From ThatHappened:

A plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, California, has been using human fat to fuel his cars. According to the surgeon, Dr. Craig Alan Bittner, he used fat liposuctioned from his patients at his Beverly Hills practice. He claims that the patients encouraged him to use their unwanted fat, but this has not been confirmed. Nor has it softened the opinion of California health officials.

Unfortunately for Doc Bittner, it’s illegal in California to use human waste for fuel. Seeing as he also had some lawsuit issues concerning his girlfriend being allowed to perform surgeries without a license, he has decided hightailed it to South America.

I also am intrigued by the fact that California already had a law against this. Does this mean that there have already been, um, “issues” with tossing body parts into the gas tank, or were the state legislators actually that foresighted?

I mean, come on…I believe in saving the girth–I mean, earth– as much as the next leftie. However, I’m not even going to do a ” The American Response ” paragraph because the actual story is already creepy enough.

Does this story scare you? It scares the willies out of me.

From PhysOrg:  A Japanese research team has revealed it had created a technology that could eventually display on a computer screen what people have on their minds, such as dreams.

The scientists realized that visual images are simply nerve impulses that the eye sends to the brain. Images generated by the brain have the same sort of pattern. By analyzing the electrical impulses, the scientists were able to reconstruct very simple images conjured up in the minds of subjects.

The team, led by chief researcher Yukiyasu Kamitani, succeeded in catching the signals and then reconstructing what people see.

In their experiment, the researchers showed people the six letters in the word “neuron” and then succeeded in reconstructing the letters on a computer screen by measuring their brain activity.

The team said that it first figured out people’s individual brain patterns by showing them some 400 different still images.

Do you remember the scene in Stepford Wives where the unwitting women read long lists of random words? THAT’s what this reminds me of.

Not to mention that I don’t want people to see my dreams. I do stupid things there.

The American Response
Let’s listen in on Billy Dabney in Okalukasuccee, FL:  “No really, honey! I wasn’t dreaming about your sister!” *slap* “In my dream it was you!” *slap*

Meanwhile, by augmenting his analog television with an ignition coil from a 72 Plymouth Duster, an old satellite TV receiver and a Betamax VCR, “Duke” Ashford of Knoxville, TN developed a similar breakthrough. When asked why he had abandoned his project, he said, “I just kept gettin’ NASCAR dreams. Why the hell should I dream about it when I can watch it live on TV? Plus, I kept dreamin’ about them Coors twins–but I seen that commercial already. I gave the damn thing to my cousin, Billy Dabney down in Florida.”

From PhysOrg:

Isn’t it great that the Australian taxpayers are funding this research and not us? According to research at Sydney University, psychologists have discovered:

a) Female art nerds get lots of sex.
b) Male art nerds don’t get much at all.
c) Science nerds are virgins.

Well, duh.

From the article, here’s the greatest passage with the greatest typo in the world:

Science students were also less likely to have had sex compared to their counterparts in other faculties, the study found.

“Who are the people at unis that go to the rave parties and the bar? It’s not the nerdy boy science students,” commented psychotherapist Stephen Carroll. “They’re carrying on doing their experiments, going to the library or doing their assignments,” he said.

I’m glad that the students and the faculty are willing to share for the sake of research.

It sounds like Stephen Carroll is a little bit smug, probably because he realizes that there was a group of students who got even less than he did in University.

The American Response
Harley Ledford, of Watkins Glen, New York, was eager to reproduce the results of the study. “Boo-Yah! Hippie chicks!” he was heard to holler as he revved his pickup truck towards Ithaca College.

“Well, that boy’s in for a world-a disappointment,” his uncle Roy snorted. “Hippie chicks ain’t what they used to be in the old days.”

(Via PhysOrg)

Scientists in Karolinska, Sweden, have figured out how to get a person to “swap bodies” even if temporarily. By mounting cameras on a mannequin, then mounting small monitors in front of the subject’s eyes, they could get the subject to see things from the mannequin’s point of view. The cameras would move as the subject moved his head, so that in essence the subject was seeing what the mannequin saw. To complete the body-swapping illusion, the scientists would touch the subject while at the same time, the subject would use the monitors to watch the scientists touch the mannequin in the same location. This simultaneous touch caused the subject to feel the sensation of actually being in the mannequin’s body.

Not only did it work with mannequins, they discovered that it worked if they mounted the cameras on another person. The gender and age of the person didn’t matter. If this person shook hands with the subject, the subject would feel the touch of the handshake at the same time they saw the action from the point of view of the other person. Voila: a powerful perception of a body-swap occurred.

The sensation of being in a different body was so strong that the subject would become extremely anxious when the camera-wearing mannequin was threatened with a knife.  The body-swapping illusion, however, only works with human-shaped camera mounts. The concept of becoming, say, a refrigerator was stretching it too far. I am curious, though, what would happen if they mounted the cameras on a monkey or even a dog or a goat?

One of the commenters on the PhysOrg posting suggested that the technology be used for scientifically-enlightening and socially-meaningful things like chopping the head off the mannequin while it was wearing the cameras. Clever idea, but since the body swap perception occurs when a similar physical sensation is experienced by the subject wearing the monitors, I suspect the necessary, mutual decapitation would prove just as fatal.

