How will the Sequester affect science How to make the invisible visible Official names of McNugget shapes DIY weaponry of Syria's rebels The birth of a volcano Christian Marclay's "The Clock" video montage Racist Businessweek cover More accurate, but less reliable Corporate executives indicted for willfully endangering public health Eyeball mouth Andrew Breitbart was my friend 28 socialist hairstyles meet North Korean approval Manning pleads guilty to lesser charges, with 20 years max sentence, but not to aiding enemy Titanium ring conceals saw and handcuff opener Cory coming to Lawrence, KS tonight! Six Strikes Oldest woman 115 next week Mathematica art Mice guilty of arson Citizen science on the sea SHIELD Act: a bill to stop patent trolls Comics Rack: Boing Boing's comic books picks for February 2013 David Byrne & St Vincent come to Europe for summer tour TED2013: My Top 3 Wednesday TED Talks The Engadget Show 41: 'Space' with NASA, SETI, Liftport and Mary Roach Block out blue light for better sleep Mark speaking at Ft. Worth Museum of Science and History, 2/28/2013 R2D2 socks The men who designed space colonies You can cry in space, but it's not recommended How will the Sequester affect science
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 28, 2013 12:55 pm Basic science — the kind of research done for curiosity's sake, in order to better understand how parts of our world work — is the foundation of applied science — research that's aimed at developing a product, or tool, or achieving a goal. In the United States, the federal government is, by far, the number ...
Read in browser How to make the invisible visible
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 28, 2013 12:40 pm Even when your eyeballs look still, they aren't still. Every time your heart beats, it creates almost imperceptible changes in your skin tone as blood moves through your body. Tall buildings and construction cranes wobble slightly in the wind, even though our eyes can't usually catch them at it. Now, a team at MIT has ...
Read in browser Official names of McNugget shapes
By David Pescovitz on Feb 28, 2013 12:40 pm McDonald's Chicken McNuggets aren't just weirdly-shaped forms of "white boneless chicken, water, food starch-modified, salt, seasoning [autolyzed yeast extract, salt, wheat starch, natural flavoring (botanical source), safflower oil, dextrose, citric acid], sodium phosphates, natural flavor (botanical source), water, enriched flour (bleached wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), yellow corn flour, bleached ...
Read in browser DIY weaponry of Syria's rebels
By David Pescovitz on Feb 28, 2013 12:18 pm The Atlantic has a fascinating photo gallery about the DIY Weapons of the Syrian Rebels. Homebrew explosives are the norm, as are catapults (Reuters photo above) and tele-operated machine guns controlled with scavenged video game controllers.
Read in browser The birth of a volcano
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 28, 2013 12:01 pm On February 20th, 1943, Dionisio Pulido watched as a crack in his farm field collapsed in on itself and began to vomit out ash, rock, and fire. The birth of Mexico's Parícutin volcano is a story I've heard before, but I really enjoyed Dana Hunter's two-part series on the occasion of its 70th volcanaversary. Her ...
Read in browser Christian Marclay's "The Clock" video montage
By David Pescovitz on Feb 28, 2013 11:58 am Pioneering sound/video collage artist Christian Marclay's "The Clock" (2010) is a 24-hour montage of appropriated film clips related to time.
Read in browser Racist Businessweek cover
By Rob Beschizza on Feb 28, 2013 11:51 am Watch out, white America! Dark people are buying houses again. [via Slate]
Read in browser More accurate, but less reliable
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 28, 2013 11:44 am This is a fascinating problem that affects a lot of scientific modeling (in fact, I'll be talking about this in the second part of my series on gun violence research) — the more specific and accurate your predictions, the less reliable they sometimes become. Think about climate science. When you read the IPCC reports, what ...
Read in browser Corporate executives indicted for willfully endangering public health
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 28, 2013 11:30 am Officials from the Peanut Corporation of America are being indicted for their roles in a 2009 salmonella outbreak that killed at least nine people. It's rare for this kind of prosecution to actually happen, writes Maryn McKenna at her Superbug blog. But, in this case, there's mounds of evidence that executives circumvented safety testing, ignored ...
Read in browser Eyeball mouth
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 28, 2013 11:24 am This amazing eye-teeth makeup job comes from Swedish makeup artist PsychoSandra, who has an awful lot of equally astonishing samples on her site: "Haha I thought it was a long time since I did something with my lips. Wanted to do something weird, yes, I can say that it is weird. But pretty, it's not, ...
Read in browser Andrew Breitbart was my friend
By Jason Weisberger on Feb 28, 2013 11:17 am A year ago I lost a friend. On March 1st, 2012 Andrew Breitbart died but every day, I still see both his personal and mobile IM accounts online. They serve as a sad reminder of the loss of a man I will always remember as kind. I gather his IM accounts are still online so ...
Read in browser 28 socialist hairstyles meet North Korean approval
By Rob Beschizza on Feb 28, 2013 11:10 am Maggie Kuo and Charlie Storrar: "Kim Jong-un's own 1990s grunge style is curiously not among them." [wantchinatimes.com]
Read in browser Manning pleads guilty to lesser charges, with 20 years max sentence, but not to aiding enemy
By Rob Beschizza on Feb 28, 2013 10:59 am Bradley Manning has pleaded guilty to "10 lesser charges", and will read out a 35-page statement on the leak of diplomatic cables to Wikileaks and the motivations behind it, according to The Guardian's Ed Pilkington. Pilkington reports that the charges carry a maximum sentence of 20 years, "but #BradleyManning pleads NOT guilty to the big ...
Read in browser Titanium ring conceals saw and handcuff opener
By Mark Frauenfelder on Feb 28, 2013 09:12 am Over at the Boing Boing G+ Community, JollyOrc posted this useful tool: a ring that conceals a saw and a handcuff shim A useful tool for covert and undercover operators, those that travel abroad in unstable countries, or anyone at risk of being held unlawfully. The Titanium Escape Ring adds another tool to the operator's ...
