5.7.2K8: Leave it to Popular Science...

... to find plenty of convenient tie-ins to popular culture wherever they can—or force it, when they can't. For instance, on the stands in the same month that the new Iron Man movie is being released, the PopSci cover features the image at right, and the cover blurb, "The Real Iron Man."

In reality, the image at right is about as real as the movie's superhero Iron Man: Specifically, it is a computer-generated image of a series of concepts for various human augmentation equipment being developed by various labs (many of them military). To be fair, the magazine does point this out on the inside... and even offers a brief article about their resident computer artist, who has been creating these incredibly photo-realistic covers for the magazine for years. Remember the female robot I pictured on an earlier Techlog? Bingo.

So, yeah, part of me is very impressed with this stuff. I mean, look at it! Wish I could create images like that. But on the other hand, I wish Popular Science was giving us more hard-hitting science issues: For instance, leading the charge to energy independence and conservation; showing us more efficient cars, as opposed to just faster ones; and examining what we know about the realities of space travel, instead of using sci-fi movies to highlight the methods they throw together to make good drama.

Oh, well... I guess that's why I have my Scientific American subscription...

5.15.2K8: Another reason to ditch your SUV...

... like you needed another one, right? But even as you shell out that $50 bill to fill up your tank, it turns out there's another reason to get rid of that SUV ASAP: It's become the target of precious metals thieves.

Did I hear a "Huh?" voiced out there? Then listen up.

In today's faltering economy, precious metals... and even many not-so-precious metals... are becoming valuable commodities. So much so, that people are stealing everyday objects that contain valuable metals, separating those metals (usually by melting them down), and selling them for money. It even extends to stealing highway barriers and sewer grates, and breaking into homes to steal the copper pipes and wiring. And it extends to SUVs... or, more specifically, their catalytic converters.

(There's that "Huh?" again...)

A catalytic converter contains the metal platinum... it's part of the process of cleaning the exhaust gases from your car. Therefore thieves have taken to stealing catalytic converters, to get at that platinum. And SUVs are at the top of their list of vehicles to hit, for two reasons: One, an SUV's converter has a bit more platinum in it than that of a smaller car; and Two, SUVs are easier to crawl under. Already, parking authorities are beefing up security, watching for lurkers in parking lots, and trying to protect vehicles from being castrated. But they can't be everywhere.

So, if one day you climb into your Hummer, start the engine, and discover it's roaring like a jumbo jet and won't proceed at faster than 20MPH (actually, it probably won't even start, much less go anywhere), you'll know what happened: You've become a victim of platinum theft.

And you thought that gas was expensive...