Survival Research Laboratories, the legendary machine performance project that started it all, turns 30 today. Founder Mark Pauline has a blog post up about this milestone, with a copy of SRL's first-ever ad, above. Mark says,

Id like to thank all those who have helped me make SRL what it is, both voluntarily and involuntarily. Im still having a blast. Even moving all 160 tons of my stuff to the new shop in Petaluma has been kind of fun. In a few more weeks, Ill be totally out of here and SRL will lurch into the next 30 year chapter. 2038 here we come!

A huge congrats and deepest respect to Mark, the SRL team, and their respective family members -- the meat-based kind, but also the magical metal machines who are the real stars of SRL. On behalf of all Boingdom, we wish all of you another 30 years of happy mutancy.

For BoingBoing readers not familiar with SRL, here's how they describe what they do:

Survival Research Laboratories was conceived of and founded by Mark Pauline in November 1978. Since its inception SRL has operated as an organization of creative technicians dedicated to re-directing the techniques, tools, and tenets of industry, science, and the military away from their typical manifestations in practicality, product or warfare. Since 1979, SRL has staged over 45 mechanized presentations in the United States and Europe. Each performance consists of a unique set of ritualized interactions between machines, robots, and special effects devices, employed in developing themes of socio-political satire. Humans are present only as audience or operators.

Below, an early photograph featuring Mark Pauline with one of his first creations. Performance artist Karen Finley and V. Vale of RE/Search Publications are among the bemused onlookers. (thanks, K0re!)

It's usual practice for a magazine to run an excerpt of a book written by one of its editors. However, BusinessWeek went one step further and converted an excerpt from senior editor Steve Hamm's new book into a comic or manga. His book, The Race for Perfect: Inside the Quest to Design the Ultimate Portable Computer, is “a popular history of portable computing and also a narrative of a single, contemporary product (Lenovo’s X300) as it travels from conception to the marketplace.” Here's the first panel of this version, which tells the story of Alan Kay, one of the creative visionaries and inventors of the computer revolution.

Steve wrote in his Globespotting blog that one of his purposes in writing the book "was to get young people interested in being engineers, designers, inventors, and entrepreneurs." Make magazine shares that goal.

I use Alan Kay's famous quote in my talks: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." I take the liberty of substituting "make" for "invent." I would love to have Alan Kay come to Maker Faire.

View the rest of Alan Kay series on the BusinessWeek website

Ben Hazell says: "Dean Kamen invented the Segway. He's also made a fortune in medical technology and now thinks he's built a working Stirling Engine - efficient electrical energy from heat. If it's true it's amazing and world changing - the breakthrough we need to face climate change. Even if it's not, he's a fascinating guy."

Now he and his engineers have built and tested a range of Stirling engines suitable for mass production that can be run on anything from jet fuel to cow dung. The one in the boot of the small blue car is designed to extend its range and constantly recharge its batteries to make a new kind of hybrid vehicle: one fit for the roads of the 21st century. A Stirling-electric hybrid, Kamen tells me, can travel farther and more efficiently than conventional electric cars; it generates enough power to run energy-hungry devices such as heaters and defrosters that are essential for drivers who, unlike those he calls the 'tofu heads' of California, must cope with a cold climate; and even using petrol, the engine runs far cleaner than petrol-electric hybrids such as Toyota's Prius.

However, Kamen confesses, his new creation isn't quite finished yet: 'The Stirling engine's not hooked up. Which really pisses me off.'

But it could work?

'It will work,' he says. 'Trust me.'

Dean Kamen: part man, part machine

In today's episode of Boing Boing tv, we float around in zero gravity. With me on this Zero-G weightless flight are Intel Chairman Craig Barrett; my friend Sean Bonner from metblogs; and a bunch of science teachers from grade schools and high schools throughout the United States who were on board to conduct microgravity experiments for the kids back home. As you watch, keep an eye out for the floating lego robot, a flying pig, and the barfing guy who is totally barfing for reals -- the rest of us did not, btw, I don't get sick in space.

