James sez, "I just completed a working build of Donald Michie's MENACE (Matchbox Educable Noughts And Crosses Engine), an early (1960) example of machine learning. MENACE uses 304 matchboxes to play Noughts and Crosses (or Tic Tac Toe in the US) - and learns over time to play it better. I built it for a talk at the UK games conference Playful, about Awesomeness and Miracles, particularly focussing on the work of Charles Babbage - and culminating in a surprisingly large version for playing Go..."

MENACE is a machine that plays noughts and crosses, built out of 304 matchboxes. Each matchbox corresponds to one of the 304 board layouts that the opening player might face (there are actually 19,683 possible board layouts, but we only need to calculate the opening player's first four moves, and many are rotationally or reflectively identical). In turn, each matchbox contains a number of glass beads corresponding to each possible next move. When it is MENACE's turn to play, the operator simply selects the matchbox corresponding to the current state of play, shakes it, and opens it to see which move has been chosen. Each matchbox contains a small nook into which one bead falls--and MENACE plays in the square corresponding to that bead.

But what's really clever is that MENACE learns. Every time it wins a game, an additional bead is added to each matchbox played, corresponding to each winning move. Likewise, every time it loses, a bead corresponding to each losing move is removed. As a result, over time, MENACE becomes more likely to play moves that have previously resulted in wins and less likely to play moves that have resulted in losses.

A New THEORY of AWESOMENESS and MIRACLES Being NOTES and SLIDES on a talk given at PLAYFUL 09, concerning CHARLES BABBAGE, HEATH ROBINSON, MENACE and MAGE

MENACE Flickr set

BB pal and periodic guestblogger Richard Metzger has an amazing blog post up about the off-Broadway musical Man on the Moon. The play was conceived by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas and his third wife, South African actress, Genevieve Waite, as a potential film or stage production originally entitled "Space."

The stage performance was produced by Andy Warhol. Long-lost video footage of the play is embedded above. More video over at Metzger's blog, too, amazing stuff.

The following text was written by Chris Campion and Jeffrey A. Greenberg from the liner notes of the CD release of Andy Warhol Presents Man on the Moon.

I'll post a snip here, but you have to read the whole thing to hear about the part Philips wrote for Elvis, and all the weird little factoids about Warhol's work, and allegations that George Lucas stole the idea for Star Wars from this offbeat project. Snip:

Space was born the day Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon. Like millions of other people, John watched the 1969 moon landing on TV. He was living, at the time, on the Malibu property rented by British film director Michael Sarne, who was under contract at Fox to direct the adaptation of Gore Vidal's novel, Myra Breckenridge, with Rex Harrison, Raquel Welch and Mae West. Sarne had commissioned John to write songs for the film.

The Apollo 11 moon landing became an obsession. John would watch a recording of the TV transmission made on an early video tape machine over and over. The idea of exploring this new frontier - and particularly Neil Armstrong's scripted aside as he stepped onto the lunar surface that it was, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" - fired John's imagination, and he began to piece together ideas for a mythical space opera set to music. "He loved myths," says Genevieve, who was first introduced to John by Sarne that summer. "He liked Homer - The Iliad and The Odyssey."

(...) Genevieve bemoaned the fate of the show to her friend, Andy Warhol, who offered to find a backer, and did. Warhol also agreed to serve as a producer, and provided a director in the form of Paul Morrissey, who had made a series of avant-garde exploitation films under Warhol's aegis (Flesh, Trash, Heat, Chelsea Girls, etc.). John expressed his bemusement about Warhol's involvement in the song, "Oh Andy My Assistant": "Oh Andy, my assistant/your mind is so consistently blank/that I'm banking on you now/so please so don't try to comprehend/the reason why I have to send/ you up or else, I'm sure that we, shall have a terrible row/It's either you or I must save the race/ So bye-bye Andy and off you're goin' to Space."

LONG LOST FOOTAGE OF MUSICAL PLAY BY JOHN PHILLIPS, PRODUCED BY ANDY WARHOL (1975) (Dangerous Minds, photo courtesy Ken Regan / Camera S)

Music CD: Andy Warhol Presents "Man on the Moon" (Amazon.com)

These beautiful high-voltage towers in Istra, Russia, near Moscow are the Experimental Grounds for High-Voltage Generation. They still light up and fire streaks of lightning into the night.

