Canadian Supreme Court puts Viagra in the public domain because Pfizer wouldn't disclose enough of its workings Calvin and Hobbes original art expected to get at least $125,000 at auction That story about a woman whose vote was a tie-breaker? Totally a Popeye cartoon. Gabrielle Giffords tells shooter she's "done thinking about you" Six strikes copyright disconnection event in NYC, Nov 28 Iranian blogger who was tortured and died in custody is buried World's tiniest violin plays for early Facebook employees whose net worth tanked from 8 to 7 figures "Pre-gaming" leads to riskier behavior and more alcohol consumption, groundbreaking study finds Obama reelection inspires racist election night rallies Report: SEC's computers were vulnerable to security breaches Sweet Tooth 5: Unnatural Habitats, in which the chimeric apocalypse gets even more engrossing China won't permit human rights monitors in Tibet, because hey, come on, nothing bad is going on there, you guys Nation unsure how it feels about video of President Obama crying Hand-crank mills with which to grind one's own flour ($675.95) are the new artisanal mayonnaise Report: Now that election's decided, NASA may announce new manned lunar mission EFF delivers easy full-disk encryption for Ubuntu James Bond: Every attempted crocodile jump in "Live and Let Die" Microsoft patents spying on you with your TV's camera and fining you if there are too many people watching "When quants tell stories," or why Nate Silver didn't win the day with awesome math alone Time-lapse animated GIF of NYC subway recovery post-Sandy Why AT&T's flip-flop on FaceTime matters Manga plates turn your food into comics Now with an orchestra: Drunk woman on YouTube upset over Obama Mommy and Daddy fairy-wrens sing "food passwords" to teach their eggs to sing Privacy Matters On Outlook.com US criminal probe of WikiLeaks is 'ongoing,' reveals judge Inside John McAfee's Heart of Darkness NYT op-doc on medical pot grower in MT who faces life in prison Firefighters in Tiananmen Square at the ready to douse self-immolators After Mitt Romney's loss, another blow: Secret Service detail says buh-bye Canadian Supreme Court puts Viagra in the public domain because Pfizer wouldn't disclose enough of its workings
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 09, 2012 11:57 am Michael Geist sez, The Supreme Court of Canada this morning shocked the pharmaceutical industry by voiding Pfizer's patent in Canada for Viagra. The unanimous decision provides a strong reaffirmation of the policy behind patent law, namely that patents represent a quid pro quo bargain of public disclosure of inventions in return for a time limited ...
Read in browser Calvin and Hobbes original art expected to get at least $125,000 at auction
By Mark Frauenfelder on Nov 09, 2012 11:53 am Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes was the last great American newspaper comic strip, and opportunities to acquire original art are as rare as bug's teeth. Heritage Auctions is rightfully giddy to be offering a hand-colored Sunday strip. (I wouldn't be surprised if Watterson himself buys it.) Oh boy -- be prepared to have your world ...
Read in browser That story about a woman whose vote was a tie-breaker? Totally a Popeye cartoon.
By Jamie Frevele on Nov 09, 2012 11:21 am That story about a wife's tie-breaking vote? The plot of a Popeye cartoon from 1956.
Read in browser Gabrielle Giffords tells shooter she's "done thinking about you"
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 09, 2012 11:21 am Jared Loughner, the 24 year old man who shot former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, has been given seven life prison sentences without parole plus 140 years for his crime. Giffords this week sat in the courtroom, "looked in the eyes of the man who shot her," and, through her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, told Loughner ...
Read in browser Six strikes copyright disconnection event in NYC, Nov 28
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 09, 2012 11:07 am Joly from the Internet Society writes, As Boing Boing readers will know, the Copyright Alert System, the result of a deal between big content and big ISPs, is a graduated response program - popularly known as the six strikes - that escalates from nastygrams, to copyright school, to Internet throttling. Just like SOPA/PIPA, enforcement targets ...
Read in browser Iranian blogger who was tortured and died in custody is buried
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 09, 2012 10:45 am Sattar Beheshti, 35, was an Iranian blogger and Facebook activist who died in police custody after being arrested and tortured. Reports this week say he has been buried in his hometown of Rabat Karim, southwest of the Iranian capital.
