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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| This article, from Atlas Obscura, is US-centric; I'd like to see one on other countries' parks. Or perhaps this is a problem unique to the USA. Beware the Legends Behind These National Park Souvenirs  Removing items from national parks is illegal—and at these sites, legend says, it can also come with paranormal consequences. Of course I don't accept the existence of the paranormal. But if myths stop people from being massive dicks, I say: fine. When I was nine years old, my family took a road trip across the American Southwest, including a stop at Petrified Forest National Park. I never visited that as a kid. At some point, I learned that it wasn't a bunch of stone trees, but basically just rocks, I was disappointed. I mean, sure, it's still cool, but I was hoping for a massive grove of petrified trees. Before I could ask, I saw the signs at the museum, warning not only of the guilt (and possible criminal charges) that follow anyone who removes a stone, but also of the people who had taken them anyway, and how they’d lived to regret it. I kind of get the urge to swipe stuff like that. It's true that, like with littering, if one person does it, the impact is minimal. But then, multiply that by something like a million, and you get a problem. Not only do national parks generally have strict rules about removing things from the grounds (hence the old adage, “take only pictures, leave only footprints”), but beyond legalities, legend says that there might be supernatural consequences for taking something from the parks that doesn’t belong to you. "God will punish you for that" is an effective way to keep kids, and some adults, in line. While an appeal to a person's better nature might be preferable, some of us don't have a "better nature." So, what are these cursed souvenirs? Where do you find them, and what happens should you acquire one? I'm not sure it helps to say, "Oh, here's where you can go to get illicit souvenirs, if you don't believe in curses." For visitors to the Petrified Forest, who may be encountering petrified wood for the first time, it’s tempting to bring a piece of this unique substance home. But those who do are breaking the law—and risking one of the infamous national park curses. I also get the urge to be a rebel and break laws. It's probably true that some laws exist to keep us from annoying the rich, but ones like this are for the benefit of everyone. Some Americans, as we've seen especially over the past 9 years, don't want to benefit everyone; just themselves. Now, one might say, "But Waltz, if you don't believe in curses, how do you explain all the people who snuck a hunk of petrified wood out and then their genitals shriveled up or whatever?" Well, bad things happen to people on a distressingly regular basis. If a hundred people smuggle out a chunk of rock, chances are that within the next few months, something unfortunate will happen to one or two of them. They then associate the bad luck with invoking the curse, rather than acknowledging the inherent semi-randomness of life. One of the most dramatic, and perhaps broadest-reaching, “souvenir curses” is associated with Haleakalā National Park—and all of Hawai’i more broadly. Unlike the Petrified Forest, I've actually been to Haleakalā. According to legend, the “curse of Pele,” the Indigenous Hawaiian volcano goddess, will befall anyone who removes the natural materials of Hawai’i, like pumice, black volcanic sand, and obsidian, from the islands. I didn't remove any natural materials from Hawai'i (unless you count their local beer as "natural"), and nothing especially bad has happened to me. Yet. Still, I've often wondered what a former famous footballer had to do with Hawaiian curses. However, despite the name, this curse doesn’t date back to Indigenous Hawaiian beliefs, but to a frustrated park ranger in the middle of the 20th century. This is unbearably hilarious to me. Gettysburg National Military Park is the site of President Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address and, prior to that, one of the Civil War’s bloodiest battles... According to Gettysburg Battlefield Tours, a local touring company, those who’ve taken stones have faced divorce, debt, and even jail time after taking stones. Presumably, the jail time is unrelated to theft of park souvenirs. Again, though, let's remember that divorce, debt, and jail time are fairly common hazards of life. Without them, where would country music be? Regardless of personal opinions about the supernatural, I find this sort of thing fascinating, if only as a window into human nature (both good and bad). And, again, even if they're fiction, stories have power. |
