Best beginner telescope: Celestron FirstScope Join Britain in cringing at Alex Jones Town delivers sidewalk dog poop to owners in "lost property" boxes Iain Banks, 1954-2013 What Prism slide-presentation means by "direct access" to Internet giants' servers New NSA leak: BOUNDLESSINFORMANT documents the extent of NSA spying around the world Raging Heroes: kickstarting all-woman armies of RPG miniatures Beastles are back: double-album of Beastie Boys/Beatles mashups imminent PRISM and Canada: what are the north-of-the-border implications of American spooks gone wild? Former FCC Chairman: Let's Test an Emergency Ad Hoc Network in Boston Watch the latest hand-picked videos in Boing Boing's video archives Extreme slo-mo yo-yo video with Doctor Popular Meet the Beetles: big squirmy beetle larvae sold as novelty pets in Japanese shops Update: At least 5 dead in Santa Monica rampage shooting and arson attack; gunman identified Elderly couple sing together as husband lies in hospital bed Blinkytape: kickstarting a smart strip of LEDs Best beginner telescope: Celestron FirstScope
By Cool Tools on Jun 09, 2013 12:38 pm The Celestron FirstScope is the best pick for an absolute beginner level telescope. Most entry-level scopes are crap, and most useable scopes start at $300. Since the FirstScope costs only $42, you might be tempted to dismiss it as more useless junk.
Read in browser Join Britain in cringing at Alex Jones
By Rob Beschizza on Jun 09, 2013 12:13 pm Alex Jones, American radio host and conspiracy theorist, was
invited to the BBC's Sunday Politics. It is not to be missed.
Read in browser Town delivers sidewalk dog poop to owners in "lost property" boxes
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 09, 2013 12:01 pm A Spanish town called Brunete used volunteers to covertly identify people who had left their dog's shit on the public sidewalk (the volunteers chatted up the dog owners' about their dogs' breeds, this was cross-referenced against the register of dogs). The volunteers then packaged up the turds in a "lost property" box and returned them to the owners.
Read in browser Iain Banks, 1954-2013
By Rob Beschizza on Jun 09, 2013 11:11 am Iain Banks, author of bizarre literary novels and visionary science fiction,
is dead at 59. Barely weeks ago, Banks announced that he was a cancer patient and that
his latest book would be his last. Yesterday, the Sunday Times
published an interview with Banks, in which he discussed the disease's impact and how it took form as
The Quarry, which will be released June 20.
Read in browser What Prism slide-presentation means by "direct access" to Internet giants' servers
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 09, 2013 08:52 am At Techdirt, Mike Masnick has further thoughts on
the NYT piece on Prism, in which they try to resolve the contradiction between the NSA and Obama's admission that Prism exists and the leaked NSA slide deck is real, and the categorical (and eerily similar) denials from the companies involved (as well as Twitter's glaring absence from the list of cooperating companies):
This is not, by the way, the first time that we've seen Twitter stand up and fight for a user's rights against a government request for data.
Read in browser New NSA leak: BOUNDLESSINFORMANT documents the extent of NSA spying around the world
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 09, 2013 05:20 am In the Guardian, Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill leak a description of
another NSA top-secret program, this one codenamed "BOUNDLESSINFORMANT." This is apparently a tool that helps spies keep track of which snooping tools they can deploy in which countries, and it produces pretty, color-coded maps showing where the NSA spying powers are strongest.
Read in browser Raging Heroes: kickstarting all-woman armies of RPG miniatures
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 09, 2013 05:01 am Raging Heroes is a spectacularly successful new Kickstarter to produce 150 female warrior miniatures divided into three armies. They were looking for $12,000 and hit that in 30 seconds. Now they're over $300K and still rising, with over 1,400 backers. The minis are very beautiful, and the studio, based in France, has a textbook-example, perfectly structured KS.
Read in browser Beastles are back: double-album of Beastie Boys/Beatles mashups imminent
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 09, 2013 02:46 am Here's some wonderful musical news: djBC has revived the Beastles, the inspired Beastie Boys/Beatles mashups that resulted in
two spectacular albums, ultimately censored off the Internet thanks to legal threats from EMI. The new double, 20-track Beastles album, "Ill Submarine," is about to drop, and djBC has a lot of teasers to get you ready for it.
Read in browser PRISM and Canada: what are the north-of-the-border implications of American spooks gone wild?
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 08, 2013 08:40 pm Michael Geist sez, "Privacy and surveillance have taken centre stage this week with the revelations that U.S. agencies have been engaged in massive, secret surveillance programs that include years of capturing the meta-data from every cellphone call on the Verizon network (the meta-data includes the number called and the length of the call) as well as gathering information from the largest Internet companies in the world including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple in a program called PRISM.
Read in browser Former FCC Chairman: Let's Test an Emergency Ad Hoc Network in Boston
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 08, 2013 06:09 pm Jonathan Zittrain writes, "Ad hoc mesh networking has been developed to enable free and censorship-resistant communications in places like Egypt and Syria. (The New America Foundation's Commotion project is an example of that kind of network.) Less explored has been this kind of networking for public safety purposes, such during attacks or natural disasters.
Read in browser Watch the latest hand-picked videos in Boing Boing's video archives
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 08, 2013 05:38 pm Among the most recent video posts you will find on
our video archive page: • Elderly couple sing together as husband lies in hospital bed • She & Him on the Tonight Show • Tintype stop motion animation of a circus • Buzz Aldrin and Thomas Dolby sing "She Blinded Me With Science" • How telekinesis works • Badger Swagger • The making of "Man of Steel" • Picture Day: wry, superb coming-of-age movie
Boing Boing: Video archives Read in browser Extreme slo-mo yo-yo video with Doctor Popular
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 08, 2013 05:36 pm "
We made a cute yo-yo video with some extreme slow-motion capturing," says Boing Boing pal and yo-yo master
Doctor Popular. Produced for the web video series
Distort.
Read in browser Meet the Beetles: big squirmy beetle larvae sold as novelty pets in Japanese shops
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 08, 2013 05:27 pm Matt Alt shot this fun video and wrote this blog post about how you can buy Rhinoceros Beetle larvae for only 98 yen each in Japanese shops. The roughly thumb-sized larva grow into big beetles that are popular pets in Japan.
Read in browser Update: At least 5 dead in Santa Monica rampage shooting and arson attack; gunman identified
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 08, 2013 05:09 pm SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 7, 2013: Police officers secure a scene at Cloverfield and Olympic after a gunman opened fire on a Santa Monica city bus during a rampage that covered more than a mile. At least seven are dead including the gunman, who was killed by police nearby.
Read in browser Elderly couple sing together as husband lies in hospital bed
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 08, 2013 04:49 pm This video
made the rounds on viral video site Liveleak with a misleading headline that stated the man died. "He is still here," his daughter Linda corrected. "At the time with a broken hip and a blood infection that affected his heart, he thought he was dying.
Read in browser Blinkytape: kickstarting a smart strip of LEDs
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 08, 2013 03:07 pm Todd sez, "Check out this awesome LED strip lights controlled by a simple controller board. Matt Mets went through the Haxlr8r program and came out with this project, with the help of Marty McGuire and Max Henstell. Just a few days left to get in on it."
BlinkyTape is a one meter long, full-color light tape with 60 independent RGB LEDs controlled by our custom light processor.
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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