How to walk on ice UK "forced labor" welfare scheme nailed in court Watch the latest hand-picked videos on Boing Boing's video page Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, Wild Style Pt. 3 Matt Ruff's brilliant alternate history The Mirage is out in paperback today Regretsy is shutting down Litterplugs: where the trash gets wedged Projecting the Lorax on a blizzard Canada's Internet snooping bill is dead North Korea conducts third nuclear test in DPRK history Ten more sucker-bets you can't lose! Chelsea Wolfe: Flatlands Snapchat raises $13.5 million to help teens sext more effectively News on antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant bacteria in meat is not good Journalists' covering Myanmar (Burma) learn they've been targeted in state-sponsored hacks Doctor says The New York Times killed his patient Exploding The Phone: tour for phreaker/hacker proto-history book by Phil Lapsley Photojojo University: learn how to take better pictures with your phone Regular expressions crossword NYT reviewer takes Tesla on road trip, "wasn't smiling." Elon Musk: NYT review is "fake." I'm cooking everything I can think of in my Fagor multicooker 10 Tips from Boing Boing on making online content sing Tell Me Something I Don't Know 001: Gary Groth interview Baltimore hair stylist tries her hand at archaeology QWERTY Rubik's Cube Scientists discover life in Antarctica Another prime number down, infinity to go Baratunde Thurston on Net Neutrality Why do dogs bark? (And what are they saying when they do?) Vaccine-resistant whooping cough found in Philadelphia How to walk on ice
By Mark Frauenfelder on Feb 12, 2013 12:26 pm (Via Mental Floss)
Read in browser UK "forced labor" welfare scheme nailed in court
By Rob Beschizza on Feb 12, 2013 11:35 am It's the stuff of dystopian fiction: welfare claimaints sent to work for no pay at profitable private companies, with costs born by the taxpayer. British courts are taking aim at the policy, the BBC reports. Miss Reilly said that in November 2011 she had to leave her voluntary work at a local museum and work ...
Read in browser Watch the latest hand-picked videos on Boing Boing's video page
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 12, 2013 10:30 am We've gathered fresh video for you to surf and enjoy on the Boing Boing video page. The latest finds for viewing pleasure include: • Miguel Alonso built a QWERTY Rubik's Cube. Looks like fun. • Baratunde on what net neutrality is and what it means for the average person. • It's Carnaval in Brazil! Let ...
Read in browser Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, Wild Style Pt. 3
By Ed Piskor on Feb 12, 2013 10:00 am Read the rest of the Hip Hop Family Tree comics!
Read in browser Matt Ruff's brilliant alternate history The Mirage is out in paperback today
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 12, 2013 08:31 am Matt Ruff's alternate history novel The Mirage was one of my favorite novels of 2012, and it's out in paperback today. Here's my review from last February: Also: the UK edition is £9.11. Yes, yes it is. (Thanks, Peter!) This is Matt Ruff with the awesome turned up to 11. To 12. To 100. The ...
Read in browser Regretsy is shutting down
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 12, 2013 01:53 am April Winchell is shutting down Regretsy, the site where she has tirelessly cataloged the most horrible things on Etsy, from "an oil painting of a couple copulating inside a burger bun, called Sex Burger; a vulva-faced zombie ornament; a custom unicorn hoodie and a cat hairball necklace." She explains to Wired UK what it was ...
Read in browser Litterplugs: where the trash gets wedged
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 12, 2013 01:49 am Cabel's got a great name for those odd gaps in buildings and street-furniture where people shove their garbage. He calls them "Litterplugs," and boy does he have a lot of great photos of them. We get a lot of these in London, thanks to the wide-scale removal of trash-cans. I first noticed the "litterplugs" (if ...
Read in browser Projecting the Lorax on a blizzard
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 12, 2013 12:58 am I never suspected how
wondrous the results would be if I shone a projector into a blizzard, as Redditor bmaffitt did three days ago.
Read in browser Canada's Internet snooping bill is dead
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 12, 2013 12:52 am Canada's terrible proposed spying law, Bill C-30, is dead. The Harper Tories, who nailed the colours to the mast on the passage of the law, which would have given nearly unlimited access to private electronic communications to law enforcement, government, and random appointed persons, has issued a statement saying they won't reintroduce the bill. It's ...
Read in browser North Korea conducts third nuclear test in DPRK history
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 11, 2013 10:59 pm Photo from North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on December 12, 2012 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un giving final orders for the launch of the Unha-3 rocket, carrying the satellite Kwangmyongsong-3, at the general satellite control and command center in Pyongyang. UPDATE: North Korea confirms a nuclear test was conducted today. From ...
Read in browser Ten more sucker-bets you can't lose!
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 11, 2013 10:56 pm Richard Weisman has updated his marvellous
video of unloseble sucker bets with ten more bar-bets you can't lose.
Read in browser Chelsea Wolfe: Flatlands
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 11, 2013 10:04 pm Los Angeles based singer-songwriter
Chelsea Wolfe performs "Flatlands," from her acoustic album "Unknown Rooms"
Read in browser Snapchat raises $13.5 million to help teens sext more effectively
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 11, 2013 10:03 pm Two dudes, 22 and 24 years old, built a sexting app through which more than 60 million "snaps" (photo-messages) are now sent daily. The messages are ephemeral, and vanish irretrievably shortly after they're sent, which people seem to think is great for sending dicks or boobs. Anyway, they've just raised $13.5 million to grow the ...
