Notes from the Technology Underground

Announcing the winners of the Practical Pyromaniac Clerihew Contest!

2011-08-12T15:07:00.007-04:00

The winners have been selected in Chicago Review Press’s Practical Pyromaniac Clerihew Contest. The Practical Pyromaniac is a new book from William Gurstelle (Popular Mechanics Magazine’s “Pyrotechnics and Ballistics Editor.”)

A clerihew is a four line, eccentrically metered, rhyming biographical poem. Easy to write and fun to read, entrants were asked to write a clerihew that describes a famous scientist or other person, or event closely associated with fire.

The Winner:

Rudolf Diesel's
As German as measles,
But his engine stayed mobile,
So his legacy's global.

--Kelly Robinson

The Runners Up:

The Great London Fire

Destroyed St. Paul's choir.

The nave and transepts were burned to sticks

On the 4th of September, 1666.

-- Chris Kaiser

Catherine O'Leary's cow

Would probably disavow

Her role in the blaze of 'seventy-one...

Too bad the witness is Well Done.

-- Erik Stearns

Well over a hundred entries were received. It was a difficult task selecting the winners because of the number of excellent entries. Points were awarded for topic relevance, style, and cleverness.

The following entries have been singled out for Special Mention:

The Philosopher Empedocles Thought there were four elements, and these Were earth and water, fire and air He was wrong, but they made a square.	Nick Muellerleile
Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford Showed heat made when gun bored. This example of friction, a conservation of energy prediction.	Ben Brockert
Baybars, Sultan of Egypt Into his hand cannon, gunpowder tipped. But how many klutzes lost a foot shootin' in the Battle of Ain Jalut?	Elissa Malcohn
Mrs. O'Leary Hated the theory That it was her cow That started that row.	Yossef Mendelssohn
Thanks to William Crookes And his love of science books, We now have faithful records Of Faraday’s Candle Lectures.	Roger Kilbourne
Isaac Watts Observed a lot. He observed that observation Is learning's firm foundation.	Michael Hahn
Had Herostratus Gone on hiatus, The shrine in Ephesus Would not be in pieces.	Brandon Burt
Sir Joseph Priestly Looked at "airs" uniquely. Phlogiston he spurned And with O2 burned.	Jim Fenwood
Antoine Lavoisier Had a flawless dossier. Hydrogen and oxygen he bred, right until they chopped of his head.	Ben Brockert
Sir Humphry Davy, for miners so gravely created a light never to unexpectedly ignite.	Jonathan Hammler

MORE-

We received a surprising number of entries involving the mythological bringer of fire to humans, Prometheus. Evidently, his story captured the imaginations of quite a few nascent poets.

Prometheus Stole the God's fire for us, Made Zeus pretty bitter, Now his liver's an eagle's dinner.	Timothy Schmidt
Prometheus Burned Zeus. His reward, that fire giver? Chopped liver.	Les Clay
Greek Fire sparks a funeral pyre Prometheus' gift workin' the graveyard shift	Travis Dynes
Prometheus the Titan Mankind’s burden would lighten He was the fire giver But an eagle ate his liver	Beth Shively
Eagle-pained Prometheus his days remain so tedious. Perhaps his aquiline pest might fancy Some fava beans and a nice Chianti?	Jake Krakovsky
Prometheus we thank for fire But Zeus responded with ire To a rock, He tied the Giver So an Eagle could chew his liver.	Raymond Nakamura
Prometheus the Titan Sought all the world to lighten To the proles he was of fire a giver And now an eagle dines on his liver	Matthew Gordon
Fire was gifted to mankind from Prometheus From raw food and chilly homes it would free all us. The fate of the Titan was grainier; He had the first case of acute pyrokleptomania.	Casey O'Connell
Prometheus What? Fire. Why? Aeschylus Knew, no doubt, his intent. Only the spark is extant.	John Anderson
Prometheus Was a bit of a wuss. Aside from fire, he could only deliver Chopped liver.	Andreas Orphanides

There were also quite a few clerihews written about the author of The Practical Pyromaniac, William Gurstelle. Hoping for extra contest points by using a bit of flattery, no doubt.

William Gurstelle, of fire does tell. In demos quite hot, now "am I missing an eyebrow?"	Ben Brockert
Fire, fire, huh huh! Chem teach says nuh-uh. Gurstelle declares how not to burn off hairs.	Ben Brockert
William Gurstelle Spent a night in a well 'Till he found in his pocket Stuff to make rockets	Robert Sanford
William Gurstelle While otherwise quite swell, For his practical pyromania Was kicked out of Moosylvania.	Craig Wittler
William Gurstelle Musing about Bill Tell Traded his bow For a little C4	Joe Lupe
William Gurstelle Along with the flames of hell Has provided a book barrage To blow the roof off your garage	David Cooper
Mr William Gurstelle May have never been on tele. But of fires and flame, Seems he now has some fame.	Mr Kim Chaisson
William Gurstelle A name I know well. His books inspire, My garage is on fire.	Jason Goodowens
Sir William Gurstelle Was half-way to hell He still hasn't learnt That pyros get burnt	Michael Dare
The mother of William Gurstelle told her son "Write a novel that will sell!" To her never-ending ire Willie wrote about fire	Liz Dorman
William Gurstelle Burns brightly and well A master of the arts Of incandescent farts	Samuel Stackman
William with fire, will never tire, to be forever lit, with wisdoms wit.	Anonymous

Other entrants’ clerihews spanned the gamut of scientific genius from Nicola Tesla to Thomas Edison, from Tim Berners-Lee to Madame Curie. There were also clerihews written to fete and illuminate the achievements of several lesser known scientists including Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner, Claude Edward Shannon, Robert Sapolsky, and Henning Brand.

Robert M. Sapolsky, follows baboons closely. Darting is an art, and unconscious alpha's fart.	Michael Sorel
Albert Einstein Well he had a fine time With E=mc^2 gosh what a lot of hair!	David Ragg
Nikola Tesla, with Serbian chutzpah, wished to save the day with a good old-fashioned Death Ray.	Daniel Harrigan
When Nikola Tesla said "AC is the best bet yet" Replied Thomas Edison DC Rocks, the fight is on	Jiri Vyslouzil
Antoine - Laurent Lavoisier Knew less than Priestley about the air He was however finely read Until the guillotine cleaved his head	Joseph Hinchliffe
Thomas Edison Never was reticent World in delight 'cuz of his bulb of light	HutcH Hutchison
Alfred Noble Was known fairly well But his fame did rise Once he offered his prize	Paul Krebs
Alfred Nobel Who we all know well Worked till he got it right Because he was dynamite!	J-Mag Guthrie
Charles Darwin, his patience ran thin. Tired of the stupidity of our race, created Darwinism to put them in their place.	Ryan Zindorf
Galileo Galilei, Made a telescope so he could see. Left school without a degree, yet became the father of modern science and astronomy.	Ryan Zindorf
Tim Berners-Lee, with out him this poem you wouldn't see. His files, while away, he could not get. Thus he invented the internet.	Ryan Zindorf
Marie Curie, interested in physics and chemistry. She won a noble peace prize, for starting in on cancers demise.	Ryan Zindorf
In the subject of gasses That shock and offend the masses A tiny spark is what’s needed For awe and wonder completed Thoughts for Pyros by Alex Willis, Author of Wisdom from the Toolbelt	Alex Willis
Nikola Tesla, with moustache, sent energy with panache via wireless transmission, and now measures magnetic induction. J. Robert Oppenheimer quoted the Vedic rhymer having unleashed nuclear force and afraid of its future course. Thomas Edison’s electrification of his Burl Street, NY station was a triumph of science made actual by J. P. Morgan’s capital.	Kat Inman
Phlogiston Aether of Serafeim Cremated to ash, reduced to dust Worldly life left to rust	Linnea M. Willing
Hennig Brand yearned To distill from his urine The stone of philosophers But only got phosphorus.	Daniel Chamudot
Doctor von Braun Rocket's head don. Launched to the moon an Air Force goon.	Ben Brockert
Robert Stirling Clever gas curling. As gasses expand, Piston moves in hand.	Ben Brockert
Thomas Edison was a man of no medicine he made artificial light there was no more night	Jonathan Pedoeem
the caveman was a very brave man he invented fire and probably the first wildfire	Michael Pedoeem
Angelina Jolie isn't very boney neither is she fat Jolie is all that	gerry kessler
Mark Frauenfelder His wife, he held her To make things worth doing They gave us the bOING bOING	Mark Gerl
To Robert Oppenheimer let's make a toast, For his nuke work at Los Alamos. Though he queasily quoted Hindu divinity, When he saw what happened with Trinity.	Eric Constantineau
Edmund Clerihew Bentley Should not have written frequently Unless perhaps he failed at guessing That slipshod scansion is entirely distressing.	Ari Multhauf
Henry Cavendish Sadly never got his wish To define the elements Without any audience.	Craig Wittler
Richard Feynman was the man, or one might say, the bomb; He was supercool like liquid helium, and his contributions live on - Whether to the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics Or to a little thing called the theory of quantum electrodynamics.	Robin Bernstein
Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot Modeled thermodynamic flow. No heat engine (he saw) can aspire To transcend the motive power of fire.	John David Stone
Alexander Bogdanov stopped confusion about the vitalities of blood transfusion his final discovery in this area- it was fatal to inject malaria. *I submit that mayhem gone wrong might involve a safe transfusion of blood. i.e. Relevant.	Charlie Callahan
Johann Joachim Becher who lived in the aether, did get his combust on, using only phlogiston	Seth Raphael
Did Fire come from America? Is Canada to blame? Rule predudiced no expats Inherent not same-same.	Jim Meier
Joseph Priestley Carbonated not yeastly. Beer gas killed mice, But in water tastes nice.	Ben Brockert
The commonplace dove Must reliably love B. F. Skinner's Favorite dinners.	David C. Oshel
Billy Joel, His fire burns out of control. Though he swears it's been burning since the world's been turning	Maximilian Vanlancker
Joan of Arc Died on a spark For supporting a rival coronation Created a great conflagration.	Seth Brown
Edward Teller Funny old feller Look what he done! He made a new sun.	Matthew Gordon
It's said that great Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity from fruit on If just an apple can do that Consider Ms. Miranda's hat!	Emily Bond
Prometheus Played thief for us Now we don't shiver But pity his liver.	Elizabeth Bailey
Sir Isaac Newton Discovered the laws of motion. What he failed at, we are told was in converting mercury to gold.	kalyanaraman durgadas
Gurstelle’s book is all the rage A bit of fire as you turn its page How flames and kindling are tamed to toil A mystery for even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle	Nanette Avery
Asimov, the Great Explainer, tackled no subject without a disclaimer: the progress of science has hiccups and hitches* *but, as always, Science Works, bitches!	David Christensen
Phineas Gage Worked the rail for wage A blast advancing neurology From his rod no apology	Timothy Missal
The late chemist Thomas Midgley, Jr Made two startlingly big bloopers. Leaded gas was slow poison, While Freon holed our ozone.	Mark Martel
Chalres Darwin did say All these changes came from DNA! And boy did this make news When he got back from his cruise.	Jack Sterne
The canonical Zeppelin Is just canvas envelopin’ Some gas that’s combustible Which is why they’re not trustable.	Brian Upton
Sir Alfred Nobel blew things to Hell. For this you would surmise, he should win some sort of prize.	John Owen
Johann Wolfgang Dobereiner, a coachman’s son but not a whiner, studied the elements on many an all nighter and made for the world it’s very first lighter.	Rachel Hoyt
Solenopsis A sting come with your kiss. Why do you desire to set my skin on fire?	Mari Stephenson

Now Posting on Makezine.com - Nobody doesn't like molton boron!

2011-06-30T21:27:00.000-04:00

Nobody Doesn’t Like Molten Boron

Here’s an excerpt from my new book, The Practical Pyromaniac. It’s a bit different than a lot of the other projects because it deals with making things NOT catch on fire. It’s a pretty simple chemistry project. By the way, it makes paper fire resistant, not fire proof.. . . .

Full post at http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/nobody-doesnt-like-molten-boron.html

Now Posting on Makezine.com - The Kukri Knife of Nepal

2011-06-30T21:23:00.000-04:00

The Kukri Knife of Nepal

I’m a sucker for things on the Interwebs that are either interestingly made or good for making other things. I’m really jazzed about my new Nepalese kukri which qualifies mighty well on both counts.
A kukri is the incredibly large and heavy knife carried by Gurkha soldiers. Real kukri knives are handmade by knife smiths in primitive village forges in the Himalayan foothills of Nepal. I ordered mine from a knife maker in Kathmandu. Even with shipping, for a handmade item such as this, the cost was surprisingly reasonable (well under $100). It’s made from recycled materials as well.. . . . .
See full post at http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/the-kukri-knife-of-nepal.html

Welcome Boing Boing Readers

2010-02-22T16:04:00.007-05:00

Welcome Boing Boing readers and thanks for taking a minute to look around my blog. I generally focus on science, technology, and DIY topics although there's more here than that. Please use the links to the bottom right or type a topic such as "animal" or "DIY" to get to some interesting subjects.

Is your organization looking for a speaker for an upcoming event? Visit www.WilliamGurstelle.com

Also, here are links to some of my favorite NFTTU posts:

1000 Dead Men:
A description of the Gerry Report, perhaps the most grotesque bureaucratic report in all of American history.

The 10 Best North American Geek Fests
A link to a recent article I wrote for Wired Magazine

The Rise, Fall, and Rise of Robotic Combat
Remember Robot Wars? Many are still at it.

Hollywood's Catapult Warrior
Orlando Bloom's catapult fetish.

Celebratory Gun Firing: Good Idea or Not?
What goes up, must come down. A lot of comments on this one.

Nitric Acid Acts Upon Trousers
Ira Remsen, a chemist with a great sense of humor.

Fun With Jet Engines
Cool video.

Dippy Bird Power
My idea to end the energy crisis.

Navy Swimmer Nullification Program
A bizarre government defense program comes to light

My Name is Bond; Covalent Bond
Chemistry sets ain't what they used to be.

Water Bears - The World's Toughest Animal
Fun with tartigrades.

The DIY Chip

2010-01-07T20:43:00.001-05:00

The January 2010 issue of The Atlantic contains an article I wrote about the way small, cheap, and easy-to-program computers are turning artists into technologists and technologists into artists. It's about the concept of physical computing, or the way people use computers to sense environments and do great things with that sort of information.

The entire issue of The Atlantic is available for reading online without cost. Read the whole article here, or browse to http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201001/robot-art

How to Build a Double Pendulum

2010-01-07T11:14:00.002-05:00

I've written a detailed article describing all things related to building a double pendulum for Make Magazine, issue 22. When Mark Frauenfelder first suggested this project, I wasn't familiar with the device. But the more I found out about it, the more I wanted to make it! They are wonderful, mesmerizing, simple, and complex all at the same time.

Full instructions are in the magazine which will be available in March or April 2010 I think. I've also produced a video that provides a pretty good introduction. Don't worry too much about dimensions: you can make them just about any size and they still look interesting.

