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Conference on Future Energy
(Originally Published July-August,
1999 In Infinite Energy Magazine Issue #26)
by Jeffery D. Kooistra
The First International Conference on
Future Energy (COFE) was held over three days, April 29-May 1, 1999,
at a Holiday Inn in Bethesda, Maryland. It was supposed to have
been held at the U.S. State Department, but then was booted out
via the machinations of one Dr. Peter Zimmerman, an action he bragged
about at the recent APS Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia [see
account in IE No. 25]. The Conference temporarily found a
new home at the U.S. Commerce Department, but Zimmerman's wave making
got it canceled there, too.
Despite these childish attempts at ruining the meeting,
I'm happy to say that COFE was exceptionally well-run and well-
attended (some 180 people registered).
Wednesday evening, April 28, there was a cozy wine
and cheese reception, then things got rolling Thursday morning.
One of the first people I noticed in the audience was a stick-figure
of a man who turned out to be none other than Dr. Robert L. Park,
Supreme Inquisitor of cold fusion, "extreme physics," and the practitioners
thereof. He seemed a bit high-strung, but I guess that's to be expected
when visiting a conference attended by scientists one has denigrated
in print. He stood in the back of the room, seemingly distancing
himself from the audience of improper scientists, jotting no doubt
"damning" notes as occasions arose.
Thomas Valone, president of the Washington, DC area
Integrity Research Institute (which was running the show, with a
significant financial assist from Infinite Energy, thanks
to a benefactor) opened the conference. He asked us to raise our
hands if we wanted free energy, which we all did, even Dr. Park.
Later, Park made fun of this in his "What's New" column. Park also
seemed to like free coffee.
The first speaker was Ken Shoulders of Somerset Power
Corporation, speaking on "Charge Clusters in Action." He talked
extensively about a sidelight to his main work, that sidelight being
the physics of charge clusters. Charge clusters, or "EVs," as Shoulders
calls them, are nifty little buggers, huge numbers of electrons
that move herd-like through space, and which are surprisingly easy
to generate with simple spark-making equipment. He presented a large
selection of slides that showed the kinds of holes that EVs bore
through materials such as ceramics. Of great interest was the nature
of the material spewed from these holes by the EVs. It looks as
though EVs don't melt the material, but rather disassociate it,
for there is evidence of sloshing, yet no evidence that the material
ever gets very hot.
Shoulders also described various energy aspects of
the EVs that make it look like these are genuine over-unity phenomena.
Comparing the amount of energy one puts in to make an EV, which
is next to nothing, with the significant amount of energy that must
be there for an EV to do what it does once it is created, simply
leaves one baffled. Far from keeping these delightful mysteries
of nature to himself, Shoulders practically begged us to investigate
EVs for ourselves. During this talk, I noticed that Dr. Park was
scribbling notes. I wondered if he was planning to do some of that
investigation? (Wink.)
Next came Dr. Paul M. Brown of Nuclear Solutions,
LLC, who talked about "Betavoltaic Batteries." These are nuclear
batteries that convert energy from a beta source, such as tritium,
into electrical power. Dr. Brown's talk was lucid and intriguing,
until he got to the theory part, which reflected some confusion
about just what energy it is that's being converted. One battery
described has as its source of power a strontium-90 sample, good
for about 30 milliwatts of output as reckoned by the kinetic energy
of the beta particle (electron) emissions. However, the battery
itself, which employs passive components, puts out 75 watts of AC
electrical power. Brown's explanation accounts for this "extra energy"
by suggesting that not only is the emission energy from the nuclear
expulsion of beta particles reclaimed, but also the magnetic field
energy associated with the moving charged particle. But in conventional
analysis, the emission energy is supposed to include the
field energy, so the 30-milliwatt figure given for the radioactive
source is supposed to be the whole shebang, kinetic energy and field
energy combined. (This battery has been described in IE No.
13/14, pp. 52-53.)
In Dr. Brown's defense, particle physicists talking
about accelerator and beam physics seem to get in a muddle on these
issues too. Brown didn't invent nuclear physics, nor the energy
accounting methods; he can only go by what the books say. And what
the books say is that there's no way he should be able to get 75
watts out of a 30-milliwatt source. Let's just say I'll take the
power meter over the book any day.
I think having Brown speak after Shoulders helped
highlight the weird nature of electrons (and positrons). With both
speakers we see that over-unity phenomena may be produced readily
if we accept that these experimental results are bona fide.
