Tuesday, December 25, 2012

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

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Gingerbread Saturn V rocket
Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, Rick Rubin Goes To College, Too $hort
Chipmunk Christmas, slowed down to original speed
Choose-your-own-adventure wedding proposal comic
Star Trek mummer's play
Erik Davis: Jesus freaks rock
NSFC: Cyriak's horrific Christmas animation
Lord Buckley meets Groucho Marx

 

Gingerbread Saturn V rocket

By Cory Doctorow on Dec 25, 2012 11:45 am

Matt sez, "For Christmas I decided to make a model Saturn V out of gingerbread. This one's 40 inches tall. I'm waiting for my niece and nephew to show up before we paint the flag and 'USA' on the sides." Gingerbread Saturn V
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Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, Rick Rubin Goes To College, Too $hort

By Ed Piskor on Dec 25, 2012 11:00 am

Read the rest of the Hip Hop Family Tree comics!
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Chipmunk Christmas, slowed down to original speed

By Rob Beschizza on Dec 25, 2012 10:16 am

AKA "Satan confers with His minions". The MP3 link blogged here some time ago is sadly dead. Put it on repeat and you'll drift gradually into madness - it's like an acid flashback to fetal languor, the surreal sounds that filtered through the uterine wall.
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Choose-your-own-adventure wedding proposal comic

By Cory Doctorow on Dec 25, 2012 08:42 am

Lauren Beukes sez, "My South African writer friend Sam Wilson proposed to his scientist girlfriend Kerry Gordon using a comic that he's been secretly collating for the last three months featuring quirky, sweet, wonderful, funny artwork to illustrate the possible futures that might occur depending on whether she says yes or no. In the yes ...
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Star Trek mummer's play

By Cory Doctorow on Dec 25, 2012 07:10 am

"King Boreas and the Vulcans" is a Star Trek-themed rewrite of a traditional mummer's play, by the delightful (and sadly departed) John M Ford and friends. Kirk: In comes I, old Captain Kirk All my fans know I'm a...great actor, Brilliant novelist, and a swell guy besides I come here from space My rug glued ...
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Erik Davis: Jesus freaks rock

By Erik Davis on Dec 25, 2012 03:01 am

Erik Davis hits the high notes of 60s Jesus freak psychedelia.
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NSFC: Cyriak's horrific Christmas animation

By Cory Doctorow on Dec 24, 2012 06:02 pm

"The Spirit of Christmas," a video from UK animator Cyriak, is not really like anything I've ever seen.
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Lord Buckley meets Groucho Marx

By Cory Doctorow on Dec 24, 2012 02:51 pm

Nothing says Christmas like jazz poetry, and nothing says jazz poetry like Lord Buckley's appearance on You Bet Your life.
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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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