The gas tank of the future may be full of chicken feathers.
Engineers have discovered a way to store large amounts of hydrogen fuel using carbonized downy fluff, which could help pave the way to clean, green cars.
A practical hydrogen car has been elusive for decades. Before the announcement this week by University of Delaware engineers, a nonstop trip from Portland to Eugene in a hydrogen car would need a tank bigger than 100 gallons to store liquid or gaseous fuel, even under high pressure.
Treated chicken feathers work like a sponge. They soak up large amounts of hydrogen and hold it in a small space so the tank can be a conventional size and the fuel won't need to held under dangerously high pressures. Hydrogen creates only water vapor when it burns, unlike gasoline that emits carbon dioxide, a culprit in climate change.
"It's the most energy-rich material we have," says Roger Ely, an Oregon State University professor who specializes in hydrogen, "It's three times the energy content of gasoline on a pound-for-pound basis."
A couple of Swedish parents have stirred up debate in the country by refusing to reveal whether their two-and-a-half-year-old child is a boy or a girl.
Pop’s parents [see footnote], both 24, made a decision when their baby was born to keep Pop’s sex a secret. Aside from a select few – those who have changed the child’s diaper – nobody knows Pop’s gender; if anyone enquires, Pop’s parents simply say they don’t disclose this information. “We want Pop to grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mould from the outset,” Pop’s mother said. “It's cruel to bring a child into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead.”"
So obviously these parents are hyper social constructivists... a view that, I believe, will one day bring the fall of civilization... The world does not need more Mothra Men. Happy Sunday... now I need to go hunt a bear or something =p
I'm glad there are heroes still left in this forgotten world... I salute you, Carnivore Flyer guy. Civilization will surely end when dudes stop acting like dudes. Go hunt and kill something.
"A spokesman for the department that publishes the guide listing recreation activities confirmed the publication was doctored to insert the face of a different father.
"He superimposed the African-Canadian person onto the family cluster in the original photo. It was two photographs and one head was superimposed over the original family photo," said John Gosgnach, communications director for the social development division."
The funny thing is the family itself is already Latin in appearance.
I feel bad for the African-Canadian guy whose image was so FAIL-tasticly photoshopped into that image. This is what happens with epicly bad photoshopping skills.
So I saw this wicked interesting video of Darren Brown busting out subliminal messaging onto some Advertising Executives... (Obviously this is a tv show but it still has some interesting points that are not outside the realm of real possibility)
Now I know you guys are thinking, I've heard of subliminal advertising.. that stuff doesn't work... OR DOES IT. If you look at alot of the cognitive neuroscience and consumer behavior research... there is a growing base of new research that supposes that it isn't as useless as we thought. Originally the guy who came up with the idea, ended up admitting it was a hoax... but the interesting thing is that there is some interesting evidence that it isn't all smoke and mirrors.
What's interesting here is that your brain does log things that you aren't even aware of and can't ever become aware of. We show that there is a brain response in the primary visual cortex to subliminal images that attract our attention -- without us having the impression of having seen anything.
Dr Bahrami said: "This is exciting research for the scientific community because it challenges previous thinking -- that what is subconscious is also automatic, effortless and unaffected by attention. This research shows that when your brain doesn't have the capacity to pay attention to an image, even images that act on our subconscious simply do not get registered."
This was quite interesting for a reason I will mention later. The idea that when you are not processing hard core, your brain uses it's slack capacity to log other stuff you don't overtly notice.
The funny thing is that this is congruent with the current stream of research in Consumer Behavior, the idea that we process a lot of things on AutoPilot if they do not trigger the 'Look at this Carefully' Flag. They call this the difference between Central and Peripheral processing. A rubric you learn in Consumer Behavior theory is the MAO principle. From a Information processing point of view, you will most likely use the Central Processing method if you have the Motivation, Ability, and Opportunity to process the information. So information about someone else, that you have no expertise in, that you don't have an opportunity to test out yourself, is usually processed in periphery (auto-pilot). It is interesting because, according to how our long term and short term memories work, you will have a tendency over time to forget the source of information you get in general, and will process this information by heuristic vs high scrutiny. It flat out takes less energy to do the heuristic method and we are lazy. A lot of political propaganda is spread this way. You shot gun terms that have high word association triggers, but you do not have to provide convincing evidence of the claims, people will take the same words and process them according to their own strongly held beliefs. This is why product placement is rampant, to an extent it does work quite well. Brand familiarity is driven by association and exposure... overt knowledge is not required for this to happen. Anyhow I thought BUY TACOS I'd share that fun BUY TACOS first video BUY TACOS to kick off BUY TACOS the Monday Blitzkrieg.
Civilization is a video installation we created with artist/director Marco Brambilla for the elevators Standard Hotel in NYC. It's comprised of over 400 video clips and it takes elevator passengers on a trip from hell to heaven as they go up or from heaven to hell as they go down.