Sometime early in Dr. Brown's talk, Dr. Park left
the meeting. I noticed him watching Brown at the beginning, but
shortly after the talk began, I saw that he'd left his seat. I know
that our photographer on the scene, Ed Wall, asked Dr. Park to be
photographed in the open area outside the conference room. Park
said that he wasn't too fond of the photo of him that we had been
using in Infinite Energy, but then he excused himself to
the bathroom (blame that free coffee). After that, Park proved as
hard to find as the elusive Dark Matter (hot, cold, or tepid).
Following Brown, Kent Robertson of the American Wind
Energy Association spoke about "The Coming Energy Revolution from
Wind." The talk made a strong case for the present economic feasibility
of wind power generation on shared-use land, such as agricultural
areas. We wish this fine effort well, but sincerely hope that progress
on other free and future energy systems will eventually make windmills
obsolete.
After lunch the conference continued with a talk by
David Wallman and Wilbur Dammann of DW-Research on "Carbon-arc Gasification
of Biomass Solutions." They provided an excellent overview of their
activities in generating Carbo-HydrogenTM
gas in a prototype laboratory test device, which Infinite Energy
has profiled in several past issues. They demonstrated their high-quality
unit for all to see. After Wallman and Damman, Dr. Peter Graneau
(Northeastern University Center for Electromagnetic Research), who
swapped time slots with Paul Pantone, spoke. Graneau looked every
inch the kind of man who makes his living zapping high-voltage sparks.
He spoke about the arc-generated "Release of Chemical Bond Energy,"
which sounds mundane, but was not. Infinite Energy has reported
on this important work in several issues past: IE No. 10,
p. 59; IE No. 13/14, p. 92; and IE No. 25, p. 9. Using
high voltage, high current discharges of electricity through water,
Graneau is able to liberate much more energy than goes into the
spark itself. This was both one of the most interesting talks at
the conference, and one of the easiest to understand. The new physics
revealed by this process cuts right to the heart of where electrodynamics
theory has stumbled. The core difficulty of the Graneau work for
establishment physics starts with the spark itself. Normal electrodynamic
"pinch forces" are orders of magnitude too small to rip water molecules
apart at the power levels used in this work. Even to take the water
apart as happens in this process requires longitudinal Ampere forces,
which are largely unknown to conventional physics, though they were
familiar in the last century. After the water is zapped, a plume
of cold fog is produced--cold, yet potent enough to blast that plume
to supersonic velocities. Much of Graneau's talk concerned the meticulous
ways in which energy accounting was done. The bottom line is this:
for every 100 joules put into the device (most of which is loss--it
doesn't go into breaking up the water), 150 joules of energy comes
out.
Whence cometh the excess energy? According to Graneau,
it comes from the water molecules themselves. There is a binding
energy associated with water molecules and, basically, the latent
heat of vaporization is different for fog droplets than for bulk
water. So zapping the bulk water into fog leaves a bunch of excess
energy available to blow the water droplets apart quite spectacularly.
Let me highlight some similarities with previous talks.
Recall that Shoulders uses EVs to disassociate matter, and finds
that it remains cold. His EVs are, he believes, clusters of electrons.
He sees over-unity effects. Dr. Brown has a process, involving Beta
particles (i.e. electrons), which also produce a huge over-unity
effect (though for now he'd like to believe he can take care of
this by changing the energy accounting process). Dr. Graneau has
a process, again involving electrons, and he also finds over-unity
effects. Always the conservative physicist, Graneau thinks that
the excess energy comes directly from intermolecular bonding energy.
These three scientists have enough work to do already, so I think
some of us should start to investigate these processes with the
specific intent of sorting out the similarities.
Paul Pantone of Global Environmental Energy Technology
(GEET) followed Graneau. He discussed his "Plasma Fuel Processor"
and he spent time talking about his GEET technology, which he neglected
to define. This isn't entirely a criticism. I had not heard Pantone
speak before and I wanted to get a sense of this dynamic personality--a
new energy pioneer whose forté is actually selling (and delivering)
real devices to the general public.
He described a type of modification his company makes
to existing engines that: 1) allows them to burn almost anything
with carbon in it (mixtures of gasoline, diesel fuel, and Mountain
Dew beverage are not uncommon) and, 2) allows these exotic fuels
to burn very, very cleanly.
