Solving Monopoly with Markov chains Kickstop: how a sleazebag slipped through Kickstarter's cracks Mobilis in Mobili Turkish cops shoot a protester's drone out of the sky London gets its own Maker Faire Digital Grotesque: complex, 3D-printed room Lawmakers introduce bills requiring Obama to explain his secret interpretation of the spying laws Run DMC's Down with the King Twentitled: tweets of pampered Twitter staffers WiFi router with impressive range: ASUS RT-N66U Wired/John Hodgman animated series about NSA spooks Apps for Kids 39: Anodia RIP, Parke Godwin US charges NSA whistleblower Snowden with espionage, asks Hong Kong to detain him Ex-Enron C.E.O. gets his sentence cut by 10 years Food Network dumps Deen The Internet prop from The IT Crowd Clothing store sticker makes fun of unpopular girls The Battle of $9.99: How Apple, Amazon, and the Big Six Publishers Changed the E-Book Business Overnight The Story of The Source Family Birth Rope, as told to Boing Boing by Isis Aquarian in Hawaii Brit spies GCHQ harvest all undersea cable comms, all UK calls and data, share with 850,000+ NSA spooks and contractors Why perform an autopsy on James Gandolfini? A day in the life of a fake astronaut Strange pet portraits A24 Films logo motion graphic Fashion trends in "swinging London of the sixties," captured in an archival short film NYC Councillors propose idiotic, headline-grabbing "3D printed gun" law 8 foods that aren't as frightening as Buzzfeed thinks they are Decline in fertility after age 30 may be vastly overstated R2-D2 birthday with Leia "hologram" Solving Monopoly with Markov chains
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 22, 2013 12:07 pm Business Insider's Walter Hickey did the math on Monopoly, calculating the most frequently landed-up squares (taking into account dice probability, Go To Jail events, and Community Chest/Chance cards) and conceived of a supposedly optimal strategy for buying and building upon property.
Read in browser Kickstop: how a sleazebag slipped through Kickstarter's cracks
By Glenn Fleishman on Jun 22, 2013 11:47 am Pick-up artists are, sadly, a
community. It even has a handy three-letter abbreviation: PUA. It dates back to the 1970s and has been enabled and expanded, like all affinity groups, by the Internet's network effect.
Read in browser Mobilis in Mobili
By Jason Weisberger on Jun 22, 2013 10:05 am Two months of life with Nemo. I can barely remember what it was like before. Living with a Great Pyrenees is a wonderful thing.
Read in browser Turkish cops shoot a protester's drone out of the sky
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 22, 2013 09:01 am Above, footage of a protester's quadcopter in Gezi Park getting shot down by the Turkish Police. Below, the footage of police violence the drone had been capturing (complete with music that sounds like it came out of an orc-fighting scene in the Hobbit).
Read in browser London gets its own Maker Faire
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 22, 2013 12:52 am At last, London is getting a Maker Faire -- albeit a "mini-Faire." The Elephant and Castle Mini Maker Faire will take place on July 6, and I'm pleased to say that I'll be one of the keynote speakers.
Read in browser Digital Grotesque: complex, 3D-printed room
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 21, 2013 10:51 pm Digital Grotesque is an ambitious architectural project using 3D printers and game-of-life-style algorithms to produce a room whose walls, baseboards, ceiling and moldings are all a-crawl with the most astonishing array of forms and complexities.
Read in browser Lawmakers introduce bills requiring Obama to explain his secret interpretation of the spying laws
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 21, 2013 10:04 pm Two legislators have introduced legislation that would require the President to disclose his secret interpretation of America's spying laws. This is especially relevant in the wake of yesterday's
Snoweden leaks showing how the NSA uses a secret interpretation of the FISA spying law to spy on Americans.
Read in browser Run DMC's Down with the King
By Jason Weisberger on Jun 21, 2013 09:36 pm One of my favorite tracks. They keep it hardcore, like you've never seen.
Video link Read in browser Twentitled: tweets of pampered Twitter staffers
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 21, 2013 09:17 pm The
@twentitled Twitter account is a running stream of supposedly genuine overheard conversations among the pampered techies of Twitter itself.
Read in browser WiFi router with impressive range: ASUS RT-N66U
By Cool Tools on Jun 21, 2013 08:44 pm For the past few years I’ve been using an Apple Time Capsule as my WiFi router. The range was awful but I kept trying to boost it with Airport Express devices.
Read in browser Wired/John Hodgman animated series about NSA spooks
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 21, 2013 07:46 pm Wired's kicked off a new animated webcomedy starring John Hodgman as a crusty old NSA agent and Nicole Winters as his young protege.
Read in browser Apps for Kids 39: Anodia
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jun 21, 2013 07:27 pm This episode of Apps for Kids is brought to you by Audible. For a free audiobook, visit Audibletrial.com/appsforkids Apps for Kids is Boing Boing's podcast about cool smartphone apps for kids and parents.
Read in browser RIP, Parke Godwin
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 21, 2013 07:12 pm The wonderful and gracious award-winning sf and fantasy author Parke Godwin has died at the age of 84, due to natural causes.
