Anatomical heart pop-up shop in London Report: CNET news writers also told not to cover courtroom foes Pee-Wee Herman cycling skinsuit Twitter suspends account of Somali Islamist militants linked to Al-Qaeda Appeals Court affirms state secrecy in Twitter/WikiLeaks case Is this the douchiest press release ever? Watch a Tibetan Wheel of Life mandala take form Aaron Swartz didn't face prison until Feds, led by Ortiz, jumped on case Vine launches, Twitter and Facebook clash over access, users lose MAC cosmetics Archie Comics line asks, "Are you a Betty or a Veronica?" What's new in the Boing Boing video archive Scottie Puppy Pinwheel Growing Up Gay in 2013: Joe Schwartz, the teen in "Oddly Normal" I am waiting for my cat to evolve Release the kraken! Punk Voyager: when the punks launched their own space-probe Proposed New Mexico law would incarcerate rape victims who have abortions Christian Bale phones a young fan Great moments in pedantry: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? A list of the "10 Craziest Drummers Ever," complete with illos The story of the men who destroyed the Unabomber's last bomb The Tweets of Rupert Murdoch, as letterpress greeting cards This is why your office feels too cold Universal's classic monster flicks in Blu-ray box set Spotting science mistakes in the movies Vampire reborn babies 3 things that keep poor kids out of the sciences What would happen if an unstoppable force met an immoveable object? Tibetan teen dies before immolation protest, leaves note for Dalai Lama's return An "Oprah mea culpa interview" doctors would really enjoy Anatomical heart pop-up shop in London
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 26, 2013 11:53 am The wonderful, edible weirdos at the Eat Your Heart Out blog are throwing an anatomical heart pop-up shop for Valentine's day in east London, at the site of this month's edible horror installation on Bethnal Green Road: Very excited to share more information about the anatomical heart pop up in London for Valentine's Day. Indicative ...
Read in browser Report: CNET news writers also told not to cover courtroom foes
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 26, 2013 10:35 am Last week, CNET's tech writers were ordered not to praise a gadget made by a courtroom enemy of parent company CBS. Now, their news team has also been given its editorial marching orders. Tim Carmody at The Verge: CNET and its staff have been put in an extraordinarily difficult position by CBS. They have to ...
Read in browser Pee-Wee Herman cycling skinsuit
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 26, 2013 09:10 am Podium Cycling sells this boss Pee-Wee Herman skinsuit for your Big Adventures. They also do Spider-Man and various other novelties (light-up Tron, "hipster," etc), but Pee-Wee takes the cake. Pee-wee Inspired Skinsuit (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
Read in browser Twitter suspends account of Somali Islamist militants linked to Al-Qaeda
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 25, 2013 11:50 pm Two days after a group of Somali islamist militants vowed to execute Kenyan hostages, and tweeted a video of a captive pleading for the Kenyan government to help free them, the Al-Shabaab Twitter account @HSMPress was suspended. A Google cache is visible here. Warning: includes gruesome photos. The group took a French intelligence officer hostage, ...
Read in browser Appeals Court affirms state secrecy in Twitter/WikiLeaks case
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 25, 2013 10:34 pm Our appeal was denied likely due to ongoing FBI probe into #Wikileaks. The probe is wrong and must be dropped; it is an affront to justice.— Jacob Appelbaum (@ioerror) January 26, 2013 In Virginia today, a federal appeals court has ruled that the government can maintain secrecy around its efforts to obtain the private information ...
Read in browser Is this the douchiest press release ever?
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 25, 2013 10:11 pm Perhaps. Soutirage poured classic wines at Davos party hosted by Sean Parker (January 25, 2013—Yountville, CA) —Soutirage, a fine and rare wine retail and lifestyle company that provides wine enthusiasts with the highest possible customer service and bespoke experiences, returned to Davos, Switzerland tonight for a fifth consecutive year to host one of the hottest ...
Read in browser Watch a Tibetan Wheel of Life mandala take form
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 25, 2013 06:05 pm Lama Losang Samten explains some of the history and symbolism behind the Tibetan "Wheel of Life" mandala.
Read in browser Aaron Swartz didn't face prison until Feds, led by Ortiz, jumped on case
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 25, 2013 04:33 pm Declan McCullagh writes at CNET News: "State prosecutors who investigated the late Aaron Swartz had planned to let him off with a stern warning, but federal prosecutor Carmen Ortiz took over and chose to make an example of the Internet activist, according to a report in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly."
Read in browser Vine launches, Twitter and Facebook clash over access, users lose
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 25, 2013 04:28 pm Craig Kanalley has a good breakdown over at HuffPo about Twitter's acquisition/launch of Vine, an iOS app described as kind of a "video instagram" that allows you to share 6-second looping video clips. Kinda like ani-GIFs in video form, sort of, but proprietary. Twitter-only. I have mixed feelings about Vine, not because I don't think ...
Read in browser MAC cosmetics Archie Comics line asks, "Are you a Betty or a Veronica?"
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 25, 2013 04:23 pm Sigh. Because, like, the whole gender role thing is binary. But, binary as in, are you Betty or are you Veronica. It hits stores February 7. More pix here. (HT: @marynmck)
Read in browser What's new in the Boing Boing video archive
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 25, 2013 04:09 pm A little reminder that Boing Boing has a Boing Boing video page where you can surf and share our video posts. Who needs words? Other than the words it takes to describe these awesome videos to you. Some recent selections: • The secret to feeling like you have more time. • Scotties in a Busby ...
Read in browser Scottie Puppy Pinwheel
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 25, 2013 03:59 pm They do love their goat's milk.
