Hey, I got a marriage proposal!

About 2 months ago. And I am just realizing now. Damn. You think he still wants to marry me?

Well, I got this email today informing me that I am being charged 40$ for going over my disk space allocation on godaddy.com. Now it didn't really say that. It said 'renewal charge' so obviously I called and yelled at some poor indian dude for a little while, until I realized what it was really for. I then proceeded to call a bunch of different companies to get quotes on hosting (I found out I would get refunded from godaddy if I canceled!), but they were all closed. So I went over to go daddy to check out exactly how far over my usage I had gone, and while I was there, I stumbled upon my statistics page. Those are always interesting if not depressing, so I decided to check it out. I discovered that people can google some interesting things and hit my site. I also discovered that the site that refers me the fifth most is fillbest.com which is a prescription drug site . . . yeah, I dunno--that's higher than facebook and all my friend's blogs! I tried searching for the link, but to no avail. Anyway, the most exciting referal was from a blog I frequent www.depletedcranium.com. It was about 10th on the list, and I was curious as to why, as I didn't remember ever posting there. So I investigated . . . or I googled 'depleted cranium kendall' . . .

The truth is . . . I'm a hit-and-run commenter! I know, I know! I'm sorry. It's a problem. You'd think I would follow up on comments I make on other blogs, but sometimes I just forget. and other times, well, I comment so small that I don't think it will spur anything exciting--much less a bunch of referrals to my website.

Here's what happened: One day I read a post on depleted cranium about how greenpeace seems to just make stuff up when they can't think of anything good to complain about, and since they really piss me off sometimes, I decided to comment about gamers spontaneously combusting. As you can see from that link, our friend 'chem geek gregor' elaborated for me, and then . . . well, he asked if I wanted to get married. (oh, and keep reading--the best part is a few posts down where he tries to sell it!)

So I really wasn't expecting anything from my 3-liner. Especially a proposal . . . but since it's already out there . . . You're right, Gregor does sound more badass, but it might give me the impression that you do a lot of grunting--that or genetics . . . Sorry about the late reply, Gregor. I usually shoot guys down way before they decide to propose. Maybe we should get drinks first? We could do it in . . . Chicago?

Anyway, after I went through all that to accidentally happen upon a 2 month old marriage proposal, I pretty much laughed for half an hour. What are the odds? ;-)

Who needs credibility?

Click the title! (if you haven't read the last post)

Alright, so honestly I didn't do much research after I read the Reuters article, because I was really bothered, and all the water powered car websites I went to said stuff like 'fueled by pure water!!' and really nothing useful like how it works. So I *assumed* they combusted the Hydrogen, and well, you all know what happens when we assume.

I assumed this because A) Reuters did a terrific job of not giving any specifics at all. If that car actually ran efficiently it would be a scientific break through, and then they might have actually found a science dude to write a story . . . and B) because of how ridiculous it would be to break up water to create hydrogen, and then put the water back together to run a fuel cell. Oops. Anyway, I was alerted to this mistake through the Genepax wikipedia article by one of my dear friends (who is still wrong about BPA not being in all plastic water containers and other things). The article surprisingly lists references, or I would have suggested that the article was just speculating as I was. The reference is even very vague as the company seems to be, but it does mention the presence of a fuel cell, and it's possible that the water separation is not done through electrolysis, although that seems like a pretty intense scientific break-through as well. I've never heard of that. Anyone? In the end, that would still require energy of some sort.

So as I'm sure you've all figured out by now, water to Hydrogen and Oxygen back to water, in a perfect system, would end up with no net energy gain. This is what these guys are doing. The world, however, is not a perfect system, so you will lose energy in this method. Which would mean you are better off with an electric car, because then at least there's no electrodes to deoxidize or energy needed to electrolyze the water. In this setup, your car is being run by the electricity in the battery basically. It has been pointed out to me that this would be alright if someday we could use entirely wind/sun energy. That's probably true, but difficult, and today is not that day. If normal Joe had one of these cars, I feel as though he would be wasting more fossil fuels from his local power plant than he would be driving his Ford Expedition (I don't really know, I'm just guessing).

But . . . that car was really tiny . . . maybe it gets like 50 miles to the respective fossil fuel gallon. But I still wonder why it's not just straightforwardly battery powered . . . it would be loads more efficient.

My point, dear reader, is that news agencies are often stupid. And they leave stuff out! And you can never tell if they're giving you the full story, or if they are decidedly leaving something out because it's more interesting or makes them more money one way or the other, or because they were given faulty information and they didn't question it. Come on.

Here's my attempt at those funny pictures that used to be only cats . . .

Hey, what's Jason doing in the front seat? weird. Later . . . I'm gonna go look at icanhascheezburger.com

You're losing your credibility

Click the title!

Oh boy, Reuters! Another time I get to make fun of you in less than a week. I'm so excited. Hi. why don't you just pay for a science editor? PLEASE! You are confusing people! Everyday, this world becomes more and more technical, and before you start scaring young mothers into not giving their children vaccines, or telling people that diet soda seems to still make you fat, or exclaim that now we can run cars with no fuel, please get a science guy . . . just advertise on slashdot or something . . . sigh

Too bad I didn't stumble upon this on my own. My lovely slashdot science feed did the stumbling. You should read the comments on that slashdot article. Some of them are pretty hilarious.

