Inside Dan Brown's Inferno Hey Jude reworked in a minor scale Yet another reason why jargon sucks Amateur astronomers find lost Russian Mars probe Excellent shadow theater performance Sun Hives: pollination and health before honey What does ambergris look like? Rendered stack of rubbery penile noodloids, falling Yeah for yeast Greg Pak and Jonathan Coulton Kickstart Everything Orphan Fever: The Evangelical Movement's Adoption Obsession Can you influence the sex of your baby by eating cereal? Watch the latest video posts in our Boing Boing video archives Non-symptomatic cases make newly identified diseases less scary Giant snails invade Florida Oculus Rift VR headset convincing enough for one 90-year-old NYT op-ed by Gitmo detainee on hunger strike Monochrome 1920s costumes Microsoft "working on a smartwatch" Gentleman Falcon occupies cell tower HOWTO spin a toothbrush on your finger Cops in Somerville, MA: "It would endanger the public to tell you what guns we have" Elite Panic: why rich people think all people are monsters San Francisco science fiction reading with Mary Robinette Kowal & Rick Klaw Inside Dan Brown's Inferno
By David Pescovitz on Apr 15, 2013 12:59 pm Dan Brown's Inferno will be released on May 14, 2013. Teasers point to Florence, Italy and Dante Alighieri but until this great work of American literature is upon us, it is all speculation. Fueled by the possibility of what secrets lie inside those pages, The Daily Grail's Greg Taylor published an ebook where he explores ...
Read in browser Hey Jude reworked in a minor scale
By David Pescovitz on Apr 15, 2013 12:33 pm Ukrainian engineer Oleg Berg has done the major-minor switch on several pop songs, but he says his favorite is this rendition of The Beatles' "Hey Jude." Take a sad song, and make it sadder. (Last month, NPR ran a piece about this recent spate of major-minor reworkings.) REM's "Losing My Religion" shifted into a major ...
Read in browser Yet another reason why jargon sucks
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 15, 2013 12:24 pm Yes, it's useful for communicating within your group, but as soon as you step outside that circle jargon becomes a problem. That's true even for scientists trying to communicate between disciplines and sub-disciplines of a field. At Ars Technica, John Timmer talks about jargon acronyms that look the same, but mean totally different things depending ...
Read in browser Amateur astronomers find lost Russian Mars probe
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 15, 2013 12:04 pm Combining NASA data with the eyes of citizen scientists might have turned up evidence of Mars 3 — a Soviet probe that was the first to make a soft landing (as opposed to a hard crash) on the planet's surface. Mars 3 has been lost since it stopped working, approximately 15 seconds after its successful ...
Read in browser Excellent shadow theater performance
By David Pescovitz on Apr 15, 2013 12:02 pm Yes, it's from "Britain's Got Talent," but Attraction's shadow theater performance is fantastic.
Read in browser Sun Hives: pollination and health before honey
By David Pescovitz on Apr 15, 2013 11:58 am Old-school bOING bOING pal Jim Leftwich says: The Sun Hive is a hanging honeybee hive designed by Günther Mancke and which is growing in popularity in the UK and elsewhere. It was designed around the needs of pollinating bees and colony health and preferences, and not around prioritizing honey production. As such, it's thought to ...
Read in browser What does ambergris look like?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 15, 2013 11:58 am Ambergris is often referred to as "whale vomit", but that's not really correct. A more accurate analogy would be to say that ambergris is like the whale equivalent of a hairball. It's produced in the whale digestive tract, possibly to protect intestines from the sharp, pointy beaks of squid — you'll often find squid beaks ...
Read in browser Rendered stack of rubbery penile noodloids, falling
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 15, 2013 11:32 am Logitech4873 spent 62 hours rendering an interlocking, Jenga-like stack of tumbling, penile, rubbery thinngums falling in slow motion.
Read in browser Yeah for yeast
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 15, 2013 10:06 am The Oregon state House has voted unanimously to make Saccharomyces cerevisiae — brewer's yeast — the official State microbe. The bill now heads to the state Senate.
Read in browser Greg Pak and Jonathan Coulton Kickstart Everything
By Glenn Fleishman on Apr 15, 2013 10:00 am Jonathan Coulton and Greg Pak launch a crowdfunding campaign to create a series of comic books based on characters from Coulton's songs
Read in browser Orphan Fever: The Evangelical Movement's Adoption Obsession
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 15, 2013 09:58 am In Mother Jones magazine, a story about the dark side of the evangelical adoption movement that has swept the United States over the past decade: "When devout Christian families made it their mission to save children from war-torn countries, the match was often far from heavenly." There's a related infographic on the rise in US ...