This video is posted at youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W-lRO9kyqk

Job for the next decade: Spider Farmer

2010-01-03T12:19:00.002-05:00

A couple of years ago the always cutting edge David Pescovitz of BoingBoing fame gave me a book called Mr. Wilson's Cabinet Of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology. It i s an interesting look at the "off-kilter scientific oddities that challenge the traditional notions of truth and fiction."

Since then I've been wanting to build my own cabinet of wonders. I'm not sure where I'd put it, but I envision a big oak curio cabinet with shrunken heads, an umbrella stand made from an elephant's foot, a meteorite or two, and of course, some large, preserved insects.

Meteorites are readily available on the Internet in in rock stores. The elephant stand is probably not available and the shrunken head sounds hard to get.

The giant preserved insect? They're for sale on the etsy website. They look cool. What's interesting is that their claimed to be raised on spider farms.

The insects used in our framed shadowbox butterfly art have been raised on natural cruelty free tropical farms around the world

Wow, spider farming. That's a job for Mike Rowe if I ever heard of one.

How to Make a Leyden Jar and Electrostatic Generator

2009-12-31T11:31:00.000-05:00

When the cold weather makes the air so dry, it's impossible to touch stuff in the house without getting a little shock. If you want to take that making a spark thing to the next level, then check out the next issue of Make Magazine (Make 21.) I show to how to create some really big-ass sparks by building a friction based static electricity generator and a Leyden jar.

The longer I worked on this project, the more excited I became with it. It took me a while to figure out how to best fabricate the Leyden jar and electrostatic generator and had to go through several iterations before it worked the way I wanted it to. The jar really holds a charge and it's unbelievable how big a spark that thing makes! If you accidentally discharge it with your hand when you're not expecting it, look out! It's quite a shocking experience.

All the directions are in the upcoming Make. I also made a video that's pretty detailed. See it at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5wr1Ishmx0 or click on the thumbnail photo below.

PS Thanks to everybody who wrote me with good wishes concerning my health. I'm going to be fine.

England's Daily Telegraph's take on Absinthe and Flamethrowers

2009-12-03T14:20:00.000-05:00

America's DIY ballistics king Bill Gurstelle shoots from the hip about health and safety

Tom Leonard meets the DIY artillery king at his 'barrage garage'.

The above headline is from today's (Dec 3, 2009) Daily Telegraph, England's largest daily newspaper. There's an in-depth article on Absinthe and Flamethrowers and goes into depth about the importance of reasonable risk taking. The reporter, Tom Leonard, is a terrific writer and the photographer took some very interesting pictures.

I'm honored and humbled to be referred to as " America's DIY Ballistics King"

The article on the Daily Telegraph website is here. I've also made it available on my blog, Absinthe and Flamethrowers.

How to Build a Potato Cannon Wall Poster

2009-11-24T10:09:00.000-05:00

Here's another poster that looks great on the wall of just about any workshop, classroom, or bedroom: How to Build a Flamethrower. I developed this poster with my professional graphic designer colleague, Jon. Huge: 3' X 2', full color. Great to have, great to give.

The poster covers the design and construction of a powerful spud gun, and covers a variety of ignition methods including taser-powered, piezo-electric, and good ole fashioned flint and steel. I've made *lots* of these and my best ideas are all here. Enjoy a 300 foot blast!

Check out the "How to Build a Flamethrower" Poster as well

You can see more and buy it at www.ballisticom.com

How to Build a Flamethrower Poster

2009-11-19T17:32:00.002-05:00

I'm excited to say my new poster: How to Build a Flamethrower is ready to go! I developed this poster with a professional graphic designer. It's full color and measures 36-inches high X 24-inches wide. Everything you need to know (with a bit of web support) to build a kick-butt, working flamethrower! A flame 15 feet high!

It's the perfect holiday gift for the person who loves stuff like this.

It looks cool on the wall of your workshop, bedroom, or classroom.

Find out more at www.ballisticom.com

Car Launching

2009-10-28T10:53:00.002-04:00

I often head to northwestern Wisconsin because my brother has a lake cabin there. Interesting place, rural Wisconsin. Go into any of the bars or taverns up there (believe me, there are a whole lot) and you immediately get the sense that the level of cultural sophistication is not what it is in say, Manhattan or West Palm Beach. Or Omaha, Peoria or Wilkes Barre either.

But that's not a bad thing. The locals are a quite creative lot. Here's an example. It's a pastime called "car launching."

It is exactly what it sounds like. This year several cars, trucks, and two school buses were launched. I'm absolutely going to be there next year.

See for yourself below: Special extended video of the event from my friends at KARE!11: click here.

Marshmallow Shooter Video on Kare -11

2009-10-27T14:22:00.000-04:00

Today on KARE-11's Showcase Minnesota show, Rob Hudson and I build a marshmallow shooter, one of the safer projects from the many available in Whoosh Boom Splat, the enthusiasts guide to making projectile shooters.

Here's a link to a video of the segment - It's pretty good; we had fun nailing the camera man! Easy and fun to make, and costs about $3 to make.

http://www.showcaseminnesota.com/show/client_article.aspx?storyid=827311

Kurt, Roger, Ryan and David build a trebuchet - and it's a big one!

2009-10-26T14:00:00.000-04:00

A few of my friends in St. Paul got together and build a really enormous trebuchet, a type of medieval hurling machine or catapult. I knew that Richard Chin, the great features writer for the St. Paul Pioneer Press would immediately understand the import of such an undertaking. I called him up and told him about it and he got out there. This story appeared in the yesterday's Sunday paper.

Have trebuchet, will fling

Four friends go medieval and build a 'siege engine' (basically a catapult) because they can

By Richard Chin

"This is kind of chancy. We've never done anything this wide and big," warned Roger Bacon. "OK. Let's do it."

There was a countdown, a whoosh, and suddenly a wheelchair was soaring hundreds of feet in the air, hurtling through the skies above Hugo at an alarming rate of speed.

That's what happens when four 30-something guys decide to build a trebuchet, a siege engine resembling a catapult originally designed in the Middle Ages to pummel castle walls with projectiles.

There are no castles in Hugo, so the builders of this trebuchet are content with seeing how far they can fling a bowling ball. They're at about 700 feet so far. They're hoping to reach 1,000.

They're also testing the flight and crash-landing characteristics of obsolete consumer electronics by launching old television sets, a VCR and a computer. Thanks to the Hugo trebuchet, mankind now knows that a flying microwave oven will bounce about five feet into the air after hitting the ground.

Eventually, the trebuchet team hopes to send a clothes dryer into flight.

Built by Bacon, of White Bear Lake; Kurt Modert, of Hugo; Ryan Krueger, of Maple Grove; and David Proehl, of New Hope; the machine is just the latest and biggest, but not necessarily the craziest, project taken on by the four friends.

"We like destroying stuff," Bacon said.

They used to combine snowmobiles with upholstered furniture, resulting in a La-Z-Boy mounted on an Arctic Cat and a couch that was towed on skis.

They've shot each other with potato cannons loaded with hot dog buns and marshmallows and went golfing with a motorized golf caddy made from an old snowblower.

Then they went through a phase in which they took plastic bags filled with a mixture of creamed corn, elbow macaroni and oatmeal and concealed them under their coats.

They would go to bus stops or the entrances of movie theaters and pretend to feel queasy. While a friend would make helpful comments like, "I told you that shrimp wasn't cooked," they would bend over and spew a stream of pseudo-puke on the sidewalk to the horror and disgust of bystanders.

So when Modert decided in 2008 that his New Year's resolution would be to build a trebuchet, maybe the only thing that surprised his friends was how big it would be.

"I thought it would be a desktop model, you know, something to launch paper balls at the office," said Modert's girlfriend, Sue Ruby, of Minneapolis, who wants the record to show that she met Modert after he was done with street-theater vomiting.

Modert actually planned to build something that would go in the back yard of his mother's 12-acre property in Hugo.

Construction began in the spring of 2008 with the erection of a massive wooden frame capable of supporting an 18-foot throwing arm.

It was built with construction lumber, landscape timbers, recycled aluminum plates and salvaged panels from a garage door.

"It's stuff you can get at any Menards," Bacon said. "Kurt doesn't have much of a life, so he was working on the trebuchet all the time."

The swinging counterweight used to propel the arm was fashioned from an old 265-gallon fuel oil tank they got for free off Craigslist.

They spent a lot of time with calculators trying to figure out what to put into the tank to get the best performance. Water leaked. Navy beans weren't very heavy. Mercury would give more than enough heft, but "it turns out it would be difficult to get a large amount of mercury," Krueger said.

They ended up putting sand in the tank, about 1,300 pounds so far. For more power, they can get it up to 3,750 pounds.

The arm is moved with an electric hoist, and it's released by a trigger mechanism that was fashioned from a device originally used to hold and release a theater curtain rope. That piece of hardware cost less than $5 at an Ax-Man Surplus store.

At one point, Modert's mother asked where they were going to move the trebuchet when they were done.

But the machine, situated only a few yards from the house, is anchored with lengths of pipe driven several feet into the ground.

"This one is permanent. It's too big to move," Modert said.

The builders are not sure how the $2,500 project will affect the home value.

"The tax assessor did come out earlier this year, and we're waiting to see what he says," Bacon said.

Bacon said when asked if any changes had been made to the house, Modert's mother told the assessor, "Well, there's less shed and more trebuchet."

"At every step, it was like 'Let's take it one step bigger than we originally planned,' " Proehl said.

"It kind of got a little carried away," Modert said. "Why do it if you're not going to do it big?"

"Most people who build stuff like giant catapults are doing what they're doing because they're seeking a challenge, the challenge of creating something big and wonderful in a physical, tangible way," said William Gurstelle, a Minneapolis author of books such as "Backyard Ballastics" and "Absinthe & Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously."

The original ammunition used by Modert and his friends were defective bowling balls, acquired for free at local bowling alley pro shops. They started arcing over the field behind Modert's boyhood home in August.

"They haven't told you about the mistakes they made," Ruby said.

Once, a bowling ball was tossed about 150 feet in the wrong direction.

"Toward where my car was parked," Ruby said.

The team uses a number of safety measures to make sure no one gets hurt. But when asked if it's dangerous, Bacon said, "Yeah. Well, no. Yeah."

"There's the potential for things to break," Modert said.

During a recent hurling session, a bowling ball was launched almost straight up in the air, sending everyone ducking for cover.

"All right. So let's not do that one again," Krueger said.

Tricked Out Motorized Couch

2009-10-23T10:45:00.001-04:00

A guy in northern Minnesota built a way cool, tricked out, motorized couch and drove it to the local bar. But he got so drunk that he crashed it into a parked car.

Note the headlights, surround sound system and cup holders. It's powered by a lawn mower engine which makes me think it couldn't attain much speed, given how heavy it is. The police chief "estimates" it could reach 15 to 20 mph. I can't imagine that being true. Anyway, the police confiscated it. Too bad.

Full story from the Star Tribune:

The operator of a La-Z-Boy chair converted into a motorized vehicle -- complete with a stereo and cup holders -- has admitted that he crashed the piece of furniture after leaving a bar in Proctor, Minn., extremely drunk.

Dennis LeRoy Anderson, 61, of Proctor, pleaded guilty Monday to hopping on the chair on the night of Aug. 31, 2008, after visiting the Keyboard Lounge, then crashing into a more traditional vehicle in the parking lot. Anderson's blood-alcohol content was 0.29 percent, more than three times the legal limit for driving in Minnesota.

Deputy Police Chief Troy Foucault said Thursday that the chair is "quite decked out." Along with the stereo and cup holders, it is driven by a converted gasoline-powered lawnmower, and has a steering wheel, headlights and a power antenna.

Foucault estimated that the La-Z-Boy can top out at 15 to 20 miles per hour. A National Hot Rod Association sticker adorns the headrest.

The chair was impounded and will be sold at the next police auction.

"We have quite a few people calling about buying it," said Foucault, who half-seriously acknowledged that he is tempted to bid on it, except that "I have kids who would take it out and drive it on the street."

Anderson admitted to police that he had been drinking at home, was leaving the bar and had drunk eight or nine beers that day before getting on the La-Z-Boy and crashing it into a Dodge Intrepid parked outside, Foucault said. Anderson was treated for minor injuries and given a field sobriety test, even though he pleaded several times with the officer to "give him a break," according to the police report.

"He failed everything," Foucault said, which led to Anderson's arrest and seizure of the chair. The officer on the scene checked Anderson's driver's license and determined that it had been revoked because of a previous drunken-driving conviction, according to police.

Anderson, who does auto body repair work out of his home, was sentenced Monday to 180 days in the St. Louis County jail or at the Northeast Regional Corrections Center and was fined $2,000. The jail time and half of the fine was stayed for two years of supervised probation with conditions that include a chemical dependency assessment, random testing and 30 days of electronic monitoring.

New How-To Video on Electrostatic Generator and Leyden Jar

2009-10-17T13:50:00.004-04:00

I've filmed a new video showing how to build an electrostatic generator and a leyden jar. Watch it at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5wr1Ishmx0

If you've never messed around with Leyden Jars, you should; they are immense amount of fun. I accidentally shocked myself yesterday and it nearly knocked me over, so if you make one, don't make it too big. Eventually all Leyden Jars wind up shocking their owners.

12 Shocking Ideas That Could Change the World

2009-09-22T11:02:00.001-04:00

This month's Wired Magazine cover article is entitled  "The
Smart List: 12 Shocking Ideas That Could Change the World."

My essay, entitled "Take Smart Risks," is number 11, (between
Gregg Easterbrooks "Embrace Human Cloning" and Robert Gates
"Overhaul the Pentagon.")

You can read the entire article in the new October issue of
Wired, or online (for free!) at
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-10/ff_smartlist#

How to Choose a Throwing Knife

2009-08-21T15:43:00.005-04:00

In my other blog Absinthe and Flamethrowers, I answer a question a reader posed about how to buy throwing knives.

I was just wondering which company sells the best throwing knives, or which one you trust.
also how much does a good set of 3 usually go for?

First, what exactly is a throwing knife? Wikipedia sez:

Throwing knives are knives that are specially designed and weighted so that they can be thrown effectively. They are a distinct category from ordinary knives.

Throwing knives are commonly made of a single piece of steel or other material, without handles, unlike other types of knives. The knife has two sections, the 'blade' which is the sharpened half of the knife and the 'grip' which is not sharpened. The purpose of the grip is to allow the knife to be safely handled by the user and also to balance the weight of the blade.

When I first started throwing I bought three fairly smallish knives and they were pretty hard to throw consistently. so, I upgraded to larger, heavier model and things were much easier.

From www.absintheandflamethrowers.com:

So, you want to learn how to throw knives? It pays to start with good equipment. The most important thing is to use knives made for the purpose. They should be neither too heavy or too light.

Choosing a knife. The type of knife you choose will have an incredible impact on how much you’re able to enjoy knife throwing. Keep in mind that quality throwing knives do not have a handle. The blade is the throwing knife.
▪ Size: Knives that are between 12”-16” are a good size. They aren’t too big and not so small that you’d have to throw harder and strain to watch them in flight.
▪ Weight: Knives of the above size will fly fairly undisturbed from wind and make a satisfying sound when they hit the target.

more at http://www.articlesbase.com/extreme-sports-articles/knife-throwing-so-you-want-to-be-a-knife-thrower-470112.html

Speed Week at Bonneville Salt Flats

2009-08-06T10:49:00.016-04:00

The Bonneville Salt Flats - A whole lot of flatness!

