Mongolian "Gangnam Style" remake Just look at this banana being shot with a steel bearing fired from an air-cannon. Robots are taking your job and mine: deal with it Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, T Ski Valley, Ice T Gets Out of the Army Correlation between autism diagnosis and organic food sales Gun Machine: Warren Ellis's brutal, hard-boiled cop novel that never stops for breath Windowpane: surreal debut from NOBROW's Joe Kessler All the year's top radio hits in one mashup What's entropy? Which professions have the most psychopaths? The fewest? Jerry Seinfeld on information design (1981) Trailer mashup: My Little Trek Into Darkness A New Year's marathon for every fan! Little Brother on stage in print! My favorite podcasts of 2012, Part 1 Stop toying with us, Arrested Development: Netflix denies rumored premiere date GIF is word of the year Just look at this gnarly conjoined banana. Mongolian "Gangnam Style" remake
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 01, 2013 12:26 pm PSY's viral hit remade in Mongolian style.
Read in browser Just look at this banana being shot with a steel bearing fired from an air-cannon.
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 01, 2013 12:22 pm Just look at it. How to Peel a Banana/Alan_sailer (Thanks, Philip!)
Read in browser Robots are taking your job and mine: deal with it
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 01, 2013 11:11 am Two striking articles on the roboticization of the workforce: first is Kevin Kelly in Wired, with "Better Than Human", an optimistic and practical-minded look at the way that robots change the jobs landscape, with some advice on how to survive the automation of your gig: Now let's consider quadrant C, the new jobs created by ...
Read in browser Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, T Ski Valley, Ice T Gets Out of the Army
By Ed Piskor on Jan 01, 2013 11:00 am Read the rest of the Hip Hop Family Tree comics!
Read in browser Correlation between autism diagnosis and organic food sales
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 01, 2013 10:17 am Redditor Jasonp55 has a neat demonstration of the perils of confusing correlation with causation, and his well-chosen example makes this a potentially useful chart for discussing this issue with friends who won't vaccinate themselves and their kids. /r/skeptic, I was practicing GraphPad and I think I may have discovered the 'real' cause of autism... (imgur.com) ...
Read in browser Gun Machine: Warren Ellis's brutal, hard-boiled cop novel that never stops for breath
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 01, 2013 09:23 am Happy New Year! Warren Ellis's second novel, Gun Machine, ships today, and it's the kind of grim, mean hard-boiled fiction that is just the right tonic for your hangover from 2012: the booze, the Mayan apocalypse, the austerity, the misery and revolutions betrayed and horror and bile and pain -- But I digress. As with ...
Read in browser Windowpane: surreal debut from NOBROW's Joe Kessler
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 31, 2012 10:49 pm Windowpane is the graphic novel debut from Joe Kessler, one of the friendly fellows working behind the cash-register at London's wonderful NOBROW (about whom we've written lots). It's a collection of short, surreal, dreamlike stories, some more experimental than others, as well as a memoir of the near-death of Reuben Mwara during his boyhood in ...
Read in browser All the year's top radio hits in one mashup
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 31, 2012 09:00 pm The spectacular DJ Earworm has published his annual mashup of the year's top-40 hits, combining them into a single, synthesized earworm, with visual accompaniment. DJ Earworm Mashup - United State of Pop 2012 (Shine Brighter) (Thanks, Rob!)
Read in browser What's entropy?
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 31, 2012 06:27 pm I sat down with the fascinating crew at the Titanium Physicists podcast to serve as their special physics-ignoramus guest in an episode about entropy (MP3)
Read in browser Which professions have the most psychopaths? The fewest?
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 31, 2012 05:05 pm The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success, by Kevin Dutton, has this side-by-side list of professions with the highest percentage of psychopaths (CEO tops the list) and lowest percentage (Care Aide has the fewest psychopaths). Here's Eric Barker's take on why this is so: Most of the ...
Read in browser Jerry Seinfeld on information design (1981)
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 31, 2012 04:47 pm Move over, Edward Tufte: here's Jerry Seinfeld's first appearance on The Tonight Show in 1981. He was 27 years old. During his bit, he makes a good point about weather forecasts. He says that typical television weather forecasts don't provide him with useful information. They show you the satellite photo. A photograph of the Earth ...
Read in browser Trailer mashup: My Little Trek Into Darkness
By Jamie Frevele on Dec 31, 2012 04:09 pm In case you weren't already excited about
Star Trek Into Darkness, maybe the Pony-fied trailer will finally sway you.
Read in browser A New Year's marathon for every fan!
By Jamie Frevele on Dec 31, 2012 03:56 pm We all know about the time-honored tradition of Syfy's Twilight Zone New Year's marathon. But in case you're not into a 24-hour trip into another dimension and still want to watch a buttload of TV today and tomorrow, here is a short list of other TV marathons that might interest you! 24 Hours of Portlandia ...
Read in browser Little Brother on stage in print!
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 31, 2012 03:23 pm The next issue of Theatre Bay Area will feature the full text of Josh Costello's theatrical adaptation of my novel Little Brother, which was incredibly well-received on stage in San Francisco last year.
Read in browser My favorite podcasts of 2012, Part 1
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 31, 2012 03:06 pm I hardly listen to the radio anymore, because I listen to audiobooks and podcasts instead. My car has a cassette player in it so I use one of those cassette adapters to connect my iPhone to the car's stereo system. I use a $1.99 iOS app called Downcast to subscribe to and listen to my ...
Read in browser Stop toying with us, Arrested Development: Netflix denies rumored premiere date
By Jamie Frevele on Dec 31, 2012 02:33 pm Let's end 2012 with some truthiness: gossip site Oh No They Didn't got wind of some new details concerning the fourth season of Arrested Development and its upcoming premiere on Netflix. Apparently, a publicity site for Fox prematurely posted a new image, a May 4, 2013 premiere date, and a list of episode titles before ...
Read in browser GIF is word of the year
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 31, 2012 01:57 pm "GIF has been named the Oxford American Dictionary's word of the year," reports the NY Daily News, in an article that Rich Kyanka points out is illustrated by JPGs of popular GIFs. Here I present you with a splendid actual GIF from DVDP; put on the "apocalyptic rave" music that the BBC plays in the ...
Read in browser Just look at this gnarly conjoined banana.
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 31, 2012 01:45 pm Just look at it. photo
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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