Science Hack Day is a fantastically inspiring and creative 48-hour event where scientists, designers, artists, and developers get together to make and do science and science-related projects. You and your friends should start one! Chief instigator Ariel "Space Hack" Waldman created a guide to organize a Science Hack Day and now, she's announced the 2013 Science Hack Day Ambassador Program. Thanks to a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, five people who want to organize a Science Hack Day in their cities will be flown to Science Hack Day in San Francisco on September 28-29 to see how it's done. Applications are accepted until May 1.

Science Hack Day Ambassador Program

Science Hack Day is coming to your city!

(Top: "Syneseizure," the hack that won the "People's Choice" award at the 2011 Science Hack Day SF, photo by Matt Biddulph. Ariel photo by Matt Nuzzaco).

On Thursday (3/28) at 3pm ET, Boing Boing pal and White House innovation advisor Tom Kalil is hosting a Google Hangout to talk about the maker movement! Tom has been instrumental in helping President Obama and the administration understand the value of maker culture in sci/tech education. Joining Tom in the Hangout will be folks like MAKE founder Dale Dougherty, Super Awesome Maker Show's Super Awesome Sylvia, and Ford future tech lead Venkatesh Prasad. "White House Hangout: The Maker Movement"

(Above, President Obama checks out a soccer-playing robot built by Blue Bell, PA high school students. Photo by Pete Souza.)

Ray Gascoigne is a former shipwright. Well, he's still a shipwright but now the ships he builds fit inside bottles.

The Atlantic has a fascinating photo gallery about the DIY Weapons of the Syrian Rebels. Homebrew explosives are the norm, as are catapults (Reuters photo above) and tele-operated machine guns controlled with scavenged video game controllers.

BB reader Readblood shares this photo in the Boing Boing Flickr pool and explains,

Bitblox are wooden alphabet blocks inspired by our pixelated nostalgia. While pixels continue shrinking out of sight on our digital screens, they live on in full chromatic and tactile splendor in these one-of-a-kind alphabet blocks.

$45 a set, available at glyfyx.com. Each limited-edition set includes 28 blocks, "featuring a total of 168 letters, numbers, symbols and quirky pictograms." They're "hand-manufactured in the United States from renewable, American grown, kiln-dried basswood," printed with non-toxic, child-safe inks, free of lead.

MAKE has a great interview with one of my favorite makers: Steve Hoefer.

Steve Hoefer is a San Francisco-based inventor and creative problem solver with nearly 20 years of experience. He’s contributed projects to the pages of MAKE, including his Indestructible LED Lanterns, Secret-Knock Gumball Machine, and Haptic Wrist Rangefinder. He’s also active in the open source hardware and software communities and is a super nice guy.

One project you’re particularly proud of:

1. The Secret Knock Gumball Machine. A lot of the things I do are for a specific audience or solving a specific problem, but the Secret Knock Gumball Machine has something for everyone and it manages to make candy more fun. It has a feel of forbidden magic to it. It’s not immediately obvious how it works, but you get to see how the trick is done. It’s mechanically and technically pretty simple — you can build your own! I still regularly get messages from people, usually young people, who are inspired by it and have used it as their own springboard into making.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Things About Steve Hoefer

This week I visited BB pal Kirsten Anderson's wonderful Roq La Rue Gallery in Seattle where Casey Curran has hung a number of his exquisite kinetic sculptures. Each sculpture is a baroque ecosystem of wire plants, synthetic flowers, metallic creatures, faux feathers, and other ornate faux-naturalia. Gently crank the handle on each sculpture and these fantasy worlds come alive. At first I thought they would benefit from an electric motor but I quickly realized that cranking them myself not only made me a more active observer, but it required a physical proximity that immersed me in each surreal scene. You can glimpse still photos and videos of the show here: "Casey Curran: Dissymmetry" Also showing at the gallery is a series of beautifully dark paintings and drawings by Sam Wolfe Connelly, titled "Nocturne." Both exhibitions will be up through March 2.

Master blacksmith Tony Swatton of Sword & Stone is Hollywood's favorite weapons maker. Here he is forging Jaime Lannister's sword for "Games of Thrones."

Creative agency LOLA Madrid designed and built a prototype bicycle constructed entirely out of with some components made of scrap auto parts, from a transmission belt used as the "chain" to a seat post clamp from a door handle. Bicycled (via Think Faest!)