Peter Tscherkassky's contemporary cut-up films Animated graphic of meteorites seen impacting Earth Sometimes, you misplace your Moon dust Satellites trace the appearance of crop circles in Saudi Arabia Stop homeopathic "vaccines" in Canada Guatemala: Ríos Montt trial enters final phase, 75 years sought for genocide, crimes against humanity Eschersketch: automated tessellated Escher-esque drawing toy Awesome amateur horror makeup Guatemala: The science behind historic genocide trial of General Ríos Montt (video report) New York City's nastiest apartments CNN fakes satellite interview with two anchors in same car lot The Troll Sanctuary Guatemalan Government declares State of Siege after Mining Protests: video report Movie posters with the working--often much better--titles Guatemala: Why We Cannot Turn Away The drug war's perverse incentives Apple's man behind the camera NeoLucida: kickstarting a new version of the Old Masters' favorite drawing gadget NewsCorp shareholders make another bid to democratize the Murdoch family empire Bounce your way to insanity with web game Rebound Deer steals wife Skeuomorphism, Apple, and Ricardo Montalbán's favorite station wagon Welcome to the century of the copyright troll: Prenda Law was just the beginning Humble Double-Fine Bundle: name your price for an amazing Double Fine games bundle Leather bracelet from Bob Basset Strange ways to contract rare diseases Why music makes us all verklempt (or angry, or wistful, or ...) More evidence that your mom's illnesses can affect your mental health Why a grand, unified theory of artificial intelligence may be a pipe dream Technology, business, culture and more ... from a female perspective Peter Tscherkassky's contemporary cut-up films
By David Pescovitz on May 09, 2013 12:59 pm Austrian avant-garde filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky makes compelling cut-up movies from "found" 16mm and 35mm footage and samples from other movies. All of the frames and clips are treated in the darkroom, without digital tools. Outer Space (1999), seen above, The Entity chops up bits from The Entity, a 1982 horror film starring Barbara Hershey.
Read in browser Animated graphic of meteorites seen impacting Earth
By David Pescovitz on May 09, 2013 12:45 pm Carlo Zapponi created Bolides, a fantastic animated visualization of meteorites that have been seen hitting the Earth. The data source is the Nomenclature Committee of the Meteoritical Society's Meteorite Bulletin. "The word bolide comes from Greek βολίς bolis, which means missile. Astronomers tend to use bolide to identify an exceptionally bright fireball, particularly one that ...
Read in browser Sometimes, you misplace your Moon dust
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 09, 2013 12:34 pm The University of California, Berkeley recently found 20 vials of Moon dust in an archival warehouse. Apparently, these were all loaned research samples that should have been returned to NASA more than 40 years ago. This is not the only institution to suffer from the same problem. At least 12 states had (and then lost) ...
Read in browser Satellites trace the appearance of crop circles in Saudi Arabia
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 09, 2013 12:21 pm It's not the work of aliens. Instead, you can chalk these crop circles up to humans + money + time. And, with the help of satellite imaging, you can watch as humans use money to change the desert over the course of almost 30 years. Landsat is a United States satellite program that's been in ...
Read in browser Stop homeopathic "vaccines" in Canada
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 09, 2013 11:41 am The Canadian government has approved the sale of nosodes — homeopathic alternatives to vaccines. I probably don't have to explain to you all why giving children a sugar pill that works no better than placebo is a bad, bad, bad idea when the diseases you're trying to prevent are things like polio, measles, and rabies. ...
Read in browser Guatemala: Ríos Montt trial enters final phase, 75 years sought for genocide, crimes against humanity
By Xeni Jardin on May 09, 2013 11:39 am Ixil Mayan women read about the trial in today's newspaper, while waiting for day 26 of the proceedings against Ríos Montt and Rodriguez Sanchez to begin in the courtroom. The former de facto dictator and his head of Intelligence are accused of genocide and crimes against humanity committed against the Ixil during a de facto ...
Read in browser Eschersketch: automated tessellated Escher-esque drawing toy
By Cory Doctorow on May 09, 2013 11:37 am Levskaya's Eschersketch is a GitHub-hosted web-toy that produces Escher style tessellated drawings that are very good fun to make and elaborate upon. Eschersketch (Thanks, Hugh!)
