Vintage cyanotype photos Carving an artificial cavern under NYC Reddit users may have discovered a murder on Google Maps Why is it so hard to make a phone call in emergency situations? CISPA: Congress wants to create unlimited Internet spying powers - KILL THIS BILL! KILL IT WITH FIRE! TOM THE DANCING BUG: The Great Photoshop War, USA vs. North Korea News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier Effort to criminalise oral sex fails Guatemala: Rios Montt genocide trial, Day 19 Evil pheasant stalks seniors The Portuguese Man-of-War On riding motorcycles into storms How Ophira Eisenberg slept her way to monogamy Welcome to your Awesome Robot: instructional robot-making comic now out in the US The Saudi Marathon Man Homebrew Duck Hunt pinball table Fun quadcopter for kids Med Express uses broken Ohio law to silence critics who say true things Report: one of Boston Marathon bombs possibly made from kitchen pressure cooker Deadly poison ricin detected in Senate mail Weird 1972 experiment in marijuana use The secret history of a hidden mural at a Los Angeles hotel "Radium Age" science fiction novel with new intro by Erik Davis: The Night Land Comic book panels taken out of context Microplane professional extra coarse grater Congressional Research Service says states can legalize cannabis Copyright enforcement as the New Prohibition: Andy Baio's speech on fair use If you see something, say something: Liveblogging from a lecture about terrorism, security, and visual narratives Samsung had to pay people to trash-talk HTC phones? Don't let the Boston Marathon bombing terrorize you, or the bombers win Vintage cyanotype photos
By David Pescovitz on Apr 17, 2013 12:54 pm Over at House of Mirth, esteemed vernacular photo collector Robert E. Jackson posts about the allure of collecting cyanotypes with some wonderful examples. The ghostly image above is from the collection of Erin Waters. Jackson posted this fascinating bit from the cyanotype Wikipedia entry: The English scientist and astronomer Sir John Herschel discovered this procedure ...
Read in browser Carving an artificial cavern under NYC
By David Pescovitz on Apr 17, 2013 12:45 pm New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority is digging an artificial cavern for a future Second Avenue Subway stop below 86th street. Patrick Cashin is photographing the massive operation. Fortunately, the tunnel has been blessed by a Catholic priest. Check out more of Cashin's photos on Flickr and a brief riff on the project by Geoff Manaugh ...
Read in browser Reddit users may have discovered a murder on Google Maps
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 17, 2013 12:00 pm The image ... is really a Rorschach test more than anything else. Do you see two people standing over a body wrapped in black plastic with an enormous trail of blood behind it? Or do you see two people about to pet a dog that’s just shaken itself off? Here, have another look. Reddit users ...
Read in browser Why is it so hard to make a phone call in emergency situations?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 17, 2013 11:58 am When bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon on Monday, my Facebook feed was immediately filled with urgent messages. I watched as my friends and family implored their friends and family in Boston to check in, and lamented the fact that nobody could seem to get a solid cell phone connection. Calls were made, but they ...
Read in browser CISPA: Congress wants to create unlimited Internet spying powers - KILL THIS BILL! KILL IT WITH FIRE!
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 17, 2013 11:44 am Rep. Rogers says #CISPA opponents are probably 14-year-olds in a basement. Tell him how wrong he is by tweeting to @repmikerogers.— EFF (@EFF) April 16, 2013 CISPA is the latest Congressional proposal to do something unbelievably horrible with the Internet -- this time, it's letting US law enforcement and intelligence service raid all of your ...
Read in browser TOM THE DANCING BUG: The Great Photoshop War, USA vs. North Korea
By Ruben Bolling on Apr 17, 2013 11:35 am Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH North Korea and the United States go to Photoshop-War.
Read in browser News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 17, 2013 11:25 am Rolf Dobelli, author of the forthcoming book, The Art of Thinking Clearly, has an essay in the Guardian that explains the many reasons why you shouldn't read, listen to, or watch news. I don't agree with everything he says, but I found it thought-provoking. News is toxic to your body. It constantly triggers the limbic ...
