Got questions about agricultural science? Get answers! Gun lobby has opposed research on effects of gun ownership/gun laws What's new in the Boing Boing video archives Headline of the day: The Lonely Island loves dog turds Santacon 2012: Why the nose, Santa? Are video games on your resumé? Employer stigma against gaming may be waning A plea to Google: give us crypto Report: Ecuador implementing national facial- and voice-recognition system Are any newspapers not bleeding cash? Bullet control? Dating sims broaden appeal Elfquest: you and the wind High-DPI displays revive Vectorbeam heritage Great Firewall of China nukes VPNs on sight Iain Macarthur's "Wildlife" drawings Code prints out randomly-generated cartoon faces Anonymous declares religious war on Westboro Baptist Church Jony Ive introduces Apple's latest Crowd Funding the Right to Know Christian teen and family object to school's RFID child-locator tags Potentially useful regulatory distinctions Freedom of the Press Foundation launches: crowdsourcing funding for transparency and accountability Visit beautiful Cape Goodenough Got questions about agricultural science? Get answers!
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 17, 2012 12:53 pm Sense About Science is a UK non-profit aimed at making science more understandable to the public. Right now, they're hosting a virtual plant science panel, where you can submit questions directly to scientists and see them answered on the Sense About Science website. What topics are fair game? Just about anything plant-related, from "Ash Dieback ...
Read in browser Gun lobby has opposed research on effects of gun ownership/gun laws
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 17, 2012 12:45 pm Last week, after giving myself an initial overview of the scientific research on how gun ownership and gun laws affect violent crime, I told you that it seems like there's not a solid consensus on this issue. At least not in the United States. Different studies, of different laws, in different places seem to produce ...
Read in browser What's new in the Boing Boing video archives
By Xeni Jardin on Dec 17, 2012 12:01 pm We've gathered fresh video for you to surf and enjoy on the Boing Boing video page: • "Anonymous" have declared religious war on Westboro Baptist Church. • Samuel L. Jackson said "fuck" live on SNL. • Disneynature's Chimpanzee: great way to spend down-time with your kid. • PUPPIES! • KITTIES! • SNOW BLOWERS! Boing Boing: ...
Read in browser Headline of the day: The Lonely Island loves dog turds
By Jamie Frevele on Dec 17, 2012 11:55 am As part of its first comedy issue -- or as I like to call it, "The Sexiest Humans Alive" issue -- Vanity Fair has featured a photo shoot and (unembeddable) interview with the lads of The Lonely Island, Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone. They provide exactly zero information on their future plans and ...
Read in browser Santacon 2012: Why the nose, Santa?
By Xeni Jardin on Dec 17, 2012 11:50 am SantaCon 2012, official "
Why the Nose" edition, San Francisco. Music by
Kevin MacLeod, video by
Mark Day.
Read in browser Are video games on your resumé? Employer stigma against gaming may be waning
By Xeni Jardin on Dec 17, 2012 11:41 am IBM's Vice President of Innovation Francoise LeGoues says World of Warcraft gamers are "definitely developing business skills companies like hers want." More in this PBS Frontline video report.
Read in browser A plea to Google: give us crypto
By Xeni Jardin on Dec 17, 2012 11:39 am "Rolling out strong encryption for Gmail would be a win-win situation for Google," argues Julian Sanchez in Ars Technica.
Read in browser Report: Ecuador implementing national facial- and voice-recognition system
By Xeni Jardin on Dec 17, 2012 11:38 am According to the Speech Technology Center, a firm based in Russia, Ecuador has successfully completed installation of "the world's first biometric identification platform, at a nation-wide level, that combines voice and face identification capabilities." More in Slate.com.
Read in browser Are any newspapers not bleeding cash?
By Xeni Jardin on Dec 17, 2012 11:36 am "Despite all the talk about newspapers being a dying business, plenty of them are profitable." Who's in the red, who's in the black, in Advertising Age.
Read in browser Bullet control?
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 17, 2012 11:32 am At The Atlantic, Philip Bump offers an intriguing alternative to gun control in an age where that might be impossible: bullet control. Were the government to limit the amount of ammunition made and sold in the United States, there would still be an awful lot available. James Holmes bought 6,000 rounds online before his shooting ...
