Teaser for documentary "Aspie Seeks Love" Artist Gus Harper at work A cat-meme I can get behind Abandoned websites Naturalist posing as cactus, snaps desert animals Brian Eno designed hospital room What happened to Waxy was terrible, but fair use works better than he thinks it does Book about woman raised by monkeys Vine video competition Siri keeps data for "up to two years", but only anonymously Kepler 62, a planetary system like our own Vegetables in your guts LIVEBLOG: Guatemala—Rios Montt genocide trial, Day 21. Defense attorneys walk out; Preliminary Court Judge annuls trial, AG vows legal battle MIT student raises funds for young Boston bomb victim's family Viacom gets its ass handed to it again by a court in its YouTube lawsuit Online privacy policies explained One Boston bombing suspect dead after shootout; brother on the run Intergalactic jewel thief Makiedoll mod Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum - exclusive video tour DragonBox: an educational game that teaches you algebra How is a $12 phone possible? FBI releases surveillance video of bombing suspects Drug Czar pretends the 1.5 million people arrested every year for nonviolent drug offenses don't exist Girl who lost her hearing after West fertilizer plant exploded is now okay Pat Robertson warns people to flee from the evil of Dungeons and Dragons Controlling a robot arm with an Android phone Photos of bugs with drops of water on their heads Ammonium nitrate fertilizer isn't really a dangerous explosive (most of the time) Truth about Beyonce's inauguration performance can't be published until 2122 Video of Mat Ricardo's London Varieties show Teaser for documentary "Aspie Seeks Love"
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 19, 2013 12:59 pm Julie Sokolow, who directed the excellent video about the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum that I posted yesterday, is making a documentary called Aspie Seeks Love. The teaser looks great! David Matthews can’t get a date. He is a writer and artist with a great sense of humor and impeccable dry delivery. He has ...
Read in browser Artist Gus Harper at work
By Jason Weisberger on Apr 19, 2013 12:54 pm A few years ago David posted this incredible
timelapse of Gus Harper at work. Recently photographer Isaac Rodriguez made this beautiful video of Gus in his studio.
Read in browser A cat-meme I can get behind
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 19, 2013 12:46 pm My feelings about cat memes are on record. But then there's this: a cat in a shark-suit riding a Roomba chasing a baby duck.
Read in browser Abandoned websites
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 19, 2013 12:36 pm Vestigial corporate barnacles too insignificant to warrant the effort of deletion, these immortal websites offer nostalgia and not a little humor. [Wired]
Read in browser Naturalist posing as cactus, snaps desert animals
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 19, 2013 12:32 pm Popular Science, 1931 (Via Mostly Forbidden Zone)
Read in browser Brian Eno designed hospital room
By David Pescovitz on Apr 19, 2013 12:12 pm Brian Eno designed a chill-out room at the private new Montefiore Hospital in Brighton and Hove, UK. It's meant to be a spot for patients to "think, take stock or simply relax." Ortopaedic surgeon Robin Turner orchestrated the collaboration apparently after he saw his mother-in-law finally relax while checking out an Eno installation at a ...
Read in browser What happened to Waxy was terrible, but fair use works better than he thinks it does
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 19, 2013 11:45 am Earlier this week, I blogged Andy "Waxy" Baio's speech on fair use, called "The New Prohibition." Andy got hit with a legal threat for making a limited edition 8-bit remix of a famous photo and ended up paying $35,000 to settle the claim, even though he thought he had fair use on his side. As ...
Read in browser Book about woman raised by monkeys
By David Pescovitz on Apr 19, 2013 11:37 am Last fall, I posted about Marina Chapman of Braford, England who claims that as a young girl she was raised by monkeys. Chapman says that when she was four-year-old, she was kidnapped from her Colombia home and dumped in the jungle where she spent five years in the care of capuchin monkeys. Eventually, hunters found ...
Read in browser Vine video competition
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 19, 2013 11:26 am The Tribeca Film Festival is hosting a competition for the best six-second films. Previously: Six-word memoirs by writers famous and obscure.
Read in browser Siri keeps data for "up to two years", but only anonymously
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 19, 2013 11:24 am Robert McMillan explains what happens to the data generated and stored with Siri queries: "Once the voice recording is six months old, Apple "disassociates" your user number from the clip, deleting the number from the voice file. But it keeps these disassociated files for up to 18 more months for testing and product improvement purposes." ...
Read in browser Kepler 62, a planetary system like our own
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 19, 2013 11:19 am Two of the five planets seen circling a distant star may be capable of supporting life, reports the team operating the Kepler Space Telescope. Relatively close to Earth's size and within their sun's habitable zone, the worlds—1200 light years away—are the most tantalizing yet in a search that began in 2009. [The Atlantic]
Read in browser Vegetables in your guts
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 19, 2013 10:43 am I'm very taken with Klaus Weber's 2011 sculpture Veggieanatomy, which includes real vegetables in its makeup. Veggieanatomy, 2011 (via Neatorama)
Read in browser LIVEBLOG: Guatemala—Rios Montt genocide trial, Day 21. Defense attorneys walk out; Preliminary Court Judge annuls trial, AG vows legal battle
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 19, 2013 10:25 am Rios Montt, moments after his attorneys walked out in protest on Thursday, April 18, day 20 of the trial; he is seated alone w/co-defendant Sanchez. Photo: @xeni. I am blogging and live-tweeting from inside the Guatemalan Supreme Court in Guatemala City this morning, on day 21 of the trial of former Guatemalan General and genocide ...
Read in browser MIT student raises funds for young Boston bomb victim's family
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 19, 2013 09:58 am Catherine sez, On Monday, the Boston Marathon was bombed. On Monday night I was feeling blessed and thankful to not know anyone directly affected by the bombs. But on Tuesday morning I woke up to an email from my colleague Chris Peterson at the MIT Center for Civic Media. Chris's family are friends with the ...
