Help correct Wolfram Alpha
Perhaps y’all know about Wolfram Alpha, the search/computational engine from Stephan Wolfram.
Well if you look up “cold fusion”, the response is erroneous.
However, there is a Feedback box right below it. I have entered feedback asking them to correct the entry and pointing them to the extensive documentation on the lenr.org site.
Please take a moment to click the “cold fusion” link above, read the entry for cold fusion, and enter some feedback to help correct their mistake.
Now that’s something – correcting Stephan Wolfram!
Addition to post: LATER……
This was the automated response:
We appreciate your feedback regarding Wolfram|Alpha. The issue you reported has been passed along to our development team for review. Thank you for helping us improve Wolfram|Alpha. Best wishes, The Wolfram|Alpha Team www.wolframalpha.com Name: Input: cold fusion Occupation: teacher Organization: Message: Please revise your statement definition of "cold fusion". An extensive peer-reviewed documentation has occurred over the last two decades that shows cold fusion is a new type of nuclear effect different than the conventional hot fusion model. Look at full documentation at http://www.lenr.org This is an important energy source for our future. Please revise your statement. Otherwise, thanks for an awesome search engine!
Letters mailed to Senate Energy subcommittee members
It’ll take a couple of weeks to get through security, but 15 senators will have a nice surprise waiting for them when they get back from recess. Each member on the Energy sub-committee got a unique letter requesting funding for low-energy nuclear reactions research accompanied by two complimentary Cold Fusion Now stickers.
Here’s a sample letter sent to Senator Debbie Stabenow from Michigan:
Senator Debbie Stabenow
133 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington DC 20510
Dear Senator Stabenow,
Please lend your support for the only viable alternative energy beyond the renewables – low-energy nuclear reactions, also know as cold fusion.
We want solar and wind developed, but these are not enough to supply all our energy wants. Nuclear energy is a million times more powerful than chemical energy, and only cold fusion promises, clean, green, safe, nuclear energy from the deuterium in sea-water with no radio-active waste.
The research has gone on for the last 21 years in virtual isolation with $0 from the Department of Energy. That’s right; $0 from the DOE. Yet low-energy nuclear reaction scientists are now getting output energy 25 times the input energy!
The Naval Research Lab and the Army Research Lab both support this research, but the funds are limited. This science needs DOE funding to take the current research to a new level, where the private sector can then begin to develop new energy products. There is just no good reason why the Department of Energy withholds funding for this important research.
You’ve worked hard on issues of water, the environment, and jobs in your state of Michigan. And you also know the danger that petroleum poses. Please take a look at the current state of cold fusion research and I think you will see another opportunity to provide clean energy jobs.
Please direct the DOE to apportion funding for cold fusion research.
Thanks very much,
My name, etc…
The names of the senators who received this particular mailing are:
Sen. John Barrasso WY
Sen. Evan Bayh IN
Sen. Robert Bennett UT
Sen. Sam Brownback KS
Sen. Jim Bunning KY
Sen. Richard Burr NC
Sen. Maria Cantwell WA
Sen. Bob Corker TN
Sen. Byron Dorgon ND
Sen. Menendez NJ
Sen. Bernie Sanders VT
Sen. Jeff Sessions AL
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen NH
Sen. Debbie Stabenow MI
Sen. Mark Udall CO
Sen. Ron Wyden OR
Yes, there’s going to be changeover soon, but that’s OK. I’ll be doing a follow-up letter in October: shorter, and with more specific info relating to each member, and….I dunno……Cold Fusion Now matchbooks? Would they even make it through security???
I will ask those of you living in any of these states to call your senators in September and ask for their support on CF funding for a follow-up.
Find your senator’s info here.
Next up: it’s the House Energy subcommittee.
Not the most fun assignment, but better than some. For instance, reading the Slate article Palladium: The Cold Fusion Fanatics Can’t Get Enough of the Stuff By Sam Kean reveals the level of ignorance of commonly available scientific data by the author, and sadly, the commentators too.
The die-hard will cling to an obsolete belief with such tenacity, staying true to their name. It blows my mind that high-caliber scientists have had to endure such ignorance for two decades. I hope I won’t even have to try…
Fusion funding in the news
1) From the Tehran Times: Iran begins nuclear fusion studies. They are talking about hot fusion, but cold fusion is mentioned in the last lines of the release…
2)Funding for nuclear fusion: Expensive Iteration looks at the cost overruns and funding difficulties the latest big hot fusion project is facing. Geez, the dollar numbers are humongous.
