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The Big Kerplop 208

Posted by timothy from the good-role-models dept.
Peter Wayner writes: "When I mentioned the Mad Scientist Club short stories to a co-worker, he rolled up his sleeve and showed me the burn scars on his arm. The books, he said, did this to him. Not literally, but by misguided inspiration. In one of the tales, the boys in the Club launch a fleet of fake flying saucers to frighten their hometown of Mamouth Falls. The scars came when the colleague tried to imitate the book, but used real gasoline to add a bit of zip to plastic cleaner bags turned UFOs. Now, that the rediscovered full-length novel about the Club, The Big Kerplop is being republished with a bit of a splash, some adults may look at stories like this and decided that there's a danger that kids might start imitating the novels. The bigger danger, though, may come if they don't." Read on for the rest of Peter's review.
The Big Kerplop
author Bertrand R. Brinley
pages 217
publisher Purple House Press
rating 9
reviewer Peter Wayner
ISBN 1930900228
summary The Mad Scientists rediscovered, in greater depth -- fun reading for kids and adults.

This novel isn't really new, although it is for all practical purposes. The author, Bertrand Brinley, had much success with the collections of short stories about the seven boys who dreamed of being scientists one day. The short stories continued to stay in print and even seemed to inspire a hack Disney adaptation, but only rumors about The Big Kerplop circulated on the Internet. When the copies of The Big Kerplop would trade on Ebay, they often closed at prices in the hundreds of dollars. Free markets can't ignore messages like that and the Purple House Press purchased the rights and relaunched the books.

It's easy for a Slashdot reader to understand how the stories could command such affection. The boys in the stories live in the netherworld between capability and responsibility. (Enjoy it if you're still there.) They have ham radio sets, fishing boats, weather balloons, and plenty of other gadgets to put to use in tweaking the noses of their buffoonish elders and only a few chores to get in the way.

The books are set in the early 60's before Bhopal, Three Mile Island, and Agent Orange rained on the big Science parade. Brinley worked for Lockheed and Martin during one of the the most romantic periods in aviation history, save perhaps the early days of the Wright Brothers. The books are infused with a certainty that rational thought guided by the scientific method and salted with a bit of pluck and wit could solve any problem. I think everyone here can agree that the entire club would be open source coders today, although it's not clear if they would embrace the BSD or GPL license. It may not even be stretching things to say that groups who wrote and distributed DeCSS are working through the same themes as the Mad Scientist Club, albeit on a global scale.

The novel is prequel to the collection of short stories that tells the backstory of how the boys found each other and discovered how a firm devotion to scientific principles could be put to work showing up the grownups. As they say on Fark, hilarity ensued many times.

The earlier short stories took up only 20-30 pages apiece, but this novel stretches to more than 200 pages, making it an entirely different animal. The characters are better drawn, the scenes are set with more than a sentence or two, and the plot twists back upon itself a few times. It's a leisurely read that makes the earlier stories seem a bit cartoonish or slapstick. This sophistication is a pleasure for me to read at my technically grownup age, but it may be why the novel didn't gain the same traction as the short stories. The laughs are driven more by character and dialog than by the setting and action. The short stories are basically set pieces, but the novel is more of a study in character. That's good for anyone who grew up loving the books, but it may mean that the current crop of 8-12 year old boys should wait a year or two before diving in.

The length of the novel also gives Brinley more room to flesh out the adults and let them play more than rubes to the Mad Scientists' schemes. The town's politicians are still a bit overstuffed, but Colonel March, the commander of the local Air Force base, is hardly a foil or a nemisis. Constable Billy Dahr, though, is still around to be the goat.

I suppose I should say something about the story. The Club, or at least the early core of what would become the Club, is out fishing on Strawberry Lake when a fleet of B52s flies over. Something makes a big kerplop in the lake and the Club spends the rest of the book saving the day, defying their elders and deploying some cool gadgets and the scientific method. This is a deeper, richer and very satisfying return for the characters.

Some of these tricks could get you some scars I guess but that's not the worst future awaiting a young reader. First, chicks dig scars -- although that theorem lies well outside of the scope of this book. Second, this may be the adult in me, but kids today seem fatter, lazier, and more hogtied than ever before. Yes, these words will haunt me when my children get bigger, but I think that Brinley hits the sweet spot between obedience and irreverence. Forethought and care save the day in these books, not caprice and whim. The characters are neither insolent nor cowed by authority. The important thing to remember is that the scientific method celebrated by the books does not suggest replacing a few candles with a burning pie plate filled with gasoline. At least not without first doing a bit of research on the safest way to ensure all of the energy turns into hot air.

You can purchase The Big Kerplop from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page. Peter Wayner is the author of several dangerous and incendiary books like Disappearing Cryptography and Translucent Databases . Don't burn them without standing at a safe distance.
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The Big Kerplop

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  • Why does it not surprise me. (Score:5, Funny)

    by mikeophile ( 647318 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @01:03PM (#6435077)
    It seems almost obligatory that a review of a book called The Big Kerplop would have to reference Fark [fark.com]?

