Law profs and librarians to Congress: government edicts should not be restricted by copyright Kepler's greatest hits The places Soviet tourists could not visit in the 1950s Spacegoing Earth: a painting by Angus McKie 1983's wonderful "Introduction to Machine Code for Beginners" Hilda (from the kids' comic) as an 8" vinyl toy Mammal school Robot made from recycled scrap Sissyfight, cult game of sexist stereotyping, returns Hellishly complex, gorgeous assemblage about endless work Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey explained in 1968 Howard Johnson's children's menu HOWTO make glowing Converse Record Eater: 1967 record player that ran in any orientation North Carolina may ban Tesla sales to prevent "Unfair Competition" Book-and-record set for the League of Space Pirates You don't have a moral obligation to cook Katamari Adventure Time We Can Fix it! - a graphic novel time travel memoir Help make Abercrombie and Fitch synonymous with homelessness Artist finds the faces lurking in maps Abusive restaurateurs stage spectacular social media meltdown Ne plus ultra of retrogamer wedding cakes Dictionary of Numbers: browser extension humanizes the numbers on the Web Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde is a candidate for Pirate Party MEP in Finland Free stream: The Source Family soundtrack of 1970s cult psychedelia Watch a caterpillar turn into a butterfly, in 3D The happiest little plankton in the world The BBC discovers the Texas Germans — and a dying dialect Law profs and librarians to Congress: government edicts should not be restricted by copyright
By Cory Doctorow on May 16, 2013 12:01 pm Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez, "105 law professors and law librarians have endorsed a call to change U.S. Copyright law to exclude edicts of government. Edicts are "the law" and include all pronouncements of government that are binding on citizens and residents, including statutes, regulations, court opinions, and legally-mandated codes. If ignorance of the law ...
Read in browser Kepler's greatest hits
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 16, 2013 11:48 am Your guide to the most awesome exoplanets yet found by NASA's Kepler space telescope — all in one handy place, thanks to Wired's Adam Mann.
Read in browser The places Soviet tourists could not visit in the 1950s
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 16, 2013 11:46 am Apparently, there were some private citizens from the USSR who were allowed into the U.S. for travel during the Cold War. But they couldn't just visit anywhere they wanted. This map, from a post at Slate's Vault blog, shows the no-go zones, shaded in green. Some of this is quite funny — gee, guys, I ...
Read in browser Spacegoing Earth: a painting by Angus McKie
By Cory Doctorow on May 16, 2013 11:09 am When I first saw this Angus McKie illustration, I had a moment when I thought it depicted the Earth being encased in a huge, space-going shell and I flashed back to Damon Knight's spectacular novel Why Do Birds?, a straight-faced yet comic novel about a man who puts the whole human race in a box. ...
Read in browser 1983's wonderful "Introduction to Machine Code for Beginners"
By Cory Doctorow on May 16, 2013 10:09 am Usborne's 1983 classic Introduction to Machine Code for Beginners is an astounding book, written, designed and illustrated by Naomi Reed, Graham Round and Lynne Norman. It uses beautiful infographics and clear writing to provide an introduction to 6502 and Z80 assembler, and it's no wonder that used copies go for as much as $600. I ...
Read in browser Hilda (from the kids' comic) as an 8" vinyl toy
By Cory Doctorow on May 16, 2013 09:05 am The good people at London's Nobrow Press have done an 8" vinyl toy for the outstanding kids' comic Hilda, created by Luke Pearson (reviews: Book 0, Book 1; Book 2). The Hilda toy is grownup-collector-expensive, but it's also a very nice piece -- I saw one in person last night when I brought my daughter ...
Read in browser Mammal school
By Rob Beschizza on May 16, 2013 08:26 am A teacher shows a preserved dolphin to students during a class about mammals at Ancol Smart House in Jakarta May 16, 2013. Ancol Smart House has about 20 animals preserved as means to "educate visitors about their life in the wild." 15m visited the park in 2012, according to PR Officer Aldhita Prayudi Ancol. [Photo: ...
