Obscure 1980s TV show intros Gravity Falls browser game Teacher with fear of children sues school district for discrimination MIT president appoints Hal Abelson to investigate university's role in Aaron Swartz's prosecution Kronos Quartet and the secret life of lemurs Pesco on stereo tube amps of today Minecraft gets animated textures Attack of the miniature lego squid Australia legalizes violent video games Poisoned lottery winner to be exhumed "Catacombo" coffin offers surround sound Snake actually on a plane Elfquest: No guarantee of serenity Aaron Swartz's politics weren't just about free technology: they were about freeing humanity Sherlock Holmes and the infamous brain attic 19A0s collection on Pinterest Just look at this banana-shaped, banana-flavored ice-cream in an edible gelatin banana-skin. Beijing air "like an airport smokers' lounge" Spider Robinson sings the Beatles Kathe Koja's "Under the Poppy": farewell stage performances in Detroit this April Aaron Swartz digital archive Fear Agent: "a booze-fueled space romp, in the aesthetic of EC's seminal classics of the 1950s" Trailer for Pirate Bay documentary Jay Lake cancer fundraiser: expect a 3D scan of my head while making a funny face originated by John Scalzi Kinetic toothpick sculpture of San Francisco Preview of Verizon's version of America's "six strikes" copyright enforcement scheme Interview-by-postcard that HP Lovecraft filled in with a sewing needle dipped in ink and a magnifying glass Obscure 1980s TV show intros
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 14, 2013 12:45 pm Sarah Marshall and Michael Magnes offer The 17 Best Failed TV Shows Of The 80s (As Judged By Their Openings) Be sure to stay at least long enough to find out why Voyagers! star Jon-Erik Hexum suddenly vanished from your telescreens. [The Awl]
Read in browser Gravity Falls browser game
By David Pescovitz on Jan 14, 2013 12:44 pm This morning, my son and I watched the "Fight Fighters" episode of Gravity Falls for what seems like the fifth time. Turns out, you can now tackle that dastardly Rumble McSkirmich yourself in Disney's new browser game Rumble's Revenge. Keep your eyes out for hidden messages! Rumble's Revenge Yet another reason why I love Gravity ...
Read in browser Teacher with fear of children sues school district for discrimination
By David Pescovitz on Jan 14, 2013 12:25 pm High school teacher Maria C. Waltherr-Willard, 61, is suing a school district for discrimination, claiming it pushed her to resign because of her age but also her disability. Waltherr-Willard has pedophobia, a fear of children. For 35 years, Waltherr-Willard has been a teacher in Mariemont, a community just outside Cincinnati, Ohio. From Cincinnati.com: Documents filed ...
Read in browser MIT president appoints Hal Abelson to investigate university's role in Aaron Swartz's prosecution
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 14, 2013 12:09 pm MIT president Rafael Reif sent out a university-wide email yesterday announcing an investigation into the school's involvement in the prosecution of Aaron Swartz. He's appointed MIT professor Hal Abelson, a founding director of Creative Commons, who worked with Aaron, "to lead a thorough analysis of MIT's involvement from the time that we first perceived unusual ...
Read in browser Kronos Quartet and the secret life of lemurs
By David Pescovitz on Jan 14, 2013 11:56 am "Songs for Unusual Creatures," featuring the Kronos Quartet and the Aye-Aye.
Read in browser Pesco on stereo tube amps of today
By David Pescovitz on Jan 14, 2013 11:34 am Over at our sponsor Intel's My Life Scoop site, I wrote about several modern tube amps to warm up your digital music. In the ongoing analog vs. digital debate, there are myriad measurements involving frequency response, distortion levels, and dynamic range that both sides cite to "prove" that the other is misinformed, unscientific, or just ...
Read in browser Minecraft gets animated textures
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 14, 2013 10:45 am Pixelated indie RPG Minecraft now has the ability to use animated textures for its chunky world-blocks. Perhaps you're thinking that the modding community will be use this feature to create subtly-windswept vegetation and more convincing lava? No. It will be used to make you retch. [via RPS]
Read in browser Attack of the miniature lego squid
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 14, 2013 10:31 am Evan B.'s been a Lego hobbyist since 1998 and reports winning numerous contests for his incredible work. His flickr photostream is full of minifig marvels; you can buy his book, How to build Forklifts using Lego Bricks, for just a couple of bucks. [via Super Punch]
Read in browser Australia legalizes violent video games
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 14, 2013 10:24 am For years, Australia's censors effectively banned games with graphic violence, making titles such as Grand Theft Auto and Mortal Kombat hard to charge money for. At Ars Technica, David Cornish writes that all this has changed with a recent bill to allow for "mature" titles to be classified for release: first up is a Ninja ...
Read in browser Poisoned lottery winner to be exhumed
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 14, 2013 10:13 am Urooj Kahn, 46, died of cyanide poisoning after winning a $1m lottery jackpot. He left no will, and the suspicion around the circumstances of his death led to a probate battle over the cash. This week, Mary Wisniewski writes, his body will be exhumed in a search for answers.
Read in browser "Catacombo" coffin offers surround sound
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 14, 2013 10:09 am Fredrik Hjelmquist, operator of a music store in Sweden, has invented a hi-fi coffin so that the dead may listen to their favorite tunes in the afterlife.