What you see in this episode is what it feels like, guys, and it feels awesome.

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Link to Boing Boing tv blog post with downloadable version of this video, and instructions on how to subscribe to the daily BBtv video podcast.

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(Special thanks to Peter Diamandis, and George and Loretta Whitesides)

In this installment of Boing Boing tv's ongoing BBtv WORLD series, I travel to the West African nation of Benin to visit the Songhaï Center, a green tech project designed to develop a new generation of "agricultural entrepreneurs," and foster economic sustainability.

Benin is nestled between Ghana, Togo, and Nigeria along the continent's midwest coast -- this shore was historically known as the "Slave Coast," and Benin was a major center in export of slave labor to the Americas. Today, Benin's people are struggling with a cultural shift from a traditional, mostly agrarian society, to a more urban, industrialized economy -- and the largely impoverished country depends on foreign aid.

The Songhaï Center was founded in the mid-'80s by Father Godfrey Nzamujo, a Dominican priest and Nigerian native, on a few acres of swampland granted by Benin's former president. What began as an experiment in small-scale sustainable development to fight poverty has since become a popular institution, and a symbol of Africa's potential for self-determination and prosperity.

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Link to Boing Boing tv blog post with downloadable video and instructions on how to subscribe to our daily video podcast.

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Aid creates dependence, but small businesses foster independence, the group's logic goes -- and unlike other anti-poverty projects, this one exports more than it imports: specialty food and beverage products produced here (cashew butter, cookies, fruit beverages) are sold and shipped to France and elsewhere around the world.

In this episode, we walk through the main Songhaï Center in Porto Novo, a coastal town near the Nigerian border, and we witness a variety of projects in action -- "integrated farming, biomass gasification, microenterprise and IT for rural communities." Here, agricultural and technical pursuits merge in uniquely African ways.

We see women hulling cashew nuts; mango soda whooshing into bottles in a soda bottling factory; barnyard critters (including the furry and tasty bush critters known as "sugar cane rats"); people sifting maize flour and baking fresh bread for sale; workers harvesting manioc, papayas, and giant mushrooms; and buzzing activity in the adjacent internet "telecentre."

Each of those parts interlock to form a massive, carefully-engineered, green tech puzzle: scrap metal is welded into parts that would cost too much to buy from overseas. Insects grown on scraps from the restaurant feed fish cultivated in the aquaculture area; water hyacinths at the edge of those pools help filter "black water" in the sewage system; solar panels power the internet cafe; coconut husks discarded in food production serve as a base on which to cultivate giant mushrooms. One area's waste becomes another component's fuel input, and the resulting products cost less than they would through contemporary, Western means.

There are 6 Songhaï Centers throughout Benin, and plans for opening more tech/agriculture hubs in Nigeria, Gabon, Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. They offer voice over internet and wifi at current sites in Benin, and plan to expand into rural telephone and ISP services, as the project grows.

-- Xeni Jardin

(Xeni shot the video footage, and the stills in this blog post; special thanks to Leonce Sessou, the center's head of technology.)

Just don't call it "Silicon Alley," he says: Venture capitalist Fred Wilson takes a trip down memory lane in a sweeping keynote he gave at Web 2.0 this week. Video: The New York Internet Industry, 1995 to 2008, From Nascent to Ascendant.

Essential viewing. Seriously. If you use the internet, you need to see this. Know your history. Wherever you are on the web, this is part of your history.

I just spent the weekend clearing out a garage full of old belongings and personal documents, including box after box after beat-up box of Silicon Alley Reporter magazines, and brochures for NYC tech conferences I produced with Jason Calacanis. Watching Fred's presentation and leafing through those dusty old glossies makes me feel nostalgic for all the hope, ambition, and excitement we all felt back then. I'm proud to have been there for some of it. Even the crazy, fucked-up parts that ended badly, which Fred chronicles beautifully here. (thanks, Josh "MC Luvvy" Harris!)

The Boing Boing tv crew is taking this end-of-summer week off from production, so we're revisiting some of our favorite episodes from the last couple of months -- fun stuff you may have missed.

