Tetherd Cow Ahead

Speaking of laughing…

A company based in Ireland going by the name of Steorn claims to have invented a method for generating free energy. Oh dear. The old Something-For-Nothing perpetual motion delusion comes up for another breath.

You can see a comprehensively information-free piece of hype from the company here in which various Steorn personnel demonstrate the benefits of regular visits to Blarney Castle. Here’s CEO Sean McCarthy explaining why existing energy sources are problematic:

“Most of the hydrocarbons in the world, oil gas and so on, happen to be in dangerous places, they happen to be in places that are politically and economically unstable…”

Er, duh Sean. They happen to be in those places? Like there’s some kind of coincidence at work there buddy?

He goes on to divulge the secret of Steorn’s incredible new accomplishment:

“The technology is the ability to construct certain magnetic fields, that when you travel around the magnetic fields starting and stopping at the same position, you’ve suffered a net gain of energy. Quite simply the analogy would be, you walk to the top of the hill and then you walk back down to the bottom of the hill, but in doing that you’ve gained energy.”

Wow, cool analogy. Like, I’m convinced. So, if I’m understanding it correctly (bear with me, I’m not really good with all this scientific stuff) putting it another way it’s like opening doors in a hallway, and then shutting them again, and in doing so you’ve gained energy! Or, maybe, like sticking a pipe-cleaner through one ear, pulling it right through your head and out the other ear, and in doing so you’ve gained energy!

If you’re falling behind with all this technical stuff, don’t worry – the Steorn movie includes a little piece of animation that clarifies the principles at work. In it, a little green whirlpool goes round and round between some magnets:

See? Could the science behind this astonishing discovery possibly be any more persuasive?

This from Richard Walshe, Steorn’s Marketing Manager:

“There’s an ecological advantage to it, absolutely. There’s a cost saving to it, but ultimately for me, the advantage is convenience. The advantage is never having to plug your mobile phone in.”

OK. So Steorn has invented a revolutionary way of creating entirely free energy thus instantly solving all the world’s industrial, travel, pollution and communications problems as well as knocking global warming on the head (not to mention rewriting the tenets of physics in the process) and Richard is most excited about the fact that he won’t have to remember to stick his phone on charge?

I guess it’s not that unusual for the marketing arm to completely miss the point. One does wonder, though, how Steorn, with the best product EVER (forget sliced bread, forget the mousetrap, forget the wheel), has managed end up with a nitwit like Richard as their strategist.

Then again, maybe the members of Steorn are crazy like foxes. The company has taken out an ad in The Economist challenging scientists to prove them wrong. You’ve gotta give them points for chutzpah. With some major scientific hoo-hah and a few serious-sounding names in the fray they could spin this hogwash out for, hey, maybe a couple of years and bring all kinds of investment money on board.

And they’re no strangers to that game.

My advice? Before you throw your hard-earned cash into Steorn’s Magical Magnetic Moolah Magnifier, take a trip to The Museum of Unworkable Devices and ponder the old saw ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’.

It holds just as true for the Laws of Physics and investment strategies as it does for interpersonal relationships.

Every Saturday morning, in the park near my house, a dozen or so people gather to stand around in a circle and laugh. Now it strikes me that if you need to set special time aside to laugh, there is something seriously wrong with your life.

Spam Observations #28

My new feiend, Grant Newell wrote to me this morning to let me know that:

SOFT CIANLIS would help you to bring back some romantic moments that u lost in past.

And I thought that if there really was a pill that would bring back some romantic moments that I lost in the past, I might possibly develop my first substance abuse problem.

Mark my words: Google is the Roman Empire of web colonization, and the beginning of its decline is already being chalked in big letters.

Honestly, their rise in profile is commensurate with their increase in stupidity. I’ve talked before about the impending disaster of the Ne’er-Do-Evil, but consider this latest piece of idiocy: Google’s lawyers have taken action against several media organizations in an effort to stop them using the word ‘google’ as a verb unless they’re referring directly to a search made on the Google engine.

HELLO GOOGLE! IS ANYBODY HOME?

I almost wept at their daftness. Well I would have, but it’s hard to pull the kleenex out of these damn velcro pockets without making a mess. And everyone knows that tiny bits of kleenex are almost as difficult to hoover up as styrofoam or q-tips.

Did Google somehow just forget which century they’re living in? Do they actually read anything online? Did someone remove the word ‘ubiquity’ from the Google Law Department’s dictionary?

Google has, up until recently, had everyone believing that they have grokked the internet paradigm for Century 21, but in this startlingly moronic lunge for control over the idiom, the concepts involved seem to be running off Google’s lawyers like jello off teflon.

The Continuing Misfortunes of Simple Graphics Man ~

The last time we saw SGM he was in dangerous circumstances on the edge of The Precipitous Precipice where predictably enough, things didn’t go well for him:

#11: The Painful Plunge.*

Nevertheless, after the dramatic Air/Sea rescue and a few months in hospital recovering from the arm transplant, he was up and about again and ready for a trip to Mainz with his new friend.† Sadly, the holiday was ruined when each of them contracted a urinary tract infection from hanging on too long (well that’s how he says they got it anyway):

#12: The Worrisome Wait.‡

If that wasn’t bad enough, on the plane on the way home the oxygen masks failed to pop out when the plane depressurized, and to make matters worse, thousands of bees escaped into the cabin at that exact moment:

#13: The Absent Air (including the Berserk Bees).‡‡

Could things get much more dire for Simple Graphics Man?

Indubitably.

___________________________________________________________________________

*Thanks Scroob!

†All together now: Oooooooh!

‡Thanks Sarah!

‡‡Thanks RaJ!