I heard one participant say that Paul sounded like
a "snake oil salesman." Yes, he did, but I had the advantage of
knowing that we actually have a few of Pantone's modified engines
in our lab; they most certainly will burn unusual mixtures as fuel
and, yes, they do seem to burn very, very cleanly. Unlike some "researchers"
in the New Energy field, Pantone has an actual product, not a promise
of a product, and he does allow people to test it. He even started
up an engine for us, running on a deadly (for the engine) mix of
gasoline and fuel oil. This demonstration was met with mixed reviews,
since the audience was in an enclosed room in a hotel. Though there
was a significant smell, which I'm told is typical when first starting
up the modified engines, it certainly seemed as pollution-free as
the inventor claimed.
The final talk of day one was delivered by Integrity
Research Institute President himself, Thomas Valone. However, since
his talk dealt with the material that is covered in his article,
"Inside Zero Point Energy," which appears in this issue of Infinite
Energy (See IE Issue No. 26, pp. 53-57), it is best you
go there and read about it in his own words.
After a day of speakers, the audience left to fuel
up on fine food, a rather trivial exercise, because near the hotel
good restaurants were plentiful, including an Italian cuisine place
named "Frascati"-interestingly the namesake of the location of an
ICCF-8 (May 2000) sponsor! Early that evening many returned for
the first Washington, DC area public showing of the video documentary
"Cold Fusion: Fire from Water." Narrated by James "Scotty" Doohan,
of "Star Trek" fame, this video is the first to put ten years of
cold fusion research into full perspective, and to clear up the
many misconceptions that remain from the past. It was very well-received.
Granted, the audience was predisposed toward acceptance, but it
didn't need to be--the video is that good. Producer and Director
Christopher Toussaint introduced the film, and Dr. Mallove, who
with Jed Rothwell helped write the script, participated in a question
and answer session after the showing.
The next day began with some confusion. Tom Valone
opened the session by telling the audience that yet again we seemed
to have been victimized by the government, since neither of our
speakers from the DOE had arrived, and we didn't know why. Fortunately,
this turned out not to be the case after all. Our original opening
speaker for the day, Dr. David Goodwin, did appear later, and the
other person from the DOE, a personable engineer, David Hamilton,
was, in fact, present. Though pressed into service on short notice,
Hamilton discussed some of his work at the DOE dealing with electric
vehicle studies. He expressed the hope that some of what he was
learning at COFE could be applied to vehicle programs at DOE (see
his letter, p. 52 of IE Issue No. 26).
It turns out that Mr. Hamilton had kindly arranged
for COFE to be held at the DOE main headquarters--after the meeting
had been booted out of the State Department by Peter Zimmerman.
Hamilton had apparently been unaware of the very nasty politics
against cold fusion and new energy at DOE, which he encountered
when he was told via the chain of command that the meeting was not
to occur at DOE and should be canceled. It was. [Editor's note:
Infinite Energy has learned from reliable sources that the
person who requested the COFE cancellation at DOE was Dr. Ernie
Moniz, Deputy Secretary of Energy, formerly the head of the MIT
Department of Physics.]
Some may think that electric vehicle studies are rather
prosaic, given the nature of the conference, but this was not the
case. Hamilton's talk gave us a rich appreciation for the sorts
of things engineers have to consider when designing a vehicle, particularly
a new kind of powered vehicle. A great deal of work that goes into
an electrical vehicle is power-supply-independent. Hence, much of
Hamilton's work is necessary, whether or not the vehicle is powered
by fuel cells or by a Back-to-the-Future-esque "Mr. Fusion" device.
Following Hamilton came Bruce Perreault, who hails from a northerly portion of New Hampshire. He delivered a sincere but somewhat disjointed talk on his various experiments. He made large but not very clear claims.
James Griggs, the inventor of the HydroSonic PumpTM,
who was supposed to deliver a talk at COFE, did not arrive due to
pressing business matters. We have been informed that Jim Griggs
is no longer affiliated with HydroDynamics of Rome, Georgia. That
company continues to market the device for its mundane (non-over-unity)
characteristics and applications.
Dr. Steven Greer was the next featured speaker. He
is an emergency medicine physician, best known for his work in the
field of UFO investigation. He is the founder of the CSETI group.
He addressed the topic, "Evidence of Free Energy Suppression." There
was some controversy about his speaking at the conference because
of his UFO connection. Although, I think there is no doubt that
the Free Energy field would do best if it stayed away from most
of the "flying saucer" controversy--that's a bottomless pit--still,
there are a few select issues where free energy work and UFO studies
may overlap. Clearly, if there is such a thing as "free energy"
and if 1) purported aliens are visiting us in ultra-high technology
craft, or 2) our own "black" programs are producing such high-tech
craft (whether or not the "black" programs "reverse-engineered"
purported crashed flying saucers to get that technology hardly matters),
then we're all stomping around on the same ground.