Read in browser Growing Up Gay in 2013: Joe Schwartz, the teen in "Oddly Normal"
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 25, 2013 03:53 pm My friend John Schwartz at the New York Times wrote "Oddly Normal," a wonderful book about how he and his wife Jeanne worked through challenges to learn how best to support their son Joe, who is gay. In the Atlantic today, Alice Dreger interviews Joe, who is now 17 years old, "to expand on some ...
Read in browser I am waiting for my cat to evolve
By Jason Weisberger on Jan 25, 2013 03:33 pm I'd completely forgotten Red Dwarf. Such a wonderful series. The cat is legendary.
Read in browser Release the kraken!
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 25, 2013 03:00 pm What do you need to catch a giant squid? At The Verge, Arikia Millikan goes behind-the-scenes on the recent, successful expedition to capture the kraken on video for the first time.
Read in browser Punk Voyager: when the punks launched their own space-probe
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 25, 2013 03:00 pm "Punk Voyager" is this week's story on the Escape Pod podcast, and it is fucking amazing. It's Shaenon Garrity story about punks at the twilight of the 1970s who are drunkenly outraged to discover that the Voyager probe has been launched with classical music records for aliens. They build their own Voyager probe out of ...
Read in browser Proposed New Mexico law would incarcerate rape victims who have abortions
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 25, 2013 02:44 pm "A rape victim could be charged with a felony and face up to three years in prison if she aborts a child conceived in that rape, according to a bill proposed by New Mexico state Rep. Cathrynn Brown (R-Carlsbad)." New Mexico House Bill 206 attempts to further dehumanize rape victims by criminalizing abortion as "Tampering ...
Read in browser Christian Bale phones a young fan
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 25, 2013 02:35 pm ...a young fan named Zach who happens to have cancer, and is a patient in a Seattle hospital.
Read in browser Great moments in pedantry: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 25, 2013 02:35 pm This debate is partly about semantics, and partly about the fact that evolution is more like a curve than a stair-step.
Read in browser A list of the "10 Craziest Drummers Ever," complete with illos
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 25, 2013 02:23 pm At
Esquire, Miles Raymer has a top-ten list of the
Craziest Drummers Ever. I'm not normally a fan of listicles, but this is more than mere linkbait. The illustrations by
Jeremy Wheeler are fantastic!
Read in browser The story of the men who destroyed the Unabomber's last bomb
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 25, 2013 02:17 pm When the feds busted the Unabomber they found a live bomb under his bed. They needed it for evidence. But they also needed it to not explode. Enter a crack team of bomb experts who were flown in to Montana to dismantle the explosives in Ted Kaczynski's backwoods cabin.
Read in browser The Tweets of Rupert Murdoch, as letterpress greeting cards
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 25, 2013 02:16 pm Artist Michelle Vaughan's "100 Tweets" is a hand typeset letterpress project printed at The Arm in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. For "100 Tweets", I spent months combing my Twitter feed in search of 100 comments which fit into the vision of the project as a whole. Because Twitter allows 140 characters, building a template for typesetting was ...
Read in browser This is why your office feels too cold
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 25, 2013 02:11 pm There is no single definition of comfort. My newest column for The New York Times Magazine explores the different cultural definitions of pleasant living, how those traditions affect energy use in different countries, and how globalization changes both the culture and the fossil fuel consumption. Fun fact: Engineers have a unit of measurement that helps ...
Read in browser Universal's classic monster flicks in Blu-ray box set
By David Pescovitz on Jan 25, 2013 02:07 pm From Bela Lugosiin Dracula to Lon Chaney, Jr.'s The Wolf Man to Boris Karloff's Frankenstein, the classic 1920s-1960s monster flicks defined horror cinema for a generation.
Read in browser Spotting science mistakes in the movies
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 25, 2013 01:59 pm In the interview I posted earlier today, SETI's Seth Shostak talked about how Hollywood has to make their science more accurate today than they did 40 years ago. That's because today's movie-watching tech makes it easier to spot flaws, and the Internet makes it easier to share them. But different people notice different kinds of ...
Read in browser Vampire reborn babies
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 25, 2013 01:47 pm Spooky says: "Reborn baby dolls have been around for a few years now, and while some people love them so much they actually treat them like real babies, their ultra-realistic look creep a lot of people out. But one artist has managed to make these thing even creepier by making vampire reborn babies." You Thought ...
Read in browser 3 things that keep poor kids out of the sciences
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 25, 2013 01:47 pm There is some truth to the American ideal of meritocracy. But there's a lot of myth, as well. Biologist Danielle Lee describes her experience coaching poor kids in St. Louis on science fair projects — an activity that often becomes a stepping stone to a career in the sciences. But, for the kids Lee met, ...
Read in browser What would happen if an unstoppable force met an immoveable object?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 25, 2013 01:42 pm Minute Physics tackles the greatest mystery in all the Internet and solves it with the power of science (and pedantry)
Read in browser Tibetan teen dies before immolation protest, leaves note for Dalai Lama's return
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 25, 2013 01:41 pm The pro-Tibetan sovereignty news site phayul.com reports that Jigjey Kyab, 17, was found dead this week due to suspected self-poisoning, just before a planned self-immolation. The teen doused himself with kerosene and was carrying two lighters in his hands. His body was recovered from a busy street in his home town in the Luchu region ...
Read in browser An "Oprah mea culpa interview" doctors would really enjoy
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 25, 2013 01:36 pm Jenny McCarthy and vaccines. Dr. Jen Gunter explains why this is the Oprah mea culpa interview doctors really want to see.
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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