Osaka's fascist mayor defends WWII policy of sexual enslavement: "a comfort women system is necessary. Anyone can understand that." Brain Rot: The Statue Highest-paid state employees: usually a school sports coach, sometimes a med school dean Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction Game of Thrones S3E7: I am yours and you are mine Inside the world's largest ghost mall, America finds schadenfreude and comfort for its fears of a Chinese century Grandson explains reddit-restored, 60-y-o navy portrait to amazed Grandad Supplies for all your punk and punk-related needs Buy a pressure cooker, get a free visit from the FBI! You cannot light a candle with a taser It's a face! A skull! A mushroom! Psychedelic drawing lesson Self-assembling foldable inchworm robots RiYL: a new podcast American private universities use poor kids' tuition to subsidize rich kids' degrees Bamboo wok brush: easy, no-soap wok and pan cleaning tool Inside the world of "booters" -- cheesy DoS-for-hire sites Newt Gingrich "puzzled" by smartphone Xeni on PBS NewsHour tonight: Guatemala genocide verdict, aftermath, significance for the future Has your doctor taken money from drug companies? Shell's racist pesticide ad, 1957 Paper Man (1971) - early movie about hackers (complete on YouTube) A 93-year-old neuroscientist explains how memory works Did a volcanic eruption nearly kill off ancient humans? Skittles sorting machine, version 3 Palm Beach Sheriff warns of terrorists who take pictures of bridges David LaFerriere's sandwich bag art How JPMorgan Chase Affords Those Big Bonuses Realtime map of anonymous edits to Wikipedia For sale: "Rocking Machine" phallic sculpture from A Clockwork Orange DevoBots iOS app Osaka's fascist mayor defends WWII policy of sexual enslavement: "a comfort women system is necessary. Anyone can understand that."
By Cory Doctorow on May 14, 2013 12:15 pm Toru Hashimoto is mayor of Osaka and co-founder of the Japanese Restoration Party. He's previously called for Japan to be run as a dictatorship; now he's made public comments defending the WWII Japanese military policy of enslaving women and giving them to soldiers to rape. He says that it was a necessary expedient to support ...
Read in browser Brain Rot: The Statue
By Ed Piskor on May 14, 2013 09:48 am 
Read in browser Highest-paid state employees: usually a school sports coach, sometimes a med school dean
By Cory Doctorow on May 14, 2013 09:42 am Good to see America's educational priorities on such sound footing: You may have heard that the highest-paid state employee in each state is usually the football coach at the largest state school. This is actually a gross mischaracterization: Sometimes it is the basketball coach. Based on data drawn from media reports and state salary databases, ...
Read in browser Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction
By Cory Doctorow on May 14, 2013 08:34 am Annalee Newitz, founding editor of IO9 and former EFF staffer, has a new book out today called Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction, and it's terrific. Scatter's premise is that the human race will face extinction-grade crises in the future, and that we can learn how to survive them by ...
Read in browser Game of Thrones S3E7: I am yours and you are mine
By Leigh Alexander on May 14, 2013 06:59 am The song "The Bear and the Maiden Fair" that heralds the climax of this episode is about the comedy in unmatched relationships, in pairing yourself inappropriately in accordance with your station. Yet that's the theme of this episode -- love, silly love, in all of its sick permutations. Once again into the breach! In an ...
Read in browser Inside the world's largest ghost mall, America finds schadenfreude and comfort for its fears of a Chinese century
By Cory Doctorow on May 14, 2013 02:12 am It's hard to say what's more interesting about this video in which a CNN reporter tours the New South China Mall, the largest mall in the world when it was built five years ago, now a deserted ghost-mall. On the one had, there's the "eerie urban landscape" of the mall itself, and on the other, ...
Read in browser Grandson explains reddit-restored, 60-y-o navy portrait to amazed Grandad
By Cory Doctorow on May 14, 2013 01:15 am Stephen sez, "I recently helped set my grandad get set up on his new PC and spotted a photo of him from when he was about 20 years old. It was in a sorry state, so I emailed it to myself and posted it on Reddit, where the community came together and restored it beyond ...
