Why screw around with ethanol?

We can use genetic hybridization to create a stem-cell propagated variant of a whale heart which will live in a solution inside the engine compartment of my car, providing a sugar-fueled hydraulic engine that is both emissions free and which, when worn out, can be recycled into pet food or used to make fajitas.

The only "downside" is that sugar will become so expensive that soft-drinks and candy are no longer affordable, thus arresting the childhood obesity/diabetes epidemic, improving life spans while simultaneously lowering health care costs. Medicaid dental plans alone save so much money that they are reinstated in all states who've previously cut them. Prescription rates for psychiatric meds for both children and adults will plummet, as researchers finally determine they've actually been providing symptomatic treatment for chronic hypoglycemia all this time. As the technology is tasked to other uses, emissions continue to fall to such low levels that global warming is arrested. Lung disease not attributable to smoking is nearly eradicated.

See? Everybody wins. So get on it, people! I'll be waiting for my royalty checks.

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You must see coming technology oh great swammi

For a minute there, I thought my intellectual property lawsuit was in jeopardy.

That looks like a tough competitor, though.

Fucking brilliant suggestion, TenK!

I can see the advertisements now [insert cheesy, overstimulated announcer voice here]: “For the ultimate in magnum towing power and enough brute force to get any job done, there’s nothing that can top the beta-Blue mega powerplant! The largest manufactured cardiac muscle in the world is combined with the latest bioengineering advances to produce the most powerful biological engine the world has ever seen.” Maybe they’d use a smaller whale for, like, little sports cars (I’m thinking the sperm whale for SUV’s – for obvious, phallic reasons).

See, what people on this board aren’t acknowledging is the impact testosterone plays in all of this. When you’re sitting at the intersection in your hydrogen-powered car, no-one turns around to look at the muted rumble or waxing roar of that whispery motor. What they want is an engine that makes noise, and they want that noise to be broadcasting something about their masculinity.

With these bio-engineered engines, the “thud, thud, thud, thud” of the subwoofer in the care next to you will be overpowered completely by a rhythmic “Thud-Thud, Thud-Thud, Thud-Thud” whose percussive quality will be evident through the floorboards, and in the vibrating windows.

So I’m with Saletan – if not this, then some other noisy combustible. Men will never settle for anything that doesn’t combine power, masculinity, virility and noise.

Mine is the perfect plan.

TenaciousK:

Men will never settle for anything that doesn’t combine power, masculinity, virility and noise.

Speak for yourself. Not all men are like that. I could wish, for the sake of the human race and especially the female half of it, that most men aren't like that.

I feel the need, the need for speed -- that's whisper quiet. Or if there's noise and lots of it, at sufficient distance from sensitive ears (including my own) and other things that it doesn't matter.

TenaciousK:

Mine is the perfect plan.

Other than that, it's brilliant.

As you know, that "genetic hybridization" stuff is a materialist fantasy. We'll need to wait for the Lord to create that whale-heart-thingy.

Sorry, Tenacious, Freeman Dyson beat you too it in the NYT Review of Books (latest issue). Where I detect irony in your posting, others, like Dyson, see opportunity. Is there really anything monstrous about a vehicle driven by genetically designed biological parts? In the literal sense, sure, but humanity has gotten used to all sorts of much more monstrous technologies (you mention lung cancer; one obvious monstrosity in the botanical sciences is breeding tobacco for increased nicotine, then selling the product to addict and poison people worldwide).

Besides, genetic manipulation is already here; we just don't like integrating mammal parts with machines because as mammals, we resent its cyborgian implications. But even the Star Trek Voyager used bio-fuel cells, so I suspect we'll get used to it eventually, at least in the West. If we can accept genetically modified plant foods, why not whale-heart engines? Sign me up.

The humor in my tone was related more to me trying to remember as many Saletan themes as I could and stretching my solution to solve them all. I was only half-kidding about the whole audible/testosterone thing, however - think about it: subwoofers so powerful they can cause a collapsed lung [not an urban myth], glass-pack mufflers, the roar of the [insert Troy McClure voice] "Nitro-charged funny cars!" It's related to the reason why people in urban areas continue to by Hummers: it's because they can.

The idea of biological engines has been around a long time - I don't even think my idea of a whale-heart is original [oh damn, there's goes my intellectual property lawsuit!]. It's actually a lovely idea - I like the idea of physiology over mechanics. Certainly, the biosphere is better suited to biological solutions than those that more fundamentally upset the balances upon which it depends.

As far as I know, however, I am the first person to suggest such engines could be recycled into fajitas - so maybe there's a meager royalty coming after-all.

the Frankencoupe.

Other suggestions will be entertained. [I believe the Bassomatic has already been taken]

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I know this will make me sound like i don't date much (not true btw.)but the voyager did not (oh man i'm really going to do this)run on bio fuel cells.it had bio circitry for faster reaction to controll imputs.It was powerd by m.a.m.r.'s. matter anti-matter reactors.(God i hope my girlfriend does'nt see this!!! i feel like such a dork!!)

Ya i know my spelling sucks.but what the hell.

Agreed - Especially, the idea that taking all the corn that goes into the high fructose corn syrup and putting it into gas will help everyone long term.

We don't have to look that far for more sugar laded crops to convert into ethanol. Look at the Red River Valley along the ND/MN border. Most years they produce way way way too many sugar beats(the ugly root version of sugar cane) and end up plowing under a good bulk of their crops. I haven't heard of any plants going up there though. What doesn't get plowed under bounces off the trucks and cause damage to cars following them or lay and rot in the ditches. We can get more crops to convert here than people think. We're still paying some farmers to NOT grow a crop some years.