Read in browser World's tiniest violin plays for early Facebook employees whose net worth tanked from 8 to 7 figures
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 09, 2012 10:42 am "Do you have any idea how it feels to be a 26 years-old in Palo Alto with less than $10 million in liquid assets? It's, like, depressing." Oh, The Shame of a Seven-figure Net Worth. (banneradconfidential.com, which is a fake/satire news site, so don't get too outraged)
Read in browser "Pre-gaming" leads to riskier behavior and more alcohol consumption, groundbreaking study finds
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 09, 2012 10:20 am A Swiss study has found that "pre-drinking," "pre-funking," "pre-gaming"—basically, the ritual among college-age young adults of drinking before you go out to drink, leads to "excessive consumption and adverse consequences." Pre-gaming didn't have a name when I was their age; it's interesting how the phenomenon (is it even a phenomenon?) has become a media meme ...
Read in browser Obama reelection inspires racist election night rallies
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 09, 2012 10:12 am Racially-fueled anti-Obama demonstrations broke out at various colleges and universities in the American South on election night, after the president's reelection was called. Counter-demonstrations by other students, urging tolerance and an end to racism, followed.
Read in browser Report: SEC's computers were vulnerable to security breaches
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 09, 2012 10:10 am U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission employees did not encrypt some computers that contained "highly sensitive information from stock exchanges, leaving the data vulnerable to cyber attacks, according to people familiar with the matter." Reuters has the full story. The SEC spent $200K to confirm that "no hacking or spying on the SEC's computers took place," ...
Read in browser Sweet Tooth 5: Unnatural Habitats, in which the chimeric apocalypse gets even more engrossing
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 09, 2012 10:04 am I've just finished
Unnatural Habitats, the fifth collection of Jeff Lemire's apocalyptic
Sweet Tooth comics, and I continue to be absolutely taken by it, on the grimmest of tenterhooks for the next volume.
Read in browser China won't permit human rights monitors in Tibet, because hey, come on, nothing bad is going on there, you guys
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 09, 2012 09:41 am At least 68 Tibetans have set themselves on fire since March 2011 in protest against Chinese rule over Tibetan regions; 56 have died. Despite this, Reuters reports that a government official said today that China "will not allow foreign observers into restive Tibet to probe human rights abuses... dismissing mounting international pressure for an independent ...
Read in browser Nation unsure how it feels about video of President Obama crying
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 09, 2012 09:29 am The "candid" video of President Obama tearing up as he thanks his staff and tells them "I'm Really Proud of All of You" is interesting.
Read in browser Hand-crank mills with which to grind one's own flour ($675.95) are the new artisanal mayonnaise
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 09, 2012 09:16 am At Acculturated blog, Abby W. Schachter writes about "bobos," short for bourgeois bohemians, and evidence that big consumer brands are now marketing to them with highly mockable DIY gear that re-creates artisanal (or, depending on your point of view, obsolete) food production methods. Case in point: William Sonoma's new upscale DIY kitchenware collection, called the ...
Read in browser Report: Now that election's decided, NASA may announce new manned lunar mission
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 09, 2012 09:05 am Space.com spoke to space policy expert John Logsdon, a professor emeritus at George Washington University, about rumors that NASA may soon unveil new manned moon missions. "Plans have probably already been cleared with the Obama Administration but have been kept under wraps in case Republican candidate Mitt Romney won," according to Space.com. As the Independent ...
Read in browser EFF delivers easy full-disk encryption for Ubuntu
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 09, 2012 08:57 am Douglas sez, 18 months ago Boing Boing posted about EFF's effort to get Ubuntu to make full disk encryption (FDE) easy upon install. EFF has delivered. I'm sure many of us have had and continue to have the experience of trying to nudge someone (or ourselves) over from OS X or Windows to GNU/Linux and ...
Read in browser James Bond: Every attempted crocodile jump in "Live and Let Die"
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 09, 2012 08:54 am Multiple takes of stuntman Ross Kanaga's epic crocodile jumps, in the shooting of the 1973 James Bond flick, "Live and Let Die."
Read in browser Microsoft patents spying on you with your TV's camera and fining you if there are too many people watching
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 08, 2012 09:32 pm Kotaku's Luke Plunkett delves into a newly disclosed Microsoft patent that covers spying on people in their homes using cameras attached to their TVs, in order to levy fines against them for allowing too many people to watch movies at once: Basically, when you buy or rent something like a movie, you'll only be granted ...
