The Getty Museum's Augmented Reality Art

From The Getty Museum: augmented reality lets you remotely view one of their art objects in 3D, turning it around to see all of its sides. If you have a webcam, you can try it yourself.

The brief video demonstration makes me want to create 3D objects meant to be viewed this way, and not in person:



(via post at Free Technology for Teachers)

Paris Review: All Writer Interviews Now Online, Free

The Paris Review has put all of its interviews online, free to read and arranged by decade. Of the few I've read so far, (50s: Ralph Ellison,  60s: Edward Albee, 90s: Jose Saramago), standouts are

Marianne Moore's:

Working as a librarian was a big help, a tremendous help...

Words cluster like chromosomes, determining the procedure...

Do the poet and scientist not work analogously? Both are willing to waste effort. To be hard on himself is one of the main strengths of each. Each is attentive to clues, each must narrow the choice, must strive for precision...

and the interview with Jorge Luis Borges:


Ah, New York. I was there, and I liked it very much—I said to myself: “Well, I have made this; this is my work" and comments on Old English poetry, Eliot and Sandburg, humor in his work, and more--reading this one felt like being a student in a fantastic seminar.

"Changing Education Paradigms" video by Sir Ken Robinson

I really enjoyed this short presentation on our current dominant educational model and its--in many ways--lack of relevance (and sense) at this time. Didn't hurt that the speaker moved quickly and seamlessly from topic to topic in a way that reminded me of Eddie Izzard:



via Stephen's Lighthouse

More and more across the web, I've been seeing the idea that real growth or solutions or invention comes from groups, not individuals, and it made me think about how I dreaded group assignments in school because of the way they usually turned out: not with the group working together, but with individuals taking a portion of the work and doing (or not doing) it, then the group rushing to slap it all together in a way that barely cohered before presenting the finished piece. The times I can remember groups working really creatively, the excitement of working together, was when we were given a problem to solve--as opposed to "Do a group report on art in Japan." The problem-solving type of group project was usually assigned in a science class, the "do a group report" in humanities classes. As a parent and someone interested in the future of education, I'd like to see more problem-solving-type group activities assigned in humanities classes. The first (not great) example that comes to mind: "You're a group of representational painters, making your living painting portraits and landscapes. Photography has just been invented. How do you respond? What should painting do now?" rather than "Do a group report on Cubism or Impressionism."

"This painting is not available in your country."

By artist Paul Mutant:

Iambik Audiobooks: Small Press Books in Audio!

I don't use exclamation points in blog post titles often. I do often refer library patrons looking for recordings of public domain works (there are inevitably way too many last-minute holds on Huck Finn on CD at the end the summer when it's been assigned to every highschooler in town) to LibriVox, which features free audiobooks recorded by volunteers.

Today, LibriVox founder Hugh Maguire has launched a company that sells (very inexpensive) audio recordings of a selection of small press books.

Iambik, the new company, currently offers 11 DRM-free audiobooks as mp3s or m4bs, including Oh Pure and Radiant Heart by Lydia Davis (Soft Skull) and Like Son by Felicia Luna Lemus (Akashic Books).

Iambik seeks input on which small press books you'd like to listen to, and is also open to hearing from publishers, authors, narrators, and prooflisteners who might be interested in working with them. Great news, I think.

Enjoying today's #sadchildrensbooks tweets on Twitter

Some favorites:

@norakl If You Give a Mouse a Cookie You Can Track His Web Usage and Invade His Privacy

@delilahsdawson How Do Dinosaurs Eat Your Legs?

@robertbtaylor Schrodinger's Cat in the Hat

@michaelbain Little House on the West Bank

@Sascha_Zuger Just So So Stories

@meandmybigmouth The Secret Garden Centre

@HouseofJules One Fish, Two Fish, Dead Fish, New Fish

@MattHoltzclaw Slap The Bunny

@mollage Tales of a College-Educated Nothing

@petersagal Bread and Water for Frances

@thatsmynewband Where's Waldo? I Have to Tell Him His Parents Died

and (I can't find the attribution) Everybody Poops...Except You

Great Visualization of the Depth of the Chilean Mine

Rob Cockerham created a long web page to help him (and others) get a sense of the depth of the mine shaft trapped miners had to ascend in Chile. 1 pixel = 1 inch. Just scrolling the depth made my stomach sink.

