Proposal: cats could deliver mail Weev sentenced to 41 months for exposing AT&T security flaw Anthropologist investigates African penis theft Don't miss Joel Johnson's Gizmodo gadget show tonight on BBCA Audio from my Homeland tour presentation New Mars Attack art by living legend pulp artist Earl Norem Douglas Rushkoff's "Present Shock" in the NYT UK press-regulation defines "press" so broadly as to include tweeters, Facebook users, bloggers What is good and important about steampunk Hans Blix on why invading Iraq was "a terrible mistake" "I tried to make the intel behind Iraq War less bogus" Adorable baby komodo dragons born in Indonesia zoo Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer to be sentenced in ATT/iPad case Control-Alt-Hack: delightful strategy card game about white-hat hacking Six-year-old's first plane ride in open cockpit Piper Cub "Rainbow Gravity," Ugo Rondinone BMEzine founder Shannon Larratt dead in apparent suicide Correcting error-ridden WSJ column praising "aiding the enemy" charge for Manning, Wikileaks Muppet Danny Boy, the only St Paddy's celebration you need Beautiful, cleverly fastened wooden sculptures from the architect for this year's Burning Man temple Death Star was an inside job: a Loose Change parody Proposal: cats could deliver mail
By David Pescovitz on Mar 18, 2013 12:41 pm A variety of animals have been used to deliver mail over the years, from camels and dogs to horses and pigeons. But cats? According to a 19th century article in the New York Times, around 1877 the Belgian Society for the Elevation of the Domestic Cat tested 37 cats for the task by taking them ...
Read in browser Weev sentenced to 41 months for exposing AT&T security flaw
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 18, 2013 12:29 pm Andrew 'weev' Auernheimer was sentenced today to 41 months in prison for figuring out a security flaw in AT&T's website, writes Matt Brian. The "hack", which exposed iPad users' email addresses, involved entering serial numbers into a publicly-accessible web form. While one journalist lamented that prosecutors "admitted they didn't understand computers", court documents also showed ...
Read in browser Anthropologist investigates African penis theft
By David Pescovitz on Mar 18, 2013 12:25 pm Penis thefts are on the rise again in West and Central Africa. UC Berkeley cultural anthropologist/geographer Louisa Lombard investigated while visiting the tiny village of Tiringoulou. According to the town doctor, "Western medicine is no match for this magic. It is a mysterious thing." From Pacific Standard Magazine: As for the men whose penises were ...
Read in browser Don't miss Joel Johnson's Gizmodo gadget show tonight on BBCA
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 18, 2013 12:02 pm Here's a reminder that former Boing Boing gadget guv'nor Joel Johnson will have his own TV pilot, Gizmodo: The Gadget Testers, tonight at 10:20/9:20c on BBC America, right after the season finale of Top Gear. He'll be joined by Veronica Belmont, Greg Foot and O.J. Borg, Joe Brown and Chris Hardwick, and they will all ...
Read in browser Audio from my Homeland tour presentation
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 18, 2013 12:00 pm Thomas "Command Line" Gideon came out for the DC stop on my Homeland tour, at Busboys and Poets, and mic'ed me up for the event. He's mastered the audio and posted it. It's a 40 minute talk about the promise of technology to improve our lives, the risks from allowing technology to be used to ...
Read in browser New Mars Attack art by living legend pulp artist Earl Norem
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 18, 2013 11:51 am Earl Norem, age 88, painted this stunning cover for the upcoming issue of Classics Obliterated. See more of Norem's work here. June 2013 Mars Attacks (Via Duane Swierczynski)
Read in browser Douglas Rushkoff's "Present Shock" in the NYT
By David Pescovitz on Mar 18, 2013 11:49 am Old-school bOING bOING pal Douglas Rushkoff has a new book out this week, Present Shock, and it received a rave review in the New York Times! Congrats, Doug! From Janet Maslin's NYT review: The ancient Greeks learned about the hero's journey from Homer's narratives. We've gotten decades of Homer Simpson, who "remains in a suspended, ...
Read in browser UK press-regulation defines "press" so broadly as to include tweeters, Facebook users, bloggers
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 18, 2013 10:58 am UK regulations may soon regulate all tweeters, bloggers, and other people who post on the Internet as part of a new system of press regulation. Today in London, Parliament is the in throes of a closed-door horse-trading exercise over "Leveson" -- that is, the Leveson Inquiry in to the bad behavior of the British press, ...