  • Bring out that old labcoat... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Back when I was a kid mad scientists meant chemistry and rockets... Oh how I aspired to be one, little did I know there wasn't that much in store for a geek ^_^

    PS-FP.

  • Rename. (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Monday July 14, 2003 @01:06PM (#6435105) Homepage Journal

    "Darwin Awards Club" is more like it.

  • Hooray! (Score:2, Funny)

    by soulsteal ( 104635 )
    It's all fun and games until someone gets mutilated... or pregnant.

    Wait, this is /. No chance of pregnancy here. Whew!

    • Re:Hooray! (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Wait, this is /. No chance of pregnancy here. Whew!

      Dammit! Why didn't I know this 10 years ago when I got my GF pregnant. I could've just joined Slashdot and saved a bunch of time and money.

      Oh wait, when was Slashdot started?
    • Remember kids, it's all fun and games until somebody's uncle pops a ventricle.

      Then it's just fun.

  • Oh great, I can just see it now (Score:4, Funny)

    by Mayak ( 688458 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @01:14PM (#6435184)
    10,000 fire balloons across the country take flight c/o Slashdot. I can't even imagine how many forest fires, UFO sightings, and general mayhem incidents this will cause. I'm going to build mine now. :)

  • Kids today... (Score:5, Funny)

    by gradius3 ( 457417 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @01:15PM (#6435192)
    but kids today seem fatter, lazier, and more hogtied than ever before.

    It's because we no longer have to walk 3 miles to school uphill both ways anymore.

    • Re:Kids today... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PsibrII ( 671768 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @01:57PM (#6435520) Journal
      They also had 12 ounce GLASS bottles of coke back then. That made it a tad harder to get fat by sucking down 6 liters worth of cola in a day.

      And if you lived in a huge metro area, you might get up to 6-7 whopping channels of TV, on which the programming was pretty lame. If you lived in the sticks you could still get those 6-7 channels, but only with a huge antenna that likely had the motor burned out 10 years ago requiring someone to go up on the roof and turn it while someone on the ground yelled up to say if it was better or worse.

      Candy flavings were still not too good in the 70s, but you learned to love it because the butter/bacon/whatever fat overwhelem the turpentine aromas of an immature artifical flavoring technology.

      And don't forget, there was the sweet and poisonous aroma of leaded gas. On bitter cold mornings you could see that evil grey everywhere.

      Ah yes, TV sucked, so kids ran amok trying to entertain themselves. Cola was flavored with cane sugar produced by neer slave labor, now its full of corn sugar that doesn't taste so good an is as addictive, if not more, than heroin. And the nation simply believed that vietnam was a fluke, and wasn't a trend of sending troops to rotting cesspools worldwide for no good reason. Drugs were something that only low born gutter scum used, and kids looked forward to when they could be cool and start smoking, drinking, and getting laid. Playboy was "hardcore" porn. The term "fisting" would be unknown to the masses until the 80s, and even not then really.

      Now, kids learn even before they enter school that the world is a cesspool, and if they are lucky they'll get enough of an education from these union protected losers "teaching" in school that they'll be able to spell and read well enough that they can get real info off the internet educational sights. And then, if they know the right people, and work like a slave they'll find a more or less dry part of the cesspool to exist in. And all their hard work will go into taxes to support the masses of baby boomers crying for more bread and circuses in their retirement years, and the welfare cesspits breeding subhuman scum who dream of becomming rap stars and crack dealers.

      But hey, who wouldn't find motivation in a future like that ?
      • > They also had 12 ounce GLASS bottles of coke back then. That made it a tad harder to get fat by sucking down 6 liters worth of cola in a day.

        Yeah, and the extra mass made them fly like crap when you tried to fill 'em with vinegar and baking soda, or even just pressurized water.

        They're safer, which is kinda boring compared to the glass ones I grew up with, but they fly better, which is what counts. Plastic 2L Coke bottles rule!

      • Ah yes, TV sucked, so kids ran amok trying to entertain themselves. Cola was flavored with cane sugar produced by neer slave labor, now its full of corn sugar that doesn't taste so good an is as addictive, if not more, than heroin.

        Soda tastes worse so it's more addictive? Whatever. Btw, the reason people use corn syrup now isn't for health reasons, but because of stupid protectionist sugar tariffs.
    • It's because we no longer have to walk 3 miles to school uphill both ways anymore.

      If we've gotten to the point where N=3 is now regarded as a large enough number for the "when I was my age we used to have to walk N miles to shool uphill both ways" joke, then we really have reached a sad state. (I mean, c'mon, a 3 mile walk is actually a pretty reasonable commute. That's like 45 minutes. Plenty of people have commutes longer than 45 minutes....)

      • Re:Kids today... (Score:2, Funny)

        by cindy ( 19345 )
        Hmph... When I was your age if we wanted some'em pierced we had ta use a safety pin! None of this "sterile technique" crap either - if you didn't get an infection, you weren't do'n it right! An we had to dye our hair with Kool-Aid too! (grr... durn beauty salon posers...) You think yer cool 'cause someone threatened to beat you up? I'll tell ya about getting beat up!!! (grumble... jes wait, they'll be middle aged and boring too someday...) Hey! You with the "Joy Division" t-shirt! Get away from my car!!!
    • They may just be smarter and walk in the opposite direction, 3 miles downhill each day.