I'm guest blogging on Makezine.com this month. I'm excited for the opportunity because it gives me a chance to provide some additional information about some of the stories I've done for Make Magazine previously.

In this month's Make Magazine (Issue 19) I've got a piece on Speed Week, the gathering of speed enthusiasts that meets in Bonneville Salt Flats near Wendover Utah to celebrate all things that go fast on the ground.

The Make Magazine piece focuses on Belly Tank Racers, which are fast cars made from the aluminum fuel tanks of military airplanes (they are highly aerodynamic so they are perfect for car bodies.) The men who make them, make them from scratch, and take them to speeds exceeding 200 mph. Now that's some fine work.

Here are some additional pictures of those way cool belly tankers.

This is Gary Calvert's belly tank racer.

Belly Racer's Engine

Here's the interior

Here's me inside it.

Belly Tankers are "open wheel" machines meaning there is no fairing or cowling covering the tires.

Working on Steve DiMartino's Jesse's Girl just before racing

Ready to race. The belly tanker gets a push start and then streaks across the desert.

How to Make a Sazerac Cocktail

2009-07-30T18:21:00.007-04:00

In 2008 the Louisiana House of Represenatives voted to make the Sazerac the official cocktail of New Orleans. It’s a great mix of flavors and packs a kick. A favorite with those who understand the art of living dangerously.

• 1/2 cup ice cubes
• 1 sugar cube
• 3 dashes Bitters
• 2 ounces rye Jim Beam or Old Overholt RYE (not bourbon) whiskey
• 1/2 teaspoon of absinthe
• lemon twist

Chill an old-fashioned glass by filling it with ice and water. In second old-fashioned glass, mix together sugar, bitters, and just enough water to dissolve the sugar. Stir. Add cognac or whiskey and remaining ½ cup ice, and stir well, at least 15 seconds. Take the chilled glass, discard ice and water and pour in absinthe. Swirl it around so the absinthe coats the interior of the glass. Add rye whiskey mixture into the chilled, absinthe-coated glass. Add lemon peel and enjoy.

How to Make an Arc Light

2009-07-22T10:31:00.004-04:00

Home Made Arc Light

Most people think Thomas Edison invented the electric light. Nah. Edison invented the incandescent light bulb, but electric lights were invented about 70 years earlier by Sir Humphrey Davy. His device was (and is) called an Arc Light.

Arc lights are extremely bright. Not particularly efficient mind you, but they are certainly bright. When I was going to high school in the 70s, there were arc light movie projectors in the school auditorium.

WWII style searchlights were arc lights as well. Each search light piercing the night sky over London searching for Stukas and Junker bombers were the equivalent of a 13,000 watt incandescent bulb and were able to throw a beam on something five miles away.

Click above on the picture above or browse to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY06G2iSR8M for a video of an arc light I made that uses carbon rods from a non alkaline battery and a 12 volt transformer. The video shows how it's made and more info is available in an upcoming issue of Make Magazine.

Note: If you make one, don't look directly at the arc without eye protection -- avoid the UV rays

A new television gig

2009-07-14T23:46:00.003-04:00

I've been itching to get back on the small screen now that I've had a taste of it when I was doing Make TV. I'm getting that scratched, at least a little bit as I've become a semi-regular on the KARE-11's morning television show Showcase Minnesota. Each month or so I go on the air with Rob Hudson, one of the show's two hosts, and show the viewing audience one of the projects from my books. KARE-11 is the local NBC affiliate.

Today (July 14) I dug out my taser powered potato cannon and demonstrated that. It worked quite well considering we were operating it outside in a driving rain. But that's show biz. The people at KARE 11 are consummate professionals and working with Rob is a treat.

The episode can be downloaded here. Next month I demonstrate the water rocket from Backyard Ballistics.

Interview Today on WHYY Philadelphia

2009-07-09T09:03:00.000-04:00

Today, I'm being interviewed on WHYY- Philadelphia's NPR Affiliate:

Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane is an intelligent talk show dealing with issues of the Delaware Valley, as well as issues of national and global concern. Radio Times is produced by WHYY in Philadelphia.

Hour 2 (11 AM Eastern Daylight Time)
This hour, learn how to make a flamethrower in your own garage with engineer and author WILLIAM GURSTELLE. Gurstelle gives instructions on this and other explosive projects for the do-it-yourselfer in his new book Absinthe & Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously.

Listen on line at:http://www.whyy.org/91FM/live.html

I was on NPR's Science Friday

2009-07-09T08:56:00.000-04:00

The 4th of July is the time when people really start thinking about the things that go whoosh boom and splat, so Absinthe and Flamethrowers is getting a lot of media attention.

Yesterday, I appeared on National Public Radio's Science Friday show. The subject of the show was how to make those oh-so-interesting projects such as spud guns and smoke bombs.

Science Friday is a live show, but I was on a cruise ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Luckily there was a good satellite connection, so the call and the interview could happen.

You can here the interview at the NPR Science Friday website or by clicking here.

Jatropha Seeds - a promising biofuel?

2009-06-17T22:56:00.005-04:00

I'm asking my brother Steve, the expert gardener to experiment with some jatropha seeds that I found on Amazon. They're pretty cheap - $4, which is a buck less than the seeds for the incredibly hot pepper called naga jolokia seeds I asked him grow. Amazon refers to jatropha as "diesel fuel plants." That's probably hyperbolic. But the stuff does have potential I think.

I became interested in jatropha because the Houston newspapers reported today that a Continental Airlines test flight earlier this year using biofuel intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions achieved fuel efficiency slightly higher than traditional jet fuel. That's huge.

During the 90-minute flight Jan. 7, test pilots put a Boeing 737-800 through various maneuvers, powered by one CFM International CFM56TB engine using 100 percent traditional fuel and one using a 50-50 mix of traditional and biofuel. The flight did not carry passengers and the airline did not set a timetable for using the fuel on regular flights.

Fuel efficiency from the 50-50 mix was about 1.1 percent higher, the airline said.

The biofuel blend included components derived from algae and jatropha rather than food crops. Greenhouse gas emissions for production and consumption of the biofuel tested are estimated at 60 percent to 80 percent less than for traditional jet fuel

This is at least the second report of an airline using biofuels based from Jatropha, Air New Zealand just reported similar results with similar biofuels.

"A second generation biofuel, jatropha is grown on land that doesn't compete with food. It requires almost no care and very little water. Another major benefit of jatropha is that, due to its ability to take hold in harsh wastelands, it can be used to help stop erosion in these areas and reclaim them for agricultural production." -- Gas 2.0

So, this jatropha plant makes a lot of fuel, grows in wastelands, and needs no care or water. Hmm, is it time to buy stock in jatropha companies?

New Absinthe and Flamethrower Website

2009-06-13T12:26:00.004-04:00

Sales of Absinthe and Flamethrowers remain brisk. As of this writing, it's one of the 300 most popular books sold on Amazon. I'm humbled and grateful. Thanks to those who have read the book and shared their opinions.

I've redone the official A and F website. For updates, corrections, and general news regarding Absinthe and Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously, visit:
www.AbsintheAndFlamethrowers.com

To purchase a copy of your own, click here.

Here's Why Engineers Aren't Famous

2009-06-12T11:23:00.004-04:00

Back in the 1970’s, there were not many famous scientists or engineers, and now, there are almost none. If you disagree, try and name one, right now. Go ahead, try it. Who did you come up with? Carl Sagan? No he’s dead. Try again. Stehpen Jay Gould, the Harvard guy who talks about dinosaurs? No, he’s dead too. Hawking? Sure, Stephen Hawking is alive, but he’s far more well known for overcoming his disabilities to do great scientific stuff, than for his scientific stuff itself (Can anybody really understand “A Brief History of Time?). Perhaps, on odd occasion a autograph seeker stalks MIT’s Old Main in hopes of obtaining Marvin Minsky’s or Noam Chomsky’s signature, but really, very few scientists need bodyguards to keep away the star struck rabble.

On the “Q-Scale” of modern fame where Albert Einstein stars with a 54 and George Takai rates a 1, no living scientist or engineer even shows makes a blip on the Sulu’s radar screen. It’s pitiful, but the truth is that no technology related individual, with the exception of Bill Gates, pulls a higher Q score higher than Count Chocula.

The point is there are many, many excellent engineers although the majority of whom are not well known outside of their own companies. In fact, the term "famous engineer" is an oxymoron on par with "nondairy creamer", "dry martini", or "jumbo shrimp". Unlike like say, journalists or lawyers, few people can name more than one or two famous engineers, real or fictional. A recent poll, (I asked my friends one night, while drinking) determined the most famous engineers in history were Thomas Edison (a good choice) followed by Scotty on Star Trek, and then a big gap to Q, the gadget guy in James Bond movies. Beyond that, it’s a lost cause.

Although many of the things that engineers, tinkerers, and radical, technological self expressives make are quite well known, the people behind the things rarely capture the limelight. Why are tinkerers, engineers and technological self expressives so hidden from fame?

Perhaps it is due to their slightly offbeat sensibilities compared to the population as a whole. Although it is not politically correct to assign traits to groups of people as a whole, I have found that more or less, engineering/tinkering life is based on a few basic principles, none of which are designed to attract attention, or at least favorable attention. Here they are:

1. Engineers as a group dig the original Star Trek (note the George Takai/ Mr. Sulu reference in a preceding paragraph.) It's a small wonder, since the only place on television with heroic engineers is the starship Enterprise. And even better, they occasionally get to have sex with aliens. This is much more glamorous than the real life of an engineer, which consists of living like salaried prairie dogs, in fabric covered cubicles, deep in suburban office plantations, dreaming of alien sex.

2. As noted above, GQ and Details Magazine spend little time courting the engineer reader. Trendy clothing is not a priority for an engineer. In fact, if the bridges of their eyeglasses stay taped together okay, and nothing embarrassing such as private parts or nipples are unwittingly exposed, then their sartorial objectives have been satisfied. Anything else is overkill.

3. When something funny happens, instead of manly, hearty laughs, people who tinker with machines tend to smirk. Actually, it’s worse than that, far worse - they giggle. This is very unfortunate for the whole group’s public relations effort and the less said about this, the better.

4. Extreme tinkerers, to a person, share a love for special purpose buildings and vehicles. Ask one what they’d like more than anything else in the world and nine out of ten will say “a 20’ x 30’ heated workshop out in the back with oversized doors and 200 amp, 480 volt electrical service.” Besides the workshop, all extreme tinkers covet a trailer large enough to transport their hobby all over the country. The trailer must come with a professional paint job on the side that reads “TEAM EXTREME” or something similar in red and black script.

5. Tech-geeks are a pretty frugal group. Now, do not misunderstand, no one is saying that radical technical self expressives are cheapskates. They're behavior is not attributable to a miserly disposition or to simple penny pinching avarice. It is really much more about looking at every spending situation as opportunity to substitute knowledge for cash, a tradeoff that most engineers would make in a heartbeat. Moreover, when the conditions are right (like when building something really, really cool), all thoughts of economy are vacated. A different engineering trait kicks in and the sky’s the limit. Which brings us to the last trait.

6. In their own weird way, they have very large egos. Two things are important to the people who tinker on large, involved projects: The first is how smart they feel they are, especially when comparing themselves to other people. The second thing is how many cool things they can make. Your pocket protected, handbook carrying, soldering-gun-at-the ready tinkerer cannot walk away from the challenge of making something really new and unique until it is met head on and conquered. If it's a really, really tough problem, it’s like watching the police dogs on "Cops" go after a shirtless car thief - they are just relentless. They clamp on to tough problems like grim death -- to them, it’s a titanic struggle between their will and the laws of physics. It's been said that radical tinkerers will go without food and hygiene for days when they’re working on a project. (At least that’s the excuse they use.)

And when they succeed in building something really, really cool, they will experience an ego rush that is better than sex - well, alien sex in a weightless environment notwithstanding.

Hey, I've Got a Monkey on My Back, or, Human - Animal Combat

2009-06-10T15:00:00.004-04:00

To some extent, fairs and amusements parks can trace their roots back to Roman Circuses. Although they incorporated bloodthirsty spectacle, the producers of such shows showed considerable creativity. One type of gladiatorial combat involved the “Venatio” or the slaying of wild animals.

To produce the Venatio, wild beasts from every part of the Roman Empire were transported to Rome. Prior to gladiatorial duels (always the main event), animal “hunts” were held. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of animals might be dispatched in a single day in this fashion. For example, during Emperor Trajan’s inauguration festival, nearly ten thousand animals were killed.

Animals that appeared in the venatio included: lions, boar, elephants, bears, dogs, and camels. The men who fought the animals were called the bestiarii, and they were often criminals and were compelled to fight the animals with feeble weapons and no protection.

Despite the impression given by the bread and circuses public policies of the era, the second century AD was tough time for Rome. The distractions of the circuses were an important tool for keeping the Roman citizenry docile to the emperor and under control.

Roman leaders often exerted control over the Roman masses not by offering bold and imaginative leadership but by appealing to people’s basest instincts. In the 3rd Century AD, the empire was in decline, buffeted on all sides by increasingly powerful Germanic neighbors, making it nearly impossible to exert tight control and provide effective government in many sections of the empire. Grasping at any opportunity, Roman emperors attempted to distract the people they ruled buy staging lavish and grotesque spectacles. And such distractions had the unfortunate effect of making the mob grow more ever more bloodthirsty.

The emperor in 182 AD was Commodus. He was a man of unbelievably strange habits, a nearly impossibly cruel demeanor, and a completely unchecked ego. He went so far as to temporarily rename Rome “Colonia Commodiana” (Colony of Commodus.) Yet despite his numerous character flaws, the common people of Rome loved him.

This emperor well understood the crudest and most primitive aspects of his subjects and he shrewdly appealed to the immoral nature of his times.

He wasn’t the first emperor to do so, but there was something that set Commodus apart from the likes of Nero or Caligula. Commodus believed he was the second coming of the god Hercules, and to prove it, he set forth on his own Herculean mission. He became the most prolific and deadly animal fighter the world has ever known.

While contemporary Roman writers often describe Commodus as a quite handsome man, surviving statues show Commodus to be rather jowly with an effeminately curly beard. Infatuated with the Greek god Herculesm, Commodus was obsessed with fighting animals in hand to hand (or hand to paw? Hand to hoof?) combat. For Hercules, as you may remember from classes in Greek mythology, endured twelve labors, most of which have something to do with hand to hand animal fighting. Some of his labors included slaying the Nemean Lion, the Lernaean Hydra, the Erymanthian Boar and the Stymphalian Birds. He also stole, rustled or otherwise committed shameful acts against the Ceryneian deer, the Geryonian Cows, and the Cretan Bull. In fact, if you were an animal of any reputation, you most certainly did not want to see Hercules knocking on your door.

But even mythical Hercules did not display the zeal for animal fighting that Commodus did. The emperor frequently posed for statues and portraits wearing a lion skin and brandishing a club of olive wood. He called himself “Hercules Romanus” (Roman Hercules) or “Hercules Secundus” (the Second Hercules.)