Read in browser US charges NSA whistleblower Snowden with espionage, asks Hong Kong to detain him
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 21, 2013 06:45 pm Image:
The GuardianIn a sealed criminal complaint announced late Friday,
federal prosecutors have charged Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who leaked a documents about the top-secret Prism surveillance programs, with espionage, theft and conversion of government property.
Read in browser Ex-Enron C.E.O. gets his sentence cut by 10 years
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jun 21, 2013 06:45 pm Ex-Enron C.E.O. Jeff Skilling, the sociopathic swindler who wiped out the life savings of thousands of people, just had his prison sentence reduced.
Read in browser Food Network dumps Deen
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 21, 2013 06:35 pm "I can't, myself, determine what offends another person,"
said Deen. Well, the rest of us have a reasonably good idea.
Read in browser The Internet prop from The IT Crowd
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 21, 2013 06:09 pm Etsy seller KineticGifts has replicated "The Internet," a prop from a classic episode of The IT Crowd (wherein the boys convince their clueless boss that Stephen Hawking has given them permission to get it down from Big Ben so that she can show it to the Board of Directors).
Read in browser Clothing store sticker makes fun of unpopular girls
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jun 21, 2013 06:05 pm Here's a mean sticker from girls' clothing store, Brandy Melville. I thought it meant its clothes are too tight, but my wife explained it's about mean girls not letting unpopular girls sit with them at the same cafeteria table.
Read in browser The Battle of $9.99: How Apple, Amazon, and the Big Six Publishers Changed the E-Book Business Overnight
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 21, 2013 03:53 pm Andrew Albanese, my editor at Publishers Weekly, has been tracking the antitrust action the DoJ brought against the big six publishers and Apple over price-fixing very carefully, and he's written a great-looking, DRM-free ebook about it called "The Battle of $9.99: How Apple, Amazon, and the Big Six Publishers Changed the E-Book Business Overnight." Here's what he had to say about it:
It is mostly about the backstory of the case, how publishers' antipathy to $9.99 led them to what turned out to be a pretty fateful decision.
Read in browser The Story of The Source Family Birth Rope, as told to Boing Boing by Isis Aquarian in Hawaii
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 21, 2013 03:37 pm [
Boing Boing Video Link.] "
The Source Family" a documentary by Boing Boing pal Jodi Wille and Maria Demopoulos, tells the story of
Father Yod and his Source Family, a radical, utopian social experiment that emerged from the Los Angeles freak scene in the 1970s.
Read in browser Brit spies GCHQ harvest all undersea cable comms, all UK calls and data, share with 850,000+ NSA spooks and contractors
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 21, 2013 02:57 pm The Guardian has published information from another Edward Snowden leak, this one detailing a British wiretapping program by the UK spy agency GCHQ that puts Prism to shame.
Read in browser Why perform an autopsy on James Gandolfini?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jun 21, 2013 02:28 pm Doctors know he died of a heart attack, right? And he's not
actually Tony Soprano, so the chances of someone secretly killing him and making it look like a heart attack are small.
Read in browser A day in the life of a fake astronaut
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jun 21, 2013 02:24 pm Kate Greene is on a mission to Hawaii. For the last 65 days, she has lived in a mostly windowless dome on the slopes of Mauna Loa volcano, only venturing outside occasionally — and then through an airlock while dressed in a head-to-toe safety suit.
Read in browser Strange pet portraits
By David Pescovitz on Jun 21, 2013 02:23 pm Mobile pet photographer Ren Netherland has a category of portraits on his site titled "
Extreme Pets." These are two of them.
Read in browser A24 Films logo motion graphic
By David Pescovitz on Jun 21, 2013 02:12 pm Last night, I saw the Bling Ring. My favorite part was the logo motion graphic for A24 Films, the distributor and production company that released the movie.
Read in browser Fashion trends in "swinging London of the sixties," captured in an archival short film
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 21, 2013 01:58 pm "They say London swings. It doesn't." A look at late sixties fashion in London. [via
puttinonthesmile.blogspot.com]
Read in browser NYC Councillors propose idiotic, headline-grabbing "3D printed gun" law
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 21, 2013 01:49 pm Michael from Public Knowledge sez, "Members of the New York City Council seem to have read a few articles about 3D printed guns and decided to hop on the bandwagon.
Read in browser 8 foods that aren't as frightening as Buzzfeed thinks they are
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jun 21, 2013 01:48 pm An actual chemist
looks at claims made about "toxic foods" in a recent Buzzfeed linkbait post and calmly explains why the whole thing is ridiculous.
Read in browser Decline in fertility after age 30 may be vastly overstated
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jun 21, 2013 01:11 pm As a woman, you do become less fertile as you get older, eventually culminating in menopause and the end of your potential babymaking years.
Read in browser R2-D2 birthday with Leia "hologram"
By David Pescovitz on Jun 21, 2013 01:07 pm Marc Freilich made an R2-D2 birthday cake for his son's sixth birthday. He integrated a pico projector into R2's dome to project the Leia "hologram" and a special birthday message.
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
No comments:
Post a Comment