      I never understood why Escher's soliders liked the stairmaster so much.

      (Aww heck, why not go for the Trifecta...)

      And Sisyphus should have just redefined the problem, considered it done, and left.

      (Thanks for the advice ... I'll keep my day job as long as they keep paying me to read Slashdot.)

  • The were no good old days (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 14, 2003 @01:17PM (#6435214)
    The books are set in the early 60's before Bhopal, Three Mile Island, and Agent Orange rained on the big Science parade.

    When exactly were these good old days. It wasn't so great before. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Thalidomide, rampant use of nasopharyngeal radium for all kinds of bogus reasons.

    • Re:The were no good old days (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved lives of our troops who otherwise would have had to invade Japan and take it yard by yard. Too bad we had to the nuke them but they started it, and we finished it.

      Besides saving American lives, other good came out of the bombings. Japan was tamed and made receptive to the ideas of constitutional democracy. Today Japan is enjoys freedoms most Asian countries can only dream about. Japan is a prosperous democratic society, and arguably it was the atomic bomb which ensured that tr

      • ~~~DWIGHT EISENHOWER "...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

        "During his recitation of the releva

  • sounds like a training manual for geek johnny knoxvilles

  • Back in the day (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @01:22PM (#6435239) Journal
    The books are set in the early 60's before Bhopal, Three Mile Island, and Agent Orange rained on the big Science parade. Brinley worked for Lockheed and Martin during one of the the most romantic periods in aviation history, save perhaps the early days of the Wright Brothers. The books are infused with a certainty that rational thought guided by the scientific method and salted with a bit of pluck and wit could solve any problem.

    And back when machinery was accessible, before integrated circuits, when it was possible to take devices apart, understand them and modify them.

    Just to nitpick, note that "Bhopal" is correct if you're talking about public reaction to technology, not about any real consequences. It's not as if catastrophic toxic disasters are a new thing, but the attitude towards the cost and benefits involved changed dramatically.

  • Just mentioned the Club... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @01:22PM (#6435241) Homepage Journal

    I was just mentioning the 'geek' books which have fallen out of print, or out of favor, in the children's section at libraries. Seems maybe a few of these are being retrofitted and re-released.

    • The Mad Scientists' Club series
    • Alfred Hitchcock's The Three Investigators series
    • Encyclopedia Brown series
    • The Great Brain series
    • ...

    For a while, Disney boosted Phil Nye the Science Guy, and there was a competing concept hitting TV at the same time, but these are science magazine formats. Many kids need more inspiration, often from personable fiction scenarios like these books offered.

    • er, Bill Nye [nt] (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Speare ( 84249 )
      I meant Bill Nye, not 'Phil Nye,' discovered from his appearances on "Almost Live" in Seattle.
      • Ah...Almost Live. They had one series of skits called the "High Fivin' White Guys"

        Also dressed up as "Speed Walker", a superhero whose specialty was Speed Walking. (Pre-TheTick)

        Comedy Central needs to start replaying Almost Live...put it after the Joel MST3K.

        I'm done now.

      • Ah yes, Bill Nye. Anyone else remember Suzanne Mikawa from that show? Of all the presenters, she had the most acting ability. I believe she is/was at Stanford [ocsn.com]. I wonder if she plans on an acting career?

    • Bill Nye....and the competing thing was Beakman's World (which had a couple of talking penguins)
    • Bizarre... I'm not even from the US, and I've read every single book in all of those series. Truly eerie how people here seem to share the same experiences growing up.

      In fact, I've got the two Mad Scientist book sitting right here next to me.
    • How about Choose Your Own Adventure? I've tried in vain to get any copies of these books.
    • I was a huge fan of Encyclopedia Brown. Some time in the fourth grade I discovered the Mad Scientists Club when I came across one of the books in a used book store with a cover illustration by Leonard Shortall, the artist who did all the EB illustrations.

      There was also a series of kid's mystery type books (along the lines of Encyclopedia Brown) about Hawkeye Collins, a kid who drew pictures of the scenes of crimes, thus spotting the clues and saving the day. It was pretty derivative of EB, but since I also
    • I read just about every book in all of those series, except the Great Brain books (don't remember that one at all. must've been either after my time, or I'm just getting too old to remember it) growing up. I would *love* to get my hands on those books again. That was great...those books were inspiring to me, especially once I got my hands on an electronics kit and then later a computer..."let's see what I can do with *this*..."

    • I was just mentioning the 'geek' books which have fallen out of print, or out of favor, in the children's section at libraries.

      A couple more good geek kids series were Danny Dunn and Mike Mars, both of which appear to be hard to find nowadays.

    • Wow, I read all of those too, and I had completely forgotten about most of those, including the Mad Scientist's Club. As well as Danny Dunn and Tom Swift.