Read in browser Robot made from recycled scrap
By Rob Beschizza on May 16, 2013 08:17 am Chinese inventor Tao Xiangli tinkers with a hand-made robot at his house in Beijing, May 15, 2013. Tao, 37, spent ¥150,000 ($24,400) to build it out of recycled scrap metal and electric wires found at second-hand markets. The robot, which took a year to complete, is 7ft tall and weighs about a quarter of a ...
Read in browser Sissyfight, cult game of sexist stereotyping, returns
By Rob Beschizza on May 16, 2013 08:04 am Sissyfight, the groundbreaking 1990s online game of playground politics, is to receive an open-source, crowdsourced remake: "We've gotten some "interesting" press about how the game delves into uncomfortable territory around bullying and sexist stereotypes, but we've always meant Sissyfight to be an intervention into the male-dominated culture of games," writes co-author Eric Zimmerman. It'll be ...
Read in browser Hellishly complex, gorgeous assemblage about endless work
By Cory Doctorow on May 16, 2013 12:56 am "Quaestus" is the latest assemblage from sculptor Jud Turner. He sez, "Quaestus" is a latin word meaning "gain or profit extracted from work", a concept darkly represented in my latest sculpture: 5 tiny employees are trapped in an endless task inside a gigantic machine, toiling to keep up with the conveyor belts they are walking ...
Read in browser Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey explained in 1968 Howard Johnson's children's menu
By Mark Frauenfelder on May 16, 2013 12:13 am It's hard to describe how much I like this.
Read in browser HOWTO make glowing Converse
By Cory Doctorow on May 16, 2013 12:00 am The good people at Adafruit have an easy way to make your Chucks glow! Make your logo light up with this simple Converse sneaker mod. All you need is EL panel and an inverter tucked into the tongue of your shoe to get the stars in your Chuck Taylors glowing. Two styles! Glowing Star Chuck ...
Read in browser Record Eater: 1967 record player that ran in any orientation
By Cory Doctorow on May 15, 2013 10:46 pm Every single thing about this ad is great: the illustration, the typography, the industrial design of the gadget, the copy. What a beauty. The Record Eater '45 rpm' record player ad, 1967. (via BruceS)
Read in browser North Carolina may ban Tesla sales to prevent "Unfair Competition"
By Mark Frauenfelder on May 15, 2013 09:44 pm A car dealership trade union in North Carolina has persuaded the state's Senate Commerce Committee to unanimously approve a law that would prohibit automakers from selling cars. The bill is being pushed by the North Carolina Automobile Dealers Association, a trade group representing the state's franchised dealerships. Its sponsor is state Sen. Tom Apodaca, a ...
Read in browser Book-and-record set for the League of Space Pirates
By Cory Doctorow on May 15, 2013 09:09 pm Noah Scalin sez, "Thought you might enjoy this little video I made to promote the latest release from my science fiction project League of Space Pirates (yes, apparently they still have As Seen On TV commercials in the future). It's a return to the classic book & record format of the 70s/80s. In this case ...
Read in browser You don't have a moral obligation to cook
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 15, 2013 08:10 pm I have found myself frustrated with Michael Pollan lately. In the course of promoting his new book about cooking, he's taken to spouting some opinions that I'll frankly call claptrap. He's mocked women who felt trapped by the kitchen drudgery that they got stuck with simply because they owned a vagina. He's implied that it's ...
Read in browser Katamari Adventure Time
By Cory Doctorow on May 15, 2013 08:00 pm What better subject for a t-shirt than an Adventure Time/Katamari Damacy mashup? Adventure Time Ball
Read in browser We Can Fix it! - a graphic novel time travel memoir
By Mark Frauenfelder on May 15, 2013 07:40 pm Cartoonist Jess Fink, creator of the erotic Victorian-era robot graphic novel Chester 5000-XYV has a new memoir out called We Can Fix It: A Time Travel Memoir. It's got a premise that reminds me of something Nicholson Baker would come up with: Fink invents a time machine and travels into the past to visit younger ...
