Resurrecting the dead — one piece at a time Video of the Castle Magpie wearable theater/costume in action To watch on NOVA: "Mind of a Rampage Killer" A gravity map of the Moon To do in SF (or online!): "Farmcore," doc on '80s punk Mission landmark Seduction of the Innocent: detective novel set during anti-comic book hysteria of the 1950s Create false memories at home for fun and profit! Camera Bag Cat is watching you pack for your trip Kickstarter: pinball machines customized by infamous underground artists The shark that only wants a single bite "Jesus Christ is my nigga" Coming in late summer — human baby season Free CC-licensed ebook of Homeland is live! Using Silk Road: game theory, economics, dope and anonymity Students get class-wide As by boycotting test, solving Prisoner's Dilemma Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, Wild Style Pt. 4 Abbott & Costello's classic "who's on first?" routine wonderfully retold in a children's book Cory in Memphis tonight! My Little Pony Applejack automata Radio doc on albinism: the Invisible Albino Chest of drawers that looks like a woodpile Bike flat tire repair kit inside tire levers Astronaut Chris Hadfield's Reddit AMA Cancer researcher and advocate Dr. Susan Love, now after her own cancer treatment Four Seasons On Brick Kiln Road: hidden joys of a quiet place in Maryland To do in the Bay Area: Hacker Fair 3 at Hacker Dojo Video game china pattern Captain Underpants and the Revolting Revenge of the Radioactive Robo-Boxers Happy Birthday, Yoko Ono Amid controversy, CIA's covert drone program may shift further onto Pentagon Resurrecting the dead — one piece at a time
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 19, 2013 12:58 pm Thanks to Jurassic Park, we tend to focus on one use for the DNA of extinct creatures — resurrecting them, in full, to live here in the modern age. But it's not necessary to go that far to learn a lot about those animals, and the evolution of life, in general. At the Experimental Podcast, ...
Read in browser Video of the Castle Magpie wearable theater/costume in action
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 19, 2013 12:47 pm Back in October, Cory was kind enough to post a
link to my Halloween costume [Ed: this was a wearable puppet theater/playset that was so fantastically fantastic it beggars description.]
Read in browser To watch on NOVA: "Mind of a Rampage Killer"
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 19, 2013 12:46 pm Excerpt from a NOVA doc on rampage killers: Miles O'Brien interviews Andy Williams, convicted of 2001 shooting in San Diego.
Read in browser A gravity map of the Moon
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 19, 2013 12:42 pm Gravity isn't uniform. Denser planets and objects in space — that is, things with more mass to them — experience a stronger pull of gravity. But even if you zoom in to the level of a single planet (or, in this case, our Moon), gravity isn't uniform all the way around. That's because the mass ...
Read in browser To do in SF (or online!): "Farmcore," doc on '80s punk Mission landmark
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 19, 2013 12:32 pm A documentary on the legendary Farm community in SF, home to chickens, goats, and punk bands in the '80s.
Read in browser Seduction of the Innocent: detective novel set during anti-comic book hysteria of the 1950s
By Mark Frauenfelder on Feb 19, 2013 12:25 pm Seduction of the Innocent by Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition author) sounds like fun -- it's a detective novel that take place during the heyday of the anti-comic book hysteria of the 1950s, which was led by the evil Dr. Frederick Wertham, who wrote a popular scare book also called Seduction of the Innocent. ...
Read in browser Create false memories at home for fun and profit!
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 19, 2013 12:23 pm Science journalist Stephen Ross Pomeroy uses real research to explain how you can trick your friends and loved ones into "remembering" events that never actually happened. Key tips: Don't get too intricate with the details (your mark will fill those in for themselves) and do focus on false memories that would have a strong emotional ...
Read in browser Camera Bag Cat is watching you pack for your trip
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 19, 2013 12:20 pm From the Boing Boing Flickr pool, a wonderful photo by Kai Teoh, a Boing Boing reader and photographer based in Minnesota who is available for editorial and special occasions booking.
