Joe Davis is telling me about his design for a 110-foot lightning-laser tower that will literally seize a hurricane’s force, bottle it up and hurl it angrily back into the sky. It’s intended as a memorial for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Davis—whose official role at MIT is research affiliate associate in the biology department—plans to name the tower "Call Me Ishmael." I ask him why, but before I finish the question, he smashes his steel peg leg down onto the table.

Good answer.

When Davis’ proposed 110-ft. memorial lightning tower is finished, it will be only the most recent instance of his lifelong unusual art-science repertoire. As a younger lad, he caught single-cell organisms using full-sized fishing tackle, built an ornithopter powered by real electrically stimulated frog legs, and in the 1980s became the first man to transmit the sound of a contracting vagina into space.