dan steingart

I cobbled this together tonight:

If I’m motivated I’ll post the code tomorrow.

Does this work?

Can I just edit?

I’m not a hater.

I am, however, struggling to see the earth shattering nature of Daniel Nocera’s “water splitting breakthrough.”

What’s Good

New catalysts are always a good thing. Neutral water electrolysis is very cool as well. In general, a cheaper, Pt free air electrode (which this is) is a great contribution to the world of electrochemistry

What’s Confusing

This isn’t free energy, by a long shot. You’ve still got to put electrodes in. Calling this anything other than electrolysis is, well, silly, because it’s electrolysis. You still have Pt at the H2 electrode. And, as I far as I understand it, that is the big problem.

What Bothers Me

Is the overhyping of energy tech: I fear the public-at-large will become jaded if it hasn’t happened already.

Again: not a hater, just worried about the tenor of the conversation.

In a manner fitting to its name, the topic of “Outsider Scientists” came out of nowhere this weekend to hold a central place in what I read, heard and discussed. Sally and I had a couple of string theorist friends over for dinner on Saturday, and Sally being the uber-hostess noted that the fist-bump issue of the New Yorker had an article about Lisi. Not just a little “talk of the town” gossip blurb, but a full blown “annals of science” depth piece. Not to dwell too much, but it’s a shame that a story that was picked up and bolstered by outlets that thrive on the weekly deluge that fades in a months time (New Scientist, Popular Science, Wired, even the Economist when it comes to tech) over a year ago was rehashed and given, in my humble opinion, a leg more than it deserved.

Just as I was moving on This American Life brought up the “quirky” Floridian author of E?mc^2. According to him it’s actually only E = mc. Now, it doesn’t take a PhD in string theory to dismiss this, but simple book keeping. Energy, by its very definition, has units of mass*velocity^2. That’s basically it.

The narrator of this piece kept saying “I didn’t really know enough to tell him he was wrong, so I thought it was best to be kind and supportive.” The only other time I was this angry at This American Life was the camp episode. The supposition that “I need to hear him out because I don’t understand this” is fine, but the addendum of “I need to hear him out and report his theories because I don’t understand this” is FUCKING RIDICULOUS. Yes, yes, they talked about the crackpot website, but the narrator made no attempt to understand anything before he wrote this story, and that’s just sloppy.

Finally, on Sunday All Things Considered, which should already say a lot, Wired’s Chris Anderson was waving his “End of Science” argument around. And I’m not gonna lie, he almost had me. Anderson is a gifted speaker and a smart guy. But regardless of Anderson’s persona, to say that having better experimental and data gathering techniques means that theory is dead is to miss the very point of the scientific process. This data, once passed through the many stomachs of this cow called Science, will lay the ground work for a hypothesis, which will lead to targeted experiments, which will lead to theory, which will be refuted through further experiments and if said theory holds up, then we pat it on the back and call it law. Because Craig Venter can analyze a barrel full of whatever you throw at him in an hour doesn’t indicate the end of theory, no, it indicates the beginning.

All of these stories make for sexy copy, and it’s always OK to think about and question the process. However, in each one of these cases the proponents, whether in a direct or obfuscated, rest on the tautological fallacy for their arguments: “it is because it is”. Lisi’s theory “works” because it cuts out everything and actually predicts nothing. The electrician from Florida says “It’s really hard to prove that e=mc^2 so it might as well be e=mc and if I say e=mc, e=mc”. Chris Andersen says “Data exists because data exists.”

Regardless of the aptitude of the sophist, circular logic should always be pointed out and dismissed out of hand. Not “understanding” arguments is no excuse to give air time to poorly constructed ones, whether it’s Fox News or NPR. And it’s not to say that outsiders to a field cannot bring anything to the party, but it is to say that circular reasoning, whether it’s a surfer, an electrician, or an editor du jour, brings nothing.

I’m sure you’ve see it by now, but you might have missed this homage to Dave Chappelle if you weren’t looking:

Just cause. Read the rest of this entry »

For those that care enough to read this but not enough to actually stay in touch with me (speak up, what’s your deal?), I’ve left the Academy and put in with these folks as an applications engineer. I’m closing in on my first month and thought some reflection would be nice.

