I do not think it means what you think it means... Better orgasms promised Long Live the Kings I'm coming to YOUR town* in February! Van Cafe at it again XNO's grotesque Jetsons Grand Canyon, the Google Street View version Journalists argue over which math equation killed Wall Street The Atlantic updates ad policy after Scientology flap Republican senator: "video games is a bigger problem than guns, because video games affect people" 25 years of legal abortion in Canada Would you like to be a Marijuana Consultant? Mega file-sharing search engine launched World of Warcraft movie coming Dog finds whale vomit The Cave Singers - "Easy Way" (free MP3) Imagining a drone-proof city: an architectural proposal Steven Soderbergh has a new movie out, and he's on Twitter New York Times: we were hacked by China for last 4 months New Jersey, home of Hitler's toilet Google adds North Korean death-camps to maps TV made out of a grid of discarded remote controls Tentacle plunger Whitepaper on the 3D printing, patents, trademarks and copyrights In the shadow of the atom How science discovered the supertasters Extreme multi-purpose tarp -- great for casual Fridays How to Aeropress like a champ ISP blinkenlights synchronized to a sprightly piano Why put magnetic paint on ants? I do not think it means what you think it means...
By Jason Weisberger on Jan 31, 2013 12:39 pm Thanks, Dave Pasquesi!
Read in browser Better orgasms promised
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 31, 2013 12:20 pm "The University of Minnesota - Twin Cities is set to hold an event this spring designed to help its female undergraduate students achieve more and greater orgasms"
Read in browser Long Live the Kings
By Jason Weisberger on Jan 31, 2013 12:14 pm Long Live the Kings is a short film, shot entirely on 16mm film, that shares the joys and dreams of people who take motorcycle road trips. It is just beautiful.
Read in browser I'm coming to YOUR town* in February!
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 31, 2013 11:36 am Next Tuesday marks the publication of my latest YA novel, Homeland, and I'll be kicking off a month-long tour across the US on February 5 with a stop in Seattle, followed by Portland and San Francisco. From there, I swing to the southwest -- a region I've never toured! -- with stops in Salt Lake ...
Read in browser Van Cafe at it again
By Jason Weisberger on Jan 31, 2013 11:16 am Van Cafe packaging just rules! Back in December we shared photos of their Flaming Unicorn. Sir Sam, over on the Samba posted another beautifully decorated box of parts. This time the FSM and a VW emblazoned Squid. That said, my '87 Westy is now running again.
Read in browser XNO's grotesque Jetsons
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 31, 2013 10:25 am This grotesque-Jetsons illustration comes from the 1994 title Art? Alternatives Magazine. It's by XNO/Chet Darmstaedter, and there's also a dandy Flintstones/zombie illustration I've had a look at. (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
Read in browser Grand Canyon, the Google Street View version
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 31, 2013 10:14 am A 360-degree view from the famous Bright Angel Trail. Street View imagery of the Grand Canyon is now available on Google Maps. Says a spokesperson, "Our team visited this spectacular national monument last October to collect the imagery, and after covering more than 75 miles of trails and surrounding roads, the panoramic views are now ...
Read in browser Journalists argue over which math equation killed Wall Street
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 31, 2013 10:05 am In the 2009 Wired mag article "Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street," writer Felix Salmon blames the Gaussian Copula Function for the financial meltdown in American markets. A SciAm article today by Chris Arnade argues that another equation is more to blame, and that it "requires nothing more than middle school algebra ...
Read in browser The Atlantic updates ad policy after Scientology flap
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 31, 2013 09:59 am After running Church of Scientology advertorial, The Atlantic has updated its advertising policy. They nail the problem, too. The Atlantic will refuse publication of such content that, in its own judgment, would undermine the intellectual integrity, authority, and character of our enterprise. After all, it was the advertiser, not the presentation, that most readers objected ...
Read in browser Republican senator: "video games is a bigger problem than guns, because video games affect people"
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 31, 2013 08:54 am Kyle Orland, quoting Lamar Alexander, (R-TN) Speaking with NBC News' Chuck Todd this morning, Alexander responded to a question about universal background checks with this amazing non-sequitur: "I think video games is a bigger problem than guns, because video games affect people. But the First Amendment limits what we can do about video games and ...
Read in browser 25 years of legal abortion in Canada
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 31, 2013 08:48 am On Torontoist, an appreciation of the 25th anniversary of R v Morgantaler, the court decision that made safe and legal abortion on demand the rule of the land in Canada: When police raided Henry Morgentaler's Harbord Street clinic in July, 1983, no doors were kicked in. "There was a policewoman and a policeman undercover who ...
Read in browser Would you like to be a Marijuana Consultant?
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 31, 2013 08:47 am Attention! The state of Washington requires a pot consultant with many years of experience in how cannabis is grown, dried, packaged and "cooked into brownies." It really is time we opened a job board for this stuff.
Read in browser Mega file-sharing search engine launched
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 31, 2013 08:41 am Mega Search is the first third-party index of Kim Dotcom's resurrected Mega file-sharing service. At Ars, Megan Geuss analyses the legal implications: 'Clearly, not all of this content is infringement (there are plenty of links to personal files and public domain items, Italian-language Agatha Christie books for example). But a quick glance at the front ...
Read in browser World of Warcraft movie coming
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 31, 2013 08:36 am Moon and Source Code director Duncan Jones (son of David Bowie) is to direct a feature film version of World of Warcraft.
