My Future

The Associated Press reports that a scientist from Erie, Pennsylvania has discovered a way to burn salt water. It's a neat little trick he discovered while playing with a radio frequency generator.

I personally think this could be one of the most influential discoveries of the past 100 years, or more. Some of you are already giddy with excitement along with me, but for the non-scientists and slow learners out there, let me explain: if you can burn something, you can probably figure out a way to use it as fuel.

Right now most of our fuels come from oil, and a great deal of our nation's foreign policy--and consequently a huge percentage of taxpayer dollars--is directly or indirectly influenced by our need to secure a steady supply of oil. Now, let me paint you a picture with my imagination brush. We could live in a world where we have a choice between using saltwater or oil as the base for most of our fuels. Our political and industrial leaders start to wonder if there might be a convenient source of saltwater near us, one that wouldn't be controlled by terrorism-supporting nations, or any other sovereignty for that matter...and if we could get the saltwater for cheaper than 40 dollars a barrel, well, wouldn't that be a coup. Eventually even our leaders who couldn't find their own posteriors with both hands would make their way to the ocean...either with the power of their minds or carried by a mob of constituents who don't appreciate paying terrorists 4 bucks a gallon to fill up their Hummers.

Oh, and wanna know the kicker? 16 days ago I wrote about a guy who was using radio waves to fight cancer...IT'S THE SAME GUY. And even more amazingly, it's the same machine that led to both discoveries (which will of course be pursued by many more sophisticated scientists with much better equipment and bigger budgets, but still). John Kanzius may be a household name in a quarter of a century, for inventing a single machine that helped the fight against cancer...as a warm-up before helping to solve the world's energy problems.

Oh yeah, and he's willing to sell the saltwater-burning invention and let someone else run with it...so he can take the proceeds of the sale and reinvest it in his efforts to cure kids with leukemia. I'm not one to affix the "hero" label to someone willy-nilly, but in this case, John Kanzius is making a good case for being the Superman of our time, and he's doing it without ever ceasing to be mild-mannered.

Some links:
http://www.livescience.com/environment/070911_ap_salt_water.html
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07252/815920-85.stm

Video from local news:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGg0ATfoBgo

This is obviously the very beginning of a long story with extraordinary potential, and I intend to keep an ear and an eye out for more developments. If I miss something, however, and one of my loyal readers (can I use the plural there? I'm gonna use the plural) sees more on the subject, please let me know.