Read in browser What is good and important about steampunk
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 18, 2013 09:46 am Nick Harkaway's essay "The Steampunk Movement is Good and Important" does a good job of answering charges that steampunk is cover for racism or colonialism, and does an even better job of explaining the attraction of steampunk technological visions to a modern artist: Just as it would be tragic to ignore the advantages and consolations ...
Read in browser Hans Blix on why invading Iraq was "a terrible mistake"
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 18, 2013 09:35 am In an op-ed for CNN.com, Hans Blix writes: "I headed the U.N. inspections in Iraq at the time of the war 10 years ago. Today, I look again at the reasons why this terrible mistake -- and violation of the U.N. charter -- took place and explore if any lessons be drawn. Here are my ...
Read in browser "I tried to make the intel behind Iraq War less bogus"
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 18, 2013 09:33 am A CIA counterterrorism analyst, in an essay for Wired's Danger Room: "Ten years ago this week, the U.S. invaded Iraq, citing intelligence that turned out to be bogus. I had to work on some of it — and I also had to work on keeping the really, really terrible versions of it out of our ...
Read in browser Adorable baby komodo dragons born in Indonesia zoo
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 18, 2013 09:32 am Seven tiny cute little baby komodo dragons have been born in a zoo in Indonesia's East Java Province. You'll want to watch the BBC News video.
Read in browser Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer to be sentenced in ATT/iPad case
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 18, 2013 09:21 am Tim Pool is webcasting the sentencing hearing this morning for Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer, whom a court has convicted of illegally gaining access to AT&T's servers and accessing more than 100,000 email addresses of iPad users. Gawker published redacted versions of the emails. There was a Reddit AMA and a party in his honor last night. ...
Read in browser Control-Alt-Hack: delightful strategy card game about white-hat hacking
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 18, 2013 09:17 am Control-Alt-Hack is a tremendously fun, hacker-themed strategy card game that uses the mechanic of the classic Steve Jackson Ninja Burger game. It comes out of the University of Washington Computer Security and Privacy Research Lab, and features extremely entertaining and funny computer-security-themed scenarios, buffs, attacks and characters. The gameplay is very well-thought-through (here's a PDF ...
Read in browser Six-year-old's first plane ride in open cockpit Piper Cub
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 18, 2013 09:11 am "A cub in a Cub," says
Miles.
Read in browser "Rainbow Gravity," Ugo Rondinone
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 18, 2013 09:03 am An
experimental film made in 2011 for LVMH, by Ugo Rondinone and Robin Kob.
Read in browser BMEzine founder Shannon Larratt dead in apparent suicide
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 18, 2013 08:58 am Shannon Larratt, creator of body modification zine and early online community BMEzine, has died. The statement he left behind indicates that he committed suicide, after several years of a rare illness that left him in extreme, constant pain.
Read in browser Correcting error-ridden WSJ column praising "aiding the enemy" charge for Manning, Wikileaks
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 18, 2013 08:44 am At Freedom of the Press Foundation, Trevor Timm factchecks an absurd column by Gordon Crovitz which praised the 'aiding the enemy' charge against Bradley Manning and insisted WikiLeaks be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.
Read in browser Muppet Danny Boy, the only St Paddy's celebration you need
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 17, 2013 09:30 pm In what's becoming
a regular St Paddy's tradition around here, here's the Muppet Danny Boy you know you want to hear but were afraid to ask for.
Read in browser Beautiful, cleverly fastened wooden sculptures from the architect for this year's Burning Man temple
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 17, 2013 06:00 pm M. Otis Beard writes, "Gregg Fleishman, the architect whose team was awarded the honorarium grant to build the Temple for Burning Man 2013 today, makes insane sculpture, furniture, toy cars, etc. out of single pieces of flat plywood, with no metal fasteners, joints, nails, or screws. Some of his pieces even incorporate wooden hinges and ...
Read in browser Death Star was an inside job: a Loose Change parody
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 17, 2013 02:39 pm Brilliant, and well made parody of the 9/11 video '
Loose Change.' It points out all the 'coincidences' in the destruction of the Death Star. Was it an inside job?
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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