Yes, you can haz Caturday: 10 cute weekend cat photos shared by Boing Boing readers Coloring the Haunted Mansion Oculus Rift founder dies in accident Crowdfunding a tool to enable oceanography for the masses: OpenCTD What is the social media style of protest? Legendary Atari cartridge dump to be excavated Guide to making magic toys (1902) Turkish Spring: Taksim Gezi Park protests in Istanbul Gainsbourg and Bardot's "Bonnie and Clyde" (1968) Final scene from Black Orpheus Ronald McJoker Mouldering city built of bread is a metaphor for Earth without humans Bomber enraged by spelling error can't blow up sign because his bomb instructions were riddled with typos Real Stuff: Close Call Disneyland dry-ice explosion: employee did it twice Arms folded: a study in local reportage This is what a hairless raccoon looks like The Value in Fixing: Nat Geo's "World's Toughest Fixes" host Sean Riley in conversation with Xeni at Maker Faire Watch PBS NOVA on the science of the Boston bombing manhunt Grainy sonar image may or may not be new clue to Amelia Earhart's plane wreckage Northern Ireland builds a Potemkin Village for the G8 First-ever high-res photos of chemical bonds breaking Seattle Pot-trepreneur plans $100 Million chain of weed stores throughout America Verizon to NYT reporter: No, we won't tell you if we gave your phone records to the Feds The Society Of Glass Enthusiasts, an informal group of Google fans, walks into a bar... Phonetic description of annoying noises teenagers make Renowned voyaging crew launches greatest journey yet in Hawaiian canoe: four-year, worldwide trek Star Wars logo history Freelance archivists raising funds to preserve precious manuscripts rescued from fundamentalists in Timbuktu E. coli engineered into an analog computer Yes, you can haz Caturday: 10 cute weekend cat photos shared by Boing Boing readers
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 01, 2013 12:57 pm 1. "
Almost," by
John Gale. It's Caturday, folks. A great reason to dip into the
Boing Boing Flickr pool and check out some of the best cat photos shared by Boing Boing readers.
We do this semi-regularly around here; if you'd like to contribute your own for a future post, just add your cute cat photos to the
pool and tag 'em "Caturday." 2.
Read in browser Coloring the Haunted Mansion
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 01, 2013 12:56 pm The Long Forgotten blog hits another one out of the park (Disneyland park, that is), with a thought-provoking post on the history of the color scheme for the Haunted Mansion, and the way that color is used to set and maintain the mood:
"For Disneyland's Haunted Mansion, we wanted to create an imposing Southern-style house that would look old, but not in ruins.
Read in browser Oculus Rift founder dies in accident
By Dean Putney on Jun 01, 2013 12:30 pm Andrew Scott Reisse, one of the founding developers behind the incredible
Oculus Rift virtual reality headset
was hit by a car while walking yesterday. The car was being pursued by police, and struck two other cars before running a red light and hitting Reisse.
Read in browser Crowdfunding a tool to enable oceanography for the masses: OpenCTD
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 01, 2013 11:42 am CTD, or "Conductivity, temperature, and depth," are the three measurements with which marine scientists "unlock ocean patterns hidden beneath the waves." A group of scientists who believe in accessibility have a crowdfunding project to create
OpenCTD, an affordable tool with which citizen scientists and students of the sea can measure these three factors, and learn more about the ocean.
Read in browser What is the social media style of protest?
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 01, 2013 11:05 am Zeynep Tufekci's essay analyzing the role that social media played in both the #OccupyGezi and the Arab Spring explores the differences and similarities between different uprisings, and has some very incisive things to say about what social media contributes to political change movements:
It was after the Gezi protesters were met with the usual combination of tear-gas and media silence something interesting started happening.
Read in browser Legendary Atari cartridge dump to be excavated
By Rob Beschizza on Jun 01, 2013 10:52 am After producing too many copies of its infamously terrible
E.T. game, Atari
dumped the unsold inventory in a remote New Mexico landfill. Thirty years on, the local authorities have
greenlighted an excavation to see exactly what's down there. [John Bear at
The Alamogordo Daily News]
Read in browser Guide to making magic toys (1902)
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 01, 2013 09:55 am John sez, "The Falvey Library at Villanova University has just digitized a turn of the century guide to mechanical toys and small automata. They've been digitizing a lot of very interesting material--see more
here."
