Rage is Back: graffiti crews save NYC from its lurking demons The (other) problems with anti-bacterial soap Collecting the Beatles' "White Album," an art project Blondie's "Heart of Glass" time-stretched into 30 minutes Films compressed into "bar codes" Top UK Catholic resigns after allegedly being captured by sexual abberation Elfquest: I can't leave them Embroidery Trouble Shooting Guide Why cellphone unlocking is so important Black Mirror episode 2: White Bear and the culture of desensitization Waiter, there is snake in my cow The world's tiniest periodic table Five stages of grief: Do they exist? Does it matter? Christian dubstep Wiretap! 1955 pulp book cover carries timely warning Abandoned Russian cruise ship drifts toward Europe "Lost" continent found under Indian ocean Let neuroscience be cool — without over-selling it Cory in Washington, DC tonight! Space-age bachelor pad poster/papercraft set White House promises open access to all federally funded research Exhaustive list of useless crap that has accumulated in various labs Just look at this vomitous vintage banana recipe. NUTELLAAARRGHHHH Marriage proposal in the form of a physics paper Rage is Back: graffiti crews save NYC from its lurking demons
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 25, 2013 12:21 pm Adam Mansbach's Rage is Back is a sneaky hybrid of a novel, part nostalgic urban graffiti memoir, full of vintage hiphop references and lush, old school New York descriptions; part brooding supernatural thriller where shamanic ritual and ancient subterranean presences secretly shape the mundane world of crime, wealth, privilege and art. Dondi Vance, Rage's narrator, ...
Read in browser The (other) problems with anti-bacterial soap
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 25, 2013 12:15 pm Anti-bacterial soap is usually made with the antibiotic Triclosan — which targets a wide range of bacteria. Most of you are probably well-educated enough on antibiotic-resistant bacteria to guess that anti-bacterial soap may not be the best thing for humanity in the long term. But at Mind the Science Gap, David Faulkner hits some points ...
Read in browser Collecting the Beatles' "White Album," an art project
By David Pescovitz on Feb 25, 2013 12:11 pm Artist Rutherford Chang has opened a very curious record shop in Portland's Recess gallery. It's filled with more than 650 first pressings of the Beatles' White Album. And nothing else. You can't buy any of them, but Chang will happily purchase yours, in any condition. He's also recording every time someone listens to one of ...
Read in browser Blondie's "Heart of Glass" time-stretched into 30 minutes
By David Pescovitz on Feb 25, 2013 11:56 am Blondie's "Heart of Glass" time-stretched into 30 minutes of glorious weirdness.
Read in browser Films compressed into "bar codes"
By David Pescovitz on Feb 25, 2013 11:51 am For several years, MOVIEBARCODE has compressed entire films and famous film sequences into barcode-like images where the lines represent frames from the movie. There are hundreds in the archive and prints are available too. Seen here at top, Blade Runner, and below that, Dorothy entering the Technicolor of Oz. And here's a Movie Barcode Generator ...
Read in browser Top UK Catholic resigns after allegedly being captured by sexual abberation
By Rob Beschizza on Feb 25, 2013 11:34 am Britain's top Catholic cardinal stepped down today after allegations of inappropriate behavior with priests, dating back to the 1980s, became public. Keith O'Brien is an outspoken conservative in the church, describing homosexuals as "captives of sexual aberration" and same-sex marriage as "shaming" the United Kingdom. [NYT]
Read in browser Elfquest: I can't leave them
By Wendy and Richard Pini on Feb 25, 2013 11:00 am Enjoy
the latest page of Elfquest. First time reader? Catch up at the comic's
official homepage.
Read in browser Embroidery Trouble Shooting Guide
By Rob Beschizza on Feb 25, 2013 10:51 am At the Embroidery Trouble Shooting Guide, HTML "heading" tags accumulate unclosed, thereby making the text grow inexorably in size until the greatest website in the world is achieved. [Sewing and Embroidery Warehouse. Hat via: Joel. (Backup)]
Read in browser Why cellphone unlocking is so important
By Rob Beschizza on Feb 25, 2013 10:42 am Don't miss this call to arms on cellphone unlocking from Derek Khanna, the Republican staffer fired over a memo calling for copyright reform. With SOPA, the industry had the money, the lobbyists, and the organization. But we, the digital generation, are the trump card—and we won. Now it's up to us to make sure that ...
Read in browser Black Mirror episode 2: White Bear and the culture of desensitization
By Leigh Alexander on Feb 25, 2013 09:56 am The last episode of Black Mirror's second season airs tonight on UK Channel 4. Do you remember the first profoundly shocking image you saw on the internet? Perhaps it would have been something you came across by accident; perhaps you followed, half horrified and half compelled, a trail of digital whispers to see if you ...
