Primate kettlebell Access Copyright Canada goes on anti-fair-dealing war-path Snake Oil's secret ingredients COOP/Pressure Printing car engine fine art print Former Tennessee legislator "drove 90 MPH while masturbating out window" Fake Web sites on TV Cookie Monster charged with assault after pushing child in Times Square Collapsible "Origami" condoms coming to a penis near you "Homeless city" in tunnels beneath Kansas City Don't hide in commercial trash containers Bio-hackers, crime journalism, and socialstructing the future Watch the latest video posts in our Boing Boing video archives To watch: "NOVA—Australia's First 4 Billion Years: Awakening" Remains of poet Pablo Neruda exhumed to determine if he was executed by Pinochet regime Brain Rot: R Budd Dwyer Game of Thrones S3E2: Ladies, leave your men at home Obvious battery tip of the day Punk Rock Jesus: media-savvy second coming/reality TV comic Creators remember Knightmare, the pioneering VR adventure show What makes dry quicksand so deadly? What's climate change making more awesome today? What's climate change ruining today? Shark painting from men's adventure magazine Put a GPS on your cat Convertible coffee-table/sofa/dining room table + stools Rare footage of a "normal person" given LSD in 1950s clinical research Pirate Cinema nominated for the Prometheus Award Technology design for addressing human trafficking Bangalore's brain museum Huge payouts for disgraced Rutgers coach and boss Primate kettlebell
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 09, 2013 12:55 pm From Joe Rogan's website, Onnit.
Read in browser Access Copyright Canada goes on anti-fair-dealing war-path
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 09, 2013 12:46 pm Michael Geist sez, Months after the Supreme Court of Canada delivered a stinging defeat to Canadian copyright collective Access Copyright by ruling for an expansive approach to fair dealing and the government passed copyright reforms that further expanded the scope of fair dealing, Access Copyright responded yesterday with what amounts to a desperate declaration of ...
Read in browser Snake Oil's secret ingredients
By David Pescovitz on Apr 09, 2013 12:25 pm There was no actual snake oil in old timey snake oil (except when there was, of course). Rather, most of the lotions and potions sold by early 20th century miracle medicine salesmen actually contained mercury and lead. Now, don't you feel better? University of Detroit Mercy chemists recently analyzed the ingredients of several dozen patent ...
Read in browser COOP/Pressure Printing car engine fine art print
By David Pescovitz on Apr 09, 2013 12:14 pm Seen here is "Hemi-Powered," a new fine art print collaboration by our pals COOP and Pressure Printing's Brad Keech! COOP's model for this beaut was a Dodge 426 Hemi engine (aka "The Elephant") with a Cragar blower. The relief print is 38.5" x 30", available in a limited edition of 25 signed and numbered for ...
Read in browser Former Tennessee legislator "drove 90 MPH while masturbating out window"
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 09, 2013 12:12 pm Tom Kludt quotes a witness: "At over 90 miles per hour, he had his penis out [the window]... he was masturbating... and that's when it got really, really bad. I wouldn't look over any more, and I wrote his tag number down on my hand, which I believe he noticed, and he exited very quickly." ...
Read in browser Fake Web sites on TV
By David Pescovitz on Apr 09, 2013 12:02 pm Almost as much fun as fake user interfaces for software on TV are fake web sites on TV!
Read in browser Cookie Monster charged with assault after pushing child in Times Square
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 09, 2013 12:01 pm Cookie Monster was arrested Sunday after allegedly shoving a child in New York's Times Square when his mother did not tip him for posing with the boy. Monster, 33, was charged with endangering the welfare of 2-year old Samay Katkar, who had wandered over to the blue-furred beast when his parents ventured into town for ...
Read in browser Collapsible "Origami" condoms coming to a penis near you
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 09, 2013 11:50 am The Origami is a "radical new condom" inspired by paper-folding techniques and supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Designed to slip on more comfortably than easily-torn rolled latex prophylactics, Origami comes in male and female forms, and there's even a special model for anuses of either sex. The creators are testing the designs ...
Read in browser "Homeless city" in tunnels beneath Kansas City
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 09, 2013 11:24 am Police leveling a homeless campsite outside of Kansas City discovered a "hidden community" of transients living in an elaborate series of tunnels, reports KMBC.
Read in browser Don't hide in commercial trash containers
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 09, 2013 11:16 am "A French teenager who had hidden inside a garbage container was crushed to death inside a trash truck in Luxembourg on Saturday, police said." [Reuters]
Read in browser Bio-hackers, crime journalism, and socialstructing the future
By Marina Gorbis on Apr 09, 2013 10:19 am Boing Boing friend Marina Gorbis is executive director of Institute for the Future, a non-profit thinktank where I'm a researcher. Marina has just published a compelling, provocative, and grounded book about how technology is enabling individuals to connect with one another to follow their passions and get stuff done, outside of large corporations, governments, and ...
Read in browser Watch the latest video posts in our Boing Boing video archives
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 09, 2013 09:57 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: • Lessig's TED talk on fighting corruption in politics with campaign finance reform. • "Free Pussy Riot" lingerie commercial. • Lethal weapons from duty-free stores. • Crossed bedside lamps turn each ...
Read in browser To watch: "NOVA—Australia's First 4 Billion Years: Awakening"
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 09, 2013 09:42 am This week on the long-running PBS science program NOVA, a really cool four-part documentary on what the geological history of Australia can teach us about how the earth was formed. My partner-in-crime Miles O'Brien watched this one at a special screening in DC recently with the film's director/host Dr. Richard Smith, and was blown away. ...