First of all, I forgot to mention that bisphenol-A is also found in every single plastic water bottle out there. Not just Nalgenes: Aquafina, Dasani, Poland Springs. Probably those polyethylene bike bottles . . . That is the main reason why you shouldn't discard your Nalgene. You'll prolly get higher doses of whatever it is you may think could possibly give you cancer from a brand new bottle than you would from a dusty old Nalgene...probably. That, and it's not so unlike refusing to leave your house because you can't prove you won't get hit by an alien spaceship . . . man I did not get my point across in that post!

Away from BPA and back on the "water fueled car:" Yes, we know that if you break up a water molecule into Hydrogen and Oxygen gas, then you'll have lost of Hydrogen and you can burn it and make things go! The problem is that you have to add something to the system to break up the molecule. Guess what that is? Energy. More than likely in the form of electrcity. Which means you need a battery of some sort, which makes this, not a water-powered car, but a battery-powered-water-power car. Bet that's efficient. You also need some metal to pass the electrons. Water + metal causes oxidation which reduces the efficiency of the process even further. Eventually the metal will have to be replaced and deoxidized. Which also costs . . . you guessed it, more energy.

So is it impossible to run a car on water? of course not! It's very possible; they're probably actually doing it in that video. The problem is that it's not been proven to be more effcient than gas. And Reuters certainly doesn't say anything about that. It also seems rather clean and good for the environment, but if you're charging your battery or deoxidizing your metal with electricity from a wall socket in sunny California, you're pulling power from the grid which is more than likely coming from a petroleum/natural gas/coal burning power plant . . . so in the end you're probably just ruining the environment harder.

You all know how I hate to be the rain on a parade, but I did think this comment was hilarious and demonstrated just how well Reuters explained the car and validated the premise . . . oh how I love sarcasm

flyingsquid says: Hello? Did you even watch the video? It's pretty impossible to argue with what the video shows.

The video clearly shows a little, blue car with the words "Water Energy System" in small, green letters. What's more, the car has the words "H2O POWER", in big, white capital letters, written on it. "H20 POWER" is written on the front, the back, AND even the sides, in ALL CAPS so it's impossible to miss that this car uses H20 POWER. If it's NOT powered by water, then how come it says "H2O POWER" all over the car, Mr. Smarty Pants?

If that wasn't enough to silence the skeptics that the car uses H2O POWER, the video features a guy in a suit talking about the car. The fact that the guy talking is wearing a SUIT clearly shows that these guys are professionals, because professional people wear suits. Now, I can't tell what he's saying, because it's in Japanese. But that's not important. The fact that he is saying it in JAPANESE is the important thing. Because that PROVES that he is Japanese! And everyone knows that Japanese people are very, very smart. To top it all off, the video is narrated by a woman with a sophisticated-sounding British accent. The same kind of sophisticated British accent you will hear on the BBC, one of the world's most reliable news organizations. You can't argue with information that is presented with a sophisticated sounding foreign accent.

Always wear a suit and speak Japanese when talking to Reuters. They'll video you and put you on the internet.

If you want to learn more about the electrolysis of water or specifically the efficiency of the process, well, there ya go. That link on electrolysis also explains fuel cells pretty well. It's pretty much the opposite of the water powered car. It takes in Oxygen and Hydrogen and expells water. Those look a little more promising.

OH! Reuters! Hey! I just thought of something! If we combine a fuel cell and a water powered car, we would have a miracle car that never needed to fill up on anything! . . . I know I left that suit somewhere around here . . .

Don't freak out about Nalgene

Oh boy. People found out that Nalgene was coating their polycarbonate bottles with bisphenol A, and they all freaked out!

I love how the media accuses politicians and coporations and some such as being fearmongers. Sure, some of these people really are fearmongers, but if the media did a good job, with, oh I dunno, a little research, maybe we could all destress just a little. I read a blog article posted by a girl who was getting rid of/finding new uses for her Nalgene bottles because (oh no!) she read here that they are coated with bisphenol A, which studies have shown can increase the risk of cancer in rats. Well, that does sound kinda scary . . . until you realize that everything increases the risk of cancer in rats. It's too bad that people are more likely to watch and read controversial, scary stuff, than they are to watch/read well researched and unopinionated news! And don't even get me started about how skewed and stupid the science reporting is. Seriously, get a science editor or corespondent or something! Someone who can tell you that what you are saying doesn't make any sense to anyone who knows a lick about science or engineering.

Nowadays I read science blogs written by people who don't make something sound scary just because it sells more news. This guy takes a very level-headed approach to the issue. If you read both posts, you come to the conclusion that, we still don't know whether Bisphenol-A can cause cancer. The problem we have here is that the Reuters article has you disdaining the FDA for not outlawing this substance! When the FDA is completely in the right. If they haphazardly outlaw Bisphenol-A, that's millions and millions of dollars lost in a US economy which I hear isn't spiraling downward anymore, but probably is still a bit sensitive.

The other problem is that science has no way of proving that something doesn't happen. We can't prove that BPA doesn't cause cancer. That's why the list of things that causes cancer includes thousands and thousands of materials and substances while the list of things that don't cause cancer is only, well, once someone told me broccoli was just about the only thing on that list . . .

But all the same, it is possible that bisphenol A may increase the risk of cancer at least a little more than broccoli, but the FDA won't get rid of it until they know that it does. Just like everything else that's not on the cancer list and isn't broccoli . . . Though reassuringly, scientists do know that the dose that seems to be harmful to lab rats is negligible in humans . . . hooray!

The fun part is that BPA is a form of synthetic estrogen . . . sorry, guys!! Just look what it does to roosters!
More Links about bisphenol-A