Jimmy O'Neill, RIP: Remembering Pandora's Box and the Sunset Strip teen riots Tennessee takes away gun permit from guy who threatened to kill anyone who tried to take away his guns Security guards attack man for shooting video of subway track The Russian way to destroy Chinese knockoff iPhones Dolphin seeks help 300 Million year old machine parts? No cloned Neanderthal baby for Harvard (at least not yet) Great mysteries of archaeology Unloading supplies onto the International Space Station French stench reaches London The world's thinnest watch Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, Negril, The Roxy, Fab 5 Freddy's Change The Beat Cat hater seeks cat ban TARDIS dress is bigger on the inside Skull ice cube maker Thinkpad Chromebook Aussie "footlong" only 11 inches Trailer for World War Z zombie thriller 3D printed house to emerge Kids should learn programming as well as reading and writing More on "Escape From Tomorrow," the guerrilla art-house movie shot at Walt Disney World and Disneyland Unique graphic novel stars hard drinking actors Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole, Richard Harris, and Oliver Reed Edward Tufte on Aaron Swartz and his own hacking career Foolproof card trick your kids will love Baby elephant rescued from well in India Pennsylvania kindergartener uses Hello Kitty bubble-gun at school, suspended for "terrorist threat" Podcast of my memorial for AaronSw, and the afterword he wrote for Homeland A list of the 131 reasons David Banner turned into The Hulk Furniture that looks like it's made from steamer-trunks US Navy produces comedy thriller about bath salts Jimmy O'Neill, RIP: Remembering Pandora's Box and the Sunset Strip teen riots
By Andrea James on Jan 22, 2013 12:56 pm Vintage video of the Sunset Strip teen riot of November 12, 1966.
Read in browser Tennessee takes away gun permit from guy who threatened to kill anyone who tried to take away his guns
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 22, 2013 12:49 pm "Yeager — who made that frightening video promising he would start killing people if gun control legislation progressed — has had his handgun carry permit suspended by state officials, according to local TV reports." (Thanks, Matthew!)
Read in browser Security guards attack man for shooting video of subway track
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 22, 2013 12:40 pm Matt Richardson says: Photography is not a Crime has been one of my must-read blogs for a long time. The owner, Carlos Miller, posts stories of people getting hassled or even arrested for using their cameras in public spaces. He himself even asserts his right to photograph (or, more accurately, videorecord) despite some intimidation from ...
Read in browser The Russian way to destroy Chinese knockoff iPhones
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 22, 2013 11:52 am Instead of giving six men hammers, they hired five men to open the cardboard box containing the 127 fake iPhones and one man to drive an excavator over the phones. (Thanks, Joly MacFie!)
Read in browser Dolphin seeks help
By Jason Weisberger on Jan 22, 2013 11:03 am This amazing video shows some divers helping a dolphin, who very obviously comes to them for help. Americablog
reports...
Read in browser 300 Million year old machine parts?
By Jason Weisberger on Jan 22, 2013 10:58 am Unexplained Things Are Out There shares the story of a purportedly 300 Million year old bit of something found in some Russian coal. The metal detail was supposedly 300 million years old and yet the scientists suggest that it was not created by nature but was rather manufactured by someone. The question of who might ...
Read in browser No cloned Neanderthal baby for Harvard (at least not yet)
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 22, 2013 10:55 am For the record, a Harvard scientist is NOT looking for an "adventurous woman" to give birth to a cloned Neanderthal. Ladies, you can stop filling out those application forms. Apparently, geneticist George Church and the German magazine Der Spiegel had a bit of a translation problem.
Read in browser Great mysteries of archaeology
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 22, 2013 10:47 am These flat ceramic disks were either playing pieces for an ancient Roman game, or, possibly, really uncomfortable toilet paper. Scientists are investigating.
Read in browser Unloading supplies onto the International Space Station
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 22, 2013 10:40 am As Matt Lynley put it, "Meanwhile, in space ..."
Read in browser French stench reaches London
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 22, 2013 10:31 am Reuters: "A cloud of harmless gas smelling of sweat and rotten eggs leaked out of a chemicals factory in northwest France and wafted across the English Channel as far as London on Tuesday."
Read in browser The world's thinnest watch
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 22, 2013 10:18 am The CST-01 is presented as the world's thinnest watch, with an e-ink display and flexible battery embedded in a stainless steel band less than a millimeter thick. Weighing 12 grams, the cuff is designed to be 'forgotten' while being worn, according to the designers at Central Standard Timing: "Everything about the design and engineering was ...
Read in browser Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, Negril, The Roxy, Fab 5 Freddy's Change The Beat
By Ed Piskor on Jan 22, 2013 10:00 am Read the rest of the Hip Hop Family Tree comics!
Read in browser Cat hater seeks cat ban
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 22, 2013 09:32 am Gareth Morgan wants cats gotten rid of. Claiming that the pets threaten New Zealand's native birds, the activist launched a website, Cats to Go, to convince his countrymen and women of the feline threat. Citing reports that cats have contributed to the extinction of 9 native bird species and that 37 percent of those remaining ...
Read in browser TARDIS dress is bigger on the inside
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 22, 2013 09:11 am Jere7my sez, "This lovely young woman brought the house down at Arisia this year with her stunning "TARDIS Princess" dress. A "door" on the skirt opened to show the TARDIS control room, giving it the illusion of being "bigger on the inside"... I believe the creator/model is Sasha Trabane." TARDIS dress. (Thanks, Jere7my!)
