Hand-shaped iPhone "case" Win a lobster in classic lobster claw game Dennis Rodman's pick for pope Farmers should make house-calls Portable organ, radio, phonograph from 1976 Dog saved after eating 111 pennies British advertising watchdog dismisses complaint over "killer" ad Irish flags OK again in Florida Funny French toilet paper TV commercial Insider claims EA lied about SimCity requiring online servers Albania is riddled with decaying Soviet-era bunkers TOM THE DANCING BUG: Judge Scalia, in "Legislative Soul Search" How ocean science saves money by hitching a ride HOWTO hotel-room upside-down cold-brew coffee Sherlock Holmes copyrights are an insane hairball Custom Zelda motorcycle helmet art In celebration of the house rabbit Pug rings RIP, John Paul Miller, a genius goldsmith and creator of many lovely gold crustaceans One in hole Why is the sky *any* color? McDonald's price increases over the years Documentary about skilled sign painters looks fantastic Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble performs "Our Factory's Girls" England My England: Anglophilia Explained - a new ebook by Mark Dery Using clips from Ed Sullivan in Jersey Boys found to be fair use; judges award costs to deter future "chilling" copyright lawsuits News article about pope selection and smoke puffs, annotated to make more sense Mexican eco-terrorists declare war on nanotechnology, threaten scientists Japan extracts gas from methane hydrate, 'Flammable Ice' Conclave smoke: a mystery recipe Hand-shaped iPhone "case"
By David Pescovitz on Mar 13, 2013 12:58 pm The Hand iPhone Case is totally impractical and not really a case. But it's absolutely fantastic! You can choose between an adult or child-sized hand. (via Gadget Lab)
Read in browser Win a lobster in classic lobster claw game
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 13, 2013 12:46 pm We've all played one of those arcade "claw" games where a mechanical lobster claw is rigged to let go of prizes. But have you ever played with the prizes being live lobsters? [The Atlantic]
Read in browser Dennis Rodman's pick for pope
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 13, 2013 12:40 pm Former NBA star Dennis Rodman has chosen Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson (of "in Africa homosexuality is not countenanced" fame) as the next pope, reports the AP. Previously.
Read in browser Farmers should make house-calls
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 13, 2013 12:39 pm John Robb wants us to stop landscaping our lawns, and start foodscaping them -- growing food for our families. And he thinks the way to jumpstart it is for farmers to make house-calls. I love this idea, but don't think I could participate in it: when we applied to Hackney Council in London for permission ...
Read in browser Portable organ, radio, phonograph from 1976
By David Pescovitz on Mar 13, 2013 12:33 pm From the @boingboing Instagram feed, my snap of a Silver Star ORP-1803 organ, radio, phonograph (c.1976) at Groove Merchant, SF.
Read in browser Dog saved after eating 111 pennies
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 13, 2013 12:29 pm Jack, a 13-year-old Jack Russell, is recovering after an operation to remove the $1.11 in pennies that he had eaten. [NY Daily News]
Read in browser British advertising watchdog dismisses complaint over "killer" ad
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 13, 2013 12:25 pm An advertisement for sleazy clothing retailer Asos showed a man, the "Asossin", crushing another with Christmas decorations, pushing a radio into an occupied bathtub, and trapping a woman in a chest freezer. This generated complaints to the authorities, but they have not been upheld.
Read in browser Irish flags OK again in Florida
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 13, 2013 12:18 pm The idiots who run Atlantic Beach, Florida, banned the flying of non-US flags, and even cited a Greek restaurant for displaying one. They have been told. [Reuters]
Read in browser Funny French toilet paper TV commercial
By David Pescovitz on Mar 13, 2013 12:13 pm Clever TV commercial for Le Trèfle toilet paper by the Leo Burnett ad agency.
Read in browser Insider claims EA lied about SimCity requiring online servers
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 13, 2013 12:11 pm At Rock Paper Shotgun, John Walker hears from a "Maxis insider" who claims that Electronic Arts lied about how SimCity works in order to avoid the obvious solution to its launch troubles: disabling the "digital rights management" (DRM) system that locked paying customers out. Maxis' studio head, Lucy Bradshaw, has told both Polygon and Kotaku ...
Read in browser Albania is riddled with decaying Soviet-era bunkers
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 13, 2013 11:55 am Wired's Pete Brook talks with Dutch photographer David Galjaard, author of the 2012 Aperture Foundation/Paris Photo First Photobook Award-winning book Concreso, a photo-essay on the insane "bunkerization" practiced by the paranoid Soviet Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha. Hoxha built a one bunker for every four Albanians, 24 per square kilometer, and now the country has no ...
Read in browser TOM THE DANCING BUG: Judge Scalia, in "Legislative Soul Search"
By Ruben Bolling on Mar 13, 2013 11:45 am Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Judge Scalia searches the Legislative Soul and finds that it SUCKS!
Read in browser How ocean science saves money by hitching a ride
By Jessica Morrison on Mar 13, 2013 11:00 am Science funding in the U.S. fluctuates with the whims of Congress, and losing research dollars can mean shuttering a lab for good. So clever ocean scientists have found ways to save money (and time) by outsourcing basic data collection to commercial ships and recreational boats
Read in browser HOWTO hotel-room upside-down cold-brew coffee
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 13, 2013 10:52 am Kent sez, "Here's a travel hack that came to me all at once in a flash at SxSW this year: how to make cold-brewed coffee out of the horrible filter pack and inadequate equipment you often find in hotels in the USA." Carefully unwrap (don't tear!) one or two of those premeasured filter-packs that came ...