Today: John Behrens and "Omega Recoil" build giant Tesla Coils. Their work explores how electronic fields can be excited in the environment, and their creations become the centerpieces of interactive public art performances.

Some of the tinkerers and performers in this SF Bay Area-based collective were previously associated with Dr. Megavolt, an electrical art project which...

[featured] a person in a metal mesh suit interacting with artificially generated lighting. The Doctor sets objects on fire with electricity originating from large Tesla coils, spars with the electric arcs and exhorts the audience to worship the elemental force of electricity.

Today on Boing Boing tv, Xeni is joined by astronaut and American hero Buzz Aldrin, Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson, Scaled Composites founder Burt Rutan, and other space luminaries for an exploration of private space travel -- the technology, the science, and the human experience.

We fly to the Mojave spaceport to witness the unveiling of WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft that will carry SpaceShipTwo and passengers on Virgin Galactic suborbital space flights.

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Link to Boing Boing tv blog post with viewer discussion, downloadable video, and video podcast subscription instructions.

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Related: All about "Eve": Virgin Galactic mothership unveiled.

Annelle of Big Think says:

We recently interviewed Columbia professor of environmental health sciences and microbiology Dickson Despommier, the pioneering researcher responsible for bringing national attention to the idea of vertical farming. In light of your recent article on Professor Despommier's critical work on BoingBoing on July 15, ("Lettuce in the sky, with diamonds") I thought that you might be interested in his interview.

Hear him describe the logistics of vertical farming.

Hear his prophesy for the "Third Green Revolution"

Select other subjects from his full interview.

As well as appearing on BoingBoing, Professor Despommier was recently featured in the New York Times, CNN, and The Colbert Report to name a few.

Logistics of vertical farming (Big Think)

Today was an amazing day out at Mojave Spaceport.

Burt Rutan, Sir Richard Branson, and a bevy of space celebs (including Dr. Buzz Aldrin) gathered for the launch of Virgin Galactic's twin-hulled mothership, "Eve," named after Sir Richard's own mom -- who formally christened WhiteKnightTwo with the pop of a champagne bottle. Branson explained that the spaceliner was also named "Eve" because she was conceived as an historic first for humankind.

The Boing Boing tv crew was there, and we'll be airing video hijinks later this week.

For now... here are a few random iphone snaps, and I twittered until my daggone fingers fell off (first tweet in series, and last tweet in series).

Here is coverage from other blog-pals we ran into out there:

Mojave historian and photographer Alan Radecki has posts up at MOJAVE SKIES

GIZMODO's Brian Lam took some fantastic photos (including some goof-off shots I dumped on Flickr), and has a dreamy little video up.

Over at WIRED: Photographer Dave Bullock and astrobiologist/space evangelist Loretta Hidalgo checked in with images and first-person accounts. She's going on the maiden voyage with her husband, George T. Whitesides of the National Space Society, for their honeymoon. Dude. Tell me that's not cool. Update: More from Bullock here.

The fine fellas at JAUNTED.

More photos from Dave Malkoff of CBS News.

(Space-helmet-tip of thanks: Charles Ogilvie and Abby Lunardini)

Here's a short video of the Martin Jetpack that's going to be unveiled at the Oshkosh Airshow next week.

Chris Borroni-Bird is the director of Advanced Technology Vehicle Concepts at GM. He's leading the effort at GM to make fuel cell vehicles, based on a "skateboard" style chassis called AUTOnomy that incorporates the fuel cell, motors and electronics control.

GMnext kindly invited me to visit with Dr. Borroni-Bird and have a discussion with him about "innovation, technology, energy, the environment, and their impact on the future of the automobile." He's a fascinating innovator with ideas that could change transportation around the world. I hope he succeeds.

Here are more videos from our conversation. (Note: GMnext compensated me for my video appearance.) Link Chris Borroni-Bird and Mark Frauenfelder in conversation (GM Next)

No country creates more beautiful product packages than Japan, in my opinion. Here, PingMag takes a look at some innovate packages from Japan.