      About the only precocious thing I ever did was teaching myself to read, which was actually a form of self-torture in a house without a television. I recall reading everything I could get my hands on at the local library, even turning to crap like the Battlefield Earth series, just because they sucked up those summer hours....
    • I'll take the opportunity to tack Isaac Asimov's _Norby_ series (_Norby the Mixed-Up Robot_, _Norby's Other Secret_, etc. etc.) Yeah, the titles suck, but they were an absolute blast, are woefully out of print, and got me interested in science fiction. I actually noticed them because Boy's Life magazine did a serial comic of one of them.
    • There was no "competing concept". What there was was Beakman, who did interesting projects and had a great sense of humor.

      Then came along Bill Nye with the weight of Disney behind him, which outmarketed Beakman with a watered down science show with little real value, so bland that it made no impact on kids.

      Bill Nye was the bastard that killed off any real interest in science because it pushed out all other forms of kid-oriented science media with bland watered down science of little significance.
    • I read and re-read Danny Dunn [bookloversden.com]. Most of the stuff in his books has come true (such as the dragonfly telerobotic).
      "Although the series is science-fiction, its stories are firmly based on scientific fact. For instance, the Lamont Geological Laboratories furnished information for The Ocean Floor and I.B.M. contributed greatly to The Homework Machine. For The Heat Ray, I was shown one of the first lasers in use. An attamp has always been made to keep the science in the stories ahead of actual scientific developm

  • Minisub (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cybermace5 ( 446439 ) <g.ryan@macetech.com> on Monday July 14, 2003 @01:22PM (#6435248) Homepage Journal
    I always wondered if they ever got that minisub out from inside that cave behind the waterfall. Arguably the largest-scale escapade in the books, especially considering how they got it in the first place, for about three dollars. Since they were going to use it to explore the bottom of the lake, maybe it plays a part in this book?

    Anyway, these books were an inspiration for many early experiments involving batteries, wires, nails, motors, and light bulbs. I am sure they helped convert me from taking things apart, to wondering how things are put together.

    • Re:Minisub (Score:3, Funny)

      by squidfood ( 149212 )
      I always wondered if they ever got that minisub out from inside that cave behind the waterfall.

      They were showing off their scientific writing skills here.

      "Dinky Poore and Henry managed to get it out, but that's another story" is, of course, equivalent to "sub-waterfall extraction is trivial and left as an exercise to the reader."

  • I read these as a child (Score:4, Interesting)

    by earthforce_1 ( 454968 ) <earthforce_1@y[ ]o.com ['aho' in gap]> on Monday July 14, 2003 @01:23PM (#6435254) Journal
    And it did inspire me to try and build a hot air powered manned UFO.

    The candle powered chinese lantern prank sounds kind of neat, except that if kids try to emulate it they run a real risk of starting serious fires, if their balloon comes down in dry grass or brush with the candle still lit.

    As an aside: In WW2 the Japanese used high altitude baloons launched into the jetstream carrying an incendiary payload, which were expected to drift across the pacific and start forest fires across North America when they landed. A captured example sits on display in the Ottawa War museum.

    • candle power (Score:3, Funny)

      by sbeitzel ( 33479 )
      My wife tells the story of how her brother made a flaming balloon once when they were kids. Instead of using a candle, he used a can of Sterno. Well, it turned out that the balloon didn't quite have enough lift to get the can over the wooden fence at the side of their yard, so the balloon tipped the can on its side and dragged along the fence, spilling flaming jelly all over the tinder-dry fence. Their mom came home to find the fire department putting out the fence and yard. Man, that sounds like it was fun
    • I believe the Japanese weapons were more fragmentary than incendiary, but my memory's not what it used to be.
      Anyway, one of those balloons was responsible for the only direct casualty of WWII on American soil.

  • self-preservation (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dbc ( 135354 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @01:27PM (#6435293)
    I worry about today's kids. How are they going to develop good instincts for self-preservation if they don't try some risky things? I grew up watching my elders work on big, dangerous machines in the shop, and working with big, dangerous animals in the corals. By watching, I learned what they respected, and learned a whole bunch of things to *not* do, like stupid handling of gasoline. So anyway, when I did my own risky stunts, personal safety (self-preservation) was part of the equation. (Elder: "Who took the welding hood??") How do today's kids learn that when we all have CRT-tans and it's a rare neighbor who has a welder, instead of a rare neighbor without one. Kids need to have the scope to do "experiments". But... kids need to internalize some important lessons first, in a safe way. How do we do that? My solution is to try to do as many projects with them as possible, role model safety, and keep the band-aids handy. I think of my townie cousins: Me: "Watch out! Electric fence." Him: "Really? Cool! OW! OW!! OW!!! Shit! Jeezus!" I don't want my daughter to be like that.

    • Re:self-preservation (Score:2, Insightful)

      by djeaux ( 620938 )
      "There are three kinds of men - the ones that learn by reading - the few who learn by observation, and the rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves."
      --Will Rogers
      We do hope that our offspring don't have to pee on the fence, don't we? Well, dunno about the rest of the /. world, but I am usually unable to realize all my geek fantasies without ready access to a good machine shop!
    • "daddy...why is the fence making a clicking noise?"