Read in browser "When quants tell stories," or why Nate Silver didn't win the day with awesome math alone
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 08, 2012 06:24 pm Felix Salmon at Reuters: "If you think that the value of Nate Silver is in the model, you're missing the most important part: there are lots of people with models, and most of those models are pretty similar to each other. The thing which sets Silver apart from the rest is that he can write: ...
Read in browser Time-lapse animated GIF of NYC subway recovery post-Sandy
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 08, 2012 06:14 pm At WNYC's Data News, MTA subway-recovery maps compiled into one handy animated GIF.
Read in browser Why AT&T's flip-flop on FaceTime matters
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 08, 2012 06:12 pm Great piece over at The Verge on why AT&T reversed its effective ban on the use of FaceTime over cellular networks. Why are they unlocking it, finally? They faced FCC complaints.
Read in browser Manga plates turn your food into comics
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 08, 2012 06:11 pm Francesco sez, "In my blog on Wired.it I posted a new series of wonderful 'manga inspired' plates created by the Japanese designer Mika Tsutai. Positioning the food in the right way Geek Chefs can tell a story or almost make the food more fun! Each plate costs 2980 Yen and for now is available only ...
Read in browser Now with an orchestra: Drunk woman on YouTube upset over Obama
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 08, 2012 06:10 pm Ethan Persoff has remixed the "Drunk Lady on YouTube upset about Obama's reelection;" now she has an orchestra to match the tinkling ice cubes in her shot glass.
Read in browser Mommy and Daddy fairy-wrens sing "food passwords" to teach their eggs to sing
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 08, 2012 06:06 pm "Superb fairy-wren (Malurus cyaneus) mothers sing to their unhatched eggs to teach the embryo inside a 'password' — a single unique note — which the nestlings must later incorporate into their begging calls if they want to get fed." Zoë Corbyn in Scientific American, on a very unusual example of avian communication.
Read in browser Privacy Matters On Outlook.com
By Advertiser on Nov 08, 2012 06:05 pm ADVERTISEMENT This post sponsored by Outlook.com: Imagine you have an account with a major free webmail provider. You log into your account via your web browser and notice ads in your inbox and when you read a message. Now imagine that these ads are displayed based on what you write in the email you send ...
Read in browser US criminal probe of WikiLeaks is 'ongoing,' reveals judge
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 08, 2012 06:04 pm David Kravets at Wired News writes about the 2-year-old federal grand jury probe into WikiLeaks, which is still "ongoing," according to a brief ruling by a federal judge in Virginia this week. The statement is the first official word on the investigation since Assange's Ecuadorean asylum plea last August. U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady of ...
Read in browser Inside John McAfee's Heart of Darkness
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 08, 2012 06:00 pm At Gizmodo, Jeff Wise writes about antivirus firm MacAfee founder John McAfee's bizarre life in Belize, holed up with heavily-armed gang members, "garbage bags full of Viagra," 17 year old local girls, did we mention lots and lots of guns, and many unanswered questions.
Read in browser NYT op-doc on medical pot grower in MT who faces life in prison
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 08, 2012 05:49 pm At the NYT, a video "opinion documentary," 'The Fight Over Medical Marijuana', by Rebecca Richman Cohen. "Our federal marijuana policy is increasingly out of step with both the values of American citizens and with state law," she writes. "The result is a system of justice that is schizophrenic and at times appalling." After the elections, ...
Read in browser Firefighters in Tiananmen Square at the ready to douse self-immolators
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 08, 2012 05:45 pm Writing at the Washington Post, Max Fisher explains a creepy photo making the foreign correspondent rounds: "This week's very public display of firefighters in Tiananmen – noticed by McClatchy's Tom Lasseter, who posted the photo to his McClatchy China blog and kindly granted permission for me to reproduce it – is meant to deter potential ...
Read in browser After Mitt Romney's loss, another blow: Secret Service detail says buh-bye
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 08, 2012 05:42 pm "Of all the indignities involved in losing a presidential race, none is more stark than the sudden emptiness of your entourage. The Secret Service detail guarding Governor Romney since Feb 1. stood down quickly. He had ridden in a 15-car motorcade to the Intercontinental Hotel in Boston for his concession speech. He rode in a ...
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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