Read in browser Can you influence the sex of your baby by eating cereal?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 15, 2013 09:54 am This article by Monique Robinson is interesting — not because it tells you anything particularly useful about what you can do before conception to influence the sex of your child, but because it provides a rundown of the many random correlations studies have linked to fetal sex determination over the years. From eating cereal to ...
Read in browser Watch the latest video posts in our Boing Boing video archives
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 15, 2013 09:20 am We've gathered fresh video for you to surf and enjoy on the Boing Boing video page. The latest finds for your viewing pleasure include: • "Gentleman," the follow-up to Psy's "Gangnam Style." • HOWTO spin a toothbrush on your finger. • Picturephone: Microsoft finally reveals its plans for Skype. • Hugging robot. • Laser on ...
Read in browser Non-symptomatic cases make newly identified diseases less scary
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 15, 2013 09:15 am If you've been following news about the H7N9 bird flu outbreak in China, it may be relieving to know that doctors are now looking for (and finding) people who are infected with the virus, but who appear perfectly healthy or who are just suffering from a mild case of the yucks. It's an important reminder ...
Read in browser Giant snails invade Florida
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 15, 2013 09:12 am "One female can produce 1,200 eggs a year and they eat stucco" [Gizmodo]
Read in browser Oculus Rift VR headset convincing enough for one 90-year-old
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 15, 2013 09:08 am "Oh, man! It's so real!"
Read in browser NYT op-ed by Gitmo detainee on hunger strike
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 15, 2013 09:00 am "One man here weighs just 77 pounds. Another, 98. Last thing I knew, I weighed 132, but that was a month ago. I've been on a hunger strike since Feb. 10 and have lost well over 30 pounds. I will not eat until they restore my dignity."—Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, a prisoner at Guantánamo ...
Read in browser Monochrome 1920s costumes
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 15, 2013 09:00 am Redditor Royally_eft's friends dressed up as monochrome people for a 1920s theme party. The effect's very good, especially shot against a colorful snack-aisle. Here's the inspiration for their costumes. grayscale costumes for a '20s party (imgur.com)
Read in browser Microsoft "working on a smartwatch"
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 15, 2013 08:55 am Microsoft is also in the smartwatch arena, reports the Wall Street Journal. Jeff Blagdon summarizes at The Verge: Citing unnamed supply chain sources, The Journal claims that Microsoft asked Asian suppliers to ship components for the device. If the reports are true, it would be joining the likes of Apple, Samsung, Google, and others looking ...
Read in browser Gentleman
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 15, 2013 08:41 am "Gentleman" is the follow-up to Psy's "Gangnam Style"
Read in browser Falcon occupies cell tower
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 15, 2013 08:38 am Mobile reception is spotty in parts of Southampton, England, due to a peregrine falcon nesting in a cellular tower. Vodafone, the operator, is forbidden by law from interfering with the nest until the falcon's chicks have fledged. [BBC]
Read in browser HOWTO spin a toothbrush on your finger
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 14, 2013 11:08 pm This enterprising fellow is very good at spinning a toothbrush on his finger, and he wants to share his talent with all of us!
Read in browser Cops in Somerville, MA: "It would endanger the public to tell you what guns we have"
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 14, 2013 08:56 pm Michael from Muckrock sez, "Want to know what guns your neighbor has? Generally public record. What guns your government has? That's top secret. A recent public records request for the armaments of a local police department in Somerville, MA., was met with a surprising response: Releasing a list of guns the department held 'is likely ...
Read in browser Elite Panic: why rich people think all people are monsters
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 14, 2013 05:52 pm Here's a quote on "Elite Panic" from Rebecca Solnit, It's an idea I'm fascinated by, particularly the notion that if you believe that people are fundamentally a mob waiting to rise up and loot but for the security state, you will build a security state that turns people into a mob of would-be looters. The ...
Read in browser San Francisco science fiction reading with Mary Robinette Kowal & Rick Klaw
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 14, 2013 03:28 pm The next installment of San Francisco's SF in SF science fiction reading series features a couple of heavy hitters: Mary Robinette Kowal & Rick Klaw. It's Saturday, April 20; doors open at 6PM.
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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