    • Re:self-preservation (Score:2, Informative)

      by hotair ( 600117 )
      Dead on. My kids have more un-common sense than most of the neighbors because they see me do things that work out when I'm careful and see me hopping around on one foot, yelling "Yipes, Youch!, Eiieee!", when I'm not. Recently my 4 year old son decided to try a new climbing stunt on a jungle gym. He recognized that he had exceeded the height he had exerience with. Did that stop him? No! He said, "Daddy, I need a safety team!" Recognizing the relationship between prior experience, challenges and manag
    • So, you've _never_ touched an electric fence? Have you ever gotten a shock from one? Your cousins don't have that experience.

      It sounds like your city cousins were displaying a healthy curiousity. They know it shouldn't damage them in a lasting sense, and wonder how powerful it is.

      The first time I encountered a stun gun, I pressed it to my arm & tried it out. I knew I wouldn't damage myself, but now I've got a better idea of exactly what it does and how powerful it is. I don't think it was stupid. It h
      • The first time I encountered a stun gun, I pressed it to my arm & tried it out. I knew I wouldn't damage myself, but now I've got a better idea of exactly what it does and how powerful it is. I don't think it was stupid. It hurt. Big deal. I knew it would, and I also knew it shouldn't do any lasting harm. THANK GOD there is another human being who says this. My Gf and friends don't get this philosophy at all.

  • This review needs a Disclaimer (Score:5, Funny)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @01:27PM (#6435294) Homepage Journal
    First, chicks dig scars -- although that theorem lies well outside of the scope of this book.

    How very careless of the /. editors to post an article carrying dangerous references like this without any disclaimer or warnings.

    Going by the average mindset of the female-starved crowd here, I thought it best to post a disclaimer, before somebody seriously injures him/herself.

    The theorem quoted herein is pure hypothesis. We can and will not confirm the above fact about chicks. Nor are we responsible for any damage to life, limb or property arising out of attempts to prove the same. If you kill yourself, you alone are responsible for it

    • Should be more simple. Such as, we are not responsible for kids who are so stupid they set themselves on fire, or get killed/injured striving for that darwin award.

    • Screw this pure hypothesis lark, this may be the best/only chance I have (err, Slashdot archives aren't kept too long, right?)! The only question is, what sort of scar and where? Should I go for some huge gash on the face, or perhaps just some tasteful burn marks on one hand? The selection is endless...

      BTW, for those who read /. and know me IRL, no, you don't need to start keeping sharp/flammable objects away from me. Equally, offering to lend me sharp/flammable objects is not a good thing, either.

    • Re:This review needs a Disclaimer (Score:5, Funny)

      by jovlinger ( 55075 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @02:52PM (#6435994) Homepage
      2) Bones heal

      3) Pain is Temporary

      4) Glory lasts forever.

      Google will tell you whoe uttered these four Lemmas of BMX/Skater wisdom.
    • It's all wrong anyway. The girls like babies. Just try it. Walk around a shopping mall with a cute little baby and see how they come a flocking. I speak from experience. Ignore scars, big motors, money.

      Babies. The cuter, the smaller, the better. If you show some willingness and ability at changing stinky nappies the higher you rate.

  • Alas, it is already too late. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by David Hume ( 200499 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @01:31PM (#6435323) Homepage

    Now, that the rediscovered full-length novel about the Club, The Big Kerplop is being republished with a bit of a splash, some adults may look at stories like this and decided that there's a danger that kids might start imitating the novels. The bigger danger, though, may come if they don't.


    Some of these tricks could get you some scars I guess but that's not the worst future awaiting a young reader. First, chicks dig scars -- although that theorem lies well outside of the scope of this book. Second, this may be the adult in me, but kids today seem fatter, lazier, and more hogtied than ever before.


    I understand the reviewer's concerns, and largely agree with them. Alas, I fear it may already be too late. Can we realistically expect that society will allow "children" to perform dangerous experiments when "[a] Santa Monica elementary school has banned the game of tag, once synonymous with youth and innocence, because they say it creates self-esteem issues among weaker and slower children." [foxnews.com]

    • Swings and see-saws on playgrounds are also being phased out. Too dangerous, or so they say.

    • Re:Alas, it is already too late. (Score:5, Funny)

      by dr_dank ( 472072 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @02:04PM (#6435577) Homepage Journal
      Alas, I fear it may already be too late. Can we realistically expect that society will allow "children" to perform dangerous experiments when "[a] Santa Monica elementary school has banned the game of tag, once synonymous with youth and innocence, because they say it creates self-esteem issues among weaker and slower children."

      Nothing will boost the self-esteem of slower/weaker children faster than a pie tin full of gasoline.
    • I love the comment, "[the kids] weren't feeling good about it".

      Since when do kids have to feel good the WHOLE DAMN TIME?! This is the sort of ridiculous approach that leads to overprescription of Ritalin and other emotionally-affective medication, and the whole "think of the children" movement.

      Why don't we just wrap 'em up in plastic, stick a feeding tube in one end, an elimination tube in the other, and leave 'em to hang for the rest of their lives? (Hey, didn't I see a movie about that?)
      • I love the comment, "[the kids] weren't feeling good about it".