Via BoingBoing.

"Everybody Likes the Snappy Worker"

Via Metafilter. Charles Mather's "Work Incentive" posters, printed in the 1920s, were "the first motivational posters for the private workplace market." You can view 62 of them here.
























62 Work Incentive Posters by Charles Mather

Online Archive of Gov't-Commissioned Comics

Well, this is cool--an online archive of comics commissioned by the US government starting in the 1940s. Click on a cover, get the pdf: for example, here are 1951's Bert the Turtle Says Duck and Cover and Foxhole On Your Front Lawn. Famous comics characters even show up from time to time: in Security is an Eye Patch (1968), Charlie Brown and Sally help the government educate readers about lazy eye syndrome.

*Government Comics Collection (UNL Libraries Digital Collections), via the ever-valuable Research Buzz

[my video for the It Gets Better Project]

(some images modified after borrowing from the generous

Flickr Free Use and CreAtive ComMonS (All Free Stuff) pools)

24 Cents Annually for the Arts: Taxpayer's Receipt

At The Washington Post, Ezra Klein suggests that taxpayers should get receipts with breakdowns of what they're paying for what. Klein offers a sample receipt for a taxpayer earning $34,140, coincidentally almost exactly what I make:

I'm paying 24 cents for funding for the arts (don't spend it all in one place, artists) and roughly 2606 times that for Medicare. I hope all the anti-tax Tea Party recipients of Medicare appreciate my contribution. Via swirlspice.

Being Visibly Queer-Friendly: Please Consider It

Six GLBTQ teen suicides were reported in the month of September. Six that we know of. Six that made the news.

I urge you, if you work with kids in a library or school or afterschool program or religious organization, to please consider wearing something (or posting something in your office, if kids visit you there) all the time that identifies you as GLBTQ-friendly. At 36, out since 18, I still feel a little lift (and gratitude) when I see a rainbow sticker on a car or posted in a shop window (or, for that matter, a queer magazine with all the other magazines in a library). It still makes a difference to me.

When I was 17, in 1992, a professor of mine wore a pro-GLBTQ button on his bag, and seeing it made my heart beat faster. I bought one and wore it (this was a button that simply said that the wearer supported GLBTQ rights--not that the wearer was GLBTQ) from my dorm room all the way to the bathroom. Then another girl opened the bathroom door, and I turned red and ripped it off before she’d even seen it, and buried it in a drawer back in my room, and even then worried that my roommate would find it when I was out of the room. Just conjuring up that moment for some weird reason makes me feel scared enough, now, to need to pee. I couldn’t wear the button yet (when I came out a year later, things went a bit too far the other way: I hardly had one piece of clothing that didn’t have some kind of queer slogan on it)—but it made a difference, however small, that someone I knew and respected—the professor—could wear it without blinking or even mentioning it, like it was perfectly normal.

I remember that dark swirling feeling I had in high school and the first year of college before I came out, the feeling that if people knew who I was that their stares would crumble my body to dust. I remember blushing a lot, and feeling my stomach sink a lot, and feeling hunted and baited by the few people (I think it was only a few) who suspected. I remember feeling ice cold when I walked by their lockers. I remember feeling like my sexuality was the source of their deepest amusement, their most hilarious joke among themselves. That they daily looked forward to that moment when I would pass by and they could make me pay for who I was, if only with their eyes and cruel, knowing grins.

I was never openly, loudly bullied, and I never had more than three or four people who made me feel bad. I’m trying to imagine what it feels like to have a huge portion of your school—including adults at your school—enjoy making you feel bad, ashamed, sick (that’s right--not just making you feel bad, but enjoying it, thriving on it, feeling a little thrill when you walk by or when they think of some new clever way to attack or hurt you). And then going home and having their intolerance follow you onto Facebook or Myspace or in texts to your phone. Bullying without borders.

