PLOS Computational Biology wants your t-shirt designs Hannah Peel covers OMD's "Electricity" on an antique music box Masterclass in making with Bunnie Huang at the Hardware Innovation Workshop Prison and racial segregation: why a Jewish guy eats with the Aryan Brotherhood Why "connecting the dots" is the wrong way to think about stopping terrorism DroneShield: crowdfunded, networked drone detectors Looking for mathematical perfection in all the wrong places When all the cool kids were hijacking airplanes Speed-aging bourbon with the power of technology Casio Pathfinder Solar Atomic Watch Baby humans are premature, fetal apes This Antarctic documentary looks beautiful Labs of the heroic age of science Jews are the best magicians What happens when you mix global disease and authoritarian governments Kevin Mack's new 3D printed sculptures Smartphone app gives public access to Malibu's illegal "private" beaches Clickable musical genre map PLOS Computational Biology wants your t-shirt designs
By Cory Doctorow on May 04, 2013 11:51 am Alan sez, "The fine folk doing open-access science at PLOS are once again crowd-sourcing their T-shirt design. They want something that 'appeal[s] to the computational biology community and encapsulate[s] a recent advance or innovation in the field.' You have until May 14 to submit ideas for a shirt that will debut at their July meeting ...
Read in browser Hannah Peel covers OMD's "Electricity" on an antique music box
By Cory Doctorow on May 04, 2013 08:49 am Rick sez, "Hannah Peel found an old musical box in her grandmother's trunk, and rebuilt it, sampled it, looped it and created this lovely cover version of the OMD song Electricity. The very inexpensive EP includes similar versions of Blue Monday and Tainted Love. Exquisite!" Electricity - Hannah Peel (Thanks, Rick)
Read in browser Masterclass in making with Bunnie Huang at the Hardware Innovation Workshop
By Cory Doctorow on May 03, 2013 11:21 pm On May 14-15, Make is hosting its second annual Hardware Innovation Workshop in San Mateo, CA. There's a pretty amazing speaker lineup, but perhaps most exciting is a "Maker Pro Master Class" with Andrew "bunnie" Huang, one of the great hardware hackers of our age.
Read in browser Prison and racial segregation: why a Jewish guy eats with the Aryan Brotherhood
By Cory Doctorow on May 03, 2013 09:09 pm From a 2009 Southern Poverty Law Center report, David Arenberg describes his life as a Jewish guy inside a heavily racially segregated state prison where he faces violence and even death if he doesn't eat with the Aryan Brotherhood. Arenberg uses the essay to jump into a harrowing view into the rise of serious, politicized ...
Read in browser Why "connecting the dots" is the wrong way to think about stopping terrorism
By Cory Doctorow on May 03, 2013 07:13 pm Bruce Schneier has a great op-ed on CNN on why it's stupid to talk about whether the FBI should have "connected the dots" on the Boston bomber. As Bruce points out, it's only in hindsight that there's a neat trail of dots to connect, a narrative we can make sense of. Before the fact, it's ...
Read in browser DroneShield: crowdfunded, networked drone detectors
By Cory Doctorow on May 03, 2013 04:58 pm DroneShield is an indieGOGO project from a DC aerospace engineer that aims to build a tiny, net-connected drone-detector/identifier. Based on a Raspberry Pi gumstick computer, it uses a mic to detect the audio signature of nearby drones, and then communicates about its findings over the Internet. The project promises free/open hardware and software specs on ...
Read in browser Looking for mathematical perfection in all the wrong places
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 03, 2013 04:05 pm The Golden Ratio — that geometric expression of the Fibonacci sequence of numbers (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, etc.) — has influenced the way master painters created art and can be spotted occurring naturally in the seed arrangement on the face of a sunflower. But its serendipitous appearances aren't nearly as frequent as pop culture ...
Read in browser When all the cool kids were hijacking airplanes
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 03, 2013 03:50 pm Between 1968 and 1973, somebody hijacked a commercial airliner nearly every week.
Read in browser Speed-aging bourbon with the power of technology
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 03, 2013 03:40 pm When bourbon ages, what's actually happening is that daily fluctuations in temperature are changing the pressure in the barrel, forcing liquid in and out of pores in the oak. At NPR, Alan Greenblatt writes about an entrepreneur who has figured out how to mechanically recreate this process — speeding up the time it takes to ...
Read in browser Casio Pathfinder Solar Atomic Watch
By Cool Tools on May 03, 2013 03:24 pm I’ve owned a Casio Pathfinder Solar Atomic series watch for about 5 years. The best things about it: 1) it’s solar powered (I don’t like replacing batteries) and 2) it’s linked to an atomic clock. I only have to change the time zone when I travel, which can be done at the push of a ...
Read in browser Baby humans are premature, fetal apes
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 03, 2013 03:23 pm My dad calls the first few months of a baby's life "the necessary larval stage". I've heard other people refer to it as "the fourth trimester". Basically, newborn human babies are pretty useless, as far as baby animals go. This is especially true in comparison to baby apes, who come out of the womb at ...
Read in browser This Antarctic documentary looks beautiful
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 03, 2013 02:55 pm Antarctica: A Year On Ice looks like it's going to offer a damn fine supply of polar landscape porn. Be sure to stick through to the final scene of the trailer, which is awe-inspiring in an entirely different way.
Read in browser Labs of the heroic age of science
By Cory Doctorow on May 03, 2013 02:46 pm On IO9, Vincze Miklós has rounded up a beautiful gallery of photos of vintage science labs, from the Renaissance to Pasteur and Edison and ENIAC. Labs like these are the source of the shared dream of what science looks like that dominates our contemporary consciousness, even though most labs today look very different (science, like ...
Read in browser Jews are the best magicians
By David Pescovitz on May 03, 2013 02:26 pm "The Jews have the greatest powers of sorcery, and they make use of this tool," top Iranian official Mehdi Taeb said last week. He's right, we do. "Iranian official: Jews used sorcery against Iran" (Jerusalem Post) photo by Ransom & Mitchell
Read in browser What happens when you mix global disease and authoritarian governments
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 03, 2013 02:10 pm When SARS emerged in China in 2002, the Chinese government tried to cover it up, waiting months to inform the World Health Organization. In fact, the WHO first heard about SARS from a Canadian monitoring service that picked up and translated Chinese reports of a "flu outbreak". Something similar happened this week. Only this time, ...
Read in browser Kevin Mack's new 3D printed sculptures
By Mark Frauenfelder on May 03, 2013 01:46 pm My friend Kevin Mack will be in an upcoming art show at PS Zask Gallery to exhibit his mind-bending 3D printed sculptures. My sculptures are created digitally using a variety of tools and processes. They are then produced as 3D printed objects in nylon and bronze. I also create high resolution computer renderings of them, ...
Read in browser Smartphone app gives public access to Malibu's illegal "private" beaches
By Mark Frauenfelder on May 03, 2013 01:28 pm For decades, the unimaginably wealthy residents of Malibu's oceanfront mansions have been using sneaky tricks to prevent the public from accessing the beautiful beaches in the area. But, as reported in USA Today, "The California Coastal Commission, a powerful state environmental agency, says the law allows everyone to frolic in the waves and the damp ...
Read in browser Clickable musical genre map
By David Pescovitz on May 03, 2013 01:15 pm "Every Noise At Once" is a fun, clickable map of musical genres where you can hear samples of the bands.
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
Great content material and great layout. Your website deserves all of the positive feedback it’s been getting.
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