Vampire Phone of Tomorrow, Today

Why, yes. That is a prototype cell phone implant. What powers it? Your blood. From PhysOrg:

The basis of the 2x4-inch "Digital Tattoo Interface" is a Bluetooth device made of thin, flexible silicon and silicone. It´s inserted through a small incision as a tightly rolled tube, and then it unfurls beneath the skin to align between skin and muscle. Through the same incision, two small tubes on the device are attached to an artery and a vein to allow the blood to flow to a coin-sized blood fuel cell that converts glucose and oxygen to electricity. After blood flows in from the artery to the fuel cell, it flows out again through the vein.

This makes sense. Oxygen and glucose carry enough energy to power the most complex system we know of, the brain, so there should be plenty left over to power your cell phone too. I wonder if this would increase your appetite? I knew blood-powered implants were being developed, but I had no idea we were anywhere near a prototype. Awesome.

You know I'm going to say it...

We live in the future.

In other news, puppies cause cancer.

From CNN, Study: Snowflakes may contain bacteria

Seriously, this is why people hate science.

The March of Democracy

Beautiful:

Myths of Biofuel

(Schematic of Methyl Linoleate, a.k.a. biodiesel, a semi-energetic molecule. It's also one of the chemicals used by insects to communicate. Will widespread use of biodiesel cause a butterfly genocide? Probably not.)

Biofuel-Powered Jet Makes First Flight

Sorry to piss on Richard Branson's parade, but the coverage of this story has glossed right over the facts. The truth, as buried in a BBC "read more" piece (and mentioned nowhere in CNN's coverage):

"One of the aircraft's four engines ran on fuel comprising a 20% biofuel mix of coconut and babassu oil and 80% of the normal Jet A aviation fuel. "

Right. So despite all of the pictures of Branson juggling coconuts on the tarmac in front of the plane, giving quotes to the press on "the future of green aviation", all he did was water down the standard, petroleum-based jet fuel in ONE of the engines with 20% nut oil.

I'm all for alternatives, but stunts like this do serious damage to this cause. These are the things oil companies use to make looking for alternatives seem a waste of time. And looking for alternatives is not a waste of time. We just haven't found any good ones yet.

Biodiesel is not the silver-bullet solution for cars either. They pollute just as much as petroleum-fueled cars, it's just that their toxic by-product is not carbon dioxide. Biodiesel-fueled cars do however work well and as advertized.

Planes are a completely different story. Until we start seriously re-engineering the coconut genome, biofuels will NEVER be energetic or stable enough to power a jet. Until then, why is Richard Branson playing pretend?

Satellite Questions, Finally

The New York Times does some fact-checking:

"An Errant Satellite is Gone, But Questions Linger"

Rep. Ed Markey: “The geopolitical fallout of this intercept could be far greater than any chemical fallout that would have resulted from the wayward satellite. The Bush administration’s decision to use a missile to destroy the satellite based on a questionable ‘safety’ justification poses a great danger of signaling an ‘open season’ for other nations to test weapons for use against our satellites."

Andrew Revkin also did a bit of research on the chemistry, which should have been done (by someone besides me) when this story first broke. His findings are published on one of the Times blogs, not the actual print edition. Better late and net-only than never I guess:

"If it was, in fact, about limiting toxic peril, I’m not quite sure what drove that concern. (...) Hydrazines easily evaporate to the air, where they are broken down by reactions within minutes or hours."

Think we'll get any official response to these questions? Me neither.

A Direct Hit for Propaganda

(In red, the orbital path of debris created by China's 2007 anti-satellite missile test. This debris will stay in orbit for roughly 35 years, creating a hazard that satellites and spacecraft must navigate around or risk being shredded by)

Missile destroys satellite - Video

James Jeffrey, deputy national security adviser, denied the allegation that the U.S. was flexing its military muscle. "This is all about trying to reduce the danger to human beings," he said.

The military also timed its efforts to minimize the chances that debris would hit populated areas. But the United States is "prepared to offer assistance to governments to mitigate the consequences of any satellite debris impacts on their territory," according to a report.

Well, that's nice of us. I still want to know what country the satellite would have come down in, had we not shot it down. Making that information public would go a long way toward justifying this whole episode, but no information to this effect has been released. This makes me think that it was just going to fall into the ocean, which means this whole adventure was unnecessary.

