60 minutes news story about the Bloom Box:

He invented a new kind of fuel cell, which is like a very skinny battery that always runs. Sridhar feeds oxygen to it on one side, and fuel on the other. The two combine within the cell to create a chemical reaction that produces electricity. There’s no need for burning or combustion, and no need for power lines from an outside source.

Dictionary definition of combustion:

combustion, burning (a process in which a substance reacts with oxygen to give heat and light)

Clearly, what’s going on in the Bloom Box, in which fuel and oxygen react to produce energy, is TOTALLY different from combustion, which is where fuel and oxygen react to produce energy.  Completely different. Not even remotely similar. Nope, no combustion going on here.  And that’s not even getting into the later part of the article where they mention that the Bloom boxes could also run on solar power.  How would that even work?  I mean, I guess you could use them to prop up solar panels…  A giant cardboard box would work just as well, though, so that’s not much of a selling point.

Farmville is a game that’s gotten some attention lately, though, not really the positive kind. Apparently even Dr. Phil had an episode about it, dealing with people ‘addicted’ to Farmville (I know about that only from what I’ve heard. Trust me, I don’t watch Dr. Phil.)  Apparently there’s 60 times more people playing Farmville than there are actual farmers in the US. So its a pretty popular game.

Without a doubt, its a pretty casual game.  You plant some crops, come back later and harvest them.  That’s about 90% of the game there.  Like the best of casual games, ‘playing’ it doesn’t require much time investment, which is why it often winds up eating up so much time.  When you play a game like World of Warcraft, you always have to ‘plan’ your playtime – you know that if you’ve anything else that needs to be done in the next hour or so, its really not worth starting the game up at all.  There’s always a fairly hefty minimum time investment to get anything done. Read the rest of this entry »