dan steingart

Google AdWords have been serving up this stuff lately:

These systems claim to either eliminate entirely or severely reduce the amount of gasoline used by a car by using a metastable gas known as “Klein Gas” or “HHO”. Those of you who paid attention to Mr. Levitt in 10th Grade Chemistry will remember that water is written as H2O. So this magic stuff, “HHO”, is just water, or kinda sorta water.

Or something.

I don’t really care if it’s just O2 and H2, or some metastable gas, or a bunch of ninjas hiding in your gas tank. All I care about is that you don’t get something for nothing. The something is this “HHO”. You can’t turn water into a reactive species without putting energy into it, and most likely that’s done through some sort of electrolysis, and that reaction might look like this:

2H2O -> 2H2 + O2 @ 1.23 V

Now, that 1.23 V is ideal, and generally pushes 1.3 or 1.4 when you’re using a common metal and not platinum, but that’s irrelevant, the best you can do is 1.23. Meaning that 1.23 V is that maximum energy you can out of this, whether you extract it through a fuel cell or electrolysis.

In either case it looks like this:

2H2 + O2 -> 2H2O @ -1.23 V

Again, ideal.

Now: unless your making this magic “HHO” at home and storing it somewhere (which I hope you’re not), you’ve got to do the conversion on the car itself, so you’ve got to have a battery to electrolyze the water. And that electrolyzed water runs the car.

The “HHO” combusting simply cannot create more energy than what went into it. Otherwise you are clearly in Steorn territory. Blech.

Am I missing something? How is this gas stored? Why doesn’t it recombine to form water (which is what thermodynamics dictates, a given an heterogeneous surface will probably catalyze)? How is this gas made? Etc, etc and what not.

Smells like snake oil.

Thanks to Dan Savage I’ve been half watching Jem all day. It makes less than no sense. It makes anti sense.

Super Computers

They just show up left and right

Motes in Earings

Circa 1988!

Film Execs At Every Turn

And they honor their word, despite almost being killed!

I’ve updated my SomaFM widget to include the latest and greatest streams: Lush, Digitalis and Sonic Universe. Get it here.

Anyone know of a better eco-news site? I’ve just about had it with the prima donnas at Treehugger, italics mine:

Also in the New York Times Business of Green Section: Eric Doub’s Solar Harvest, his own solar powered dream house. It has solar panels, 6,000 gallons of underground hot water storage, careful siting for passive solar gain, super-insulated windows and photovoltaic panels. He framed the $8.45 cheque that he got from the local electrical utility for selling power back to the grid.

Good thing too, because he may not get another; he has added electrical backup heating and air conditioning.

Meanwhile this travesty is still up. Feh.

So the latest installment of airport firmare (7.3.1) allows time machine support but it does not use the existing time machine backup. Thus the backup I’ve been generating since December is now invalid.

Come on.

Inspired by this

We would also accept:

Your menstruating heart, it ain’t beating enough for two

Two slices that is.

And this is what I get

Sigh.

So the National Academy of Engineering announced 14 goals for a better 21st century. Here’s what I think (yes they asked).

Yay!

• Make solar energy affordable

This is on the cusp. See here and here, and maybe here, here and here. Of course, reduced demand is the other half of this equation, and reduced demand (demand for stuff), overall, will go a long way toward solving half of these challenges.

• Provide access to clean water

The technology is available: the last mile challenge of infrastructure (civil engineering on a budget plus people generally behaving) is the trick. Luckily the NSF is starting to give out money for this kind of stuff.

• Restore and improve urban infrastructure

See above.

• Engineer better medicines

Hell yes. Jay Keasling is my hero.

• Advance health informatics

Certainly doable. Again, an infrastructure and people behaving issue, but I think this is a lower apple than the clear water, or the infrastructure, mostly because bits are free.

• Manage the nitrogen cycle

Capturing gas is hard. That said, the operative words here are manage and cycle. Multi-pronged, lateral containment is key. Kennan like a mofo.

• Reverse-engineer the brain

I was on the fence about this one, but this would, in addition to making it easier to sell Coca Cola, help us understand violence, greed and apathy. Sign me up.

And then it got silly

• Provide energy from fusion

Didn’t you people see Chain Reaction?

This also makes fission not seem like a tenable solution, when it is, right now, the best we have. My fear is that searching for fusion will prevent people from solving the (IMHO tractable) last miles problems associated with fission. There are only so many people that understand this shit, and Nuclear Engineerign funding is already paltry.

• Develop carbon sequestration methods

This, again IMHO, just encourages bad behavior. What poor town will be the next Staten Island?

• Prevent nuclear terror

We’re engineers, not Christopher Reeve and Richard Pryor.

• Secure cyberspace

The internet is insecure because of people, not because of computers. Right? Help?

• Enhance virtual reality

Really? Really? In the top 14? Did Larry Page just watch the Lawnmower Man before the vote? W. T. F. I’ll take my potatoes fried and my copulation authentic, thanks.

• Advance personalized learning

With technology? How bout paying teachers more? Forget OLPC, how about 1 teacher per ten children first.

• Engineer the tools for scientific discovery

What the hell does this mean? I haven’t got a clue. That’s like building a computer to tell you the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Given that I’m trying awfully hard to stay in the good graces of these folks, I’m glad there are at least 7 problems we’re both interested that I can try to work on.

Memory Suppliers has supplanted 1800Memory as my RAM shipper of choice. They’ve got solid prices on sticks for apple, as well as some homebrew supplies: I just ordered a coupla DSTT to try my hand at DS development. Sweet.