Read in browser Waiter, there is snake in my cow
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 25, 2013 08:20 am It's a crazy world out there. IKEA meatballs — which should, ostensibly, be 100% cow — are, in fact, at least partly horse. Meanwhile cow genomes are even more mixed up, containing 25% snake DNA. How the hell does that happen? The venerable Ed Yong explains.
Read in browser The world's tiniest periodic table
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 25, 2013 07:58 am Tonight, I got to meet Martyn Poliakoff — the fabulously frizzy-haired University of Nottingham chemist who you might recognize from a series of awesome videos about the periodic table that Xeni first blogged about back in 2008. This is his business card. It's a microscope image of the world's tiniest periodic table, which Poliakoff's friends ...
Read in browser Five stages of grief: Do they exist? Does it matter?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 25, 2013 07:57 am The idea of grief being expressed in predictable emotional stages dates back to the 1960s, writes Claudia Hammond at the BBC. But recent studies in the last decade suggest that reality is seldom so neatly defined. Her story is an interesting history of the science behind a popular idea, but also makes me curious. Is ...
Read in browser Christian dubstep
By Rob Beschizza on Feb 25, 2013 07:39 am "Dubstep isn't going to stop expanding into fresh sub-genres any time soon," writes Vice's Matt Shea. " ... [which] also made it inevitable that, at some point, someone was going to add wub-wubs to The Bible."
Read in browser Wiretap! 1955 pulp book cover carries timely warning
By Rob Beschizza on Feb 25, 2013 07:33 am Dr. Ivan Greenberg sent in this high-res scan of Charles Einstein's novel, Wiretap!: "This 1955 book from Dell publishing was one of the first popular novels to address police wiretapping abuse. The technology of wiretapping recalls a much different era, when wires really mattered." The design is pure pulp, but its warning of mass surveillance ...
Read in browser Abandoned Russian cruise ship drifts toward Europe
By Rob Beschizza on Feb 25, 2013 07:22 am Dina Spector reports on the Lyubivy Orlova, a Russian cruise ship adrift in the North Atlantic. It snapped free of towing cables while en-route from Canada to new owners in the Caribbean, and for various reasons no-one is taking responsibility. It, and its suspected payload of rats, is now just 1300 miles off the Irish ...
Read in browser "Lost" continent found under Indian ocean
By Rob Beschizza on Feb 25, 2013 07:14 am Lemuria found, reports Sid Perkins: "The drowned remnants of an ancient microcontinent may lie scattered beneath the waters between Madagascar and India, a new study suggests." [Nature]
Read in browser Let neuroscience be cool — without over-selling it
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 25, 2013 07:08 am Vaughan Bell is one of my favorite neuroscience writers and, at his blog, he makes an impassioned post that's aimed at scientists, but has some important implications for you, as well. The basic message: Stop over-selling neuroscience research. Stop telling people that a new discovery might "help cure schizophrenia", or any other promises that outstrip ...
Read in browser Cory in Washington, DC tonight!
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 25, 2013 07:06 am Hey, DC! I'm speaking at Busboys and Poets tonight at 7PM! Tomorrow I'll be in Cambridge, Mass; then Albuquerque (and more!)
Read in browser Space-age bachelor pad poster/papercraft set
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 24, 2013 11:02 pm Marshall sez, "This paper scene is a collaboration between illustrator Derek Yaniger and Marshall Alexander. The result is this poster-sized template that you can either hang on the wall or cut to pieces to create the paper scene. We hope to make this template available for purchase soon." HI-FI GUY (Thanks, Marshall)
Read in browser White House promises open access to all federally funded research
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 24, 2013 09:02 pm Jim Dezazzo sez, John Holdren, Obama's science advisor, issued a directive on Friday to all research funding agencies to develop plans to make the results of federally-funded research publically available free of charge within 12 months of publication. It also requires that scientists receiving taxpayer dollars to improve upon the management and sharing of scientific ...
Read in browser Exhaustive list of useless crap that has accumulated in various labs
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 24, 2013 07:07 pm An epic Reddit thread entitled "These fucking scissors" has lab-techs and scientists compiling an exhaustive, definitive list of all the weird, useless crap that has accumulated in their labs, and the reasons why none of it can be thrown away. A couple of my faves: Specialized Glassware of Uncertain Use You don't know where it ...
Read in browser Just look at this vomitous vintage banana recipe.
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 24, 2013 06:00 pm Just look at it. Ham and Bananas Hollandaise (Thanks, Teemu!)
Read in browser NUTELLAAARRGHHHH
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 24, 2013 05:25 pm Delicious, delicious, weird Nutella priesthood art.
Read in browser Marriage proposal in the form of a physics paper
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 24, 2013 02:52 pm Redditor bogus_wheel is a physicist in Sydney, Australia. Her boyfriend of seven years submitted a marriage proposal in the form of a physics paper that tracks their relationship (with a graph!). It is a beautiful piece of physics romance! My boyfriend of 7 years and I are both physicists. Here's how he proposed to me. ...
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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