Fancy free.

Do you know what a chimera is? It's a monster with a lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail from the Greek mythology, says my dictionary. In other words, an exceedingly fanciful notion. Getting something for nothing has been one such wild dream of human beings from time immemorial. A power generator that conjures energy out of nothing, for instance, was Leonardo da Vinci's chimera. It seems an Irish inventor has finally cracked the riddle after 23 years' of tireless toil with the Jasker Power System. Of course, those who believe in the first law of thermodynamics ("You can't get out more energy than you put in.") as gospel say it cannot be done. Meanwhile, read the Reuter's story at this address (if you don't find it there, read it from the Google cache using 'Jasker Power System' as your search phrase): news.zdnet.co.uk.

Missionary impossible.

L Ron Hubbard was a moderately successful sci-fi writer. He said he was a World War II hero. History says the US Navy sacked him for incompetence. L Ron also 'invented' Scientology. This dianetics-based cult with 'applied religious philosophy' has always held a strange fascination for me. Its eccentric, sci-fi like, totalitarian theology does not appeal to me. What intrigues me is the list of its adherents. It reads like a high-achiever Who's Who. (Tom Cruise and John Travolta are two examples. No business like show business, what?) I read on the Web how the 'Church' used the much criticised and much feared Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) forcing Google to expunge from its database URLs of several Norway-based Xenu.net's pages [xenu.net] containing "mirrored excerpts from sacred texts which the cult guards jealously as its intellectual capital." (Thomas C Greene in 'Scientologists gag Google'.) theregister.co.uk. Also read a related Reuters report ('Google revives Scientology Web page') at news.com.com.