CISPA is back: worst Internet law since SOPA needs you to fight it! What "Twitter" meant in 1874 Daniel Pinkwater's FISH WHISTLE free until Wednesday Logic of surveillance and problems of the enforcer class Black Mirror decodes our modern dread of technology Canadian rude Nerval's Lobster: Is walking a crustacean any more ridiculous than a dog? Elfquest: Birth celebration Cory in Oxford, MS this afternoon Mutant pizza parlor Maryland landlord used tiny cameras to sexually spy on tenants Watch video of a baby dolphin saved after being caught in fishing net Meteor detection advocates now somewhat less likely to be mocked Reconstructing the Chelyabinsk meteor's path, with Google Earth, YouTube, and math In response to bad NYT review, a Tesla Road Trip CISPA is back: worst Internet law since SOPA needs you to fight it!
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 18, 2013 12:56 pm CISPA is a sweeping, privacy-annihilating Internet law that we killed last year. The Congressmen who introduced it haven't learned their lesson and they've reintroduced it. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, right? We killed CISPA once before. We will kill CISPA again. It only works if you take part. Last year, Representatives Rogers and ...
Read in browser What "Twitter" meant in 1874
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 18, 2013 11:46 am John Camden Hotten's The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical and Anecdotal was published in 1874, and is available in Project Gutenberg's archive. It's a nice piece of work, as this post on EbookFriendly illustrates, with choice definitions from a bygone era for "Pin," "Twitter" and more. pin: "to put in the pin," to refrain from drinking. ...
Read in browser Daniel Pinkwater's FISH WHISTLE free until Wednesday
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 18, 2013 10:51 am Jennifer writes with amazing news! "FISH WHISTLE is a compilation of the best of Daniel Pinkwater's short essays. Contains classic (and very funny) stories of Pinkwater's family, travels in Africa, food, raising dogs and becoming an artist, many of which were first heard on NPR's 'All Things Considered.' Originally published in 1990, this first ebook ...
Read in browser Logic of surveillance and problems of the enforcer class
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 18, 2013 10:13 am Ian Welsh's piece on the "logic of surveillance" makes several good points, but this one really smacked me in the face: "The enforcer class...is paid in large part by practical immunity to many laws and a license to abuse ordinary people." Surveillance is part of the system of control. The more surveillance the more control, ...
Read in browser Black Mirror decodes our modern dread of technology
By Leigh Alexander on Feb 18, 2013 10:04 am The English have a coy euphemism for addiction: "moreish." It summons the delightful anxiety in surrendering your control to something else, the ambivalent cocktail of desire and guilt. We feel it flickering in the periphery, and we feel our smartphones in the middle of a restaurant dinner. We live with the inability to fall asleep ...
Read in browser Canadian rude
By Rob Beschizza on Feb 18, 2013 10:01 am When asked by an analyst whether new Canadian investment rules would prohibit its takeover by foreign state-owned entities, interim CEO Clayton Woitas had a ready answer: "The answer would be no. Fucking asshole." [Reuters]
Read in browser Nerval's Lobster: Is walking a crustacean any more ridiculous than a dog?
By M. Dery on Feb 18, 2013 10:00 am Before Rimbaud, before the Surrealists, there was Nerval (1808 - 1855), living his life as if it were a lucid dream. Of course, it didn't hurt that his mental skies flickered with the chain lightning of madness—bouts of insanity that condemned him to periodic stays in asylums and, ultimately, self-murder.
Read in browser Elfquest: Birth celebration
By Wendy and Richard Pini on Feb 18, 2013 09:00 am Enjoy
/www.elfquest.com/gallery/OnlineComics3.html">official homepage.
Read in browser Cory in Oxford, MS this afternoon
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 18, 2013 08:37 am Hey, Oxford, MS! I'm coming to town today, and signing at Square Books at 5PM on the tour for my new book Homeland. I'll be in Memphis tomorrow, and then I go to New Orleans on Tuesday. Though I can hardly believe it, the tour is only halfway along, and there's tons more stops to ...
Read in browser Mutant pizza parlor
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 17, 2013 04:51 pm Jenise sez, When a new pizza place opened up next door to my favorite happy mutant cafe in Salem, MA, I had to wander in. The delectable smells wafting out certainly helped nudge me through the doors. Inside, I found the place brimming with SF memorabilia, including a life-size Borgified Picard statue acting as maitre'd ...
Read in browser Maryland landlord used tiny cameras to sexually spy on tenants
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 17, 2013 03:09 pm On March 4, a landlord will go on trial in Montgomery County District Court, Maryland, over charges he secretly recording three female tenants while they were nude or engaged in sexual acts with their boyfriends. The accused: Dennis Alan Van Dusen, 63, a lawyer with graduate degrees from Harvard. Small, hide-able spycams are cheap, and ...
Read in browser Watch video of a baby dolphin saved after being caught in fishing net
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 17, 2013 02:59 pm Lifeguards and SeaWorld marine mammal specialists freeing a juvenile dolphin that became tangled in fishing line.
Read in browser Meteor detection advocates now somewhat less likely to be mocked
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 17, 2013 02:53 pm Guys, scientists who have "been on the lookout for killer objects from outer space that could devastate the planet" were once mocked by skeptics "as Chicken Littles," but less so after that scary Russian meteor disaster, and the New York Times is on it.
Read in browser Reconstructing the Chelyabinsk meteor's path, with Google Earth, YouTube, and math
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 17, 2013 02:49 pm Stefan Geens: "Like many others, I was absolutely astounded by the meteor strike over Chelyabinsk when I woke on Friday morning. One silver lining to our self-surveilling society is that an event of this magnitude is certain to get caught on the myriad of always-on dash- and webcams. I for one could not get enough ...
Read in browser In response to bad NYT review, a Tesla Road Trip
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 17, 2013 02:28 pm mage: Lauren Goode, WSJ, via Twitter. A group of Tesla Model S owners set out Saturday to re-create John Broder's ill-fated review test-drive of the Tesla Model S. One of the participants set up Tesla telemetry and Twitter integration, to live-tweet data during the drive. In case you missed the drama earlier this week: John ...
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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