Cold Fusion is the holy grail of energy research. If scientists can unlock the power of cold fusion, the sky’s the limit for energy production, and we can offer a not so fond farewell to the era of petrochemical energy production. You might recall the furor the Stanley/Pons research caused in the late 80’s/early 90’s, when they claimed to have discovered a method of achieving cold fusion. To say that didn’t pan out would be an understatement, but now there’s a second round of research out [warning, NY Times link, registration required] on an alternative method of achieving cold fusion that is gaining positive commentary from the scientific community. Could this be it? Time will tell, it’s very cool though that the initial reports are so promising.

I spend so much time complaining about products and services on here, I thought I might try praising a product for once. Every winter I suffer from dry skin. This can actually turn into a dangerous health issue for diabetics, so the past two winters I have been paying closer attention to it and trying various things to alleviate the dry skin. Hand creams have done ok on the dry skin on my hands and face, but it’s particularly bad on my elbows, and basically nothing had helped. My doctor suggested I try Eucerin, and lo and behold, two weeks later my elbows are soft and the skin is alive again. Got dry skin? Give it a try.

[this message sponsored by Dave’s no longer dry skinned elbows ;-)]

Something’s put me in a whimsical mood of late. I keep stumbling across oddball stuff that makes me laugh. Imagine a pogo stick that lets you launch yourself 5-6 feet in the air. No joke. You’ll be able to buy one soon enough, and shortly after you’ll be hearing about the wrongful death lawsuits on the evening news 😉 Seriously though, depending on how much these end up costing I would consider getting one. The concept sounds like an absolute blast. Who wouldn’t want to bound down the street in 6 foot high hops?

There’s a short piece over on wired about an EFF proposal to handle the legality of file sharing. It’s a basic system I’ve proposed before – have all ISP customers pay (or opt to pay in this case) a small monthly fee, in return for which they can file share to their heart’s content. The money goes into a pool that’s payed out to the artists on the basis of popularity. I love this idea. I think it neatly handles the issue of compensating the artists, it sidesteps the middlemen (the big music companies) and it would enable a broader and more diverse sharing environment as the small indie artists could start to actually earn money, whereas right now they’re basically locked out of the music industry. Plus it emulates a model that’s already known to work, ie Canada where a large surtax is paid on recordable media to compensate the industry for the music you’re presumably copying.

A little over a year ago I pointed out that if you registered you would be entitled to as much as a $20 rebate as part of a lawsuit settlement dealing with price fixing in the music industry. You did pay attention and register, right? I got my check in the mail on Monday. Unfortunately it was for only $13.86 because of the number of people that did register for compensation. I’m thinking I will donate the money to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (the EFF) so they can spend it defending our rights against the predations of industry groups like the RIAA. I urge you to consider doing the same, assuming you did register and got your rebate.

Check out this awesome collection of blueprints for animated models you can make out of paper and paperboard. While these cost money, they’re really very cheap and they’re sure to make any kid under 10 giggle when they see them.