Read in browser Supplies for all your punk and punk-related needs
By Cory Doctorow on May 14, 2013 12:05 am An undated ad for a punk store in Newcastle offers batty punk tees for a mere £4.50 -- mid-1980s punk revival? MY GEAR FIXATION IS BACK IN FULL EFFECT. I'M LOSIN' IT. (via Goths and Punks)
Read in browser Buy a pressure cooker, get a free visit from the FBI!
By Mark Frauenfelder on May 13, 2013 11:58 pm Matthew says: "Talal Al-Rouqi, a Saudi student in Michigan, brought a pressure cooker filled with meat and rice to his friend's house for dinner. The next day, he was interrogated by FBI agents, who warned him not to venture outside again with the pressure cooker."
Read in browser You cannot light a candle with a taser
By Cory Doctorow on May 13, 2013 11:01 pm In case you were wondering. (Also: tasers play merry hell with digital video cameras, it seems) Taser Candle (via JWZ)
Read in browser It's a face! A skull! A mushroom! Psychedelic drawing lesson
By Cory Doctorow on May 13, 2013 09:58 pm Katana Leigh sez, "I want to provide memorable ways to learn to draw that are interesting and visually entertaining. The proportions of a red spotted button mushroom are the same as a skull and these LSD colors provide maximum contrast so you can see the process and hopefully copy it. Not your boring art lessons ...
Read in browser Self-assembling foldable inchworm robots
By Cory Doctorow on May 13, 2013 08:55 pm Here's a quick and fascinating look at "Robot Self-Assembly by Folding: A Printed Inchworm Robot," presented at the 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. The authors demonstrated a foldable inchworm robot that actually folds itself into shape. The goal is to have all the components placed on the robot's shrinky-dink surface using a ...
Read in browser RiYL: a new podcast
By Mark Frauenfelder on May 13, 2013 08:38 pm Hurray! We've added a new podcast to Boing Boing's line-up of high-quality audio disinfotainment. Brian Heater, our Comics Rack columnist, is the host of RiYL, which he describes as “mostly just an excuse to interview people I think are cool.” The first three episodes feature cool people indeed: Scam zine editor Erik Lyle Your browser ...
Read in browser American private universities use poor kids' tuition to subsidize rich kids' degrees
By Cory Doctorow on May 13, 2013 08:00 pm In The Atlantic, Jordan Weissmann does a very good job of summing up the New America Foundation's important new report, Undermining Pell: How Colleges Compete for Wealthy Students and Leave the Low-Income Behind [PDF], by Stephen Burd. The report documents how private universities in America have raised the cost of tuition to incredible heights, and ...
Read in browser Bamboo wok brush: easy, no-soap wok and pan cleaning tool
By Cool Tools on May 13, 2013 07:58 pm I use well-seasoned cast iron and carbon steel pans for the better part of my cooking. To clean them, I’ve used the same bamboo wok brush than I bought at a corner market in Sacramento in 1990. I’ve been thinking of buying a new one, just so I can phase it in over a few ...
Read in browser Inside the world of "booters" -- cheesy DoS-for-hire sites
By Cory Doctorow on May 13, 2013 07:10 pm Brian Krebs delves into the world of "booter" services, low-level, amateurish denial-of-service websites where you can use PayPal to have your video-game enemies' computers knocked off the Internet by floods of traffic. Many booter services run off the same buggy codebase, and Krebs was apparently able to get inside the administrative interfaces for them and ...
Read in browser Newt Gingrich "puzzled" by smartphone
By Mark Frauenfelder on May 13, 2013 06:50 pm Newt Gingrich says: To call this a "cell phone" or a "handheld computer" fails to capture the change that has taken place. It is a change in kind, not just a change in scale, and just as drivers of the earliest cars called them "horseless carriages", our language has not caught up. So having failed ...
Read in browser Xeni on PBS NewsHour tonight: Guatemala genocide verdict, aftermath, significance for the future
By Xeni Jardin on May 13, 2013 06:25 pm Xeni live-blogging from the court in Guatemala City where Rios Montt was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity in an historic trial. Photo: James Rodriguez, mimundo.org On PBS NewsHour tonight, I spoke with Hari Sreenivasan about the aftermath and significance of Friday's court decision to convict former US-backed military dictator Rios Montt of genocide ...
