207lb of caterpillars seized at London Gatwick Airport OS X Lion-O Impulse: At long last, a new Jumper novel from Steven Gould Bradley Manning's statement Mayor ensures "Koruption" stickers never seen again Retro City Rampage ported to Nintendo Entertainment System How to be an indie game developer Delicious giraffe found in South African snacks British sell French wine to pay off drinks tab Internet argument runs course Cory coming to Toronto tonight! Boston Dynamics unveils brick-hurling robot monster Ted Chiang at UC Riverside My books on a Tor hidden service Rat brains linked in first ever brain-to-brain interface Vote for Spock socks! Bradley Manning military trial updates: live-blogs, who to follow on Twitter, and analysis TV pediatrician on CNN says something stupid about transgender girls Floating alt-comedy festival on a cruise ship sounds pretty cool Secret Service denies Truthout's FOIA request for Aaron Swartz documents Silicon Valley's success squeezes California's immigrant farmers Macworld UK: Apple censoring iCloud emails and attachments Mouthstick: mouth-held touchscreen stylus Skull Brain Porcelain by Emilio Garcia City in NY forbids un-related people from sharing a home Rob Walker on the cult of Evernote Bestiary of unimportant envelopes that look important Game theory and bad behavior on Wall Street Perfectly sharpened pencils A friendly reminder: if you like Boing Boing the blog, join us on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ 207lb of caterpillars seized at London Gatwick Airport
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 01, 2013 12:10 pm A vast haul of dried caterpillars seized at Gatwick is "among the largest finds of its kind at the airport," reports a UK Border Force spokesperson. Hey, at least you know what won't be in next month's Tesco's Everyday Value Spaghetti Bolognese. [BBC]
Read in browser OS X Lion-O
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 01, 2013 11:47 am John Brownlee has a solution to the "big cat" problem now faced by OS X's marketing team, which has run out of cool ones to use as version titles
Read in browser Impulse: At long last, a new Jumper novel from Steven Gould
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 01, 2013 11:30 am After a delay of too many years, Steven Gould has penned another Jumper novel. Impulse picks up where the excellent Reflex left off, with Davy and Millie -- a couple who possess the power to teleport -- living in exile, hiding away from the sadistic, power-hungry plutocrats who would enslave them and use them to ...
Read in browser Bradley Manning's statement
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 01, 2013 11:21 am Alexa O'Brien transcribed the statement that Pvt. Bradley Manning read to the court yesterday. Manning pleaded guilty to exfiltrating classified documents, but not to a more serious charge of aiding the enemy. In his statement, Manning described his motivations for leaking the information, and said that he tried to contact other news media before Wikileaks, ...
Read in browser Mayor ensures "Koruption" stickers never seen again
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 01, 2013 10:30 am Gary Korpan, the former mayor of Nanaimo, British Columbia, has declared victory over scurrilous stickers displayed by local residents. "The third of three of the core group behind the spreading of the slanderous, malicious lies against me, my family, the Office of Mayor and the administration of the City of Nanaimo has, at long last, ...
Read in browser Retro City Rampage ported to Nintendo Entertainment System
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 01, 2013 09:53 am Retro City Rampage, an oldschool-inspired game full of 21st century swagger and depth, has nonetheless been ported back to the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System. Kyle Orland: The final ROM City Rampage is definitely missing a few key features, but it ends up looking surprisingly faithful to last year's release despite being fully compatible with hardware ...
Read in browser How to be an indie game developer
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 01, 2013 09:48 am So you've got a yearning to code games, you've got a killer idea, and you want to work for yourself. What next? [Derek Yu]
Read in browser Delicious giraffe found in South African snacks
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 01, 2013 09:32 am British diners shocked to find mystery horsebeef in their meals can take heart: South Africans have learned that their own burgers contain donkey. And then there's the giraffe meat in the antelope snacks.
Read in browser British sell French wine to pay off drinks tab
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 01, 2013 09:22 am Belinda Goldsmith at Reuters: "Britain's government is selling vintage French wine at around 5,000 pounds a bottle ($7,500) in a bid to make its wine cellar self-funding."
Read in browser Internet argument runs course
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 01, 2013 09:14 am Glenn Fleishman got into a debate with someone on the Internet who is opposed to gay rights, yet is obsessed with gay sex. Goalposts move, reason melts, arguments fall in on themselves, and even the winking irony of obvious repression is buried by the simple truth: "a bigot who lacks empathy."
Read in browser Cory coming to Toronto tonight!
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 01, 2013 09:13 am Hey, Toronto! This is the last night of my 23-city, 29-day book-tour for Homeland, and I'm finishing the odyssey at the Merril Collection at 7PM. Come on out and send me home, because I am touring complete.
Read in browser Boston Dynamics unveils brick-hurling robot monster
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 01, 2013 09:01 am "BigDog handles heavy objects."
Read in browser Ted Chiang at UC Riverside
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 28, 2013 10:51 pm From Avi: "Ted Chiang will read selections from his work at the University of California, Riverside on Monday, March 4, at 7 p.m. in the Department of English conference room, HMNSS 2212"
Read in browser My books on a Tor hidden service
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 28, 2013 08:57 pm Part of the plot in Homeland revolves around "hidden services" on the Tor network. Now, a fan of mine in Norway called Tor Inge Røttum has set up a hidden service and stashed copies of all my books there. He writes: A hidden service in Tor is a server, it can be any server, a ...
