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.

Alex Dragulescu, a clever man if ever I saw one, has performed a near-miracle. He has taken the torrent of unadulterated swill generated by spammers and turned it into something beautiful.

Go and visit his gallery of Spam Plants to see what I mean, and make sure you take a look at some of his other inspiring work too.

___________________________________________________________________________

Thanks jedimacfan for pointing me to Alex’s site!

So, Nurse Myra and I have been invited to visit our friends Tuan and Trinh. They’ve just finished doing some renovations on their apartment and they’re showing us around.

The gadget above, sitting on a table, catches my eye.

You’re probably thinking what I thought – some kind of tennis racquet, right? With a power button…? Hmmm. That’s weird. Maybe for a game or something?

“No, no, no!” says Tuan, and picks it up.

He swishes it through the air and there is a z-z-z-z-z-a-p! You know the kind of thing – like an Insect-O-Cutor® sound. And a little violet flash of light.

Oh man! It’s a rechargeable electric mosquito zapper that you can swing! All my life have I wanted this gadget, had I only known it existed.*

Yes, I had found the:

Of course I know that you’re way ahead of me with the ‘all purpose‘. Like, it’s just one purpose, surely? That being the total annihilation of the little blood-sucking creeps.

Aha! Again you’re forgetting the VCF (Vietnam Chaos Factor). Shall I elaborate? Sit back, grab a bowl of dried watermelon seeds, pop yourself a can of Bird’s Nest White Fungus Soda and get comfy.

Nurse Myra and I knew we had to get some of these things to take back home. Hell, with some judicious plugs from Engadget and boingboing I reckon I could sell off a container-load of hand-wieldable Ozzie Mozzie Terminatorsâ„¢ come Sydney summer, but for the moment we thought maybe we’d grab just a modest half dozen for friends and family. Next morning we headed off on our bicycles to a nearby electrical appliance shop.

With the help of our phrase book and some RADA-quality mosquito-extermination miming (with zapping sounds), we simultaneously amused the locals and procured our goods with lavish amounts of our exotic currency†. Now this is what Free Trade is all about!

Simplicity itself.

Unfortunately, Free Trade often comes a cropper when you cross the border, and The All-Purpose Mosquito-Killer Bat was to demonstrate one of its other purposes rather quickly; it is also very effective at holding up the departure of aircraft.

The next day, just as we were about to board our already delayed flight from Danang to Hanoi, we were taken aside by airport security people and quizzed about our belongings.

“You have a mosquito killer in your baggage, yes?” said the polite‡ official.

“Er… yes,” I said.

“It must be switched off for safety reasons,” she said.

“Oh, er, of course,” I said, feeling like a complete idiot. Little zillion-volt spark generator; aircraft-fuel/oxygen mix in the baggage compartment – I got the picture pretty quickly.

The Cellotape came out, there was some quick swishing and sticking – they’d done this kind of thing before. And we were on our way.

Danang to Hanoi, no problem. Hanoi to Sydney…

Nurse Myra got all her zappers confiscated at Sydney Customs.

“But why?” she asked.

“Because they are classified as dangerous weapons,” said the Customs Official.

Well, sure, if mosquitos are drawing up the Import Legislation.

“He told me you could kill a dog with one,” she told me later.

“You could kill a dog with a litre bottle of single-malt whisky,” I said “But they didn’t stop me from bringing that through”.

They somehow failed to stop me from bringing my Mosquito-Killer Bat through either. Tsk. How careless is that?

Do they have any idea who they’re dealing with?

___________________________________________________________________________

*Those living in colder climes sans mosquitos may not fully realize the magnitude of my rapture at this discovery. Calloo Callay! No more prancing naked around the bedroom in the middle of hot summer nights with a rolled up newspaper (well, not in the pursuit of exacting vengeance on mosquitos, anyway).

†They cost us about $3 each…

‡I should probably just dispense with the ‘polite’ whenever I’m talking about Vietnamese officialdom; it can just be assumed.

This is the remote control for the air conditioner in a cabin on a cruise junk at Vietnam’s beautiful Halong Bay. Please to take notice of the only English word to appear on this unit.

It explains a lot.

Y’know, sometimes the modern world is just so bizarre that you really hope someone must be having a good ol’ chuckle at someone else’s expense.

Take the case of mobile phone manufacturer Mobiado, teaming up with perfume company Bissol to create Bissol No. 919 a ‘fragrance for the luxury mobile phone user‘.

WTF?

I don’t think I could have dreamed up that concept in my wildest moment of sarcastic surrealism.

Here, from the press release:

No. 919 is a clean, fresh, youthful scent with top notes of mandarin, juniper berry, elemi; middle notes of white musk, bamboo, oakmoss; and base notes of vanilla, cedarwood, sandalwood. (Mobiado Limited Edition) also has a special addition of Australian lime note, formulated for the elegant mobile phone user.

How is it that Australian Lime, whatever that might be*, bestows some extra power on elegant mobile phone users, whatever they might be?† What the hell is a ‘luxury mobile phone user’ anyway, for that matter?

There certainly is a very strong smell through all of this alright: something like a base-note of fish with a pungent lingering odour of bullshit…
___________________________________________________________________________

*Most likely, this is a species of Queensland lime called the ‘Gympie (pron: ‘gimpy’) Lime’ which possibly explains why Bissol has opted for the more general description ‘Australian’

†I guess from now on, at least, we’ll be able to spot them by their smell

Something very weird’s going on in cyberspace. I’ve been receiving a number of spams of the format:

Subject: 1545453
Date: 6 June 2006 6:33:59 PM
To: reverend@tetherdcow.com

969

That’s it. No spiel, no links, no products, no attachments. I know other people have been receiving these too.

What’s going on?

Well, let’s Google ‘1545453’ (I’m doing this as I write). The first hit that turns up, after hits referring to the spam itself, is a link to the NCBI database – a Center for Disease Control abstract for an influenza vaccine demonstration.

Hmmm.

Let’s try ‘969’:

The first hit, strangely enough, is a Sydney radio station, Nova 969. Then some links from Wikipedia for the year 969 then… ooooo… what’s this…? Another scientific abstract from the NCBI database. This time, a profile of gene CD69 (Homo Sapiens). It appears to be a gene active in the immune system.

Did the hairs just go up on your arms…

Searching for ‘1545453′ and ‘conspiracy’ returns its first hit to a blog that has gone dead.

But the Google cache is still active.

Keith Graham traces the origination of the email to a server in Australia.

More news as it comes to hand.

If The Cow goes AWOL, start worrying.