Strange, scammy director made the same movie over and over for 40 years Helado Negro - "Dance Ghost" (free MP3) London mayor praises horse meat The Ed Piskor Interview Elfquest: Not just for show Sleights of Mind: the secrets of neuromagic Cory at ASU Phoenix this morning Pope to resign Raytheon making social-network-mining software to help gov'ts spy on citizens Supersonic ping-pong-ball gun leaves cartoonish ball-shaped hole in hapless paddles Interview with Rick Kleffel about Homeland Confessions of a fifth grade punk Letter from a young Homeland reader Ron Paul wants to expropriate RonPaul.com from his supporters without compensation Timelapse of Boston's nemopocalypse Amanda Palmer: "Hallelujah" Strange, scammy director made the same movie over and over for 40 years
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 11, 2013 11:56 am A filmmaker named Melton Barker travelled America from the 1930s to the 1970s, making and remaking a short movie called "The Kidnapper's Foil," which featured a large cast of kids. He'd roll into small towns, announce that he was going into production, and advertise for proud parents who wanted their kids to break into the ...
Read in browser Helado Negro - "Dance Ghost" (free MP3)
By Amy Seidenwurm on Feb 11, 2013 11:28 am Sound it Out # 42: Helado Negro - "Dance Ghost"(MP3) Helado Negro is the musician alter ego of the visual/experimental artist Roberto Carlos Lange.He's the son of Ecuadorian immigrants who grew up in South Florida and now lives in Savannah, Georgia. The music of Helado Negro (translation: Black Ice Cream) is a moody mish-mash of ...
Read in browser London mayor praises horse meat
By Rob Beschizza on Feb 11, 2013 10:40 am London mayor Boris Johnson wonders why the British don't like horse meat, which the French eat loads of. Amazing! Here are two nations, with roughly the same level of civilisation, with a densely interwoven history, a cognate language – but who have entered the internet age with radically different ideas about eating humanity's eternal helpmeet. ...
Read in browser The Ed Piskor Interview
By Marc Sobel on Feb 11, 2013 10:33 am Ed Piskor is one of the most fascinating young cartoonists in America. Marc Sobel talked to him about his influences, his art, and his forthcoming book,
The Hip Hop Family Tree.
Read in browser Elfquest: Not just for show
By Wendy and Richard Pini on Feb 11, 2013 09:50 am Enjoy
the latest page of Elfquest. First time reader? Catch up at the comic's
official homepage.
Read in browser Sleights of Mind: the secrets of neuromagic
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 11, 2013 08:53 am Last month, I blogged a fascinating profile of Apollo Robbins, a stage pickpocket with an almost supernatural facility for manipulating attention and vision to allow him to literally relieve you of your watch, eyeglasses, and the contents of your wallet without you even noticing it, even after you've been told that he's planning on doing ...
Read in browser Cory at ASU Phoenix this morning
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 11, 2013 07:45 am Yesterday's event at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, AZ was amazing, and I'm sticking around in Phoenix for one more day: this morning, I'll be presenting at ASU's Center for Science and the Imagination at 10:30AM, talking about hacktivism, ethics and the future of the fight for digital rights. Then I'm on the red-eye to ...
Read in browser Pope to resign
By Rob Beschizza on Feb 11, 2013 06:16 am The BBC reports that Benedict XVI is unexpectedly resigning as pope. I guess you could call it an ex cathedra announcement. /caruso
Read in browser Raytheon making social-network-mining software to help gov'ts spy on citizens
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 10, 2013 10:54 pm Raytheon's "RIOT" (Rapid Information Overlay Technology) is intended to help governments all over the world by providing a "Google for spies" that mines multiple online sources to build up detailed pictures of the personal activities of their citizens: The sophisticated technology demonstrates how the same social networks that helped propel the Arab Spring revolutions can ...
Read in browser Supersonic ping-pong-ball gun leaves cartoonish ball-shaped hole in hapless paddles
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 10, 2013 09:27 pm Purdue's prof Mark French and grad students Craig Zehrung and Jim Stratton built a supersonic ping-pong-ball gun that attains supersonic muzzle velocity.
Read in browser Interview with Rick Kleffel about Homeland
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 10, 2013 08:11 pm Last week I sat down for an interview with Rick Kleffel at KQED in San Francisco. He's put the whole interview -- a long one! -- up in his Trashotron podcast feed. We talked about Homeland and other things. Rick, as always, was a very astute interviewer. MP3 link
Read in browser Confessions of a fifth grade punk
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 10, 2013 05:58 pm From Taylor-Ruth's Tumblr, a page from her fifth grade diary. She was unquestionably the most punk fifth grader she knew, and possibly the most punk fifth grader in history. If you're trying to place the chronology here, note that Taylor-Ruth identifies as an Indiana high-school senior (she's also a great cartoonist!). actual diary entry from ...
Read in browser Letter from a young Homeland reader
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 10, 2013 03:50 pm As you've no doubt gleaned, I'm on tour with my new novel, Homeland. A lot of people commiserate with me about the grueling pace -- and it is! a new city practically every day and nowhere near enough sleep and continuous interviews and presentations from o-dark hundred to late at night -- but for all ...
Read in browser Ron Paul wants to expropriate RonPaul.com from his supporters without compensation
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 10, 2013 02:42 pm From RonPaul.com: Earlier today, Ron Paul filed an international UDRP complaint against RonPaul.com and RonPaul.org with WIPO, a global governing body that is an agency of the United Nations. The complaint calls on the agency to expropriate the two domain names from his supporters without compensation and hand them over to Ron Paul. On May ...
Read in browser Timelapse of Boston's nemopocalypse
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 10, 2013 02:13 pm I pointed my camera out my dining room window for 30 hours of Nemo in Boston, from the start of precipitation on Friday to the end of Saturday's cleanup.
Read in browser Amanda Palmer: "Hallelujah"
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 10, 2013 01:07 pm Amanda Palmer's live performance of
Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah.
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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