How to get ahead in robotics Happy Birthday to the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin US Ninth Circuit says forensic laptop searches at the border without suspicion are unconstitional Brazilian Birds: ambient internet radio station of bird calls in the Amazon George W. Bush, painter of puppies and semi-nude bathroom self-portraits Caturday Two tesla coils in concert Edward Gorey's illustrations for War of the Worlds Welcome to your Awesome Robot: instructional comic turns kids & cardboard boxes into AWESOME ROBOTS! Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere as a BBC radio play Have yourself 3D-scanned and turned into a human gummi To do at SXSW: "And I Am Not Lying" The Women of Nyamonge, Kenya, present Netball: a PSA without pity, from MamaHope.org Austin Chronicle on Aaron Swartz and the future of computers Tropes vs Women in Video Games part one: Damsels in Distress AP: Chavez made "meager" gains, only reduced poverty, didn't build the world's tallest building Review of David Eagleman's Incognito Australian pop-out camper that is full of well-thought-out features Toronto Mayor Rob Ford accused of grabassing, letching on former election rival Happy story about a ghastly plumbing problem Photography exhibition under the sea If you like surreal Photoshop jokes, LiarTownUSA is the tumblog for you Photos of suffragettes in Holloway Prison Sloppy statistics: Do 50% of Americans really think married women should be legally obligated to change their names? Photos of Google's Tel Aviv office ASAP Science video: The Science of Aging Expanding table with interesting mechanism Fabulous page from Weird Worlds #25 comic book (1954) How to get ahead in robotics
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 09, 2013 12:44 pm Swiss social psychologist Bertolt Mayer views 'Rex', a two metre tall artificial human, at the Science Museum in central London February 5, 2013. Mayer, a who uses a prosthetic hand himself, was used as the model for the 'bionic man', whom the British roboticist designers claim is the world's first complete bionic man, featuring artificial ...
Read in browser Happy Birthday to the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 09, 2013 12:30 pm Yuri Gagarin on BBC TV, July 11 1961.
Read in browser US Ninth Circuit says forensic laptop searches at the border without suspicion are unconstitional
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 09, 2013 12:22 pm An en banc (all the judges together) decision from the 9th Circuit has affirmed that you have the right to expect that your laptop and other devices will not be forensically examined without suspicion at the US border. It's the first time that a US court has upheld electronic privacy rights at the border, and ...
Read in browser Brazilian Birds: ambient internet radio station of bird calls in the Amazon
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 09, 2013 12:06 pm My new ambient-sound-while-working internet radio jam: Brazilian Birds. (Photo: Toucan eye, a Creative Commons image from doug88888's photostream)
Read in browser George W. Bush, painter of puppies and semi-nude bathroom self-portraits
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 09, 2013 11:18 am "He started off painting dogs. I think he said he painted 50 dogs," says painting teacher Bonnie Flood of her student, George W. Bush. "He pulled out this canvas and started painting dogs and I thought, 'Oh my God, I don't paint dogs!" There's video. As you may recall, images of the former president's paintings ...
Read in browser Caturday
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 09, 2013 11:14 am Two cat portraits shared in the BB Flickr Pool by reader __AK__.
Read in browser Two tesla coils in concert
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 09, 2013 11:08 am Photo: Tesla Concert 3, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2.0) image from Tau Zero's photostream, shared in the BB Flickr Pool. "A concert on the engineering quad, University of Illinois," explains Tau Zero. "The arcs reproduced the fundamental tones of music played back through a PA system. Part of the Engineering Open House."
Read in browser Edward Gorey's illustrations for War of the Worlds
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 09, 2013 09:13 am Zack sez, "Brain Pickings has a selection of illustrations for Edward Gorey's little-seen take on H.G. Wells' classic tale of Martian invasion. It's every bit as creepy as you'd think." At the end of his time at Doubleday, Gorey illustrated a special edition of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds for the celebrated ...
Read in browser Welcome to your Awesome Robot: instructional comic turns kids & cardboard boxes into AWESOME ROBOTS!
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 09, 2013 02:47 am Welcome to Your Awesome Robot is a fantastic book for maker-kids and their grownups. It consists of a charming series of instructional comics showing a little girl and her mom converting a cardboard box into an awesome robot -- basically a robot suit that the kid can wear. It builds in complexity, adding dials, gears, ...
Read in browser Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere as a BBC radio play
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 09, 2013 02:34 am Dan sez, "The BBC have produced a radio play of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere with a host of great British actors. Sounds exactly like you want it to sound."
Read in browser Have yourself 3D-scanned and turned into a human gummi
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 08, 2013 10:59 pm FabCafe, a 3D printed confectioner in Shibuya, Tokyo, is offering nine lucky blokes the chance to have their bodies 3D scanned and rendered in gummi, the most wondrously magical of all the edible substances. It's in honor of White Day, the Japanese give-your-female-lover-a-present holiday on March 14 (they also did custom chocolate-lollies of one's 3D ...
Read in browser To do at SXSW: "And I Am Not Lying"
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 08, 2013 10:18 pm Jeff Simmermon tells Boing Boing, A few years ago, you guys blogged about my zombie robot Elvis bust - thought you guys would appreciate this poster I made out of it to promote 'And I Am Not Lying' (the live show inspired by my blog) at SXSW this year. The show itself features bullwhip & ...