This should be easy to understand. There is only one
Physics; that is, one real set of physical principles that describes
the Universe. Aliens would be using that same physics; those purportedly
visiting us would have figured out the secrets of free energy, since
it's becoming clear already that some of those secrets can be worked
out in one's own workshop.
Greer contends that the Earth has been and continues
to be visited by extraterrestrials, but they were not his primary
concern. If the aliens wanted to harm us, they could drop a big
asteroid on us and that would finish off our side of the argument.
Rather, he offered us insight into how the secret world of the "deep
black" works, and how the "military-industrial complex," about which
Eisenhower warned us, came to be and what it knows. It is important
to note, Greer said, that these programs are not really part of
the government we elect. In short, the programs exist and go on,
and though the U.S. President might know about them, he can't get
his hands into them either. Workers in these programs already know
how to make free energy devices, "anti-gravity" craft, and the like.
But this is a divided group, these outside the government
folks. According to Greer, perhaps 60% want to keep all the secrets,
while 40% want to let out some of the information, particularly
free energy aspects that would help clean up the planet and remove
at least some of the incentives for war. Greer was plain spoken
and direct. He explained that if you want to get your free-energy
device to market, there are certain ways you have to go about it.
Although his talk was controversial, it was also well-attended
and stirred much discussion. At a conference like this it wasn't
difficult to find people with stories that suggest the existence
of behind-the-scenes interests--stories of seizures of property
and harassment related to experimental work. It also wasn't hard
to find former military people who had heard and seen things that
they were encouraged to forget.
The first post-lunch speaker on Friday was Les Adam
of AZ Industries, who spoke on the topic of "Magnet Power and Non-Combustive
Helicopters." This accomplished entrepreneur and industrialist spoke
about a wide range of activities that he has had in the alternative
energy field--mainly well-accepted renewable energy technologies.
Among other initiatives, AZ Industries has become one of the foremost
manufacturers of specially designed shaped magnets. The company
is interested in pursuing magnetically levitated trains. It has
a facility in which it archives alterative energy and new energy
reference materials. Les' fascinating talk and videotape about power
from hydrogen peroxide left me thinking about how soon I might be
able to afford one of these small, very simple and inexpensive helicopters.
The power-to-weight ratio for the engine, if it can be called that,
is greater than anything I have seen, with a couple of drawbacks:
the quantity of hydrogen peroxide that must be carried was considerable
and hydrogen peroxide is unstable, particularly at warm temperatures
(how it compares to conventional fuels, I cannot say). He is an
energetic, practical innovator, not afraid to develop new and useful
inventions.
Ed Storms, of LANL (retired), next spoke on the problems
of generating excess energy in palladium-heavy water systems. This
materials-oriented presentation followed many of his earlier papers,
some of which have been published in Infinite Energy, notably
one in the Cold Fusion 10th Anniversary Issue No. 24. One point
Storms made that bears repeating: the process of "peer review" is
actually much more rigorous at LANL than it is in the academic world.
In the slot assigned to James Griggs, who, as mentioned
above, couldn't make it, we had David Goodwin of the U.S. DOE Office
of High Energy and Nuclear Physics, he having finally arrived. He
commenced with his talk on the "Summary of the Breakthrough Physics
Conference." Goodwin's talk covered a variety of topics, all of
them related to how "breakthrough physics" could help with space
travel. The biggest single problem for space travel is, of course,
energy. Given enough energy, any kind of rocket can work. Eject
mass out the back fast enough and the Solar System certainly is
ours, so a free energy solution for power on Earth could easily
be a solution for space travel, too. And the Conference wasn't against
looking into wild ideas, such as Faster-than-Light travel and other
exotic things.
Goodwin covered issues and ideas in Zero Point Energy,
but during this portion some controversy from the floor ensued.
Our resident reporter skeptic, Marc Gubrud (who, unlike Dr. Park,
did stay for both days and even the banquet), objected to Goodwin
using the term "breakthrough" when discussing zero-point theories,
since the entire idea of getting useful power out of the zero-point
field was, to him, "fringe physics." The skeptic became a bit obnoxious
at this point, clearly forgetting that no one had paid money to
hear him speak. At least one person in the audience (OK, it was
me) made a rude, though entirely pertinent remark, which broke up
the skeptic's discourse. As it turns out, the skeptic's remarks
were not off target--zero-point discussions are considered fringe,
even though papers on this subject appear often in the usual Establishment
journals. This brings up an important point--most physicists don't
have any more intelligent opinion on zero-point energy than the
average person on the street. They have not studied the issue. So
when one says, "Most physicists would object," this need not mean
any more than saying, "Most barbers would object."
