Chemis-tree UK record industry seeks to financially ruin leaders of the Pirate Party Charlie Brooker on media coverage of mass shootings Roger Ebert on how the press reports mass killings Open University is now more open Gweek 079: Milo Danger, maker of the armed civilian drone Mike Huckabee: school "carnage" caused by having "removed God" from schools Art prints from Curio House Laurie Penny on the misogynist harassment she suffers as a woman journalist Green women, fat livers, and the cultural side of disease Muir Beach, sunrise "Breaking Abbey": A Downton Abbey/Breaking Bad crossover, courtesy of Colbert What science says about gun control and violent crime iPhone case allows you to take photos with phone held horizontally American Apparel style gift guide Top Pentagon propagandist boasted of running a smear campaign against USA Today Drug Policy Alliance's response to Obama's marijuana legalization interview Hackers pwn industrial heating system using backdoor posted on web CIA 'tortured, sodomized' terror suspect, European human rights court rules And now, puppy chaser, in case the kittens weren't enough The Shadow knows... Kittie chaser, for a very, very bad news day Chemis-tree
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 15, 2012 12:47 pm Breokz uploaded a photo of "Xmas at the lab of Avans University of Applied Science." Chemistry may all be "pretty colors and things that go bang," but it sure makes for a festive tree. True Chemistree (imgur.com)
Read in browser UK record industry seeks to financially ruin leaders of the Pirate Party
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 15, 2012 12:42 pm Ever since the UK record labels got a court to order our national ISPs to censor The Pirate Bay, the UK Pirate Party has been offering a proxy that allows Britons to connect to the site and all the material it offers, both infringing and non-infringing. The record industry has finally struck back. Rather than ...
Read in browser Charlie Brooker on media coverage of mass shootings
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 15, 2012 10:35 am A 2009 installment of Newswipe shows how the 24-hour news-cycle is part of the system that gives rise to mass shootings.
Read in browser Roger Ebert on how the press reports mass killings
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 15, 2012 08:36 am Roger Ebert's review of the 2003 Van Sant movie "Elephant" contains some of the most coherent criticism of the way the media reports mass killings I've yet read: Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and ...
Read in browser Open University is now more open
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 14, 2012 08:35 pm The UK Open University, where I'm a visiting senior lecturer, has just announced a new free/open learning platform called Futurelearn: "Futurelearn will be the UK's first large-scale provider of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), a new kind of educational offering that charges no fees, offers no formal qualifications and has no barriers to entry. The ...
Read in browser Gweek 079: Milo Danger, maker of the armed civilian drone
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 14, 2012 08:30 pm In this special edition of the Gweek podcast I interviewed Milo Danger, the guy who installed a paintball handgun into an unmanned drone and shot cardboard targets shaped like human torsos. Milo has other videos on his Danger Info YouTube channel about lock picking and how to grow medical marijuana.
Read in browser Mike Huckabee: school "carnage" caused by having "removed God" from schools
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 14, 2012 07:20 pm Mike Huckabee, on Fox News: "We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee said on Fox News, discussing the murder spree that took the lives of 20 children and 6 adults in Newtown, CT that morning. "Should we be so surprised that schools would ...
Read in browser Art prints from Curio House
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 14, 2012 07:15 pm Boing Boing friends Oric Scott De Las Casas and Allen Yamashita have founded Curio House, a new media venture launching in 2013. Ramping up, they're offering a series of prints from Dan Hipp, Bill Sienkiewicz, Eric Orchard, Adam Van Wyk, and the late, great Mike "Ringo" Wieringo. Opening at 4pm today, the prints are for ...
Read in browser Laurie Penny on the misogynist harassment she suffers as a woman journalist
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 14, 2012 06:32 pm Writing in The Independent, journalist Laurie Penny recounts the kind of awful, grotesque, misogynist threats and insults that she receives on a daily basis for daring to have left-wing opinions while being a woman. I read Penny pretty regularly, and I generally agree with what she has to say. What's more, it's not vastly different ...
