ransom note
warning labels
official seal
web 2.0 names
image mosaic
random.org
previously on generator zen:
generator zen 2005
generator zen 2003.2
generator zen 2003.1
Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)
Web zen: generating zen
Robert Crumb robot art on eBay
This beautiful piece of original Robert Crumb artwork is on eBay right with a Buy It Now price of $14,500. I loved it before I even noticed that one of the robot's noises is "Boing!" From the item description:
LinkThis is original art for an unused cover for an unspecified issue of Inkling. The art is undated, but was probably done in the late '60s, as Mr. Natural, who appears in the piece, wasn't created until 1967. The artwork measures 8" x 10.5" and has been tastefully matted and framed to an overall size of 11.5" x 14".
Ashtray at Carmen Hotel in Granada, Spain offers a mixed message. Instant BoingBoing post generator, mad libs style
Enter some nouns, adjectives, and other stuff into a text form on this website, and you get an instant BoingBoing post! Don't miss the extra bonus link at the end, for some palate-cleansing unicorn goodness by "Snark Frankenfurter." I think they really nailed the BoingBoing spirit. It's almost as good as an open source bluetooth dildo website woven by Bigfoot that gets banned by internet censors in China. ALMOST. Link. (thanks, Katie)
MIT students demonstrate wireless power transfer
RayK says
In an experiment, a team from MIT were able to power a 60W light bulb from two meters away. Calling their demonstration 'WiTricity,' the researchers believe that a system is possible that could send electricity to your battery powered devices within a room sized space.LinkIt's a Tesla-dream come true.
WiTricity is based on using coupled resonant objects. Two resonant objects of the same resonant frequency tend to exchange energy efficiently, while interacting weakly with extraneous off-resonant objects. A child on a swing is a good example of this. A swing is a type of mechanical resonance, so only when the child pumps her legs at the natural frequency of the swing is she able to impart substantial energy. Another example involves acoustic resonances: Imagine a room with 100 identical wine glasses, each filled with wine up to a different level, so they all have different resonant frequencies. If an opera singer sings a sufficiently loud single note inside the room, a glass of the corresponding frequency might accumulate sufficient energy to even explode, while not influencing the other glasses. In any system of coupled resonators there often exists a so-called “strongly coupled” regime of operation. If one ensures to operate in that regime in a given system, the energy transfer can be very efficient.
Canadian gent oozes green blood
The medical journal The Lancet reports on the case of a hospitalized man who was discovered to have green blood.
"It was sort of a green-black. … Like an avocado skin maybe," said the patient's doctor, Dr. Alana Flexman.
The patient may have had a condition called sulfhemoglobin, caused by a drug interaction that makes sulphur bind to red blood cells, preventing oxygen from binding. Link to CBC article loaded with Mr. Spock jokes about the incident
Graffiti Research Lab comes to Barcelona
The Graffiti Research Lab, creators of the LED throwie and inspiration for the mooninite signs that destroyed the city of Boston in January, went to Barcelona with their amazing laser guided graffiti project system. Here's a video of the event, which has a good shot of the pedal-powered projection system. Link
Previously on Boing Boing:
• Graffiti Research Labs high-power projection system
• Graffiti Research Lab's video of Maker Faire
• Mind blowing video of laser-guided graffiti system
• LED ad campaign ignites terrorism scare in Boston
• Make cheap magnetic LEDs for fun graffiti projects
Rejuvenile: making sense of the new kidulthood
I just finished Christopher Noxon's "Rejuvenile: Kickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes, and the Reinvention of the American Grown-up," a snappy little book about the perpetual childhood of Transformer toys, adult skateboarding, and "Playalong Parenting."
Noxon wants to know why America's adults increasingly dress up as Klingons, collect dolls and action figures, participate in urban pillowfights, play RPGs (fantasy and massively multiplayer), participate in crafts, read comics, and hang out on the carpet with the kids and the legos instead of plopping the kids into a playpen and then settling in with a martooni.
He tracks the early history of the "rejuvenile" movement back to Lord Baden-Powell's pitch to potential Scout-masters to become "boy-men" in the woods with their young charges, through boomer entitlement, and to a new generation who, driven by a mad housing market and a lunatic job-market, find themselves holding off on kids and marriage through their thirties.
Written as a series of fun case-studies of grown-ups who won't grow up (a woman who attained brief fame by skipping everywhere she went, a man who tried unsuccessfully to get his son to play with his Star Wars action figures) in some way or another, Rejuvenile is a thoroughly affectionate look at the breaking down of the barriers between adulthood and kidhood.
I was utterly charmed. Here was a book that pulled together a ton of diverse threads -- friends who spend their weekends at American Coaster Enthusiast events, haunting eBay auctions for access to the lost toys of my boyhood, and that floating D&D game I keep trying to squeeze into my schedule.
Noxon's style is breezy and his touch is light, but he doesn't shrink from the harder questions of protracted adolescence. If your desk is covered in vinyl toys and Schoolhouse Rock nodders, this book will probably mean a lot to you.
Link
X-Ray as exciting technology: 1939
Dot-com exuberance from June, 1939: Mechanix Illustrated's ecstatic article, "X-Ray Solves the Secret of Life!"
Link
The X-ray is more than the tool of the surgeon. It is a force in the change of civilization. So great a force is it in changing of sex, the reduction of infection, radio and telephone, and a score of other fields that scientists are beginning to wonder if it is not the single greatest force shaping our development toward the Utopia towards which all scientific achievement points.The story of the X-ray of today and tomorrow is a fabulous story of amazing accomplishment, more thrilling than the wildest tale of incredible adventures ever lived by a human being.
the latest
latest episodes