| I covered our eight-legged friends in an entry recently: "What a Tangled Web" . This is a different spider-written article from SciAm: Do People Really Swallow 8 Spiders a Year While They Sleep? Should we worry about arachnids crawling into our mouths while we’re in dreamland? Sure, go ahead. Worry about that. It's not like there's enough other stuff to worry about. Rod Crawford has heard plenty of firsthand accounts of spider-swilling slumberers. “Once or twice a year, someone tells me they once recovered a spider leg in their mouth,” says Crawford, the arachnid curator at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle. Yes, this is the same Rod Crawford (actually a spider in a trenchcoat and hat) who got quoted in the previous entry. Luckily for all of us, the “fact” that people swallow eight spiders in their sleep yearly isn’t true. Not even close. Yeah, it's more like eighty. Okay, yes, I'm kidding. But if you think it's "luckily for all of us," just think how much luckier it is for the spiders. Three or four spider species live in most North American homes, and they all tend to be found either tending their webs or hunting in nonhuman-infested areas. I'd say it's more like thirty or forty. Okay, I'm kidding again. During their forays, they usually don’t intentionally crawl into a bed because it offers no prey (unless it has bed bugs, in which case that person has bigger problems). Problems that can be solved by introducing spiders. Plus, many people would likely be awakened by the sensation of a spider crawling over their faces and into their mouths. Sure, whatever helps you sleep at night. Spider experts concede that a sleeping person could plausibly swallow a spider, but “it would be a strictly random event.” Given that we swallow a lot less while sleeping, and we sleep only about 1/3 of the time, I think it's far more likely to swallow one while awake. If this article doesn't put your nocturnal arachnophobia to rest, consider this: other arthropods don't have the same fear of us that spiders do. It's far more likely that you've swallowed a cockroach. |
| Huh, and here I thought Sam Vega was Vincent Vega's brother. From Big Think: Saṃvega: The urgent realization that you need a more meaningful life If you feel like you’re missing out on something bigger, you might be feeling saṃvega. Well, at least it's not an idiotic English portmanteau, like maybe, I don't know, "fearpression;" or another catchy acronym like FOMO. It is a feeling most of us will have experienced at some point, but we might not have called it by that name. So, what does saṃvega mean? The article has already answered this in the summary points at the top, but I'll indulge. Saṃvega is hard to define but it pops up again and again in philosophical literature. It might be called angst, absurdity, ennui, dissatisfaction, alienation, or existential dread. So, there are at least six synonymous words or phrases already in English. Got it. Saṃvega is that sense of unease that comes on when you think everything is pointless. Huh. I don't feel unease when I think everything is pointless. No, it's one of the few realizations that actually makes me smile. It's like... "Nothing matters. What a relief! Now I don't have to worry so much or create drama for other people!" Saṃvega is when you sense that there’s something more to the Universe you’re not quite tapping into — as if you’re dancing around some deeper and more meaningful truth that’s always just out of reach. My beer is usually just within reach. Have you ever worked incredibly hard for a long time toward a goal only to find out that, once you’ve accomplished it, things feel a bit flat? That is saṃvega. Okay, now, that, I can relate to. But it doesn't seem nearly the same thing as angst, absurdity, etc. It is there when Karl Marx talks about the alienation of workers from their work. Oh, so it's about how labor is entitled to what it produces? It is in Friedrich Nietzsche’s angry tirade against the social and moral norms of our time. Our time isn't Nietzsche's time. In Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, the titular character exemplifies saṃvega. Huh, and here I thought he was just being Russian. Like Ivan, saṃvega is a disease with a great many remedies. These solutions or cures for saṃvega are known as pasada. Broadly, these pasadas fall into four categories: And I won't reiterate the categories in detail here. To summarize: religion, existentialism, absurdity, and nihilism. Well, for me, religion is right out; it just makes shit up and offers false hope. Existentialism, as the article points out, encourages us to find our own meaning internally, which, okay, fine, whatever works. Nihilism is... well, let's just say it's a trap. Absurdity, though? Leaving aside for a moment that up there, they just said that absurdity was a synonym for samvega, at least with absurdity we get to have a laugh every once in a while, and that's something I absolutely believe in. But hey, that's me. I know everyone's different, which is one reason we keep going around and around about "meaning" and "purpose:" everyone has a different point of view on the subject. Once I realized that we're all just making this shit up as we go along, I learned to relax and enjoy it. |
