Eel's glow as a test for human disease UglyCon at GR2 in LA this weekend: a gathering of Uglydoll fans Meet Nastygirl, Germany's most beautiful cow Amid violent protest crackdown, Sao Paolo cop smashes his own car's window Evil parking inspector jailed The rivers of America Art of Punk videos Gigabit wifi isn't Thief 4, latest in legendary sneak-n-stab series, coming soon Jersey Devil or… something else? Gaming is home to a potent new form of storytelling SofaCON: a podcasted sf convention with guest-of-honor Peter Watts Simple map design tool from Stamen Browser the web with a faraway friend Nazi SS commander discovered living in Minneapolis Who are the greatest Armchair Taxonomists? The winners announced! Blunders of Genius: interesting errors by Darwin, Pauling, and Einstein Overly Attached Girlfriend on Prism UK Pirate Cinema is out! By His Things Will You Know Him (podcast) Australian Army on institutional sexism: The standard you walk past is the standard you accept Sen Warren to US Trade Rep: release the Trans-Pacific Partnership docs - if they piss the people off, then we shouldn't be part of it Lawsuit: "Happy Birthday" is not in copyright, and Warner owes the world hundreds of millions for improperly collected royalties Why Americans should be worried about state surveillance Radio-seeking drone Stolen: 200-pound pink bulldog sculpture in West Hollywood House votes to allow indefinite military detention of Americans FBI's use of Patriot Act to collect US citizens' records up 1,000 percent Petition to "Christian" college that won't provide transcripts to student expelled for being gay Faces deformed by rubber bands Eel's glow as a test for human disease
By David Pescovitz on Jun 14, 2013 12:54 pm The biology behind the green glow of Japanese freshwater eels could lead to new tests for jaundice and liver problems. RIKEN research institute scientists determined that the protein bilirubin is what triggers a protein in the eel, called UnaG (after
unagi), to glow.
Read in browser UglyCon at GR2 in LA this weekend: a gathering of Uglydoll fans
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 14, 2013 12:43 pm I had the great pleasure of visiting with
Giant Robot's
Eric Nakamura and collaborators last night at the
GR2 space on Sawtelle in Los Angeles.
Read in browser Meet Nastygirl, Germany's most beautiful cow
By Rob Beschizza on Jun 14, 2013 12:16 pm A doe-eyed look would not have won over judges at a contest in Germany this week: it was for cows only.
Read in browser Amid violent protest crackdown, Sao Paolo cop smashes his own car's window
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 14, 2013 12:08 pm From Sao Paolo, where the the
cops are violently attacking protesters, a video of a cop smashing his own police-car window, presumably to blame it on the protesters later.
Read in browser Evil parking inspector jailed
By Rob Beschizza on Jun 14, 2013 11:59 am A parking inspector in Britain pretended to have been struck by a disobedient motorist, thereby earning 4 months in jail when CCTV footage exposed his lies.
Read in browser The rivers of America
By Rob Beschizza on Jun 14, 2013 11:41 am Nelson Minar created
a massive map of the United States' rivers. [via
Kottke]
Read in browser Art of Punk videos
By David Pescovitz on Jun 14, 2013 11:41 am I am overjoyed about the new video series, "The Art of Punk," from the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles.
Read in browser Gigabit wifi isn't
By Rob Beschizza on Jun 14, 2013 11:39 am Glenn Fleishman at
Tidbits: "Apple's implementation is technically capable of 1.3 Gbps. But as Apple notes at the bottom of the page, "Actual speeds will be lower." I'll say.
Read in browser Thief 4, latest in legendary sneak-n-stab series, coming soon
By Rob Beschizza on Jun 14, 2013 11:27 am Announced at gaming trade show E3,
Thief 4 looks like a great stealth game—better than the overweight third entry, in any case.
Read in browser Jersey Devil or… something else?
By David Pescovitz on Jun 14, 2013 11:26 am Is this the elusive Jersey Devil as some Redditors have
speculated? Perhaps it's the dreaded Chupacabras? Or a bastard cousin of the Montauk Monster?
Read in browser Gaming is home to a potent new form of storytelling
By Rob Beschizza on Jun 14, 2013 11:21 am John Walker argues, irrefutably, that
games are a great place to tell stories: "There are some who have argued that games just aren't the right medium for telling stories.
Read in browser SofaCON: a podcasted sf convention with guest-of-honor Peter Watts
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 14, 2013 11:18 am Tony Smith sez,
Hugo Award winning science fiction podcast StarShipSofa presents SofaCON: An Online International Science Fiction Convention Guest include Peter Watts as GoH, plus Special Guest Lois McMaster Bujold and many more Ted Kosmatka, Grey Frost.
Read in browser Simple map design tool from Stamen
By David Pescovitz on Jun 14, 2013 11:17 am The supremely creative design/data experimentalists at Stamen launched Map Stack, a fascinating and super-simple tool to design your own maps and cartographical mash-ups:
You can use it to combine custom cartography, colors, and satellite images into custom, easily modified maps.
Read in browser Browser the web with a faraway friend
By Rob Beschizza on Jun 14, 2013 10:58 am Liz Stinson: "Swedish artist Jonas Lund ...
built a browser that allows people around the world to surf the internet together in one window.