The American Response
Josh “Captain Kind” Jacobs, a junior at  Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon, was recently discharged from the local emergency room yesterday evening. When reached for comment, his roommate, Elf (“just Elf”), stated “Well, like you see, the Captain had the, umm, idea that he could do the same thing, like, get the same results, by dropping seven hits of acid, and uhhh…oh yeah–like, he was going to go to Portland and, like, go to the mall and drop this acid and stand next to, like, a window dummy, and he was going to all, like, pose like the dummy, ’cause he’s, like, into the whole performance art thing, y’know? Well, like, you see, the cops picked him up, like, in Corvallis, dude. Heh. They picked him up wearing, like, only his underwear, and trying to hump a gopher hole in some guy’s yard. Dude–the paramedics said he was saying that God was like, you know, sperm, and that he was all, like, ‘Hey, I’m God! I am sperming! ‘ So, uh, I guess now he’s, like, all like God now, and the cops had to chase him, like, all around this neighborhood, and he’s all wearing his tightie whities and sportin’, like, this wicked boner. And, they, like, shot him in the butt with a, uh, with a tazer, and he’s, like, all trippin’ his brains out, man, and screaming and, like, the guy who’s yard it was, he was all, like, to the cops, ‘Hey man, it’s cool,’ because, he’s, like this mandolin player who used to Jam with Leftover Salmon, you know? So he’s, like, all cool, and he’s all, like, well, uhh, like…  Hey dude–what did you ask me?”

From space.com: While cleaning up during a repair of a 10ft diameter cog that adjusts the starboard solar array, an astronaut watched as a toolbag floated away from the space station. “Oh great,” astronaut Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper said as the backpack-sized bag drifted away.

.

The American Response
In Mud Hollow, Arkansas, Jimmy Cole’s pickup truck was struck by a smoldering toolbag, in which the only undamaged tools were a set of box wrenches. In a dispirited statement, he stated, “Damn truck got a hole bust through the hood, an’ my bran’ new Edelbrock header’s done cracked open. Now I cain’t fix it, ’cause Jesus sends me some tools, but He busts my truck throwin’ ‘em down. Then it turns out the damn wrenches is metric. Jesus must drive a damn Toyota.”

From MLive.com:  Now that wastewater have gotten cleaner, Muskegon County, Michigan, has a problem: the wastewater system has gone green–and not in the fuzzy, feel-good way.

You see, they used to have a paper mill that dumped huge volumes of dark brown wastewater into the county’s wastewater treatment lagoons. Now that the mill has closed, the water in the lagoons has gotten much clearer. This allows more sunlight to penetrate the water, which has cause a massive algae bloom.  The treated water is used on croplands, but the increased algae in the water has clogged up the soils, causing mini-swamps to form in once-productive farmlands.  The built-up algae in the ponds also dies and rots, creating a significant odor problem.

Local restaurants cart their grease to the wastewater lagoons, which adds to the problem. Enter Western Michigan University. WMU has teamed up with Muskegon County to determine the feasibility of harvesting the algae for energy use and converting the restaurant grease to fuel. The county already harvests methane from their landfill and sells it to local industry, so the concept of dipping into the waste stream to harvest energy is an easy topic to broach to the county.

We need more forward-thinking public officials like the administrators in Muskegon County. It would be simple enough to skim up the algae and send it to the landfill. By partnering with academics and entrepreneurs, they are solving a common problem with an intriguing solution and maybe even generating some future revenue as well.

So, what about Douglas County, Nevada? What exciting things are we doing here in the hamlet of Gardnerville?  Considering the Gardnerville city council has forbidden recycling companies from operating here, considering that there are no bike lanes or bike trails, considering that dogs are forbidden in every single park, considering that the sewage treatment plant smells like last year’s egg salad, considering that Bentley Biofuels is just up the road outside of Minden, Gardnerville is not doing much.  Well, we did have a renewable energy fair last month, but a presence from the town of Gardnerville was conspicuously absent. I would have thought that Gardnerville/Minden/Douglas County would be eager to take a lead in alternative energy.

From the CBC: The Toronto Zoo is hoping to use feces from 5,000 animals to create biogas fuel to power a generator. Although the city is unwilling to put monkey –I mean, money– into the project, the zoo hopes that private financing will materialize. The zoo predicts that the energy generated from the project will not only power the zoo but produce a surplus that can be sold back into the grid.

There is precedent to the project. Some clever dairy farmers are already producing fuel from the tons of manure produced by their livestock.

Now, all we need to do is harness the energy expended by bloggers and reporters coming up with cleverly-worded headlines.

The American Response
Meanwhile,  Suzie Jonston of Salina, Oklahoma, is left pondering if she can harness the energy released by her good-for-nothing husband, Cody. “He Dutch Ovens me five or six times ever’ night. It’s disgustin’. Maybe I can just chuck him into a lawn-n-leaf bag and hitch it up to the grill. That way he’d finally be gettin’ off his butt and doin’ some work roun’ here.”

As reported on physorg.com, researchers in Maryland have discovered that 1) happy people tend to read books and socialize, and 2) unhappy people tend to watch TV.

I’m curious now. If you’re unhappy, but you force yourself to read more and get out of the house, will that help you feel happier? Conversely, does watching too much television have a deleterious effect on your mood?

Although…where does this put people who surf the web reading geeky science sites?

Now sing along to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It”

If you’re happy and you know it, sit and read,
If you’re sad and you know it, watch TV.
If you know that you’re depressed
Then O’Reilly is the best
But if you’re happy then you know he’s just a dweeb.

From the University of Washington and the Nature Conservancy, here is a chart detailing all the dirty little details about biofuels that accompanied an insightful biofuels article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Corn? Fuggedaboudit. Algae? Wave of the future, baby!

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com

The more I read about the algae, the more I like the concept. Save the Ethanol for drinkin’.

Click the image to read the associated story at SeattlePI.