Read in browser Snake actually on a plane
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 14, 2013 10:05 am Reuters: "The three meter-long (9.1 foot) non-poisonous Amethystine python appeared about an hour into the Qantas flight between Cairns in northern Queensland and the Papua New Guinean capital of Port Moresby on Thursday."
Read in browser Elfquest: No guarantee of serenity
By Wendy and Richard Pini on Jan 14, 2013 10:00 am Enjoy
the latest page of Elfquest. First time reader? Catch up at the comic's
official homepage.
Read in browser Aaron Swartz's politics weren't just about free technology: they were about freeing humanity
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 14, 2013 09:04 am In a guest editorial on Naked Capitalism, Matt Stoller reminds us that Aaron Swartz's politics weren't just about digital freedom: he saw free software and open networks as instrumental to eliminating corruption and corporatism in wider society. In 2009, I was working in Rep. Alan Grayson's office as a policy advisor. We were engaged in ...
Read in browser Sherlock Holmes and the infamous brain attic
By Maria Konnikova on Jan 14, 2013 08:55 am Illustration: tisserande Maria Konnikova is the author of Mastermind: How to think Like Sherlock Holmes, out January 2013 from Viking, and a blogger at Scientific American. Visit her website and follow her on Twitter. One of the most widely held notions about Sherlock Holmes has to do with his supposed ignorance of Copernican theory. "What ...
Read in browser 19A0s collection on Pinterest
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 13, 2013 11:39 pm Kurt Wurk has collected a number of images from the lost decade. [Pinterest]
Read in browser Just look at this banana-shaped, banana-flavored ice-cream in an edible gelatin banana-skin.
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 13, 2013 11:15 pm Just look at it. The Peeled Banana Ice Cream
Read in browser Beijing air "like an airport smokers' lounge"
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 13, 2013 09:46 pm Beijing's air quality is so bad the EPA doesn't have a scale that goes up far enough to define it. [Edward Wong at the NYT]
Read in browser Spider Robinson sings the Beatles
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 13, 2013 08:42 pm Tony from the StarShipSofa science fiction podcast writes, "On the 26th January Spider Robinson with deliver his live online lecture How To Write Science Fiction... with Spider Robinson over at StarShipSofa. We hooked up just now to sort out logistics. Spider sang the Beatles for me (MP3)... this is why I do what I do!" ...
Read in browser Kathe Koja's "Under the Poppy": farewell stage performances in Detroit this April
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 13, 2013 07:58 pm Kathe Koja's brilliant novel
Under the Poppy -- a dark, romantic, swirling wartime intrigue -- was adapted for stage in her hometown of Detroit.
Read in browser Aaron Swartz digital archive
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 13, 2013 06:39 pm Brewster Kahle, Carl Malamud, and Aaron Swartz's other radical archivist friends have put together an open repository for peoples' electronic Aaron Swartz files. Brewster writes, "The Web team of the Internet Archive have been archiving all the aaronsw sites they are finding. But, Carl suggested we make a way for people to store digital archives ...
Read in browser Fear Agent: "a booze-fueled space romp, in the aesthetic of EC's seminal classics of the 1950s"
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 13, 2013 06:06 pm Our pal Tony Moore, co-creator of The Walking Dead, has good news to share about his comic book title: Fear Agent (written by Rick Remender). He says: [The first issue] is available for free on the Dark Horse Digital app, and the first 3 collected volumes are available as well. And if you like that ...
Read in browser Trailer for Pirate Bay documentary
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 13, 2013 05:56 pm Just released: the trailer for the upcoming documentary "TPB:AFK" about the founders of the Pirate Bay.
Read in browser Jay Lake cancer fundraiser: expect a 3D scan of my head while making a funny face originated by John Scalzi
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 13, 2013 05:20 pm Last week, I blogged about the fundraiser to help sf writer Jay Lake with his cancer therapy (he's hoping to have his genome sequenced and to find some new avenues for treatment) and expenses. The fundraiser involves sf writers and friends doing "public acts of whimsy" as progressively higher sums were raised. The fundraiser is ...
Read in browser Kinetic toothpick sculpture of San Francisco
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 13, 2013 04:02 pm Scott Weaver is a San Francisco sculptor who spend 35 years building the most stupendously gorgeously wonderful toothpick sculpture.
Read in browser Preview of Verizon's version of America's "six strikes" copyright enforcement scheme
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 13, 2013 03:00 pm America's largest ISPs took the chickenshit step of agreeing to voluntarily police copyright on behalf of the movie studios and record labels, with a "six strikes" system that involves a series of ever-more-dire warnings and punishments for unsubstantiated copyright complaints from Big Content. Here's a preview of the final stage of the punishment regime at ...
Read in browser Interview-by-postcard that HP Lovecraft filled in with a sewing needle dipped in ink and a magnifying glass
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 13, 2013 01:55 pm Update: The joke's on me. Nick Mamatas sez, "Thanks for the ink, but I should tell you that my piece in The Revelator is fiction. The 'from the vaults' feature of the magazine is always a fiction that purports to be a true story or interview connected with the largely imaginary history of The Revelator ...
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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