Sunday, March 17, 2013

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

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Sheet music for the Mario "coin" sound
CPAC racism panel derailed by audience member who suggests slaves should have been grateful for food, shelter & clothing
Poplocks and Paper Pose-Ables: papercraft joints for pose-able robots
Maria Del Camino: an art-car that's part tank, part El Camino
Boing Boing reader discovers internet vulnerability
EFF explains yesterday's National Security Letter ruling

 

Sheet music for the Mario "coin" sound

By Cory Doctorow on Mar 17, 2013 12:14 pm

From the Mario Piano site, where you'll find "authentic, high-fidelity Mario sheet music that was entirely faithful to the original Mario themes and sound effects, and which could be trusted to be 100% accurate," the sheet music for the Mario "coin" sound. Mario Piano Sheet Music - Coin Sound (via Hacker News)
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CPAC racism panel derailed by audience member who suggests slaves should have been grateful for food, shelter & clothing

By Cory Doctorow on Mar 17, 2013 09:08 am

A conservative group looking to make inroads with African American Voters held a talk on Friday called 'Trump the Race Card'.
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Poplocks and Paper Pose-Ables: papercraft joints for pose-able robots

By Cory Doctorow on Mar 16, 2013 09:30 pm

Poplocks are a very clever system for making movable papercraft fastenings with die-cutting and folding. The Paper Pose-Ables site has a bunch of downloadable papercraft toys you can print out and make, as well as pre-cut/scored kits you can buy, for making fabulous poseable robots and other cool figures. The Pose-Ables people came out to ...
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Maria Del Camino: an art-car that's part tank, part El Camino

By Cory Doctorow on Mar 16, 2013 05:48 pm

Wired Design has a great short video documentary on my friend Bruce Tomb, who has built an amazing art-car called Maria Del Camino that's part tank, part 59 El Camino, part flying car. I camp with Bruce and his wife Mary and our friends at Burning Man, along with Maria, at the Liminal Labs camp ...
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Boing Boing reader discovers internet vulnerability

By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 16, 2013 05:42 pm

Please do not reboot. Internet will be deleted. (Via Andrew Roach BB G+)
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EFF explains yesterday's National Security Letter ruling

By Cory Doctorow on Mar 16, 2013 02:42 pm

Further to Xeni's post from yesterday about the landmark ruling by a San Francisco district court judge that the FBI may not issue "national security letters" (NSLs), the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who fought the case, has posted a good explanation about what NSLs are and why they were so creepy: The controversial NSL provisions EFF ...
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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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