As GLBTQ rights are slowly won, each generation of GLBTQ people tends to think that it's easier for the new one coming up. I know I've been guilty of thinking "Well, if I was 11 in 2010 instead of 1985, I'd have come out at 11." In 1985, I didn't even have a vocabulary to describe who I was--I honestly didn't know what "gay" or "lesbian" even meant. In 2010, most kids know what it means. And they see successful, out, unashamed GLBTQ folk, at least on TV. And maybe their schools have GSAs, though I’m sure some kids are afraid to attend meetings (I know I would’ve been—my siblings went to the same school. I might’ve been ready for a GSA, but I wasn’t ready for my family knowing I was interested in one). But perhaps there's a mistake in thinking this stuff makes it easier.

In addition to seeing Ellen and Kurt on Glee, today’s GLBTQ teens are also seeing GLBTQ rights discussed almost every day in the media. Eat breakfast. Wait to see if the country decides folks like you are allowed to be in the military. Pop a Diet Coke. See a photo of Fred Phelps picketing funerals with a “FAG BURN IN HELL” sign. Take a bus. See a campaign ad arguing that you should never be allowed to marry. Right at that moment when change seems to be accelerating--a biracial president! Gay marriage legal in Iowa!--is when we see a huge backlash against the change. People that were passively racist/homophobic/etc become actively so. People, goaded by anger and irresponsible politicians, somehow feel it's okay to make remarks they wouldn't have made before. Hatred in the air and on the airwaves trickles down to kids. Opinions get magnified into passions and crusades.

And there are parts of being a queer adolescent that, even when role models are available and rights are won, are humbling. So entrenched is the default assumption that everyone is straight that straight kids don't have to come out to their parents. And coming out, as long as GLBTQ folks are considered "lesser" (and discussions of sex between generations are considered taboo) in the U.S., isn't easy--even to accepting parents. For one, you usually know your orientation before you're ready for your parents to think of you as a sexual being. And when an 11-yr-old girl tells her parents she has a crush on a boy, they don't respond, "How can you know you're straight when you're only 11?" Queer 11-yr-olds are regularly told they can't possibly know who they are yet. Finally, as long as GLBTQ folks are considered lesser, you might have the feeling that you're disappointing your family, letting them down by being queer, giving them one more thing to have to "deal" with. This is not a great sensation to be running around with as a young teenager.

We can help young queer kids by knowing about things like the It Gets Better project, I'm From Driftwood, and The Trevor Project--and promoting them through posters or buttons or bumper stickers, so kids can see and learn about them without having to ask for them (which they might not be ready to do). We can also help by visibly wearing a button on our lanyards or bags that identifies us as queer-friendly. Kids will notice, even if they don't yet feel comfortable approaching you to talk about it. I wear a "Be Proud at Your Library" button on my lanyard that I whipped up at Zazzle. It costs $1.45 to get a button from Zazzle. They're easy to make. Consider making one--or customizing the one I've linked to (you can change text to "school" or whatever fits your situation)--and wearing it. Bumper stickers are a little more expensive at Zazzle, with a base price of $3.99. I made the below and ordered one. You can also make shirts, stickers, posters, and more. Note: before buying anything from Zazzle, check at RetailMeNot for promotional coupon codes--Zazzle regularly offers them.

Why buttons and bumper stickers? I think it's extremely important to be visibly queer-friendly out in the world, especially in less metropolitan areas. Some kids aren't ready to attend GSA meetings, and some may even shy away from watching queer-friendly YouTube videos if it's on their home (or even a library) computer. Seeing a car pass by with a friendly sticker while your mom's driving you to your piano lesson doesn't require a kid to pursue anything: it just happens. And we need to reach (and not judge) kids who aren't ready to pursue anything, but may be comforted by seeing a queer-friendly face (or bumper).

Please consider making or buying and wearing or posting something that identifies you as a GLBTQ-friendly adult, and passing this post on or writing your own. We are needed.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE: It Gets Better Project by shelfcheck