Having written about a wooden car a few days ago, I found an interesting piece about a 'green' car, with 'zero emissions':
Green sports car set for launch
It uses hydrogen fuel, so creates only water as exhaust. However - it requires hydrogen, and getting hygroden an energy-intensive process:
Critics point out that to produce hydrogen by splitting
water uses a large amount of electricity. At present, the majority of
this electricity comes power stations burning fossil fuels and
therefore brings no environmental benefit.
However, the fact that this is the case now is not a good reason to stop exploring and researching this technology. Hopefully one day someone will crack it (so to speak).
This is rather a good story, about a sports car made almost entirely out of wood. Sounds very suspect, and it doesn't look like it will go into production, but it's a fascinating idea!
Wooden horsepower
This made me laugh a few days ago:
'Brain Training' slammed by 'Watchdog'
Apparently the computer game (which claims to train your brain) can't recognise northern accents. So if you shout 'yeller' instead of 'yellow' at the console, it tells you that you're stupid.
At last! Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1 has been released to manufacturing (RTM) by Microsoft. It contains much-needed performance and stability updates to their latest operating system.
However, it won't be released to end-users until March. Here's the relevant section from the post on the Windows Vista Team Blog:
Here's the timing for SP1 availability for current Windows Vista users:
- In mid-March, we will release Windows
Vista SP1 to Windows Update (in English, French, Spanish, German and
Japanese) and to the download center on microsoft.com. Customers who
visit Windows Update can choose to install Service Pack 1. If Windows
Update determines that the system has one of the drivers we know to be
problematic, then Windows Update will not offer SP1. Since we know
that some customers may want to update to SP1 anyhow, the download
center will allow anyone who wants to install SP1 to do so.
- In mid-April, we will begin delivering
Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Vista customers who have chosen to have
updates downloaded automatically. That said, any system that Windows
Update determines has a driver known to not update successfully will
not get SP1 automatically. As updates for these drivers become
available, they will be installed automatically by Windows Update,
which will unblock these systems from getting Service Pack 1. The
result is that more and more systems will automatically get SP1, but
only when we are confident they will have a good experience.
- The remaining languages will RTM in April.
This is good news, but a bit frustrating that we'll have to wait another six weeks to install it!
I saw the end of a programme last night called Horizon, which was looking at the theory of gravity. The bit I saw was the tail-end of the explanation of Einstein's theory, which moved into the theory of quantum gravity (or the quantum theory of gravity..?).
It was all very interesting - I used to read New Scientist so I'd read a lot of it before - but the closing moments of the programme really made me sit up. The presenter was summing up his conclusions, saying that a full understanding of gravity won't come from looking at the stars and galaxies, but from the smallest particles. He said that this would help us to explain what happened at the Big Bang, and - here it comes - why we exist.
Now, I have no doubt he has great credentials as a scientist, but it was my understanding that science looks into the question 'how it is' that we exist, not 'why'. I suppose that may be a technical distinction, but it is an important one, because it goes some way to showing how science and faith can go together: science looks empirically at the world to find out how it works; faith listens with gratitude to the Creator of the world to find out why it exists.
I'm sure that discovering how gravity works will be a huge step forward for modern science. But it will not help us one bit in discovering why gravity works, or who made it work. That is why we need both science and faith, why scientists can have faith, why scientists should be careful not to make grander claims for science than are warranted (for example, Professor Dawkins), and why theologians should be careful not to make sweeping scientific statements based on theological reasoning (for example, young-earth creationists).
Apparently, 100Mbit Broadband Hits UK.
I'll believe that when I see it, and actually can we have 4Mb broadband, please, instead of the pitiful less-than-modem-speed I get in the evenings with Tiscali?
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