The Maker Faire festival is a mecca for inventions, arts and crafts in a kind-of re-imagined county fair. Organized by the staff of the magazines Make and Craft, the Faire tries to inspire attendees to roll up their sleeves and become makers themselves. I traveled to the recent Faire that took place in San Mateo, California. There I found that nothing is too sacred that it can’t be tinkered with, hacked or modified by the many inventors there.
The Gamelatron at the Maker Faire
Take for example, the Gamelatron: the world’s first fully robotic gamelan orchestra. In a radio piece produced for KUSP, I interview the invention’s creator, Taylor Kufner.
I used to hate beer. Most Americans experience beer and alcoholic beverages as a rite of passage into adulthood, but I refused to follow the crowd. Despite their fowl taste, most of us are introduced to beer through the cheapest, most processed versions available. I remember someone once explaining to me a kind of golden rule to appreciating (bad) beer, in an attempt to get me started: after ten cans the foul taste will go away! Even hardcore vegetarians and vegans can be found making exceptions for these beers, many of which contain animal products like bone, bladder, and dried blood. But I wanted nothing to do with them.
Then I moved to Portland, Oregon.
The wet city in the Pacific Northwest contains more brewpubs per-capita than anywhere else in the world, even Germany. I was surrounded by exotic Scotch Ales and fruity Lamics. It wasn’t long until I was trying beers left and right and attending such world-class beer events as the Oregon Brewers Festival and the Holiday Ale Festival. So then with so many great beers out there, why did it take me so long to find them?
Last year’s documentary film, Beer Wars, answers my question with a sobering story. Through an inside glimpse into the beer industry, the film illuminates how the giants of the market reinforce their dominance and squelch micro brewers using every tactic available. Distribution companies and grocery stores are manipulated to ensure that the smaller companies have little to no room in the trucks or on the shelves. We watch as the humble brewmaster of microbrewery Dogfish Head is served with litigation from Anheuser-Busch. Even though the suit is bogus, it is obvious that the corporation is aiming to simply bankrupt the little guys in legal fees. Why? Because they can.Continue reading »
Is Wikipedia using this seal to impersonate the FBI?
As reported in the New York Times, the widely popular collaborative information website known as Wikipedia has been threatened with prosecution if it does not remove the FBI seal from the site’s pages. The Wikimedia Foundation – the nonprofit charitable organization that runs Wikipedia – wrote back that the FBI’s was “incorrect” in interpreting its use as an effort to impersonate the agency:
Our inclusion of an image of the FBI Seal is in no way evidence of any “intent to deceive,” nor is it an “assertion of authority,” recognizable or otherwise.
Over the years, Wikipedia has enacted new standards for ensuring the legal validity of the content on its site. Users must now provide detailed information on how uploaded images meet permission and licensing standards for approval. Ironically, the credits for the FBI image file on Wikipedia include a warning to users about the same law now being used against the website:
Author
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Permission
Public domain from a copyright standpoint, but other restrictions apply. In the US, unauthorized use of the FBI seal, name, and initials are subject to prosecution under Federal Criminal law, including 18 U.S.C § 701, § 709, and § 712.
Wikimedia’s author of the response, their general counsel Michael Godwin, took it a step further in his letter and called out the FBI for selectively removing statute language in their notice. He begins by asking, “May we talk a little bit further about ejusdem generis and your creative editing of the statute?” before ripping into the agency’s gross interpretation in a humorously cordial fashion.
Read the full letter as a .pdf courtesy of the New York Times.
Its a bit late, but in preparation for the 1st issue of my new zine, DIY 2010, I’ve been compiling a list of notable events from 2009. Is there something important to DIY culture that you don’t see here? Let me know!
January
New device uses laser beams to project your own lane from the back of your bicycle,
Shooting of Oscar Grant in Oakland, California, sparks months of protests and clashes with police,
Canada is no longer a safe place for U.S. war resisters
Faythe Levine releases her documentary “Handmade Nation” alongside her book “Craft’s New Wave”,
FCC Free Radio begins broadcasting
Make Magazine begins airing a new national TV series
Bolivia approves of a new constitution that creates a ministry in support of indigenous autonomy
Half the fun at this weekend’s Maker Faire in San Mateo was checking out all the funky outfits. While the steampunk crowd was out in full force, there were many other unique styles on display – many of them handmade by the attendees.
For many makers, form and function can collide, like in the utility belt seen below. But I didn’t find much wearable electronics – did anyone else see any?
How many types of mushrooms can you name? Unfortunately, for most of us, our knowledge is limited to what the grocery store can offer – usually three or four commercial varieties. Yet, nature offers hundreds of species – many of them edible, and some of the best available in the Pacific Northwest.
So I went to a mushroom workshop outside Salem at the Opal Creek Ancient Forest Center to get schooled. The forest center itself provided a perfect learning environment, as the center is remotely located among the Cascade Mountains – a perfect region for mushrooms. The mountains trap the weather systems moving in from the West and cause large amounts of rainfall. Rain and moisture are essential for mushrooms to grow. Once you bring in other factors – such as elevation, flora and fauna – what you find on a mushroom hunt can be quite varied. The center itself prides itself as being a steward of the land – it not only uses its educational program to foster sustainability but also offers a rare low-impact energy use system.
On our first hunt, we found Chantrelles, Winter Chantrelles, a Hedgehog Mushroom, Lacluster Lacaria, and Lobster Mushrooms - all edible!
On the hunt, it is good to have a knife, a brush, and a basket for placing the mushrooms into. The knife helps cut the dirty or undesirable part of the mushroom away, the brush helps further clean it before putting it into the basket. It is helpful to have them as clean as possible before they are placed together with other mushrooms they could possibly dirty.
The wet city in the Pacific Northwest contains more 
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