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.

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.

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.

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.

But is it intended?

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.

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.

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!

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.

Come on.

Inspired by this

We would also accept:

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

Two slices that is.

Sigh.

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.

• Applications in the right place
• Documents in the right place
• Quicksilver and triggers just work

And somehow I’ve got 20 extra gigs. Woohoo!

Why?

The Leopard install on my macbook pro has been messed up for a while, and after the 10.5.2 update finder won’t start up.

The disturbing

The install on my iMac went fine, and it’s been running great. The stability differences between the installs bug me. This shit is supposed to “just work,” and for the most part is does, but this could be a crack in the armor. Something about permissions? Hopefully the fresh start will fix it.

The good

Backing up a borked mac is easy. Cmd-T’ing with a firewire cable, the backer-upper computer automatically sees the borked drives index. That and that all of my important files are in my home directory and applications folders, and it’s a little drag and drop.

The stupid

I have my desktop on time machine. My laptop was not. C’est la guerre.

We’ll see.