In case you missed: Xeni's update from Guatemala on genocide trial Meat from a 20-kb swamp rat: taste test Huge head found floating in Hudson River Gear Guide portable folding hammock When trademark becomes a tool for stealing our language Hear Alexander Graham Bell speak Japanese folk music glitch hop Bruce Sterling on startups' role in helping the global rich get richer Video about Judith, the strange pregnant "barbie doll" from 1992 Pravic: new SF zine Buildings built by bacteria The Shouting Matches - "Avery Hill" (free MP3) Why do governments get Internet surveillance so wrong? Monsters and Legends: kids' reference book on the origin of monsters Moombahton in Guatemala: house meets reggaeton meets the unknown In case you missed: Xeni's update from Guatemala on genocide trial
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 29, 2013 12:53 pm Today here in Guatemala, the genocide trial of former US-backed military dictator Rios Montt and his head of military intelligence Rodriguez Sanchez remains on hold after a series of legal actions involving various Guatemalan courts. Catch up on the latest trial news in this most recent Boing Boing update; archives of my posts from Guatemala ...
Read in browser Meat from a 20-kb swamp rat: taste test
By Chris Metzler on Apr 29, 2013 12:48 pm Rodents of Unusual Size do exist. We know because we just ate one. Here's how it happened.
Read in browser Huge head found floating in Hudson River
By David Pescovitz on Apr 29, 2013 12:47 pm Did you lose your head? The crew team of Pouhkeepsie, New York's Marist College spotted this seven foot sculpture floating in the Hudson River last week. The men's crew head coach described the scene as "something out of a post-apocalyptic movie." They dragged it to shore but nobody has called to claim it. (Poughkeepsie Journal)
Read in browser Gear Guide portable folding hammock
By Jason Weisberger on Apr 29, 2013 12:41 pm This
folding hammock is really great!
Read in browser When trademark becomes a tool for stealing our language
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 29, 2013 12:35 pm My latest Guardian column is "Trademarks: the good, the bad and the ugly," and it looks at why trademark, at its best, does something vital -- but how trademark can be abused to steal common words from our language and turn them into a twisted kind of pseudo-property. Trademark lawyers have convinced their clients that ...
Read in browser Hear Alexander Graham Bell speak
By David Pescovitz on Apr 29, 2013 12:32 pm The voice you can hear above is Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone. Bell's voice, not likely heard anywhere since he died in 1922, was retrieved from a wax-and-cardboard disc recorded on April 15, 1885 and recently "played" for the first time in more than a century. That's the disc above, looking strangely similar ...
Read in browser Japanese folk music glitch hop
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 29, 2013 12:14 pm Daniel Ryan describes his music as "a mix of Japanese folk music and glitch hop." This isn't normally my sort of thing -- I pretty much only listen to music with words -- but I played this one three times in a row this morning. There's a lot of clever stuff going on here that ...
Read in browser Bruce Sterling on startups' role in helping the global rich get richer
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 29, 2013 12:09 pm Bruce Sterling's speech from NEXT Berlin is a blast of cold air on the themes of startup life, disruption, and global collapse. Bruce excoriates the startup world for its complicity with the conspiracy of the global investor class to vastly increase the wealth of a tiny minority, and describes the role that "design fiction" has ...
Read in browser Video about Judith, the strange pregnant "barbie doll" from 1992
By David Pescovitz on Apr 29, 2013 12:04 pm Attaboy of Hi-Fructose Magazine started a new video series called "They Actually Made That!" to showcase strange toys from history. This episode is about Judith, a pregnant Barbie knock-off, complete with spring-loaded baby. And if you really want your own Judith to play with, here you go!
Read in browser Pravic: new SF zine
By David Pescovitz on Apr 29, 2013 11:49 am Pravic is a new science fiction zine edited by David "Total Dick-Head" Gill and Nathaniel K. Miller. The copy machine just spit out the second issue, featuring fiction by Rudy Rucker, Robert Onopa, Cal Godot, and Gill. Also, a special bonus rumination: "Are The Melvins sci-fi?" Single print copies are $3 to your door or ...
Read in browser Buildings built by bacteria
By David Pescovitz on Apr 29, 2013 11:32 am Over at Fast Company, our pal Chris Arkenberg wrote about how advances in synthetic biology and biomimicry could someday transform how we build our built environments: Innovations emerging across the disciplines of additive manufacturing, synthetic biology, swarm robotics, and architecture suggest a future scenario when buildings may be designed using libraries of biological templates and ...
Read in browser The Shouting Matches - "Avery Hill" (free MP3)
By Amy Seidenwurm on Apr 29, 2013 11:06 am Sound it Out # 47: The Shouting Matches - "Avery Hill" (MP3) Do you, like me, have a secret love for straight-ahead 70's rock? If so, that means we can enjoy together the blues guitar and gruff vocals of The Shouting Matches. The singer and songwriter of The Shouting Matches is Justin Vernon, who you ...
Read in browser Why do governments get Internet surveillance so wrong?
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 29, 2013 09:36 am The UK Open Rights Group has just published "Why the Snoopers' Charter is the wrong approach: A call for targeted and accountable investigatory powers," a digital paper on why and how governments go terribly wrong with Internet surveillance proposals, and what a reasonable and accountable form of surveillance would look like. Jim Killock from ORG ...
Read in browser Monsters and Legends: kids' reference book on the origin of monsters
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 29, 2013 05:55 am Monsters and Legends is part of the fabulous debut lineup of titles from Flying Eye, a kids' imprint spun out of London's NoBrow (they're the publishers of recently reviewed books like Welcome to Your Awesome Robot and Akissi). The book, written by Davide Cali and illustrated by Garbiella Giandelli, is a fascinating reference work for ...
Read in browser Moombahton in Guatemala: house meets reggaeton meets the unknown
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 28, 2013 01:09 pm DJ Wicho Lopez is the best-known local ambassador of one of the more interesting musical genres to take root here in Guatemala of late: moombahton, a mix of house and reggaeton and whatever else the DJ feels like throwing in.
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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