Creepy High Voltage Installations (Thanks, Bill!)

(Image: Master Z Great)

Joao sez, "I work for the ATLAS experiment at CERN, the biggest and most complex of the devices within the Large Hadron Collider. We are organizing a multimedia contest for artsy-geeky people, offering the winner a paid internship at CERN, where she/he will have the opportunity to show off her/his science communication skills, documenting the experiment and producing more awesome multimedia. We'll spread it around with full credit to the author. Alternatively, if the winner prefers, we'll offer instead an Adobe Production Suite package."

CERN, the world's largest particle physics laboratory, birthplace of the World Wide Web and home of the famous Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has a great opportunity for you. We are about to kick-start the most complex scientific project ever conceived by mankind, and would like you to witness and record its unveiling, and help us spread the news.

We want you to start by showing us your communication and creative skills by producing an original short film or multimedia piece, incorporating material about ATLAS, the biggest experiment on the LHC. The best submissions will be posted on the ATLAS website and YouTube page with full credit to the author, and enter a competition for a paid internship at CERN or alternatively win a Adobe Production Suite package. The winner will be offered a trip to CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, and given exclusive access to scientists working on the project as well as all the equipment and expertise in CERN's audiovisual lab.

What we want from you is your unbridled creativity. In return, we offer a chance to experience history in the making, and a global platform for your work as the world's eyes look towards CERN this fall. To apply, read the official rules and register below. What are you waiting for?

The deadline is July 31, so lights, Camera, Action!

ATLAS/CERN Multimedia Contest and Intern Program: (Thanks, Joao!)

(Download / YouTube) Boing Boing Video today peeks inside the electrified world of Omega Recoil, a group of engineers and "makers" who craft giant Tesla Coils, and stage humorous and thrilling performances with those large electrical devices. What's a Tesla Coil? From the Tesla Society website:

[It] is one of Nikola Tesla's most famous inventions -- essentially a high-frequency air-core transformer. It takes the output from a 120vAC to several kilovolt transformer & driver circuit and steps it up to an extremely high voltage. Voltages can get to be well above 1,000,000 volts and are discharged in the form of electrical arcs. Tesla himself got arcs up to 100,000,000 volts (...) [They] are unique in the fact that they create extremely powerful electrical fields. Large coils have been known to wirelessly light up florescent lights up to 50 feet away, and because of the fact that it is an electric field that goes directly into the light and doesn't use the electrodes, even burned-out florescent lights will glow.

For viewers in San Francisco -- Omega Recoil members will be giving a talk at the 7th anniversary Dorkbot event, which features other cool "maker mutants" we've featured on Boing Boing Video before, like Jon Sarriugarte and the Boiler Bar folks. Organizer Karen Marcelo says,

...and to think this all started because i was bored seven years ago and decided to call Douglas and start the SF one in Marc Powell's garage! Pesco was a speaker at the first one! We had Brian Normanly talk about how to 'liberate' electricity from PG&E. I dont think anyone has the guts to do that now! :) Here's that first event from 2002.

More on Jon Sarriugarte's blog.

---

Sponsor shout-out: This week's Boing Boing Video episodes are brought to you in part by WEPC.com, in partnership with Intel and Asus. WePC.com is a site where users come together to "share ideas, images and inspiration about the ideal PC." Participants' designs, feature ideas and community feedback will be evaluated by ASUS and "will influence the blueprint for an actual notebook PC built by ASUS with Intel inside."

Aaron sez, "An engineer gutted an old Volkswagen that he bought on Craigslist and designed a custom electric motor for it. It can hit 82 MPH!"

Tischer converted a '91 VW Passat with a blown engine. He found it on Craigslist for $1,800. The Passat is a bit big for a conversion, he says, but it's aerodynamic and attractive. That counts for a lot. "It's just a professional looking car with a beautiful interior, and something I enjoy having as a daily driver," he said.

Tischer's EV project

VW Owner Shifts Gears, Goes From Gas to Electric (Thanks, Aaron)

High voltage hackers ArcAttack of Austin, Texas, are known to BB readers for their Singing Tesla Coils that they use to perform music. For example, here, a pair of coils delight us with an, er, energized rendition of the Doctor Who theme. Sadly, it's unlikely that most of us will get a chance to try our hand at conducting this Tesla orchestra so ArcAttack has enhanced their Web site with a simple yet fantastically fun Tesla Coil Emulator. My first number was the familiar tune from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. What song would you like to hear the coils sing? From the ArcAttack site:

ArcAttack employs a unique DJ set up of their own creation (an HVDJ set up) to generate an 'electrifying' audio visual performance. The HVDJ pumps music through a PA System while two specially designed DRSSTC's (Dual-Resonant Solid State Tesla Coils) act as separate synchronized instruments.