Read in browser Kickstarter: pinball machines customized by infamous underground artists
By David Pescovitz on Feb 19, 2013 12:14 pm Fantastic idea! Top shelf underground artists COOP, Frank Kozik, Alex Pardee, Sam Flores, and Jeremy Fish teamed up with pinball hackers Tilt Warning Customs to build a classic pinball arcade. They've launched a Kickstarter and if funding comes through, they'll open at the FIFTY24SF Gallery in San Francisco next year and either tour, expand to ...
Read in browser The shark that only wants a single bite
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 19, 2013 12:14 pm The cookiecutter shark is one of those animals that kind of makes you believe nature just likes to mess with us. Instead of killing the things it eats, a cookiecutter shark just takes a bite — leaving a neat, tidy hemispherical divot. As marine biologist Yannis Papastamatiou told reporter Douglas Main, it would be more ...
Read in browser "Jesus Christ is my nigga"
By David Pescovitz on Feb 19, 2013 12:02 pm Video by Pastor and Mrs. Jim Colerick, of the now-closed West Dubuque 2nd Church of Christ, and Brian Spinney.
Read in browser Coming in late summer — human baby season
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 19, 2013 11:59 am There is definitely a seasonality to human births, writes Beth Skwarecki at Double X Science. The complicated bit is that human baby season isn't necessarily the same (or as strongly expressed) from place to place and culture to culture. In the United States, significantly more babies are born in July, August, and September. Meanwhile, in ...
Read in browser Free CC-licensed ebook of Homeland is live!
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 19, 2013 11:43 am After nearly two weeks on the road, I've finally resolved the niggling technical issues I was having with the free, CC-licensed electronic edition of Homeland. Many, many thanks to Nat Torkington and Ralph Amissah for their invaluable assistance. You can download and share the free ebooks from the official Homeland site. Go nuts!
Read in browser Using Silk Road: game theory, economics, dope and anonymity
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 19, 2013 10:39 am Gwern's "Using Silk Road" is a riveting, fantastically detailed account of the theory and practice of Silk Road, a Tor-anonymized drugs-and-other-stuff marketplace where transactions are generally conducted with BitCoins. Gwern explains in clear language how the service solves many of the collective action problems inherent to running illicit marketplaces without exposing the buyers and sellers ...
Read in browser Students get class-wide As by boycotting test, solving Prisoner's Dilemma
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 19, 2013 10:11 am Johns Hopkins computer science prof Peter Fröhlich grades his students' tests on a curve -- the top-scoring student gets an A, and the rest of the students are graded relative to that brainiac. But last term, his students came up with an ingenious, cooperative solution to this system: they all boycotted the test, meaning that ...
Read in browser Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, Wild Style Pt. 4
By Ed Piskor on Feb 19, 2013 10:00 am Read the rest of the Hip Hop Family Tree comics!
Read in browser Abbott & Costello's classic "who's on first?" routine wonderfully retold in a children's book
By Mark Frauenfelder on Feb 19, 2013 09:12 am TIME Magazine called Abbott and Costello's "Who's on first?" routine "the best comedy sketch of the twentieth century," and I find that hard to argue with. I loved listening to it as a kid, and when I hear it today it still brings a smile. A couple of weeks ago I received a review copy ...
Read in browser Cory in Memphis tonight!
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 19, 2013 08:37 am Hey, Memphis! I'm appearing tonight at The Booksellers at Laurelwood at 6PM! Tomorrow, I'll be in New Orleans, followed by Houston on Thursday. And lots more to come!
Read in browser My Little Pony Applejack automata
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 18, 2013 11:06 pm OK, nobody tell my kid about ~renegadecow's "Applejack's Apple Harvest" My Little Pony automata.
Read in browser Radio doc on albinism: the Invisible Albino
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 18, 2013 10:03 pm Garth sez, "There's only 1 in 20 000 of us, so most people have never met an 'albino' in real life. And yet, we are everywhere: The idea of 'the albino' has seized the popular imagination from the circus sideshow to the negative stereotypes of modern cinema to a gruesome East African black market in ...
