Actually, that headline is a little misleading.  What Amazon.com really invented was the Kindle DX, which isn’t really virtual paper, and costs way too much, but is the closest thing we’ve ever seen.  What is virtual paper you ask?  In science fiction, virtual paper is an extremely thin screen that rolls/folds up to fit in your pocket and carries ever piece of paper you ever would normally inside it.  Newspapers, magazines, work documents, books, etc., all in the one thing, wirelessly connected to everything else.

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Note that I didn’t say “the end of cell phones”, but cell phone companies have maybe ten years or so at the outside to discover a new business model or they’re all toast.  And I mean whaling oil industry toast, not the current definition of corporate toast like the music industry or something.  I mean dead.  Why and how you ask?

It’s simple.  Skype has finally released an App for the iPhone.  If you don’t know, Skype is a web-based service that lets you make voice and video phone calls over the internet.  The newer smartphones are all equipped with internet radios.  If you can make a call over the internet, then why are you paying a cellular carrier?  To be more clear, if you’re paying $30/month for an internet data plan, and $40/month for cellular phone service, but you can just send the phone call information over the internet, paying for the cell service becomes an unnecessary expense.

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I read this piece in Wired today and was thunderstruck-ish by the ramifications.  Apparently some scientists in South Africa have discovered a way to reduce the energy input required for coal to liquid conversion processes by 65%.  Coal to liquid (CTL) is a way to transform Coal into gasoline.  The technology was widely used and pioneered by the Germans during WWII as a way to fuel their military.  Since then it’s been used around the world by regimes and countries that get hit with sanctions and don’t have their own oil supplies.  South Africa began using the technology during the Apartheid era.

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At his press conference the other night, Barack Obama spent a fair amount of time discussing the need to not only fix the problems with our economy, but also transform it.  To seek out and find new engines of growth.  This has actually been a recurring theme with the President since his assumption of the office.  Historically, there has always been one simple, easy, surefire method to spur economic growth.  It’s worked in a variety of cultures and in numerous historical periods.  That method?  Expansion, colonization, and subjugation.  Find someone weaker or less advanced than you and take all their natural resources for yourself.

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From Danger Room comes news that the Navy may or may not (but probably did) issue a research directive to begin design and construction of an underwater drone craft.  The main problem with undersea vehicles is air, both for the crew and for the engines.  In modern manned submarines this is taken care of by the ships’ nuclear reactors.  Nuke power probably isn’t an option for an unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV?) but we do have some historical non-nuclear designs to fall back on for technology examples.  

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George Will and the Washington Post got taken down by the interwebs pretty extensively yesterday after Will posted an anti-global warming column that was full of factual errors and misrepresentations.  This is something that’s always fascinated me.  It’s pretty clear that average annual temperatures are on the rise and have been for the last hundred years or so since we started keeping track of them.  For more evidence of temperature increases, see this pretty graph from Nate Silver.  (I wouldn’t argue with the man and his numbers, last year he predicted the House, Senate, and Presidential races and the Tampa Bay Ray’s massive improvement.  Possibly the best year for statistical predictions ever.)

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I originally caught this when it was posted by Time.com’s Michael Sherer.  Figured it was worth reprinting.  Reposting?  Revideoing?  Whatever.

Discovered the link to this in a pretty random place.  It really starts getting good at about 1:20, and my absolute favorite moment is at 3:38, but the whole thing is worth watching.  Freaking hilarious.  

I love it when the internet decides to chuck up a bunch of useless monkey garbage and call it gold.  This bloggy post from Discover describing a new scientific advance is a prime example of the trend.  First, they start out with some interesting/useful scientific discovery.  In this case, the fact that carbon nanotubes can be used to facilitate the chemical reactions in hydrogen fuel cells that are currently facilitated by Platinum.  The piece then goes on to note that Platinum is one of the most expensive parts of a fuel cell and that this discovery could dramatically lower the cost of fuel cells, thus enabling hydrogen car future utopia.

However, there’s a slight problem with this.  Over the last month Platinum traded at about $960 an ounce.  Carbon nanotubes currently run on the order of $1500 an ounce.  And that’s from a website called “CheapTubes.com”, and is only available if you buy in bulk amounts.  So basically, some scientists figured out how to replace an expensive component of an expensive technology with an even MORE expensive component.

The nanotubes only serve as a better option if their price comes down faster than the price of Platinum does.  There was a time when Aluminum was the most valuable metal on the planet.  Then somebody discovered eloctroplating and the price has been in freefall ever since.  The same thing could happen to Platinum.  Or it could happen to nanotubes.  But until one of them drops in price, trumpeting this as a “solution” to the fuel cell cost issue is a lot of hype and hot air designed to attract attention and the grant money that sometimes follows said attention.