Wonders Never Cease

George Huber, a scientist from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has developed a process that can create gasoline from sawdust, according to a report by Jim Motavallie of Mother Nature Network. Huber estimates the fuel produced could be "price competive" with gasoline produced from oil by 2019, and the process is carbon nuetral, because the wood or grasses used absorb carbon dioxide while they are growing.

I'm a very loving and optimistic man. I want to believe in a hopeful future. I want to invite positive people into my life, good news, belief and creativity. I'm reading a book right now called Bolt of Fate by Tom Tucker, about Benjamin Franklin and the his experiments with electricity. It was the age of reason, and influential men were fascinated by science and progress, the wonders of the natural world, and the possibilities of harnessing them by the application of reason and the scientific method. Competition was fierce to explain and demonstrate natural phenomena. Papers were written. Electrical demonstrations took place in fashionable salons and scientific societies, before royalty and the elite. It turns out Franklin's famous electric kite was hoax, but the urgency and fervor over ideas in that time provided impetus to a remarkable transformation of human history. In the 1740s an English apothecary named William Watson became a celebrity by transmitting electricity forward and back across the Westminister bridge. In another experiment he transmitted it eight miles, using a simple hand-cranked machine called a Leyden jar that generated static electricity. Out of wonder and curiosity a new age was born, a technology central to our entire lives, that we understand only a little but benefit from every day. We flip a switch and wonders breath to life. It all started with questions and experiments and curiosity.

It's remarkable what human ingenuity can do. Centuries ago an explosion of ingenuity transformed the world and led to remarkable new resources and benefits, the ability to feed millions, the ability to communicate across the world in seconds. We need a new explosion of ingenuity, before the explosions of another kind undo us all.