Read in browser Help make Abercrombie and Fitch synonymous with homelessness
By Cory Doctorow on May 15, 2013 07:18 pm As you know, Abercrombie and Fitch is a horrible shitshow of a company whose owner refuses to make large sized clothes so that "unattractive people" can't wear them, and who burns surplus clothing rather than donating it to charity to keep their clothes off poor peoples' backs. So Gkarber has set out to make the ...
Read in browser Artist finds the faces lurking in maps
By Cory Doctorow on May 15, 2013 06:00 pm Artist Ed Fairburn selective colors in maps, revealing faces lurking in potentia in their many lines, contours and shapes. He sells prints. These are gorgeous. Shown here: Paris. Ed Fairburn (via Neatorama)
Read in browser Abusive restaurateurs stage spectacular social media meltdown
By Cory Doctorow on May 15, 2013 05:14 pm Amy's Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro is Scottsdale, AZ gained some small notoriety when it became the first restaurant that Gordon Ramsey gave up on in his show Kitchen Nightmares, in which the restaurateur helps failing businesses reform their ways. The Ramsey segments show the owners of the restaurant, Samy and Amy Bouzaglo, screaming ...
Read in browser Ne plus ultra of retrogamer wedding cakes
By Cory Doctorow on May 15, 2013 04:07 pm This amazing retro-gamer wedding cake was made by Wedding Cakes By Nicole of Bunbury, Australia. The cake pays homage to many of the arcade greats: I created a 3 tier square cake, with each of the sides representing a popular retro platform game. Topped off with a game off Pong, with the score depicting Stephen's ...
Read in browser Dictionary of Numbers: browser extension humanizes the numbers on the Web
By Cory Doctorow on May 15, 2013 03:03 pm Dictionary of Numbers is a Chrome extension that watches your browsing activity for mentions of large numerical measurements and automatically inserts equivalences in real-world terms that are meant to clarify things. For example, a story about a 300,000 acre forest fire would be annotated to note that this is about the area of LA or ...
Read in browser Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde is a candidate for Pirate Party MEP in Finland
By Cory Doctorow on May 15, 2013 03:02 pm Peter "brokep" Sunde -- who co-founded The Pirate Bay and founded Flattr, a system for allowing fans to directly pay the artists they love -- is standing for the European Parliament in Finland on behalf of the Finnish Pirate Party. Sunde was raised in Sweden, but has Finnish roots, and is able to run there. ...
Read in browser Free stream: The Source Family soundtrack of 1970s cult psychedelia
By David Pescovitz on May 15, 2013 02:43 pm The Source Family was a radical, utopian social experiment that emerged from the Los Angeles freak scene in the 1970s. Operating out of a hip health food restaurant owned by judo master/bank robber/accused murderer Jim Baker, aka Father Yod, The Source Family was everything you could want in a post-hippie, West Coast outsider spiritual trip. ...
Read in browser Watch a caterpillar turn into a butterfly, in 3D
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 15, 2013 02:03 pm What happens inside a caterpillar's cocoon? Scientists got to watch the whole process with the help of X-ray 3D scanning technology. In the video above, you can watch a caterpillar turn into a butterfly. Over the course of 16 days its breathing tubes (shown in blue) and its digestive system (shown in red) change shape ...
Read in browser The happiest little plankton in the world
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 15, 2013 01:48 pm Artist Hiné Mizushima makes these super adorable models of microscopic crustaceans called Daphnia out of felt. Scientists like to get the real-world versions of these creatures drunk, and use them to study how alcohol affects the nervous system. I suspect that Daphnia are cute drunks. Via David Ng
Read in browser The BBC discovers the Texas Germans — and a dying dialect
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 15, 2013 01:33 pm My great-grandmother, Hedwig Nietzsche Koerth, never spoke English. My Grandpa Gustav didn't learn the language until he entered first grade. But, by the time I was in grade school — and was going through a brief fling of learning German — Grandpa no longer remembered much of what had once been his first language. Today, ...
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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