A contemporary of his, historian Cassius Dio, describes Commodus’ animal fighting devotion:

Commodus devoted most of his life to ease and to horses and to combats of wild beasts. In fact, besides all that he did in private, he often slew in public large numbers beasts as well. For example, all alone with his own hands, he dispatched five hippopotami together with two elephants on two successive days; and he also killed rhinoceroses and a camelopard (a giraffe).

Imagine, then, a day at the Roman Coliseum in the second century during the reign of Commodus, now calling himself Hercules Secundus. The arena, decorated to resemble a cheesy, faux Serengi, is clogged with exotic beasts -- lions, bulls, horses, and a gorilla or two. Perhaps the animals are drugged, or hobbled, or perhaps simply confused by the noise and the crowd. In any event, Commodus, dressed in a lion skin and holding various weapons wades into the bestiary and cuts down half of Noah’s Ark to shouts of admiration by the decadent Roman spectators.

The spectacle is hardly bloody enough to satisfy the bloodlust of the crowd. Before long, there are more animal carcasses on the ground than at the killing floor of the Chicago Stockyards. At the end comes the monstrous coup de gras: the Emperor cuts down an exotic animal with a 14-foot neck; a gentle, silent, cud-chewing giraffe.
But this is just the morning’s entertainment. After that carnage, the gladiator fights begin. Ave caesar! Morituri te salutamus!

Animal fighting is one aspect of Living Dangerously, and obviously one that has ancient roots. But in modern times it does not, in fact it should not, mean that animals must killed or injured. It simply requires a fair fight between man and beast, no guns allowed. There are plenty of modern examples of animal fighting that are part of the art of living dangerously.

Fairs and amusement parks at the turn of the Twentieth Century were colorful, vibrant, and boisterous places. They offered an antidote to the strict moral codes of the period and offered exotic products and activities which curious visitors found irresistible: foot long hot dogs and salt water taffy, ferris wheels and roller coasters, and . . . kangaroo boxing.

In the year 1900, the Boardwalk in Atlantic City was well known for its boxing kangaroo (whose name unfortunately is now lost to obscurity.) But by all accounts, it was a hell of a good boxer and was said by more than one spectator that it could probably give John L. Sullivan himself a run for his money. This was the heyday of man versus kangaroo pugilism. While kangaroo boxing was in vogue, mastering this Living Dangerously Art was a fast track to glory and admiration.

At the Pan American World Expo in Buffalo, New York in 1901, one of the most popular attractions was “The Man versus Kangaroo Boxing Match.” One spectator was so enthralled by the event that she recorded the event in her diary in vivid detail. Her breathless description, presented below, has been reproduced exactly, including her spelling and grammatical errors.

A man dressed in red tights entered, followed by a good-sized Kangaroo, who immediately made preparations for the contest. At the Refree’s request the contestants proceeded to shake hands after which the foxy Kangaroo made a swift lunge at the man and the fight was ON. The man immediately followed this up with his right and then the Kang got down to business and went for his adversary for fair, dodging his blows and raining one after another blow upon the mans neck and shoulders.

Then when the man, seeming to getting the best of him, the Kangaroo would throw himself backwards, supporting his weight on his powerful tail and then he would strike with his fore feet and his hind feets at the same time. Each time he would succeed in striking the man in the stomach with his hind feet. On getting an advantage by these maneuvers he would follow them up by a succession of very sharp blows and at times during the performance the man was often made to know when he got "it" in the neck. Of course the man did not strike as hard as he seemed to but it kept him pretty busy to ward off the quick thrusts from the creatures stout arms. At last with a bound the Kangaroo struck the man on the chest and then as he lifted his arm to ward off the next blow the Kangaroo would pelt him again.
"TIME" was called and the contestants were escorted to their corners to be fanned and rubbed down by their attendants. Again, they met in the ring at the first of the second round, and clinched and struggled, the kangaroo pelting blow after blow on the mans head.

After 10 minutes of good solid scrapping the kangaroo landed an uppercut sending the man sprawling up against the bars of the arena. Time was again called and at the end of the third round the fight was called off - the Kangaroo being declared the VICTOR.
The FIGHTING KANGAROO was a pretty creature with a soft coat of brown fur covering its body. Its eyes were soft and dreamy and during the fight when getting the advantage its eyes could be seen to sparkle with a mischievous light. To see this boxing contest was alone well worth the price of Admission to the show.

The motes of kangaroo fighting evidently lingered in the air over Buffalo and settled on some of it’s residents. Thirty-four years later, a young man named Robert Donovan was promoted from copy boy to reporter by the Buffalo Courier Express. Ambitious and talented, he eventually became Washington Bureau Chief for the Los Angeles Times.

Fast forward to 1966, when President Lyndon Johnson embarked on an Asian trip to seek support for his Vietnam policies. President Johnson asked Donovan, who covered the mission as Washington Bureau Chief for the Los Angeles Times, to box a kangaroo while the entourage was in Australia. Johnson remembers Donovan rooted loudly for the kangaroo.

As the well educated and well connected Johnson proves, hand to hand animal fighting isn’t just for street toughs and down-and-outers. It’s actually quite popular among many Dangerous Livers.

Randy Brinkley has done many interesting things in his life. He was the NASA Program Director who led the team that saved the Hubble Telescope. And before that, he was a Marine Top Gun fighter pilot, flying F/A-18 Hornets and AV-8B Harriers. But his most unusual claim to fame is that he is a monkey fighter.

That doesn’t mean he fights like a monkey. Rather, it means he actually fights monkeys (orangutans to be exact), hand to hand.

Okay, that’s a huge exaggeration, since he only did it once, But the point is, anybody who can run a company that builds rockets, fly a Mach 2 fighter jet, and then take on an ape in a cage match is a guy who understands the art of living dangerously.

“I was in Georgetown, with other Marine second lieutenants, drinking beer and trying to impress a group of students. This group had gone to a nearby carnival where for five dollars you could get into a cage with an orangutan. If you could stay in the cage with the ape for five minutes, they paid you $100. But none of them were successful.

“After several hours of strategy sessions and drinking beer, we devised a plan and we launched off to encounter the orangutan.

“The monkey looked docile enough, 110 pounds, long skinny arms, just sitting there in the middle of this iron cage. I approached the monkey from the backside and grabbed it in a half nelson. To my surprise and pleasure, she offered no resistance. Then I made the mistake of lifting the orangutan off the ground. I had a big smile on my face. This lasted for about fifteen seconds, and then I noticed that this long, skinny arm had reached up and grabbed the iron bar over my head.

I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, until a few seconds later, I felt my feet leave the ground. I figured out the orangutan, who weighed 110 pounds (and I weighed about 230 at the time) had just done a one-arm pull up with something like three times her body weight.

“I realized I was in deep and serous trouble, and the grin on my face turned to stark terror. I was no longer squeezing the ape, but actually holding on her back for fear of my life. The orangutan, while she held us in mid air with one arm, reached around with this other long skinny arm and grabbed me from the back of my neck and slung me the length of the cage, through the door which I immediately took exit from the cage.”

Absinthe and Flamethrower Review in Today's New York Times

2009-06-10T10:36:00.001-04:00

People have good days and bad days. Today, I'm pleased to say, I am having a very good day.Forgive me for tooting my own horn, but how often does this happen to a person?

Top of page C6, Today's New York Times: Here's the full review.

For Those Who Like Danger, the Home Book of Things Not to Try at Home

by Dwight Garner

ABSINTHE & FLAMETHROWERS

Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously

By William Gurstelle

It’s only a few weeks before the Fourth of July, the time of year that the thinking person — or at least the type of thinking person who likes to hear things go whoosh and ka-blam — begins to consider how best to spend the holiday.

Some guys, and I know who a few of you are, will be loading up the car in states where, unlike New York, the sale of fireworks is legal. (Those Phantom Fireworks discount cards can really burn a hole in your wallet.) Others like to prepare emotionally and mentally for the Fourth by getting some reading done.

Two books that put me in the mood for rockets’ red glare are George Plimpton’s classic “Fireworks: A History and Celebration” (1984), and, less conventionally, Jim Paul’s shaggily artful book “Catapult: Harry and I Build a Siege Weapon” (1991).

But when it comes to the theory and practice of making your own noisy, mildly dangerous fun in the backyard, America has a new poet laureate. His name is William Gurstelle, and he staked his claim to do-it-yourself greatness in 2001 with his friendly paperback book “Backyard Ballistics.” Its subtitle tells you all you need to know: “Build Potato Cannons, Paper Match Rockets, Cincinnati Fire Kites, Tennis Ball Mortars, and More Dynamite Devices.” According to the author, it has sold more than 250,000 copies. I keep a well-thumbed copy in the upstairs bathroom.

Mr. Gurstelle, a professional engineer, has now returned with a more contemplative if no less wonky and gonzo book called “Absinthe & Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously.” It explores the significance of moderate risk taking to our happiness, well-being and career advancement. (Managers who take the greatest risks are the most successful, he observes.)

It’s also a book that contains meticulous directions for making a real, live, beastly flamethrower in your garage — albeit the propane kind, not the ridiculously dangerous liquid-based variety.

Mr. Gurstelle’s book begins with the words of David Brooks, the New York Times Op-Ed columnist, who complained in 2005 that we are living “in the age of the lily-livered,” where “everything is a pallid parody of itself.”

Mr. Brooks continued: “Gone, at least among the responsible professional class, is the exuberance of the feast. Gone is the grand and pointless gesture.”

For Mr. Gurstelle, this column was as rousing as Henry V’s speech at Agincourt. He is also an admirer of Hunter S. Thompson, who in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” introduced the term “edge-work” into the lingo. (“It was dangerous lunacy,” Mr. Thompson wrote about one of his enterprises, “but it was also the kind of thing a real connoisseur of edge-work could make an argument for.”)

Mr. Gurstelle warns against incorporating Thompson’s hallmarks — “shotguns, LSD and anarchy” — into your lifestyle. Because you are not Hunter S. Thompson. And because he does not want you to die stupidly and young. Just as important, he observes, it is hard to make playing with shotguns, LSD and anarchy artful. And for him, style, ingenuity and playfulness are everything.

In “Absinthe & Flamethrowers,” Mr. Gurstelle burrows into the difference between what he calls “Big-T types” (genuine thrill-seekers) and “little-t’s” (total milquetoasts), while suggesting that most of us dwell somewhere in the middle. He even provides a test that indicates where, on the thrill-seeking scale, a reader stands. He notes “the specific brain chemicals — dopamine, monoamine oxidase and norepinephrine, among others — that underlie the personality traits of risk taking, impulsivity and self-preservation.”

There are pages and pages of warnings in “Absinthe & Flamethrowers.” Some of these are very funny. (“Do not eat any chemicals no matter how tasty they smell.”) All are serious. Mr. Gurstelle does not want you to get hurt. But he notes: “Part of the appeal of living dangerously may be that there is a real possibility of death. However, that possibility should be extremely, extremely remote.”

Mr. Gurstelle exactingly describes how to make your own gunpowder, a substance he calls “the most significant chemical compound mankind has ever developed.” It’s the foundation for many of his book’s activities, the same way the perfect fish stock undergirds dozens of recipes in a cookbook.

Making even small quantities of gunpowder, he adds, “puts you in the rarefied company of such important historical figures as Joan of Arc, Roger Bacon, Mark the Greek, Lammot du Pont, Black Berthold and Leonardo da Vinci.” From there, he’s on to making things like fuses, rockets and an eprouvette, or small cannon.

“Absinthe & Flamethrowers” is not “The Anarchist’s Cookbook Redux.” Making your own gunpowder or small-scale rocket is real work, hardly worth a terrorist’s time.

“Even underage delinquents have easier opportunities for finding materials with which to cause problems,” Mr. Gurstelle writes, “than to go through the rather long and demanding processes described here.”

When Mr. Gurstelle begins to explore things like drinking absinthe, mastering bullwhips, eating hot chili peppers and throwing knives, his book runs briefly into the shallow weeds. There is even a disquisition on “danger dogs,” that is, hot dogs wrapped with grilled bacon. That’s not edge-work, it’s pigging out. I have nothing against any of these things, but Mr. Gurstelle is at his best in the garage with a “This Old Tennis Ball Mortar” sort of project.

“Absinthe & Flamethrowers” ends with Mr. Gurstelle’s own kind of Declaration of Independence, one perhaps worth reading aloud on the Fourth of July, ideally after strapping a battered football helmet onto your head so you look a bit like B. D. from “Doonesbury.”

“We, the intellectually curious, may soon find ourselves trapped in a pen, fenced in by rule-bound sticklerism and overzealous concern for our personal safety, unless we exercise our civil liberties and our curiosity,” he declaims. And so, “It’s time to retake authority from those whose goals are to limit, not expand, intellectual and physical pursuits.”

Bravo, sir. It’s the kind of speech you want to punctuate with a potato cannon blast.

The Mother of All Potato Cannons

2009-06-07T10:54:00.009-04:00

My friend Christian Ristow was at Maker Faire with his giant pneumatically powered sculpture called Hand of Man. It’s great. It’s a highly interactive piece in which one puts on a glove with sensors and controls a multi-ton pneumatic hand capable of picking up and crushing a refrigerator.

photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

I've known Ristow for years, ever since I interviewed him for a book and we stayed in touch. About a year or so ago, I worked on a TV pilot for Discovery Channel starring my friend Christian. He is perhaps the most gifted mechanical artist I’ve ever met.

Ristow designed a machine gun potato cannon which was a true machine gun spud gun. It had a gravity fed magazine that fed spuds into the firing chamber. There were four air tanks with solenoid valves that could shoot potatoes continually and at high velocity at a target until the magazine was emptied. I dubbed it "the Quadra-tator."

The airtanks were massive and could hold plenty of compressed air. I calculated the muzzle velocity was well in excess of 85 mph. The rate of fire depended on the speed with which you turned a crank. The crank controlled five pneumatic solenoid valves, one for the magazine loader and one for each of the air tanks.

It worked absolutely great. We could get 20 or potatoes in the magazine and could empty the thing in much less than a minute. For the finale, the Quadratator, along with the gatling gun that Dave Mathews built, destroyed a car with it.

Now Blogging on BoingBoing

2009-06-05T15:38:00.002-04:00

It's been pretty spare here on Notes from the Technology Underground lately. That's because I've been posting on my friend Mark Frauenfelder's well known blog, BoingBoing.

I've written about 10 posts so far and the most popular as been the post on Absinthe.

It took a while, but I'm starting to develop a taste for the anise and wormwood combination that flavors all absinthes. I got several bottles from several distillers evaluated them. There are several good ones, and a few not so good. I'm very impressed with Taboo from Okanagan Distillers and Kubler from Altamar Brands.

Geek Dad Guest Blogging

2009-05-18T10:40:00.003-04:00

For the next two weeks I have the honor of guest blogging on Wired's Geekdad blog (www.geekdad.com) It's important to nurture the next generation of Edisons, Teslas, DiVincis, and Curies and here's a forum for exploring just that topic.

My friend John Baichtal is a regular contributor there and I read it regularly. So, when the opportunity to write for a group of like minded people with a big readership came along, I jumped on it.