These high tech machines produce an electrical arc similar to a continuous lightning bolt which put out a crisply distorted square wave sound reminiscent of the early days of synthesizers. The music consists of original highly dance-able electronic compositions that sometimes incorporates themes or dub of popular songs.

Joe DiPrima and Oliver Greaves are the masterminds behind the design and construction of the Tesla Coils while the music is developed by John DiPrima and Tony Smith.

Tesla Coil Emulator

Seen in the video above is Anaconda, a new system for harvesting energy from the ocean's waves. The 8-meter long, water-filled rubber "snake" is a prototype of a 200 meter version that the developers, Atkins Global, hopes will generate the energy required to power 1000 homes. The device is currently under testing in Gosport, UK and Checkmate Seaenergy hopes to bring it to market by 2014. I was surprised to learn that one of the big challenges to harvesting tidal wave energy is that the mechanical devices don't tend to last long because they get so abused by the ocean. From New Scientist:

(As the Anaconda moves, it forms "bulge waves") similar to those that pass through the human circulatory system and can be felt as the pulse in the wrist and neck, says Rod Rainey of Atkins Global, co-inventor of the Anaconda. When each bulge wave reaches the end of the snake it keeps a turbine spinning to generate electricity.

The snake is made from a rubber-based material similar to that used to make dracones – flexible containers that are filled with diesel or water and towed behind ships for quick and cheap transportation.

Other than the turbine, Anaconda has no moving parts and unlike other wave power devices it needs only one tether to the ocean floor. That lowers construction costs and reduces the need for maintenance – an expensive undertaking in offshore settings where corrosion and accessibility are problems, explains Rainey.

"Sea 'snake' generates electricity with every wave"

Although I won't sacrifice my own microwave to replicate this experiment showing the surprising effects of nuking a mobile phone, I'm glad that one of the web's many amateur scientists did so and recorded the outcome.

My Cell phone company is evil! (Thanks, Fipi Lele!

The theme for MAKE Vol. 18 (on newsstands and in bookstores on May 18) is about building a sustainable future at home. The articles include geeked-out gardening tips (like an Arduino-controlled automatic indoor garden called the Garduino, micro-irrigation, and worm composting) and lots of energy related projects (like how to make a Tweet-a-Watt so you can twitter your electricity usage, and other ways to measure and reduced power usage in your home).

One of the projects in the magazine I'm looking forward to making myself is the solar powered hot tub heater. Eric Muhs, the author, built a 3' x 3' plywood box, painted it black, drilled a couple of holes in a corner, and dropped a 100 foot coil of cheap black vinyl hose inside. The ends of the hoses go into the water, and a solar-powered pump moves water through the coils. The cool thing Eric's design is that the pump stays off when it's dark or cloudy, preventing the system from cooling the hot tub water.

Eric says, "On a sunny day, it works great, and the water returns to the tub 2 or 3 degrees hotter than it left. That may not sound like much, but it adds up. The basic rule of thumb of this system: if it's the kind of day when your parked car is hotter than the outside air when you get in, you'll get heat."

Make Vol. 18 -- building a sustainable future at home

Another gem from the Evil Mad Scientist lab: edible circuit diagrams that help you visualize the delicious results of your electronic experiments: "Any number of chocolate-bar-like foods can be made into edible versions of integrated circuits. Kit Kat, Twix, and Mini Charleston Chews are small components that make good models of integrated circuits in long, skinny packages. Chocolate covered graham crackers are another good option. The aspect ratio is good for doing large-scale models of (e.g.) 8-pin DIP packages; These are the ones that we made into 555s."

