Is a Water powered automobile too good to be true? Well, not according to Japanese company Genepax. They claim to have built a car that runs on water and air alone.

The system can generate power just by supplying water and air to the fuel and air electrodes, respectively, the company said at the press conference, which took place June 12, 2008, at the Osaka Assembly Hall.

The basic power generation mechanism of the new system is similar to that of a normal fuel cell, which uses hydrogen as a fuel. According to Genepax, the main feature of the new system is that it uses the company’s membrane electrode assembly (MEA), which contains a material capable of breaking down water into hydrogen and oxygen through a chemical reaction.

Though the company did not reveal the details, it “succeeded in adopting a well-known process to produce hydrogen from water to the MEA,” said Hirasawa Kiyoshi, the company’s president. This process is allegedly similar to the mechanism that produces hydrogen by a reaction of metal hydride and water. But compared with the existing method, the new process is expected to produce hydrogen from water for longer time, the company said.

With the new process, the cell needs only water and air, eliminating the need for a hydrogen reformer and high-pressure hydrogen tank. Moreover, the MEA requires no special catalysts, and the required amount of rare metals such as platinum is almost the same as that of existing systems, Genepax said.

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Last Tuesday I was in Chicago, and all was going well until a seemingly unlikely event started a chain reaction that would lay me up in bed for nearly three days… It rained.

Yep. It didn’t rain very hard, or very long, but it just so happened that I was walking about a mile or so through the city back to my hotel during the light rain. I could have caught a cab, but instead I ducked into a Walgreen’s and got a baseball hat and kept walking.

I know what you’re thinking. But no, I didn’t catch a cold!

I was taking my time, even stopping to snap photos of skyscrapers in the rain, when about halfway back to the hotel I started having difficulty catching my breath. Now I don’t have asthma, and I can generally out walk anyone I know, so it took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on. I was having an allergic reaction to something.
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Wow. I speculated about getting ready for $5 per gallon gas here in the US a few weeks ago, but when you read that the oil companies are breaking the record for most profit in a single quarter – ever! For any company! Ever! It kind of makes you pissed off.

The New York Times reported today that Exxon’s Second Quarter Earnings Set a Record:

HOUSTON — Exxon Mobil reported the best quarterly profit ever for a corporation on Thursday, beating its own record, but investors sold off shares as oil and natural gas prices resumed their recent decline.

Record earnings for Exxon, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, have become routine as the surge of oil prices in recent years has filled its coffers. The company’s income for the second quarter rose 14 percent, to $11.68 billion, compared to the same period a year ago. That beat the previous record of $11.66 billion set by Exxon in the last three months of 2007.

Exxon’s profits were nearly $90,000 a minute over the quarter, but it was less than Wall Street had expected. Exxon’s shares fell 4.6 percent, to close at $80.43. (The company calculates that it pays $274,000 a minute in taxes and spends $884,000 a minute to run the business.)

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Well, you better get ready. Gas was near an all time inflation adjusted high back in April, but as of right now we’re already paying more than we’ve ever paid for a gallon of gas. According to the Wall Street Journal:

The skyrocketing price of oil, now up more than 44% so far this year, is battering the airline and auto industries and causing consumers to cut back on driving and nonessential spending.

That jolt is reinvigorating worries that crude prices could ratchet still higher, putting a severe squeeze on many economies around the world and deepening the growing tension between the world’s big oil exporters and consuming countries.

This chart illustrates the price of Gas in the US in both real dollars and inflation adjusted dollars. Either way we’re at the top of the scale right now.
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Folks, I’m neither a Democrat, nor a Republican. But my mom asked me to give her an unbiased, factual rundown on the political platforms – so what my mother wants, my mother gets! Here you go Mom…

I’m making the presumption that the two candidates who are going to actually be running for President are Barack Obama, and John McCain. So, below I’ve taken the liberty of narrowing down all the data to these two guys. What you need to do is line up as many of your political ideal matches and then you can rationally choose who you are voting for.
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Folks, I’m going to go ahead and call it, even though no one else seems to be willing to do so. We’re officially in a recession.

The National Bureau of Economic Research defines a recession as:

A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales.

Let’s take a look at some of the leading indicators, shall we?
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I don’t normally pass along things that circulate the Inter-Tubes via e-mail, but this is pretty interesting information – if it is all true. I have no idea where it originated, but a family member sent it to me. I’d be curious if anyone could actually vet this info and prove / disprove it’s validity.

I don’t know what you guys are paying for gasoline…. but here in California we are also paying higher, up to $3.50 per gallon. But my line of work is in petroleum for about 31 years now, so here are some tricks to get more of your money’s worth for every gallon.

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This is a little skit which was apparently first featured on the Taproot Blog. I have no idea who produced it or why, but it’s quite a funny parody of a politician explaining an oil spill.

I’m guessing it is from an Australian comedy TV show, so if one of you knows a little more detail about where this came from it would be great.
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I was so amazed at what I’m about to share here that I struggled for some time to come up with the right title. Other titles I considered:

• Florida Man Saves the World
• Man Cures Cancer and Solves Energy Crisis With One Invention
• Accidental Discovery Eliminates Need for Oil
• Saltwater Combustion – The Incredible Energy Solution

In the end, no title seems worthy of this discovery. And I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if it changed the world.
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There is a film called Oil, Smoke & Mirrors which documents what the producers claim to be an impending peak in global oil production. It has been viewed 750,000 times on Google Video alone.

A number of experts, economists, the UK’s former Environment Minister, Michael Meacher, and Germany’s former Science and Technology Minister, Andreas Von Buelow, share their opinions regarding what sounds like an impending oil crash; and then the producers tie this theory into one of complete global conspiracy to control the last remnants of oil capacity.

To me, the film is woven together in such as way that the topic seems to change from the concept of the world’s increasing oil usage and decreasing supply to more of a Roswell type malicious governmental cover-up.
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In 1980 Texaco was doing exploratory drilling for oil in Lake Peigneur, a shallow man-made lake near New Iberia, LA. Although many of the facts from that day are lost, what we do know is that someone miscalculated and drilled right through the lake and into a salt mine below.

It’s generally accepted that the drill punctured the roof of the third level of the mine. This created an opening in the bottom of the lake, similar to removing the drain plug from a bathtub. The lake then drained into the hole, expanding the size of that hole as the soil and salt were washed into the mine by the rushing water, filling the enormous caverns left by the removal of salt over the years.
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The October 23 issue of Business Week magazine had an interesting report about the impact of falling gas prices on the economy:
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