I might add that this skeptic's behavior came as close
as anyone at the meeting ever got to being disruptive, and yet this
was more or less nothing. Had Dr. Park behaved the same way, he
would not have been escorted out by security. He might have been
verbally disassociated by many of us with the efficiency of one
of Shoulders' EVs, but he would not have been ejected. I say this
because a colleague of Dr. Park apparently made a great fuss and
complaint to one of the staff, Mark Whitford. This after Whitford
politely told Park and his friend that no one should feel uncomfortable
at the conference, because security was being provided. Park's professor
friend apparently took this as a threat!
Finally, a genuine matter of gravity.
The concluding speaker of the day was astronomer Dr.
Tom Van Flandern of the Meta Research Institute, who spoke on "A
Complete Gravity Model and Free Energy." Van Flandern's background
is in astrodynamics and celestial mechanics; he was formerly with
the U.S. Naval Observatory. His interpretation of astronomical data
(from binary pulsars, planetary dynamics, etc.) is that the speed
of gravitational interaction is much, much faster than light, at
least several billion times as fast. This may be a surprise to those
who think the speed of gravity is the same as the speed of light,
but, in fact, there has been no direct measurement of gravitational
speed. Looking out into the heavens at how large bodies interact
with one another, it is obvious that gravity is much faster than
light. For instance, the position in the sky where we see the sun
is about eight minutes behind its real instantaneous position, yet
the Earth in its orbit responds to the Sun's real-time position.
Van Flandern suggests an alternate model to gravitational
interaction. He proposes a very old idea that perhaps gravity is
a "pressure" phenomenon, and not an attractive one. That is, space
may be permeated by little entities called c-gravitons, which travel
billions of times lightspeed. The continuous interaction of these
with masses leads to all the effects we ascribe to gravity. Toss
into the picture a light-carrying medium (the "aether") and you
have a model that accounts for all the observations now attributed
to General Relativity, but does this much more simply. There are
a number of experiments that can be done to distinguish between
Van Flandern's gravitational theory and the usual ones. One of these
is that c-gravitons should be attenuated and eventually blocked
by enough matter. Van Flandern showed some tantalizing data collected
from satellites that seem to show this very effect in action!
For the free energy enthusiast, the implications of
gravity being particulate and perhaps blockable are obvious. Block
or deflect the c-gravitons raining down from the sky and up you
go into space. Turn off the blocking shield and recover the energy
you've gained, for free, as you fall back to Earth.
Van Flandern's views may bother those among us who
want to unify all the forces of nature with complex theories untethered
to experiment, gravity included, but that's a matter of taste, not
physics.
With the speakers' sessions over, a question and answer
period ensued that was devoted to providing feedback about how the
conference had gone and how it could be made better. Having been
run unusually well under trying circumstances, not much needed to
be said about this conference.
On Friday evening the conference banquet was held.
We were entertained by a local singer and Dr. Paul M. Brown was
awarded the "Integrity in Research Award." Our keynote speaker was
supposed to be Mary Hutzler from the DOE, but she didn't arrive.
On short notice, we were treated to a talk by Mark Goldes of Magnetic
Power, Inc. of Sebastopol, California. His presentation was mind-bending,
but I'm afraid that we were asked (for the time being) not to disclose
the topic in a public forum beyond that dinner. The technical subject
was explosive enough (no, it was not about over-unity motors) for
our resident skeptic to exclaim rather loudly that Goldes "must
be a liar." Still, we didn't kick out this skeptic.
Many of the previous days' speakers also conducted
workshops on Saturday. These ran in parallel sessions, so it was
impossible to attend them all. Ken Shoulders held a workshop to
provide further details about charge clusters. Unfortunately, several
attendees at the workshop had missed the actual talk and, in the
process of review, Shoulders pretty much redid his entire talk of
the day before. This wasn't superfluous, since many got to see the
slides up close this time, and it was still good to interact with
Shoulders in a more intimate setting. There were handouts and other
data sheets to buy. Most interesting about the session were those
questions that got close to Shoulders' "real" work, which he cheerfully
declined to discuss.
