Locus Medius

Hydrogen Ethanol Methanol

There's been a fair amount of coverage over the last week-or-so of George Olah's new book Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy.

George Olah holds the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Chair in Organic Chemistry at USC and is the 1994 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His new book examines what he believes is the vastly superior potential for methanol as a future transportation fuel over ethanol or hydrogen.

MIT's Technology Review ran an interview with Professor Olah as did NPR's Science Friday. Note that the NPR interview is long and rambling so, even though I linked to it, I actually do not recommend listening to it.

We all know why a replacement for gasoline is needed. We do eventually need to transition to a fuel source that is renewable. The strategies currently under discussion for replacing gasoline are predominately hydrogen and ethanol.

The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

While I was busy not blogging, Bobby Henderson released his book The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

I haven't had a chance to read it but it seems to have gotten pretty good reviews.

See the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster's site if you're not familiar with all of this.