Plastiki

Much as I try not to follow the exploits of people with way too much money and their efforts to spend it in amusing or charitable ways, I couldn't resist this story in the SFChronicle. It seems one of the de Rothschild progeny is about to launch Plastiki, a catamaran made of two-liter plastic bottles.

Pier 31 is ground zero for Plastiki, the strangest-looking boat ever built in San Francisco, a fantastic vessel, a twin-hulled catamaran 60 feet long, made of 12,000 2-liter plastic drink bottles filled with dry ice. It's bound to a frame made of woven plastic, held together with heat-welded tape and steel bolts.

As you might guess, anyone with enough money to finance this thing can afford a pretty snazzy web site, too. On it, you will learn that the toilet (not the head, it seems) is:

a separating composting toilet; worms and coconut husks get added to the solid waste enabling fast breakdown of the bad stuff.

Eww.

Not sure about the dry ice reference in the Chronicle story. Garrett can tell you that dry ice and plastic soda bottles make great dry ice bombs, but that would seem not to be a great idea here. I also just found out from that Wikipedia article on dry ice bombs that they're illegal in California -- a felony, no less! That will be news to our unnamed friends who schooled Garrett in the technique.