Read in browser Sherlock Holmes copyrights are an insane hairball
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 13, 2013 09:45 am Robbo sez, "The Independent Filmmaker Project has a great post examining the nonsense which continues to surround Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most loved character, Sherlock Holmes (now 125 years old) , and whether he resides not just at 221B Baker Street - but also in the public domain." According to the lawsuit all the Sherlock ...
Read in browser Custom Zelda motorcycle helmet art
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 13, 2013 09:00 am Ara did a beautiful job decorating redditor phrenetiKz's motorcycle helmet with a monochrome, line-art Zelda motif. There's a wallpaper of the whole thing, too. Local redditor finished her Zelda artwork on my helmet...AKA my Zelmet
Read in browser In celebration of the house rabbit
By Brian Heater on Mar 13, 2013 08:30 am Rabbits are terrible at masking their joy. Really, truly awful. The eyes, the ears, the body language -- all are dead giveaways, but the real giveaway is in the hop. When a rabbit is happy, like so pulsing with lagomorphian ecstasy that it truly can't contain itself, such emotions manifest themselves in mid-air. First a ...
Read in browser Pug rings
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 12, 2013 10:41 pm Hannah sez, "I've just recently finished working on a series of pugs in costumes They all turned out to resemble somebody. One looks just like the Queen, one like Hercule Poirot and one very much like a geek with classic, horn-rimmed glasses. In fact, he turned out to look very much like an editor of ...
Read in browser RIP, John Paul Miller, a genius goldsmith and creator of many lovely gold crustaceans
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 12, 2013 09:24 pm David sez, "A quiet genius, jeweler John Paul Miller, recently passed away and a memorial service was held this past weekend in Cleveland. His jewelery is beautifully detailed and I thought the Boing Boing audience would enjoy his take [Google Image Search] on crustaceans and insects." Yet the relative paucity of attention given to Miller ...
Read in browser One in hole
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 12, 2013 08:31 pm "One step onto the pocked section [of the golf course] and the 43-year-old mortgage broker plunged into a sinkhole." He survived. (Thanks, Matthew!)
Read in browser Why is the sky *any* color?
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 12, 2013 07:38 pm A nice video from PBS that explains why the sky has color. Why is the sky blue? It's a question that you'd think kids have been asking for thousands of years, but it might not be that old at all. The ancient Greek poet Homer never used a word for blue in The Odyssey or ...
Read in browser McDonald's price increases over the years
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 12, 2013 07:11 pm Rob Cockerham says: "Because I have pictures of every fast food franchise's Drive Thru menu from 2002, I was able to take new drive-thru menu photos and compare the prices and layout of the new with the old."
Read in browser Documentary about skilled sign painters looks fantastic
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 12, 2013 07:09 pm Stendahl Syndrome alert! This trailer for a documentary about sign painters made me swoon. There was a time, as recently as the 1980s, when storefronts, murals, banners, barn signs, billboards, and even street signs were all hand-lettered with brush and paint. But, like many skilled trades, the sign industry has been overrun by the techno-fueled ...
Read in browser Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble performs "Our Factory's Girls"
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 12, 2013 06:21 pm From North Korea's nonstop hit-making music machine: Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble - "Our Factory's Girls." (Is there some kind of rule that says all music made in dictatorships shall be played on Hammond E-100 knockoffs?) (Thanks, Brian!)
Read in browser England My England: Anglophilia Explained - a new ebook by Mark Dery
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 12, 2013 06:13 pm Hot off the electron gun: England My England: Anglophilia Explained, a new ebook from our friend and frequent Boing Boing contributor, Mark Dery. It's published by Thought Catalog. Downton Abbey has brought out the Anglophile in American fans of the hit TV series. But Anglophilia has a long history in America. Why are some native-born ...
Read in browser Using clips from Ed Sullivan in Jersey Boys found to be fair use; judges award costs to deter future "chilling" copyright lawsuits
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 12, 2013 05:34 pm A Ninth Circuit Appeals Court has ruled that the producers of the musical "Jersey Boys" did not violate copyright law by using a clip from the Ed Sullivan Show in their production. They'd been sued by SOFA Entertainment, who holds the Sullivan Show rights. The judges awarded costs to the Jersey Boys production company, so ...
Read in browser News article about pope selection and smoke puffs, annotated to make more sense
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 12, 2013 04:44 pm "I was reading this CNN article, and thought it needed some context." [IMGUR via @rob_sheridan]
Read in browser Mexican eco-terrorists declare war on nanotechnology, threaten scientists
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 12, 2013 04:43 pm Mexican scientists involved in bio- and nanotechnology have become death threat targets over the past two years. It's not the narcos who want them dead, but "a group of bomb-building eco-terrorists with the professed goal of destroying human civilization," reports Wired News. In a manifesto posted on anarchist blog Liberacion Total last month, Individualidades Tendiendo a ...
Read in browser Japan extracts gas from methane hydrate, 'Flammable Ice'
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 12, 2013 04:40 pm Hiroko Tabuchi at the Times reports that Japan has successfully extracted gas from offshore deposits of methane hydrate, also referred to as "flammable ice." The breakthrough is hailed as a possible step "toward tapping a promising but still little-understood energy source." The extraction from a deep-sea bed hydrate reservoir is believed to have been the ...
Read in browser Conclave smoke: a mystery recipe
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 12, 2013 04:35 pm Guys, during the papal conclave in the Sistine Chapel, alternating puffs of black and white smoke emerge after the voting, "coming from a copper flue jutting from the chapel roof." But nobody outside the Chapel seems to know how those colors are created, and the New York Times is on it. Guesses range from damp ...
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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