I have an original pen-and-ink cartoon in my office done by a former colleague, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Steve Breen, in which Dr. Irving Crumpler demonstrates his Perpetual Lotion Machine to a pair of potential investors. I paid Steve $25 for the work back in 1993, before his Pulitzer, to post on a science web site I had just started, and almost no one ever saw the cartoon. Anyway, the machine just keeps dripping and dripping at the outflow pipe, with no form of input but lots of whizbang gizmos attached to a big tank. It amuses me every time I look at it.

Equally amusing is the case of Dennis Lee, who for years now has been selling dealerships for his perpetual motion machines. How creative! He of course does not have a perpetual motion machine yet to demonstrate (Eric Krieg explains why not), but if you want to get in on the eventual market (which would end our dependence on oil and surely dwarf the hydrogen economy) you can plunk down some cash and be ready to sell them when they’re fully developed.

Lee has gotten in trouble with the law a few times, points out physicist Bob Park. At least seven states apparently have taken action against him. Last month he violated a court order in Washington state, where he pitched “free electricity from magnets, a car engine that runs on pickle juice, and other products.”

You have to wonder how good the science education is in this country if the law has to help protect people from the likes of Dr. Irving Crumpler.