Matt sez, "The School of Library and Inoformation Management at Emporia State University (Kansas, USA) unveiled a comic book aimed at generating newfound excitement for librarianship and increasing the awareness of the many opportunities that an MLS/MLIS degree can provide. From the same team that created Library of the Living Dead and Monster Clash, Supreme Librarians in Metaspace is a promotional comic that highlights the many facets of librarianship in a quirky, tongue-in-cheek manner. This resource encourages librarians around the world to take a look at the profession in a new light. And maybe have a laugh or two while doing it."

Supreme Librarians in Metaspace (Thanks, Matt!)

The annual FlyerTalk survey of frequent business travellers' greatest hotel annoyances found that the top three peeves are all related to network access: expensive Internet, inaccessible/inadequate electrical outlets and slow Internet topped the list in positions one, two and three. As one traveller put it, "If I can get free wifi at Starbucks where I’m buying a $4 cup of coffee, why can’t I get free wifi at a hotel where I’m paying $250 a night?" Preach, sister!

Hotel Pet Peeves – What Bugs You the Most in 2012 (via Interesting People)

"Robbing banks: Crime does pay – but not very much," a paper by academic economists commissioned by the Royal Statistical Society and American Statistical Association on the economics of bank-robbery concluded that bank-robbers are wasting their time. The return from robberies is "rubbish". John Timmer summarizes the paper for Ars:

The basic problem is the average haul from a bank job: for the three-year period, it was only £20,330.50 (~$31,613). And it gets worse, as the average robbery involved 1.6 thieves. So the authors conclude, "The return on an average bank robbery is, frankly, rubbish. It is not unimaginable wealth. It is a very modest £12,706.60 per person per raid."

"Given that the average UK wage for those in full-time employment is around £26,000, it will give him a modest life-style for no more than 6 months," the authors note. If a robber keeps hitting banks at a rate sufficient to maintain that modest lifestyle, by a year and a half into their career, odds are better than not they'll have been caught. "As a profitable occupation, bank robbery leaves a lot to be desired."

Worse still, the success of a robbery was a bit like winning the lottery, as the standard deviation on the £20,330.50 was £53,510.20. That means some robbers did far better than average, but it also means that fully a third of robberies failed entirely.

Economists demonstrate exactly why bank robbery is a bad idea

Hacker School is an intensive, three-month residential programming bootcamp in NYC. Some students receive tuition grants funded jointly by Etsy, 37 Signals, and Yammer. This year, they decided to focus on increasing the number of awesome women programmers participating in Hacker School, and did an amazing job. Etsy VP of Engineering Marc Hedlund is justifiably proud:

When we announced the program, we were aiming to find 20 women to join the summer class. The previous class, in the spring, had only around 7 female applicants and wound up with 1 female student, so we knew it would take a big effort to get to our goal. Since Hacker School runs admissions and structures the classes, Etsy’s primary role was to get the word out about the grants — and we asked for help from our community in reaching as many great candidates as we could.

To say that worked would be a serious understatement. With help from all of you, Hacker School received applications from 661 women, nearly a 100-times increase from the previous session. (As they put it, they received more applications this time from women named Sarah, than all applications from women for all previous sessions combined.) Hacker School has admitted 23 of those women for the summer program — exceeding our original goal by 3. It’s been incredibly exciting to see.

The response to the Hacker Grants program was much larger than we expected. 597 (90%) of the 661 female applicants requested financial assistance. We believe that the existence of the grants did play a major role in causing the increase in applications from women. Of the 23 female students admitted, 18 of them requested grants — 8 more than we’d planned to provide.

Update on the Hacker Grants Program (via O'Reilly Radar)

Charles Carreon, the lawyer who sent a letter demanding $20,000 from The Oatmeal on behalf of FunnyJunk, is evidently his own worst enemy. First he threatens a lawsuit against Oatmeal creator Matthem Inman, claiming that Inman's complaints over Funnyjunk's users reposting material from his site constituted defamation. Yesterday, he expressed bewilderment at Inman's "tactic" of publicly making fun of his stupid legal threat. Now he's posted a notice to his site saying that he's taken down his contact information: "Due to security attacks instigated by Matt Inman, this function has been temporarily disabled."

I have seen no evidence that Inman instigated any "attacks"* -- security or otherwise. If Inman didn't instigate any attacks against Carreon, this strikes me as a highly defamatory thing to publish.

Funnyjunk's Lawyer, Charles Carreon, Continues To Lash Out: Accuses Matt Inman Of 'Instigating Security Attacks'

*Also, getting nasty emails is an "attack," but not a "security attack."

The editors of Welcome to Bordertown have just published a study guide for teachers and librarians. WtB is the latest installment in the Bordertown series, one of the oldest (and finest) examples of urban fantasy, a shared world in which the realms of Faerie and the mundane world clash in a border region where magic and technology both work intermittently and swirl together in a hybrid that is as exciting as it is erratic. This latest installment is a young adult book, and it includes my story Shannon's Law.

Set in a gritty, diverse city that straddles the divide between the human world and the magical realm, Welcome to Bordertown provides an ideal backdrop for exploring the issues and ideas most vital to young adults in a classroom or extracurricular setting. Through more than twenty interconnected songs, poems, and stories, educators can use Welcome to Bordertown to generate discussions and activities around a number of topics, including race, disability, technology, immigration, sexuality, and gender.