| How about a lesson in comparative linguistics disguised as an article about tacos? A recent one from Gastro Obscura: There’s No Right Way to Say ‘Taco’ An exploration of the ways our tongues—and our pride—twist around foreign words, and what that says about how we want to be seen. I'll give a pass to the subhead reference to "foreign words," as the site is obviously aimed at US English speakers. But it occurred to me that even if the headline is correct, and there's no right way to say 'taco,' there are myriad wrong ways to say it: 'extricated,' 'ashtray,' 'flugel,' and 'dimethylethylpropynol,' to name but a few. It wasn’t so much that my friend, a Brit who has lived in Los Angeles for many years, said the word “taco” differently than I do. The confounding thing was that it was difficult for him to hear the difference, and that when he could distinguish it, he insisted that his way was more correct, closer to the way a Spanish speaker would say it. He pronounced it “tack-oh.” If Brits (and Australians and Canadians, etc.) didn't pronounce things differently to USofAmericans, there wouldn't be distinguishable accents. One wonders if he also called his mom 'mum.' “There’s something very strange going on with that particular ‘A,’” says Lynne Murphy, a lexicologist at the University of Sussex who explores the differences between British and American English on her blog, Separated by a Common Language, and further in her book, The Prodigal Tongue. Oh, so this is an ad. Well, it's an ad for a blog and a book, so I can't fault it too much. The way the Brits pronounce “taco,” as well as “paella” (pie-elluh, with the English L rather than the Spanish LL), “salsa” (the first vowel rhymes with “gal,” the second with “duh”), and “Nicaragua” (nick-uh-rag-you-uh), among others, is a glaring siren of weirdness to an American ear. I remember the first time I heard pasta pronounced "pass-tuh" instead of "pahs-tuh," but I can't remember if that was British or just variant American pronunciation. What’s going on is a complex blend of tongue positioning, imperial history, code-switching, language exposure and accommodation, and an unconscious, or uncomfortably conscious, desire not to seem like you just got back from a semester abroad in Barthelona and brought with you an inability to see your friends rolling their eyes. Oh, imperialism gets thrown into the mix. I'm shocked. Shocked, I say. Okay, not that shocked. I don't think I've ever actually heard it pronounced 'tack-oh' instead of 'tah-co.' What I do remember is that people who live in Nevada pronounce the first a like in 'van,' while non-Nevadans tend to pronounce the same vowel like in 'father.' Nevada is, of course, also a word of Spanish origin (from what little I understand, it translates to "snow," and if you're wondering why a state famous for being a desert is named after snow, just remember its western border is a very tall, usually snow-capped, mountain range). My point being that yes, we know that English speakers often mangle the vowel sounds of other languages, and vice-versa. And don't get me started on the dozens of ways different languages interpret the sound of the consonant 'r.' At any rate, the article dives into some of the vowel (and consonant) differences between languages, and even different dialects of the same language. I find it interesting, but no need to quote a lot of it. As is often the case in linguistics, it’s simpler to say how the British and American pronunciations are different than to explain why they ended up this way. One of the more prevalent theories among the linguists and Anglophones I spoke to was a basic lack of exposure. The U.S. has around 41 million native Spanish speakers, and around another 12 million identifying as bilingual... Whereas, as the article notes, Brits are more likely to be exposed to French instead of Spanish. This is a concept called language accommodation, in which speakers tend to modify the way they speak depending on the person or people they’re speaking to. Which, when you think about it, is actually a pretty cool superpower to have. This ties in to the code-switching concept mentioned above. Trying to impress someone? You might try to use longer, less common words to seem more intelligent. "Devour feculence." For some Americans, policing global Mexican food is a bit of a hobby. I feel kinda good that this is the first