Circuitry Snacks (via IZ Reloaded)

The Professor would be proud of David Butcher of San Jose, California. He built his first pedal generator prototype in 1976. Every morning, he spends 45 minutes on the stationary bicycle generator to charge up a bank of salvaged batteries. Having mastered the machine, Butcher now sells plans so you can build your own. The cost of the parts is around $230, he says, or much less if you recycle an old bike. If you're interested in learning more, Butcher hangs out in a videochat room when he's pedaling away every morning. Apparently, he cranks out 1.8 kilowatt-hours a month. Of course, er, YMMV. Butcher has videos demonstrating the generator directly powering a blender (video above), washing machine, and breadmaker. His bike blender was even featured on a recent episode of MAKE: TV. From Butcher's site:

My pedal generator is in the garage, hooked up through the Trace C12 controller in my Micro Solar Energy System to a recycled battery pack from my Sparrow Electric Car. I work out in the early morning, and it's dark. It would be pointless to use as much energy to light the workout area as I generated with the workout, so I light the area with the 12 volt LED Bar Light I put together several years ago. It uses white LED's to light the workout area. They require almost no power, so virtually everything I generate ends up in the batteries.

The San Francisco Chronicle profiled Butcher last year. Butcher digs alternative power tech in general, having installed solar panels on his roof and X10 modules throughout his house for intelligent control of appliances and other devices. From the SF Chronicle:

Butcher, who lives alone after a divorce, traces his environmental leanings to the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, which marred miles of coastline with 200,000 gallons of crude oil. Butcher was 14 at the time and witnessed it firsthand. He built his first pedal generator when he was in his early 20s.

"I was always interested in alternative energy and solar in particular," he says. "I was living in Portland, Ore., where solar is not as much of an option. So I thought, 'What else could I do?'

"I'd been on a swim team for years and I was in pretty good shape, and I thought there must be a way to get some power going."

Butcher's prototype bicycle was chain-driven and featured a welded steel frame. Today's version, with its simplified drivetrain and bolted frame, can be assembled with basic hand tools.

When he took up his pedaling regimen two years ago, Butcher tipped the scales at 180 pounds. Today, at age 53, he weighs a lean 150 and possesses a pair of legs that wouldn't look out of place on the Olympic cycling squad. Butcher's pedaling has become so efficient that he has pretty much abandoned his car (electric, incidentally) in favor of bicycling, reducing his carbon footprint still further.

David Butcher: Pedal Powered Generator (via BB Gadgets)

"Stationary bike designed to create electricity" (San Francisco Chronicle)

Every year, approximately 2.5 million exajoules of solar energy reach the Earth. That's about 5,000 times the amount of energy consumed by people each year. The trick is collecting it and converting it into electricity cheaply and efficiently. Plants do a good job of that. Turns out scientists have been working on ways to imitate nature's photosynthesis since 1912. And they're still at it. This week, the scientific journal Chemical & Engineering News posted two deep articles on the subject. The first is about the molecular mysteries of photosynthesis, including whether it's as efficient as one would expect from a process that has more than a couple billion years of evolution behind it. From the article, "Harnessing Light":

Water-splitting is key to the renewable production of hydrogen gas and other energy fuels, and doing so with inexpensive catalysts, as plants do a billion times per day, would be a huge step forward for solar power research. But the photosynthetic process has some other secrets, too, that scientists are only just figuring out, such as how photosynthetic organisms can tame light without suffering too much radiation damage, the plant equivalent of a sunburn...

(One) contentious area is the question of how efficient photosynthesis actually is..

One reason that plants don't store fuel efficiently is that "plants' goals are different than our goals," says (Devens Gust, a photochemist at Arizona State University). "The plant's goal is to live and reproduce, not to store energy for humans."

Even so, many researchers turn to photosynthesis for inspiration on how to achieve humanity's energy needs. They hope to mimic the early, energy-efficient light-harvesting steps of photosynthesis, but then direct the harnessed light energy entirely toward producing fuel instead of growing a plant.

"When we think about ways to harvest sunlight," Gust says, "it seems natural to look to photosynthesis for ideas. It has been around for the longest time, and it works on the largest scale."

That's where biomimicry comes in. The companion article in C&EN describes research by Gust and others to build small molecular systems that imitate what plants do using a biological "machine" consisting of 20 proteins. From the second article:

The overall efficiency of photosynthesis for making sugar fuels is low--only about 2-3%--because plants' primary goal is to live and reproduce, not store fuel. But the first steps performed by (the plant's photosynthesis system) are much more energy efficient, about 30%. So researchers want to "take the basic chemistry and the basic physics of the photosynthetic reaction center" and build a molecular version in the lab, says Devens Gust, a photochemist at Arizona State University. In effect, they want to produce a molecular photovoltaic that, like (the plant's version), produces a current of electrons that could be used to split water and thus drive the production of a fuel such as hydrogen gas.

