TOM THE DANCING BUG: A HOSTESS TWINKIES AD - CAPTAIN INDUSTRY VS. UNION-MAN Does your family rock? Enter this contest! Chocolate Fix: a favorite puzzle game, now a mobile app Chris Anderson's Makers: economic manifesto that combines business savvy with down-and-dirty workshop HOWTO The worst things for sale Translating plutocrat economic campaign-speak into plain English Cool space-saving kid rooms Check out the McAfee Mind Map How to draw Space Invaders-style characters MuchLoved: photos of long-suffering toys French spermcount down Vandal ruins millions of dollars worth of wine Villagers: women with cellphones 'debase the social atmosphere' UN's International Telecommunications Union sets out to standardize bulk surveillance of Internet users by oppressive governments Women can "tell a cheating man", but not vice versa Mixed early reviews for The Hobbit Gallivant, a minimalist travel site The "Perfect Pencil" Funny fake planning notices Library gift-shop, on wheels, in LA Postmortem on the Daily Petition to make gender-neutral Easy-Bake Ovens The making of "It's a SpongeBob Christmas" stop-motion episode Star Trek Federation: The First 150 Years Open, CC-licensed photo course draws up to 35,000 students Plush Fin Fin virtual pet toy needed by distraught Boing Boing reader's grandson Major studios send legal threats to Google demanding removal of links to their own Facebook pages and more Yosemite's Bracebridge Dinner Trailer for Breaking the Taboo: documentary about the disastrous results of the war on drugs You can be a loser at the game of social ostracism TOM THE DANCING BUG: A HOSTESS TWINKIES AD - CAPTAIN INDUSTRY VS. UNION-MAN
By Ruben Bolling on Dec 05, 2012 12:10 pm Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH a Hostess Twinkies ad goes horribly awry, and Captain Industry gets more than he bargained for from the evil Union-Man
Read in browser Does your family rock? Enter this contest!
By Advertiser on Dec 05, 2012 12:00 pm ADVERTISEMENT This post is brought to you by The New Santa Fe from Hyundai. Think your family rocks? Show us by uploading a photo of your family rocking out. Enter now for a chance to win great prizes. Do your family values include kindness, sharing, and hard work? That's nice, but boring. How about loud ...
Read in browser Chocolate Fix: a favorite puzzle game, now a mobile app
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 05, 2012 12:00 pm The puzzle game Chocolate Fix has been a family favorite around our house for years.
Read in browser Chris Anderson's Makers: economic manifesto that combines business savvy with down-and-dirty workshop HOWTO
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 05, 2012 11:11 am Some months ago, Chris Anderson wrote to me to let me know that he was working on a book called Makers, and given that I'd written a well-known novel on similar themes with the same title, did I mind? Of course I didn't -- for one thing, having already published many stories with the same ...
Read in browser The worst things for sale
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 05, 2012 11:11 am Drew of Toothpaste for Dinner and KOMPRESSOR fame collates the worst things that are for sale. These include voice-activated grocery list dispensers, electric bag sealers, and the purportedly funny book, HTML for Babies. "Is there anything funnier than taking an adult idea like HTML and giving it to a baby in a format called "HTML ...
Read in browser Translating plutocrat economic campaign-speak into plain English
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 05, 2012 11:04 am The Campaign to Fix the Debt is a coalition of hyper-rich CEOs and bankers that's been formed to campaign for social safety net cuts, seizing the "fiscal cliff" moment as a chance to change the public debate and protect tax breaks to the richest 1% while slashing services upon which the rest of the country ...
Read in browser Cool space-saving kid rooms
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 05, 2012 11:00 am A gallery of 12 cool kid room designs.
Read in browser Check out the McAfee Mind Map
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 05, 2012 10:05 am Hilary Sargent, investigator and chartmaker, created this map of murder suspect and former antivirus mogul John McAfee's bizarre exploits in Belize. Click to show an embiggened, draggable version, or visit her site for a PDF file that you can download.
Read in browser How to draw Space Invaders-style characters
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 05, 2012 10:00 am Pixel Dude is an image editing app for the iPad. Like the name suggests, it's pixel based, and is good for drawing chunky graphics.
Read in browser MuchLoved: photos of long-suffering toys
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 05, 2012 09:57 am Mark Nixon's "MuchLoved" project collects photos of peoples' long-suffering toys, along with the stories behind them. It's a poignant collection of sentimental reminiscence and beautiful patinas and genteel decay. MuchLoved (via Neatorama)
Read in browser French spermcount down
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 05, 2012 09:07 am Andrew M. Seaman writes: "Researchers found that between 1989 and 2005, the number of sperm in one milliliter of the average 35-year-old Frenchman's semen fell from about 74 million to about 50 million - a decrease of roughly 32 percent". [Chicago Tribune]
Read in browser Vandal ruins millions of dollars worth of wine
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 05, 2012 09:00 am A moment of silence, please. Some complete bastard in Italy has destroyed 84,000 bottles of Brunello, worth at least $25m. [Eric Asimov/NYT]
Read in browser Villagers: women with cellphones 'debase the social atmosphere'
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 05, 2012 08:55 am "The Sunderbari village council in a Muslim-dominated area east of Patna, the capital of Bihar, has also imposed a fine of 10,000 rupees ($180) if a girl is caught using a mobile phone on the streets." [Yahoo News]
Read in browser UN's International Telecommunications Union sets out to standardize bulk surveillance of Internet users by oppressive governments
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 05, 2012 08:53 am The International Telecommunications Union, a UN agency dominated by veterans of incumbent telcoms who mistrust the Internet, and representatives of repressive governments who want to control it, have quietly begun the standardization process for a kind of invasive network spying called "deep packet inspection" (DPI). Other standards bodies have shied away from standardizing surveillance technology, ...
