Well, lucky for you a couple young Russians recorded their research before they presumably hurt themselves and were hospitalized, or maybe just became infertile -- or caused cataracts -- point is don't do it.
They've taken a magnetron out of a microwave, and tied a soup can to the side of it to focus the microwaves. After discovering this, they did the next logical step -- point it at various things and see what happens.
Plus, it makes a great Active Area Denial System!
But THEN they unleash the true comedy gold:
A new ad that mocks Burning Man's corporate influences and was itself produced by sandwich company Quizno's (as a faux-installment of The Maze Runner movie franchise) is so meta and self-aware as to be nearly sentient. At once brilliant and sordid, this is the kind of meta-TV that David Foster Wallace warned us about, may he rest in peace. Oh, and perfectly completing the meta-mind-fuck of this whole episode, Burning Man officials are considering a lawsuit against Quizno's -- for commodifying its culture.
[Burning Man] Spokesperson Jim Graham says legal action is being considered because the video is theft of the event's intellectual property. "We are pretty proactive about protecting our 10 principles, one of which is decommodification," Graham said. "We get a quite a number of requests each year from companies wanting to gift participants with their product or to capture imagery or video of their products at the event, and we turn them all down."
"We'll be coordinating with our legal team to see what action we can take," Graham said.
Sometimes I wonder if the Burning Man organization is actually a satirical performance art project about willful misunderstanding and abuse of copyright and trademark law. But if that was what was going on, they'd probably be funnier.
A transparent plastic ball filled with helium floats in an all white room. Attached are 300 charcoal sticks that make the ball look a bit like a flu germ [...] though people try to control where it touches and how it spins, its lines are often independent and unpredictable.
