Brian Appel, chairman and CEO of Changing World Technologies, can turn anything into oil

"This process can deal with the world's waste. It can supplement our dwindling supplies of oil. And it can slow down global warming."

Pardon me, says a reporter, shivering in the frigid dawn, but that sounds too good to be true.

"Everybody says that," says Appel. He is a tall, affable entrepreneur who has assembled a team of scientists, former government leaders, and deep-pocketed investors to develop and sell what he calls the thermal depolymerization process, or TDP. The process is designed to handle almost any waste product imaginable, including turkey offal, tires, plastic bottles, harbor-dredged muck, old computers, municipal garbage, cornstalks, paper-pulp effluent, infectious medical waste, oil-refinery residues, even biological weapons such as anthrax spores. According to Appel, waste goes in one end and comes out the other as three products, all valuable and environmentally benign: high-quality oil, clean-burning gas, and purified minerals that can be used as fuels, fertilizers, or specialty chemicals for manufacturing.

Unlike other solid-to-liquid-fuel processes such as cornstarch into ethanol, this one will accept almost any carbon-based feedstock. If a 175-pound man fell into one end , he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water.

noticed on future hi

"Love potion" about to become real science | betterhumans.com

by futuretalk:

People who have suffered unbearable broken relationships in the past, or who simply want to devote their present time to careers and seek romance later, may choose to inoculate themselves from the risk of romance with an “anti-love” pill. Those considering separation from troubled marriages could take pills to rekindle the fire, which would lower divorce rates.

However, love drugs might also lead to misuse. Someone wanting out of a relationship could slip a pill to their mate making them fall out of love; or if a person one admires is in love with someone else; simply slip them an anti-love pill, and they immediately fall out of love and become available for you.

& you thought ads for Viagra & Levitra were bad

'Sponging' Dolphins May Be Sharing Culture

"We define culture as a behavior that is acquired by imitation and passed on in a population," said Michael Krutzen, of the University of Zurich in Switzerland, who led the new research. "We think this behavior is an example of that. It's very exciting."

Krutzen and his colleagues believe the dolphins, which live in Shark Bay off the west coast of Australia, wear the sponges while foraging for small fish, crustaceans and other food along channels in the sea floor to protect themselves against sharp coral and stinging critters such as stonefish. It's a trick that appears to be almost exclusively passed from mothers to daughters.

"They wear them like a glove," Krutzen said. "When they go down to the sea floor to probe for prey, there are lots of noxious animals down there. By using the sponge, it protects them."...

The behavior may be passed almost exclusively to females because foraging along the seabed is a solitary activity, and males tend to spend most of their time traveling in groups searching for mates.

heheh. no real surprise there

Flesh-eating aliens were chasing me when I caused fatal car crash

Hemadrones. Kinda like CHUD from China...

Scott Krause's defense will argue that the defendant believed he was trying to escape man-eating subterranean beings when he ran into Drew Reynolds' truck on Jan. 6, 2004.

Krause has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to five felony counts, including first-degree murder, carjacking, and burglary, stemming from a string of alleged criminal activities leading up to the fatal highway crash.

In three court-ordered evaluations, the defendant stated he was fleeing subterranean beings he called "hemadrones" when he carjacked a commercial vehicle near a Nevada City, Calif., gas station and then crashed into Reynolds' service vehicle.

(step away from the methamphetamines)