Read in browser Nazi SS commander discovered living in Minneapolis
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jun 14, 2013 10:56 am Michael Karkoc — a 94-year-old Ukranian immigrant who lives in a neighborhood of Minneapolis known for housing populations of both Eastern Europeans and artists — has turned out to be a former Nazi SS commander whose unit was involved in cracking down on the Warsaw uprising, as well as other brutal attacks on civilians.
Read in browser Who are the greatest Armchair Taxonomists? The winners announced!
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jun 14, 2013 10:53 am The Encyclopedia of Life announces the winners of the Armchair Taxonomist competition featured here at Boing Boing. Everyone gets a warm thanks for helping to fill an open-source database with information about animals, plants, fungi, protozoa, and bacteria—but who gets to go on a tour of the Smithsonian?
Read in browser Blunders of Genius: interesting errors by Darwin, Pauling, and Einstein
By Mario Livio on Jun 14, 2013 09:11 am Charles Darwin, Linus Pauling, and Albert Einstein made great contributions to science. They also made large blunders. In this original essay Mario Livio, astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, and author of the new book Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe, describes three blunders, and why these great minds made them. Read in browser Overly Attached Girlfriend on Prism
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 14, 2013 09:06 am Laina, AKA "Overly Attached Girlfriend" (a YouTube comedian and memestar who trades on her ability to stare intensely while monologuing hilariously about her terrifying romantic attachment) has outdone herself with an Uncle Sam edition, commenting on Prism
Overly Attached Uncle Sam Read in browser UK Pirate Cinema is out!
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 14, 2013 04:41 am The
UK edition of my novel Pirate Cinema hits stores officially today! Tell your friends!
When Trent McCauley's obsession for making movies by reassembling footage from popular films causes his home s internet to be cut off, it nearly destroys his family.
Read in browser By His Things Will You Know Him (podcast)
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 14, 2013 01:53 am Earlier today, we
published my story "By His Things Will You Know Him," which is from the forthcoming
Institute for the Future anthology "
An Aura of Familiarity: Visions from the Coming Age of Networked Matter." I've read the story aloud for my
podcast, if that's how you prefer your fiction.
Read in browser Australian Army on institutional sexism: The standard you walk past is the standard you accept
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 14, 2013 01:25 am Michael sez, "In response to a breaking scandal the head of the Australian Army gives a textbook example on how to respond to sexual abuse in the military, hell, misogyny in any organisation: blunt, unambiguous, drawing on both institutional policy and personal ethics, and frankly a bit terrifying in a Tywin Lassister kind of way.
Read in browser Sen Warren to US Trade Rep: release the Trans-Pacific Partnership docs - if they piss the people off, then we shouldn't be part of it
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 14, 2013 01:07 am Senator Elizabeth Warren has written an open letter to Michael Froma, the nominee to run the US Trade Representative's office, calling on him to release the text and negotiating documents for the secretive, controversial Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), whose sweeping and brutal copyright provisions make it clear that this is the next attempt to pass SOPA and ACTA -- the US law and international treaty that flamed out in 2012.
Read in browser Lawsuit: "Happy Birthday" is not in copyright, and Warner owes the world hundreds of millions for improperly collected royalties
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 13, 2013 11:51 pm Copyright scholars have long been pretty certain that "Happy Birthday to You" is in the public domain, despite the fact that Warner/Chappell claims copyright on it and charges impressive licensing fees to use it in public performances.
Read in browser Why Americans should be worried about state surveillance
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 13, 2013 11:14 pm As the Prism/NSA leaks story unfolds, many Americans are left with a cynical
"are you surprised?" response that rather misses the point.
Read in browser Radio-seeking drone
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 13, 2013 10:13 pm TRAQ is a senior project from a group of Northeastern University engineering students; it's a quadcopter that seeks out and homes in on radio signals.
Read in browser Stolen: 200-pound pink bulldog sculpture in West Hollywood
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 13, 2013 09:43 pm A very large and very gay sculpture of a pink bulldog by Belgian artist William Sweetlove
went missing after a recent gay pride parade in West Hollywood.
Read in browser House votes to allow indefinite military detention of Americans
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 13, 2013 09:29 pm "The U.S. House of Representatives voted again Thursday to allow the
indefinite military detention of Americans, blocking an amendment that would have barred the possibility." [HuffPo]
Read in browser FBI's use of Patriot Act to collect US citizens' records up 1,000 percent
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 13, 2013 09:13 pm Michael Isikoff at NBC News reports that the FBI has "dramatically increased its use of a controversial provision of the Patriot Act to secretly obtain a vast store of business records of U.S.
Read in browser Petition to "Christian" college that won't provide transcripts to student expelled for being gay
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 13, 2013 09:07 pm Danielle Powell had nearly finished her Bachelor's Degree at Omaha's Grace University when the school administration found out that she was a lesbian.
Read in browser Faces deformed by rubber bands
By David Pescovitz on Jun 13, 2013 08:58 pm Photographer Wes Naman who famously wrapped his subjects'
faces in scotch tape has now twisted people's mugs into grotesquery with rubber 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
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