Exploring the trans-Saharan Gold Trade

2009-05-15T12:29:00.003-04:00

My archeologist son Andy leaves today on an expedition to a remote part of Ghana, on Africa's western coast. It's seems like it's going to be quite an adventure:

I'm leaving tonight for Ghana to once again participate in an archaeological investigation of West African history. We're staying in the main city of Accra for a few days before heading out to the rural village of Banda. I'm working on a team of North American and Ghanaian archaeologists investigating an ancient market town connected with the very beginning of the trans-Saharan gold trade about 1000 years ago.

Under Andy told me about it, I didn't know there was a trans-Saharan gold trade. According to Wikipedia,

"Trans-Saharan trade is trade across the Sahara between Mediterranean countries and sub-Saharan Africa. While existing from prehistoric times, the peak of such trade extended from the eighth century until the late sixteenth century

The place he's working is so remote that there's no phone or email. I can only imagine what it's going to be like for him.

The Marvelous Work of Norman Saunders

2009-05-14T12:59:00.006-04:00

I met illustrator Zina Saunders at the GEL conference in New York City last week. Wildly creative and fairly edgy, she works have been in a number of top magazines. I hope to talk to her later today to learn more about what she's doing.

Anticipating that call, I did a bit of internet research and found out she's the daughter of Norman Saunders. Norman was a big time illustrator also and did a lot covers for pulp novels. It turns out Norman was from northern Minnesota (I live in Minnesota) and the story of his life is fascinating.

Random bits of information from NormanSaunders.com:

Norman Blaine Saunders' illustration career was as big and successful as any artist could hope for, and no single genre could contain his remarkable talent. He painted them all - aliens and aviators, heroes and hunters, detectives and demons, quarterbacks and comic books, sex kittens and serial killers, westerns and wacky packs.

and

1953- Daughter Zina is born. Norm's style of work for gruesome comic books is effectively ended when Comic Book Code of Decency Law is enacted and most comics are printed with a the seal "Approved."

100 Geeks You Should Be Following

2009-05-13T09:47:00.003-04:00

GeekDad.com is the parenting blog at Wired.com. Basically it is a group geeks who have reproduced biologically and now blog their experiences raising children in the digital age. I like this blog as it ruminates about the way being a parent intersects with technology and popular culture.

Today, on GeekDad.com, this post: 100 Geeks You Should Be Following On Twitter

Among those recommended are Neil Gaiman, Wil Wheaton, Adam Savage, Trent Reznor, and. . . . . (wait for it) me(!).

I love the recognition, but now I'll have to try harder to make my tweets more interesting and actually understandable. No more "I think anchovy pizzas suck" or "A/n hav bn sndng ppls (s bck 2 thn. edit LT @SpazNet:"

New York: I am a Camera

2009-05-03T22:13:00.009-04:00

I flew home from New York last night, and boy, are my arms tired. Seriously though, flying a plane is no different than riding a bicycle, it's just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes.

I was part of Mark Hurst's always excellent GEL presentations which was held at the TimesCenter in Manhattan. GEL 2009 was super despite the down economy - upbeat and interesting. I spoke on the Art of Living Dangerously.

Before I left I decided to walk around midtown, play tourist, and take a few pictures. My requisite shots of skyscrapers at night.

This one is better. On 30th street I found this locust tree.

The tree's trunk was bubbling up, sort of angrily, out of the tiny open space allowed for it between concrete layers of NYC sidewalk. The other trees on the block were a lot calmer.

Next week I head for Washington DC to participate in Kinneret USA. Should be fun.

How to Give an Ignite Presentation

2009-04-24T09:33:00.004-04:00

What is an "Ignite Presentation" and how do you give it? Ignite talks are a style of presenting where people speak on a subject of their choice for five minute accompanied by 20 powerpoint slides. The slides are automatically changed every 15 seconds. At the end of five minutes, the Ignite talk is over - that's it; fini; done.

On Wednesday, I gave a five minute Ignite talk at Ignite Minneapolis. It was a boisterous crowd, 500+ people strong, and many of them a little tipsy after having a few glasses of beer at the free social hour that preceded the event. I've done Ignite before and I'd do it again because I find it a lot of fun to get up there and talk about something for five minutes.

Reaction of the crowd? It was positive; they laughed at the appropriate places and I got a sort of a boozy roar of approval at the end.

I encourage everybody to give it a try. As far as public speaking goes, it's a good place to start. Here's why:

Like karaoke, even if you suck, no one really cares.
It only lasts five minutes.
Most people come to ignite to be entertained. It's a pretty non judgemental crowd. (But there may be some troglodytes or hecklers out there - just ignore them since they're idiots anyway.)

Convinced? Okay, if you're going to do it, here are some tips:

HOW TO PREPARE AND PRESENT YOUR IGNITE TALK

If you write out your talk in advance, figure that you can speak about 20 to 30 words per 15 second slide. That's not a lot but you can do a lot with that if you're good.
You have five minutes, that's it. So, you're really limited to how much you can say. Don't try to explain global warming. But you can tell people how to plant a tree and why that's a good thing. Have a single concept broken into 3 to 5 subparts (and keep those subparts SIMPLE)
Use as few words on your slides as possible. Most of my slides have no words at all, just a single photo or graphic. The slides should reinforce your words, not vice versa.
You need to connect with your audience using your voice. Modulate it. Talk fast then slow. Loud, then soft. Sound sarcastic then sincere. It keeps people interested.
Figure out your natural style and go with it. I tend to talk fast. It works for me. But your natural style may be completely different. Your style will become apparent when your practice your talk. Once you figure it out, go with it.
Humor is terrific. A few funny pictures will hold the audience attention.
Speakers get energy from your audience. Look for a few people in the crowd who like what you're saying and speak to them.

Ignite Minneapolis

2009-04-19T22:26:00.003-04:00

I am doing a talk at the upcoming Ignite Minneapolis this Wednesday (April 22) . Ignite presentations were invented by my friends Bre Pettis and Brady Forrest a few years back in Seattle and the concept has taken off. Basically, you sign up and talk for five minutes about what ever subject you want. You have 20 PowerPoint slides and they change automatically every 15 seconds.

It's fast paced and fun. I did this before at an OReilly event in San Jose and it was fun. This time it should be even better as there's free beer!

Come if you can. Feel free to email me via the form on williamgurstelle.com/contact.php

Here's the info from the Ignite website:

Ignite Minneapolis #1

The first ever Ignite Minneapolis event is right around the corner. Admission free. Beer is free.

Wednesday, April 22
Solera, downtown Minneapolis

6:00 – Doors Open, social hour
7:00 – Presentations Begin
8:00 – Break
8:15 – Presentations Continue
9:00 – Event Conclusion

Risk Taking and Decision Making

2009-04-16T09:54:00.008-04:00

I gave a talk yesterday about the Art of Living Dangerously at the Minnesota High Tech Conference. Some of what I spoke about is based on the work of a number of well known academics who more or less pioneered the ideas of measuring and analyzing an individual's proclivity to assume risk.

RECOMMENDED BOOKS
A number of people asked me for additional information on the field of risk taking and decision making. Here are some books I recommend on the subject.

"Risk Taking, A Managerial Perspective" by Zur Shapira. It's good, although I'd have say it's pretty densely written, and doesn't lend itself to skimming.
"Behavioral Expressions and Biosocial Bases of Sensation Seeking" by Marvin Zuckerman. This is a terrific book should be read by more people. No doubt the title puts people off.
"Choices, Values, and Frames" edited by Amos Tversky. Covers the concept of framing bias in risk taking and decision making.
For a book on decision making in general, apart from looking strictly at risk taking psychology, consider "Decision Making" by the editors at Harvard Business School
Finally, there is much information on risk taking psychology and suggestions on ways to improve your life through wise and rational risktaking in my new book, Absinthe and Flamethrowers: Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously. It will be widely available in June. To reserve a copy, preorder now on Amazon by clicking below:

RISK TAKING PSYCHOLOGICAL TEST INSTRUMENTS
An adapted version of Zuckerman's Sensation Seeking Scale V psychological test is available online here . Note that SSSv and provides a more detailed breakdown of risk taking behavior than the SSSVI version we took at MHTA. The online test provides raw scores and some interpretation.

Fully interpreting SSSv is a bit involved, but there are instructions in the Zuckerman Book listed above.

FURTHER ADVICE
I speak professionally and consult with organizations on this subject and would be happy to discuss working with your organization. For more information, please visit www.williamgurstelle.com

Methylene Chloride and Dippy Bird Science

2009-04-09T00:01:00.005-04:00

Methylene Chloride is the bonding agent I used to attach one piece of polycarbonate plastic to another piece when I was constructing the firepiston (see Feb 13 post in this blog.) MC works well because it's thin and penetrates into seams well and does a good job of dissolving the plastic so it solvent welds together.

Coincidentally, I found out, while researching dippy bird physics, that methylene chloride is the same stuff used in the dippy birds to make them go up and down. The science of dippy birds, according to the How Stuff Works website are this:

When water evaporates from the fuzz on the Dippy Bird's head, the head is cooled.
The temperature decrease in the head condenses the methylene chloride vapor, decreasing the vapor pressure in the head relative to the vapor pressure in the abdomen.
The greater vapor pressure in the abdomen forces fluid up through the neck and into the head.
As fluid enters the head, it makes the Dippy Bird top-heavy.
The bird tips. Liquid travels to the head. The bottom of the tube is no longer submerged in liquid.
Vapor bubbles travel through the tube and into the head. Liquid drains from the head, displaced by the bubbles.
Fluid drains back into the abdomen, making the bird bottom-heavy.
The bird tips back up.

Methylene chloride is also used, apparently in decaffinating coffee. The MSDS says the stuff is somewhat dangerous, but apparently not so much that it cannot be used in dippy bird toys - at least until someone complains.

Publishers Weekly review

2009-04-06T12:03:00.004-04:00

My new book, Absinthe and Flamethrowers, was reviewed in today's Publisher's Weekly:

Absinthe & Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously William Gurstelle. Chicago Review, $16.95 paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-55652-822-4
If you can imagine Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes all grown up, this supercharged guide for amateur thrill seekers would probably replace Hobbes as his constant companion. Ostensibly in order to encourage the notion that “to a point, the ability to wage risk is a useful and worthwhile attribute,” professional engineer Gurstelle (The Art of the Catapult) lays out detailed instructions for making “black powder” (gunpowder), rockets, flamethrowers and other devices that will endanger your digits and eyebrows. To the author’s credit, he is equally detailed in his prescriptions of safety gear and precautions. He also details more hedonistic thrills, such as absinthe, cigarette smoking and “thrill eating” à la the Travel Channel’s Andrew Zimmern—“in small amounts,” he says, “they add bite and depth to the flavor of life.” Most of the recipes and blueprints that Gurstelle shares with fellow “Big-T” (thrill-seeking) personalities, can be found all over the Internet, but this antidote to the usual cautious self-help guides is written well if occasionally in overheated prose, and, more important, is presented responsibly. Illus. (June)

From this day forward, it shall becomes my life's work, nay, my life's passion, to henceforth, wrest every infinitesimal bit, every intimation of overheatedness from my prose. Seriously though, it's a great review and I think the reviewer understands what it's about. Look for it in June at bookstores everywhere.

Making Fireworks

2009-03-22T22:37:00.004-04:00

<---- Lighting the Lances

This weekend I've made fireworks with the chemicals I bought during Skylighter's half off sale last week. I made a couple fountains, or as fireworks makers often call them, gerbes, with pretty good results. But the great appeal to me is to make "set pieces." This is an old time fireworks display where glowing and moving things are set down on the ground or against a wall instead of shooting them in the air. I feel they have this old, Victorian feel and I like that.

First and foremost among set piece fireworks are chemical lances which are a lot like railroad flares. The lances burn brightly for a minute or more. They're very bright and cheerful.

<---Lances burning brightly

Blowing Stuff Up as A Kid

2009-03-19T09:19:00.005-04:00

Last night, I tried out a new combination of pyrotechnical chemicals in some fireworks I made. It was a fountain, or in pyrotechnical lingo, a gerbe. It worked wonderfully. The key was the addition of fine iron particles into the fuel-oxidizer and those iron flakes lit up the night with intense sparks and streamers.

I mentioned this on my twitter feed and was gratified that fellow like-minded technologist and my electronic correspondent, Dan Dubno, wrote me immediately and directed me to a wonderful article he wrote in yesterday's Huffington Post.

A few years ago, I questioned a large number of scientists working for the Office of Naval Research on critical projects for our nation's security. In this room full of doctorates and inventors I asked, "How many of you hold a patent or have been closely involved with one?" Most of the several hundred scientists here raised their hands.
I wondered what gave them the "permission" to invent. "Since this place is clearly full of inventors," I wondered, "how many of you blew stuff up when you were kids?" Nearly every hand in that audience -- an audience filled with the nation's leading innovators -- shot up.

In particular, Dan relates how he asked a group of accomplished scientists "did you blow things up as a kid?"

Well did they? What do you think, of course they did! And that's something to think about: Is the world to led by small minded, tort fearing, safety-first, second, and always, nanny staters? Let's hope not. More on this subject later

Make Day at the Science Museum of Minnesota

2009-03-14T19:27:00.008-04:00

Me, Richard Hudson, John Edgar (Eggy) Park explain Maker life to visitors at Make Day -->

At Make Day, Minnesota's finest tinkerers, inventors, geeks, and hackers showed their mettle and wowwed the crowd.

I was the MC on the Maker Stage and the theme of the day was music. There was a lot of music from self made instruments. Keston and Westdahl, Tim Kaiser, and Savage Aural Hotbed expanded my musical horizons, providing a wholly encompassing tableau of sound and music.

The museum staff said the turn out was excellent, far exceeding the norm, which was especially noteworthy since today was the nicest day, weather-wise, since last October.

Savage Aural Hotbed -->

2009-03-02T22:12:00.003-05:00

I received word today that the people who run Make Magazine's Maker Shed (the magazine's online store which carries an terrific assortment of Maker gear, tools, kits, and so on) are offering an incredible deal my books and DVD. I'm amazed that they can offer a discount this big.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Announcing our new bundles available exclusively in the Maker Shed. William "Bill" Gurstelle is an award-winning writer, licensed engineer, bestselling author and professional speaker (not to mention MAKE Magazine contributing editor and producer on Make: television). We like the guy, we like the way he thinks. We think you'll like him too, which is why we've created the Ballistic bundle.
The Ballistic Bundle includes:
Backyard Ballistics $16.95 value
Whoosh! Boom! Splat! $16.95 value
Make Vol. 3 $14.99 value
Barrage Garage Vol. 1 DVD $19.99 value

All for the discounted price of $48. That's an amazing 46% off the price if you purchased these items individually. Take advantage of this amazing deal before it's too late.
More about the Welcome to MAKE bundle in the Maker Shed

The Fire Piston

2009-02-13T11:30:00.006-05:00

Doesn't look like much, but it's actually way cool ->
(click on picture to see it work)

The fire piston is a clever little device for starting a fire when you're say, in the woods and don't want to use a match. Basically, it's a small, handmade piston and cylinder. You place some easy to ignite tinder in a cavity in the end of the piston and smack the piston down inside the closed cylinder. The air inside heats up and viola! the tinder ignites.