Tofu packed into balloons, by Kamakura-komachi?! Surprisingly a great example for reduced packaging: Its elastic material is extensively stretched, and when pierced with a toothpick, the balloon bursts and only a tiny bit remains. How amazing! REDUCE with more flexibility! The same packaging concept is also applied to a pudding.

Japanese Design #7: A How-to-Reduce-Packaging Journal (PingMag)

From Core77:

French design collective Duende have used a technique that can transform human or animal milk into plastic by solidifying the casein content. The 'Perle de lait' range of jewelry will be on display as part of their collection of objects exploring the relationship of food between mother and child at La Cuisine. This takes the concept of bespoke jewelry to whole new level.

Jewelry created from plasticized human milk (Thanks Ultimate Cowboy!)

Columbia professor Dr. Dickson Despommier is developing models for "vertical farms," swank-looking skyscrapers that produce agricultural products for urban locavores.

The idea, which has captured the imagination of several architects in the United States and Europe in the past several years, just caught the eye of another big city dreamer: Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough president in New York.

When Stringer heard about the concept in June, he said he immediately pictured a "food farm" addition to the New York City skyline. "Obviously we don't have vast amounts of vacant land," he said in a phone interview. "But the sky is the limit in Manhattan." Stringer's office is "sketching out what it would take to pilot a vertical farm," and plans to pitch a feasibility study to the mayor's office within the next couple of months, he said.

Country, the city version: Farms in the sky gain new interest [ IHT, via Tim O'Reilly's twitterstream ]

Kajima Corporation, a Japanese construction company, demolishes high-rise buildings from the bottom up. They install giant hydraulic jacks on the first floor, break up all the building material on that floor, then lower the jacks and repeat the process on the second floor (which is now resting at ground level.)

Informally, this method is called daruma-otoshi, the name of a Japanese game where you remove the lowest block on a stack by knocking it out with a small mallet.

According to Kajima, the daruma-otoshi demolition method — which is now being used to dismantle a 75 meter (246 ft) tall, 20-story building and a 65 meter (213 ft) tall, 17-story building — is safer and creates less noise and dust pollution because the work is kept close to the ground. In addition, this method cuts demolition time by 20% and makes it easier to separate and recycle the building materials.

Daruma-otoshi skyscraper demolition (Pink Tentacle)

A University of Florida researcher is designing a flying saucer that uses plasma and surrounding air as its fuel to generate lift. The aircraft's skin will be studded with electrodes that ionize the air, converting it into plasma. Mechanical and aerospace engineering associate professor Subrata Royh hopes to have a six inch working prototype in the next year.

Using an onboard source of energy (such as a battery, ultracapacitor, solar panel or any combination thereof), the electrodes will send an electrical current into the plasma, causing the plasma to push against the neutral (noncharged) air surrounding the craft, theoretically generating enough force for liftoff and movement in different directions (depending on where on the craft's surface you direct the electrical current)...

Theoretically, Roy says, the flying saucer can be as large as anyone wants to build it, because the design gives the aircraft balance and stability. In other words, this type of aircraft could someday be built large enough to ferry around people. But, Roy says, "we need to walk before we can run, so we're starting small."

The biggest hurdle to building a WEAV large enough to carry passengers would be making the craft light, yet powerful enough to lift its cargo and energy source. Roy is not sure what kind of energy source he will use yet. He anticipates that the craft's body will be made from a material that is an insulator such as ceramic, which is light and a good conductor of electricity. "In theory you probably should be able to scale it up," says Anthony Colozza, a researcher with government contractor Analex Corporation who is stationed at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and helped Roy draw up the original plans for powering the saucer. The choice of a power source that is powerful, yet lightweight is "probably going to be the thing that makes or breaks it."

Flying saucer (Scientific American)

UPDATE: As several commenters point out, saying that the saucer uses air as fuel, as I did in my post based on the SciAm articl, isn't really correct.

Street artist Joshua Allen Harris uses trash bags to make "balloon animals" that inflate over subway grates throughout New York City, and NY Mag has a behind-the-scenes video on how he does it.

