What's inside a poop? Rise of the Graphic Novel: everything you need to know about the comics field in 70 pages Congress decides every aspect of your electronic life can be spied on without a warrant and you can't know how much spying is going on Einstein audio Is a $10,000 Leica M9 setup worth it? China's Princelings: descendants of Mao's generals who control the country's wealth "Both" Adafruit is making a kids' electronics puppet show! Working record made from ice Census Dotmap: a dot for every person in the United States Bruce Sterling's annual State of the World address Pirate radio station jams keyless entry system Pet chicken saves family from blaze Hanging jellyfish lights Sand spider builds a burrow Chewbacca bandolier inspired messenger bag Tiny nude figurines are crowd pleasers What's inside a poop?
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 29, 2012 12:20 pm In PLoS One, the delightfully titled "In-Depth Analysis of a Piece of Shit" explains, in-depth, how many hookworm eggs you can expect to find in your average infectious turd: An accurate diagnosis of helminth infection is important to improve patient management. However, there is considerable intra- and inter-specimen variation of helminth egg counts in human ...
Read in browser Rise of the Graphic Novel: everything you need to know about the comics field in 70 pages
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 29, 2012 08:53 am Stephen Weiner's seminal Rise of the Graphic Novel has had a second edition. Rise builds on Weiner's influential work in cataloging and charting a course through the field of graphic novels for librarians around America and the world, spinning out a compact, fascinating narrative of the history of graphic novels, from the Yellow Kid to ...
Read in browser Congress decides every aspect of your electronic life can be spied on without a warrant and you can't know how much spying is going on
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 29, 2012 04:04 am They voted down every single privacy amendment to FISA, the act that lets the NSA spy on you without a warrant.
Read in browser Einstein audio
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 28, 2012 10:50 pm On Being has a nice little archive of rare audio clips from Albert Einstein, speaking on various subjects, including what it means to be American, E=MC^2, Gandhi, and "The common language of science." Einstein: In His Own Voice (Thanks, Avi!) ((Photo: Einstein sitting on the front steps of his home in Princeton, wearing his fuzzy ...
Read in browser Is a $10,000 Leica M9 setup worth it?
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 28, 2012 10:22 pm Marco Arment rented Leica's well-loved but expensive M9 digital camera, and a similarly top-shelf lens, to see what the fuss is about. The bottom line: great glass, but a frustrating and surprisingly low-end shooting experience. I wonder if Sony's new full-frame compact is going to eat their lunch.
Read in browser China's Princelings: descendants of Mao's generals who control the country's wealth
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 28, 2012 09:26 pm This long-read from Bloomberg about China's "Princelings" -- the generation of hyper-rich oligarchs' children, descended from Mao's generals -- is endlessly fascinating. Wealth in China is even more concentrated than Russia, Brazil or the USA, and the Chinese looter-class use complex screens that take advantage of different ways of representing their names in English, Cantonese ...
Read in browser "Both"
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 28, 2012 08:00 pm 
Read in browser Adafruit is making a kids' electronics puppet show!
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 28, 2012 07:17 pm The boundlessly wonderful folks at Adafruit are producing an online puppet show for kids aimed at teaching electronics. I could not be more happy about this without that I exploded. Their new online show, titled Circuit Playground, will teach the essentials of electronics and circuitry to children through kid-friendly dolls with names like Cappy the Capacitor and Hans the ...
Read in browser Working record made from ice
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 28, 2012 06:21 pm Swedish band The Shout Out Louds released a limited edition of 10 promos for their new album that consisted of latex molds that you filled with distilled water, froze, and played on a turntable:
Read in browser Census Dotmap: a dot for every person in the United States
By Dean Putney on Dec 28, 2012 04:56 pm Cartography and data analysis nut Brandon M-Anderson put together this impressive zoomable map of the United States with one dot for each of the 308,450,225 people recorded by the 2010 census: oddities revealed include people living in "abandoned" areas or parks. A Redditor stitched the tiles into a huge image.
Read in browser Bruce Sterling's annual State of the World address
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 28, 2012 04:53 pm Bruce Sterling's annual "State of the World" interview on the WELL with Jon Lebkowsky is underway and roaring along, as Chairman Bruce sets out the stuff he's watching and thinking about. These are always a great way to end the year and start a new one, and this one is no exception. #1. The 3d ...
Read in browser Pirate radio station jams keyless entry system
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 28, 2012 04:37 pm A mysterious string of keyless entry malfs in Hollywood, FL were resolved when police was discovered a 24-hour pirate Caribbean music station that was inadvertently jamming the car-fobs. For months, dozens of people could not use their keyless entry systems to unlock or start their cars whenever they parked near the Hollywood Police Department. Once ...
Read in browser Pet chicken saves family from blaze
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 28, 2012 03:32 pm Kevin Hurd reports: "The smoke detectors were not working, the people inside were asleep. That is, until the chicken sensed something was wrong."
Read in browser Hanging jellyfish lights
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 28, 2012 02:50 pm Roxy Russel's jellyfish lighting fixtures are a treat. They're made from transparent mylar, and run about $425 each. Medusae Collection (via Neatorama)
Read in browser Sand spider builds a burrow
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 28, 2012 02:07 pm Watch him dig!
Read in browser Chewbacca bandolier inspired messenger bag
By Jason Weisberger on Dec 28, 2012 01:42 pm This messenger bag integrates a Chewbacca-style "bandolier" shoulder strap and Star Wars logo imprint. I guess an actual bandolier would not look much like one with Wookie bowcaster ammo in it?
Read in browser Tiny nude figurines are crowd pleasers
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 28, 2012 01:15 pm Amy Crehore says: The Crowd Pleaser and the VIP make perfect conceptual art pieces. Duchamp would be proud. I've always been a sucker for tiny things and these were nudes hanging around the house untouched, in the old packaging, so I took some photos. These are "the little people that add a lot". Funny Little ...
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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