Jello shot orange slices "Potential Prostitutes" site lets users label women as prostitutes, charges "removal" fees The horrors of an avalanche (and the beauty of really amazing online journalism) Free beer for life (and a Nobel Prize) Of coral and common sense: Why it's important to test our theories Could you get a restraining order against Santa? Clampdown on candy cigarettes Solar system forms "vortex" as it moves through space Warrantless email snooping could still be killed Randi Zuckerberg: not sharing my photo is a matter of "human decency" Anti-Westboro Baptist Church petition smashes White House records Star Wars memoir "A Long Time Ago" is back in the Kindle store Steampunk wrist-keyboard in a leather buckler Lovely woman reunites family with stolen dog 3D movies finally dying again? Robo-Santa and his Meccano tree, 1960 Lamenting the loss of children's chemistry kits Santa's privacy policy Jack Klugman's secret, lifesaving legacy: fighting for awareness of "orphan" diseases Luminous retro Cyberpunk costume Once your PC is hacked, your ecommerce passwords go on sale at $2 a pop Santa tax Jello shot orange slices
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 27, 2012 12:59 pm I am currently mesmerized by these mimosa jello shots, served in the peels of the oranges juiced to make them. They are absolutely ridiculous and I love them. A little something for New Year's Day?
Read in browser "Potential Prostitutes" site lets users label women as prostitutes, charges "removal" fees
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 27, 2012 12:57 pm Potential Prostitutes is only the latest sleazy site to wed personal photos to public humiliation. Its offer to publicize anonymous claims of sex crimes, however, is a novelty: any woman may be be anonymously tagged as a prostitute, then targeted with hefty removal fees. The site accepts anonymous submissions through an online form, promises to ...
Read in browser The horrors of an avalanche (and the beauty of really amazing online journalism)
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 27, 2012 12:51 pm Now this is how you do multimedia. At The New York Times, John Branch tells the amazing, terrifying story of 16 backcountry skiers and snowboarders caught in an avalanche in the Cascade mountains in February 2012. The article, by itself, is a must-read. But you should also take a look at the absolutely fantastic way ...
Read in browser Free beer for life (and a Nobel Prize)
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 27, 2012 12:03 pm I'm trying to decide which is more awesome: That a Danish beer company once had a laboratory that did research in protein chemistry and funded independent scientists ... or that said beer company gave Niels Bohr an unlimited, in-home beer supply as a gift in honor of Bohr winning the Nobel Prize. (Via Charlie Papazian)
Read in browser Of coral and common sense: Why it's important to test our theories
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 27, 2012 11:46 am Pseudopterosins are a family of naturally occurring chemicals with the power to reduce inflammation, skin irritation, and pain. In other words, they make a great additive in skin cream. If you want skin that less red, pseudopterosins can help. Want a lotion that soothes your face after a particularly vigorous round of exfoliation? Call on ...
Read in browser Could you get a restraining order against Santa?
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 27, 2012 11:37 am The excellent Law and the Multiverse blog (which seriously considers legal questions arising from funnybooks) examines the legal options available to someone seeking to get a restraining order against Jolly Old St Nick. As with all stories whose headline ends with a question-mark, the answer to this one is "no," but the reasoning behind that ...
Read in browser Clampdown on candy cigarettes
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 27, 2012 10:35 am An old-timey soda shop in St. Paul, Minnesota, has been busted for selling candy cigarettes. Lynden's, on Hamline Avenue near Cretin-Derham Hall High School, said a city inspections official came in last week and gave the shop a warning and added that a misdemeanor citation -- with a $500 fine -- would be next if ...
Read in browser Solar system forms "vortex" as it moves through space
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 27, 2012 10:18 am You can stop it at 2m in, when "Why is this important?" appears on-screen.
Read in browser Warrantless email snooping could still be killed
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 27, 2012 09:45 am Buzzfeed's John Stanton: "Backers of new protections against warrantless monitoring of private citizens' emails said Wednesday that Congress has a good shot of passing digital privacy legislation next year — despite complaints that a bill passed last week didn't include the provisions."
Read in browser Randi Zuckerberg: not sharing my photo is a matter of "human decency"
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 27, 2012 09:37 am Digital etiquette: always ask permission before posting a friend's photo publicly. It's not about privacy settings, it's about human decency — Randi Zuckerberg After accidentally making a private photo public on Facebook, Randi Zuckerberg is lecturing the world on "human decency" in the wake of its spread across the 'net. The level of grandiosity and ...