Read in browser Remains of poet Pablo Neruda exhumed to determine if he was executed by Pinochet regime
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 09, 2013 09:28 am The great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda has long been thought to have died of prostate cancer, but in recent years, his personal driver claims he was murdered by the Pinochet regime. After years of controversy, a judge has ruled that there is sufficient evidence to approve the exhumation of his remains, to try and determine ...
Read in browser Brain Rot: R Budd Dwyer
By Ed Piskor on Apr 09, 2013 09:07 am 
Read in browser Game of Thrones S3E2: Ladies, leave your men at home
By Leigh Alexander on Apr 09, 2013 09:00 am The Game of Thrones universe is all about how disadvantages are balanced against advantages: Every major character or faction has a unique set of challenges, and then a trump card. Tyrion Lannister's unfavorable height, scarred face and status as the family black sheep is balanced by his superior wit and endless disposable income; as Queen ...
Read in browser Obvious battery tip of the day
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 09, 2013 08:53 am Does screen brightness have a significant effect on cellphone battery life? You betcha. [Wired]
Read in browser Punk Rock Jesus: media-savvy second coming/reality TV comic
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 09, 2013 08:53 am Sean Murphy's Punk Rock Jesus is a rockin' comic about the Second Coming. It opens with a psychotically ruthless show-runner arranging to clone Jesus from DNA salvaged from the Shroud of Turin, implanting a foetus in the womb of a teenaged virgin, all for a reality TV show that starts with auditions for the part ...
Read in browser Creators remember Knightmare, the pioneering VR adventure show
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 09, 2013 08:48 am Knightmare was a fantastic childrens' adventure show that ran on British TV in the 1980s. A youngster, wearing a vision-blinding helmet, would be guided around a giant virtual reality castle by a team of his or her peers, which issued instructions from dungeon master Treguard's chambers. Though defined by its technical limitations, Knightmare built a ...
Read in browser What makes dry quicksand so deadly?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 09, 2013 12:28 am Dry quicksand was a mythical substance — normal-looking sand that could swallow you in a flash. That is, until 2004, when scientists made the stuff in a lab. (Mark told you about that development.) In this video, geologist Matt Kuchta explains how dry quicksand is different from both wet quicksand and stable sand. Hint: Think ...
Read in browser What's climate change making more awesome today?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 09, 2013 12:13 am Remember, climate change isn't intentionally trying to make your life miserable. It's just a trend in rising global average temperatures. That comes along with lots of side effects, some of which do, in fact, make human life pretty miserable. In other cases, though, the effect can be beneficial. For instance: In Antarctica, climate change seems ...
Read in browser What's climate change ruining today?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 09, 2013 12:03 am Okay, sure, jet travel accounts for 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions (this is situation where a small percentage is actually a really big number, fyi). So this is maybe more ironic than tragic, but it turns out that some scientists think changing climates could have an effect on air turbulence. Specifically, one model suggests ...
Read in browser Shark painting from men's adventure magazine
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 09, 2013 12:01 am Enjoy giant size picture here. (Via Martin Klasch)
Read in browser Put a GPS on your cat
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 08, 2013 11:54 pm When one of Caroline Paul's cats disappeared for 5.5 weeks, it inspired her to find out what Tibula (the cat) was really up to when he left home. The process of this is pretty fascinating. The outcome is, well, kind of cat like. What was Tibula doing when he wasn't at home? Avoiding the house ...
Read in browser Convertible coffee-table/sofa/dining room table + stools
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 08, 2013 11:21 pm Julia Kononenko, a designer in Kharkiv, Ukraine, created a clever piece of furniture that converts from a coffee table to a sofa to a dining room table with chairs. It's more small living-space porn for me -- the perfect thing for your 130sqft apartment. In our apartments we are always in the confrontation with furniture ...
Read in browser Rare footage of a "normal person" given LSD in 1950s clinical research
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 08, 2013 09:12 pm In this video, Sidney Cohen (author of The Beyond Within: The L.S.D. Story, administers LSD under clinical conditions to an unnamed "normal person" (her description), some time in the 1950s. Her description of her experience is really wonderful -- you can tell she's going through something profound and amazing. As Reason's Jacob Sullum wrote in ...
Read in browser Pirate Cinema nominated for the Prometheus Award
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 08, 2013 07:57 pm I was delighted today to discover that my novel Pirate Cinema had been nominated for the Libertarian Futurist Society's annual Prometheus Award, amid a slate of absolutely wonderful books: Arctic Rising, Tobias Buckell (Tor) The Unincorporated Future, Dani & Eytan Kollin (Tor) Pirate Cinema, Cory Doctorow (Tor) Darkship Renegades, Sarah Hoyt (Baen) Kill Decision, Daniel ...
Read in browser Technology design for addressing human trafficking
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 08, 2013 06:46 pm danah boyd sez, "Researchers who focus on technology's role in human trafficking and the commercial sexual exploitation of minors teamed up to create a short primer for technologists who are trying to do the right thing. This high-level overview is intended to shed light on some of the most salient misconceptions about human trafficking and ...
Read in browser Bangalore's brain museum
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 08, 2013 06:03 pm Dr Shankar's Brain Museum in Bangalore is shelf upon shelf of largely unlabelled brains in jars, along with various other bits of anatomical pickle (human and otherwise). Andy Deemer took a visit and provides some lovely snapshots. I'm not sure that I'd call Dr Shankar's Brain Museum a museum. There were no explanations, no details, ...
Read in browser Huge payouts for disgraced Rutgers coach and boss
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 08, 2013 04:30 pm How to make $1,000,000 at Rutgers: Get a job as a coach or athletic director. Beat students, throw basketballs at their head, and insult them with homophobic slurs. Profit! Rice will get $1.1 million, and Rutgers' athletic director Tim Pernetti (who resigned last week) will get "$1.2 million in salary, plus an iPad, car allowance, ...
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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