Read in browser Effort to criminalise oral sex fails
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 17, 2013 11:09 am A homophobic politician's attempt to recriminalize anal and oral sex has ended in failure in Virginia. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli wanted to revive the state's "Crimes against Nature" statute; the Fourth Court unanimously blew him off.
Read in browser Guatemala: Rios Montt genocide trial, Day 19
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 17, 2013 11:09 am Former General and dictator Rios Montt, in a crush of reporters in the Guatemalan Supreme Court. Photo: @xeni. I am blogging from inside the Guatemalan Supreme Court in Guatemala City this morning, on day 19 of the trial of former Guatemalan General and genocide and de factor dictator Rios Montt, and his then-head of intelligence ...
Read in browser Evil pheasant stalks seniors
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 17, 2013 10:55 am An angry bird attacks Ben and Ann Hudson, a septuagenarian couple in England, every time they leave their Shropshire residence: "The 2ft tall thug pheasant, nicknamed Phil, swoops at the family as they come and go," but leaves the rest of the village unmolested. [Daily Mail]
Read in browser The Portuguese Man-of-War
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 17, 2013 10:48 am Jakob Schiller interviews Aaron Ansarov, who collects dead men-of-war from the beach with his wife, then takes astounding photographs of the remains. [Wired]
Read in browser On riding motorcycles into storms
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 17, 2013 09:53 am Joel Johnson is on a vision quest: "Not a bad way to put it. For my whole adult life, I've developed a good technique for dealing with bad situations: I run away. It's real effective. Stressful job? Quit it. Girlfriend upset? Leave her. Save money? Nope. Better to buy a motorcycle, pack up the bags, ...
Read in browser How Ophira Eisenberg slept her way to monogamy
By Glenn Fleishman on Apr 17, 2013 09:30 am http://soundcloud.com/beschizza/glenn-fleishman-interviews Photo: Matt Bresler Whatever you do, don't call Ophira Eisenberg a comedienne. That's an outdated, patronizing term from an era when men patted women on the head (or, unsolicited, on the ass) and called Amelia Earhart an aviatrix. If only her fiancé, now husband, had known that before he compiled a spreadsheet of every ...
Read in browser Welcome to your Awesome Robot: instructional robot-making comic now out in the US
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 17, 2013 08:50 am Last month, I blogged a review of the kids' instructional comic book Welcome to Your Awesome Robot: 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 ...
Read in browser The Saudi Marathon Man
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 17, 2013 12:24 am A new crime, apparently: being brown while being bombed. A twenty-year-old man who had been watching the Boston Marathon had his body torn into by the force of a bomb. He wasn't alone; a hundred and seventy-six people were injured. But he was the only one who, while in the hospital being treated for his ...
Read in browser Homebrew Duck Hunt pinball table
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 16, 2013 11:25 pm Skit-B Pinball built this custom Duck Hunt pinball machine by modding a 1962 'Williams Valiant' table and hybridizing it with a PC to provide sound effects and other nifties.
Read in browser Fun quadcopter for kids
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 16, 2013 09:49 pm I bought Jane a $60 quadcopter from Banggood for her 10th birthday. One of the motor wires was broken on arrival so I had to solder it back on, and the battery charger was for a European power outlet so I broke it open and soldered on a US plug. Now it works and it's ...
Read in browser Med Express uses broken Ohio law to silence critics who say true things
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 16, 2013 09:17 pm Are you a lawyer in Ohio? If so, your pro-bono services are urgently needed to defeat a trollish, bullying legal action from Med Express, a company that sells refurb medical equipment on eBay. The company is suing one of its customers for providing accurate, negative feedback on eBay's comment system, trying to establish a precedent ...
Read in browser Report: one of Boston Marathon bombs possibly made from kitchen pressure cooker
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 16, 2013 08:07 pm LA Times: "Investigators believe at least one of the two bombs in Boston was made with a pressure cooker, according to law enforcement and intelligence officials." MSNBC: Authorities have recovered forensic evidence that leads them to tentatively conclude the bombs "consisted of an explosive and shrapnel -- BBs and pieces of nails -- packed inside ...