Sounds simple, and it is, but actually making one took more time and care than I expected. I used a number of different materials for the piston and found that I could make a working piston out of either hardwood or hard plastic. The tricky part was making a good seal, and making the cylinder end air tight.

The fire piston demonstrates the ideas of 19th century scientists Rudolph Clausius, James Joule, and Julius Meyer. Basically, it shows the relationship between work and heat. Work and heat are the same thing, said those scientists, which was in contrast to the then current notion that heat was a "thing," a mysterious quantity called phlogiston or caloric. Nope, said Clausius, heat is simply the what happens when you do mechanical work in a closed system.

See a movie of my fire piston in action at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX9odql1Abc

The Maker President

2009-02-03T09:31:00.004-05:00

As a maker and rational risk taker, I was thrilled to hear President Obama say this in his inaugural address:

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or
seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labour, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Making, like charity, begins at home. Go out and make something cool today. For ideas, visit:

makezine.com
makezine.tv
instructables.com
wonderhowto.com

The Moaster

2009-01-29T10:21:00.003-05:00

What happens when you mix a toaster, an arduino, some pressurized CO2, and the same English ingenuity that brought the world the steam engine, the power loom, and the sandwich? You get the Moaster, the world's highest popping toaster.

While I didn't realize the need for such a device before, upon reflection there is no doubt that it serves a crucial need. And it leads to a glorious vision of other amplified, modified appliances. Work must begin immediately upon the world's loudest kitchen timer, built from a series of air powered klaxon horns and kettle drums. Or perhaps the world's most powerful stove burner, an oxyacetylene powered hob with integrated scram-jet technology to boil water faster than you can say "the rural juror's brewery*."

* John Edgar Park (or "Eggy" as he prefers to be called on the set of Make: Television) and I have decided that of all possible lines in an actor's script, this is the most hellish to say.

The Airborne Laser - World's Largest Hunk of Titanium

2009-01-22T15:37:00.010-05:00

Titanium alloy is extraordinarily strong, stiff, and light, all qualities coveted by people interested in cramming in as much horsepower into the lightest, strongest package possible. On the flip side, it is extraordinarily expensive, and a real pain in the neck to cut and weld. It is close to impossible to cut with a hacksaw, all but requiring the use of fancy water jet cutters or electrical discharge machining.

Titanium is such a cool material that its has developed its own mystique, even crossing over to non engineers, conjuring up, for many, the promise of a real space age materials – rare, expensive, and high performance. Even though it is one of the more common elements in the earth’s crust, it is so hard to work with that items made from it are necessarily, expensive.

Marketing types have pounced on the metal’s cachet, and it is used as a come-on in sorts of marketing campaigns that seek to project of an image of high tech strength. There are titanium golf balls, titanium coffee cups, titanium rain coats, titanium computers, titanium sunglasses, and titanium condoms. There may actually be some rationalization for including a fleck or two of titanium in a golf ball, but the need to include it in the others doesn’t seem apparent, and in fact most of these items don’t actually contain a lick of it.

One item that does contain titanium, in fact quite a lot of it, is the “ABL”, a gigantic US Air Force airplane-mounted laser, one of the linchpins of U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense system which is the successor to Ronald Reagan’s Cold War Era “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative. The ABL is a very large oxygen-iodine laser that is powerful enough, or so its Pentagon designers claim, to destroy a missile during its “boost phase”, the first few minutes after it lifts off and is thrust into the sky by its powerful chemical rocket engines.

Large parts of the missile killing light beam are encased in an approximately 25 foot by 10 foot protruding titanium “belly skin” affixed to the bottom of a heavily modified Boeing 747. This skin, or panel, has 36 holes arranged in eight neat rows of four holes, each hole being slightly larger than one foot in diameter. Through these holes, the jet of steam exhaust generated by the laser’s firing system will be ejected after it locks on and destroys an ascending missile.

When the laser operates, great quantities of hot, highly pressurized steam will rapidly exit the aircraft and extreme measures to protect the airplane and crew are required. The project engineers designed a massive hunk of robot-fabricated titanium, the world’s largest titanium part, for the laser shell because only titanium met the thermal, material strength and chemical requirements of the project.

How to be Interviewed on Live TV

2009-01-15T09:44:00.006-05:00

So, maybe you've been trying to figure out how to be interviewed on live television without crashing and burning. Well, don't worry, I can help.

I decided to write this post after I did a live tv spot plugging Make:television on Almanac.

Almanac is the live, weekly public affairs television program produced by Twin Cities Public Television and I was asked to come on the show and talk about Make:Television.

Personally, I've done interviews on over 100 radio and tv stations. I've never died on stage, and actually, they've typically been a lot of fun. Good time, and the interview went just fine.

And, as Andy Warhol said, everybody gets their own fifteen minutes of fame eventually. So, odds are you'll get your time on TV as well. (Hopefully not on Fox Network's COPS.)

When your time comes up, it pays to be prepared.

How to be Interviewed on Live TV
1. Make a personal connection with the person interviewing you. The better the connection, the better the interview. At a minimum learn, memorize, and use that person's name. Sound easy, but a lot of people all of sudden can't remember the name of the interviewer when the lights go on.
2. Know where to look and where not to look. Usually, just look a the person interviewing you and not at the camera.
3. Take it easy with hand gestures. The camera operator will have a hard time tracking if you constantly wave your hands around.
4. Easy to say and hard to do, but: try and relax and have a good time.
5. Dress in solid colors. Bright white shirts and those with patterns make strange moire patterns and should be avoided.
6. Talking about your product or book is great but avoid over plugging it. Hopefully, the interviewer will take care of that for you. But if you get to the end of the interview and your product, book, video, etc hasn't been mentioned then by all means plug away. But do it with restraint and succinctness.

Potato Cannon Instructions - NOW RENDERED IN 3D!!!

2009-01-13T09:17:00.005-05:00

This is way, way cool.

In 2006 I wrote an article for Make Magazine which describes in detail how to make a potato cannon. I called it the Night Lighter 36 and it was quite fine piece of work. It was constructed from clear PVC plastic (the better to see the what goes on inside the combustion chamber) and uses a high voltage taser to supply the spark required to ignite the fuel that propels the potato. (Note to the the taser-averse crowd, you could subsitute a flint and steel lantern lighter in the end cap for the the taser. But, it wouldn't be nearly as interesting (or expensive))

As far as spud guns go, it was pretty high tech. Speaking of high tech, the Make magazine website made an interactive 3D rendering of the device available. I didn't know about that until I read Make website editor Phil Torrone's comments on a recent newsgroup post called the Foo Camp Digest.

The technology is exceedingly interesting and interactive 3d rendering of tech projects shows great potential. Check out the 3D PDF for yourself on the Make Mag web site.

(A bit of self promotion here: this and many other wonderful projects are brilliantly rendered and explained in my book Whoosh Boom Splat. There is a link to Amazon.com to the right -->)

I'm not sure how complicated the software is that makes such interesting drawings. I've doodled around with SolidWorks and AutoCad and, well, I just don't have the patience to learn it. Maybe this one is easier.

Make: Television is on the air!

2009-01-09T18:03:00.005-05:00

Make: Television comes to the airwaves!

This is a shot of me, John Edgar Park (who I think I'll start called Eggy for short), and the television show crew working on one of the projects we describe on the show.

As I've mentioned before, I'm one of the producers and on air presenters for the new national television series, Make: Television. It will be carried by roughly 75% of all public television stations in the USA. Many stations including those in the Minneapolis, Washington DC, New York, Miami, and San Francisco areas have already scheduled it into their programming while many others are waiting until later in the year to slot it.

It's a terrific show, if I do say so myself. It's (as the name implies) a show about making things. We feature the inventors artists, musicians, tinkerers, and other folks who mix up art, technology, tools, and imagination to build some of the coolest stuff you could ever imagine.

Truly, it's a show for the times. It's green and clean, as it shows how to make use of things that otherwise might be discarded or junked. The projects we describe are typically low cost and rely more on creativity and imagination than on dollars. Plus it's about coming to terms and feeling comfortable with the technology that permeates modern life.

That might sound high-falutin, but it's true. Visit www.makezine.tv to find out where and when it's on in your town. Episodes will also be made available on the web for those who don't have broadcast access. Use the form on my website williamgurstelle.com to comment and make suggestions.

Water Casts

2008-12-18T09:32:00.005-05:00

Those who have read my blog recently are aware of my enjoyment of Victorian age English magazines. One magazine in particular, Pearson's, has caught my interest. While researching bartitsu for an upcoming book, I found that a fascinating article on photographing "water casts."

This is nothing more than taking a picture of a man throwing a bucket of water using a fast shutter speed. But the author, a Victorian/Edwardian age Englishman named Archie Williams has taken some great photos using the premiere photographic equipment available in 1901.

Wrote Williams, "My attention was first drawn to the artistic possibilities latent in a bucketful of water by the manner in which a thatcher damped a pile of straw to make it tough and supple enought for his purpose. With a quick turn of the writst he projected a thin seminciruclar film which covered several square feet, glistening like the sun and suggesting many beautiful forms."

I'm not sure my Nikon D-90 with all of it's metering and digital features could do much better than this Victorian photographer.

Homemade Windmills Across America, ca.1900

2008-12-16T09:57:00.008-05:00

Much time on my part has been spent in the sub-basement annex of the University of Minnesota library. That's where they keep the old, old, pre-1900 copies of magazines.

I've been doing research on Bartitsu, a rare hybrid martial art, combining ju-jitsu and boxing and was developed by a Victorian Brit named E. W. Barton Wright. Down there in the stacks, among the crumbling pages, are some of the most interesting reading I've come across.

These magazines are so interesting, I could spend hours (and I have) reading through them when I should be doing something else.

Some days, I can't get enough of those crumbling magazines from America and Britain printed in about 1900. Subject matter? It's all over the board: self defense articles, the habits or African and Asian animals, many, many article on prison life for some reason (and it sounds awful!) and a fair amount on travel to exotic places which back then were actually quite exotic and hard to get to, making magazine accounts about the only way for the average person to get to Asia or Africa.

I came across an account of "Windmills of America." It's interesting to see the home-made designs of windmills made by frontier and homesteading farmers out of the materials available to them. Some of these designs are incredibly complex and they certainly show an ability to design and fabricate mechanisms with I imagine, only rudimentary tools.

Are they efficient? Well, that might be another story. But here they are, rickety looking and wonderful.

Cold Days, Warm Flamethrower

2008-12-15T12:05:00.001-05:00

Cold days, warm flamethrower.
Instructions on how to make your own are part of Absinthe and Flamethrowers, coming to all bookstores in June 2009

Absinthe and Flamethrowers Cover

2008-12-12T17:12:00.000-05:00

Hot off the press: Here's the cover of my new book, Absinthe and Flamethrowers which will come out in June, 2009. The bold red cover and interesting artistic lettering will make it standout among other books on the bookstore shelves.

Drop me a line using the form on www.williamgurstelle.com if you're interested in being notified when it's on sale.

How to Make a Pole Aerial Photography set up

2008-12-12T10:06:00.007-05:00

Make Magazine issue 16, with the cool Spy vs Spy cover, features my how-to article on how to make a pole mounted camera (aka Mast Aerial Photography) by using hobby servo motors and a standard painter's extension pole.

This project isn't terribly hard, requiring only about a half day or so to complete, not including getting the materials.

Pole aerial photography is fun and practical and provides a way to get incredible aerial photographs without ever leaving terra firma.

We liked this project so much that we decided to show how to make in one of the initial episodes of Make:Television, the nationally televised program coming to public television in January 2009.

Developments in High Explosives

2008-12-11T10:51:00.003-05:00

The first atomic bombs, of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki variety, worked by basically crashing one piece of highly enriched uranium into another piece in order to start a chain reaction. To do that, I read that US government scientists built specially shaped blocks of explosive. The explosives were cut into precise hexagon and pentagon shapes.

When detonated, the uranium went exactly where it was supposed to go, and ka-boom! But, it's much harder to do than it sounds because of the difficulty in shaping High Explosive charges precisely.

The explosives were machined into shapes like this: -->

I don't think the world needs easier ways to cast high explosives into precise shapes, but the scientists at Los Alamos just announced precisely that: an easy to use, low melting point high explosive that can easily cast into precise shapes.

ScienceDaily (Oct. 14, 2008) — Since the discovery of nitroglycerin in 1846, the nitrate ester group of compounds has been known for its explosive properties. A whole series of other nitrate esters have been subsequently put to use as explosives and fuels.

A research team led by David E. Chavez at Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA) has now developed a novel tetranitrate ester. The compound has a particularly interesting characteristic profile: it is solid at room temperature, is a highly powerful explosive, and can be melt-cast into the desired shape.

The Blowing Things Up Holiday Gift Guide

2008-12-09T11:06:00.005-05:00

If you're looking for gift ideas with high energy appeal, the list below may be just the ticket. I think almost every garage tinkerer desperately wants at least some of these items, whether they know it now or not.

1. Interested in pyrotechnics? There are many fine books available, and some not so fine ones. If you're interested in learning how to make fountains, rockets, roman candles, shells, etc, there are two I've found to be excellent.

The first is Introductory Practical Pyrotechnics by Tom Perigrin. I bought it from American Fireworks News (http://www.fireworksnews.com/) . It's not inexpensive, but it's clear and fairly well written. The second is the Dictionary and Manual of Fireworks by George Washington Weingart. It's a much older book and doesn't provide step by step instructions like Perigrins book, but it's a fine supplement to it.

2. When I wrote my first book, Backyard Ballistics, I wasn't sure anybody would like it. I'm pleased to say that people do enjoy it. Over 200,000 copies sold and still going strong! Spud guns, dry cleaner bag balloons, and carbide cannons and such are what makes Makers great. Check it out.

3. Servo motors and radio transmitter. I have so many projects where I need to move something remotely. Recently, I wrote in Make Magazine issue 16 about a pole mounted camera, where the camera is mounted way up on a 20 foot long pole. How to trip the shutter? A servo motor of course. Servo's are great for robot control as well as their standard use controlling throttles and control surfaces on RC vehicles. (If you get a servo and radio for tinkering, use ground frequencies only.)

4. Serious makers and builders really must know something about "physical computing, " that is, sensing and controlling the non-digital, non-virtual world, with computers. The way most makers to that is through microcomputers. I've looked at several. The Make Controller, available from makershed.com has a lot of inputs and outputs including connections to servo motors!. Less expensive and therefore extremely popular is the Arduino. The Arduino is cheap, has several analog and digital inputs and outputs, and is programmable in a C like language. There's also the Basic Stamp, also cheap, but is programmable in Basic for dinosaurs like me. Available at makershed.com

5. Any electronic project requires soldering. Soldering isn't hard (well, too hard) if you have the right tools. This means a good iron and a great work holder. The best work holder I've found is made by Panavise. Panavise's standard #301 vise coupled with the #312 base mount/part tray, and the #315 circuit board holder is the ticket. Simple to use, it allows pieces to be positioned comfortably and securely. It's what serious electronics people use. Thanks to John Edgar Park at Make TV for turning me on to this.

6. I think my book Whoosh Boom Splat is way cool. Plans include a tee-shirt cannon, a steam cannon, and a nifty clothespin shooter that shoots lighted matches. Of course, I may be biased.

