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Internet governance and cyber-security conference in Toronto Lizz Winstead, co-creator of Daily Show, launches Lady Parts Justice Entire, working mobile phone with SIM free in this week's Entertainment Weekly Cory in Berkeley tonight 68,000 Texans no longer have to prove they're not dead in order to vote Gary War: "Jared's Lot" music review Sensible Internet policy platform from the German Pirate Party Disney Research's ideas for 3D printed toys Geeky license plate gallery Striking new Murakami book covers Pirate Cinema audiobook: no DRM, no EULA, just the spoken word Schoolkids pay to store cell phones in "valet" trucks Maine GOP attack-flier condemns Democratic candidate for playing an orc rogue in online game The Carter Family: Don't Forget This Song: exclusive excerpt from new graphic novel about country music pioneers Rings carved from billiard balls Chirp sends information from one smartphone to another, using electronic birdsong Amazing discoveries in science fiction: Everyone in Star Wars might be illiterate PBS Off Book video: What Are Indie Video Games Thief steals iPhone from a baby How to flip food in a pan (Video) Future of racism, Canadian style New 3D printer makes furniture, glass jars, food and more out of garbage Photographic proof that Arrested Development is really, truly back Sesame Street: A Celebration of 40 years of Life on the Street Ronald Reagan collage art show by Winston Smith and friends Internet governance and cyber-security conference in Toronto
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 05, 2012 01:00 pm Robin Gross from IP Justice sez, "Public interest groups involved in ICANN will gather for the event, 'ICANN & Internet Governance: Security & Freedom in a Connected World' on Friday 12 October at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto, Canada. Sponsored by the Noncommercial Users Constituency (NCUC), the voice of civil society in ICANN, ...
Read in browser Lizz Winstead, co-creator of Daily Show, launches Lady Parts Justice
By Lizz Winstead on Oct 05, 2012 12:49 pm [Video Link] Look, it’s time to stop being polite and start asking, “What the fuck do you think you are trying to pull here?” It is time to ask, “Why the fuck are men and women who are inexcusably incompetent continually being elected into statehouses, governorships and THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS? And how the fuck ...
Read in browser Entire, working mobile phone with SIM free in this week's Entertainment Weekly
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 05, 2012 12:18 pm This week's issue of Entertainment Weekly sports a live-tweeting interactive video display. The folks from Mashable did a teardown to see how this was accomplished, and discovered that there is a complete (albeit without a case or keypad) Foxconn Android phone glued between the pages, along with a T-Mobile SIM. By poking around, they were ...
Read in browser Cory in Berkeley tonight
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 05, 2012 10:35 am Hey, Berkeley! I'll be at Books Inc tonight on 4th Street at 7PM, as part of the Pirate Cinema tour. Tomorrow, I'll be in Pasadena and then Redondo Beach, then Lansing, MI, Chicagoland, and many (many!) other US and Canadian cities. Here's the whole schedule -- come on out and say hi!
Read in browser 68,000 Texans no longer have to prove they're not dead in order to vote
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 05, 2012 10:07 am 68,000 Texans will no longer have to prove that they aren't dead in order to vote in the next election. The state of Texas has settled a suit brought on behalf of 68,000 "potentially deceased" Texas voters who shared a birthdate and a partial Social Security match with a person appearing on a federal death ...
Read in browser Gary War: "Jared's Lot" music review
By Aquarius on Oct 05, 2012 10:00 am Expertly performed, extremely difficult clash between pop inclinations and punk ideals sent through a completely synthetic, inhuman aesthetic.
Read in browser Sensible Internet policy platform from the German Pirate Party
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 05, 2012 09:30 am The German Pirate Party has released a brochure (PDF, German), outlining the party's agenda for a free and open Internet, based on discussions with a group of German publishers. The program they set out is one that I hope to see many parties adopting -- I could certainly see liberal democratic, green, and libertarian parties ...
Read in browser Disney Research's ideas for 3D printed toys
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 04, 2012 10:36 pm Printed Optics: 3D Printing of Embedded Optical Elements for Interactive Devices, a paper from Disney researchers in Pittsburgh, details a set of toymaking techniques involving 3D printers. Some of them (like "a bug-like figure with glowing eyes that display different graphics") are intriguing in the extreme. I like the way they're thinking about 3D printed ...
Read in browser Geeky license plate gallery
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 04, 2012 09:00 pm Wired's Robert McMillan has collected some of the geekiest license plates he can find for a fun little gallery. I've only ever owned a car once, the year I lived in LA, and I was happy to score COPYFYT for my crappy Hyundai (my wife, a gamer, got MAGELFG, only after being turned down for ...
Read in browser Striking new Murakami book covers
By David Pescovitz on Oct 04, 2012 07:25 pm Vintage Books has redesigned its Haruki Murakami backlist with striking covers by Israeli designer/illustrator Noma Bar. The covers -- and there are a dozen more -- are reproductions of Bar's hand-pulled screen prints. "Vintage Murakami"
Read in browser Pirate Cinema audiobook: no DRM, no EULA, just the spoken word
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 04, 2012 07:17 pm Further to yesterday's post about the availablity of a DRM-free, EULA-free MP3 download for the audiobook of Little Brother, I'm pleased to announce that I'm also selling the audiobook for my new novel Pirate Cinema. As with the Little Brother audio, this is a professionally voiced, unabridged audiobook from Random House Audio. This one is ...