Read in browser Green women, fat livers, and the cultural side of disease
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 14, 2012 05:23 pm Once upon a time, there was apparently a disease called chlorosis. (There is, still, a plant disease of the same name, but we're talking about human chlorosis, here.) It existed in young women from the U.S. and Europe. It turned their skin turn green. The diagnosed cause: Excessive virginity. Prescription: A husband and, for best ...
Read in browser Muir Beach, sunrise
By Jason Weisberger on Dec 14, 2012 04:24 pm Was looking at scans of some recent photographs. Honestly can't recall when I took it, but I like it.
Read in browser "Breaking Abbey": A Downton Abbey/Breaking Bad crossover, courtesy of Colbert
By Jamie Frevele on Dec 14, 2012 04:23 pm A most proper drug deal in the New Mexico desert could only happen with the finest English gentlemen.
Read in browser What science says about gun control and violent crime
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 14, 2012 04:00 pm Does gun control mean fewer guns on the street and less violence? Does encouraging gun ownership mean better protected people and less violence? I don't think it's too early to be asking questions like this. When you're faced with a tragedy like what happened today at Sandy Hook Elementary School, it's reasonable to start asking ...
Read in browser iPhone case allows you to take photos with phone held horizontally
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 14, 2012 03:55 pm The MirrorCase for the iPhone lets you take photos while holding the phone flat, like an old-timey camera. It seems like a good way to shoot video of yourself, too - just set it on a table and do your thing. At $50, it's a bit pricey. I wonder if there's a DIY version? (I ...
Read in browser American Apparel style gift guide
By Advertiser on Dec 14, 2012 03:40 pm ADVERTISEMENT This post sponsored by American Apparel: Seeking stylish gifts for the happy mutants in your life? American Apparel has moved way, WAY beyond t-shirts and hoodies. Here's a fine selection of sweatshop-free items from the USA's most colorful and comfortable vertically-integrated manufacturer, along with some classic products from other iconic brands: • Casio Batteryless ...
Read in browser Top Pentagon propagandist boasted of running a smear campaign against USA Today
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 14, 2012 03:26 pm Camille Chidiac, one of the owners of "the Pentagon's top propaganda contractor in Afghanistan" is being sued for stealing company secrets related to waterproofing Iphones, and the lawsuit's filings include documents alleging that Chiciac boasted of running a smear campaign against USA Today: The online smear campaign began early in 2012 and included fake Twitter ...
Read in browser Drug Policy Alliance's response to Obama's marijuana legalization interview
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 14, 2012 03:14 pm Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Drug Policy Alliance, responds to Obama's marijuana legalization comments this morning. tldr; "Obama is sort of heading in the right direction."
Read in browser Hackers pwn industrial heating system using backdoor posted on web
By Xeni Jardin on Dec 14, 2012 02:43 pm Dan Goodin at Ars explains how hackers "illegally accessed the Internet-connected controls for a New Jersey-based company's internal heating and air-conditioning system by exploiting a backdoor in a widely used piece of software, according to a recently published memo issued by the FBI."
Read in browser CIA 'tortured, sodomized' terror suspect, European human rights court rules
By Xeni Jardin on Dec 14, 2012 02:38 pm In a landmark ruling for human rights in the war on terror, the European court of human rights found that CIA agents tortured German citizen, Khaled el-Masri.
Read in browser And now, puppy chaser, in case the kittens weren't enough
By Jamie Frevele on Dec 14, 2012 02:25 pm Puppies.
Read in browser The Shadow knows...
By Jason Weisberger on Dec 14, 2012 02:07 pm Listening to radio programs with my father, just as he did as a kid, was a joy of my childhood. The Shadow was always a favorite. Nero Wolfe as well. Episodes are available on Amazon cheaply enough that I have stopped searching and started listening. The Shadow Vol. 1 on Amazon MP3
Read in browser Kittie chaser, for a very, very bad news day
By Xeni Jardin on Dec 14, 2012 02:07 pm kitties.
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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