— FEATURED —
— FOLLOW US —
Boing Boing is on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to our RSS feed or daily email.
— POLICIES —
Except where indicated, Boing Boing is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution
— FONTS —
Cory Doctorow at 6:45 am • 
• 
This ingenious technique for safeguarding books from falling in the bathtub was invented by redditor Crash-From-Space's 8-year-old daughter. The suction cup came from the plumbing aisle at Home Despot.
Never drop a book on the bath again. My 8 year old daughters invention. (imgur.com)
Michael Schreiber at 5:29 pm • •
The good people over at Narrative.ly caught up with some of the surviving cast members of the 1995 film Kids. Written by Harmony Korine and directed by Larry Clark, Kids was a raw glimpse at life inside New York's early 90s skater and club scene. I remember the film for being both terrifying and making me feel like I was one of the most boring people in the world. The stars of the film were all real kids from that scene, and many of the storylines were also legit.
The kids say the film was accurate, except for the most fantastical stuff. There’s no denying they weren’t sober during filming. Even the scene with Javier Nunez, at fourteen, by far the youngest of the skate crew, and three other little kids mashed on a couch smoking a joint and pontificating about god and life—that too was real. The virgin hunter, the AIDS plotline, and the rape scene at the end were fictional.
Kids was responsible for launching the careers of both Chloë Sevigny and Rosario Dawson.
Korine, nineteen at the time, and Clark, then over fifty, wrangled the troops from the skate clique, supplementing them with more non-actors from Washington Square Park and the club scene, and across downtown—including Chloë Sevigny, from tony Darien, Connecticut, who had been hanging out with the crew in Washington Square Park for years. They plucked a then fifteen-year-old Rosario Dawson from her stoop in the East Village. Vibe magazine was shooting a commercial on her block, and her father told her to go downstairs to get discovered. Korine heard her laughing loudly at a strange man who looked like Jesus, walked over and told her, “You’re exactly what I wrote.”
Others didn't fare so well. RIP Casper and Harold.
Read the whole story here.
Cory Doctorow at 5:42 am • •
TOPSY TURVY WORLD is one of the new titles from Flying Eye, the kids' imprint of London's wonderful NoBrow publishing. Like the rest of the line (recently reviewed titles include Welcome to Your Awesome Robot, Monsters and Legends and Akissi), Topsy Turvy World is brilliantly conceived, beautifully executed, and not quite like anything else in kids' publishing today.
Topsy Turvy World is a wordless collection of surreal paintings presented as two-page spreads. Though there's no story per se, the paintings do progress from the merely whimsical to the outright bizarre. The artist, Atak (a pseudonym for the German illustrator Hans-Georg Barber) manages to make things weirder and weirder without even hinting at horror, which is a great trick and makes this a perfect picture book for small kids like my daughter, who experienced unvarnished delight as we snuggled up at bedtime, working our way through all the strange and funny situations depicted on each page (the final spread is a real crescendo!).
Topsy Turvy World is already out in the UK, and will hit the USA on June 11 (you can pre-order it now). The nice folks at Flying Eye were kind enough to supply some samples to go with this review -- check them out below the jump!
TOPSY TURVY WORLD [Flying Eye]
Topsy Turvy World [Amazon UK]
Read the rest
Maggie Koerth-Baker at 4:26 pm • •
A Florida high school student with an interest in science mixed together aluminum foil and toilet bowl cleaner as an experiment. To her surprise, the mixture exploded. Unfortunately for Kiera Wilmot, she tried her experiment on school grounds.
It was a small explosion, and nobody was hurt. Wilmot was, otherwise, a good student with a perfect behavior record. But the school chose to expel her, have her arrested, and is supporting her being charged with a felony as an adult.
Scientists across the country are not amused. Biologist Danielle Lee writes about this incident in context with the discipline gap that treats minority kids more harshly for small infractions.
Through Twitter, scientists and educators speak up about the things they blew up for science, under the hashtag #KieraWilmot.