Read in browser Schoolkids pay to store cell phones in "valet" trucks
By David Pescovitz on Oct 04, 2012 06:49 pm Some NYC students not permitted to bring their phones or other gadgets to school shell out $1/day at "valet" trucks like the "Pure Loyalty Electronic Device Storage" vehicle and other similarly converted vans. From the AP: Cellphones and other devices, such as iPods and iPads, are banned in all New York City public schools, but ...
Read in browser Maine GOP attack-flier condemns Democratic candidate for playing an orc rogue in online game
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 04, 2012 05:58 pm A flier distributed by the Maine GOP attacks Democratic state senate candidate Colleen Lachowicz for playing an orc assassin rogue in World of Warcraft, using quotes she's made about the virtual violence her imaginary fairy-tale creature gets up to in order to imply that she is unfit for office. Timothy Lee has more on Ars ...
Read in browser The Carter Family: Don't Forget This Song: exclusive excerpt from new graphic novel about country music pioneers
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 04, 2012 05:57 pm What is the year that country music started to suck? 1970? 1960? 1950? I don't know, but The Carter Family was around well before any of those years, and I love their music. I also love this new graphic novel,
The Carter Family: Don’t Forget This Song, By Frank M. Young and David Lasky, published by Abrams ComicArts.
Read in browser Rings carved from billiard balls
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 04, 2012 05:05 pm Eleanor Salazar, a jewelry maker in Maine, fashions beautiful rings from old billiard balls, carving them to size and polishing them to a smooth finish. These rings are carved from bona fide used billiard balls to fit your finger. I can make yours in sizes 5-10, and can carve it from whichever pool ball in ...
Read in browser Chirp sends information from one smartphone to another, using electronic birdsong
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 04, 2012 04:41 pm [Video Link] Nicolas Pergola of Chirp says We're a spinout from University College London Computer Science and we've developed a new data transfer application for smartphones (and more) called Chirp. This is our thing - a technology inspired by birdsong and the principles of biomimicry. We think it's pretty exciting since the app has great ...
Read in browser Amazing discoveries in science fiction: Everyone in Star Wars might be illiterate
By Jamie Frevele on Oct 04, 2012 04:31 pm "It seems like all the characters in Star Wars learn how to do is punch certain buttons to make their machines do what they need to do, and everything else is left up to droids." Ryan Britt at Tor has an analysis on how all the citizens in George Lucas' space epic have culturally evolved ...
Read in browser PBS Off Book video: What Are Indie Video Games
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 04, 2012 03:50 pm [Video Link] As I've mentioned before, I love PBS's Off Book video series about Internet culture. The videos are intelligent, well produced, and often reveal things that surprise me. The newest video, released today, is about indie video games. The video game industry is now bigger than Hollywood, with hundreds of millions of dollars spent ...
Read in browser Thief steals iPhone from a baby
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 04, 2012 03:36 pm How soon before this gent -- who stole an iPhone from a 20-month-old baby watching an episode of Barney & Friends -- gets doxed? Thief steals iPhone from a baby (Via Cult of Mac)
Read in browser How to flip food in a pan (Video)
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 04, 2012 03:24 pm [Video Link] You aren't supposed to lift the pan. You're supposed to slide it back and forth. Thanks, Chef John! (Via Doobybrain)
Read in browser Future of racism, Canadian style
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 04, 2012 03:02 pm Denise sends us Jef Catapang's project where "A bunch of Canadian science fiction authors riff on what sci-fi teaches us about race, and share their thoughts on the future of racism."
Read in browser New 3D printer makes furniture, glass jars, food and more out of garbage
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 04, 2012 03:00 pm [Video Link] The Muffin Monster creates useful objects out of shredded garbage. This is a game changer. (Via Laughing Squid)
Read in browser Photographic proof that Arrested Development is really, truly back
By Jamie Frevele on Oct 04, 2012 01:47 pm We knew that several reports over the last few months have confirmed the wonderful news that Arrested Development was not only coming back, they were coming back to film 13 episodes that would be streamed on Netflix in 2013, and those episodes would lead into a full-length movie. We knew that Ron Howard had an ...
Read in browser Sesame Street: A Celebration of 40 years of Life on the Street
By Jason Weisberger on Oct 04, 2012 01:16 pm Last night, I spent an hour flipping through this lovely coffee table book on Sesame Street. Every time there is a debate about some obscure memory of the Street, out comes this tome. Sesame Street played such an important role in my childhood and that of my friends that I am never surprised to find ...
Read in browser Ronald Reagan collage art show by Winston Smith and friends
By David Pescovitz on Oct 04, 2012 01:12 pm This Friday at Grant's Tomb in San Francisco, "The Beginning of the End: Ronald Reagan's Legacy," a show of new and classic collage art by Winston Smith, Fast, Cheap & Easy Graphics, Ron Donovan, and Jon-Paul Bail. The event is one-night-only, tomorrow (10/5) from 6pm to 11pm at 50-A Bannam Place (tiny alley off Union ...
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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