Street Art: Joshua Allen Harris
[ New York Magazine, thanks Jessica Coen and Glen E. Friedman ]

See also a related post on Laughing Squid from March, 2008.

Snip from an article in today's New York Times about a slew of designers and firms developing new models of airships. These passenger-carrying aircraft float on the wind, rather than being propelled solely by fuel (more precise explanation here). And, ah, hopefully they don't blow up in the sky or whatever.

As the cost of fuel soars and the pressure mounts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, several schemes for a new generation of airship are being considered by governments and private companies. “It’s a romantic project,” said Mr. Massaud, 45, sitting amid furniture designs in his Paris studio, “but then look at Jules Verne.”

It has been more than 70 years since the giant Hindenburg zeppelin exploded in a spectacular fireball over Lakehurst, N.J., killing 36 crew members and passengers, abruptly ending an earlier age of airships. But because of new materials and sophisticated means of propulsion, a diverse cast of entrepreneurs is taking another look at the behemoths of the air.

Mr. Massaud, a designer of hotels in California and a stadium in Mexico, has not ironed out the technical details, nor has he found financiers or corporate backers for his project — to create a 690-foot zeppelin shaped like a whale, with a luxury hotel attached, that he has named Manned Cloud.

And, heh, my favorite quote here:

“A dirigible is something magical,” said Jérôme Giacomoni, who was 25 when he founded Aerophile with a friend. “But most of the ideas are crazy.”

Why Fly When You Can Float? [NYT]
Image: Jean-Marie Massaud.

Update: most LOLlable comment in this thread, #4 posted by Chris the Tiki guy...

[I]f they're exploring whale shapes, why not other aquatic creatures, like the seacow? That way people can point and say "Oh, the huge manatee!" (...) [I]f Helium is in short supply, I doubt we'll be launching very many lighter-than-air craft any time soon, unless we can figure out how to make hydrogen just as buoyant but less explode-y.

Image: found floating (snort) around on the internet, provenance unknown Something Awful Dot Com's Photoshop Phriday.

This video is not new, but a friend just pointed it to me. It is noteworthy because it shows a dude shooting himself in the chest and not dying. Also, because it includes mock-pizza-boxes crafted for a robbery enactment on television. The mock pizzas appear to be made of palm thatch. How do they do that?

Richard Davis, former U.S. Marine and onetime pizza delivery guy in Detroit, survived a gun shootout (he killed three armed robbers when they attacked him during a delivery). He went on to develop new forms of concealable body armor using kevlar. Those products are now widely used by military and law enforcement personnel, and private sector folks who have reason to believe they will be shot. This video tells a bit of his life story.

Richard Davis: video
[ YouTube, via, thanks, Susannah Breslin ]

Here are the top 10 most-viewed TED Talk videos from June 2006 to May 2008)

Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insight

Jeff Han's touchscreen foreshadows the iPhone and more

David Gallo shows underwater astonishments

Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos Photosynth

Arthur Benjamin does "mathemagic"

Sir Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

Hans Rosling shows the best stats you've ever seen

Tony Robbins asks why we do what we do

Al Gore on averting a climate crisis

Johnny Lee demos Wii Remote hacks

You can also watch the Top 10 TED talks highlights video.

When I visited Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen of Homegrown Evolution last week they showed me the rocket stove they made in their backyard. Theirs is quite fancy because it is made of bricks. They sometimes use their rocket stove to fry a meal in a skillet.

The rocket stove was invented about 10 years ago by Dr. Larry Winiarski at the Aprovecho Research Center in Oregon. It consists of an elbow-shaped combustion chamber (usually made from metal cans) surrounded by insulating material (often a large can filled with sand). It uses twigs for fuel, so it's ideal for areas where the trees have been depleted.

Here's a video from the Aprovecho Research Center that shows how to make a rocket stove.

Here are the first 3 of 10 rocket stove principles, by Larry Winiarski.

1.) Insulate, particularly the combustion chamber, with low mass, heatresistant materials in order to keep the fire as hot as possible and not toheat the higher mass of the stove body.

