Daily Archives: 16 October 2007

Cold Fusion

It seems impossible: nuclear reactions at room temperature, electro-chemists succeeding where nuclear physicists have long failed, elements changing — the stuff of alchemy. Yet many scientists can’t ignore it. They keep saying: “excess heat” and “tritium” and “helium” (byproducts of nuclear reactions). Skeptics have come down hard against cold fusion. Who dares to imagine the end of the fossil fuel age? MIT’s chief science journalist resigned over what he deemed a fraudulent rebuttal to cold fusion. Research is rarely funded, but continues. Private companies have formed around the technology.

The possibilities of cold fusion speak to everything that’s best about mankind. It is a rare opportunity to see ourselves as good, beautiful, ingenious and suited to create a better future for all.

Watch the five-part documentary, or skip to part three to be convinced it works.

See also: Patterson Power Cell.

Iran is NOT coming to get me

This brief (300-word) letter to the editor appeared in the Daily Iowa, October 16th 2007.

     In last week’s Republican presidential debate, all the candidates except for Ron Paul went on ad nauseam about the Islamo-fascist regime bent on destroying all of Western civilization.
     This would be quite an accomplishment for a nation whose national GDP is comparable to the state of Alabama’s.
     The sentiments are echoed by many prominent figures in the press who have propagated an inexcusable misquotation with frightening efficiency. Ahmadinejad never threatened to “wipe Israel off the map.”
     The war cheerleading smacks of the same duplicity that led to the invasion of Iraq. Even the supposedly liberal New York Times subsequently apologized for deliberately suppressing stories that questioned the invasion of Iraq.
     The Iranian threat is not nearly as dire as depicted. We have faced a nuclear Soviet Union and a nuclear North Korea. I agree with former CENTCOM commander General Abizaid: we can live with a nuclear Iran. Their regime is not suicidal.
     Military action against Iran, no matter how precise and limited, would certainly escalate, erase our modest gains in Iraq and Afghanistan, instantly jeopardize our soldiers overseas, destabilize Pakistan (who already has nukes), and cause terrorism against us to skyrocket.
     I doubt the sincerity of those making a hysterical case for war. James Madison warned us “the means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.”
     If we are supposed to be so scared of terrorists that we start a third war in six years, that we accept concessions already made to our constitutional liberties, it seems like a no-brainer to do something about our completely porous borders.
     The fear-mongering is completely hypocritical so long as our borders are ignored. It’s analogous to a child on a playground, sticking out his chin. “Hit me, so I can have my war.”
     Enough is enough.

See it in the Daily Iowan. (I didn’t choose their title.)
250-word version published in Fayetteville Observer, Nov 5th, 2007.