        No shit.

        Whatever happened to feeling good about yourself because you accomplished something, not because conditions were set up from the beginning to guarantee your success?

        You know, I never felt that good after playing kickball in elementary. Then again, a lot of my peers that felt great after kickball didn't feel so good once they got their math tests back. So god damn what? Should we have eliminated the competition from the kickball ga

  • They were a great read and I still chuckle thinking about them now. Speaking as someone who tried to make their own napalm (and nearly set fire to my Dad's garage) I totally approved of their adventures!

    I think the best sign of how good these books are is that when I was a kid I wished the Mad Scientists Club was real and I could be a member....

    • You "wished"? I founded the local chapter in 1974. We built tissue paper hotair balloons (notice the login) and many other projects. Eventually, we even got the adults to pitch in. There were some problems because certain projects didn't scale well when the adults tried to do it "bigger and better" with no research effort. Ah well, the kids didn't get into trouble that time.
    • Speaking as someone who tried to make their own napalm (and nearly set fire to my Dad's garage) I totally approved of their adventures!

      How did it go? ;-)

      • Re:The first books that made me think 'What if...' (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @02:42PM (#6435893)
        > Speaking as someone who tried to make their own napalm (and nearly set fire to my Dad's garage) I totally approved of their adventures!
        >
        > How did it go? ;-)

        "Nearly set fire to his Dad's garage". I'd say he did pretty well!

        (I grew up on these stories too. My folks gave 'em to me. My folks also supervized me - I now realize they were close enough to intervene if I screwed up, but from far enough away that, at the time, I didn't think they were watching. Good on them, I say. Techniques like that turned me on to science, which turned me on to computers, which turned into a fantastic career and hobby. But I do miss the homebrew fireworks. Dad, thanks for that 1950s-era book of chemistry experiments... and for bringing back some of the chemicals they stopped putting in chemistry sets. ;-)

        (Side note: Today's chemistry sets are even worse. I think "dissolve sugar" and "mix vinegar and baking soda, look at foam" are about all that's left. How the hell are you supposed to get an 8-year-old interested in science with that?!?! Fer chrissakes, you don't have to give 'em thermite, but at least let 'em detect the friggin' humidity with cobalt chloride!)

  • Which would be worse... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by djeaux ( 620938 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @01:32PM (#6435335) Homepage Journal
    ... kids building mock UFOs from dry cleaner bags & candles or kids standing on the railroad tracks trying to stop the "Hogwarts Express" with a small stick, er, "wand."

    It took Rowling a whole lot more than 200 pages to tell the latest Potter story & she already had the characters & setting in place.

    Methinks I need to revisit the Mad Scientists Club of my youth...

    I don't think that "Kerplop" will have the latest batch of 8-12 yr old boys out doing "science" instead of trying to be wizards, but that's probably because our "post-post-modern" culture is more attuned to angels & witches than it is to the scientific method. <sigh> I don't blame it on Bhopal, Three Mile Island, or Agent Orange, though. I blame it on LSD, fake mysticism & "I'm OK, You're OK."

    • I don't think that "Kerplop" will have the latest batch of 8-12 yr old boys out doing "science" instead of trying to be wizards, but that's probably because our "post-post-modern" culture is more attuned to angels & witches than it is to the scientific method. I don't blame it on Bhopal, Three Mile Island, or Agent Orange, though. I blame it on LSD, fake mysticism & "I'm OK, You're OK."

      Yeah, but the thing you're missing is that Rowling's presented probably the /least mystical wizards/ to ever ap

  • Scars (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ayandia ( 630042 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @01:40PM (#6435368)
    It's true. Chicks dig scars. Since scars help you to determine the guys who are more accident prone, they're an ideal way to determine if a guy will make a good choice for a Starter Husband.

    You don't want the first one to last TOO long since you'll be making most of your uneducated mistakes with him, so guys with scars are an excellent choice. Plus, they're more likely to die in some tragic, yet totally accidental, way that will be ideal for the huge insurance policies she's no doubt taken out him.

    • Re:Scars (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Hmm.. Or, they could be total survivors and last
      far longer than ever expected.

      darn scarred, survivalist, starter husbands! :)
    • they're more likely to die in some tragic, yet totally accidental, way

      As someone who bears a noticeable scar from diving through a window while sleepwalking, I can confirm your hypothesis.

  • I really don't remember reading this series.
    I do remember chewing through Tom Swift series though.

    And Tom Corbett Space Cadet
    I still have 3 copies of my father's green hard backed books.