I've heard of this. I mean, I can understand Americans (in this case meaning "US citizens") having strong opinions on pizza, which is actually an American food, and hamburgers—I certainly do—but it strikes me as weird that we'd get all up in arms about other countries' interpretation of food associated with another country. It'd be like, I don't know, a Japanese person pushing away a dish of fries with gravy and curds and proclaiming "this is not poutine!" A word like “taco” is on its way to becoming, or is perhaps already, simply an English word. Oh, it definitely is an English word. Sure, it's of Mexican Spanish origin, but it's also an English word. Like "hors d'œuvres" is an English phrase, despite it being so French that it might as well be wearing a beret, carrying a baguette, and smoking a Gauloise. It's just a more recent loanword, so we're more aware of its linguistic/culinary origin than we are of words like, say, beef (French) or chicken (German). One fascinating aspect of English food words is that the reason we have both "chicken" and "poultry," for example, is that we got the animal words from German but the food words from French, probably because the French are demonstrably better cooks. (Please don't cut me if you're a German cook. German beer is superior; be proud of that.) One thing never brought up in the article: what is the literal translation of "taco" in English? I don't mean the food; I think we can mostly agree on what constitutes a delicious taco, despite differences of opinion on what should and should not go into one. But the word came from somewhere; apparently, that "somewhere" is something akin to the English "plug" or "wad." Why it came from that particular meaning, I can't be arsed to investigate right now. Anyway, I had no idea this was even a thing. I'm pretty sure I've only ever heard it pronounced "tah-co." And now I'm hungry; thanks, Gastro Obscura. |
| Anyone who's followed me for some time knows I appreciate Ben Franklin. I hope my hometown (known as Thomas Jefferson's stomping grounds) won't call me a traitor for it. But everyone has skeletons in their closet and, as this older Smithsonian article points out, sometimes they're literal: Why Were There So Many Skeletons Hidden in Benjamin Franklin’s Basement? During restorations in the 1990s, more than 1,200 pieces of bone surfaced beneath the founding father’s London home This being an article originally released way back in 2013, I had to check to see if I've covered it before. Not in this blog, certainly, but in the previous one. I didn't find it, so perhaps I didn't. Well, Smithsonian did an unspecified update last year, so even if I did feature it at some point, it was almost certainly before the update. The future founding father left his English home and returned to America in 1775. Two centuries later, bones from more than a dozen bodies were found in the basement, where they had been buried in a mysterious, windowless room beneath the garden. Well, I can understand how that might seem suspicious. If anyone found purely hypothetical bodies buried beneath my purely hypothetical garden, I couldn't blame them for backing away from me slowly. The skeletons had gone unnoticed until the 1990s, when historians decided to turn Franklin’s old haunt into a museum. Presumably British historians, which, when you think about it, is about as weird as American Southerners putting up statues of Union generals. Franklin was a storied revolutionary and high-ranking Freemason, so it’s easy to wonder what dark secrets he may have hidden in his basement chamber. Yeah, like, was he fighting the Revolutionary War one Brit at a time, before the war even started? But the truth, it turns out, isn’t quite so dark. I am both relieved and disappointed. “The most plausible explanation is not mass murder, but an anatomy school run by Benjamin Franklin’s young friend and protégé, William Hewson,” as the Guardian’s Maev Kennedy wrote in 2003. Franklin was a lot of things, but I don't think "murderer" was one. One never really knows, though. Hewson was an anatomist who began his career as a student of William Hunter, a famous obstetrician who also studied anatomy. Following a dispute, Hewson parted ways with his teacher and started his own anatomy school at 36 Craven, where his mother-in-law, Margaret Stevenson, was the landlady. Imagine going up to your mother-in-law and going "Can I rent out your house to desecrate corpses?" In Franklin’s time, the study of anatomy was an ethically ambiguous business. I have a strong feeling that religious doctrines had a lot to do with that. “[Franklin] was a champion of science—he was supportive of young researchers and others that could exemplify his passion for knowledge and innovation,” Balisciano told Discover magazine. “He probably loved the idea that this scientific work would be going on.” Obviously speculation, but it tracks. In 1774, a 34-year-old Hewson died of sepsis, which he had contracted by accidentally cutting himself during a procedure. I could be wrong about this, but I don't think the idea of diseases spread through invisible microbes really caught on until the following century. While previous generations had some inkling, there was no science backing them up, just empiricism.So, I'm not sure if the mystery is truly solved, but at least there's a plausible explanation that doesn't involve Ben Franklin being an early Jack the Ripper. |
