Stardate 20030628.1427

(On Screen): In the movie Babes in Toyland, a strange inventor (I don't remember the character's name) comes up with a fantastic way for the Toymaker to make his toys. He creates a gun which shoots a gas at fullsized objects and shrinks them to toy-sized.

He demonstrates it to the Toymaker by shrinking some furniture. The Toymaker then turns to him, and asks him where the Toymaker is supposed to get all the full-sized furniture which is to be shrunk in order to produce the toys.

Having no answer to that unfortunate question, the inventor tosses his gun into the trash, whereupon the villains steal it and use it to shrink the hero later in the film.

A processing step is not a source.

The AP reports on the development of a new kind of metallic catalyst which is particularly good at liberating hydrogen from certain kinds of organic wastes. This is trumpeted as being a boost for those who propose hydrogen as a replacement for oil and natural gas as major fuels. The new catalyst purportedly can create hydrogen from paper mill sludge or cheese whey, or anything else which contains a lot of glucose.

But is there really enough paper mill sludge and cheese whey created each year to make it possible for this process to produce enough hydrogen to significantly offset our use of petroleum? I'm afraid not.