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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 10:32 AM
Original article: Demi Moore's W debacle

Yes, coinkydink

This is a pretty stupid "controversy". I don't see any reason to think that the hip is photoshopped -- it has just the right kind of awkward apperance that is a classic hallmark of The Real World. People, this is a real, live, 3-dimensional woman, not a Barbie doll. The lines that you assume would continue underneath the clothing may actually curve in ways that you don't expect. If there's any fault, it's that the photo editor and/or photographer missed how awkward this looks and didn't get another shot with her hips more even with her shoulders.

As far as the other model -- this is just a person of pretty much the same frame wearing the same thing, also in a basically standing-up position. Nothing beyond that is really the same: look carefully at the various skin areas -- arms, thighs, chest/neck. None of it is exactly the same. She's not even wearing the outfit in quite the same way -- notice how both of Ms. Rubik's hip bones jut out clearly in the gaps, whereas Moore's are more covered (and less even).

Wednesday, November 4, 2009 04:41 PM

@IaintBacchus

To further the discussion on fuel cells / hydrogen:

The hydrogen first has to be either cracked from natural gas or electrolyzed out of water. Both processes take more energy that is produced by the hydrogen in the fuel cell. And in the case of the natural gas you lose the greater energy output of the natural gas. Fuel cells, like batteries, are storage devices not sources.

One thing to remember about the notion of hydrogen as a means of energy storage is that it's really pretty bad at that job -- you lose some 3/4 of the energy in the process! Electrolysis of water is at best 50% efficient, and most fuel cells are around 50% efficient as well. So you lose half the energy when you create the hydrogen, and half again when you go back to electricity. This is why you will never see fuel cell cars in commercial deployment -- they have the same basic barrier to overcome as electric cars, poor energy storage density vs. gasoline, but the fuel will cost at least 4 times as much vs. straight electric cars! That means 4 times as many windmills or solar panels will be needed for sustainability.

The only way hydrogen cars would make sense is if the hydrogen could be obtained nearly for free, and there is no prospect for that (perhaps midday peaks with solar production could provide cheap-enough electricity, but I don't see it matching the total demand of a fully-hydrogen fleet).

Now, there may be an argument that hydrogen is a competitor not to electric batteries, but as the quick-refill secondary source for hybrid vehicles. I did some back-of-the-envelope calcs, and found that a given area of land could yield 10x the car mileage if it were devoted to solar panels generating electricity that gets turned into hydrogen vs. the best-case scenario for ethanol production using switchgrass. That is, hydrogen could in fact beat biofuels.

I think hydrogen might have the best potential for large oceangoing vessels (again as a competitor to biofuels, not batteries), as that application could probably afford large volumes of lower-pressure hydrogen storage tanks better than cars or airplanes. Jet airplanes will probably be stuck with biofuels, which means that air travel will become -- and remain -- significantly more expensive than it is today.

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