How to make magic toys : containing full directions for making magic toys and devices of many kinds / by A. Read in browser Turkish Spring: Taksim Gezi Park protests in Istanbul
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 01, 2013 04:32 am (Estimated 40,000 people cross the Bosphorous Bridge to join the protests/OccupyGeziPics) Taksim Gezi Park in Istanbul is alive with protest at this moment. The action began on May 28, when environmentalists protested plans to remove the park and replace it with a mall, and were met with a brutal police crackdown.
Read in browser Gainsbourg and Bardot's "Bonnie and Clyde" (1968)
By David Pescovitz on Jun 01, 2013 12:13 am Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot's "Bonnie and Clyde" from 1968. The lyrics (in French) are based on Bonnie Parker's poem "The Trail's End" that she wrote several weeks before she was killed. You can find the song on several releases, including Gainsbourg and Bardot's fantastic collaborative album "
Bonnie and Clyde" and also on multiple Gainsbourg compilations, including
Monsieur Gainsbourg: The Originals.
Read in browser Final scene from Black Orpheus
By Mark Frauenfelder on May 31, 2013 11:53 pm Watching the video about
Luiz, the adorable boy who explained why he didn't want to eat octopus, gave me the same feeling as the beautiful ending of
Black Orpheus, which is one of the best movie endings ever. It's not really a spoiler either, so enjoy it then watch the entire movie when you can.
Read in browser Ronald McJoker
By Cory Doctorow on May 31, 2013 11:22 pm This terrifying Ronald McDonald/Joker mashup cosplayer was snapped at San Jose's FanimeCon 2013 by David Ngo.
Ronald McDonald (
via Neatorama)
Read in browser Mouldering city built of bread is a metaphor for Earth without humans
By Cory Doctorow on May 31, 2013 09:15 pm Swedish artist Johanna Mårtensson created this installation depicting a cityscape made of bread in 2009, and photographed it as it decayed, creating a series of pictures representing the destiny of all human folly come the day that we make ourselves extinct and vanish from the face of the Earth:
I was inspired by an article about how well the earth would do without us.
Read in browser Bomber enraged by spelling error can't blow up sign because his bomb instructions were riddled with typos
By Cory Doctorow on May 31, 2013 07:38 pm A 50-year-old man was upset that the sign in front of the Oregon Teacher Standards and Practices Commission read "Oregon Teacher Standards an Practices Commission" (the D had fallen off the sign or been worn away), so he resolved to explode it with a pressure-cooker bomb.
Read in browser Real Stuff: Close Call
By Dennis Eichhorn on May 31, 2013 06:21 pm "Because the bartender is always on TV, I got laid a lot. There were plenty of free drugs and drinks. I lived out all my middle-class Idaho fantasies as quickly as possible." From
Real Stuff #1 (Fantagraphics, December 1990).
Read in browser Disneyland dry-ice explosion: employee did it twice
By Cory Doctorow on May 31, 2013 06:11 pm More on the
dry-ice explosion that triggered an evacuation of Toontown in Disneyland: it appears that the employee who put dry-ice in a sealed bottle in order to cause a loud bang and some water vapor did the same thing earlier in the day in another part of Disneyland.
Read in browser Arms folded: a study in local reportage
By Cory Doctorow on May 31, 2013 04:43 pm Local People, Arms Crossed: exactly what it sounds like. A Tumblr full of hometown heroes, posed by unimaginative newsies with their arms crossed for extra competence. (
via Waxy)
Read in browser This is what a hairless raccoon looks like
By Mark Frauenfelder on May 31, 2013 04:18 pm Delightful!
(Via Reddit) Read in browser The Value in Fixing: Nat Geo's "World's Toughest Fixes" host Sean Riley in conversation with Xeni at Maker Faire
By Xeni Jardin on May 31, 2013 03:43 pm I had a great time interviewing Sean Riley at
Maker Faire this year.
Watch our conversation, here.
(Fora.tv) Read in browser Watch PBS NOVA on the science of the Boston bombing manhunt
By Xeni Jardin on May 31, 2013 03:19 pm Watch
Manhunt—Boston Bombers on PBS. See more from
NOVA. Above, "
Manhunt—Boston Bombers," a documentary for the PBS science program NOVA reported and directed by
Miles O'Brien. The hour focuses on which technologies worked, and which didn't, in the race to track down the men behind the April 2013 Boston marathon attack.