Harnessing Light
Attempts To Mimic A Plant's Light-Harvesting And Water-Splitting Megamachinery

Neil Young's latest album, Fork in the Road, is entirely about his electric car, which he calls the Lincvolt.

The songs on the album are an emotional response to the current social and ecological questions facing the world’s population. Young has been an activist his entire career, and over the past few years has become involved in developing different fuel possibilities. Along with Johnathan Goodwin, their LINCVOLT project using alternative energy to power Young’s 1959 Lincoln Continental is now finished.

Thomas built a steam powered iPod generator. From Jake von Slatt's Steampunk Workshop:

I coupled a Lego Technic Motor to a Jensen #75 steam engine to make a crude generator. From there I built a 5V regulator circuit and soldered in a female USB connection to power any USB device. Since I wanted to use it to charge my iPod, I put in a diode and a .5 amp fuse to provide some circuit protection. Attached are some pictures of it and here are some links to videos of it in action. Unfortunately you can't see the charge light on the ipod, But as you can hear, the iPod really loads the engine. I was somewhat surprise it could hack it.

What a cool idea. Just think if they could scale up this idea and use steam to generate electricity for entire cities!

David JC MacKay's "Sustainable Energy -- Without the Hot Air" may be the best technical book about the environment that I've ever read. In fact, if I have any complaint about this book, it's in how it's presented, with its austere cover and spartan title, I assumed it would be a somewhat dry look at energy, climate, conservation and so on.

It's not. This is to energy and climate what Freakonomics is to economics: an accessible, meaty, by-the-numbers look at the physics and practicalities of energy. MacKay, a Cambridge Physics prof, approaches the subject of carbon and sustainability with a scientific, numeric eye. First, in a section called "Numbers, not adjectives," he looks at all the energy and carbon inputs and outputs in Britain and the rest of the world: this is how many kWh of energy are needed to power all of Britain's vehicles. This is how many kWh you would get if you covered the entire British shore with windmills, or wave-farms. This is Britain's geothermal potential. Here's how much carbon vegetarianism offsets. Here's how much carbon unplugging your idle appliances saves (0.25%, making the campaign to switch off energy vampires into a largely pointless exercise -- as MacKay says, "If everyone does a little bit, we'll get a little bit done"). This is the carbon-footprint of all of Britain's imports, gadgets, office towers, and so on.

Using a charming, educational style that teaches how to think about this kind of number, how to estimate with it, and what it means, MacKay explains these concepts beautifully, with accompanying charts that make them vivid and clear, and with exhaustive endnotes that are as interesting as the text they refer to (probably the best use of end-notes I've encountered in technical writing -- they act like hyperlinks, giving good background on the subjects that the reader wants to find out more about while allowing the main text to move forward without getting bogged down by details).

Next, in "Making a Difference," looks at what it would take to balance Britain's (and, eventually, the world's) energy budget so that the consumption is sustainable (that is, so that it uses only renewables or fuels that would last for 1000 years -- and emits so little carbon that we avert a 2C' rise in global temperature). He looks realistically at conservation, considering the theoretical limits on efficiency for rail, electric cars, air, as well as factories, home design and so forth, giving examples ranging from better insulation to tearing down all the housing in Britain and rebuilding it for maximum efficiency (factoring in the energy and carbon costs of the new building, of course).

This chapter also has a lot of sensible personal advice for things you can do to reduce your energy consumption -- especially identifying those few badly designed devices in your home whose idle power-draw really is punitive and replacing them (one Ikea lamp he cites draws nearly as much switched off as running, because of a transformer design that was one penny cheaper to manufacture than a more efficient one would have been).

Finally, in a long technical appendix, MacKay delves into the physics of maximal performance in transport, manufacturing, housing and energy generation, explaining it in a way that I -- who have not studied physics since I was 18 -- was able to follow.

This reminded me of nothing so much as Saul Griffith's wonderful talk on climate change as an engineering problem. Add up all the energy we can make if we harness every erg, every photon. Subtract all the energy we want to use. Examine this difference and come up with strategies for bringing the two into balance. Once you get this approach, it becomes a lot simpler to figure out what is and isn't worth doing.