3) Finally, this article to be published in Canadian Business, Wanted: More cash in nuclear fusion, appears to blur the lines between hot and cold fusion, unaware of the huge scientific and funding differences between them. The article does give some dollar numbers for recent start-up projects.
Shout out to the Private Sector: Could we please get $10 million to the cold fusion scientists? Comparing the funding to the hot fusion folks, there is little to lose, and everything to gain.
Pizza run leads to God
I went out to get a pizza last nite. I almost never leave the house without a book, and this time it was “The Rebirth of Cold Fusion” by Steven Krivit of New Energy Times. While waiting for the pizza, I’d catch up on some history.
When my pizza was done, the older gentleman who called my name asked “What are you reading there?” I said “Oh, it’s about an energy source whose fuel is derived from sea-water.”
He thought a second, and then replied “Well that makes sense. Just look around…why else would God put all this water here?”
Keep talking. Keep typing.
It is pretty overwhelming watching humanity destroy itself; allowing whole systems to collapse, rather than change course. Cultures rise, and they fall. At the limit of global expansion, we now confront ourselves, squarely. Do humans have a limit of irrationality
Giant methane lakes a half mile under the ocean? Water samples blowing up? Calls for MORE deep ocean drilling? If this wasn’t reality, I’d think I was losing my mind in a Twilight Zone episode. If we humans have a future, the immediate one looks rocky, and the anxiety in the chip body is palpable.
Time to unplug and get outside!
So I’m walking around my little town and I decide to stop in the Shoe Repair and check in with Mark, with whom I had had a wonderful conversation a while ago when I had dropped off a pair of shoes for maintenance. In the course of our transaction, I discovered that he was born in Greece, and, he collected ancient coins. When he was a kid growing up in the Mediterranean, they could find ancient coins on their beaches regularly just as they played around!?
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Well, I am an ancient coin lover, and as a student of media, I’ve learned the relationship of the phonetic alphabet and the beginning of science and math in ancient Greece. This alphabet effect is also reflected in their coinage. (Indeed, coinage itself is an effect of the alphabet.) Earlier pieces are classified as Archaic, and are raw, wild, abstract symbols juxtaposed, while later coins from the Classical period show a refined character, with increasing perspective and realism throughout the design.
The coins pictured above are the ancient coins of Athens, called owls. The obverse shows Athena, the patron goddess of Athens. The reverse, not shown, has an owl, which Athena often appeared as. Of course Pallas Athena, goddess of wisdom and war, is the origin of the word palladium, by way of the asteroid, that is!
Well, I don’t know about you, but the thought of having something from 400BC in my pocket when I’m walking around just puts an extra spring in my step and I just happen to have my Athena with me on this jaunt, my original destination being our local Antique and Coin Shop. I’d go show my pal Mark the piece first, knowing he’d totally dig it.
Now before you start crying that this is a Cold Fusion Now blog, and not a personal diary for an ancient coin lover, let me beg your patience, as all will be revealed.
I roll in the Shoe Repair and show him my Athena (mine’s the one in the middle of the pictures above). Mark isn’t busy, and he loves the Owl, so we start in on a little conversation, in the course of which, I lay a Cold Fusion Now sticker on him, and show him the copy of Fire from Ice I’m draggin around with me. Yes, I start ministering the CF.
He reacts astounded and says, “My son and daughter both worked at the fusion center!” And he runs to the back of the shop, and when he comes back, he shows me his jacket with the National Ignition Facility stitched logo on the front! One of his kids had been at Lawrence Livermore at some point as well. I am just like “Whaaaatt?”, aghast to find someone who even knows what I’m talking about, let alone whose kids have fusion research experience, albeit the other kind!
Well, I began to describe some of the differences between laser fusion, and cold fusion.. Turns out he had heard about it in 1989, but then heard it turned out to be a “fraud”. Thus the conversation continued.
He was interested in hearing about the story of CF and I ended up giving him my hardback copy of Fire from Ice, the very copy I’d gotten in 2004 after learning about CF myself (again, from Bob). He didn’t want to take it, and we went back and forth until he relented. He had to have it, and I know he’ll read it.
That’s it, that’s the story. It just goes to show, you never know who’ll you’ll meet. And everywhere you go, you got to keep talking about cold fusion. Sometimes the conversation slides your way, and a light is turned on. It really brought my spirits up.
Arthur C. Clarke said “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Before the alphabet, words had magic. Just saying something evoked power. Isn’t it funny when the most important thing we can do for our future is to keep talking?
Keep talking cold fusion. Keep typing cold fusion. The words are cloned over and over the more say it, the more we add to the critical mass, and then, at some point, awareness will bifurcate, and instantly, our world is changed.