Journalists took secret money for critical pieces about Malaysian opposition candidate US Trade Rep orders Canada to comply with the dead-and-buried ACTA treaty, Canada rolls over and wets itself The legacy of Fukushima United Airlines sucks New Haunted Mansion merch TED2013: Takeaway roundup A Single Shot: creepy backwoods crime suspense novel Toy Story Zoetrope PBS short documentary about 3D printing Robot makes cocktails Boing Boing messenger bags - new in the Boing Boing shop! Scientifically accurate Spider-Man Frank Frazetta's painting of Ringo Starr on the back cover of MAD (1964) TED2013: Bluebrain's location-aware albums SpaceX Dragon launches successfully; thruster problem will delay ISS arrival Help for Ernie Gygax The Angry Korean Lady of Honolulu: a restaurant I plan to patronize while in Hawaii Sinkhole swallows 36-year-old man in Florida FAA investigating "Harlem Shake" on plane Yochai Benkler: The dangerous logic of the Bradley Manning Case Jedi Mind Meld Journalists took secret money for critical pieces about Malaysian opposition candidate
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 02, 2013 12:12 pm The government of Malaysia hired a US PR firm to pay conservative journalists to write articles critical of a opposition leader running on a pro-democracy platform for The Huffington Post, The Guardian, The National Review, The San Francisco Examiner, Red State, and The Washington Times. The writers who took the money then wrote for their ...
Read in browser US Trade Rep orders Canada to comply with the dead-and-buried ACTA treaty, Canada rolls over and wets itself
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 02, 2013 11:43 am Do you remember ACTA? It was a broad, Internet-destroying copyright treaty, negotiated with unprecedented secrecy (even Congress and the European Parliament were not allowed to know what was going on in the negotiations -- though CEOs of beer and fertilizer companies were kept apprised on a running basis). Well, ACTA died when the people of ...
Read in browser The legacy of Fukushima
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Mar 02, 2013 08:58 am At Time, Bryan Walsh reports on two pieces of news coming out of the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. First, the World Health Organization has released estimates of the health effects on the plant's workers, the people who were involved in shutting it down, and the local residents who lived closest to the plant ...
Read in browser United Airlines sucks
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 02, 2013 07:57 am Yesterday morning, I flew the final leg of my 23-city book-tour. I was supposed to fly Kansas City -> Chicago -> Toronto, but the Kansas/Chicago flight was delayed, because United had scheduled the crew too tightly on its turnaround, and the FAA grounded them until they got a full night's sleep. I was able to ...
Read in browser New Haunted Mansion merch
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 02, 2013 07:37 am Uh-oh, Disney is releasing a rather nice line of Haunted Mansion memoribilia. There goes my bank-balance. Some highlights: The Hourglass: "I've wanted to make an hourglass for years," said Cody, who is an 18-year Disney cast member. "This 7 ½-inch-tall hourglass has gargoyles from the stretching room and the famous wallpaper design on the top. ...
Read in browser TED2013: Takeaway roundup
By Carla Sinclair on Mar 01, 2013 10:30 pm Every talk this week had a message that could help us shape our personal lives as well as the bigger world around us. I want to conclude my TED coverage with four talks that resonated most with me. The over-arching takeaway here was that obstacles give us the opportunity to think, problem-solve, and create something ...
Read in browser A Single Shot: creepy backwoods crime suspense novel
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 01, 2013 08:41 pm I always bring a dead tree book with me on flights, because I need something to do in the time during which passengers are forbidden from using electronic devices (I can't bear to sit quietly with my thoughts for 15 minutes on a plane; I need a distraction). If the book is excellent, I'll continue ...
Read in browser Toy Story Zoetrope
By Jason Weisberger on Mar 01, 2013 08:12 pm Stumbled across this while poking around Disney's California Adventure. Woody does a nice job of describing how the zoetrope works. It is beautiful.
Read in browser PBS short documentary about 3D printing
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 01, 2013 07:51 pm PBS OffBook made this excellent 7-minute introduction to 3D printing. Much attention has been paid to 3D Printing lately, with new companies developing cheaper and more efficient consumer models that have wowed the tech community. They herald 3D Printing as a revolutionary and disruptive technology, but how will these printers truly affect our society? Beyond ...