Read in browser Skull ice cube maker
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 22, 2013 08:55 am For $12, Gama Go will sell you a mould that makes skull-shaped ice cubes. Not technically cubes, though, are they? P.S. This reminded me that we require pyramid-shaped ice cubes (i.e. pyramids) for our illuminati parties. Unfortunately, all the molds available online seem to be floppy silicone ones with the tops flattened to be stable ...
Read in browser Thinkpad Chromebook
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 22, 2013 08:44 am The X100 series failed, in my view, as $500 "high end" netbooks: hot-running, clunky, and generally not up to Thinkpad snuff. Replacing Windows with Chrome OS and tailoring the system to its needs could be just the thing: the Lenovo X131e has a solid state drive, USB 3 and an ARM CPU. $430 for a ...
Read in browser Aussie "footlong" only 11 inches
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 22, 2013 08:20 am A "footlong" sandwich was measured to be merely 11 inches in length at a Subway restaurant in Australia. [Reuters]
Read in browser Trailer for World War Z zombie thriller
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 21, 2013 11:01 pm I can't believe I hadn't seen this trailer until today. It's based on Max Brooks' novel, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. I was so excited that it took me a while to pay attention to the movie I paid to see. It comes out this summer.
Read in browser 3D printed house to emerge
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 21, 2013 11:00 pm A Dutch architecture firm plans on using a D-Shape 3D printer to output a house in the shape of a Mobius strip, a project they estimate will take 18 months: Dutch architecture studio Universe Architecture is planning to construct a house with a 3D printer for the first time. The Landscape House will be printed ...
Read in browser Kids should learn programming as well as reading and writing
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 21, 2013 08:39 pm Here's Mitch Resnick of the MIT Media Lab's
Lifelong Kindergarten Group (whence the kids' programming language
Scratch comes) doing a TedX talk about the role of programming in education.
Read in browser More on "Escape From Tomorrow," the guerrilla art-house movie shot at Walt Disney World and Disneyland
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 21, 2013 07:07 pm The New York Times's Brooks Barnes has some tantalizing details on "Escape From Tomorrow," the art-house movie I blogged about yesterday, which was shot in part at Walt Disney World and Disneyland: His cast and crew spent about 10 days filming at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., and two weeks at Disneyland in Anaheim, ...
Read in browser Unique graphic novel stars hard drinking actors Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole, Richard Harris, and Oliver Reed
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 21, 2013 06:47 pm Unique graphic novel stars hard drinking UK actors
Read in browser Edward Tufte on Aaron Swartz and his own hacking career
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 21, 2013 04:57 pm Designer and theorist Edward Tufte was a friend and mentor of Aaron Swartz's. At Saturday's memorial to Aaron at the Cooper Union in NYC, Tufte remembered both Aaron and his own hacking career, inventing "blue boxes" and using them to make illegal calls on AT&T's network, and wondered about what would have become of him ...
Read in browser Foolproof card trick your kids will love
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 21, 2013 04:48 pm Here's a great self-working card trick to teach your kids. If they are old enough to spell, they will love performing it for their friends. I learned about the trick, which was invented by magician Jim Steinmeyer, on Greg Ross's Futility Closet blog. Remove any nine cards from an ordinary deck, shuffle them, and deal ...
Read in browser Baby elephant rescued from well in India
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 21, 2013 03:15 pm "This calf was part of a herd, and was probably a lookout sent to scout the area and signal the others if it finds food. The animal probably did not see the well, and fell in as a result." (Via Arbroath)
Read in browser Pennsylvania kindergartener uses Hello Kitty bubble-gun at school, suspended for "terrorist threat"
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 21, 2013 02:43 pm Mount Carmel Area Elementary School in Pennsylvania suspended a five-year-old girl for pointing a Hello Kitty bubble-gun at another student, characterizing this as a "terrorist threat." The little girl had to undergo psychiatric evaluation before she was allowed back in. Her parents say that they couldn't get their daughter into another school, because no one ...
Read in browser Podcast of my memorial for AaronSw, and the afterword he wrote for Homeland
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 21, 2013 02:13 pm This week on podcast, I read my remembrance of Aaron Swartz (MP3), and the afterword he wrote for my upcoming novel Homeland.
Read in browser A list of the 131 reasons David Banner turned into The Hulk
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 21, 2013 02:10 pm 81. Being beaten up by the thieves and thrown in the store vault, having the vault door closed on his foot, and then having the air supply cut off by the giggling thieves 106. Being fed poisoned sushi 117. Being attacked by some mean cops who handcuff him even though he has told them his ...
Read in browser Furniture that looks like it's made from steamer-trunks
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 21, 2013 02:06 pm I've turned old steamer trunks into furniture before, and while it looks great, it's often a bit impractical. Restoration Hardware has released a line of nicely turned out, usable furniture that looks like it was made from steamer trunks. It'd be cooler if it was actually recycled from real, vintage pieces, but it would cost ...
Read in browser US Navy produces comedy thriller about bath salts
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 21, 2013 02:00 pm Dose Nation lauds it an "amazing turd of institutional anti-drug propaganda."
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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