Cory Doctorow at 2:55 am • •
Monsters and Legends is part of the fabulous debut lineup of titles from Flying Eye, a kids' imprint spun out of London's NoBrow (they're the publishers of recently reviewed books like Welcome to Your Awesome Robot and Akissi). The book, written by Davide Cali and illustrated by Garbiella Giandelli, is a fascinating reference work for kids 7 and up about the curious origins of the monsters of the popular imagination. The book recounts the odd history of stories of mermaids, chupacabras, cyclopses, dragons, the Loch Ness Monster, and other cryptozoology favorites. It's a great balance between fascination with monsters and lore and a skeptical inquiry into how widespread beliefs can be overturned by evidence and rational inquiry -- a real "magic of reality" book.
The illustrations in this book represent a range of engaging styles, and they bring it to life for even younger readers. My five year old and I spent several bedtimes on this, flipping through the pages, and stopping when a picture caught her eye. I had to interpret the text for her -- the language was often over her head -- but the stories absolutely grabbed her and it's become a family favorite.
As with other Flying Eye titles, this one is out in the UK right now and coming to the US on June 11 (here's a pre-order link). As a one-time monster kid who's doing his best to raise another one, this one gets my unreserved stamp of approval.
MONSTERS AND LEGENDS [Flying Eye]
Monsters and Legends [Amazon UK]
Cory Doctorow at 9:35 am • •
What better way to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the publication of Watson and Crick's landmark paper on the double helix structure of DNA than by making your own double-helix out of jellybabies and licorice? Dr Mark Lorch's method for making edible DNA models promises to capture the "elegant simplicity" of DNA.
You'll need:
Two long, flexible sweets, such as liquorice ribbons.
A few handfuls of soft, highly coloured sweets, such as jelly babies or marshmallows.
Cocktail sticks.
For advance bio-engineers, Lorch also explains how to extract the DNA from a kiwi fruit using things lying around your kitchen.
How to make a DNA double helix from jelly babies and liquorice [Dr Mark Lorch/Guardian]
(via Neatorama)
Cory Doctorow at 11:38 am • •
Alex Law's "little girls R better at designing heroes than you" is a great, occasionally updated Tumblr that features illustrations of superheroes based on the hero costumes little girls have made for themselves.
Kids are more impressionable than you, but kids can also be less restricted by cultural gender norms than you. Kids are more creative than you, and they're better at making superheroes than you.
This is a mini art project where I draw superheroes based on the costumes worn by little girls.
little girls R better at designing heroes than you (via MeFi)
Cory Doctorow at 2:01 am • •
The Zoom is a great British satirical comic written and drawn by a 12-year-old named Zoom Rockman. I picked up his eighth issue last weekend at a comics show in London and it was a delight, and not in some patronising "Oh, it's quite good for something done by a kid" way. The Zoom is funny, pointed, and satirical, and Rockman's busy, dark drawings and crowded lettering are excellent camouflage for a sophisticated and irreverent wit. Issues 1-7 (created while Zoom was between the ages of 9 and 12) are online as free reads, while the new issue (which is excellent) can be had for a mere GBP1.99. It's money well spent.
Cory Doctorow at 10:07 am • •
Todd Bieber made a great short video on his experience as an Eagle Scout and a volunteer with the Scouts who is upset about the decision of the BSA to exclude gay and lesbian people: "I'm a filmmaker and an Eagle Scout. Recently, while serving as merit badge counselor of Cinematography Merit Badge, I invited several gay filmmakers to help teach some Boy Scouts about making movies."
Gay Filmmakers and Boy Scouts (Thanks, Eric!)
Cory Doctorow at 2:19 pm • •
Here's a great tutorial for making your own glittery superhero paper bracelets out of toilet-paper rolls. The trick is to use blue painter's tape backing to keep the cardboard intact while it's all gluey.
This may seem like a strange way of doing things - to cut and then stick back together etc - but we went through a couple of versions of this before the toilet roll pieces survived - when you paint the toilet roll it tends to collapse go floppy. This was the best process we came up with.
After you have cut, taped and stuffed your toilet roll you are ready to:
- paint (allow to dry)
- apply a light layer of glue and then roll in glitter (allow to dry)
- seal on the glitter by applying a layer of gluey glaze (1 part glue to 2 parts water) (allow to dry)
- add some super hero gems/sparklesOnce all your paint, glitter and glue is dry remove the newspaper and painters tape from inside and round of the corners.
Cory Doctorow at 1:47 pm • •
David sez, "Did the children's book "Goodnight Moon" help put you to sleep as a little kid? Not anymore. Especially after watching its dark reimagining in this gritty movie trailer. I'm afraid the family-friendly search results for this children's book are going to be ruined as this video makes its rounds. Made by the Gritty Reboots team who most recently brought you Calvin and Hobbes as a dark Hollywood blockbuster."
