Treasure Island Music Festival 2013 lineup UK Ministry of Justice denies that the court system is to be sold to hedge funds Queer indie games Turntable that "plays" the rings of a tree Guatemala: Genocide in Our Hemisphere event D.C. May 29 with scholars, survivors; Xeni moderating Fascinating iOS apps for music making 15 SFF classics rejected by publishers British invade U.S. media Watch the latest hand-picked videos in Boing Boing's video archives Anatomy of a password-crack, part II Toronto mayoral car-crash: homicide detectives search mayor's office after tip on crack-smoking video; top staffers quit Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, Ice T's First Record and Uncle Jamm's Army Shambling Guide to New York City Excellent bad advice $200k raised to buy claimed video of Toronto Mayor smoking crack Disaster porn and elite panic: the militarized lie of savage disaster aftermath Fully functional Apple-1 from 1976 sold for almost $700K Library Lounge: decorating with books Kafka, meet Orwell: peek behind the scenes of the modern surveillance state Oh Joy Sex Toy: dildo funnies High school teacher faces discipline for Informing students about their rights E-waste porn: a tour of Silicon Valley's Weird Stuff Warehouse Treasure Island Music Festival 2013 lineup
By David Pescovitz on May 28, 2013 12:57 pm Our dear friends at San Francisco's
Treasure Island Music Festival More have announced the (killer) line-up for this year's two-day extravaganza, October 19-20, 2013! If you're not familiar, Treasure Island is a masterfully-curated mix of electronic/dance and alt.rock that takes place in a stunning location right on the San Francisco Bay.
Read in browser UK Ministry of Justice denies that the court system is to be sold to hedge funds
By Cory Doctorow on May 28, 2013 12:09 pm The UK Ministry of Justice has denied a
report in The Times that claimed the courts were to be privatised and paid for henceforth through hedge fund investments made in anticipation of high court fees extracted from wealthy litigants.
While confirming that civil servants are looking at ways of improving the efficiency of the HM Courts & Tribunal Service (HMCTS), the MoJ denied that it planned to outsource all court buildings to a private contractor. More
Read in browser Queer indie games
By Rob Beschizza on May 28, 2013 12:08 pm Brendan Keogh checks out the
the "secret avant garde of video games." "Queer people have always been creating culture from the margins," insists Anna Anthropy, game developer and author. "Like, queer people popularized jeans. It was queer soldiers who started wearing jeans outside of the military, and then that became popular. More
Read in browser Turntable that "plays" the rings of a tree
By David Pescovitz on May 28, 2013 11:35 am Bartholomäus Traubeck's "Years" is a modified record player that "plays" a slice of a tree, converting (and transforming) year ring data into piano music.
It is mapped to a scale which is again defined by the overall appearance of the wood (ranging from dark to light and from strong texture to light texture). More
Read in browser Guatemala: Genocide in Our Hemisphere event D.C. May 29 with scholars, survivors; Xeni moderating
By Xeni Jardin on May 28, 2013 11:30 am Benjamin Manuel Geronimo, massacre survivor, and representative of Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR), speaking in the genocide trial in Guatemala City on May 9, 2010. On Wednesday, May 29, I will be among the moderators at a very special event in Washington, DC at the New America Foundation, "
Genocide in Our Hemisphere: Justice and Reconciliation in Guatemala Beyond the Conviction of General Ríos Montt More." Featured speakers at the event include scholars, massacre survivors, and people who were directly involved in the genocide trial of Ríos Montt, which ended with a guilty verdict on May 10, only to be thrown out ten days later in an unprecedented move by Guatemala's Constitutional Court.More on the event below.
Read in browser Fascinating iOS apps for music making
By David Pescovitz on May 28, 2013 11:27 am Over at our sponsor Intel's LifeScoop site, I
wrote about several fascinating iOS apps for music creation that employ non-traditional and intuitive interfaces. My favorite is
SoundPrism:
Created by Audanika in Germany, SoundPrism is a stunning interface that immerses the user in a relaxing, meditative music making experience. More
Read in browser 15 SFF classics rejected by publishers
By Rob Beschizza on May 28, 2013 11:21 am Charlie Jane Anders and Michael Ann Dobbs offer
an illustrious list More that includes H.G. Wells, George Orwell, Ray Bradbury and Ursula K. LeGuin. [i09]
Read in browser British invade U.S. media
By Rob Beschizza on May 28, 2013 11:12 am At a bar in Vegas, during the sprawling PR shitfeast that is the Consumer Electronics Show, I overheard someone ask a companion, "Why do we keep hiring British drunks to run everything?" I didn't volunteer an opinion, but
the Washington Post has all the answers. More Read in browser Watch the latest hand-picked videos in Boing Boing's video archives
By Xeni Jardin on May 28, 2013 11:10 am Among the most recent video posts you will find on
our video archive page: • Middle Eastern flavored Radiohead cover • What does a $4,000 vinyl record sound like? • Little Mermaid's Ursula does the Haunted Mansion narration • Videos of dead media devices • Google Glass photographers: the future looks awkward • Simpsons land coming to Universal Studios Florida • Laptop with thermite self-destruct mechanism • Van Halen's "Eruption" guitar solo shredded by 14yo girl
Boing Boing: Video archives More Read in browser Anatomy of a password-crack, part II
By Cory Doctorow on May 28, 2013 11:01 am Ars Technica's Nate Anderson
Dan Goodin follows up on Nate Anderson's
excellent piece on the nuts and bolts of password cracking More with a further attempt to decrypt an encrypted password file leaked from LivingSocial, this time with the aid of experts.
