Watch the latest video posts in our Boing Boing video archives HOWTO make a DNA model out of licorice and jellybabies Too-big-to-fail banks implicated in $500 trillion fraud: biggest price-rigging scandal in history Dresses made from old maps When is Google Glass "weird"? Ask Google's Chairman! CISPA is dead! (again) (for now) Defense contractors pimp wares after Boston bombings Mall of America welcomes 72,000 ladybugs Nuts may contain nuts Psychedelics eyed for mood disorders Akissi: kids' comic about a mischievous girl in Cote D'Ivoire The last words of murderer Richard Cobb Snooper's Charter is dead! (for now) Debunking the HTML5 DRM myths Kickstarting a game based on Gaiman's "Study in Emerald" Cthulhu/Holmes mashup Cool Tools Show & Tell video podcast 002 Live sf writing workshop with Resnick and Di Filippo The "Lollipop Fort of Death" - a clubhouse on a pole The Important Book, by Margaret Wise Brown Sweet, nostalgic film about a magic trick Paul Ryan intern charged with sextortion (he may have also dressed up as Newt's elephant) Superheroes designed by little girls Mid-century modern kitchen Watch the latest video posts in our Boing Boing video archives
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 26, 2013 12:48 pm 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: • Sweet, nostalgic film about a magic trick. • Russian paratroopers deploy inflatable Orthodox church. • How to: Build a better sand castle. • Guatemala video snapshot: Youth protest during genocide ...
Read in browser HOWTO make a DNA model out of licorice and jellybabies
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 26, 2013 12:35 pm What better way to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the publication of Watson and Crick's landmark paper on the double helix structure of DNA than by making your own double-helix out of jellybabies and licorice? Dr Mark Lorch's method for making edible DNA models promises to capture the "elegant simplicity" of DNA. You'll need: Two ...
Read in browser Too-big-to-fail banks implicated in $500 trillion fraud: biggest price-rigging scandal in history
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 26, 2013 12:11 pm In Rolling Stone, the amazing Matt Taibbi documents a breaking price-rigging scandal involving the world's biggest banks. The $500 trillion conspiracy to game the interest-rate swaps victimizes every city, town, state and nation that uses bonds to raise money, diverting an unimaginable sum from tax coffers to the pockets of mega-rich bankers. If you've been ...
Read in browser Dresses made from old maps
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 26, 2013 10:54 am Elisabeth Lecourt recycles old maps and turns them into beautiful dresses and shirts. I don't imagine they're wearable, but they'd look lovely on the wall nevertheless. Elisabeth Lecourt | Les robes géographiques: (via Crazy Abalone) Update: An idea so nice, I blogged it twice! Here's the original from 2008.
Read in browser When is Google Glass "weird"? Ask Google's Chairman!
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 26, 2013 10:30 am There's something just a bit odd about the things Eric Schmidt says. Talking out loud to control the Google Glasses via voice recognition is "the weirdest thing," Schmidt said in a talk on Thursday at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. People will have to develop new etiquette to deal with such products that can ...
Read in browser CISPA is dead! (again) (for now)
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 26, 2013 10:24 am After months of activist agitation and a crushing disappointment from the cowards in the House of Representatives, the US senate has effectively killed CISPA, a sweeping Internet surveillance proposal. This is astoundingly great news! But CISPA died once before, and came back from the dead, and it will not likely stay dead this time around ...
Read in browser Defense contractors pimp wares after Boston bombings
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 26, 2013 10:17 am "The newly-limbless victims from the Boston Marathon attack are still being treated," writs Noah Schachtman. "But for a handful of defense and intelligence contractors, it's never too early to start pimping their products as the solution to the next terrorist strike." [Wired]
Read in browser Mall of America welcomes 72,000 ladybugs
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 26, 2013 10:01 am "The Bloomington, Minn., mall, which is so huge it could hold seven Yankee Stadiums, also has more than 30,000 live plants, including about 400 trees, which act as natural air purifiers for the indoor mall. But aphids -- the pesky insects that feed on plants -- thrive inside the Mall of America's many landscaped areas." ...