Read in browser Chest of drawers that looks like a woodpile
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 18, 2013 09:03 pm Facecord is a chest of drawers disguised as a woodpile, with hidden drawers: the vision of a stockpile of wooden logs, brings forth visions of fueling the fire and keeping warm by the hearth on cold winter's night.american artist mark moskovitz translates this into 'facecord', a chest of drawers using the irregularities and haphazard geometry ...
Read in browser Bike flat tire repair kit inside tire levers
By Cool Tools on Feb 18, 2013 08:41 pm Every cyclist should have a flat kit to enable them to deal with a flat tire. Most kits include simple levers to get the tire off the rim and a set of patches for repairing holes. The Lunar Levers combine these two needs into one. The levers themselves are better designed to help you remove ...
Read in browser Astronaut Chris Hadfield's Reddit AMA
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 18, 2013 08:04 pm "I Am Astronaut Chris Hadfield, currently orbiting planet Earth." The ISS commander took questions from Reddit users, in a really good AMA this weekend. Go have a read.
Read in browser Cancer researcher and advocate Dr. Susan Love, now after her own cancer treatment
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 18, 2013 08:03 pm "I say this to my daughter, whether it's changing the world or having a good time, that we should do what we want to do. I drink the expensive wine now."—Dr. Susan Love, longtime breast cancer researcher and patient advocate, interviewed in the New York Times after completing leukemia treatment. She was diagnosed last year.
Read in browser Four Seasons On Brick Kiln Road: hidden joys of a quiet place in Maryland
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 18, 2013 07:56 pm Patrick Costello sez, Brick Kiln Road in Crisfield in Maryland is one of those quiet places that you can drive by a thousand times without noticing. The short stretch of road is home to a small fishing boat harbor, a public beach and not much else of consequence - but, like most small quiet places ...
Read in browser To do in the Bay Area: Hacker Fair 3 at Hacker Dojo
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 18, 2013 07:42 pm The Mountain View, CA-based Hacker Dojo, a grandaddy of hacker spaces, is hosting a job fair on March 3, described as "an awesome opportunity to find the candidate or job of your dreams." This is their third year doing the Hacker Fair, and the other two "have been wildly successful," they tell us. More info ...
Read in browser Video game china pattern
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 18, 2013 07:04 pm Olly Moss's new personal tableware remixes the classic Willow Pattern with a video-game motif. I'm assuming it's a shoop, or at least not available in the stream of commerce, which is a durned shame. I had some downtime so I decided to make myself a new set of dinnerware based on The Willow Pattern. (via ...
Read in browser Captain Underpants and the Revolting Revenge of the Radioactive Robo-Boxers
By Mark Frauenfelder on Feb 18, 2013 06:36 pm Hurray! A new Captain Underpants novel is out. My daughter Jane (9) rips through each Captain Underpants novel the second she gets her hands on a copy. And so do I. These adventure stories are about two mischievous but goodhearted 4th grade boys, George Beard and Harold Hutchins, and their crabby high-school principal, Mr. Krupp. ...
Read in browser Happy Birthday, Yoko Ono
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 18, 2013 06:19 pm Yoko Ono by @MatthuPlacek, 18 Feb 2013, via @yokoono Artist and peace activist Yoko Ono, wife of the late John Lennon, turns 80 today. Boing Boing interviewed her two years ago, when she was honored with the 8th Hiroshima Art Prize, an award for artists whose work has contributed to peace. To commemorate the award, ...
Read in browser Amid controversy, CIA's covert drone program may shift further onto Pentagon
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 18, 2013 06:07 pm A series of leaks have led to outcry over the secrecy with which our government conducts targeted killings with drones overseas. Now, "the Obama administration is considering shifting more of the CIA's covert drone program to the Pentagon, which operates under legal guidelines that could allow for more public disclosure in some cases." [LA Times]
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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