Tuesday, September 29, 2009

stop, little orbo, stop

More on Steorn's magic bean generator aka magic perpetual motion gizmo the Orbo, which I'm sure you'll remember from previous posts. The latest exciting news is that the company are "nearing readiness" to give a product demonstration "by the end of 2009". This is, it turns out, the sort of demonstration done over a live internet video-stream from an unspecified location, so not exactly rigorous peer review. As you read this Q&A with Steorn CEO Sean McCarthy, you should be doing two things, firstly, still trying to work out if he's a well-meaning but self-deluding nitwit or a massively brass-necked con-man, and secondly marvelling at the fact that there is a publication called Free Energy Times. Their puppyish enthusiasm for the patently impossible is quite endearing, but I fear that their high hopes ("I think the latter end of 2009 could prove to be very interesting") are probably going to be dashed.

On the other hand, maybe McCarthy will crank up the Orbo, forget the words to the magic incantation to stop it and it'll eat the universe. And we all thought it'd be the Large Hadron Collider! Oh, the irony.

3 comments:

nicola said...

The lovely magic porridge pot book cover got me all nostalgic, so I did a little search for Ladybird Well Loved Tales, and in particular ones written by Vera Southgate. I found a web site called theweeweb.co.uk where I found the covers of all the classics I used to spend time reading when I were a wee nipper. Like: The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids, and the Elves and the Shoemaker, and Rumpelstiltskin.. and lots of others.. so many memories flooded back. Anyway, this is completely irrelevant to your post. sorry.

electrichalibut said...

Well, the reason that particular cover caught my eye was that we used to have a copy of that exact edition of the book when I was a child. The concept of having to eat your way through a whole street of porridge was quite appealing, though even at that age I remember being concerned about the possibility of accidentally eating stinging nettles, dog turds etc. as well. It's a Health and Safety nightmare.

Jann said...

My mum still has that very same edition, plus loads more. Tasseltip, anyone? Bueller?
Ooh, that reminds me...http://instantbueller.com/

Ahem.