Read in browser Awesome amateur horror makeup
By Cory Doctorow on May 09, 2013 11:15 am Click above for full-on grodiness Redditor ImNotJesus has a friend who does her own amateur horror makeup. She's pretty amazing -- check out the ultra-gross fool-the-eye gaping eye-socket wound above. A good friend of mine does horror makeup regularly. What do you guys think? I'm going to surprise her with the support. [X-post from /r/horror] ...
Read in browser Guatemala: The science behind historic genocide trial of General Ríos Montt (video report)
By Xeni Jardin on May 09, 2013 11:06 am Video above: "From Guatemalan Soil, Unearthing Evidence of Genocide," a report I produced with Miles O'Brien for PBS NewsHour on the science behind the historic genocide trial that is in its concluding phase today, here in Guatemala City. Complete transcript of the video report is here. Forensic science, data analysis, satellite images, and a massive ...
Read in browser New York City's nastiest apartments
By Rob Beschizza on May 09, 2013 11:01 am The Worst Room is a blog exploring the seedy and insanitary world of New York City's "affordable housing." The home featured above, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is yours for $1200 a month.
Read in browser CNN fakes satellite interview with two anchors in same car lot
By Rob Beschizza on May 09, 2013 10:56 am The medium is the message! This extravagantly bizarre moment, courtesy of the producers of CNN Headline News, defies explanation in its giggle-inducing madness.
Read in browser The Troll Sanctuary
By Rob Beschizza on May 09, 2013 10:48 am Gym instructor Michelle Kerrins owns more than 3,000 fiery-haired troll dolls and spends much of her week combing thrift stores for more. There's even a video tour of her collection—the segment is part of a forthcoming episode of TLC's My Crazy Obsession.
Read in browser Guatemalan Government declares State of Siege after Mining Protests: video report
By Xeni Jardin on May 09, 2013 10:47 am For PBS NewsHour, I spoke with Miles O'Brien from inside the "State of Siege" zone, where the government has declared a state of military occupation in response to protests over a US/Canadian-owned mine. Today, debate continues between Congress, the Constitutional Court, and the administration of President Otto Perez Molina, over whether the State of Siege ...
Read in browser Movie posters with the working--often much better--titles
By Rob Beschizza on May 09, 2013 10:29 am What if movies had kept their provisional/stealth titles? [via Reddit]
Read in browser Guatemala: Why We Cannot Turn Away
By Xeni Jardin on May 09, 2013 10:28 am José Ceto Cabo, an Ixil civil war survivor who runs a small NGO that aids fellow Ixil survivors, leads Miles and Xeni to a clandestine grave from the armed conflict war. Photo by Xeni Jardin. GUATEMALA CITY -- When the trial of Guatemalan General and former de facto head of state José Efraín Ríos Montt ...
Read in browser The drug war's perverse incentives
By Rob Beschizza on May 09, 2013 10:24 am How come the police kick down the doors of medica marijuana users, but ignore reports of men keeping girls on leashes? [Kristen Gwynnne at AlterNet]
Read in browser Apple's man behind the camera
By Rob Beschizza on May 09, 2013 10:17 am Peter Belanger reveals the technical complexity behind Cupertino's cooly minimalist advertising. [Michael Shane at The Verge]
Read in browser NeoLucida: kickstarting a new version of the Old Masters' favorite drawing gadget
By Cory Doctorow on May 09, 2013 10:13 am Pablo Garcia and Golan Levin, two celebrated art profs and dead media specialists, have launched a fantastically successful kickstarter to recreate the Camera Lucida, a gadget much favored by the Old Masters. It uses an optical trick to superimpose the scene in front of you on a sheet of paper that you can trace in ...
Read in browser NewsCorp shareholders make another bid to democratize the Murdoch family empire
By Cory Doctorow on May 09, 2013 09:11 am The traditional shareholder revolt at NewsCorp (owner of Fox, Fox News, Sky, Harper Collins, the NY Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Sun) is back for another run, and this time it's gathering steam and may indeed make it. Rupert Murdoch and his family own a minority of the shares in NewsCorp, but their shares ...
