Subject: punkin ballistics and animated dog carcasses i had the pleasure of dining with Mark Pauline last evening. He's the director of a s.f. bay area techie-artist org called survival research laboratories (i guessed correctly that they keep a copy of guns & ammo in the bathroom) or srl. if you haven't heard of them, here's what they do: they basically make make large radio-operated robots from random machine parts. some examples are: a backhoe arm mounted on a more mobile chassis with jaws at the end instead of a bucket; a small, fast machine on tractor treads, with arms that immobilze a target about 5 feet in front of a long composite spear, which rushes out to impale the target; a small spidery thang that spews molten steel in a thin jet about 22 feet long; an air gun which propels 150 deg F blasts in short bursts at the audience from 50 - 100 feet away (it appears that the poor shmuck of a target is getting pushed around the bleachers), a huge iron cannon mouinted on a chassis that spouts a 50 ft. flame and billowing smoke; a small machine with a crane arm and a spiked wrecking ball at the end of a chain, etc. all through dinner mark talked shop; i could swear i was sitting next to a more militant brother of fred fenning. after perfecting(right) the machines, they put on a show in which they sppear to destroy each other, attack the crowd, mutilate animal flesh, burn huge portraits of jesus, etc (hence the 'art'). like 2.70 on acid, with no goals, and no winner, and the robots spit napalm and buckshot at each other. totally cool. these guys have way too much time on their hands, get way too much weird equipment, mostly donated to them (mark just bought a cruise missile engine for $150. he's going to use it to levitate a platform in one of the upcoming shows), and have a little too much attitude for their own good: it seems like the city of sf doesn't like the way they seem to endanger the lives of innocent onlookers and has a vendetta organized...so they actually can't announce the location of their next show. which btw is on nov. 26, for those of you in the area (you should definitely go see it. he did say it was next to a post office, and : they were making plaster replicas of .45's and M16's to be handed to each audience member upon admission) anyhow, they have a couple web sites (i don't have the addresses because i don't have web access here, but mark sez a browser search of 'SRL' should get you there), and will also be bradcasting the show live over the net. they plan to have another show next year in which random humans operate the robots from the net, in a scenario like the behavioral sci experiments which asked people to "electrocute" actors in another room... try to catch the show. they have a lot of video of their prior shows available, i'll try to get a copy of some & send 'em to tep. luv & felches -e