My only complaint about this book is its packaging: if it were tarted up to look like the transformative, important popular science book that it really is, I think it would be at the center of the environmental debate today.

The entire book is available as a free 10MB PDF download so you can start reading immediately

Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air (US)

Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air (UK)

Without Hot Air -- MacKay's site for the book, including the whole book as a free download

The PUMA is a Segway/car combination prototyped by Dean Kamen's company in collaboration with General Motors. More details and video at Boing Boing Gadgets.

Puma: GM and Segway take a swing at a small car (Thanks, Jim Leftwich!)

All I can say is, it's about goddamned time:

Creators of the original Singing Tesla Coils, the crew of ArcAttack uses high tech wizardry to present music in a whole new light.

ArcAttack employs a unique DJ set up of their own creation (an HVDJ set up) to generate an 'electrifying' audio visual performance. The HVDJ pumps music through a PA System while two specially designed DRSSTC's (Dual-Resonant Solid State Tesla Coils) act as separate synchronized instruments.

These high tech machines produce an electrical arc similar to a continuous lightning bolt which put out a crisply distorted square wave sound reminiscent of the early days of synthesizers. The music consists of original highly dance-able electronic compositions that sometimes incorporates themes or dub of popular songs.

Joe DiPrima and Oliver Greaves are the masterminds behind the design and construction of the Tesla Coils while the music is developed by John DiPrima and Tony Smith.

ArcAttack! (Thanks, Mary!)

Philips Research Laboratories engineers have taken inspiration from moth eyes to develop a coating for solar cells that increases their efficiency. Nanostructures, comparable to the tapered structures on the insects' eyes, reduce the amount of light that's reflected off the photovoltaic material. From Physics World:

To maximize the amount of light entering (moths') eyes, to help them see at night, the insects' eyes are covered in tapered nanostructures. This creates an "effective medium" where the refractive index gradually increases as light travels from air through to the insects' optical nerve. The resulting effective index is close to one, which means that very little light is reflected out of the eye.

Inspired by these biostructures, Gomez Rivas and colleagues have mimicked the effect by growing nanowires of different lengths - creating a metamaterial with optical properties that change gradually as a function of distance.

"Moth eyes inspire more efficient solar cell" (via Daily Grail)

(click image for big)

In MAKE, Vol. 4, Mister Jalopy wrote a "Maker's Bill of Rights." In the introduction, he stated "If you can't open it, you don't own it."

Well, here's a light switch that I paid full price for, but don't really own. I learned this when the block plastic strap (the part attached to the chain you pull to turn the light off and on) broke off inside the housing. There was a screw on the housing, but when I removed it, the housing wouldn't come apart. That's because the metal socket (the part with the threads in it) has a dimple pressed into it, preventing its removal from the plastic housing.

In addition, the seam between the two halves of the plastic housing seem to be glued or melted together, violating one of Mr. Jalopy's tenets: "Screws better than glues."

So I had to throw it away instead of repairing it. Yes, I know it's dangerous to play with electricity, but I would have liked to have been able to peek inside, at least!

Here's an attractive PDF version of the Maker's Bill of Rights.

A description of Electric Fault Circuit Interrupter (EFCI) on stage at TED2009.

Smoke alarms are great -- they detect fires but don't prevent them. One of main causes of fires is electricity.

How does electricity ignite fires? Faulty, overloaded or misused outlets. 83% of all fires start at loads below circuit breakers (invented by Edison) trip.

By putting a 10-cent data tag (like RFID) in an appliance plug and a reader in the electrical outlet, you can prevent fires. The appliance's safe operating parameters are embedded in the plug. If there's an overload, the power shuts off. Also, outlets are off unless the appliance with the chip is plugged in. That means a kid can stick a fork in the outlet and not get shocked.

Can save thousands of lives and conserve energy.

Stef sez, "Here's an Instructable explaining in 25 simple steps how to convert your car to run on household trash using a process called Gasification. As the site sez: 'Gasification is the use of heat to tranform solid biomass, or other carbonaceous solids, into a synthetic "natural gas like" flammable fuel.' Not only that, but as a benefit it pimps your car out with a fantastic steampunky contraption to impress your fellow road users with!"

Convert your Honda Accord to run on trash (Thanks, Stef!)

