"The Banzai Institute, an independent, non-profit research organization of ranking scientists, is located an hour from New York City in Holland Township, New Jersey. Overlooking a truly panoramic expanse of the Delaware River Valley, it is a one hundred and twelve acre haven for scholars of all disciplines, but the sciences in particular. Founded in 1972 to fulfill a need of the scholarly community for greater continuity of research, the Institute affords its members the opportunity to work outside the limitations and confines of the government grant."

"It was believed and has been demonstrated that the Institute could be self-supporting if both researchers and staff lived frugally and in a familial atmosphere, donating a percentage of their royalties from any commercial applications and patents which might arise from their work within its walls.... At the Banzai Institute, it is the candidate who is appraised and not the proposal."

"If a candidate is approved by the board, he is given a key, a small monthly stipend and a Spartan cell without electricity or running water, where he sleeps on a straw mat atop a wooden bunk. He arises at 4am, washes in cold water..."

"Through the Hegellian equation of thesis and anti-thesis, the initiates to this elite club fuse their vast intellects for the purpose of applying the scientific method to all human endeavor."

"At the Banzai Institute, the law of the microcosm converges with the law of the telecosm, i.e. the power of a network rises apace with the square of the increase in the number and power of its components..."

"Interns at the Institute devote themselves as much to strategic games and "thought experiments" as to practical research, and some of the projects developed here -- like Pecos' plan to string a cable from an orbiting satellite to function as a "space elevator," or Rawhide's quest to develop a high-protein livestock feed out of houseflies -- are aptly classified in Institute jargon as "moonbeams." But the list of the Institute's practical achievements is impressive: "Cellular radio, (employed by Team Banzai as their handy go-phone), the development of the drug Interferon, the computer program later adopted by NASA for assessing survival probabilities of its missions, the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulator, the invention of Kevlar (five times its strength to weight), DATA-SAT, the first data of steel, transfer satellite (capable of carrying the entire contents of the Library of Congress into space, to be accessed by any home computer), and many more, from robotics to gene technology." Inventions like these and Perfect Tommy's adaptation of the Sony-Watchman have added many dollars and yen to the Institute research coffers. Most impressive of all, however, is the development in its final form of the OSCILLATION OVERTHRUSTER, the key to the 8th Dimension."

"Purpose Statement of the Banzai Institute: To Reject convention, confront chaos and map it, populating it with concepts, intense singularities and names for things that happen to us."

To quote Buckaroo himself on the Institute: "At the risk of sounding high-falutin', I have always believed that the core appeal of the Banzai Institute is as an antidote to the vanishing American Frontier. In the earlt days of this republic, a feller could pick up and move; reinvent himself, head west and find more chances to make good. As the frontier expanded, so did the possibilities. Nowadays, that's all over with. A feller can't very well move from New York to Phoenix to escape his sorry history - too many databases.

"Enter the Banzai Institute, a second chance giver. We don't ask for a social security number; a mere handshake'll do. Men and women of all ages come and knock on the door and none is turned away. They stay for a day, a week, a year, a lifetime... working for no pay except three squares a day and learning how to rope, shoot and ride a horse. In return, they promise to act honorably and always take the side of the underdog."