Goodnight Moon: The Movie (Trailer) (Thanks, David!)
Cory Doctorow at 11:35 am • •
Dave sez, "THE ZIPPER CLUB is a comic focusing on survivors of childhood congenital heart defects, written by a survivor of such a condition himself. It's on Indie-GO-Go in hopes to put out a first print run. Part of the proceeds will go to the AHA and part of the run will be distributed to pediatric cardiac care centers for the kids who will truly benefit from it."
At age 8, Cliffy Goldfarb was the recipient of an emergency heart transplant. At age 9, Cliffy is now struggling to cope with the limitations his still recovering body is undergoing, and the fact that because of this, he has trouble relating to his peers. When his mom suggests spending his summer at Camp Bravehearts, a place for kids living with heart defects like his own, he has some trepidations about going this camp for “special” kids, but soon learns his worries were all over nothing when he meets a young girl named Rosie who introduces him to a group of new friends who encourage him by showing off their surgical scars to one another and inducting Cliffy into “The Zipper Club”.
Welcome to THE ZIPPER CLUB! (Thanks, Dave!)
Cory Doctorow at 5:50 am • •
Last month, I blogged a review of the kids' instructional comic book Welcome to Your Awesome Robot:
Welcome to Your Awesome Robot is a fantastic book for maker-kids and their grownups. It consists of a charming series of instructional comics showing a little girl and her mom converting a cardboard box into an awesome robot -- basically a robot suit that the kid can wear. It builds in complexity, adding dials, gears, internal chutes and storage, brightly colored warning labels and instructional sheets for attachment to the robot's chassis.
More than that, it encourages you to "think outside the box" (ahem), by adding everything from typewriter keys to vacuum hoses to shoulder-straps to your robot, giving the kinds of cues that will set your imagination reeling. For master robot builders, it includes a tear-out set of workshop rules for respectfully sharing robot-building space with other young makers, and certificates of robot achievement. I read this one to Poesy last night at bedtime, and today we're on the lookout for cardboard boxes to robotify. It's a fantastic, inspiring read! You can get a great preview of the book at NoBrow.
As of today, it's available in the US!
Welcome to your Awesome Robot by Viviane Schwarz [NoBrow]
Welcome to your Awesome Robot [Amazon]
Cory Doctorow at 3:46 pm • •
danah boyd sez, "Researchers who focus on technology's role in human trafficking and the commercial sexual exploitation of minors teamed up to create a short primer for technologists who are trying to do the right thing. This high-level overview is intended to shed light on some of the most salient misconceptions about human trafficking and provide some key insights that will be useful for anyone who is trying to build tools to intervene. This document is to help those who are trying to create innovative solutions recognize pitfalls that they can address in the design of their systems."
Curbing commercial sexual exploitation of children and promoting the rights and safety of children should be a top priority for all members of society. Yet, all too often, myths and public misunderstandings – particularly about technology’s role in CSEC – and a lack of empirical data about the scope of the problem drive political and legal agendas, however well intentioned. These same myths and misunderstandings have the potential to inadvertently affect how technologists approach the problem. As researchers, we feel it’s important to take an evidence based and data-driven approach toward technological interventions so that they are effective, efficient, and limit the additional harm done to victims. With this goal in mind, we offer a series of key findings that should be a part of any serious discussion about using technology to address CSEC in a networked world. We hope that this information is useful for technologists seeking to build innovative solutions. We would be happy to offer more detailed information and data to any technologist seeking to learn more.
Addressing Human Trafficking: Guidelines for Technological Interventions [blog post]
How to Responsibly Create Technological Interventions to Address the Domestic Sex Trafficking of Minors (paper, PDF)
(Thanks, danah!)
Cory Doctorow at 8:18 am • •
Projectophile's Clare has a funny post about the hazards presented by beautiful mid-century modern home designs to children. My grandparents had a proper split-level MCM when I was a kid, and it's a wonder we survived. As Clare says, "I love open, flowing space as much as the next modern girl. But I know it would only be a matter of minutes before my kid flings himself off one of these deadly ledges..."
15 Mid-Century Modern Dream Homes that will Kill Your Children (via MeFi)