| Yes, sometimes I find an article about actual writing instead of just writing about an article. This one, especially helpful to fellow nonfiction writers, is from Mental Floss: What ‘Sic’ Means—And How To Use It Correctly The way writers use the word ‘sic’ is a little more nuanced than its literal meaning Of course, I knew what 'sic' translates to from a very early age, being a Virginian. "Sic Semper Tyrannis" is our state motto, and it's on the flag right under the boob. But it's a little different when used on its own, in the service of clarifying quoted material. You’re perusing a news article when there, right in the middle of a quote, is the word sic encased in brackets. Since this is far from the first article you’ve ever read, maybe you already know what sic signifies: that the word or phrase directly preceding it hasn’t been altered from the original quote—even though it might be misspelled or simply a strange word choice. I've used it myself, though not without wondering at its utility when posting stuff on the internet. I'd assume that any quote I read online has been copy/pasted (it's what I do), so any errors or typos get copied exactly. Probably no need for the three-letter editorial insertion, and it often feels like I'm just being smug, as in "This is an error I wouldn't make, and I caught it, ain't I smart?" But why sic? The shortest possible answer to that question is this: Because Latin. It's often called a dead language, but I prefer to think of it as a zombie shuffling across the written word. An undead language. It literally means “thus” or “so,” as in sic semper tyrannis, “thus ever to tyrants.” In case you were still wondering what our state motto meant. It was also the most famous line quoted by actor John Wilkes Booth. But that hasn’t stopped people from coming up with a slew of “backronyms” that describe it in slightly more detail: “spelling is correct,” “said in copy,” “said in context,” etc. Okay, first of all, I see what you did there with your sneakly little zombie Latin "etc." Second, backronyms annoy me. Sure, they serve a mnemonic purpose, but then you get people believing and insisting that "tips" came from "to insure prompt service" (it certainly did not) or that "fuck" came from "for unlawful carnal knowledge" or "fornicating under consent of the King" (it absolutely, positively, did not.) The only exceptions for my annoyance are humorous ones, like Ford (found on road, dead) or Chevrolet (cracked heads, every valve rattles, oil leaks every time). I doubt anyone actually believes those car brands started out as acronyms. As for when you might want to use it, there are a couple different scenarios. One is when a quote features a typo, a misspelling, or a grammatical error. One of my smuggest uses for it is when I catch someone doing something like mistaking "its" for "it's" or vice-versa (dammit, zombie!). Sic can also come in handy if you’re writing something that the reader might accidentally interpret as a mistake. That's a little less obvious, but the article provides an example. As the Columbia Journalism Review’s Merrill Perlman put it in 2014, sic “can come off as snarky, giving a sense of ‘we know better,’ at the expense of the original author.” Which is exactly what I'd expect someone hit with a sic to say. In 2019, the Associated Press Stylebook announced that it would henceforth retire sic for good. Yeah, let me know when The New Yorker follows suit. “Most people don’t speak, off the cuff, in grammatically perfect sentences,” the Stylebook tweeted. Okay, but what about written works? We tend to hold them to a higher standard, especially nonfiction works. If I had to slog through a technical paper written in the style of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, I'd give up. Hell, I gave up on Faulkner. For example, if a source says “Using sic make the writer seem insufferably smug,” you could update “make” to “make[s]” without employing sic and proving your source’s point. Nah, I'd rather be insufferably smug. There are, as always, exceptions. Not every technical error in writing results in an ambiguous meaning. Like when someone uses "it's" incorrectly, where it's obviously meant to be a possessive and not a contraction. But that error is so egregious, I'm going to call it out anyway. Which, of course, guarantees that I'll mess it up sometimes, and the zombies will come for my brains. |