Ed Begley, Jr, says:

Thought I would send along this video from my friend Jay Leno about a new wind turbine called the MagWind from Enviro-Energies that he and I will be installing soon. As many of you have asked about "vertical axis wind turbines," I thought you'd like to see the latest in this technology.

Jay Leno's wind turbine

The Oak Ridge Associated Universities website has a splendid gallery of nuclear-age slide-rules (as Mr Jalopy notes, these are artifacts from an age after nukes but before pocket calculators) -- mostly circular cardboard calculators that help you compute the size of the crater generated by the nuke that touches off WWIII. Shown here, the 1960 Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer by EG&G.

As a convenience to those interested in the effects of nuclear weapons, this circular computer was designed to make data easily available on various weapon effects - some as functions of both yield and range and others on yield alone . . . The weapons data incorporated in this computer were taken from the very informative and useful text, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, edited by Samuel Glasstone for the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project of the Department of Defense.

Nuclear Slide Rules (via Dinosaurs and Robots)

In a New York Times op-ed today, Al Gore (or should we say, @al_gore) reprises some of the themes he spoke of at this week's Web 2.0 summit. Snip:

THE inspiring and transformative choice by the American people to elect Barack Obama as our 44th president lays the foundation for another fateful choice that he -- and we -- must make this January to begin an emergency rescue of human civilization from the imminent and rapidly growing threat posed by the climate crisis.

The electrifying redemption of America's revolutionary declaration that all human beings are born equal sets the stage for the renewal of United States leadership in a world that desperately needs to protect its primary endowment: the integrity and livability of the planet. The world authority on the climate crisis, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, after 20 years of detailed study and four unanimous reports, now says that the evidence is "unequivocal."

To those who are still tempted to dismiss the increasingly urgent alarms from scientists around the world, ignore the melting of the north polar ice cap and all of the other apocalyptic warnings from the planet itself, and who roll their eyes at the very mention of this existential threat to the future of the human species, please wake up. Our children and grandchildren need you to hear and recognize the truth of our situation, before it is too late.

Here is the good news: the bold steps that are needed to solve the climate crisis are exactly the same steps that ought to be taken in order to solve the economic crisis and the energy security crisis.

The Climate for Change (NYT, via @timoreilly)

Previously: Web 2.0 Summit Videos: Lessig, Kelly, Al Gore, many more

Photo: "Treasure Island / The Island" by Aaron Escobar, Creative Commons licensed, on Flickr.

MIT researchers are developing a novel power scavenging systes for small wireless sensors that monitor for forest fires. The sensors are powered by the trees themselves. Each sensor's battery is trickle charged with the electricity generated by the imbalance in pH between the tree and the soil. From the MIT News Office:

A single tree doesn't generate a lot of power, but over time the "trickle charge" adds up, "just like a dripping faucet can fill a bucket over time," said Shuguang Zhang, one of the researchers on the project and the associate director of MIT's Center for Biomedical Engineering (CBE).

The system produces enough electricity to allow the temperature and humidity sensors to wirelessly transmit signals four times a day, or immediately if there's a fire. Each signal hops from one sensor to another, until it reaches an existing weather station that beams the data by satellite to a forestry command center in Boise, Idaho.

Preventing forest fires with tree power

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.

In today's episode, Boing Boing tv features John Behrens and "Omega Recoil," a group that builds 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 the 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.

Link to Boing Boing tv post with discussion and downloadable video.

Design Observer has an article about "blast door" art, painted by the people who man nuclear launch control centers in the US.

Like the garish and cheeky illustrations etched across the noses of World War II aircraft, these images in launch control centers across the United States testify to the bravado of the men (and, from the mid-1980s onward, women) of what has been called "America's Underground Air Force." But they also reflect the sometimes surreal pressures faced by two-person missile crews on 24-hour duty alerts, waiting for a call to turn their missile launch keys and perhaps end civilization as we know it. "You're sitting there waiting for the message you hope never comes," says Tony Gatlin, who painted the Domino's homage as a young deputy flight commander at Delta One in 1989. "That's a pretty screwed up way of looking at the world."

Now an Air Force major and deputy director of staff with the 100th Air Refueling Wing, based at the Royal Air Force's Mildenhall Base, in England, Gatlin was struck by the similarity of Domino's delivery time and that of his missiles. "One went with the other kind of well," he deadpans. Gatlin's painting is one of only a few the public can see, following the transformation in 1999 of the Delta One control facility and the nearby Delta Nine missile silo into an historic site by the National Park Service (NPS). Under the terms of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the then-Soviet Union and the United States, many Minuteman missile sites have been deactivated or destroyed.