Read in browser Anti-Westboro Baptist Church petition smashes White House records
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 27, 2012 09:30 am The Huffington Post claims that this petitions.whitehouse.gov petition, calling for the classification of the Westboro Baptist Church as a "hate group," is now the most popular White House petition of all time. To be honest, I'm less interested in this petition than I am in a pair (1, 2) of similar petitions calling for the ...
Read in browser Star Wars memoir "A Long Time Ago" is back in the Kindle store
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 27, 2012 02:16 am A followup to yesterday's post about how Amazon had nuked the Kindle edition of A Long Time Ago, Gib Van Ert's memoir about growing up with Star Wars, citing nebulous and incoherent trademark issues. The Kindle edition is back. Amazon PR person Brittany Turner wrote, "Wanted to let you know that this book is now ...
Read in browser Steampunk wrist-keyboard in a leather buckler
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 27, 2012 12:47 am Etsy seller Brute Force Studios has leather, steamed-out buckler with an equally steampunk wrist-keyboard/touchpad, which talks to your computer over Bluetooth and just, you know,
wow.
Read in browser Lovely woman reunites family with stolen dog
By Jason Weisberger on Dec 26, 2012 10:13 pm A sketchy guy was selling a darling Cavalier King Charles Spaniel in a NYC when an amazing young women passed. She knew something wasn't right and paid to get the darling dog away from him!
Read in browser 3D movies finally dying again?
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 26, 2012 08:50 pm On the BBC's website, a series of respected directors of photography and cinematographers declare the imminent death (again) of 3D movies. This is something that could not come a moment too soon for me, since 3D glasses never converge properly for me, give me eyestrain and a headache, and are spectacularly uncomfortable when worn over ...
Read in browser Robo-Santa and his Meccano tree, 1960
By Xeni Jardin on Dec 26, 2012 06:31 pm From vintage ad enthusiast Paul Malon's superb Flickr stream, this 1960 holiday season cover from science fiction magazine Galaxy. He has another one with two aliens sneaking up on Christmas, and a stressed-out interstellar Santa.
Read in browser Lamenting the loss of children's chemistry kits
By Xeni Jardin on Dec 26, 2012 06:21 pm A New York Times piece on post-9/11 chemistry sets, modified for the age of lawsuits and terror-noia: "Basically, you have to be able to eat everything in the science kit," says Jim Becker, president of SmartLab Toys, "who recalled learning the names of chemicals from his childhood chemistry set, which contained substances that have long ...
Read in browser Santa's privacy policy
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 26, 2012 06:09 pm "Santa's Privacy Policy" is a McSweeney's classic from 2010. On the one hand, the joke is pretty much all in the headline and doesn't really need much elaboration. On the other hand, this is pretty well done. We obtain information from a variety of sources. Much of it comes from unsolicited letters sent to Santa ...
Read in browser Jack Klugman's secret, lifesaving legacy: fighting for awareness of "orphan" diseases
By Xeni Jardin on Dec 26, 2012 04:47 pm One thing you may not know about the late "Quincy" star Jack Klugman: he advocated for the development of treatments for rare diseases. "The problem was that many terrible diseases didn't afflict enough people to entice pharmaceutical companies to develop treatments. Hence they were 'orphan' diseases. They included Tourette's syndrome, muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, spina bifida, ALS and many ...
Read in browser Luminous retro Cyberpunk costume
By Xeni Jardin on Dec 26, 2012 03:54 pm Photo by Mike Vickers In the Boing Boing Flickr pool, Melissa Li shares some wonderful photo documentation of a cool costume she developed in multiple editions, over a period of years. Above, "Cyberpunk 2.0," the 2012 build: Costume is an original design inspired by the 'cyberpunk'/fantasy genre work of artists including Masumune Shirow, Eric Canete, ...
Read in browser Once your PC is hacked, your ecommerce passwords go on sale at $2 a pop
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 26, 2012 03:03 pm Brian Krebs writes about how hackers have expanded the ways they extract value from compromised PCs. No longer is a compromised machine merely good for forming part of a botnet or forwarding spam. New strains of malware extract all your login/passwords for ecommerce sites, and these are then put on sale at $2 a throw ...
Read in browser Santa tax
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 26, 2012 01:40 pm "Cash-strapped Ukraine on Wednesday reminded entertainers making money by posing as Did Moroz - the local version of Santa Claus - and his helpers to pay income tax." [Reuters]
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