Three's Company pilot with different actors How to write about Muslims Scientists not quite done ripping off Henrietta Lacks and family How consumers let down their guard on web privacy Unicorn Chaser Dinner's Revenge: mealworms that survive in the stomach, then eat their way out of predators April Fools now big business Rocket scientist who also made "a mean beef stroganoff" inspires debate on how to write about lady-scientists Online journalism consumers are "looters" The Case of Charles Dexter Ward: HP Lovecraft, much improved in graphic form. Why PLAY pie-anna when you can VAMP? HOWTO turn a dead hard-drive into a cotton candy machine TSA routinely violates own rules and the law to discriminate against people w/disabilities Just look at this liquid nitrogen-dipped banana being shot with a steel bearing. Three's Company pilot with different actors
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 01, 2013 11:44 am It turns out there was an unaired pilot of
Three's Company that used some of the same cast, but a different writing team and a somewhat smarter brand of comedy, and it's surfaced on YouTube.
Read in browser How to write about Muslims
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 01, 2013 10:18 am "The Western press and social media often seem to exercise two options for dealing with the Muslim population of the world: overt, unabashed Islamophobia or slightly subtler Islamophobia," writes contributor Belen Fernandez at Al Jazeera English. She has some suggestions on how to avoid clichés and stereotypes.
Read in browser Scientists not quite done ripping off Henrietta Lacks and family
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 01, 2013 10:17 am "History seems to have repeated itself. A group of scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg recently published a paper in which they sequenced the entire genome of a HeLa cell – essentially putting Henrietta Lacks's DNA sequence up on the internet for all to see. Amazingly, they failed to alert anyone in ...
Read in browser How consumers let down their guard on web privacy
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 01, 2013 10:14 am There's a piece in the NYT by Somini Sengupta on how we are increasingly turning over our data online "in exchange for a deal we can't refuse." The story profiles Alessandro Acquisti, a behavioral economist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, who studies how online users make these choices. "In a series of provocative experiments, ...
Read in browser Unicorn Chaser
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 01, 2013 10:06 am Image: "Unicorn Resting - A white unicorn rests under a bright star," by Catmando, for Shutterstock.
Read in browser Dinner's Revenge: mealworms that survive in the stomach, then eat their way out of predators
By Mary Roach on Apr 01, 2013 10:00 am "Within ten to twenty seconds," came the report, "the mealworm is chewing out of the animal's stomach."
Read in browser April Fools now big business
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 01, 2013 09:53 am "The April Fool is dead," writes Alastair Macdonald. "Or at least the gentle jester of the common folk has metastised into a corporate colossus controlled by global marketing executives, bestriding the Internet to force familiar brands ever deeper into the collective consciousness."
Read in browser Rocket scientist who also made "a mean beef stroganoff" inspires debate on how to write about lady-scientists
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 01, 2013 09:44 am Rocket scientist Yvonne Brill honored by President Obama. (Courtesy of Ryan K. Morris/National Science & Technology Medals Foundation) Yvonne Brill, a Canadian rocket scientist who developed jet propulsion technologies, died recently at 88, after a long career propelling human beings toward the stars. The New York Times obituary by Douglas Martin began with a quote ...
Read in browser Online journalism consumers are "looters"
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 01, 2013 09:28 am Noted crankypants Bob Garfield, co-host of On The Media, likens current consumers of (mostly free, readily-shared) online news to "looters" who "enjoy an improved standard of living." Writing in a Guardian op-ed section ironically titled "Comment is Free," Garfield says that standard of living "only stays improved until the store is emptied out." Those consumers ...
Read in browser The Case of Charles Dexter Ward: HP Lovecraft, much improved in graphic form.
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 01, 2013 08:50 am The dirty secret of the Cthulhu mythos is that their originator, HP Lovecraft, wasn't a very good writer. In addition to his unfortunate tendency to embrace his era's backwards ideas about race and gender, Lovecraft was also fond of elaborate, tedious description that obscured the action and dialog. Which is a pity, because Lovecraft did have one of the great dark imaginations of literature, a positive gift for conjuring up the most unspeakable, unnameable (and often unpronounceable) horrors of the genre, so much so that they persist to this day.
Read in browser Why PLAY pie-anna when you can VAMP?
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 31, 2013 10:37 pm As far back as the 1920s, smart musicians have known that your ability to hit the notes isn't nearly so important as your ability to vamp. Vamping
Read in browser HOWTO turn a dead hard-drive into a cotton candy machine
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 31, 2013 08:35 pm Here's an unexpected use for a dead hard-drive: use its motor to power a candy-floss machine: A Chinese engineer who operates a data recovery and hard drive repair center is being hailed as a genius after inventing a DIY candy floss machine made from a used hard disk. According to the instructions, all that is ...
Read in browser TSA routinely violates own rules and the law to discriminate against people w/disabilities
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 31, 2013 06:22 pm I have a neurological disorder that causes episodic muteness and muscle spasms. The TSA has a de facto program of violating the rights of disabled travelers like me.
Read in browser Just look at this liquid nitrogen-dipped banana being shot with a steel bearing.
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 31, 2013 03:10 pm Just look at it. I Broke my Banana (Thanks, Philip!)
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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