    I really don't think it matters the nuances of the material, but rather something abit more poignant than the damn USA Today. These books were good exercise for the day when i would RTFM ! (Well LOTR, and then TFM)

    I remember fighting with the local librarian to read At Dawn We Slept, she claimed that it was too advanced f

  • Hobanobacoba (Score:4, Interesting)

    by August_zero ( 654282 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @02:03PM (#6435567)
    I had this teacher in the 3rd grade that used to read books from the "Encyclopedia Brown" and "The Great Brain" series to us. I enjoyed them so much that I nagged my parents to take me to the library so I could read the rest of the series. Growing up, these were some of my favorite books, and along with my favorite TV show "MacGyver" I had plenty of intelligent role models. When I read these books again as an adult, they do seem a bit corny, and in retrospect, there were a lot of inconsistencies with MacGyver (and some very preachy politics) but I can't help but think the authors' hearts were in the right place at least. Characters that rely on their wits and cunning to defeat their foes has always seemed far more interesting to me then the ones that just pull out a gun or a pipe wrench when adversity arises.

    Who's to say how much exposure to these characters and stories shaped the way that I look at the world? Maybe I would have been the same without them, but I can't help but thinking that you are what you eat intellectually. I'm not making a case for games and TV poisoning the youth of the world, rather I think that teaching children to actually think about things may be one of the best lessons you can give, and one of the ways to do this, is show some examples of characters that do use thier brains.

  • There was a series I read in junior high where the teenage protagonist's father was a scientist who travelled around the world with his team of experts getting into trouble. I can't remember the name of it. Wasn't Johnny Quest, either. Anybody remember that series? It was Tom Swift-like, but it wasn't he. Man, this is going to drive me nuts.

    • There was a series I read in junior high where the teenage protagonist's father was a scientist who travelled around the world with his team of experts getting into trouble. I can't remember the name of it. Wasn't Johnny Quest, either. Anybody remember that series? It was Tom Swift-like, but it wasn't he.

      Are you thinking of the "Danny Dunn" novels?

  • Speaking as one of the 'kids' of today... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nicodemus05 ( 688301 ) <nicodemus05@hotmail.com> on Monday July 14, 2003 @02:14PM (#6435675)
    I don't think we're any 'fatter' or 'more hogtied' than you geezers were. We don't play with breadboards because electronics have long since passed the point where anything sophisticated can be achieved with a soldering iron. Instead I learned C++, HTML, and some PERL. I'm as technically adept as you were at my age; all that's happened is a spectrum shift from hardware to software.

    I haven't read these books, but I've done my fair share of back yard demolitions. I think that anything that encourages children to do the same (responsibly and from the standpoint of intellectual curiosity) is admirable. Sure you have to show some common sense around dangerous substances, but you're not going to learn any if you're sheltered by adults your whole life.

    I think that if kids today are any less adventurous than the kids of the fifties it's because their parents encourage them to be. Of course no father wants his son to be in any danger. My father's solution was to buy me a pair of safety goggles, some work gloves, and sit down with me to demonstrate the correct, safe, responsible way to light a bonfire with a zipline, 10 gallons of gasoline, and a model rocket.

    Sure, not every parent will go to that extreme, but how about a middle ground? Start with safety tips and responsibility discussions while playing with sparklers and firecrackers on the 4th of July. Quality time with the kids plus valuable lessons that they can see demonstrated by an authority figure.

  • As a young teen I remember how excite I was learnign a formula for dry rocket fuel. Basically gun powder.

    I had a blast mixing this stuff and lighting it in my backyard. :-)

    One day I decided to raid my chemistry set and adding random chemicals to the mix to see what would happen.

    I remember learning how volatile sodium and potassium was so I mixed every chemical I had with these chemicals into the mix. Including NaCl. Damn fun times.

    But let me also say because of the exlosion that happened I am v

  • The Mad Scientists Club RULES (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TerryAtWork ( 598364 ) <research@aceretail.com> on Monday July 14, 2003 @02:20PM (#6435713)
    Damn this is great! The Mad Scientist's Club was one of the best books I read as a kid.

    I bought it through school and never regretted it.

    One of the things I didn't know about the author is that he was one of the American officers to negotiate with the North Koreans, who were, and are, about the most obnoxious, lying, vicious chicken-shit bastards ever to be brought to the table. THAT must have shaken his faith in humanity.

    He ALSO, in The Big Kerplop, (which was on a USENET book group some months ago) answered a question we had debated fiercely among the jr NCOs when I was in the Canadian Militia, which is 'How best to get a section across an open road?'

    Turns out the best way is all at once in a rush as Henry Mulligan points out, it only gives them one chance to spot you.

  • Brinley's Other Book (Score:3, Informative)

    by StefanJ ( 88986 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @02:31PM (#6435798) Homepage Journal
    Bertrand Brinley is known in the amateur rocketry community for another book, the Rocket Manual for Amateurs.

    This famous, or infamous, paperback describes how to safely build, fuel, and fly steel-cased rockets powered by zinc-sulfur mixtures. It's the sort of activity that the teens in Rocket Boys (AKA "October Sky") did.

    Brinley doesn't pull punches. Doing things right, by-the-book, requires you to have several square miles of land, and sandbag bunkers for storage, fueling, launching, and observation. There's a big first aid section with instructions on dealing with belly wounds and nasty burns.

    Its fascinating but sobering stuff; most readers will realize that they're better off with Estes and Aerotech stuff.

    Stefan

    • most readers will realize that they're better off with Estes and Aerotech stuff

      Maybe not since Estes starting charging C$50 for a small painted paper tube and a couple of pieces of balsa wood.