Read in browser Dog finds whale vomit
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 31, 2013 07:10 am Ambergris in Morecambe, England. [BBC] A man from Morecambe believes his dog has found a rare piece of whale vomit while walking on the beach. ... Mr Wilman said: "When I picked it up and smelled it I put it back down again and I thought 'urgh'.
Read in browser The Cave Singers - "Easy Way" (free MP3)
By Amy Seidenwurm on Jan 31, 2013 07:00 am Sound it Out # 41: The Cave Singers - "Easy Way "(MP3) I've gone on about my love for The Cave Singers here before. What's changed: They've added bassist & multi-instrumentalist Morgan Henderson (Blood Brothers, Fleet Foxes) and are now a 4-piece. The new record sounds lusher and includes some new sounds (background singers! reverb! flute solos!). ...
Read in browser Imagining a drone-proof city: an architectural proposal
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 31, 2013 01:31 am Sepoy at Chapati Mystery blog proposes an architecture for a drone-proof city in the Middle East: The idea for my final project, an architectural defense against drone warfare, came from the realization that law had no response to drone warfare. My own understanding of the ongoing [War on Terror pseudonym] as a civil rights issue ...
Read in browser Steven Soderbergh has a new movie out, and he's on Twitter
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 31, 2013 01:22 am I don't understand why I have to die but the scarlet medusa jellyfish doesn't. Although it does have to eat out of its own asshole.— Bitchuation (@Bitchuation) January 28, 2013 Director Steven Soderbergh has a new sci/psy thriller out next week: Side Effects, starring Rooney Mara, Jude Law, Channing Tatum and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Psychiatrist Dr. ...
Read in browser New York Times: we were hacked by China for last 4 months
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 31, 2013 12:48 am The New York Times reported today that hackers inside China infiltrated its network over the course of at least four months. They obtained reporters' passwords, presumably to ID sources and gather intel on stories related to the family of China's prime minister. According to the Times exposé by Nicole Perlroth, the hackers first intruded on ...
Read in browser New Jersey, home of Hitler's toilet
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 31, 2013 12:37 am Hitler's toilet in Florence, N.J. (Photo: Hana Hawker/Tablet Magazine) In Tablet Magazine, a most unlikely profile of Greg Kohfeldt, who ended up acquiring a little something extra when he bought Sam Carlani's auto-repair shop in Florence, N.J. almost 20 years ago: a toilet that came off of Hitler's biggest private yacht, the Aviso Grille. Kohfeldt ...
Read in browser Google adds North Korean death-camps to maps
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 30, 2013 10:42 pm Google Maps has added notorious, secretive North Korean prison camps to its maps of the country. The data is gleaned from user contributions, including a first-person account of Shin Dong-Hyuk, who escaped from Camp 14, a death camp where he was born and raised. Called Map Maker, Google's information for the country's layout comes primarily ...
Read in browser TV made out of a grid of discarded remote controls
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 30, 2013 10:09 pm Artist
Chris Shen made a TV out of 625 discarded remote controls, hacking their LEDs to light up in a grid, creating a low-rez moving image.
Read in browser Tentacle plunger
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 30, 2013 09:36 pm From Art Lebedev studios, the "octopus" plunger, which creates the amusing illusion of a tentacled poop-monster's questing appendage reaching up out of the pan. Вантуз «Октопус» (via JWZ)
Read in browser Whitepaper on the 3D printing, patents, trademarks and copyrights
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 30, 2013 08:04 pm Public Knowledge's Michael Weinberg, who wrote "It Will Be Awesome if They Don't Screw it Up: 3D Printing, Intellectual Property, and the Fight Over the Next Great Disruptive Technology", a fantastic 2010 white-paper on copyright and 3D printing, has penned a followup. He sez, "As a follow up to It Will Be Awesome if They ...
Read in browser In the shadow of the atom
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 30, 2013 07:21 pm For once, "shadow of the atom" is not just a poetic metaphor for the nuclear age. The black dot at the center of this image is, literally, the shadow cast by a single atom of ytterbium, magnified 6500 times. Via Discover magazine
Read in browser How science discovered the supertasters
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 30, 2013 07:08 pm Supertasters are seemingly normal humans who have more bumps on their tongues — a difference that allows them to taste more intensely than average people and (as a side effect) to detect bitter flavors that most of us miss. And they were discovered by accident, when one scientists could taste the chemical dust released in ...
Read in browser Extreme multi-purpose tarp -- great for casual Fridays
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 30, 2013 07:00 pm Finland's Varusteleka sells a multipurpose "Jerven Fjellduken" tarpaulin that you're meant to wear, sleep under, and sleep in. It makes you look like a well-camouflaged Nordic Nazgul. Jerven bag, those are almost words of power among hunters, outdoorsmen and soldiers the world over. Jerven has been making the Fjellduken since 1982, besides the obvious hunting ...
Read in browser How to Aeropress like a champ
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 30, 2013 06:17 pm The winning recipes from the 2012 Aeropress championships give me the fear. Clearly I have not been paying enough attention to this. 17 grams of coffee (light roasted fresh crop washed Sidamo from Heart roasters) fine filter grind on a Mahlkönig Tanzania paper filter rinsed with hot water water from Maridalsvannet (brought in glass bottles ...
Read in browser ISP blinkenlights synchronized to a sprightly piano
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 30, 2013 06:12 pm Here's a lovely video shot at the XS4ALL ISP data-center outside of Amsterdam, in which the many twinkling, blinking lights are synchronized to a sprightly piano score.
Read in browser Why put magnetic paint on ants?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 30, 2013 06:09 pm Messing with ants for fun (and scientific profit)
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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