Vintage photos related to bugs Augmented reality game about NYC's Jewish cultural history Social steganography: how teens smuggle meaning past the authority figures in their lives Jack Kirby's grandson is kickstarting a coffee-table book about the "King of Comics" TOM THE DANCING BUG: The Truth Behind the Nixonian Presidency of Obama Man's attempt to videotape ghosts proves something more shocking Leaks and fear: "The government will decide what we can know" Guatemala: After high court collapses genocide case, trial may have to restart Independent Brewers United says they own sixes and nines Ray Manzarek, remembered by X's Exene Cervenka, John Doe Guatemala justice events in NYC today, May 22; and in DC on May 29 with Xeni Steampunk magazine #9 Contest: design peaceful uses for 3D printers Privacy, public health and the moral hazard of surveillance Bath time for Bonobo Everything done to WikiLeaks is now being done to US reporters Boba Fett mixer In China, controversy over bear bile farming as Asia's animal rights movement grows Guatemala: Genocide trial annullment amplifies chaos and fear Watch the latest hand-picked videos in Boing Boing's video archives Perils of smart cities Teacher suspended for touching girl inappropriately with banana during class CNN's Wolf Blitzer to tornado victim: "You gotta thank the lord". Victim: "I'm an atheist" 1958 video of Disney artists painting the same tree Chronology of the Canadian Conservative government's war on science Woman forces stepdaughter to wear dowdy thrift store clothes as punishment for bullying U.S. policy and the market for zero-day exploits: blowback fears grow in Washington Face morphing mirror at Maker Faire 2013 NYT lawyers to indie dev: "you need to remove any reference to The New York Times from your website" Fabergé Fractals Vintage photos related to bugs
By David Pescovitz on May 22, 2013 12:49 pm House of Mirth asked dedicated vernacular photo collectors to share their favorite vintage snapshots with an insect theme. Above is Robert Jackson's pick. Right is a snap from Pat Street's archives. "Bugs - They fly, bite and pester & sometimes people take photos of them"
Read in browser Augmented reality game about NYC's Jewish cultural history
By David Pescovitz on May 22, 2013 12:31 pm I think one of the most fascinating uses of augmented reality is to reveal the "secret histories" of neighborhoods, buildings, and other locations when you are actually in those spaces. Jewish Time Jump: New York is a new mobile AR game meant to teach young people about New York City's rich cultural history of Jewish ...
Read in browser Social steganography: how teens smuggle meaning past the authority figures in their lives
By Cory Doctorow on May 22, 2013 12:30 pm Danah boyd has a great summary of the new Pew report on Teens, Social Media, and Privacy. The whole thing is worth a read -- especially her thoughts on race and social media use -- but the most interesting stuff was about "social steganography" -- smuggling meaning past grown-ups through the clever use of in-jokes ...
Read in browser Jack Kirby's grandson is kickstarting a coffee-table book about the "King of Comics"
By Cory Doctorow on May 22, 2013 12:24 pm Zack sez, "Jack 'King of Comics' Kirby's grandson is looking to raise funds for a coffee-table-sized book that will look at Kirby's life and times...along with a never-before-seen play by the master of comics. The book will include a wide variety of unpublished personal photographs and artwork from Kirby dating through the 1980s." You have ...
Read in browser TOM THE DANCING BUG: The Truth Behind the Nixonian Presidency of Obama
By Ruben Bolling on May 22, 2013 11:45 am Tom the Dancing Bug's "The Truth About the Nixonian Presidency of Obama," IN WHICH Barack Obama takes advice from his little Dick.
Read in browser Man's attempt to videotape ghosts proves something more shocking
By David Pescovitz on May 22, 2013 11:43 am A Tasmanian fellow set up a video camera in his kitchen to capture images of what he believed to be paranormal activity. When he later reviewed the video, he saw his common law wife making out with (drumroll) his 16-year-old son. The young man revealed that they had sex several times. From The Mercury: The ...
Read in browser Leaks and fear: "The government will decide what we can know"
By Xeni Jardin on May 22, 2013 11:24 am Glenn Greenwald in a NYT op-ed: "The administration of Barack Obama has prosecuted more accused leakers under "espionage" statutes than all prior administrations combined -- in fact, double the number of all prior such prosecutions.