Link (Thanks, William!)

Here's a video and build notes for a steam-powered battery charger.

For the most part we have all the power we could ever need from our small 600 Watt solar array and our 20' diameter wind turbine, but on occasion I do need to run a generator and I always figured that a steam engine would be the most fun, plus... I don't need to rely on petroleum - I have lots of wood all around me!

The engine is a 1903 C&BC 6 horsepower steam engine. I bought it at auction nearby (stole it) for less than $150. It's in very good shape, I believe it's been rebuilt and never run since. The boiler we got about a year later. I'm guessing it to be about a 4hp boiler. It was made by 'The Look Out boiler company' in 1940. It seems to be in good condition.

Link

"The braking mechanism that limits the speed of the wind turbine broke during a storm in Denmark. This was the outcome." Article about the turbine failure

Over on the Boing Boing Gadgets blog, our Joel spots a delightful solar-powered, movie-playing, game-emulating handheld computer:

This knock-off "MP4 Player" not only plays music and video, it can emulate the NES and Game Boy Color. But even better, it can be recharged with built-in solar panels. That's right: you can play Faxanadu until the sun explodes.

It comes with 2GB of memory built in, which is plenty for NES and GB ROMs, although perhaps not music and movies, and can be expanded up to another 2GB with an SD card. Oh, and it's got a USB out to which other gadgets can be connected--not for data, but to be recharged from the solar panel.

Link Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

Today's the anniversary of Thomas Edison's vicious electrocution of a live elephant in order to prove the dangers of Nikola Tesla's alternating current and the safety of his competing direct current.

When the day came, Topsy was restrained using a ship's hawser fastened on one end to a donkey engine and on the other to a post. Wooden sandals with copper electrodes were attached to her feet and a copper wire run to Edison's electric light plant, where his technicians awaited the go-ahead.

In order to make sure that Topsy emerged from this spectacle more than just singed and angry, she was fed cyanide-laced carrots moments before a 6,600-volt AC charge slammed through her body. Officials needn't have worried. Topsy was killed instantly and Edison, in his mind anyway, had proved his point.

A crowd put at 1,500 witnessed Topsy's execution, which was filmed by Edison and released later that year as Electrocuting an Elephant.

Link

Scientist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have discovered a fungi that uses radioactivity to make its source of nourishment. The upshot? Spacemen will eat this fungus when they travel to other planets. Yum!

The ability of fungi to live off radiation could also prove useful to people: "Since ionizing radiation is prevalent in outer space, astronauts might be able to rely on fungi as an inexhaustible food source on long missions or for colonizing other planets," says Dr. Ekaterina Dadachova, associate professor of nuclear medicine and microbiology & immunology at Einstein and lead author of the study.

Link

Reader comment:

Jerm says:

This is the second time I've seen this study linked (slashdot was the first), and I feel compelled to mention that one of the fungi, C. neoformans, is far from edible. It causes pulmonary infections and meningitis in immunocompromised people (AIDS patients, etc.). Furthermore, saying it "eats" radiation is somewhat misleading. It implies we could use these fungi to detoxify a radiation contaminated area, and we could do no such thing. They appear to utilize the radiation in a way plants utilize solar radiation, which while cool, isn't quite "eating," in my book.

This 40 story tall tower just outside Seville, Spain is actually a new solar thermal power plant. Operated by Solúcar Energía, the facility uses 600 mirrors on the ground to tightly focus the sun's rays on water pipes at the top of the tower. The heat converts the water into steam that drive turbines to generate electricity. It's the photo of the reflected solar rays hitting the tower that really impresses me though. As ForteanTimes.com editor Alistair Strachan pointed out to me, the scene "looks strangely religious," like a bad biblical illustration. From the BBC News:

The tower looked like it was being hosed with giant sprays of water or was somehow being squirted with jets of pale gas. I had trouble working it out.

In fact, as we found out when we got closer, the rays of sunlight reflected by a field of 600 huge mirrors are so intense they illuminate the water vapour and dust hanging in the air.

The effect is to give the whole place a glow - even an aura - and if you're concerned about climate change that may well be deserved.

Link