Read in browser News on antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant bacteria in meat is not good
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 11, 2013 10:01 pm Maryn McKenna writes in Wired News about two important documents recently and quietly released by the FDA about antibiotic use in livestock raising, and what the results of that antibiotic use are. "The news does not appear to be good."
Read in browser Journalists' covering Myanmar (Burma) learn they've been targeted in state-sponsored hacks
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 11, 2013 09:58 pm The New York Times reports that several journalists who cover Myanmar (Burma) have received warnings from Google that their Gmail accounts may have been hacked by "state-sponsored attackers."
Read in browser Doctor says The New York Times killed his patient
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 11, 2013 09:56 pm In a Mediaite column, Dr. George Lombardi blames what he believes to be misleading science journalism in the New York Times for the death of one of his patients. The patient declined a PSA test, and in so doing, failed to learn that he had prostate cancer until it had progressed to a very advanced ...
Read in browser Exploding The Phone: tour for phreaker/hacker proto-history book by Phil Lapsley
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 11, 2013 09:50 pm Phil Lapsley is on tour starting today to promote his new book, "Exploding the Phone," which features a foreword by Steve Wozniak. The book "traces the birth of long-distance communication and the telephone, the rise of AT&T's monopoly, the creation of the sophisticated machines that made it all work, and the discovery of Ma Bell's ...
Read in browser Photojojo University: learn how to take better pictures with your phone
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 11, 2013 09:45 pm Amit Gupta of Photojojo says, "We just launched something that we built during our final week of Workcation in Thailand. (Every year I take the Photojojo crew on a trip somewhere fun for 2-3 weeks.) It's called Photojojo University. It's photography fundamentals, taught for people discovering photography for the first time with a phone." Looks ...
Read in browser Regular expressions crossword
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 11, 2013 08:54 pm On Coinheist.com, a crossword puzzle you solve by interpreting regular expressions. PDF download
Read in browser NYT reviewer takes Tesla on road trip, "wasn't smiling." Elon Musk: NYT review is "fake."
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 11, 2013 07:24 pm Rick Ibsen unloads the Model S from a flatbed truck at the Supercharger station in Milford, Conn. (John Broder/The New York Times.) John Broder of the New York Times test-drove a Tesla Model S on an interstate road trip in cold weather, and encountered problems with drive time and charge time falling way short of ...
Read in browser I'm cooking everything I can think of in my Fagor multicooker
By Cool Tools on Feb 11, 2013 07:16 pm Last summer I tried some carrot soup that tasted like buttered toffee. It had been made in a pressure cooker, which heats water vapor above boiling temperature, greatly reducing normal cooking times. I told my parents I was going to get a pressure cooker, and they recommended the $90 Fagor multicooker, because unlike most pressure ...
Read in browser 10 Tips from Boing Boing on making online content sing
By Mark Frauenfelder on Feb 11, 2013 06:55 pm Fast Company excerpted a chapter from a new book, The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do and How They Do It So Well, by Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield. The chapter is an interview with me about what I've learned so far about writing for a blog. 5. Don’t waste people’s time. ...
Read in browser Tell Me Something I Don't Know 001: Gary Groth interview
By Mark Frauenfelder on Feb 11, 2013 06:42 pm Boing Boing has a new podcast! It's called Tell Me Something I Don't Know, and it's an interview podcast featuring artists, writers, filmmakers, and other creative people discussing their work, ideas, and the reality/business side of how they do what they do. It's produced and hosted by three talented cartoonists and illustrators: Jim Rugg, a ...
Read in browser Baltimore hair stylist tries her hand at archaeology
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 11, 2013 06:06 pm Here's a nice reminder that an expert is only "an expert" in their specific, narrow field, and (more importantly) everybody in an expert in something. A Baltimore hair stylist has helped archaeologists better understand how Roman and Greek women achieved some of the complicated, towering hairdos depicted in sculpture and paintings. How? She experimentally demonstrated ...
Read in browser QWERTY Rubik's Cube
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 11, 2013 06:02 pm Miguel Alonso built a QWERTY Rubik's Cube, which looks like a lot of fun.
Read in browser Scientists discover life in Antarctica
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 11, 2013 06:00 pm "It appears that there lies a large wetland ecosystem under Antarctica's ice sheet, with an active microbiology." — There's some really exciting news coming from the land at the bottom of the world.
Read in browser Another prime number down, infinity to go
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 11, 2013 05:45 pm There are 17 million digits in the largest prime number we know of, so far. Its discovery is part of an ongoing distributed computing project aimed at exposing the existence of ever larger prime numbers, largely because prime numbers are there — flagrantly going around, only being divisible by themselves and the number 1. We'll ...
Read in browser Baratunde Thurston on Net Neutrality
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 11, 2013 05:23 pm Baratunde Thurston is generally known as a humorist, not a net.activist, but here he gives a concise and remarkably non-technical explanation of what net neutrality is and what it means for the average person.
Read in browser Why do dogs bark? (And what are they saying when they do?)
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 11, 2013 05:20 pm Barking might just be a reflex for agitated dogs. It might be a side-effect of domestication — i.e., when you select for less-aggressive animals you get ones that tend to bark. Or, it really might have meaning, both for other dogs and for humans. At Scientific American, Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods describe some of ...
Read in browser Vaccine-resistant whooping cough found in Philadelphia
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 11, 2013 05:09 pm When we talk about the resurgence of childhood illnesses, we tend to focus on vaccine-resistant people as the primary cause. And it's true that a large population of un-vaccinated kids can give a disease like whooping cough a foothold in a community, and allow it to spread to kids who haven't been vaccinated yet or ...
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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