Read in browser Guatemala: After high court collapses genocide case, trial may have to restart
By Xeni Jardin on May 22, 2013 11:10 am Ríos Montt's attorney, Francisco García Gudiel. Photo: El Periodico, Guatemala. "They must restart the trial," he told the paper today. In Guatemala today, confusion and concern around what will become of the historic trial that found former US-backed military dictator Ríos Montt guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity. Just 10 days after that trial ...
Read in browser Independent Brewers United says they own sixes and nines
By Cory Doctorow on May 22, 2013 11:00 am Magic Hat IP, LLC and Independent Brewers United Corporation filed a remarkably spurious trademark lawsuit against West Sixth Brewery in Lexington, KY. Ben sez: The suit alleges that West Sixth's own logo, which is a "6" within a circle, infringes upon its trademarked "#9" mark and is "directing Defendant West Sixth to account for and ...
Read in browser Ray Manzarek, remembered by X's Exene Cervenka, John Doe
By Xeni Jardin on May 22, 2013 10:18 am Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek died Monday of cancer at 74. He produced the first four albums by seminal L.A. punk band X. Today in the Los Angeles Times, X's Exene Cervenka and John Doe speak about their memories of Manzarek as a generous teacher and a kind friend. (HT: @cruftbox)
Read in browser Guatemala justice events in NYC today, May 22; and in DC on May 29 with Xeni
By Xeni Jardin on May 22, 2013 09:52 am Photo: Protest, Guatemala City, April 19, 2013. James Rodriguez/mimundo.org. Here's info on two special events in NYC and DC with visiting speakers from Guatemala talking about human rights accountability in Guatemala, where the historic genocide trial of former US-backed military dictator Ríos Montt has just been overturned. Both events are free of charge, but you ...
Read in browser Steampunk magazine #9
By Cory Doctorow on May 22, 2013 09:41 am Margaret Killjoy sez, "Steampunk Magazine #9 is out and available for order. The pdf is up as well. New orders and pre-orders will be going out this weekend! 118 ad-free, Creative-Commons pages of steampunk mad science, lifestyle, fiction, and history. Including an interview with Cory Doctorow and how to make hydrogen airships out of condoms." ...
Read in browser Contest: design peaceful uses for 3D printers
By Cory Doctorow on May 22, 2013 08:35 am Bas writes, 3D printing is being condemned in the media because of the potential for printing guns. Engineers at Michigan Tech believe there is far more potential for 3D printers to make our lives better rather than killing one another. To encourage thinking about constructive uses of 3D printing technology Michigan Tech Open Sustainability Technology ...
Read in browser Privacy, public health and the moral hazard of surveillance
By Cory Doctorow on May 21, 2013 10:48 pm My new Guardian column, "Privacy, public health and the moral hazard of surveillance," discusses the way that the governments' reliance on social networks for intelligence purposes means that they can't intervene to help their populations get better at trading their privacy for services. That's a crisis. If online oversharing is a public health problem, then ...
Read in browser Bath time for Bonobo
By Xeni Jardin on May 21, 2013 10:43 pm "Bath Time." A photograph shared in the Boing Boing Flickr pool by Cody Pope.
Read in browser Everything done to WikiLeaks is now being done to US reporters
By Xeni Jardin on May 21, 2013 10:23 pm Data requests without a warrant. Government refusing to notify journalists they're being spied on. Equating journalists and reporting to spies and espionage. Potential "conspiracy to commit espionage" charges. "Virtually every move made by the Justice Department against WikiLeaks has now also been deployed on mainstream US journalists," writes Trevor Timm at Freedom of the Press ...
Read in browser Boba Fett mixer
By Cory Doctorow on May 21, 2013 10:15 pm DeviantArt's TommyFilth modded a KitchenAid mixer and gave it a perfect Boba Fett makeover: "I asked for a Kitchenaid mixer for Christmas, I pointed my wife toward a broken one on eBay so that I could refurbish it, as I was taking it apart I got some inspiration for the paint job and this is ...
Read in browser In China, controversy over bear bile farming as Asia's animal rights movement grows
By Xeni Jardin on May 21, 2013 10:11 pm In the New York Times, Andrew Jacobs reports on new outrage over the business of selling bile extracted from Asiatic black bears, a threatened species also known as the moon bear. The extraction process requires open wounds for "milkings" that take place three times a day. "The bears' teeth are invariably worn down from gnawing ...
