Wednesday, November 28, 2012

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing
The Latest from Boing Boing

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Labatt beer-drinking songbook from the 1930s
Extreme card flourishes
New evidence of 'chemo brain' proves cognitive damage from cancer treatment isn't 'all in your head'
Hacker High: free lessons to teach kids to pwn their stuff
Girls' crappy fake toy laptop is pink, and half as powerful as boys' crappy fake toy laptop
TOM THE DANCING BUG: The Evolutionary Leap from Domestic Cats to Lolcats
Chore Monster: Keep track of chores and set up rewards
Dog was band's lead singer
Welcome to Boing Boing Family!
In Finland, piracy fines are orders of magnitude higher than fines for rape, torture and murder
DIY Lego key holder
Slayer's heavy metal Christmas sweater
Darrell Issa proposes 2-year ban on Internet legislations, will appear in Reddit AMA today to discuss
Subcompact publishing
Gift Guide 2012
Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer, the Adrian Chen profile
Guess how many House Committee Chairs will be white men this year
Interactive laser-cutter
Andy Stott's "Numb" (music video)
Death of a cyborg
Judge Dredd will PUNISH YOUR BOING!
Cincinnati Comic-Con kicking off on Kickstarter
Gilda's Club affiliates changing their name because Gilda Radner died way too long ago
Scientific American: Live Chat Weds. 12:30 P.M. EST on What Good Is a Home 3D Printer?
Insane CGI disco-video for teat-cup liners
Kevin Costner's Waterworld actually considered for adaptation
Canadians: write to Parliament about keeping generic pharma available to poor countries
Zombie Flamingos!
Mass Effect Trilogy's Mordin Solus and other esteemed extraterrestrials
Neil Patrick Harris "dreams in puppets" in a new web series on the Nerdist Channel!

 

Labatt beer-drinking songbook from the 1930s

By Cory Doctorow on Nov 28, 2012 12:42 pm

Tom Megginson posted this 1930s Labatt Employee Drinking Songs book to Retronaut. It looks like it'd improve drunkenness immensely. I found this artifact at an antiques sale in Kingston, Ontario. I estimate its age based on the label on the IPA bottle on the front cover, as well as by the design. Note that many ...
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Extreme card flourishes

By Cory Doctorow on Nov 28, 2012 12:38 pm

The Virts, a trio of skilled cardistes from Singapore, up the ante of ECM (Extreme Card Manipulation).
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New evidence of 'chemo brain' proves cognitive damage from cancer treatment isn't 'all in your head'

By Xeni Jardin on Nov 28, 2012 12:23 pm

Image: RSNA. The bright yellow and lime green in the left superior medial frontal gyrus sharply contrast the cool blue hues in the same region on the right. The brain uses glucose for energy; bright colors represent large decreases in glucose usage by the brain. Cancer survivors everywhere are nodding in agreement today: "chemo brain" ...
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Hacker High: free lessons to teach kids to pwn their stuff

By Cory Doctorow on Nov 28, 2012 12:14 pm

Pete sez, "Hacker Highschool, Security Awareness for Teens is releasing version 2 of its popular Hacking Lessons to teach teens how to be more resourceful, creative, and in control of the things they own. All this while providing practical security and safety techniques. This open, free project is a relaunch of the lessons first published ...
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Girls' crappy fake toy laptop is pink, and half as powerful as boys' crappy fake toy laptop

By Cory Doctorow on Nov 28, 2012 11:53 am

Claudia, a Dublin-based reader of Sociological Images, clipped this image of a flier for an Irish shop that sells crappy fake toy laptops in gendered versions, with the blue male version getting twice as many "functions" as the pink female version. Gwen at SocImg says, "Also, it looks more like a packet of birth control ...
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TOM THE DANCING BUG: The Evolutionary Leap from Domestic Cats to Lolcats

By Ruben Bolling on Nov 28, 2012 11:30 am

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH the memetic evolutionary leap from domestic cats to lolcats is revealed
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Chore Monster: Keep track of chores and set up rewards

By Mark Frauenfelder on Nov 28, 2012 11:17 am

Chore Monster is a website and iPhone app that encourages your kid to do chores around the house.
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Dog was band's lead singer

By Rob Beschizza on Nov 28, 2012 11:11 am

Until her death last year, the lead singer of deathgrind metal band Caninus was a dog.
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Welcome to Boing Boing Family!