Read in browser Toronto mayoral car-crash: homicide detectives search mayor's office after tip on crack-smoking video; top staffers quit
By Cory Doctorow on May 28, 2013 10:00 am More drama from the world of Toronto Mayor "Laughable Bumblefuck" Ford -- first, reporters from two rival news entities independently verified the existence of
a video showing the mayor smoking what appeared to be crack cocaine More and passing racist remarks about the kids on the football team he coached.
Read in browser Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, Ice T's First Record and Uncle Jamm's Army
By Ed Piskor on May 28, 2013 09:38 am Read the rest of the Hip Hop Family Tree comics! More Read in browser Shambling Guide to New York City
By Cory Doctorow on May 28, 2013 09:00 am Mur Lafferty is one of the worst-kept secrets in science fiction and fantasy publishing. "Secret" in that her fiction has not been widely published (until now). "Worst-kept" in that she has been such a force of nature -- the podcaster's podcaster, author of a huge corpus of excellent self-published work, and a skilled editor currently running Escape Pod -- that anyone who's been paying attention has known that there were great things coming from her.
More Read in browser Excellent bad advice
By Cory Doctorow on May 27, 2013 10:59 pm "Here's that bad advice you were hoping for" is a Tumblr that picks out letters to advice columns (as well as direct requests from readers) and writes scathing, hilarious responses:
NYT, Social Q's, 24 May 2013: Our group of close friends has spent the last few years attending one another's weddings. More
Read in browser $200k raised to buy claimed video of Toronto Mayor smoking crack
By Rob Beschizza on May 27, 2013 10:39 pm Gawker hit its target with hours to spare, but have already warned readers that the ne'er-do-wells in possession of the alleged evidence might
not be willing or able to do business More. In that case, the funds will go to charity.
Read in browser Disaster porn and elite panic: the militarized lie of savage disaster aftermath
By Cory Doctorow on May 27, 2013 08:48 pm Jonathan M. Katz reported on the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake for the AP. What he saw there ran contrary to the prevailing narrative of violence, looting and lawlessness in the streets. Instead, what he found was another example of
"Elite Panic" More, the UN's "relief" forces landing heavily armed people all around the island who treated everyone as a bestial looter.
Read in browser Fully functional Apple-1 from 1976 sold for almost $700K
By Xeni Jardin on May 27, 2013 06:04 pm The Apple-1. Photo:
apple2history.org. One of the first Apple computers, a fully functional model built in 1976, has been sold for a record 516,000 Euros (about USD $668,000).
From the AP's account:
German auction house Breker said Saturday an Asian client, who asked not to be named, bought the so-called Apple 1, which the tech company's founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built in a family garage. More
Read in browser Library Lounge: decorating with books
By Cory Doctorow on May 27, 2013 05:41 pm The
Library Lounge at the B2 Boutique Hotel Zürich More is one of those amazing temple-of-books rooms that always make me catch my breath. If I had a teleporter, this is where I'd go every time I felt stressed out. (Except for the wallpaper with the pattern that looks like JPEG artifacts -- that'd have to go).
Read in browser Kafka, meet Orwell: peek behind the scenes of the modern surveillance state
By Cory Doctorow on May 27, 2013 03:00 pm Journeyman Pictures' short documentary "Naked Citizens" is an absolutely terrifying and amazing must-see glimpse of the modern security state, and the ways in which it automatically ascribes guilt to people based on algorithmic inferences, and, having done so, conducts such far-reaching surveillance into its victims' lives that the lack of anything incriminating is treated of proof of being a criminal mastermind:
"I woke up to pounding on my door", says Andrej Holm, a sociologist from the Humboldt University. More
Read in browser Oh Joy Sex Toy: dildo funnies
By Cory Doctorow on May 27, 2013 02:16 pm Oh Joy Sex Toy is a weekly webcomic that features reviews of sex toys, porn, pinups, sex clubs -- basically, the whole pervy gamut. It is written and drawn with such gosh-darn sweet enthusiasm by Erika Moen (with the occasional guest-shot from husband Matthew, who provides a
dude's perspective More) that even if your tastes are tamer than Moen's, I think you'll find it a perfectly wonderful read.
Read in browser High school teacher faces discipline for Informing students about their rights
By Mark Frauenfelder on May 27, 2013 01:57 pm Reason Hit & Run More: "A high school social studies teacher in Batavia, Illinois, faces disciplinary action for informing students of their Fifth Amendment rights in connection with a survey asking about illegal drug use."
Read in browser E-waste porn: a tour of Silicon Valley's Weird Stuff Warehouse
By Cory Doctorow on May 27, 2013 01:53 pm Ars Technica has a beautiful, mouth-watering gallery of the stuff for sale at Silicon Valley's
Weird Stuff Warehouse, a high-tech surplus store of epic proportion:
"There is a need for a place you can walk around and get parts and older technology—or even newer technology," said Chuck Schuetz, the man behind the Weird Stuff Warehouse. More
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
No comments:
Post a Comment