Read in browser Guatemala: Genocide trial annullment amplifies chaos and fear
By Xeni Jardin on May 21, 2013 09:42 pm "I'm distressed. I don't know what's happening. That's how this country is. The powerful people do what they want and we poor and indigenous are devalued. We don't get justice. Justice means nothing for us."— Ana Caba, an Ixil Maya survivor of Guatemala's 36-year internal armed conflict. She became an internally displaced refugee, living in ...
Read in browser Watch the latest hand-picked videos in Boing Boing's video archives
By Xeni Jardin on May 21, 2013 09:34 pm Among the most recent video posts you will find on our video archive page: • Controversial banana-touching. • NASA solar flare video with Lars Leonhard music. • HOWTO make a "Swiss Army knife" key ring. • Museum home of Oddities' Ryan Matthew Cohn. • The Life of astronaut Sally Ride. • Ray Manzarek, founding member ...
Read in browser Perils of smart cities
By Cory Doctorow on May 21, 2013 09:12 pm Here'a an excellent piece on the promise and peril of "smart cities," which could be part of a system to make cities fairer and more transparent, or could form the basis for an authoritarian lockdown. As Adam Greenfield says, "[the centralized model of the smart city is] disturbingly consonant with the exercise of authoritarianism." The ...
Read in browser Teacher suspended for touching girl inappropriately with banana during class
By Xeni Jardin on May 21, 2013 09:02 pm A teacher in Florida has been disciplined for reportedly touching a female student inappropriately in the head and neck area with a banana. Jonathan Hampton was suspended for three days without pay from his teaching job at North Marion High School after the student's parents complained, roughly three months after the incident. According to his ...
Read in browser CNN's Wolf Blitzer to tornado victim: "You gotta thank the lord". Victim: "I'm an atheist"
By Rob Beschizza on May 21, 2013 08:20 pm This is CNN.
Read in browser 1958 video of Disney artists painting the same tree
By Mark Frauenfelder on May 21, 2013 08:14 pm I Love this 1958 video of old school Disney animators going outside to paint a tree (Thanks, Scott!)
Read in browser Chronology of the Canadian Conservative government's war on science
By Cory Doctorow on May 21, 2013 08:07 pm No government in Canadian history has been as hostile to science as Stephen Harper's Conservatives. John Dupuis has assembled a brief, brutal chronology of the ways that the Tories have attacked Canadian science. It's no coincidence that this government is so hostile to science, seeing as how its funding and grassroots support come from the ...
Read in browser Woman forces stepdaughter to wear dowdy thrift store clothes as punishment for bullying
By Mark Frauenfelder on May 21, 2013 07:38 pm Matthew says: "For several weeks, a fourth-grade girl was relentlessly harassing a classmate's choice of clothing. As punishment, the girl's stepmother spent about $50 at a thrift store and forced her to wear poorly-fitting and embarrassing clothing to school."
Read in browser U.S. policy and the market for zero-day exploits: blowback fears grow in Washington
By Xeni Jardin on May 21, 2013 07:10 pm Security researcher Charlie Miller sits in his home-office in Wildwood, Missouri, April 30, 2013. REUTERS/Sarah Conard. The booming market for hacking tools known as zero-day exploits has officials at the highest levels in Washington very worried, reports Joe Menn at Reuters, "even as U.S. agencies and defense contractors have become the biggest buyers of such ...
Read in browser Face morphing mirror at Maker Faire 2013
By Mark Frauenfelder on May 21, 2013 07:09 pm One of my favorite exhibits at Maker Faire Bay Area 2013 (held last weekend) was Alex Andre's Metamorphosis Project. It's a six-foot-diameter spinning disc with a hand crank. The disc is made of clear glass and mirrors in alternating quadrants. You stand on one side and line up your nose with a person standing on ...
Read in browser NYT lawyers to indie dev: "you need to remove any reference to The New York Times from your website"
By Rob Beschizza on May 21, 2013 07:03 pm Cody Brown, developer of software that makes it easy to generate classy website news features in the style of The New York Times' "Snow Fall", made a mistake: he used photos from that legendary web layout in a youtube demo. The NYT sent a cease and desist letter, and he took it down. But then ...
Read in browser Fabergé Fractals
By Cory Doctorow on May 21, 2013 07:00 pm Here's a mesmerizing gallery of "Fabrege Fractals" created by Tom Beddard, whose site also features a 2011 video of Fabrege-inspired fractal landscapes that must be seen to be believed. They're all made with Fractal Lab, a WebGL-based renderer Beddard created. Fabergé Fractals by Tom Beddard, using his WebGL-based fractal engine, Fractal Lab. (via Colossal)
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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