Read in browser Viacom gets its ass handed to it again by a court in its YouTube lawsuit
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 19, 2013 09:36 am For years, Viacom has been embroiled in a bizarre lawsuit against Google, asserting that Google had a duty to figure out exactly which videos uploaded by it users infringed on Viacom's copyrights and stop them from showing (Viacom's internal memos showed that they themselves had paid dozens of companies to secretly upload Viacom videos disguised ...
Read in browser Online privacy policies explained
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 19, 2013 08:39 am The Zero Knowledge Foundation's explainer on privacy policies is a pretty good introduction to where the fine-print on the sites you read comes from, and the surprisingly meaningful differences between different privacy policies on different sites. It's easy to assume (as I usually do) that the average privacy policy says, "You have no privacy," but ...
Read in browser One Boston bombing suspect dead after shootout; brother on the run
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 19, 2013 08:26 am Boston is in lockdown after a shootout between the two Boston bombing suspects and police. One of the two is dead, as is at least one police officer; the other suspect fled on foot and is the subject of a massive manhunt. The two, identified online as 19- and 26-year old immigrants from or via ...
Read in browser Intergalactic jewel thief Makiedoll mod
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 19, 2013 01:27 am Kaitan modded his 3D printed Makie doll into a spectacular intergalactic jewel-thief, complete with accessories. She was dyed using a mixture of green and yellow iDye poly. Her face up/ body up (?) was done with Perfect pearls iridescent powders, pastels, fine glitter and acrylic paint. The scaly pattern covers her arms,legs and torso as ...
Read in browser Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum - exclusive video tour
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 18, 2013 09:43 pm Comic book artists and Tell Me Something I Don't Know podcast producers - Ed Piskor, Jasen Lex, and Jim Rugg - visit a singular archive containing the world's largest collection of cartoon and comic book art: The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum (Columbus, OH). It's curated by Caitlin McGurk. Film directed, edited, and scored ...
Read in browser DragonBox: an educational game that teaches you algebra
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 18, 2013 08:51 pm Matthew Good is the creator of DragonBox+, "an educational puzzle game that also secretly teaches you how to do algebra." The basic premise is that you must isolate the dragon on one side of the board in order for him to emerge. After each level the dragon will grow a little until he is finally ...
Read in browser How is a $12 phone possible?
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 18, 2013 05:41 pm Bunnie Huang paid a visit to Shenzhen's Mingtong Digital Mall and found a $12 mobile phone, with Bluetooth, an MP3 player, an OLED display and quad-band GSM. For $12. Bunnie's teardown shows a little bit about how this $12 piece of electronics can possibly be profitable, but far more tantalizing are his notes about Gongkai, ...
Read in browser FBI releases surveillance video of bombing suspects
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 18, 2013 05:28 pm Most assuredly not the men that The New York Post insinuated were suspects today—those guys are almost certainly innocent. Boston Police: "Do you know these individuals? Contact boston@ic.fbi.gov or 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324)" [Video Link] UPDATE: One Boston bombing suspect dead after shootout; younger brother on the run
Read in browser Drug Czar pretends the 1.5 million people arrested every year for nonviolent drug offenses don't exist
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 18, 2013 04:49 pm Tony Newman of the Drug Policy Alliance says: "Yesterday during a nationally televised event at the National Press Club, Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske repeated the federal government’s claim that they ended the war on drugs in 2009 and are now prioritizing drug treatment and prevention over incarceration. They cite an increase for drug treatment in ...
Read in browser Girl who lost her hearing after West fertilizer plant exploded is now okay
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 18, 2013 04:46 pm The Today Show tracked down the Texas father who shot that now iconic video of the West fertilizer plant explosion — the one where you can hear his daughter screaming and pleading with him to leave after the explosion happens. Derrick Hurtt and his family were within 300 yards of the factory when it went ...
Read in browser Pat Robertson warns people to flee from the evil of Dungeons and Dragons
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 18, 2013 04:42 pm America's favorite make-up model, Pat Robertson, weighs in on Satan's newest psychic weapon: Dungeons and Dragons. (Via CN)
Read in browser Controlling a robot arm with an Android phone
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 18, 2013 04:33 pm Students at the University of Toronto created an Android app for a course project that allows for wireless and intuitive control of a robotic arm from an Android-powered smartphone.
Read in browser Photos of bugs with drops of water on their heads
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 18, 2013 04:21 pm This is the best gallery of bugs with drops of water on their heads I've ever seen. Dmitriy Yoav Reinshtein, I lift my drop of water to you.
Read in browser Ammonium nitrate fertilizer isn't really a dangerous explosive (most of the time)
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 18, 2013 04:16 pm Fertilizer can explode*. We all know that. It was a key ingredient in the bomb that destroyed Oklahoma City's Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995. Last night, a factory full of the stuff went up with enough force that United States Geological Survey seismographs registered it as a magnitude 2.1 earthquake. Ammonium nitrate is ...
Read in browser Truth about Beyonce's inauguration performance can't be published until 2122
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 18, 2013 03:56 pm Muckrock Michael sez, "Today MuckRock's Mara Berg chronicles the saga of a particular public records request I put in for the following: A copy of the backing track used during Beyonce's Inauguration performance, as well as copies of other backing tracks created in preparation for Inauguration events, whether or not they were actually used. Unfortunately, ...
Read in browser Video of Mat Ricardo's London Varieties show
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 18, 2013 02:54 pm Mat Ricardo's London Varieties Episode Two is now up online for anyone to watch, enjoy and share - for free to course!
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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