Remembering Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson with exclusive track Britons! Stop the Snoopers' Charter, end the government's spying plan! Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer gala party on Mayan Doomsday at Boston's Torrent Engine 18 Street artist KAWS at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade The Four Leading Electric Novelties of 1897 Shape-Shifting Lizard Skin Cream The Milky Way Coding Freedom: an anthropologist understands hacker culture Open source, sonar-controlled vibrator you play like a theremin, with your whole body Bong Bong Apps for Kids podcast on CNN Remembering Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson with exclusive track
By David Pescovitz on Nov 25, 2012 12:18 pm Exclusive mix of "Desertshores" in memory of Throbbing Gristle's Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson.
Read in browser Britons! Stop the Snoopers' Charter, end the government's spying plan!
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 25, 2012 11:59 am On Saturday, the UK Open Rights Group held a London training session for activists who want to fight the "Snoopers' Charter."
Read in browser Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer gala party on Mayan Doomsday at Boston's Torrent Engine 18
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 25, 2012 11:15 am Katherine sez, "Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer will be performing a GALA PARTY on Friday, December 21st, 2012 (aka MAYAN DOOMSDAY) to benefit the restoration of Torrent Engine 18, a Boston firehouse turned flexible art gallery/theatre. On the official Last Day on Earth, the gala will offer decadent music, mystery readings, and ritual burlesque, plus ...
Read in browser Street artist KAWS at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 25, 2012 11:10 am Street artist KAWS, aka Brian Donnelly, 38, reached a milestone this year: his "Companion" character was a float in the 2012 Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.
Read in browser The Four Leading Electric Novelties of 1897
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 25, 2012 10:56 am Scanned and Flickr'd by Captain Geoffrey Spaulding, an ad for Ohio Electric Works, 1897.
Read in browser Shape-Shifting Lizard Skin Cream
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 25, 2012 10:38 am Shape Shifting Lizard Skin Cream, by Darren Cullen & Mark Tolson. Shapeshifting from lizard to human form is great for controlling Earth so you can mine gold to save your dying homeworld, but it's not so great for your skin. When you're juggling appointments and global depopulation deadlines, you don't have time for an exhaustive ...
Read in browser The Milky Way
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 25, 2012 09:46 am A wonderful night-sky photo shared in the BB Flickr Pool by Dave Hensley: "Unadjusted jpg made from 16bit/channel tiff created by a linux stacking script I wrote; operating on a series of images I captured over vacation."
Read in browser Coding Freedom: an anthropologist understands hacker culture
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 25, 2012 07:35 am Biella Coleman is a geek anthropologist, in both senses of the epithet: an anthropologist who studies geeks, and a geek who is an anthropologist. Though she's best known today for her excellent and insightful work on the mechanism and structure underpinning Anonymous and /b/, Coleman is also an expert on the organization, structure, philosophy and struggles of the free software/open source movements. I met Biella while she was doing fieldwork as an intern at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She's also had deep experience with the Debian project and many other hacker/FLOSS subcultures.
Read in browser Open source, sonar-controlled vibrator you play like a theremin, with your whole body
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 25, 2012 04:04 am Scanlime's Beth modded a remote control vibrator, replacing the interface with an Arduino-based sonar controller that she can activate with any part of her body.
Read in browser Bong Bong
By David Pescovitz on Nov 24, 2012 04:52 pm While traveling in Mumbai, my IFTF colleague Jason Tester visited Boing Boing's flagship marijuana dispensary.
Read in browser Apps for Kids podcast on CNN
By Mark Frauenfelder on Nov 24, 2012 01:18 pm Hot on the heels of our NPR interview, My daughter Jane and I were interviewed on CNN about Apps for Kids
Read in browser Meet SparkTruck, an “educational build-mobile” for the twenty-first century.
Dreamed up by a group of Stanford d.school students and funded through Kickstarter, SparkTruck is a mobile maker space currently traveling across the United States. At schools and summer camps and libraries around the country, the SparkTruck team offers workshops to help kids “find their inner maker” as they design and build projects like stamps, stop-motion animation clips, and “vibrobots.”
[video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmRKXqDwieY&feature=plcp]
This might seem all shiny and new. And it is—but only in part. What’s so striking (and exciting) about SparkTruck is the way it combines old and new. It does so in the tools it gets kids using, which range from pipe cleaners to laser cutters. It does so in its educational approach, which combines cutting-edge (get it?) STEM and design pedagogy with the fundamentals of an old-school shop class. And it does so in its method, which combines the iconic, century-old technology of the bookmobile with the hot new form of the maker space.
In doing so, SparkTruck joins a growing number of libraries which are combining time-tested principles (like equal access to information) with new technologies (like 3-D printers), putting in maker spaces and media production labs alongside bookshelves and meeting rooms. As I’ve argued over on bookmobility.org, these combinations make sense because reading and making actually have a lot in common. They’re both creative processes that take existing materials and combine them in new ways. Getting people engaged in those kinds of processes—through imaginative thinking, contemplation, hands-on problem-solving, and collaborative learning—is what both maker spaces and libraries are all about.
Taking that commitment on the road with scissors and hammers and 3-D printers and a great big bookmobile-like truck, SparkTruck serves as a laboratory for new approaches, as well as a reminder that trying new things doesn’t have to (and probably shouldn’t!) necessarily mean tossing old ones out.
After all, what would those vibrobots be without classically crafty pipe cleaners and tongue depressors? And what would a library be without the creative, participatory, straight-up awesome experience of reading?
SparkTruck schedule [sparktruck.org]
How to arrange a visit from SparkTruck [sparktruck.org]
SparkTruck YouTube channel [youtube.com]
Signature: --Derek Attig, bookmobility.org
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