Read in browser Robot makes cocktails
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 01, 2013 07:47 pm Shake is a whimsical robot from Inertial Labs that can make any 3-ingredient cocktail. The LED ice cubes are a nice touch! It is entered in the upcoming BarBot competition this weekend in San Francisco.
Read in browser Boing Boing messenger bags - new in the Boing Boing shop!
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 01, 2013 07:19 pm New in the Boing Boing Shop -- messenger bags featuring some of our favorite artists' work, including Ape Lad's Unizilla illustration and Mark Pawson's Demolish Serious Culture logo (which always has its intended effect on pinks, cage dwellers, mediocretins, norm-worms, glorps, and other dupes of the Conspiracy). Get them in the Boing Boing Shop!
Read in browser Scientifically accurate Spider-Man
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 01, 2013 06:00 pm Finally, the truth revealed.
Read in browser Frank Frazetta's painting of Ringo Starr on the back cover of MAD (1964)
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 01, 2013 05:45 pm This photo of Ringo Starr reminded me of the above painting by Frank Frazetta, which appeared on the back cover of MAD #90 in October 1964. I remember seeing it when I was about 12 years old or so, and being just as fascinated by it as MAD's art director, Sam Viviano: "The best use ...
Read in browser TED2013: Bluebrain's location-aware albums
By Carla Sinclair on Mar 01, 2013 04:07 pm Imagine strolling through New York's Central Park with earbuds, listening to music that changes its melody and emotion as you pass each statue, monument, pond, and play area. For instance, if you are walking towards Bethesda Fountain, the orchestral instruments might build to a dramatic crescendo as you approach the water, and walking past a ...
Read in browser SpaceX Dragon launches successfully; thruster problem will delay ISS arrival
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 01, 2013 03:50 pm SpaceX's Dragon space capsule launched into space today, March 1, 2013, toward the International Space Station on its second cargo mission for NASA. It launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., at 10:10 a.m. ET. Space.com reports that a thruster problem "has engineers scrambling to identify the cause, forcing a delay in the spacecraft's ...
Read in browser Help for Ernie Gygax
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 01, 2013 02:44 pm Matt sez, "Ernie Gygax, son of Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax recently had a fire which destroyed his home. While he, his roommate and dog are fine all of his possessions including some very rare D&D and Gaming memorabilia was destroyed. Efforts are underway to help Ernie get back on his feet and help ...
Read in browser The Angry Korean Lady of Honolulu: a restaurant I plan to patronize while in Hawaii
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 01, 2013 02:41 pm I've been working and adventuring in Hawaii over the past few weeks, and my Twitter friend Jose Gonzalez says I should try this restaurant in Honolulu. I am so very down. The restauranteur's motto is "I'm already angry. Don't make me more angry." Read more about Ah-Lang Korean Restaurant at The Tasty Island, a Honolulu ...
Read in browser Sinkhole swallows 36-year-old man in Florida
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 01, 2013 02:28 pm A Florida man is presumed dead after a sinkhole 30 feet wide and 20 feet deep opened up beneath his bedroom, at 11:00pm local time last night. Video here.
Read in browser FAA investigating "Harlem Shake" on plane
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 01, 2013 02:12 pm Colorado College students who are members of the school's ultimate frisbee team convinced the crew of a Frontier Airlines fight to let them do the "Harlem Shake." The FAA, the same killjoys who think your game of Angry Birds on an iPhone during lift-off will crash a plane, is looking into whether safety rules may ...
Read in browser Yochai Benkler: The dangerous logic of the Bradley Manning Case
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 01, 2013 01:40 pm Yochai Benkler, in The New Republic, on an exchange that took place in a military courtroom in January during pre-trial hearings in the Bradley Manning/Wikileaks case: The judge, Col. Denise Lind, asked the prosecutors a brief but revealing question: Would you have pressed the same charges if Manning had given the documents not to WikiLeaks ...
Read in browser Jedi Mind Meld
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 01, 2013 01:17 pm President Obama tried to drop a gratuitous nerd culture reference in a press conference about serious business, and blew it. He said earlier today he couldn't perform a "Jedi mind meld" on the GOP, an amalgam of "Jedi mind trick" and "Vulcan mind meld." Regarding negotiations with Congress over issues like averting the sequester, Obama ...
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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