Read in browser Nuts may contain nuts
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 26, 2013 09:55 am A British supermarket was forced to take bags of nuts off the shelves after the labeling failed to declare the possible presence of peanuts. The store, Booths, apologised and warned customers allergic to nuts not to consume the nuts. [BBC]
Read in browser Psychedelics eyed for mood disorders
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 26, 2013 09:44 am Greg Miller writes that the study of psychedelics has recovered after "Timothy Leary really screwed things up for science", and is emerging from dormancy. "The antics of Timothy Leary really undermined the scientific approach to studying these compounds," psychopharmacologist Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University told the audience. But the times they are a-changin'. In ...
Read in browser Akissi: kids' comic about a mischievous girl in Cote D'Ivoire
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 26, 2013 09:14 am Akissi is a French-language comic about the adventures of a little West African girl, now available in English translation thanks to the astoundingly excellent Flying Eye, a new kids' imprint of London's NoBrow. It was created by Marguerite Abouet, whom you may know from Aya, a series of comics for adults set in Cote d'Ivoire, ...
Read in browser The last words of murderer Richard Cobb
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 26, 2013 08:29 am "Wow, that is great, that is awesome."
Read in browser Snooper's Charter is dead! (for now)
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 26, 2013 02:50 am The UK Communications Data Bill -- AKA the "Snooper's Charter," a sweeping, totalitarian universal Internet surveillance bill that the Conservative government had sworn to pass -- is dead!
Read in browser Debunking the HTML5 DRM myths
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 25, 2013 10:40 pm Kyre sez, "The Free Culture Foundation has posted a thorough response to the most common and misinformed defenses of the W3C's Extended Media Extensions (EME) proposal to inject DRM into HTML5. They join the EFF and FSF in a call to send a strong message to the W3C that DRM in HTML5 undermines the W3C's ...
Read in browser Kickstarting a game based on Gaiman's "Study in Emerald" Cthulhu/Holmes mashup
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 25, 2013 09:02 pm Neil Gaiman's award-winning mash-up of Sherlock Holmes and H.P. Lovecraft '
A Study in Emerald' gets a Gaiman-approved board game expansion.
Read in browser Cool Tools Show & Tell video podcast 002
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 25, 2013 08:22 pm Welcome to the second episode of Cool Tools’ Show and Tell podcast! Last week, Camille Cloutier-Hartsell and I had a video hangout with Joshua Glenn and Oliver Hulland. We showed each other 18 different things we love, including books, kitchen tools, games, apps, and gadgets. Since this is a show and tell, I recommend that ...
Read in browser Live sf writing workshop with Resnick and Di Filippo
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 25, 2013 06:56 pm Tony from StarShipSofa sez, "StarShipSofa is hosting a live writers workshop all in video with SF writers Mike Resnick and Paul Di Filippo. StarShipSofa built its reputation by featuring science fiction from the best authors of our time, from living legends whose works have inspired generations to the rising stars of the genre. StarShipSofa's focus ...
Read in browser The "Lollipop Fort of Death" - a clubhouse on a pole
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 25, 2013 05:20 pm Dig Derek “Deek” Diedricksen’s dangerous digs! Make: Deek’s Lollipop Fort of Death
Read in browser The Important Book, by Margaret Wise Brown
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 25, 2013 04:58 pm Goodnight Moon (1947) is Margaret Wise Brown's most famous book. It's terrific, without a doubt. It entertained my kids several dozen times when they were little. But I won't shed a tear if I never read it again. Brown's less-well known children's book, The Important Book, is her magnum opus. Goodnight Moon has pleasant rhymes, ...
Read in browser Sweet, nostalgic film about a magic trick
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 25, 2013 04:09 pm A short film about magic and nostalgia: 'The Magic Box'
Read in browser Paul Ryan intern charged with sextortion (he may have also dressed up as Newt's elephant)
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 25, 2013 02:43 pm The FBI has indicted Adam Paul Savader for "sextortion," alleging that he hacked women's computers, plundered compromising photos of them, and then threatened them with public embarrassment unless they performed private sex shows for him over their webcams. Savader was Paul Ryan's sole campaign intern in the 2012 elections, and Gawker reports that he also ...
Read in browser Superheroes designed by little girls
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 25, 2013 02:38 pm Alex Law's "little girls R better at designing heroes than you" is a great, occasionally updated Tumblr that features illustrations of superheroes based on the hero costumes little girls have made for themselves. Kids are more impressionable than you, but kids can also be less restricted by cultural gender norms than you. Kids are more ...
Read in browser Mid-century modern kitchen
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 25, 2013 02:07 pm Now that's a kitchen! 1950 Armstrong Mid Century Modern Kitchen
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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