Read in browser Deadly poison ricin detected in Senate mail
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 16, 2013 07:32 pm Politico: "An envelope sent to the U.S. Senate office of Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) included a substance that has tested positive for Ricin, two sources say." A suspect has been identified.
Read in browser Weird 1972 experiment in marijuana use
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 16, 2013 07:20 pm Cannabis News: "In the winter of 1972, 20 young women took part in one of the weirdest scientific experiments in this country’s history. For 98 days in a downtown Toronto hospital, their brains, hearts, kidneys, livers, blood and urine were rigorously tested and analyzed. A team of nurses kept round-the-clock records of their behaviour, logged ...
Read in browser The secret history of a hidden mural at a Los Angeles hotel
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 16, 2013 07:16 pm The website Mosaic Art Now has a fun story about a tile mosaic of an oil refinery that was discovered behind some wood paneling at the Wilshire Grand Hotel in Los Angeles. In May 2012, when the renowned Wilshire Grand Hotel in Los Angeles was slated to close its doors for good, the owners ran ...
Read in browser "Radium Age" science fiction novel with new intro by Erik Davis: The Night Land
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 16, 2013 07:04 pm Our friend Joshua Glenn, publisher of HiLoBooks says, "I'm thrilled to announce that the HiLoBooks edition of William Hope Hodgson's 1912 dying-earth novel The Night Land, with an introduction by Erik Davis, is available in bookstores and via Amazon. 'One of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written,' claimed H.P. Lovecraft, in 1927; ...
Read in browser Comic book panels taken out of context
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 16, 2013 06:53 pm Panels 2 Ponder is a website that presents comic book panels taken out of their context, likely making them more enjoyable than the source material.
Read in browser Microplane professional extra coarse grater
By Cool Tools on Apr 16, 2013 06:46 pm This cheese grater has become essential in my kitchen. It won’t take up extra space and grates better than any others I’ve owned. Cheeses ranging in hardness from Parmesan to mozzarella transform almost effortlessly into shreds perfect for nachos or pizza. Though I have a food processor with a cheese grater attachment that works well, ...
Read in browser Congressional Research Service says states can legalize cannabis
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 16, 2013 06:41 pm The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is part of the Library of Congress, and it provides "policy and legal analysis to committees and Members of both the House and Senate, regardless of party affiliation." This month the CRS issued a report that says Colorado and Washington (where cannabis is legal, according to state laws) can't be ...
Read in browser Copyright enforcement as the New Prohibition: Andy Baio's speech on fair use
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 16, 2013 06:11 pm Andy Baio's "The New Prohibition" is a speech given at a Creative Mornings/Portland event, expanding on his must-read "
No Copyright Intended" post.
Read in browser If you see something, say something: Liveblogging from a lecture about terrorism, security, and visual narratives
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 16, 2013 04:07 pm When bombs explode in a crowded city street, individuals and governments naturally ask themselves, "Could we have prevented this if we had been paying better attention to people and things that were out of place?" Trouble is, that question leads to a whole cascade of other questions — covering everything from personal privacy to racism. ...
Read in browser Samsung had to pay people to trash-talk HTC phones?
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 16, 2013 03:10 pm Samsung paid sockpuppeteers to criticize rival products online, it is alleged in Taiwan. A subsidiary reported on its facebook page that it had "ceased all marketing activities that involve the posting of anonymous comments". [BBC]
Read in browser Don't let the Boston Marathon bombing terrorize you, or the bombers win
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 16, 2013 03:05 pm Bruce Schneier's terrific Atlantic essay on the Boston Marathon bombings is a must-read. As he points out, the terrorists win only if we let this sort of thing scare us. By being empathic toward the victims and indomitable and fearless toward the criminals, we can create a climate where politicians can get away with telling ...
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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