The Wall Street Journal fulfills the predictions I made in the last entry with stunning pomposity:

A successful shootdown would be a useful warning to countries such as Iran, Syria and North Korea that are building ballistic missile programs. In the U.S., it might even silence diehard critics, who still say missile defense is impossible despite a string of successful tests. By the way, the systems that will be used in the satellite shootdown wouldn't be up to the job had the U.S. not withdrawn in 2002 from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which imposed serious technological constraints.

"See? These liberal international agreements actually make it harder to protect Americans!". What crap.

Deterrence and P.R.

From CNN: "The U.S. military may try within days to shoot down a failed satellite using a missile launched from a Navy ship, officials announced Thursday":

"While much space trash and debris have safely crashed to Earth after burning up in the atmosphere on re-entry, authorities said what makes this 5,000-pound satellite different is the approximately 1,000 pounds of frozen toxic hydrazine propellant it carries."

Oye, where to start with this one? Essentially, the military is temporarily overstating the risk this satellite poses just long enough to try to destroy it with a missile, not because it's actually dangerous, but because there's a P.R. opportunity for missile defense.

Hydrazine, despite the scary name, is just hydrogen peroxide. While you probably don't want a lungfull of the stuff, we're talking about a thousand pounds that will first be incinerated by atmospheric re-entry, then, if any survives, spread and diluted by the atmosphere. Wherever you're reading this from, I guarantee there's a factory, refinery, or plant nearby dumping far worse things into the atmosphere, according to EPA regulations. Hydrazine has been used as rocket fuel since world war 2, so plenty of it has already been dumped into the atmosphere.

My favorite part:

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said there's nothing the military can do to make the outcome worse. "If we miss, nothing changes. If we shoot and barely touch it, the satellite is just barely in orbit" and would still burn up somewhat in the atmosphere, Griffin said. "If we shoot and get a direct hit, that's a clean kill and we're in good shape," he added.

Here's what happens next: either the military is able to hit and destroy the satellite seconds before it hits the atmosphere, and it becomes a big story. A reminder that despite having trouble with the low-tech stuff in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military's still got us covered with the high-tech stuff. Or, they miss and the satellite burns up, with maybe a few chunks hitting the ocean.
In this case, the story is "we're safe, all went according to plan, and missile defense technology wasn't really designed for this kind of thing anyway". I think it's 50/50 which way it'll go.

What's conspicuously missing from the current story is that the military knows exactly where and when this satellite is coming down. They're tracking it with radar, and before they could begin putting the assets in place to attempt to shoot it down, they'd have to know exactly where it was going to be, and consequently, where it would end up. If you recall, the original story was all about how they had no idea where or when it would come down. I explained in my last entry that this didn't necessarily mean it was a threat. Somewhere between then and now, they ran the math and didn't tell anyone. Lame.

One other super-relevent piece of this story: in the first test of this technology by any country since the 1980s, China destroyed a weather satellite with a missile last year. So that's been hanging over us.

I can't wait to see what happens.

Big Science!

Ben Stein is at it again in the run up to the release of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed", his "intelligent design" propaganda movie. PZ Meyers tears into the "Darwin Day" post on the film's website:

"In a way, I'm impressed; I'd have to really struggle to write something that was such a dense array of concentrated stupid, but for them, it seems to be a natural talent, allowing them to blithely and effortlessly rattle off a succession of falsehoods without blushing.

Let's begin with the beginning. You don't even have to be a biologist to be embarrassed by these wankers."

I can't wait to see this movie and tear it up. In the meantime, I've been writing a review of "The Privileged Planet", another ID propaganda movie, so that will be posted sometime this weekend.

Chinese Punk, Japanese Jazz

Whatever it is that made jazz more than the deflated anglo-suburban endeavor it's become in the US, they've got it in Japan.

The Seatbelts -


This is action-jazz, like we used to have here. So I've read in books. Anyway, wow:


China's also showing us up, but they've sprouted a punk movement.

Joyside -


Whole teams of coolhunters and ethnographers have been deployed to answer the big questions: How did this happen? How can we sell it? NPR answers both questions. There are a lot of good reasons to be punk in China, so I think we should let them keep it. We were just turning it into punk-pop anyway.

Carsick Cars -


See Also: Snapline

"Adopt, Adapt, Adept", indeed.