By Mark Frauenfelder on Nov 28, 2012 11:10 am

"Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself." -- George Bernard Shaw When we started Boing Boing, our mission was to make a zine and a blog that we wanted to read ourselves. And when we launched the Apps for Kids podcast, the idea was to review ...
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In Finland, piracy fines are orders of magnitude higher than fines for rape, torture and murder

By Cory Doctorow on Nov 28, 2012 10:36 am

Thierry sez, "Hey, remember the scandal last week about the girl whose laptop was confiscated for downloading a album from Chisu? Well, here's another shocking story about the same company, with a staggering €400,000 fine to a young man aged 21. According to this, piracy is worse then rape or murder in Finland, i.e. a ...
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DIY Lego key holder

By Mark Frauenfelder on Nov 28, 2012 10:00 am

Minieco made this cute key holder from Legos that she raided from her son's Lego box. It would be fun to make a set for the entire family.
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Slayer's heavy metal Christmas sweater

By Cory Doctorow on Nov 28, 2012 09:46 am

Sadly, Slayer's holiday jumper has sold out. This is the perfect evolution of the black heavy-metal t-shirt, something for an aging headbanger cohort. I hope they do pajamas and hot water bottle cozies next. Slayer Christmas Holidays Jumper (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
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Darrell Issa proposes 2-year ban on Internet legislations, will appear in Reddit AMA today to discuss

By Cory Doctorow on Nov 28, 2012 09:00 am

Rep Darrell Issa (R-CA) has pretty good credentials as a friend of the Internet, being one of the early Congresscritters to stand up to SOPA and PIPA (though there's the little matter of sponsoring a corporatist bill to limit open access for state-funded research). He's introduced a bill called the "The Internet American Moratorium Act ...
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Subcompact publishing

By Rob Beschizza on Nov 28, 2012 08:04 am

Craig Mod on the rise of small, tailored publishers unencumbered by mainstream media's addiction to bloat: "You shouldn't have to hire a famous actor to show readers how to use the app with his nose. Much like a printed magazine or book, the interaction should be intuitive, effortless, and grounding. The user should never feel ...
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Gift Guide 2012

By Boing Boing on Nov 28, 2012 08:00 am

Welcome to this year's Boing Boing Gift Guide, a piling-high of our most loved stuff from 2012 and beyond. There are books, comics, games, gadgets and much else besides: click the categories at the top to filter what you're most interested in—and add your suggestions and links in the comments.
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Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer, the Adrian Chen profile

By Xeni Jardin on Nov 28, 2012 07:39 am

Weev. Photo: Gawker Adrian Chen at Gawker has a must-read profile on Weev: so-called "iPad hacker," founder of the anti-blogging Internet-trolling organization "Gay Nigger Association of America," and born-again Mormon troll. Snip: For Auernheimer, the AT&T breach was one of his finest works as a troll. He personally didn't hack anything—the program used to collect ...
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Guess how many House Committee Chairs will be white men this year

By Xeni Jardin on Nov 28, 2012 07:36 am

One hundred percent.
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Interactive laser-cutter

By Cory Doctorow on Nov 27, 2012 11:05 pm

Constructable is an experimental laser-cutter from the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam. It uses a light-pen to direct the cutting beam, so that you can draw the cuts freehand, in realtime, rather than designing a pattern that is fed to the cutter.
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Andy Stott's "Numb" (music video)

By David Pescovitz on Nov 27, 2012 10:32 pm

"Numb," from haunted house/dub producer Andy Stott's glorious new record Luxury Problems.
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Death of a cyborg

By Cory Doctorow on Nov 27, 2012 09:37 pm

Here's Shorra's "Death of a Cyborg," and it's lovely. (via Kadrey)
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Judge Dredd will PUNISH YOUR BOING!