So this morning on Slashdot.org I saw this link to an article detailing how Google reserved 1 million phone numbers for its anticipated free phone forwarding service that, "The free service, announced in March, lets users unify their phone numbers, allowing them to have a single number through Google Voice that rings a call through to all their phones." Check the article out here
This is super awesome... although I do worry a little bit. Google at this point in time is a veritable Information Atlas. It has the responsibility to protect and maintain a ridiculous amount of people's private information around the globe. I'm sure the intentions are good but, but the idea of phone calls being accidentally or maliciously forwarded to a ghost phone somewhere is kind of scary. Granted this sort of thing can happen already I guess, but this provides an epic scale to do it. I guess we should exercise the same mentality that a lot of us have finally adopted for email. The idea that the channel is not always secure (they can always reply all stuff), and acting accordingly. So I think it'll be OK after we adjust our behaviors accordingly. Not like I think that Google would mess stuff up or anything, its just that if there was a security breach the impact would be ridiculous. Big ups to google for being so epic.
STL Booze and Schmooze creator Kelly V. has announced the next St. Louis Booze and Schmooze event. It is going to be held at Cardwell's in Clayton. For more info check out the official website Stlboozeandschmooze.com.
So a while ago a few of my fellow MBA buddies got together and took a silly photo of us busting out our best Street Fighter 2 pose, little did I know that it would later end up on the Official Washington University Olin School of Business presentation power-point. Btw PMBA 22 represent...
My friend Tim G sent me this. It's kind of cool kind of scary. Ok so the analogy isn't quite species because they found it under the ice on earth, but I like the picture for Species better... Obviously these scientists did not watch enough Sci-Fi or Horror movies to realize the hilarious possible outcomes. =)
Apparently "Scientists have brought a newly-discovered bug back to life after more than 120,000 years in hibernation. It raises hopes that dormant life might be revived on Mars.
The tiny purple microbe, dubbed called Herminiimonas glaciei, lay trapped beneath nearly two miles of ice in Greenland. It took 11 months to revive it by gently warming it in an incubator."
LOL I just had to, and YES that is a real picture and frame, and yes i totally went to kinko's and got that made. =) It's great, first step into the crib always generates lolz...
This reminds me of a discussion I had with some friends about how Disney totally screwed up the life lessons in fairy tales by remixing the endings for fairy tales. See below for example the tale of the Grasshopper and the Ant in remixed Disney Style...
Notice the core lesson is totally hosed when the lazy grasshopper not only has a sweet time during the summer, but totally gets to eat free food, shelter, and a house party during the winter... Lesson Learned from the Remix Version: You can totally socialize your losses and individualize your gains.
So my friend Kyle sent the first link to me and I later found the second on ZeroHedge. I don't agree with everything he says, but he has some good points and I think the way he feels is pretty reflective of how most Americans feel these days. LOL - Warning Hilarious Amounts of Cussing. So basically its super rant funny with some interesting points.
So I saw this epicly disturbing article on Fark.com about the Herbivorization of Japanese men. I think this is a glimpse of our future if civilization continues on it's current vector. Perhaps a dichotomy of hyper carnivore and hyper herbivore will ensue...
Fukasawa said Japanese men from the baby boomer generation were typically aggressive and proactive when it came to romance and sex. But as a result of growing up during Japan's troubled economy in the 1990s, their children's generation was not as assertive and goal-oriented. Their outlook came, in part, from seeing their fathers' model of masculinity falter even as Japanese women gained more lifestyle options.
Older generations of Japanese men are not happy about the changes. At a bar frequented by businessmen after work, one man said: "You need to be carnivorous when you make decisions in your life. You should be proactive, not passive."
So I saw this ad posted on BoingBoing.net about a new AXE Loofa(sp?) product. The ad itself is pretty funny and edgy, but what is even better is the comments at the bottom of the BoingBoing.net posting.... There are some SERIOUS comments on an obviously non-serious topic. I always thought the Axe ads were really funny... I guess some people can't take a joke or have a immense tendency to take things literally. Enjoy.
I attended a motivational speaking event a few months ago and the speaker, Tom Terez of TomTerez.com Work Place Solutions, made us plan an interesting game. He told us to pick the geometric shape that we most identified with. The interesting thing was after we separated into groups based on the shape, we all came up with the same ideas of projecting human attributes to the different shapes. It was interesting because it's not something that we necessarily learn explicitly. Somehow we all seemed to have an innate association of geometric shapes with personality and action. If you couldn't guess already... I was the Squiggly Line.
So my friend Darren sent me this and I think it quite an appropriate guide for Victorian Era/Turn of the Century Bling. Notice that rocking the up-collar is reserved for Gentlemanly activities.
So for some reason when I think of the MidWest... I don't think of slave labor camps.... or should I? Check this ridiculous story out about how they found effectively slave labor in America's heartland. Branson MO, if you haven't ever heard of it you are not alone.... Slave labor in wholesome sin free Las Vegas style.... I saw this on fark.com originally.
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