      • Shop around! You may be getting ripped off.


        As I recall, there's at least one Canadian MR manufacturer. Yes, you'll still pay through the nose for motors, but the kits should be cheaper w/o exchange rate and duties.


        Once upon a time, there was a Canadian model rocket motor manufacturer. Canaroc, as I recall.


        And there's currently a Canadian maker of high-power motor reloads.

  • The big WHAT? (Score:3, Funny)

    by ewhenn ( 647989 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @03:05PM (#6436110)
    Are we sure this book is not about plumbing?

  • scitoys (Score:3, Informative)

    by MoreDruid ( 584251 ) <moredruid&gmail,com> on Monday July 14, 2003 @03:08PM (#6436136) Journal
    I'm amazed nobody mentioned SciToys [scitoys.com] yet.

    I tried several experiments (and I don't even have kids, I just like to do this kind of stuff and I'm either too lazy or stupid to come up with my own stuff) and it's just fun to do... For us geeks, the site includes an argumantation of why a certain device works and how with the laws of physics and all...

  • Oh. My. God... (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by autopr0n ( 534291 )
    I think everyone here can agree that the entire club would be open source coders today, although it's not clear if they would embrace the BSD or GPL license. It may not even be stretching things to say that groups who wrote and distributed DeCSS are working through the same themes as the Mad Scientist Club, albeit on a global scale.

    This may shock you, but there are smart people out there who are not OSS coders! In fact, there are smart people out there who are not even coders at all! That's right, in
  • I loved the two "Mad Scientists Club" short story anthologies when I was a kid (and still: I got two copies of the first one from Purple House Press a year ago, one for me, one for a fellow (female!) hacker friend who loved the books too.) I'll have to get the second one and The Big Kerplop now.

    I was a little surprised that no one has mentioned the Alvin Fernald series by Clifford B. Hicks (TWO of which were made into Disney versions, years apart.) Wonderful "boy inventions," funny situations and scary cl

    • Wow danny dunn!! I had completely forgotten about that series, I had read this entire series when I was back in england (~9 yrs old) and had thought this was some brit series that america hadn't gotten. The other brit. series like this was something called the "famous five" which was a series of 5 kids on adventures. I remember when I came to america the other series that I thought was quite good (though very 50s genre sci fi) was the "tom swift" series that our local library had. I've never heard of this
    • My favorite, "Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine"

      Man that brings back some memories. Read that book in 5th grade - that was 1965. I beleive the book was written in the early 60's, the one about the time machine was set in 1963 (and 1763).

      The storyline did foreshadow word processors - the original "homework machine" in the book was a board suspended by strings and holding two pens - allowing two copies of a handwritten paper to be done by one person.

      One amusing detail - Danny had a problem when his n

  • True Life Story (Score:3, Interesting)

    by serutan ( 259622 ) <snoopdoug@RABBIT ... minus herbivore> on Monday July 14, 2003 @04:18PM (#6436745) Homepage
    I vividly remember such a fake flying saucer incident that occurred in the SF Bay Area when I was a kid in the late 1960's.

    A spectacular UFO story appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle one day. Hundreds of people had spotted a small, glowing cylindrical spaceship floating slowly out over the bay. It was described as being about 9 feet long by 3 feet in diameter, like a large water heater. A drawing by an eyewitness even showed a small humanoid figure reclining at the controls inside.

    The very next day there was a followup article in the Chronicle, in which a bunch of students admitted they had launched dozens of small balloons, made from dry cleaner bags and drinking straws and powered by birthday candles. What struck me was the certainty of the eyewitness reports and the details they gave of the size and nature of the craft and its pilot.
  • That was an confusing ending. DID Harvey Muldoon's gang fake it again?
  • Those books totally fell off my radar but were just so great to wile away those boring summers outside of Boston.

    Thanks to the poster for the trip in the wayback machine.

  • Hey! I resemble that remark... (Score:5, Funny)

    by B747SP ( 179471 ) <slashdot@selfabusedelephant.com> on Tuesday July 15, 2003 @01:18AM (#6440186)
    I learned how to make hot air ballons from those books! My Mother made us follow the balloons around town on our bicycles to make sure they came down somewhere safe... "You'll set fire to some old lady's washing line!".

    'course, when I was a boy, wheelie bins didn't exist, so we had to trawl around the cheap supermarkets for the really cheap (ie: really thin and light) regular sized bins. Nowadays, 300+litre lightweight garbage bags can be had as cheap as ten for a dollar. Today's kids get it easy. We had to walk five miles to the shop, and carry the bags back on our shoulders, uphill both ways

    My brother learned garbage bag hot air ballooning by another means: The Really Cool Science Teacher method. As he tells it, they were shown how to make the balloons, but were instructed that they must fly them tethered, "for safety reasons". The teacher gave them nylon fishing line to tether the balloons with, and showed them how to tie it nice and tight to the centre of the frame, right beside the petrol-soaked rag....

    Apparently the Really Cool Teacher even pretended to be surprised when the tether burned through ;-)

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