[Sponsor] Tendence watches now have fully mechanical automatic movements! Watchismo has the exclusive for the new Tendence Skeleton Watches, each with fully exposed 'skeletonized' mechanics seen both from the top of the dial and the see-through crystal of the caseback where the rotor can be seen revolving & generating power the old fashioned way -- with cogs, gears and hairsprings! A blend of form and function, the Tendence collection is a highly evolved concept, with extreme dimensions and three-dimensional numbers carved to stand high above the concave dial, itself cut from stainless steel, polycarbonate or titanium.s.
Stem cell madness Anduin: "Stolen Years" music review The Dinosaur Alphabet tells the stories of non-famous dinos Sponsor shout-out: ShanaLogic and tentacle t-shirts! Cats free-falling from space A menu for the intrepid space jumper A closer look at that freaky, giant fish eye Weller Pyropen Cory in Brooklyn tonight Elfquest: I think I can do this The hidden (and incredibly expensive) relics of gaming's golden age NES controller door for a games-room The Stratos jump - in Legos (Video) Water-powered car scammers through history Monster Mash: horrific composite of Universal Monsters' Big Four Accused of infringement? AT&T will take away YouTube and Facebook and send you to Copyright Reeducation Gulag Stem cell madness
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 15, 2012 12:31 pm Last week, Shinya Yamanaka won a Nobel Prize for figuring out how to make adult stem cells revert to an embryonic (and much more medically useful) state. Within days, another scientist unconnected to Yamanaka, claimed to have produced such cells from human heart tissue and injected them back into human patients in a clinical trial. ...
Read in browser Anduin: "Stolen Years" music review
By Aquarius on Oct 15, 2012 12:09 pm A darkly spectral sound, infused with a deep melancholia, a spare, ghostly sonic landscape that manages to fuse field recordings, deep dronemusic, lumbering slowcore, downtempo electronica, and plenty of horns, into something soundtracky and sinister, brooding and ominous.
Read in browser The Dinosaur Alphabet tells the stories of non-famous dinos
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 15, 2012 12:02 pm At The Dinosaur Tracking blog, Brian Switek is starting a cool, new series meant to highlight the lesser-known dinosaurs that the public as long ignored. Sure, it's a bit easier to pronounce Tyrannosaurus, but Agujaceratops and Zalmoxes still deserve their 15 minutes of fame. The alphabetical series kicks off today with the aforementioned Agujaceratops. Found ...
Read in browser Sponsor shout-out: ShanaLogic and tentacle t-shirts!
By David Pescovitz on Oct 15, 2012 11:57 am Thanks to our longtime sponsor ShanaLogic, sellers of handmade and independently-designed jewelry, apparel, gifts, and other delightful goods. Wrap your body with a Tentacle Tee from Sharp Shirter, newly available at ShanaLogic! The two-sided design is hand-printed and available in both men crew neck and women's v-neck styles. Shana says, "Free domestic shipping for orders ...
Read in browser Cats free-falling from space
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 15, 2012 11:55 am Created by combatcameraman on b3ta. Felix the cat! (Via: crackajack.de. Thanks, Tara McGinley) Parachuting from 120,000 feet - Boing Boing Felix Baumgartner jumps with a parachute from space - BoingBoing Free-fall from stratosphere, live now - Boing Boing
Read in browser A menu for the intrepid space jumper
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 15, 2012 11:44 am Step one: Skip the beans. On Sunday, Felix Baumgartner jumped out of a balloon capsule in the stratosphere, parachuting safely down to Earth. Today, The Guardian answers some interesting questions about the feat, including an inquiry into Baumgartner's pre-jump diet. "For at least a day before the jump, Baumgartner consumed a "low-residue, low-fibre" diet on ...
Read in browser A closer look at that freaky, giant fish eye
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 15, 2012 11:33 am Last week, Mark told you about a giant eyeball that washed up on the beach in Florida. Today, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission released their preliminary analysis of who that eyeball once belonged to and how it likely ended up becoming the temporary toast of the Internet. The Deep Sea News blog called ...
Read in browser Weller Pyropen
By Cool Tools on Oct 15, 2012 11:17 am The Weller Pyropen is one of the best portable soldering irons out there. I like them because I get almost an hour and half of heat, and I can move around — no cords. So, while I have an electric soldering station, I almost exclusively end up using this Weller, even when I'm near the ...
Read in browser Cory in Brooklyn tonight
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 15, 2012 11:16 am Hey, Brooklyn! I'll be at WORD Books tonight at 7PM for the last New York stop on my Pirate Cinema tour. Tomorrow I'll be in Philly at Indy Hall, before heading to Bethesda, Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Toronto and Boston (whew!). Looking forward to seeing you there! Here's the whole schedule -- be there or ...
Read in browser Elfquest: I think I can do this
By Wendy and Richard Pini on Oct 15, 2012 11:00 am Page 6 of
The Final Quest: Prologue is published online-first
for the first time here at Boing Boing. First time reader? You've
got some catching up to do.
Read in browser The hidden (and incredibly expensive) relics of gaming's golden age
By David Wolinsky on Oct 15, 2012 10:08 am A growing obsession with retrogaming relics has led to a bubble in the auction market, with the most inflated prices commanded by prototypes, unreleased games and rare games still in their 30-year old shrink-wrap.
Read in browser NES controller door for a games-room
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 15, 2012 09:08 am Redditor Fredeev did a smashing job painting the door to his or her game-room as a giant NES controller. I like the (current) top comment, from starving_troll: "the next step is to add actual buttons so that you door automatically unlocks if you enter the konami code." I custom painted the door to my game ...
Read in browser The Stratos jump - in Legos (Video)
By Amy Seidenwurm on Oct 15, 2012 08:30 am Lego reenactment of the Stratos jump from this morning. Scale 1:350. That was fast!
Read in browser Water-powered car scammers through history
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 14, 2012 08:24 pm If you missed Jason Torchinsky's Jalopnik story about water-powered car hucksters of past and present, here's your chance to read it. The idea itself— to build a car that runs on ordinary water— is total crap, scientifically. It violates at least one law of physics, and pisses off a few others. But the idea behind ...
Read in browser Monster Mash: horrific composite of Universal Monsters' Big Four
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 14, 2012 04:20 pm We've covered Jason Edmiston's genius monster illos here before, but this one deserves special attention. His "Monster Mash" comes from an alternate universe where Doctor Frankenstein has gotten a little enthusiastic with the needle. It's ghoulishly delightful. Spotted today at New York Comic-Con. $60 for a giclee print. Dr. Frankenstein has been working on a ...
Read in browser Accused of infringement? AT&T will take away YouTube and Facebook and send you to Copyright Reeducation Gulag
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 14, 2012 02:50 pm David sez, "According to TorrentFreak, a leaked AT&T training doc indicates that starting on Nov. 28, if a customer is flagged 4-5 times for copyright infringement, AT&T, Comcast, Cablevision, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon will block access to unspecified "popular sites" until the customer completes an 'online education tutorial on copyright.' No, there's nothing even ...
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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