Subject Matter

It’s always been important to me to be something of an outsider, and at a deeply subconscious level. So what’s the opposite of materials science? Computer science, I’d say (but Dr. Chrazn might disagree).

Having never taken a proper CS course, I find myself surrounded by those skilled in the art, and it’s a blast. Everything I wanted to know about bits and bytes but was afraid to ask, explained by some excellent, patient guys. Very patient.

Efficacy

The product works. Well. No need for a mitigating “for a 1.0 release.” In academia, proof of concept was the name of the game. Learning how to execute like this is why I left the comfort of the lab.

Gender

I can’t tell whether it’s the field, the industry, or the company, but there’s a distinct lack of women around. Hmm. When

Tone

On an engineer to engineer basis it feels just like the lab: good doses of curiosity, excitement and skepticism. Management let’s us play for the most part, and is agile and cunning enough to turn the results of that play into functional product. Hard to beat.

Selling

This is the part I was most worried about. So far it’s been exhilarating. Knowing you can not only help solve someone’s problem but actually do it. Pretty great.

Impact

If you’ve been a devotee of pervasive computing/wireless sensor networks, you’ve heard, and probably buy into, the “future of computing” tales spun by the Academy. If you’ve been paying attention since 2001, you’ve seen it inflate, sort of flounder, and then regain traction in a reserved, cautious manner. And if you’ve done anything remotely successful (har har), chances are you’ve used the TelosB, and that it’s pretty damn reliable.

We’re working hard to bring the same level of confidence to the software experience. I should say “they” because as an app engineer, I’m essentially an internal customer. They, however, are doing a pretty great job, and the software is a pleasure to use if you’ve ever mucked around with TinyOS.

I think this is going to be pretty big.

The noise on the BART recalls chalk going through a chainsaw, mixed with bass-ala-white-earpods and cells phone clearly lacking a ????, my lovely Jabra c820s are a frickin godsend. Yes I rock the katakana. What up now.

What’s particularly interesting isn’t what they cut out, but what they don’t.

Low frequencies are blocked well, as are repetitive sounds. What isn’t blocked, unforunately, are particularly loud, higher pitched sounds. Like the asshole next to you with the really loud iPod, or the insane horse addict talking on her speaker phone at the other end of the train.

But, given the earsplitting screech that is the norm, it’s a hell of a lot better.

Just as easily a condom ad…..

But is it intended?

In the latest Iron Man movie, when said man gets his perma-electo-magnet mabob he launches into a hooey based conversation with his surgeon regarding the power source glowing in his chest. I don’t remember the lines exactly, but it went something like this:

Almost Iron Man: It produces 50 GJ/s

Cave Surgeon in Dapper Suit: That would power your heart-o-mabob for a hundred years!

Except for the fact that there’s not a single mention of capacity. Silly Cave Surgeon, Almost Iron Man expressed a rate, not a quanitity. However, shortly after this scene a lot of shit blew up, including the surgeon, so we can forgive this slight. I think AIM might have said 50 GW/s, which is a rate of a rate, and that makes even less sense, but then he started to fly, so again, it doesn’t really matter.

However, our fine friends at the MIT Tech Review posted an article proclaiming the benefits of formic acid fuel cells, in which they state

Beller points out that using formic acid to make hydrogen also has drawbacks. Compared with methane and methanol, formic acid has much less hydrogen. If you use all the hydrogen in a kilogram of methanol, you get 4.19 kilowatts of power, while the hydrogen in formic acid gives 1.45 kilowatts.

I’m guessing the good Dr. Beller stated kilowatt-hours.

To review:

• A joule is the basic unit of energy.
• The rate at which energy is transferred is a watt.
• The former tells us how much we have, the latter tells us how fast we can use it.
• Think gas tank vs. engine.

Engineers generally use watt-hours as a term of capacity, as it saves us from having to divide by 3600 when we have to figure how long we can run our batteries for. Scientists, who are increasingly interested in the minute, tend to use joules.