The most ingenuous solutions I enjoyed this week were tried and true methods sourced from old popular mechanic publications. My favorites were the very practical, yet highly creative methods for reading small type when you can’t find your glasses - Pinhole lens and positioning your iphone speaker over the top of a glass jar when you need to dial up your volume and tone just a bit more.
The most ingenious thing I encountered this week was this a design for self-healing biomemtic solar cells. First, what great language: “biomemetic solar cells,” I love the way it sounds. Even better, it’s engineering reality. http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/velev_solar_cell_channel/
The most ingenious thing i came across this week was Nautilus magazine- which in fact led me to this Boing Boing thread about a “veritable cabinet of curiosities” because they have an article about cabinets of curiosity in the current issue and had a nifty online contest going on to identify items in their virtual cabinet of curiosities. http://nautil.us/issue/4/the-unlikely/a-cabinet-of-curiosities
Thanks all! Contest is over. Winners have been notified. This thread is amazing. We should do this more often!
JAM - I think you’d still have more to gain from participating. There are few if any places that a troll free. Don’t let the bastards grind you down. Live free now.
Who’s going to this?
Hi, this is a late replay, but I just caught the thread on BB!
By far the highlight of creativity for me this past week was attending DEFCON and participating in 1057’s (@1o57) labyrinth of puzzles and mystery crypto challenges that forces you to meet and interact with the many quirky and awesome people at DEFCON. The badges this year were PCB boards designed as a hacker deck of cards, yet they also have live circuits that you can pin-out as part of one of 1057’s many puzzles.
I think the DEFCON community embodies a lot of BoingBoing’s values. My best friend raved about Cory’s speech at DEFCON 20 that extended his “War on general computing talk” to talk about the difficulties AFTER we’ve won the war on general computing that we will face. This is why I had to go this year.
Also, I’m moving to San Fran just two days prior to attend SFAI. I’ve been a big fan of Cory Doctorow’s books and would love to attend.
-Lilim
You can do the pinhole thing with just your hand. Handy in a pinch.
Ah, well. Had a dull week.
I was enjoying myself at a party and was standing next to an outdoor sculpture of Buddha, in his familiar sitting meditative pose, when it occurred to me that I knew little about his ‘after enlightenment years’… So I asked the people around me: “How old was Buddha when he died? and How did he die?” No one knew,… so I started asking everyone at the party, and no one knew… so I started asking EVERYONE those same questions, and NO ONE KNEW!
Isn’t it interesting, he was one of the most influential humans and spiritual leaders that ever existed, and it is not common knowledge, (unless you Goggle it)… Go ahead… even ask your Buddhist friends, most won’t know either…
The ingenious element is that his teaching focused on non-attachment, and obviously succeeded…
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