7. One of my favorite tools is a taser. Okay, that probably seems weird, but making a spark is often pretty important. Whenever you want to ignite something (say the propellant in a potato cannon, or a gas stream in a flamethrower) a taser works pretty darn well. Much easier than rigging an ignition coil, a taser makes sparks available anywhere, anytime. And, if the bad guys attack, you're ready for that as well. One of the least expensive, but highest voltage ones I've seen is here at Amazon

8. Anybody who makes anything should know about Make Magazine. (I'm a contributing editor there.) Four gigantic issues a year, each chocked full of information on how to make the greatest stuff in the world. See more at http://www.makezine.com/ and if you agree, go ahead and subscribe.

Yellow Fever Vaccinations and Travel Medicine Clinics

2008-12-05T17:48:00.007-05:00

Sad but true, the health care system in the US does not work well. One must be a vigilant consumer of health care services.

Later this month, I'm going to the coast of French Guiana. Circumstances dictate that I am required to get a yellow fever vaccination. According to the US Government's CDC website, there is a "low incidence of yellow fever in South America, generally a few hundred reported cases per year."

Strange it may seem but I need to get a yellow fever shot in order to spend a less than a day on a continent of 371,000,000 inhabitants which reports perhaps 400 yellow fever cases per year. It seems to me that I have a much better chance of being struck by lightning, coming under pirate attack or dying by getting hit on the head by a falling coconut.

But rules are rules, so a yellow fever shot I must get. I have very high deductible health insurance and since I've managed being run over by a truck so far this year, I must bear the full cost of vaccination.

I called my doctor who told me that I must go to a clinic that specializes in "travel medicine" since my doctor, (who is a fine physician,) doesn't handle tropical infectious diseases. Fine, I'll call around.

Travel Medicine Clinic A: $120 for the shot, plus $250 for a "consultation." I simply cannot imagine the need for a consultation about something like this. It seems absurd.

Travel Medicine Clinic B: $275 for the shot and a 15 minute consultation with "travel clinic" doctor.

I finally found that the city of St. Paul public health department has a nurse that will vaccinate me if I bring in a doctor's prescription and give them $100 cash money. Much better, but I have better uses for $100.

"Travel Medicine clinics" sound like a blatant marketing ploy, another example of a desperate and broken health care system.

Worlds Fastest Indian?

2008-12-03T10:55:00.007-05:00

I've got an upcoming article in Make Magazine about Speed Week, a gathering of fast cars and faster drivers that happens once a year on the salt flats on the Nevada - Utah border. The salt is smooth and goes on for miles. It a perfect place to see how fast your car can really go.

The vehicles (cars and motor cycles) there don't race against each other and not against the clock either. They are simply trying see how fast they can go. And they do go fast.

What's most interesting to me is the incredible amounts of horsepower, and therefore speed that these guys get out of their cars. There are vehicles with 2-liter engines that go over 200 mph. How do they do that? By using fuels that have more energy in them than gasoline or diesel, boosting the pressure of the intake air with a blower, optimizing the engine tuning for speed (at the expense of say, gas mileage,) and streamlining the car body.

I spoke at length with Gary Calvert, a member of the Muckleshoot Indian tribe from Washington State. Really a knowledgeable guy -- he built his vehicle from the wheels up, taking a wing mounted fuel tank from a military airplane (it's large and aerodynamic) adding a Japanese car's V6 and turning it into a really (really) fast car. It burns fuel (nitromethane) and has an enormous turbo charger that radically increases the amount of air going into the pistons which does good things for horsepower.

This car, called a belly tanker, screams across the salt flats.

I sat in it for a while to get the feeling of driving a vehicle like that. I'd sure like to build one myself.

The Barrage Garage DVD!

2008-12-01T13:04:00.006-05:00

Two Years in the Making: The Barrage Garage DVD
THE GARAGE WARRIOR’S ULTIMATE VIDEO GUIDE TO ALL THINGS THAT GO BOOM is available for purchase. The Garage Barrage video contains four of my favorite scientific projects. They may be a bit edgy, but I believe they're safe (follow the directions and use your common sense.) Of course, you never really know do you?

But if you are like me, you understand that a bit (just a bit) of danger and excitement is the salt and cayenne pepper in the stew of life. They make things interesting. Of course, if you use too much, they ruin it. so, it's a balance.

And this video is all about projects that fit into a good balance -- danger, excitement, science, fun.
The video was a collaboration between me and a group of professional video producers and writers. I really like it, and I hope you do too.

The projects include making smoke bombs (go here to see the entire project for free!), the Night Lighter 36 Taser-Powered Potato Cannon, a small jet engine (a jam jar jet), and the world famous Mentos Fountain. We've put our own twist on all of these projects to make them easy to do and spectacular to watch.

Plus, there Amanda and Nicole ;)

Ghost Pigeons

2008-11-26T14:48:00.009-05:00

Ghost Pigeons - the last enduring testament of a bird's life and premature death.

Recently, I've become aware of what I call "ghost pigeons, " the imprint a pigeon makes on a glass window of a building when it unwittingly flies into it. They are spooky and depressing and kind of pretty all at the same time.

Now that I'm aware of them, I see them all the time when I look out of the windows in downtown office buildings.

If you have any ghost pigeon pix, please post.

Chinese Siege Warfare - Mechanical Artillery & Siege Weapons of Antiquity

2008-04-10T16:23:00.004-04:00

Too often, when we talk about siege engines - catapults, trebuchets, ballistae, and so forth - we focus on European technology. But it's in the far east where the story begins, at least for gravity powered siege weaponry.

I recently purchased Chinese Siege Warfare, Mechanical Artillery & Siege Weapons of Antiquity by Liang Jieming. A somewhat difficult book to get a hold of (not available on Amazon as far as I can tell), this 150 page book did much to plug gaps in my knowledge. Although much of the book deals with Chinese pre-gunpowder siege weaponry, there are smaller sections on western designs and some early gunpowder devices.

Incredibly, much of the book has been placed on the web for free, and this book an is absolutely wonderful resource for students of siege engines and model makers.

The book is well illustrated, using a combination of line drawings from old texts and colored pictures of the author's recreations of many of the machines discussed in the text. I noticed that Liang uses rope lashing to connect the wooden members of his machines, which is something I discussed in the Viking Catapult chapter of my book The Art of the Catapult. I've often suspected that the ancient builders, world over, made extensive use of lashed joints as they are strong, rigid, and relatively easy to master.

Overall, a good book filled with hard to find information. I recommend it.

Too Much Clutter in America's Nuclear Attic?

2008-03-26T17:56:00.008-04:00

<-- Mark 12 "Brock" atomic weapon

Several newspapers had this or a similar story in it yesterday:

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military mistakenly shipped four nuclear-missile detonators to Taiwan in 2006, then failed to detect the error for more than a year, the Pentagon announced Tuesday.

Pentagon officials said they didn't know how the detonators had been sent when Taiwan had ordered helicopter batteries or who was responsible. Michael Wynne, the secretary of the Air Force, said the cone-shaped fuses didn't resemble the power batteries that Taiwan had requested.
Wynne said that the misdirected detonators, used to ignite the trigger of a Mark-12 nuclear weapon, didn't pose a security threat. The triggers couldn't be used to detonate other weapons, officials said.

That's strange. Did someone at the airbase from which they were shipped, look at a packing list that said "helicopter battery" and accidentally pack 4 nuclear bomb triggers? I imagine they have a label on the box that reads "WARNING! NUCLEAR BOMB TRIGGER INSIDE. DO NOT USE HOOKS" or something like that. Still I guess mistakes happen.

But here's what I really don't understand. The triggers were for Mark -12 nuclear weapons. The Mark 12, nicknamed "Brock" by those who have pet names for atomic bombs, hasn't been part of the nuclear arsenal since 1962. These things have been outdated for 46 years. I think (this is no joke) that a Mark-12 trigger uses vacuum tubes.

So, my question is, why are we keeping so much junk in our nuclear attics? Even my mom finally cleared out her basement (throwing away my collection of vintage Archie comics, but that's another issue.)

No doubt there are still a thousand crates of horse liniment for the cavalry or a million sticks of slowmatch for flintlock rifles piled next to the Mark-12 triggers as well.

TV-B-Gone? A good first step

2008-03-23T13:46:00.003-04:00

In this month's Wired Magazine, number 16-04 (I have absolutely no idea what Wired's magazine numbering scheme means) there is an article on the rivalry between gadget blogs Engadget and Gizmodo. In it there's a anecdote about one of the blogger's taking a device called a TV-B-Gone to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and wrecking havoc on the many, many TV's there.

A TV-B-Gone is a small battery operated device invented by Mitch Altman who I met a number of times at various Make Magazine events. Push the button on a TV B Gone and every TV in the area turns off. Kinda cool.

More power to ya, Mitch. There's too much tv and other noise in the world. Why do restaurants, noisy enough anyway, feel they have to pump in extra music, enough to make conversation with more than one other person impossible? Why do supermarkets and Home Depots feel that I can't shop unless there's music constantly playing. There's music, usually bad music cluttering up nearly every lobby, waiting area, and vestibule in existence.

Note to world: I do love music but I do not need to be bathed in it every second of the day or in every public place I go. I don't think it makes the world a more pleasant place. Please, turn it off.

Mitch: Please invent a Music - B - Muted device. I will buy several. Thanks.

Making Black Powder

2008-02-28T11:49:00.005-05:00

Make 13, themed around the concept of magic is on the newsstands!

It's another excellent issue and includes a PVC air cannon modification (by a different author) that is pretty interesting. It's called the boom-stick and is designed to maximize the noise.

I wrote three articles for this issue. The first is describes the DARPA urban challenge and the uber-makers that attended. While most of the competitors were big money corporate and academic types, there were a few entrants that really exemplified the ardent amatuer, and the skillful maker.

The second was the Maker Calendar and lists upcoming events of interest to those who make things.

The third article is about my foray into the world of gunpowder manufacture. I've received some great feedback from readers already -- it's something that a lot of people find interesting. In this article, I describe what I did to make home made black powder. I don't go into step by step directions for making the powder, but there is a good explanation of how to prepare your charcoal which is the really critical step in making the stuff. Everything else is less important.

Visit makezine.com or better yet, subscribe via the link below. TIP: if you select Make's autorenew option, you get digital access to the entire library, back to Make Vol 1!

Slouch or no slouch?

2008-02-21T14:35:00.006-05:00

The AP published a story, available here, exploring the growing number of people who are building and making things in their garages and basements. It's an article worth reading, for several reasons.

First, it provides several good examples of the type of projects peope are are undertaking.

Second, it lists severa websites and magazines that provide ideas and inspirations for many interesting and instructional projects.

Finally, and not least, I think it's a good article because it contains these words:

"William Gurstelle is no slouch."

I've been telling people this for years. Now maybe they'll believe me. After all, the Associated Press is never wrong

Which leads to a new game show concept: Slouch or No Slouch. This was first suggested to me by Dale Dougherty, publisher of Make Magazine. It could work like this:

Each week a person who believes they are pretty good at doing one particular thing, does something they haven't tried before and get judged on how well they do it. For instance, a football player learns ballet, a scientist makes beer, a beekeeper trains a dog. Then at the end, the judges evaluate the outcome and declare the contestant a slouch or no slouch.

Huh?

Gunpowder Artist Cai Guo-Qiang

2008-02-18T11:45:00.005-05:00

He experimented with various painting techniques that could
harness natural forces: blowing a fan over thinly applied paint on canvas; blistering a thick paint surface with heat; coaxing a dove to walk through green paint and onto a picture. More fruitfully, in 1984 he began to use the ancient Chinese invention of gunpowder — beginning by shooting fireworks at a canvas and then, for more control, developing a method of unrolling firecrackers, sprinkling the powder on canvas and igniting it. -- Arthur Lubow in the New York Times

There is an interesting article in today's New York Times about Cai Guo-Qiang, a New York based Chinese artist who uses gunpowder as an artistic medium. He is very successful, having won numerous awards and selling his paintings at auction for millions of dollars.

You can see how he makes his art by viewing the video here. Like the work of some other modern visual artists, the symbolism and meaning that makes it so valuable is lost on me. Like a work by Jackson Pollock, Cai's work is interesting but .... To me, using gunpowder to create an artistic vision is a fascinating idea. But is it anything more than simply clever?

Catapult and Trebuchet Triggers

2008-02-13T16:32:00.013-05:00

[Looking for more catapult building info? There is much information in this blog on how to build a catapult. Type "catapult" into the search bar above for more catapult building posts]

More in my series of posts on How to Build a Catapult

In this post, I discuss Catapults, Ballistas, Trebuchets and the Triggers, Releases, and Latches that operate them.

I receive quite a few inquiries about making catapults and trebuchets. And among the most frequent questions is: how do I build the trigger? It's an important question.

Catapults are fun and educational to build and operate. They would make a very good entry in a science fair or science contest. For ideas on catapult related science fair projects, check out "The Art of the Catapult" and "Backyard Ballistics," available at book stores everywhere. (Click on the Amazon link to the books above for more info) Believe me, there is plenty of physics and math behind the machine for cerebral types.

When building a catapult, trebuchet, ballista, mangonel, or any of the hundred names by which such hurling machines are known, you'll find out that the mechanism that releases the throwing arm is often the most complicated part of the machine.

You may build your own release, which is tricky because you need to design the latch so that it will release reliably under full load. Actually, you can get pretty creative about triggers.

But considering how cheap and easy it is to buy one, it might make more sense to use one of the commercial solutions below, and spend your time working on the other aspects of the machine.I've spent time researching the best triggers and releases for small catapults. You can follow the links below to obtain high quality, inexpensive catapult release trigger mechanisms that should work well for most small experimental catapults. There are three good, off-the-shelf solutions: The archer's arrow release, the sailor's pelican hook, and the horse trainer's panic snap.

Archer’s Arrow Release:

This is the premier solution. Works dependably, quickly and very smoothly. It costs a bit more, but of all the catapult releases I've tried, I like this one the best.

Sailor's Pelican Hook:

This is another excellent hurling machine trigger. Its normal use is in sailing, where it is used to securely hold and release lines and ropes. Basically a pelican hook is a hinged hook that can be quickly secured or released by a sliding ring. It is quite a bit less expensive than an arrow release, but it holds securely under load. The downside is that they can be awkward to release sometimes.

Horse Trainer’s Panic Snap:

A panic snap is a mechanism often used between a lead and a horse's harness. They are decent catapult triggers because they can be disconnected under load. A panic snap is specially built so that the latching mechanism is separate from the load bearing structure. Just pull back on the latch and the load releases. Very inexpensive, but not as smooth or dependable as the arrow release.

Best of DIY Science and Technology Blog Projects Feb 12

2008-02-12T16:53:00.001-05:00

I am going to attempt to monitor several of the most active DIY science and technology sites for the next several weeks to get an understanding on which sites provide the best ideas for projects. Some of them post new stuff constantly, but the projects are mostly "unfiltered".

Some, like the Make blog have so much good stuff, it's an overwhelming task to sort the interesting from the pedestrian projects. So what I want to do is pick and choose and post about the few that regularly have excellent, doable projects.