By Cory Doctorow on Nov 27, 2012 09:03 pm

Sara sez, "Found this in an old Judge Dredd comic (scan attached). In the 22nd century, when Boinging is outlawed, only outlaws will Boing. Includes great snippets such as: "Give me a hundred credits Ma. I gotta Boing®!" "Terminal Boing®" "I always knew I would die... on duty... but not like this... not an ILLEGAL ...
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Cincinnati Comic-Con kicking off on Kickstarter

By Cory Doctorow on Nov 27, 2012 08:31 pm

Tony Moore sez, "My name's Tony Moore. I'm a comic book illustrator known for my recent years at Marvel doing wacky runs on Punisher, Venom, and Deadpool, and also for my early work on The Walking Dead. I've thrown in with some of Cincinnati's finest to launch a major destination comic book convention, as found ...
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Gilda's Club affiliates changing their name because Gilda Radner died way too long ago

By Jamie Frevele on Nov 27, 2012 07:52 pm

Four affiliates of the cancer support community Gilda's Club, formed and named in honor of the legendary Saturday Night Live comedian Gilda Radner (who died of ovarian cancer in 1989), have decided to drop Gilda's name for an incredibly depressing reason: the younger patients don't know who she is. "...[O]ur college students were born after ...
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Scientific American: Live Chat Weds. 12:30 P.M. EST on What Good Is a Home 3D Printer?

By Mark Frauenfelder on Nov 27, 2012 07:47 pm

Earlier this week, MAKE published its Ultimate Guide to 3D Printing, which explains what 3D printing is and what you can do with a 3D printer. The heart of this special issue is a side-by-side review of 15 different low-cost 3D printers. Tomorrow I'm participating in a live chat with the editors of Scientific American ...
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Insane CGI disco-video for teat-cup liners

By Cory Doctorow on Nov 27, 2012 07:16 pm

Ray sez, "I was looking for teat cups to build a simple hand vacuum pump milking machine for our new pet goat. And I found this website for milking machine teat cup liners, with the associated disco dancing promotional video. ClassicPro - Silicone Liners (Thanks, Ray!)
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Kevin Costner's Waterworld actually considered for adaptation

By Jason Weisberger on Nov 27, 2012 06:42 pm

Shocking! A.V. Club shares that the SyFy channel may make a TV series out of Costner's terrible flop. "Syfy's reasoning is that Waterworld continues to be a decent performer every time they air it—and as Nielsen boxes are not currently capable of measuring ironic and/or drunk viewing, it's considered a big enough hit to think ...
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Canadians: write to Parliament about keeping generic pharma available to poor countries

By Cory Doctorow on Nov 27, 2012 06:16 pm

Dave Ng writes, "Tomorrow, the Government of Canada will go through the second reading of Bill C-398. This is essentially important discussion over the fate of a law that would allow a measured approached for the production of life saving generic medicines within Canada. These generics are life saving in the sense that with this ...
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Zombie Flamingos!

By Cory Doctorow on Nov 27, 2012 05:52 pm

Zombie Flamingos are just the perfect accessory for the home that has everything! Zombie Flamingo (via Geekologie)
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Mass Effect Trilogy's Mordin Solus and other esteemed extraterrestrials

By Advertiser on Nov 27, 2012 05:45 pm

ADVERTISEMENT This post sponsored by MASS EFFECT TRILOGY. Own the award-winning saga. Out now. 
 Once you're immersed in the Mass Effect Trilogy, you'll come to know Mordin Solus, seen above center. A Salarian from the planet Sur'Kesh, Solus is a professor and geneticist who was formerly an operative in the Special Tasks Group. "Lots ...
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Neil Patrick Harris "dreams in puppets" in a new web series on the Nerdist Channel!

By Jamie Frevele on Nov 27, 2012 05:39 pm

If you dream in puppets like Neil Patrick Harris does, it might be time to drink more chamomile tea at night.
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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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