Read in browser Cory coming to Lawrence, KS tonight!
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 28, 2013 09:11 am Hey, Lawrence, KS! I'm giving the Richard W. Gunn Memorial Lecture tonight at Alderson Auditorium, University of Kansas Student Union at 730PM. Tomorrow, I finish the Homeland tour in Toronto, with a 7PM appearance at the Merril Collection. Come on out and say hi before I go home to London!
Read in browser Six Strikes
By Rob Beschizza on Feb 28, 2013 09:10 am The first "Six Strikes" notifications were sent out this week by Verizon and Comcast, and Ars Technica's Cyrus Farivar got a copy.
Read in browser Oldest woman 115 next week
By Rob Beschizza on Feb 28, 2013 09:07 am Guinness World Records has recognized a 114-year-old Japanese woman, Misao Ookawa, as the worlds oldest. Ookawa, who turns 115 next week (becoming age-mate to 115-year old Jireomon Kimura, the world's oldest man), was born the same year that radium was discovered. [Reuters]
Read in browser Mathematica art
By Rob Beschizza on Feb 28, 2013 09:03 am Enjoy the amazing images at Into The Continuum, created with Mathematica. [via Waxy]
Read in browser Mice guilty of arson
By Rob Beschizza on Feb 28, 2013 08:42 am An inquest found mice responsible for burns found on a dead 55-year-old woman in England, but was unable to determine the exact cause of death. Though the rodents nibbled through cabling and started a fire, Linda Wyatt suffered no smoke inhalation and may therefore have already succumbed to other ailments. [Court News UK]
Read in browser Citizen science on the sea
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 28, 2013 08:17 am Phytoplankton — the microscopic, plant-like organisms that make up the base layer of the oceanic food chain — might be in serious trouble. A 2010 paper suggested that their numbers have declined 40% since the 1950s, largely thanks to climate change. But that paper is controversial because the methods for counting phytoplankton haven't been particularly ...
Read in browser SHIELD Act: a bill to stop patent trolls
By Mark Frauenfelder on Feb 28, 2013 12:05 am Rob, the host of Podcast411, says: A patent troll is out to kill off podcasting, or at a minimum critically wound it. This troll does have a patent on the whole podcasting process, despite the fact they have not contributed one line of code to the process or even a single idea used in podcasting. ...
Read in browser Comics Rack: Boing Boing's comic books picks for February 2013
By Brian Heater on Feb 27, 2013 11:40 pm I was seriously considering saving this one for Bastille Day, as by some strange coincidence, I've round up with 75-percent French speakers here (and for all I know, the fourth, a midwesterner may also be proficient in the language). Aside from that, it's a pretty diverse array of titles this time out, including a entropic ...
Read in browser David Byrne & St Vincent come to Europe for summer tour
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 27, 2013 11:02 pm Hey, Europe! David Byrne and St Vincent are taking their Love This Giant tour (the best gig I've seen in years) on the road to .eu all summer long. Here's a video of the show.
Read in browser TED2013: My Top 3 Wednesday TED Talks
By Carla Sinclair on Feb 27, 2013 10:44 pm Today's TED2013 line-up was once again filled with amazing people with super-charged ideas and skills. I really can't pick any bests out of the bunch, but here are three talks that stood out for me. Black: Yo-Yo Performance Artist Wow! Never has yoyo-ing seemed so elegant, exciting, and dare I say, beautiful. Black is a ...
Read in browser The Engadget Show 41: 'Space' with NASA, SETI, Liftport and Mary Roach
By Mark Frauenfelder on Feb 27, 2013 10:23 pm The latest episode of the Engadget Show is about space, and it's terrific. It's co-hosted by Brian Heater, senior editor at Engadget and our own Comics Rack reviewer! We kick things off with a profile of LiftPort, a commercial space endeavor operating out of a small garage in rural Washington State that has been funding ...
Read in browser Block out blue light for better sleep
By Mark Frauenfelder on Feb 27, 2013 09:08 pm Uvex Skypers are protective eyewear that have built-in side shields and a brow guard. Lightweight and comfortably snug, they fit me perfectly out of the box, but they do come with a nose bridge and an adjustable temple length for those who need to customize the fit. With great eye coverage and total comfort, I'm ...
Read in browser Mark speaking at Ft. Worth Museum of Science and History, 2/28/2013
By Mark Frauenfelder on Feb 27, 2013 08:58 pm Thursday night (Feb 28) at the Ft. Worth Museum of Science and History I'm giving a talk titled "Making Makers: The New Tools and Ideas Driving a Movement." I am going to present a short and colorful history of making things, and then launch into the new tools, technologies, and social changes that are driving ...
Read in browser R2D2 socks
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 27, 2013 08:52 pm SuperHeroStuff sells a lot of great socks, but the R2D2 ones take the prize. Star Wars Yoda and R2D2 Socks 2-Pack (via The Mary Sue)
Read in browser The men who designed space colonies
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 27, 2013 07:21 pm If your mental image of futuristic human colonies in space involves tubular ships, rolling hills, and a population seemingly plucked from a cocktail party in Sausalito in 1972, chances are good that you've been influenced by the art of Rick Guidice and Don Davis — illustrators commissioned by NASA to envision human homes among the ...
Read in browser You can cry in space, but it's not recommended
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 27, 2013 07:14 pm Robert Frost trains astronauts for NASA. At Quora, he answered an interesting question about what happens when astronauts cry. It's certainly happened, Frost says. But it's pretty uncomfortable. Without the aid of gravity to send tears streaming down your face, they just ball up around your eyes
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