Read in browser Grainy sonar image may or may not be new clue to Amelia Earhart's plane wreckage
By Xeni Jardin on May 31, 2013 03:07 pm A
sonar image taken hundreds of feet below the surface of the Pacific may help solve one of the greatest mysteries in the history of aviation: What happened to Amelia Earhart, and where is her plane? TIGHAR, The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, has
a website dedicated to the search and the new data. Read in browser Northern Ireland builds a Potemkin Village for the G8
By Cory Doctorow on May 31, 2013 03:04 pm The G8 Summit is coming to Fermanagh, a county in Northern Ireland that has been devastated by austerity. To spruce things up and maintain the fiction that austerity will get us out of the global economic depression, the county has spent £300,000 giving local businesses "a facelift" -- including installing a fake butcher-shop window full of imaginary meat in a derelict storefront.
Read in browser First-ever high-res photos of chemical bonds breaking
By Xeni Jardin on May 31, 2013 03:03 pm About
this groundbreaking photo from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley: "Almost as clearly as a textbook diagram, this image made by a noncontact atomic force microscope reveals the positions of individual atoms and bonds, in a molecule having 26 carbon atoms and 14 hydrogen atoms structured as three connected benzene rings." "Nobody has ever taken direct, single-bond-resolved images of individual molecules, right before and immediately after a complex organic reaction,"
said Felix Fischer of the U.S. Read in browser Seattle Pot-trepreneur plans $100 Million chain of weed stores throughout America
By Xeni Jardin on May 31, 2013 02:59 pm Get ready for the Walmart of weed. Even Mexican President Vicente Fox thinks it's a good idea.
The Stranger reports on a
Seattle entrepreneur's plans to launch a $100 Million chain of marijuana stores throughout the US.
Read in browser Verizon to NYT reporter: No, we won't tell you if we gave your phone records to the Feds
By Xeni Jardin on May 31, 2013 02:55 pm Verizon won't tell Charlie Savage and the New York Times if it gave the Feds phone records for Times reporters. "We regret... that we cannot indicate whether we have previously received legal process in a criminal matter for either telephone number."
Document here.
Read in browser The Society Of Glass Enthusiasts, an informal group of Google fans, walks into a bar...
By Xeni Jardin on May 31, 2013 02:46 pm "
What Happens When Google's Biggest Fans Get Drinks," Huffpo asks, about a meetup of the Google+ (duh) group known as "The Society Of Glass Enthusiasts," who do not actually own Google Glass? Well, spoiler. They sit around drinking and talking about what they'll do when Google sees fit to sell or give them Google Glasses.
Read in browser Phonetic description of annoying noises teenagers make
By Xeni Jardin on May 31, 2013 02:40 pm James Harbeck
created this video to demonstrate various vocalizations that young adults make, to express emotions that are endemic to teens.
From an accompanying article at The Week:
The next time you find yourself wondering about the highest use of linguistics, or enduring the insulting grunts and groans of petulant adolescents and wondering how such noises could even be described, bring the two worlds together.
Read in browser Renowned voyaging crew launches greatest journey yet in Hawaiian canoe: four-year, worldwide trek
By Xeni Jardin on May 31, 2013 02:22 pm The Polynesian Voyaging Society famed traditional Hawaiian sea vessel Hōkūle'a began the first portion of a planned worldwide voyage this week with a "Malama Hawai'i" sail around the islands of Hawai'i. Of the 22 total portions of the canoe's trip around the world, the first and last are in Hawai'i.
Read in browser Star Wars logo history
By David Pescovitz on May 31, 2013 02:18 pm Over at Tenth Letter of the Alphabet, a fascinating history of the Star Wars logo. Above left, a decal created during the film's pre-production, to be used on film cans and other early materials. "This was how we first pictured Han Solo," production designer and artist Ralph McQuarrie explained in
The Star Wars Scrapbook: The Essential Collection.
Read in browser Freelance archivists raising funds to preserve precious manuscripts rescued from fundamentalists in Timbuktu
By Cory Doctorow on May 31, 2013 02:11 pm Tony sez, "In 2012, under threat from fundamentalist rebels, a team of archivists, librarians, and couriers evacuated an irreplaceable trove of manuscripts from Timbuktu at great personal risk. The manuscripts have been saved from immediate destruction, but the danger is not over.
Read in browser E. coli engineered into an analog computer
By David Pescovitz on May 31, 2013 01:57 pm Synthetic biology researchers at MIT are creating simple analog computers in living cells, complete with fluorescent "displays." Rahul Sarpeshkar and Timothy K. Lu engineered genetic circuits in
E. coli so that the bacteria glows with a brightness determined by the amount of certain chemicals surrounding it.
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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