Read in browser The Women of Nyamonge, Kenya, present Netball: a PSA without pity, from MamaHope.org
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 08, 2013 10:11 pm For International Woman's Day, Africa-focused NGO
Mama Hope has released a timely video PSA on the women's art of netball.
Read in browser Austin Chronicle on Aaron Swartz and the future of computers
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 08, 2013 09:20 pm Happy Mutant (and EFF-Austin co-founder) Jon Lebkowsky has a great piece in the new Austin Chronicle about Aaron Swartz, privacy, copyright, and the future of computers: It's an odd predicament, seeing your customer as the enemy. Attempts by the music industry to protect its control of distribution have risked alienation of a customer base that ...
Read in browser Tropes vs Women in Video Games part one: Damsels in Distress
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 08, 2013 07:01 pm Anita Sarkeesian has released the long-awaited first installment in her new, improved "Tropes vs Women in Video Games" series.
Read in browser AP: Chavez made "meager" gains, only reduced poverty, didn't build the world's tallest building
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 08, 2013 06:16 pm Associated Press business reporter Pamela Simpson wrote a terrible obit for Huge Chavez, writing Chavez invested Venezuela's oil wealth into social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs. But those gains were meager compared with the spectacular construction projects that oil riches spurred in glittering Middle ...
Read in browser Review of David Eagleman's Incognito
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 08, 2013 05:16 pm Many years ago I watched a standup comic on television explain that the President of the United States has no more control over the country than the bulldog hood ornament on a Mack Truck has in controlling where the truck goes. He was exaggerating but he had a point. Neuroscientist David Eagleman has a similar ...
Read in browser Australian pop-out camper that is full of well-thought-out features
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 08, 2013 04:48 pm Here's a slow, gentle, fascinating demonstration video for the Wedgetail slide-on camper, "built for rough Australian terrain." It's a pretty amazing feat of engineering.
Read in browser Toronto Mayor Rob Ford accused of grabassing, letching on former election rival
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 08, 2013 04:22 pm Toronto's living shitshow of a mayor, Rob "Laughable Bumblefuck" Ford, is back in the headlines. Sarah Thomson, the publisher of The Women's Post, who ran against Ford in the last election, claims that he came onto her at a Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee affair, grabbing her ass and saying, "[she] should have been in ...
Read in browser Happy story about a ghastly plumbing problem
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 08, 2013 03:09 pm Jake Mohan's account of getting the plumbers in to repair a ghastly backed-up basement drain is a lovely, happy-ending tale of honest contractors, nice property developers, and the fascinating, invisible guts of your house: Rick turned on the jackhammer, making the loudest noise I've ever heard indoors (and I'm a drummer). What's truly crazy is ...
Read in browser Photography exhibition under the sea
By David Pescovitz on Mar 08, 2013 02:38 pm For the last two months, Viennese artist Andreas Franke has had a new show of photographs on exhibition near Barbados. Thing is, you needed to SCUBA dive to see them. The photos hung on the hull of the Stabrokikita, a 365-foot Greek freighter that was deliberately sunk in 1978. Franke's photos of Rococo-inspired scenes are ...
Read in browser If you like surreal Photoshop jokes, LiarTownUSA is the tumblog for you
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 08, 2013 02:37 pm Every single thing on Sean Tejaratchi's blog is magnificent 'shoop genius. Twitter: @shittingtonuk.
Read in browser Photos of suffragettes in Holloway Prison
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 08, 2013 02:12 pm Charlotte sez, It's International Women's Day today and the London Feminist Network (to whom I proudly belong) have organised the most awesome fundraising event for our conference later this year, a film launch for "Banners and Broad Arrows." In 1832 the women of the United Kingdom were excluded from the Parliamentary franchise. After 71 years ...
Read in browser Sloppy statistics: Do 50% of Americans really think married women should be legally obligated to change their names?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Mar 08, 2013 01:52 pm Jill Filipovic wrote an opinion column for The Guardian yesterday, arguing against the practice of women taking their husbands' names when they get married. It ended up linked on Jezebel and found its way to my Facebook feed where one particular statistic caught my eye. Filipovic claimed that 50% of Americans think a women should ...
Read in browser Photos of Google's Tel Aviv office
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 08, 2013 01:35 pm Google's Tel Aviv office was designed by Camenzind Evolution with Setter Architects and Studio Yaron Tal. Office Snapshots has a bunch of Itay Sikolski's photos. Inside The New Google Tel Aviv Office (Via Twisted Sifter)
Read in browser ASAP Science video: The Science of Aging
By David Pescovitz on Mar 08, 2013 01:27 pm The latest episode by ASAP Science from biologists Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown explains why we age.
Read in browser Expanding table with interesting mechanism
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 08, 2013 01:26 pm This table, from
Nick Dearden, does a sweet expanding trick.
Read in browser Fabulous page from Weird Worlds #25 comic book (1954)
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 08, 2013 01:21 pm This wonderful opener from a story in Weird Worlds #25 (1954) reminds me of the great 1988 scifi flick They Live. (Via X-Ray Delta One)
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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