Today, I found these on my newsreader:

On the Hacked Gadgets blog, there's a project that uses balloons to take pictures from the sky. It's very reminiscent of the Kite Cam found in Make Magazine issue #1. Video of the red balloon project is available here. Separate but related information on making balloon mounted cameras is available here.

On Etsy's site, my friend Bre Pettis (he of imakethings.com) returns to the video world with a short video on how he's making his new business cards. It's not really a science or technology project, but it's good to see he's back.

On Street Use, Kevin Kelly shows just how far people can go, using the materials around them to meet their mechanical needs. I like this because I've done some research on the abilities of Aborigines, Cubans, and Eastern Europeans to scrounge parts and keep things moving out of baling wire, hose clamps, and bungie cords.

On Windell Oskay's Evil Mad Scientist laboratories, there's a very good post about making a pegboard LED display that makes it simple to paint with LEDs, maybe not as simple as light-brites, but sorta simple. By the way, the VD in the "Happy V.D." picture refers to Valentines Day.

If you know of good DIY science and technology blogs that at least occasionally post good projects, please let me know.

Why Science Education is Boring

2008-02-07T13:09:00.001-05:00

This is excerpted from my recent article in Make Magazine. Is there a problem with the way science is taught? Are schools overprotective? What do experiences like these mean for science education?

When my son Andy was 12 years old, he entered his junior high school science fair. His challenge was to invent something new and useful. To Andy, the science contest was big deal. There was a great deal of schoolyard prestige attached to the event. He badly wanted to win, but inventing is hard work. Inventing something useful is even harder. And inventing something new and useful when you’re 12 is really, really hard.

He thought about it for a while and, after various aborted attempts and blind alleys, came up with the idea of a self-buttering toaster. What a brilliant idea from such a young person! (I readily admit my fatherly bias.) The device Andy designed was intricate yet simple: a wood and steel construction that held a slice of bread at an angle in front of a carefully wound matrix of nichrome wire heating elements. While the bread toasted, the heat from the wires melted a glop of butter on a perforated metal holder positioned over the bread. The butter dripped through the holes and on to the toasting bread. Voila! There was a slice of automatically buttered toast. By my lights, this was a pretty terrific invention for a sixth grader.

The evening of the fair approached, and Andy and I looked forward with anticipation and excitement to a night of glory. The judges, a collection of teachers and parent volunteers, methodically walked up and down each aisle. They asked questions, measured things with rulers, made notes on clipboards, and generally maintained a judgelike demeanor. When the judges came to Andy’s table, the toaster worked perfectly. With self-assurance and a smile, he handed each judge a slice of warm, buttery Wonder Bread for a snack.

The Self Buttering Toaster ---->

But when the winners were announced, Andy’s name wasn’t called. Crestfallen, he approached the judges and asked, “Why didn’t I get a ribbon?”

“Well, Andy,” said a judge, “we thought your machine was dangerous. After all, it uses electricity and it gets very hot.”

“Of course it does. It’s a toaster,” he protested. “It’s supposed to get hot and use electricity. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be a toaster.” Unswayed by logic, the judges would not reconsider.

So who won? First place went to a girl who made a cap and vest for her hamster. Second place went to a boy who “made” radar.

“Hamster clothes? That’s so lame,” Andy whispered to me during the award ceremony. “And that the second place kid didn’t invent radar. He just cut out some pictures of radar antennas and glued them to a poster board.”

[Life imitates art: In the 4th season episode of the Simpsons called "Duffless, " Nibbles the hamster plays a significant role in the outcome of the Springfield Elementary science fair]

<--- Bart Simpson science project: Can Hamster Fly Planes?

Andy graduated from college last year with a major in archeology and a minor in African languages. Is his technology-light choice of major a result of his science contest experience? Perhaps not, but I sometimes wonder how losing to a hamster hat influenced his future.

Dinosaurs and Robots - Cover Boys

2008-02-05T00:20:00.000-05:00

Two of my good friends have their own blogs which I find very enjoyable. So I was certainly pleased to find that these two have decided to collaborate to form a digital media conglomerate. It's called Dinosaurs and Robots.

<---Mr. Jalopy on Cover of Make Magazine

To be honest, I can't figure out where Make Magazine cover boys Mark Frauenfelder (of BoingBoing) and Mr. Jalopy (of HooptyRides) find time to turn out such a good looking magazine. I guess they figured that since they were both on the cover of Make Magazine, it was time to move on to something bigger. Reminds me of when Wayne Rogers left MASH and Patrick Duffy decided he was too big for Dallas.

The first issue of D&R is available here. (I sometimes call Mr. Jalopy "J-Lop" (like J-Lo, get it?) for short but he really seems to dislike that. )

The new magazine is currently available as a downloaded pdf, but I understand plans are underway for a website. I checked it out and loved the articles but it's the photos that really clicked with me. There's a recurring theme dealing with the intrinsic beauty or at least pleasing geometry of tools and metal objects.

----> Mark Frauenfelder on cover of Make Magazine

Visit hooptyrides.com and read the blog for more info.

“You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.”

2008-02-03T10:50:00.000-05:00

This post is about the air whistle, (similar to a steam whistle) I designed and wrote about in the last Make Magazine.

This PVC whistle is based on a calliope design that provides a lot of noise at relatively low air pressures. I called it the Super Tritone after a train whistle my friend Steve Cox owns, which is called a Leslie Super Tyfon, (although technically, the Super Tyfon is a horn, not a whistle.)

There are several good articles in Make Magazine #12, the latest issue. I’ve contributed three, including a major project called the Super TriTone Shop Whistle. I’ve written and photographed step-by-step directions showing how to make a really neat whistle from PVC pipe and fittings. If you don’t subscribe to Make Magazine, try to locate a copy. You can subscribe online to this wonderful magazine here.

If you sign up using their autorenew feature (no big deal, you can always cancel) you will get online access to all of Make’s voluminous archives of projects including this one. That's a good deal, believe me. There's a lot in there.

Adjusting the Super Tritone Shop Whistle

The Super Tritone is easy enough to make, see the Make Magazine article for details. But be forewarned -- it takes a while to adjust. There are a number of critical dimensions and if any of them are off, the whistle doesn’t sound, it mostly just hisses. However, adjusting the Super Tritone isn’t that hard, mostly consisting of turning the adjusting nuts on the main shaft, thereby making the whistle throat larger or smaller. At some critical dimension, it will provide a loud shrill tritone.

If you’re still having trouble, first make sure there are no leaks where holes have been machined through the PVC. Those leaks are sound killers so all holes and joints MUST be air tight.

Next, look at the alignment of the bells (the larger PVC pipe with the edge filed into the bottom) with the opening through which the air passes. The air opening is an annular slit, formed by the PVC bowl and a slightly smaller plastic disk called the languid. The placement of the languid is critical.

In connection with that, you’ll need to turn the horizontal adjusting screws on the bell and the bowl to make sure the air escaping the languid goes straight up into the edge on the bottom of the bell.

Finally, use enough air pressure. You’ll likely need 50 psi on up to get a really good sound.

Whistle physics is tricky and therefore, so is making your own whistle. But with enough adjustment and experimentation, your whistle will sound great. Be sure to read read all disclaimers and warnings in the magazine before you start.

Things Blowing Up! - Fun and Not So Fun

2008-01-31T22:57:00.000-05:00

Exploding dump trucks and exploding whales... what could be better than that?

It's blogging time again. I'm going to do my best to update Notes from the Technology Underground fairly regularly after being on hiatus for several months. My goal is to update twice a week with more of the types of posts that readers have found interesting in the past

Here's a story that received a fair amount of attention in the local (Minneapolis, MN, USA) press. It concerns one Brian Childs, a 30 year old man who lives in rural Welch township south and east of Minneapolis, MN.

From what I can surmise from news reports, the guy obtained 100 pounds of a compound called Tannerite which is an explosive that you mix up on site from two non-explosive chemicals. According to wikipedia, the ingredients are ammonium nitrate and ammonium perchlorate with a bit of aluminum powder and zirconium hydride to get things cookin'.

click here to see the video of the exploding dump truck

Typically, tannerite is detonated by shooting it. Basically, you take your long range rifle and put a bullet through the bottle holding the mixed up ingredients. Kaboom!

Mr. Childs appears to be in a lot of trouble because the explosion he made was large enough to trigger alarms at a nuclear power plant several miles away. The police were called and locked him up, I suppose because they thought he might be a terrorist.

Bill Gurstelle's comment: I'm not sure how I feel about this. As one who loves to watch high energy, high velocity examples of science and chemistry, I must say it's a pretty darn good explosion.

On the other hand, firework makers and more serious thinkers may likely disagree. I wonder can't tell if he put his neighbors and friends in harm's way. But assuming that the exploded dump truck was sited in such in way to as to pose no danger, than I'd have to say it's nobody's business but his own. Just because some alarm went off doesn't make him a criminal.

Thar She Blows! (Bonus Post)
While searching the web for pictures of exploding dump trucks for this post, I came across this story about a whale that exploded while being trucked through a city in Taiwan. Here are the unbelievable pictures of the whale (sperm whale, I think) pre and post explosion:

Evidently, gases from the rotting whale carcass built up inside the thing and all of a sudden, this happened:

Summer Vacation

2007-06-15T11:30:00.000-04:00

On Vacation for the Summer. . .

Welcome to Notes from the Technology Underground. The Tech Underground is a world of edgy, highly kinetic, physical science. If there's news on stuff goes whoosh, boom, or splat, then, this is the place to read about it.

During the summer, it's hard for me to update the blog regularly, but check back from time to time to see what's new. I plan to start posting more regularly in a few months.

While you're hear use the search bar and try a few terms - catapult, explosion, "Orlando Bloom", whatever. . . see what you come up with.

Here are links to some of my favorite posts:

1000 Dead Men:
A description of the Gerry Report, perhaps the most grotesque bureaucratic report in all of American history.

The 10 Best North American Geek Fests
A link to a recent article I wrote for Wired Magazine

The Rise, Fall, and Rise of Robotic Combat
Remember Robot Wars? Many are still at it.

Hollywood's Catapult Warrior
Orlando Bloom's catapult fetish.

Celebratory Gun Firing: Good Idea or Not?
What goes up, must come down. A lot of comments on this one.

Nitric Acid Acts Upon Trousers
Ira Remsen, a chemist with a great sense of humor.

Fun With Jet Engines
Cool video.

Dippy Bird Power
My idea to end the energy crisis.

Navy Swimmer Nullification Program
A bizarre government defense program comes to light

My Name is Bond; Covalent Bond
Chemistry sets ain't what they used to be.

Water Bears - The World's Toughest Animal
Fun with tartigrades.

Bullets and Hammers - A Bad Combination

2007-05-15T09:21:00.000-04:00

Yes, the following seems like a terribly dumb idea. But is it possible that this kid was not stupid but simply so unaware of the danger involved?

LAKE LUZERNE, N.Y. - A teenager who put bullets in a vise and whacked them with a hammer to empty the brass shell casings was wounded in the abdomen by approximately the 100th bullet he hit, according to Warren County deputies.
Damion M. Mosher, 18, had been discharging .223-caliber rounds, placing them in a steel vise, putting a screwdriver on the primer, and striking the screwdriver with the hammer, deputies said.

Deputies were called to his home in Lake Luzerne shortly after 5 p.m. Saturday when one bullet went about a half-inch into his abdomen. He was treated at Glens Falls Hospital and was released. No charges were filed.

Mosher told authorities he was trying to empty the rounds to collect the brass casings for scrap.

Sheriff Larry Cleveland said about 100 other rounds that Mosher hit had "fizzled," but one was somehow sent with more force. It was unclear if the bullet ricocheted or hit him directly.

An employee of Capitol Scrap Co. in Albany said Monday the business pays $1.70 a pound for scrap brass shell casings.

Cleveland said Mosher's shells amounted to just a few pounds.

Lake Luzerne, at the southeastern edge of the Adirondacks, is 45 miles north of Albany.

___

Information from: The Post-Star, http://www.poststar.com

Turning Down the Noise

2007-04-10T10:49:00.000-04:00

I work at home and I like that, a lot.

But my neighbor has a little barky dog that makes a lot of noise. It reminded me of an article about sound masking, noise cancellation, and acoustical engineering that I recently wrote for Minnesota Technology Magazine (www.minnesotatechnology.org). Noise control is pretty interesting technology. (At Minnesota Technology, I write a column called Ask Mr Technology. The whole magazine is online and makes for very good reading.)

Noise,” said the brooding German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer,“is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but is also a disruption of thought.”

Workers in noisy environments like yours must contend with frequent thought disruptions. But don’t give up hope, as there are techniques for dealing with disruptive noise in the workplace. According to acoustical expert Steve Orfield, president of Minneapolis-based Orfield Laboratories, sound-masking can be an effective way to provide speech privacy and minimize distractions from noisy environments.

Sound masking consists of an electronically generated noise distributed throughout a workspace. This increases the ambient noise, thereby “masking” other sounds and reducing the intelligibility of speech.“ Sound masking makes use of a specially tuned random noise generator. The noise is used as a base which is shaped by an equalizer to make it unobtrusive and most effective to speech intelligibility,” explains Orfield.

But even with sound masking, your cubicle neighbors can still hear you talking with your bookie on company time. “During our research in the 1970s, we found that a normal speaker in an office environment could be heard 20 feet away” says Orfield. “When we put in sound masking, that dropped to 12 feet.“

The original work spaces we designed measured 12 feet,” he adds.“But now work spaces have shrunk as small as 6 by 6 feet.So even with masking, the person next door can hear what’s going on in your cube.”

Is there anything better? A technique called noise cancellation goes beyond mere sound masking. In noise-cancellation systems, undesired sounds are cancelled out by computer-generated soundwaves that are exactly 180 degrees out of phase to the offending sound. But, says Orfield, sound cancellation is only effective in contained areas and on constant noise problems such as hums and vibrations. For example, if you’ve got a noisy air duct running throughout a hotel, you can build speakers into the duct to completely cancel out the annoying duct-related sounds.

Noise cancellation doesn’t work on random or higher-pitched sounds such as traffic noise or human speech. But research into other types of devices is ongoing. Perhaps sometime soon, a noise cancellation technology will arrive that won’t just mask the shouting next door, but eliminate it completely.

Book Publishing and the First Amendment

2007-04-03T09:09:00.000-04:00

The editors and writers of Make Magazine (of which I am one) had a lively conversation regarding what news is fit to print. Specifically, the question debated regards the limits on which stories are too dangerous to print. Here's a link to the discussion.

I'm thinking about this because I purchase liability insurance to help protect me from lawsuits. I think it's unfortunate that I need to do this. If information is written and published in good faith, and the writers carefully vet the facts, and let people know the risks, then the writers job is done. What people do with it is up to them. That's what the first amendment protects and it's what makes America great.

The First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Writers should not have to worry that somebody will misconstrue information or use information unwisely and wind up suing them. The only thing that does is stem the flow of ideas. It stifles creativity and ultimately makes the world less interesting.

On the other hand, anybody can sue anybody for anything. Seemingly, there's always a lawyer willing to take specious cases and I hear of a lot of crazy cases. I do think that responsible writers won't provide information that's crazy or wrong, but doesn't the first amendment protect crazy or wrong speech as long as it's not hate speech?