| This Bloomberg CityLab article is two years old, but climate change doesn't work that fast, so it's probably still relevant. While a fascinating exercise, the headline is a bit misleading. A Cross-Country Road Trip Where It's Always 70 Degrees An updated map from climate scientist Brian Brettschneider provides year-long interior and coastal routes that span more than 7,000 miles. The misleading bit is the "always 70 degrees" thing (I'm giving the use of Fahrenheit a pass because the article is very clearly US-oriented). But there's no need to be too pedantic about it. For travelers in search of the perfect weather, a climate scientist in Anchorage, Alaska, has mapped out the ultimate US road trip where the temperature is always 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The maps included in the article clarify: the routes follow "70°F Normal High Temperature." His original trips span more than 9,000 miles coast to coast for the contiguous US and more than 13,000 with an Alaska stop — the latter also draws on data from Environment Canada. Why Hawaii was excluded is left as an exercise for the reader. Both of the new routes manage to stay below 8,000 miles, unless travelers opt for a “connector segment” that passes through Arkansas, Tennessee and Virginia in April. I'd recommend that segment. Nice scenery. As an avid mapmaker who has made thousands and thousands of maps typically focused on climate, he says it’s hard to know what part of his work will resonate with people. But the overlap between climate and the road trip caught fire. As I said above, it probably doesn't change much in two years. But over longer time frames, sure. Like the first time, Brettschneider says while making the map was a fun exercise, he won’t be making the trip, but he would be interested in hearing from anyone who is planning to do so. It sounds like something I'd do, even though I consider 70°F to be entirely too cold, but I have cats to take care of. |
| Today, from PopSci, evidence that the US is actually #1 at something other than gun violence and imprisonment: US ranks first in swearing ‘Some may find it disappointing,’ said the new study’s Australian co-author. I especially love how the article anticipates the Krakatoa-scale explosion of doubt coming from Down Under, and states right up front in the sub-head that one of the authors was Australian. While the headline filled me with great joy, as usual, I can't just take a headline's word for this shit. Congratulations, United States. The nation may lag behind in healthcare, education, and life expectancy, but Americans still reign supreme in at least one way—swearing like a bunch of drunken sailors. My father was very careful, as a sailor, to avoid getting too drunk or swearing excessively. While I respect that, I've traveled a different path. Linguists in Australia recently analyzed the Global Web-Based English Corpus (GloWbE), a massive database containing over 1.9 billion words from 1.8 million web pages across 340,000 websites in 20 English-speaking countries. Oh, so they're only talking about written works. It's entirely possible that Australia still has the top spot with spoken cuss words, so calm down, kangaroos. “Rather than being a simple, easily definable phenomenon, vulgarity proves to be a complex and multifaceted linguistic phenomenon,” Schweinberger and Monash University co-author Kate Burridge wrote in the journal Lingua. I know people like to say, "What's the big deal? It's just words." Yeah, well, if words are just words, there should be no problem with ethnic or religious slurs, right? No. Words have power. Yes, we give them that power. But the power is there. “Some may find it disappointing, but the research found the United States and Great Britain ranked ahead of Australia in terms of using vulgar language online,” Schweinberger said in an accompanying statement. Now, I can think of one possible reason why the results skewed the way they did: while, as I noted, words have power, they have different power in different cultures. It's entirely possible that, in the US and UK, we have a greater awareness of the base nature of certain words, so using them signals a breaking of a taboo. The taboo (which is a word introduced into English from Tongan by Captain James Cook, the same guy who was the first European to visit Australia) has different strength depending on location. One of the study authors offers a different hypothesis: “One possible explanation is that Australians are more conservative when they write online but not so much when they are face-to-face,” he said. “Australians really see vulgarity, swearing and slang as part of our culture—we’re very invested in it.” Well, then, I guess someone needs to do a goddamned follow-up study. Despite its limitation (focusing on writing rather than speaking), I find the study amusing. As with most studies of this nature, I wouldn't take it to be the Absolute Truth, but at least it's evidence that the US is actually best at something besides fucking everyone in the metaphorical arse. |
