Tag Archive: technology
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More Great Placebos: Monster Cables
Can Beldens beat coat hangers?
A placebo is anything that makes you feel good because you buy into it’s goodness - not because it works. Almost invariably, the strength of the placebo improves with its price.
After 5 tests, none could determine which was the Monster 1000 cable or the coat hanger wire… Needless to say, after the blind folds came off and we saw what my brother did, we learned he was right…most of what manufactures have to say about their products is pure hype. It seems the more they charge, the more hyped it is.
Out of Thin Air: Oil
A feasible, carbon-neutral fuel technology emerges… with a catch.
US Scientists at Los Alamos report that they can now make fuel from air (carbon dioxide) and water (not bottled) for roughly the same cost of fossil fuel. The catch? The electricity needed to power the processes would need to be nuclear. And to meet the billions of barrels of global demand, that’s a LOT of nuclear power.
This plan has a minor hurdle: the electricity for driving the chemical processes, according to a white paper describing the overarching concept, would come from nuclear power. The proposal says it’d be worth it to have a payoff of steady, secure streams of methanol and gasoline with no carbon added to the atmosphere (and a price for gasoline at the pump of perhaps $4.60 a gallon — comparable to petroleum-based fuels as oil becomes harder to find).
But it’s no secret that sooner or later, we will have to face the risks of nuclear power as oil reserves become depleted. Sooner seems better lest there is no later…
Los Alamos: The Milk Marketing Board of Nuclear Power.
In Full: New York Times
Play Pumps
Harnassing an unusual source of energy
Child Labour.