Read in browser Has your doctor taken money from drug companies?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 13, 2013 06:04 pm Mine hasn't. At least, he hasn't taken money from any of the 15 companies that have been forced to disclose information about gifts and cash they give to doctors. Pro Publica has put that information into an easily searchable database. It's not total transparency — the drug companies whose payouts are included here only represent ...
Read in browser Shell's racist pesticide ad, 1957
By Cory Doctorow on May 13, 2013 06:02 pm From 1957, a disturbing, patronizing, racist Shell ad for pesticides, selling the superiority of big agribusiness. Weekend Event - White
Read in browser Paper Man (1971) - early movie about hackers (complete on YouTube)
By Mark Frauenfelder on May 13, 2013 05:56 pm Edgertor says: "No list of hacker movies i've found includes this one from 1971, it might also be the earliest!" A prank that starts with a group of college students creating a fictitious person so they can get a credit card develops into a plot that leaves three of them dead. With Dean Stockwell and ...
Read in browser A 93-year-old neuroscientist explains how memory works
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 13, 2013 05:54 pm Insights on science and doing science by the woman who studied one of history's most famous neuro patients.
Read in browser Did a volcanic eruption nearly kill off ancient humans?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 13, 2013 05:45 pm Short answer: We don't know. What makes this story by Erin Wayman interesting is the way it carefully breaks down an almost Hollywood-ready narrative and finds the fascinating uncertainty lurking underneath. The truth is, uncertainty is cool. Because it means there's more stuff left to discover.
Read in browser Skittles sorting machine, version 3
By Mark Frauenfelder on May 13, 2013 05:38 pm Here's Brian Egenriether's new-and-improved Skittles sorting machine. It's interesting to note that he used machinable epoxy for the parts instead of using a 3D printer. I know 3D printing is the future, but the current crop of home 3D printers make ugly parts. Subtractive fabrication technology makes better looking stuff, at least for now. This ...
Read in browser Palm Beach Sheriff warns of terrorists who take pictures of bridges
By Mark Frauenfelder on May 13, 2013 05:28 pm Matthew says: "Here's your newest dose of terrornoia: the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office has developed a program called CPAT: Community Partners Against Terrorism, which encourages citizens to report suspicious or unusual behavior in their neighborhoods." Possible Warning Signs of Terrorism (@ 2:40) "Tourists love to take pictures. But what sometimes strikes people as unusual ...
Read in browser David LaFerriere's sandwich bag art
By Mark Frauenfelder on May 13, 2013 05:19 pm David LaFerriere has drawn a picture on almost every one of his kids' lunch bags since 2008. He uses colored Sharpies to draw on the plastic bags. See all of them (over 1,100!) on his Flickr stream. (Via Colossal; Thanks, Sally!)
Read in browser How JPMorgan Chase Affords Those Big Bonuses
By Cory Doctorow on May 13, 2013 05:15 pm Alan sez, "Apparently they do it by clogging the court system with dubious - and allegedly fradulent - claims against people for credit card debt. Let's see... massive numbers of lawsuits, hasty filings, breakneck pace, questionable and incomplete records. I wonder if JPMC is taking a page from the Cartel's playbook?"
Read in browser Realtime map of anonymous edits to Wikipedia
By Cory Doctorow on May 13, 2013 04:59 pm Stephen LaPorte and Mahmoud Hashemi's "Wikipedia Recent Changes Map" plots anonymous edits to Wikipedia on a world-map in realtime, based on the location of the user (only anonymous users are identified by IP address, so they're the only ones whose locations can be estimated). It's a hypnotic view into Wikipedia's casual users and vandals, as ...
Read in browser For sale: "Rocking Machine" phallic sculpture from A Clockwork Orange
By David Pescovitz on May 13, 2013 04:58 pm Japanese designer toy firm Medicom worked with Herman Makkink to recreate an edition of his iconic sculpture "The Rocking Machine," famously seen in the film A Clockwork Orange. It's almost three feet long and more than a foot wide. You can have one one of your very own for $1600 or so. "The Rocking Machine" ...
Read in browser DevoBots iOS app
By Mark Frauenfelder on May 13, 2013 04:58 pm Last year I wrote about Remo Camerota's DevoBot project, an iOS application that lets you design DEVO-inspired robot art and play music using unreleased DEVO sounds. It's now available for $0.99 in the iTunes stores.
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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