| From PopSci, modern alchemy: Refrigerator-sized machine makes gasoline out of thin air The Aircela acts like a mini direct air capture facility, sucking up carbon dioxide and then synthesizing it into real, usable gasoline for cars. When you run a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine, in ideal principle, the exhaust consists of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water vapor (in reality, of course, nothing is ideal, so you get other chemicals from incomplete combustion). So the idea that one could, with the proper setup and energy input, reverse this, doesn't seem completely farfetched. And yet, reading this article, every fiber of my being cried out "fraud." In 2022, transportation was responsible for an estimated 28 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. The majority of those emissions came from everyday gas-powered cars. Put another way, nearly 3/4 of greenhouse gas emissions came from something other than transportation. Most Americans also still just aren’t interested in ditching their gas guzzlers to save the planet. But what if they didn’t have to? It wouldn't save the planet. At best, it would slow down the destruction. (Yes, yes, I know, "the planet will be fine." "Save the planet" really means "protect the biosphere.") That’s the alluring—if wildly ambitious—vision being presented by New York–based fuels startup Aircela. Earlier this month, the company announced it had created the world’s first functional machine capable of generating real, usable car gasoline “directly from the air.” The article is fairly recent, so the announcement would have been in May. Aircela’s new device, roughly the size of a commercial refrigerator, combines direct air capture (DAC) with on-site fuel synthesis to create gasoline using just air, water, and renewable energy. No fossil fuels, they say, are required. You know, it occurs to me that this technology (if it's real, which, to reiterate, I seriously doubt) could be used for more important things. The manufacture of ethanol, specifically. Aircela demonstrated the process, making gasoline directly from air, in front of a live audience in New York. David Copperfield once made the Statue of Liberty disappear in front of a live audience in New York. Also, alchemists used sleight-of-hand to "prove" to their patrons that they've turned lead into gold. Though most would describe this proof of concept as a “prototype,” company co-founder and CEO Eric Dahlgren takes some umbrage with that label. Sure, go against basic English word usage because it offends you. Is it in mass-production yet? No? Then it's a prototype. “We didn’t build a prototype. We built a working machine,” Dahlgren said in a statement. “We want people to walk away knowing this isn’t too good to be true—it actually works.” It's the first one. It's a prototype. Aircela’s device essentially functions as a compact, portable direct carbon capture facility (DAC) unit. Carbon capture generally refers to the practice of removing carbon dioxide from sources like smokestacks or fossil fuel power plants. Don't get me wrong; I'd love to be wrong. About this. But it really does sound like fakery. A spokesperson from Aircela told Popular Science that their machine is designed to capture 10 kgs of CO₂ each day. From that, it can produce 1 gallon of gasoline. The machine can store up to 17 gallons of fuel in its tank. Yes, we Americans can switch easily from one system of measurement to another even in the same paragraph. That's a superpower. In other words, at least in its current form, the device wouldn’t be capable of filling up a car’s tank with gas overnight. That doesn't seem insurmountable. If it's real. But okay, let's assume for a moment, for the sake of discussion, that it works as advertised, and it's possible to create and distribute a reasonably-sized and -priced machine that turns air into gasoline/petrol. Now, think about how large oil corporations would feel about that, and what lengths they might go through to stop it from cutting into their profits. At the very least, they hand over a few million dollars for the patent and then... sit on it. Cynical? Damn right I'm cynical. It's hardly the first time someone has claimed to pull a rabbit out of thin air. |
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