Mumpower-led protest termed just sound, fury

 In last month’s cover story on the protest of the Mexican consulate’s visit to Flat Rock, the Daily Planet paraphrased Carl Mumpower saying the consulate’s visit was for “political purposes.”

I couldn’t conceive of a more hypocritical statement. Consular Rosa Curto is a bureaucrat, not an elected official. She made the trip to Flat Rock from Raleigh because the Latino community and the Latino Advocacy Coalition requested her service.

Mumpower, on the other hand, used Curto’s visit to help rally his conservative base and prove his jingoist credentials. The protest had nothing to do with policy or helping fix our country’s immigration problem; it was a political stunt in preparation for November’s 11th-District congressional race against Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville.

Mumpower claims to be a man of action, but his rhetoric is nothing but a political gimmick: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

BEN SMITH
Editor-In-Chief
The Blue Banner, UNC Asheville’s Student Newspaper
Asheville

50 mpg from car with pickle-jar power? Not!

Some weeks back in the Asheville Citizen-Times, a gentleman defining himself as a retired engineer from Honeywell (probably designed boxes to ship thermostats) stated that he used a pickle jar with two electrodes, powered by an auto battery, to generate hydrogen (and oxygen) through electrolysis.

He then stated that he introduced the hydrogen into the fuel injection. He claimed he was getting in excess of 50 miles per gallon, using only the addition of some water. The expenses associated with this concept were about $20.

A friend of mine who lives in the Asheville area called me to relate the above story. My friend had actually been a high-school physics teacher. I was in total shock that he could believe this absurd story.

Yesterday, I was attending a conference in Boone on an unrelated topic when a distinguished older gentleman repeated the same story, saying his son (a veterinarian) was doing this and getting over 50 miles per gallon on his car.

As I pondered these two accounts, I came to the conclusion that there must be a form of illiteracy associated with basic scientific concepts. There are two fundamental issues that make the pickle jar theory impossible.

Breaking apart the water molecule of hydrogen and oxygen requires energy; if you took the total quantity of hydrogen and oxygen collected and recombined them, there would be less energy available than is required to separate the elements.

That is using oxygen (stronger reaction) as the oxidizing agent, not air. Second, if you take the total energy equivalent of the gasoline plus the total energy equivalent of the hydrogen, the total cannot exceed the sum of the parts.

I understand our desire to find alternative sources of fuel, but in this case, one could simply say, “if a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is not true.”

JERRY HYMAN
Boone

Stop the hotel/condo project near Basilica

Please have the will to stop this ... the hotel and condo towers across from the Basilica.

The couple of comments on TV were that this was too large for our smallish downtown .....

One business person from the Grove said she welcomed it — she wanted the business ... had nothing to do with the out of scale size and added congestion ....

 The master plan said we should have parks every few blocks — isn’t this a few blocks from Pritchard Park? Would not a park here highlight jewels — like the Basilica — and the Civic Center?

 Couldn’t we find a way to have parking — and a park — and not 25 stories of towers looming over the town?

 This is just wrong in this location. New hotels should be on the edges and leading to development of the other parts of Asheville, and having satellite parking with transit to town.

 What value added to our unique downtown do we get for a 25-story condo and 25-story hotel? More traffic. More need for permanent parking inside the city. How do we make the town more bike and pedestrian friendly with this kind of thinking?
 We like the scale of downtown — how can you justify changing that so significantly?

 You started a process that was a mistake — and you are afraid to change course — even considering Master Plan comments.
 The Master Plan leaders said we were in the driver’s seat and don’t dare accept anything that we don’t really want ... and we really want this?

 I just don’t understand ....

JERRY HINZ
Asheville