Read in browser Rat brains linked in first ever brain-to-brain interface
By Rob Beschizza on Feb 28, 2013 08:37 pm "Scientists have connected the brains of lab rats, allowing one to communicate directly to another via cables. The wired brain implants allowed sensory and motor signals to be sent from one rat to another, creating the first ever brain-to-brain interface." [Jen Whyntie at the BBC]
Read in browser Vote for Spock socks!
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 28, 2013 06:23 pm Cast your vote now on Threadless for these Spock socks (called, predictably enough, "Spocks"). Leonard Nimoy called them "fascinating". Need I say more? Score Spocks | Threadless (via IO9)
Read in browser Bradley Manning military trial updates: live-blogs, who to follow on Twitter, and analysis
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 28, 2013 05:29 pm Army private Bradley Manning pleaded guilty on Thursday to 10 of the 19 total charges made by the US that he leaked unprecedented amounts of classified material to Wikileaks, the anti-secrecy organization run by Julian Assange. Manning entered a not guilty plea to the government's more serious charge of "aiding the enemy," which carries a ...
Read in browser TV pediatrician on CNN says something stupid about transgender girls
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 28, 2013 05:28 pm A pediatrician on CNN who co-hosts the CBS show The Doctors said something stupid and trans-hatey on the February 27 edition of CNN Newsroom. During a panel discussion about Coy Mathis, a trans girl suing her school district for the right to use female restrooms at her elementary school. Sears warned that the 6-year-old Colorado ...
Read in browser Floating alt-comedy festival on a cruise ship sounds pretty cool
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 28, 2013 05:22 pm Boing Boing pal Jesse Thorn points us to a fun-sounding comedy/alt-culture cruise: The Atlantic Ocean Comedy & Music Festival, presented by MaximumFun.org, Splitsider and KCRW. Best url ever: boatparty.biz. Talent includes: Maria Bamford, Kurt Braunohler, John Darnielle, Dan Deacon, John Hodgman, Hari Kondabolu, Josie Long, Al Madrigal, Marc Maron, Nellie McKay, Eugene Mirman, Jasper Redd, ...
Read in browser Secret Service denies Truthout's FOIA request for Aaron Swartz documents
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 28, 2013 05:18 pm Truthout reports: "The US Secret Service has refused to release its records on Aaron Swartz to Truthout. The agency claimed in a letter, sent to Truthout and a researcher in response to two separate Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, that the release of any documents the agency has on the late Internet activist would ...
Read in browser Silicon Valley's success squeezes California's immigrant farmers
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 28, 2013 05:16 pm A
Hyphen magazine short doc on the life of an Asian immigrant farmer in Silicon Valley.
Read in browser Macworld UK: Apple censoring iCloud emails and attachments
By Mark Frauenfelder on Feb 28, 2013 04:08 pm Macworld UK: Apple's iCloud email service deletes all emails that contain the phrase "barely legal teen" it was revealed today. (Via D.S. in BB G+)
Read in browser Mouthstick: mouth-held touchscreen stylus
By David Pescovitz on Feb 28, 2013 04:07 pm Griffin Technology, makers of a slew of iPhone accessories and other gear, just announced the Mouthstick, a capacitive touchscreen stylus for people who can't use their hands. It's $29.99.
Read in browser Skull Brain Porcelain by Emilio Garcia
By Mark Frauenfelder on Feb 28, 2013 03:53 pm A zombie's dream - an entire head made of brains! A pricey delicacy, though: 200,00 € Skull Brain Porcelain by Emilio Garcia (Via This Isn't Happiness)
Read in browser City in NY forbids un-related people from sharing a home
By Mark Frauenfelder on Feb 28, 2013 03:36 pm Reason's Nanny of the Month video producer Ted Balakar says: Imagine a city forbidding un-related people from sharing a home in a residential neighborhood. That's what happened in Watertown, New York. Deborah Cavallario doesn't like the fact that her next door neighbor Travis Hartman shares his home with his fiance and two friends, so she ...
Read in browser Rob Walker on the cult of Evernote
By Mark Frauenfelder on Feb 28, 2013 03:31 pm Count me among the members of the cult of Evernote, a web service (with 50,000,000 users) that stores digital documents and makes them easy to find. I use it with my Fujitsu ScanSnap document scanner (here's my review) and would have a very hard time without them. The current issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek has our ...
Read in browser Bestiary of unimportant envelopes that look important
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 28, 2013 03:26 pm The Evil Mad Scientist folks have compiled an annotated bestiary of junk-mail envelopes that are camouflaged to look like important correspondence. It's a fascinating study in meatspace spam. Often times, these envelopes are quite well done. Above is an example that might cause a genuine double take— with its "FINAL NOTICE ENCLOSED" — and bank-PIN ...
Read in browser Game theory and bad behavior on Wall Street
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 28, 2013 03:13 pm An opinion piece by Chris Arnade on the asymmetry in pay (money for profits, flat for losses), which he describes "the engine behind many of Wall Street's mistakes" That asymmetry "rewards short-term gains without regard to long-term consequences," Chris writes in a new guest blog at Scientific American. "The results? The over-reliance on excessive leverage, ...
Read in browser Perfectly sharpened pencils
By Cool Tools on Feb 28, 2013 03:11 pm I use soft pencils and I bear down hard when I write. As a result, I have to resharpen the pencils frequently. A few years ago I came across this pocket-size two-hole pencil sharpener and now swear by it. It produces very sharp points and does so efficiently. Hole 1 shaves just the pencil's wood ...
Read in browser A friendly reminder: if you like Boing Boing the blog, join us on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 28, 2013 03:07 pm Boing Boing is on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus. Join us at the social network of your choice, or heck, all three of 'em.
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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