Jewelry made from fragments of broken vintage china Satan's Spiritual Scorecard: how'd you do? "Riot" at kindergarten graduation Protester kicking away teargas cannister Moscow launches bikeshare service: In Soviet Russia, bike shares you! Amusing Reddit thread: "If companies had realistic slogans what would they be?" Jean Stapleton (Edith Bunker), RIP Jewelry made from fragments of broken vintage china
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 02, 2013 12:47 pm Boodi Blu is a London jeweler who makes beautiful, clever pieces out of broken pieces of vintage and antique china, puzzled together with small metal fittings. I just saw them in person at a flea market stall and they're wonderful, the kind of thing a suicidal AI might piece together in the bittersweet denouement of a William Gibson novel.
Read in browser Satan's Spiritual Scorecard: how'd you do?
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 02, 2013 12:12 pm This
list of the components of Satan's Spiritual Structure appears on handouts given to attendees at San Diego Comic-Con by evangelical picketers. It seems to originate
with a Jack Chick Tract, though I'm not sure if the protesters elaborated on the original or if it came from ChickCorp itself.
Read in browser "Riot" at kindergarten graduation
By David Pescovitz on Jun 02, 2013 11:23 am A brawl erupted at a kindergarten graduation in Cleveland on Friday, leading to eight arrests. It seems that two teens started the fisticuffs, and then some adults joined the fray. According to the
Cleveland Plain Dealer, "eventual charges could include aggravated rioting." None of the graduates were taken into custody.
Read in browser Protester kicking away teargas cannister
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 02, 2013 09:18 am From
OccupyGeziPics: an uncredited photo of a woman in at the Turkish anti-government/pro-democracy protests kicking away a tear-gas cannister. It's an amazing shot -- like something out of a Banksy stencil come to life. Do you know who took it?
Read in browser Moscow launches bikeshare service: In Soviet Russia, bike shares you!
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 02, 2013 12:38 am In Moscow, people rushed to try out the Russian capital's
first bicycle sharing program today. The program launched with hopes to cut the number of cars clogging streets in epically awful Moscow traffic. The service is similar to similar bike-share programs in cities like Paris, London and most recently New York.
Read in browser Amusing Reddit thread: "If companies had realistic slogans what would they be?"
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 02, 2013 12:33 am Nearly 20,000 responses to the question, "
If companies had realistic slogans what would they be?"—and many of them quite funny.
(via @pesce) Read in browser Jean Stapleton (Edith Bunker), RIP
By David Pescovitz on Jun 01, 2013 05:17 pm Jean Stapleton, who most famously played Edith Bunker on "All in the Family," has died. She was 90 years old.
(via CNN) 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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