Read in browser Women can "tell a cheating man", but not vice versa
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 05, 2012 08:52 am Reuters' Tan Ee Lyn: "Women can tell with some accuracy whether an unfamiliar male is faithful simply by looking at his face, but men seem to lack the same ability when checking out women, according to an Australian study published on Wednesday."
Read in browser Mixed early reviews for The Hobbit
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 05, 2012 08:45 am Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy says "it's a bit of a slog" but quite likes the overall tone of the picture: There are elements in this new film that are as spectacular as much of the Rings trilogy was, but there is much that is flat-footed and tedious as well, especially in the early going. This ...
Read in browser Gallivant, a minimalist travel site
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 05, 2012 08:17 am Gallivant looks like a great way to cut through the noise and bloat of Yelp, Google, and plane-booking sites when headed to unfamiliar turf.
Read in browser The "Perfect Pencil"
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 05, 2012 08:11 am Faber Castell's Perfect Pencil is described by the ad copy as "the culmination of the history of the pencil", which somehow does not quite prepare one for the eye-watering $240 price tag—or that of the $500 gift set! Don't worry, though: refills are only $50. [via Uncrate] Previously: The new Palomino Blackwing 602 pencil is ...
Read in browser Funny fake planning notices
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 04, 2012 11:12 pm Artist/prankster Phil Lucas puts up fake "planning notices" around Brighton, England, announcing his plans to radically improve the cityscape and inviting people to comment via the local government's planning authority. I live in Hackney, which boasts England's "worst performing planning authority" (as one MP recently put it in Parliament), so I sympathise with these shenanigans. ...
Read in browser Library gift-shop, on wheels, in LA
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 04, 2012 10:19 pm Katie from the Library Foundation of Los Angeles sez, "The Library Store On Wheels, a mobile truck version of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles' beloved Central Library gift store (which LA Weekly named 'LA's Best Gift Shop'this year) hits the road December 10. Over the next two weeks, we'll be taking the mobile store ...
Read in browser Postmortem on the Daily
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 04, 2012 09:06 pm Writing on Reuters, Felix Salmon has a good postmortem on the demise of the Daily, Rupert Murdoch's iPad-only, $30,000,000 subscription-based newspaper, which folded yesterday. Among other things, he writes about print media's enthusiasm for iPads, and the inability of closed ecosystems to out-iterate the open Web: When the iPad was first announced, there were lots ...
Read in browser Petition to make gender-neutral Easy-Bake Ovens
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 04, 2012 08:00 pm Mckenna Pope of Garfield, NJ has started a petition -- with just over 23,000 signatures at time of writing (including mine) -- to Hasbro, asking them to produce a gender-neutral version of the Easy-Bake Oven, so that her cooking-crazed little brother won't feel excluded from his passions: My little brother has always loved cooking. Being ...
Read in browser The making of "It's a SpongeBob Christmas" stop-motion episode
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 04, 2012 07:44 pm If you're a fan of Rankin Bass style Christmas Specials like I am, you should tune into SpongeBob Squarepants on December 9th to watch "It's a SpongeBob Christmas!" (which Jason posted about here in November). I watched a screener and they perfectly captured the look and feel of those delightful old stop motion specials. Mark ...
Read in browser Star Trek Federation: The First 150 Years
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 04, 2012 07:21 pm Here's my jaw-droppingly professional unboxing video of Star Trek Federation: The First 150 Years by David A. Goodman.
Read in browser Open, CC-licensed photo course draws up to 35,000 students
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 04, 2012 07:00 pm The BBC's picture editor Phil Coomes has a long, excellent feature on the open education photography classes offered by Jonathan Worth and Matt Johnston through Coventry University. The course is open to anyone in the world, via webcast, and runs with up to 35,000 students. The class focuses not just on technique, but on the ...
Read in browser Plush Fin Fin virtual pet toy needed by distraught Boing Boing reader's grandson
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 04, 2012 06:54 pm Edwin's grandson fell in love with Fin Fin, a defunct plush virtual pet last offered by Fujitsu in 1996. Now Fin Fin has disappeared and he's desperate to replace Fin Fin for Christmas. If you've got one, he wants to buy it from you. Read his note after the jump. Ordinarily, I would never consider ...
Read in browser Major studios send legal threats to Google demanding removal of links to their own Facebook pages and more
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 04, 2012 06:27 pm One things the movie studios say in copyright takedown discussions is that they're very careful when they send legal threats to Google demanding removal of links to pirated copies of their work. I mean, maybe some little guys out there play fast and loose, but the Big Five? They're grownups, man. Then, this happened: On ...
Read in browser Yosemite's Bracebridge Dinner
By Jason Weisberger on Dec 04, 2012 05:40 pm Last year I had the incredibly good fortune to attend Yosemite's
Bracebridge Dinner.
Read in browser Trailer for Breaking the Taboo: documentary about the disastrous results of the war on drugs
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 04, 2012 05:31 pm This groundbreaking new documentary uncovers the UN sanctioned war on drugs, charting its origins and its devastating impact on countries like the USA, Colombia and Russia.
Read in browser You can be a loser at the game of social ostracism
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 04, 2012 05:02 pm Now you can play Cyberball — a computer game that psychology researchers use to study the effects of social ostracism and hurt feelings. Normally, the game is played by test subjects who are hooked up to some kind of brain scanning system and who are told that they are playing against other test subjects 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
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