Read in browser Bounce your way to insanity with web game Rebound
By Rob Beschizza on May 09, 2013 09:09 am Imagine Bennett Foddy's QWOP reduced to abstraction, the warm of embrace of pure insanity. You would have Rebound, an entry in the latest Ludum Dare game development contest by Creatively Bankrupt. My high score is -2. [via @bfod]
Read in browser Deer steals wife
By Rob Beschizza on May 09, 2013 08:49 am Via Graham Linehan, "a #unicornchaser from yesternet." Previously: Do not mess with baby deer.
Read in browser Skeuomorphism, Apple, and Ricardo Montalbán's favorite station wagon
By David Pescovitz on May 08, 2013 11:43 pm Over at Apple, Jony Ive is reportedly pulling back on the skeuomorphism for iOS 7. I'm glad. I don't care for skeuomorphism except in a very few instances, like the 1982 Chrysler Town & Country seen above with Ricardo Montalbán.
Read in browser Welcome to the century of the copyright troll: Prenda Law was just the beginning
By Cory Doctorow on May 08, 2013 11:20 pm As the saga of the porno copyright trolls Prenda Law moves into its end-game (likely to involve disbarments and jail time for the fraudsters behind the multimillion-dollar scheme that relied on bogus legal threats and sloppy accusations of copyright infringement), it's worth asking, how, exactly, this scam was able to go on for so long, ...
Read in browser Humble Double-Fine Bundle: name your price for an amazing Double Fine games bundle
By Cory Doctorow on May 08, 2013 09:06 pm The Humble Indie Bundle is back again, with the The Humble Double Fine Bundle: name your price for three DoubleFine games, pay more than the average and get a fourth, pay $35 or more and get backer access to the Broken Age Kickstarter, and at $70, you get a t-shirt, too! It's all DRM-free and ...
Read in browser Leather bracelet from Bob Basset
By Cory Doctorow on May 08, 2013 07:00 pm The Ukraine's Bob Basset is best known for its leather steampunk/fetish masks, but now the leatherworking group has turned its hand to wrist decorations. They call this a "men's bracelet," but I don't see anything gender-specific in its design. Steampunk Mens Bracelet
Read in browser Strange ways to contract rare diseases
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 08, 2013 06:48 pm The Body Horrors blog has a new recurring series called Microbial Misadventures — all about times when people met disease-causing microbes under less-than-normal circumstances. It starts with an interesting question: Given the fact that most anthrax infections come from eating tainted meat, how did a vegetarian end up with the disease in 2009? Two-word hint: ...
Read in browser Why music makes us all verklempt (or angry, or wistful, or ...)
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 08, 2013 06:42 pm It could just be cultural connections that make us identify one song as happy and another as sad. But, explains Joe Hanson, there's evidence that our emotional connections to music are more universal than that. In this video about evolution, music, and smooshy feelings, Hanson describes a study that asked participants to create short lines ...
Read in browser More evidence that your mom's illnesses can affect your mental health
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 08, 2013 06:32 pm You've probably heard before that people with schizophrenia are more likely to have been born in winter than other seasons — and that this weird fact could be linked to their mothers coming down with the flu, or suffering from Vitamin D deficiency. A new study has now found that people with bipolar disorder had ...
Read in browser Why a grand, unified theory of artificial intelligence may be a pipe dream
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 08, 2013 06:16 pm A computer scientist and a psychology professor analyze Entropica — the artificial intelligence system that's been getting major buzz in the blogosphere. Quick version: It's a good idea, but it underestimates the complexity of the real world. Sure, you could create an AI that can play chess, but that same bot won't necessarily have the ...
Read in browser Technology, business, culture and more ... from a female perspective
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 08, 2013 05:31 pm Medium just launched Lady Bits, a new collection hosted by former Wired.com editor Arikia Millikan. The goal: Provide a space for the kinds of stories and perspectives that get left out of traditional magazines because of advertising profiles that say tech readers are all dudes. It's a worthy idea and I'm looking forward to seeing ...
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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