2.) Within the stove body, above the combustion chamber, use an insulated,upright chimney of a height that is about two or three times the diameterbefore extracting heat to any surface (griddle, pots, etc.).

3.) Heat only the fuel that is burning (and not too much). Burn the tips ofsticks as they enter the combustion chamber, for example. The object is NOTto produce more gasses or charcoal than can be cleanly burned at the powerlevel desired.

Illustration from In the Wake, a cool website on various simple off-the-grid tools.

Today on Boing Boing tv -- a sneak preview of Heavy Load: A Film About Happiness, a new documentary about a UK punk band whose members include people who have developmental disabilities.

'70s punk star Wreckless Eric describes them as "a triumph of dysfunctionalness," and even Kylie Minogue (they've covered a hit song of hers) has become a fan.

The band says their mission is...

...to demonstrate that disability rocks. There are few genres left in music that have yet to be defined. Heavy Load have unwittingly created a brand new one.

The band is also behind a campaign called "Stay Up Late" which advocates for the right of cognitively disabled people to be allowed to go out, supervised, to live music shows and -- well, stay out late enough to actually see and hear the show. Again, from the band:

We play gigs all over the country and we have noticed that something strange happens at 9.00pm – people start to go home. Heavy Load are fed up with people with learning disabilities leaving club nights and gigs early because their staff finish their shifts at 10pm. This means they are missing out.

If this happens to you: You need to talk about this with your friends, support workers, family and advocates. Our ‘Stay Up Late’ campaign is to make managers and staff know that we want them to plan ahead and talk to us about what we want to do...

Link to Boing Boing tv post with discussion, downloadable video, and BBtv podcast subscription info.

The full-length documentary premieres on the US cable network IFC on June 23rd, 9PM ET/10PM PT, and again on 24th June. (Special thanks to BB's Mark Frauenfelder, and to the film's director, Jerry Rothwell)

Chris Borroni-Bird is the director of Advanced Technology Vehicle Concepts at GM. He's leading the effort at GM to make fuel cell vehicles, based on a "skateboard" style chassis called AUTOnomy that incorporates the fuel cell, motors and electronics control.

GMnext kindly invited me to visit with Dr. Borroni-Bird and have a discussion with him about "innovation, technology, energy, the environment, and their impact on the future of the automobile." He's a fascinating innovator with ideas that could change transportation around the world. I hope he succeeds.

Here's the first video from our conversation. (Note: GMnext compensated me for my video appearance.) Link

Daniel Bauen made a nifty pedal-powered tennis ball launcher

Both cleanly powered and built from 2 recycled bicycles, scrap steel and wood, leaking 5 gallon water jug and a lacross stick, our pedal powered tennis ball launcher was created as a unique entry for the Innovate or Die pedal powered machine contest.

It allows players varying in skill levels to practice to be better at both tennis and cycling. The launcher is towed to the court on its built-in bicycle trailer. A bike is secured to it and functions to drive the device. Pedaling the cycle as one would on a trainer drives the two launcher wheels. The cyclist then aims and pulls the lever to launch balls to the hitter.

Link (via Treehugger)

Myst co-creator Robyn Miller writes about computer pioneer Doug Engelbart's "mother of all demos" from 1968.

What I didn't know until recently, is that a stunted version of hypertext had been demonstrated as early as 1968. This was no run-of-the-mill boring-vision-of-the-future demo. This was, simply put, "The Mother of All Demos". Steven Levy first gave it that name and it seems to have stuck: The Mother of All Demos (and oh I really love that name). Douglas Engelbart's whirling vision of the future; it was the first public use of a mouse, as well as examples of cutting, copying, pasting, teleconferencing, video conferencing, email, and... hypertext. It's just too damn much for 1968! From Steven Levy in his book, Insanely Great, The Life and Times of the Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything:

"... a calming voice from Mission Control as the truly final frontier whizzed before their eyes. It was the mother of all demos. Engelbart's support staff was as elaborate as one would find at a modern Grateful Dead concert. ..."

Link