This guide provides a range of discussion questions that can be modified for use with a wide variety of groups, including reading clubs, middle and high school classes, Gay-Straight Alliances, and other diversity and discussion-focused groups. Divided into General Discussion Questions, Story-Specific Discussion Questions, and Post-Reading Activities, this guide works best when paired with the Bordertown series website, which provides supplementary material for many of the discussion questions and activities.

Study Guide for Welcome to Bordertown

Ah, the infinite surreal comedic potential of a giraffe in a swimming pool

There she was. Long legs, long neck and all she wanted to do was swim. (imgur.com) (via Super Punch)

Probably not yet. But it's on the cusp. And part of what makes this entire process really, really interesting is that, by the very nature of this whole experiment, we don't know exactly what will happen when Voyager I does cross that imaginary boundary line. But, as Rebecca Rosen explains on The Atlantic, we do have some pretty good theories.

Some cosmic ray particles enter the heliosphere and we can see them here from Earth. But a slower type has a hard time entering the heliosphere. Last month, the sum of those slower particles, suddenly ticked up about 10 percent, "the fastest increase we've seen," Stone says. But an uptick does not mean Voyager has crossed over, though it does mean we're getting close. When Voyager does finally leave and enter the space "out there where all the particles are," the level will stop rising. The rising itself means that Voyager is not out there, yet. "But," cautions Stone, "we don't know. I mean this is the first time any spacecraft has been there." Since nothing's ever been there before, we don't know what it will look like, which makes it a little hard to recognize "it" at all. "That's the exciting thing," he continues.

This is the most exciting kind of science—the sort where we really don't know the answers and we're on the cusp of learning something truly, wonderously new. Stay tuned.

Read Rebecca Rosen's full article at The Atlantic

ToorCamp, the American Hacker Camp, is back again this summer! Although there is no missile silo this time, the weather/environment should be a lot more pleasant on the beach in Washington state. The 5-day (August 8-12) open-air event is open to all hackers, makers, breakers, and shakers to build projects, exchange ideas with the brightest technology folk from around the world, toast a few marshmallows, and just geek out amongst the trees.

There are on-going talks, workshops (including things like hardware hacking, welding, penetration testing, brewing and others), contests, and art projects. [PRO-TIP: We're still accepting submissions if you have something you'd like to present.] And of course, there is plenty of outdoors -- stunning scenery, whale watching, surfing, birding, etc. The camp itself has everything you need: power, internet, food and fun.

We are encouraging attendees to set up a campsite with their friends/maker-space/group, and we'd like to offer all Boing Boing readers a discount code ('bboingrocks!' good until July 1st) for an Happy Mutants Campsite!

Bring a tent, make some friends, and learn a few things. Look forward to seeing everybody there!

MattAttackPro is a chemistry and physics teacher in South Carolina. This is what happened when he dropped a roll of unused camera film into a container of hydrochloric acid.

What you're seeing is the plastic backing separating from the "film" from which film takes its name—a coating of multiple layers of light-sensitive salts suspended in gelatin. Yes, film is like a jello salad. And it makes for a beautiful photograph.

See the photo on Instagram

Sometimes, it's a little mind blowing when you remember just how recently medicine passed from the world of art/magic/tradition and into the realm of science. There's plenty of reason to argue that the transformation still isn't complete today, but I'm really mesmerized by stories from the 19th century, when every surgery was something of an experiment and the same, cutting-edge doctor could vacillate between modern techniques and medieval bio-alchemy in his treatment of the same patient.

Until that time, the prevalent method of cataract treatment was “couching,” a procedure that involved inserting a curved needle into the orbit and using it to push the clouded lens back and out of the line of sight. Warren's patient had undergone six such attempts without lasting success and was now blind. Warren undertook a more radical and invasive procedure—actual removal of the left cataract. He described the operation, performed before the students of Harvard Medical School, as follows:

"The eye-lids were separated by the thumb and finger of the left hand, and then, a broad cornea knife was pushed through the cornea at the outer angle of the eye, till its point approached the opposite side of the cornea. The knife was then withdrawn, and the aqueous humour being discharged, was immediately followed by a protrusion of the iris."

Into the collapsed orbit of this unanesthetized man, Warren inserted forceps he had made especially for the event. However, he encountered difficulties that necessitated improvisation:

"The opaque body eluding the grasp of the forceps, a fine hook was passed through the pupil, and fixed in the thickened capsule, which was immediately drawn out entire. This substance was quite firm, about half a line in thickness, a line in diameter, and had a pearly whiteness."

A bandage was applied, instructions on cleansing the eye were given, and the gentleman was sent home. Two months later, Warren noted, inflammation required “two or three bleedings,” but “the patient is now well, and sees to distinguish every object with the left eye.”

That's from an amazing essay on the history of surgery published last month in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Read the rest

Diane Walton sez, "On May 30, Clarice (an Edmonton, Alberta, Canada teacher) was hit and seriously injured by two cars, on her way home from her daily jog. Her husband's post on Facebook describing the accident went viral her amazing recovery has been watched by thousands of well-wishers. Aaron, a talented aboriginal artist, has posted a link for donations toward costs the family will, no doubt incur, during the coming months of Clarice's recovery. On Spec magazine has offered a free download of the issue that feature's Aaron's artwork on the cover. Aaron has provided a free jpg of another work, to thank donors."