Fake Bombs and Fake Art

I'm not an artist. I only play one on the Internet.

Which is to say that any art I produce is merely fake art of the lamest variety.

Here is my latest attempt at art...


You probably can't make out what this is, but it's a telephone punch-down block with a computer battery on the right, an electrolytic capacitor on the left, and a cluster of NE2 bulbs in the middle. It took me about 20 minutes to make it, mostly looking for the box of NE2 bulbs in the basement. Actual fabrication time was about 3 minutes.

Last week, a 19-year old MIT student with marginally more artistic talent than me constructed a similar artifact, using green LEDs instead of NE2 bulbs. She arranged them into a star pattern, since her name is Star. It was her name-tag for MIT Career Day.

And then she was arrested for displaying a 'hoax device' that journalists covering the story labeled as a 'fake bomb' in their breathless national headlines.

The only hoax was the one perpetrated by the authorities, who took one look at a harmless cluster of green LEDs and trumpeted 'hoax device' to a gullible press.

Shame on the authorities and shame on the press.