Read in browser Dating sims broaden appeal
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 17, 2012 11:00 am Kimiteru Tsuruta on the increasing popularity of dating sims among Japanese women: The video game industry has always had a strong male following, but it seems to have found a way to finally capitalize on female users. The sector based on such love simulation games grew by 30.4% with 14.6 billion yen ($177.3 million) in ...
Read in browser Elfquest: you and the wind
By Wendy and Richard Pini on Dec 17, 2012 10:49 am Enjoy
the latest page of Elfquest. First time reader? Catch up at the comic's
official homepage.
Read in browser High-DPI displays revive Vectorbeam heritage
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 17, 2012 10:30 am Vectorbeam displays--think Asteroids and Tempest--drew perfect lines from point to point. As a result, these games never looked right when emulated on low-res raster displays. With the latest high-DPI gadgets, however, the pixels are so small that the vectorbeam effect may be convincingly mimicked. Here's Kyle Orland on Vectrex Regeneration, a new app that goes ...
Read in browser Great Firewall of China nukes VPNs on sight
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 17, 2012 10:07 am A new rev of the Great Firewall of China seeks out VPN connections (including, I assume, connections over The Onion Router) and terminates them. Only companies who register official VPNs with the Chinese government will be able to run them without interference. Registration is only available to Chinese companies, and I'll bet it involves escrowing ...
Read in browser Iain Macarthur's "Wildlife" drawings
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 17, 2012 10:03 am Iain MacArthur's linework reminds me of everything from Louis Wain and art nouveau to Klaus Voormann to Jim Woodring, but isn't overburdened by references. The Google image search result grid is unusually remarkable! And you can follow him on Tumblr. [Behance via Scene 360]
Read in browser Code prints out randomly-generated cartoon faces
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 17, 2012 09:18 am Mattias "Mokafolio" Dörfelt wrote a program that generates convincingly hand-drawn but randomly-assembled cartoon faces. [via Creative Applications] Computer generated images have a certain aesthetics to them that make them immediately recognizable as such by the trained eye. Weird Faces Study is an attempt to combine my old interest in illustration with programing, to create something ...
Read in browser Anonymous declares religious war on Westboro Baptist Church
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 17, 2012 09:17 am Some people using the Anonymous banner have declared religious war on the Westboro Baptist Church.
Read in browser Jony Ive introduces Apple's latest
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 17, 2012 09:04 am John Herrman is brilliant.
Read in browser Crowd Funding the Right to Know
By Xeni Jardin on Dec 17, 2012 08:30 am An op-ed by Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and John Perry Barlow, on the launch of The Freedom of the Press Foundation, an organization I'm proud to also serve as a board member. We believe that not only does WikiLeaks need to survive, it must be joined by an array of others like it, edited ...
Read in browser Christian teen and family object to school's RFID child-locator tags
By Xeni Jardin on Dec 17, 2012 08:29 am NPR's Morning Edition reports that a federal court in Texas will today take up the case of a 15yo high-school student from an evangelical Christian family who refuses to wear her RFID-enabled, location-tracking school ID. Andrea Hernandez believes her ID is "the mark of the beast" from the Bible's Book of Revelation.
Read in browser Potentially useful regulatory distinctions
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 17, 2012 12:53 am Some useful distinctions, I think: * Regulating using a gun * Regulating carrying a gun * Regulating owning a gun * Regulating parts of guns * Regulating tools that can be used to make guns * Regulating the information necessary to make guns * Regulating the information necessary to make tools that can be used ...
Read in browser Freedom of the Press Foundation launches: crowdsourcing funding for transparency and accountability
By Xeni Jardin on Dec 16, 2012 07:50 pm I'm proud to serve as a board member for the newly-launched Freedom of the Press Foundation, dedicated to helping promote and fund aggressive, public-interest journalism focused on exposing mismanagement, corruption, and law-breaking in government. The project accepts tax-deductible donations to an array of journalism organizations dedicated to government transparency and accountability. The board includes Pentagon ...
Read in browser Visit beautiful Cape Goodenough
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 16, 2012 05:31 pm Or as I like to call it, Cape Fuckthiswearegoinghome. Sadly, Antarctica's Cape Goodenough (pictured here on National Geographic's Political Map of the World) was not named by a less-then-intrepid band of explorers who decided that seeing the coastline of Antarctica was plenty of adventure for them, thankyouverymuch. Instead, it's named for William Goodenough, admiral in ...
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
No comments:
Post a Comment