Following Shoulders came Prof. George Miley of the
University of Illinois, who talked about low energy nuclear reactions
(LENRs). Miley did not have a previous general session talk, so
his information was new to many (unless they subscribed to Infinite
Energy). Miley described the nature of his work with thin metallic
films as cold fusion cathodes, and showed numerous graphs of the
data that he collected. This clearly shows the signatures of very
many heavy element nuclear transmutations. The graphs were rich
with daughter products with non-natural isotope ratios; there was
even put forth evidence for new, transuranic elements within the
hypothesized island of stability. One of the great advantages of
Miley's work is that it yields so much data with which to try to
figure out the nature of the core reactions involved in CF processes.
Just finding excess heat and helium is valuable, but three dozen
or so anomalous isotope ratios really give the theorist something
to think about. These findings powerfully constrain possible theories.
Dr. Graneau spoke in much greater depth about his
water arc work, giving a detailed overview of the energy accounting
methods used in the lab, more information on the history of what
he has been doing, and hints at the nature of his ongoing work.
In some ways it is hard to know where to place Graneau's work in
the new energy field. His mundane explanation that his "free energy"
is ultimately solar and comes from unaccounted-for binding energy
makes it seem that it should have been discovered years ago. If
Graneau is right, this tells us a lot: Even a free energy source
this easy to understand (and probably acceptable to the mainstream)
can go undiscovered for decades despite being right under our noses!
On the other hand, if Graneau's explanation is wrong, then we have
a surprisingly easy means for tapping into an unknown source of
energy. There is no third possibility--the fact that there is excess
energy being produced is firmly established. The technology to exploit
it is being developed. (Poor Dr. Park; he should have stuck around
at least for this talk.)
The final workshop, and perhaps the best attended,
was that of Dr. Greer. Greer went out of his way not to repeat himself
from the previous day. He opened up the discussion immediately to
questions that many still had from the earlier session. Attendees
heard a great deal about the who, what, and where of the secret
groups responsible for concealing secrets about UFOs and exotic
energy technologies. Of course, if one blithely assumes that Greer
is making it all up, then there is no need to listen to him at all.
But for some of us, he certainly painted a plausible picture of
a system within our government that isn't properly controlled by
our government.
The approach that Greer outlined is simply good business
sense with the recognition of possible suppression forces that may
need to be dealt with. But during the questioning some points came
up that need to be addressed, the most pertinent of which is the
common but bizarre notion that "publishing the information on the
Internet" is a kind of cure-all, because then "everyone will have
it."
Everyone will have what? It is easy to find
plans for over-unity devices on the Internet. It is trivial to find
patents for such things. Detailed descriptions are a dime a dozen,
as are testimonials from scientists who investigated the devices.
Perhaps some of these things actually do work. Certainly, some of
the inventors were likely to be mistaken in their claims. Maybe
some of the plans are even disinformation sown by the suppression
folk to keep people distracted.
Who is going to sort through all these claims and
find out which ones work and which ones don't? Some of us do just
this kind of thing-it's essentially the mission of NERL and other
groups to perform these kinds of studies. But we have bitter experience
with just how difficult it is to replicate someone else's work,
even when the inventor is willing to help and provide feedback,
advice, and even equipment.
The Internet is not some magic source of information.
It is a huge garbage dump of contradictory information, though here
and there scattered gems and nuggets of gold turn up. You need to
have good filters in place to reduce the garbage dump to a single
pile of trash, but after that filtering isn't enough. You have to
look at the remaining items one by one.
And there is another problem with the Internet, one
much harder to see: all the information that is missing that should
be there. As I complained to one friend a few months ago, the Internet
is a vast E&M wasteland. It is not entirely fair to complain that
the Internet lacks data that should be there, but it is important
to combat the notion that enough searching through the web will
turn up everything. For example, I am right now in the middle of
perhaps the most important book on electromagnetism I've ever read.
It is entitled Electromagnetic Theory and was written by
Alfred O'Rahilly. This book came out in 1938, was reprinted by Dover
in 1965, but is so obscure that it doesn't even show up in book
searches (including out-of-print titles) from Amazon, Barnes & Noble,
and Borders. People who rely on the Internet to find it, or to even
hear about it, could easily miss this title. (I borrowed the copy
I'm reading from Tom Phipps, and I first heard of the book from
Peter Graneau.)
There you have it. This was a good convention. For
those of you who need a rating of some kind, the First International
Conference on Future Energy was a 10, two thumbs up, and four stars.
We look forward to next year's COFE conference, this time without
interference, since there are now no plans to try to hold it on
government property. Let the government folks walk for their next
COFE.
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