Is Ethanol ready as an alternative fuel?

Hidden costs of corn-based ethanol | csmonitor.com:

"Policymakers and legislators often fail to consider the law of unintended consequences. The latest example is their attempt to reduce the United States' dependence on imported oil by shifting a big share of the nation's largest crop – corn – to the production of ethanol for fueling automobiles.

Good goal, bad policy. In fact, ethanol will do little to reduce the large percentage of our fuel that is imported (more than 60 percent), and the ethanol policy will have ripple effects on other markets. Corn farmers and ethanol refiners are ecstatic about the ethanol boom and are enjoying the windfall of artificially enhanced demand. But it will be an expensive and dangerous experiment for the rest of us.

President Bush has set a target of replacing 15 percent of domestic gasoline use with biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel) during the next 10 years, which would require almost a fivefold increase in mandatory biofuel use, to about 35 billion gallons. With current technology, almost all of this biofuel would have to come from corn because there is no feasible alternative.

American legislators and policy­makers seem oblivious to the scientific and economic realities of ethanol production. Brazil and other major sugar cane-producing nations enjoy significant advantages over the US in producing ethanol, including ample agricultural land, warm climates amenable to vast plantations, and on-site distilleries that can process cane immediately after harvest.

Thus, in the absence of cost-effective, domestically available sources for producing ethanol, rather than using corn, it would make far more sense to import ethanol from Brazil and other countries that can produce it efficiently."

Lets see, we'll double the cost of food so we can produce fuel that is more expensive per mile than the oil we have sitting in the ground? Sounds like government planning to me.

OpinionJournal - Potomac Watch:

"It's taken politicians a while to catch on to these anti-ethanol vibes, but they've now got the picture. At an agriculture conference in Indianapolis last fall, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns and EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson spoke, delivering their usual fare about how ethanol was the greatest thing since sliced corn bread. They expected warm applause; in the past the entire ag community united around helping their brother corn farmers make a buck. But now that ethanol is literally taking food from their beasts' mouths, much of that community has grown less friendly. According to one attendee, Messrs. Daniels, Johanns and Johnson were later slammed with snippy ethanol questions from angry livestock owners, much to their dazed surprise. Word is that even the presidential candidates--who usually can say no wrong about ethanol while touring the Midwest--are having to be more selective about where they make their remarks.

Things are even hotter in Washington, where lobbying groups are firming up their positions against corn ethanol. The hugely influential National Cattlemen's Beef Association has gone so far as to outline a series of public demands, including an end to any government tax credits (subsidies) for ethanol and an axe to the import tariff on foreign ethanol. Put another way, the cattlemen are so angry that they are demanding free markets and free trade--a first. Maybe ethanol really is a miracle fuel. In any event, expect the ethanol call to get harder for Plains state senators such as Max Baucus, Ben Nelson and Byron Dorgan."

Note: 60% of corn production has been used to feed animals in the US - those costs have doubled also...

Have you switched to Vista?

KFYI - "The Valley's Talk Station":

"Dell, which is tied with HP as the largest computer maker in the country, quietly announced it was going to offer Windows XP again on models in two of its lines, the Inspiron and Dimension.

This follows an intense series of posts on Dell's 'IdeaStorm' blog, which was designed to allow direct feedback from consumers and end users to Dell's management.

(Dell, if you have not been following the company, has been hammered of late for poor management and terrible customer service.)

'We heard you loud and clear on bringing the Windows XP option back to our Dell consumer PC offerings,' said Dell on its blog.

Why is this significant?

This is a clear shot across the bow of Microsoft and sends two messages I think are really interesting:
1. you shipped Vista before it was ready and without any compelling, must-have features and
2. Windows XP is good enough for most people and we don't really care to learn a different way of doing things."

I'm not planning to use Vista for at least a year - Win XP is working fine, and I even have Win98 on some computers. The only person I've talked to who knew someone with Vista said that laptop couldn't connect to their home LAN, despite the best efforts of several computer savvy folks who were strongly motivated to get it working.
Gateway decided to keep offering WinXP earlier this year.

A Cure for Tennis Elbow - Robotic Bagpipe Player

McBlare - Robotic Bagpipe Player:

"'McBlare' is a robotic bagpipe player. It plays an ordinary set of bagpipes using an air compressor to provide air and electro-magnetic devices to power the 'fingers' that open and close tone holes that determine the musical pitch. McBlare is controlled by a computer that has many traditional bagpipe tunes in its memory."

OK - it has nothing to do with Tennis Elbow. I found this at Dave Barry's site: http://blogs.herald.com/dave_barrys_blog/

Happy Friday

Not your father's GTI

Video: Unveiling a W12-Powered Volkswagen Golf GTI:

"There's fast and then there's uber fast. The 200hp Volkswagen GTI is pretty peppy in its own right, but the German carmaker was far from satisfied. Thus, they created the Golf GTI W12 650 concept vehicle at Worthersee 2007 in Austria. They're saying that this is 'the ultimate GTI in every way', with its 0-62mph time of just 3.7 seconds. Keep the pedal to the metal and this rabbit on steroids will keep going and going until it tops out at around 325 km/h (201mph)."

Actually a 200 HP GTI doesn't sound too bad - 650 is just a bit over the top ;-)

Seven Stages of Legal Activism

Eliot Spitzer's Pro-Abortion Zealotry | Redstate:

"Most of you should be familiar by now with the Seven Stages of Liberal Legal Activism:

1. It's a free country, X should not be illegal.
2. The Constitution prohibits X from being made illegal.
3. If the Constitution protects a right to X, how can it be immoral? Anyone who disagrees is a bigot.
4. If X is a Constitutional right, how can we deny it to the poor? Taxpayer money must be given to people to get X.
5. The Constitution requires that taxpayer money be given to people to get X.
6. People who refuse to participate in X are criminals.
7. People who publicly disagree with X are criminals."

Regardless of how you feel about the rest of this article, these 7 stages of activism deserve some consideration.

A key question I sometimes ask pastors is whether they want their religious beliefs expressed as the law of the land. If they do, then I walk on - the same should be applied for some of these social issues.

There is an enormous difference between living in a country where abortion is permitted, and living in a country where discouraging abortion is a criminal act. The same is true of many other issues.

I would much prefer that my government not have an opinion on an issue, than have my government regulate what my opinions should be.

Jerry Falwell - RIP

Jerry Falwell -- Say Hello to Ronald Reagan! by Ann Coulter - HUMAN EVENTS:

"No man in the last century better illustrated Jesus' warning that 'All men will hate you because of me' than the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who left this world on Tuesday. Separately, no man better illustrates [Ann Coulter's] warning that it doesn't pay to be nice to liberals.

Falwell was a perfected Christian. He exuded Christian love for all men, hating sin while loving sinners. This is as opposed to liberals, who just love sinners. Like Christ ministering to prostitutes, Falwell regularly left the safe confines of his church to show up in such benighted venues as CNN."

All the reporting I've ever seen about Falwell has been very one-sided. His fans speak of his generosity & his faith - on balance, I prefer to believe them. The rest of Ann Coulter's column quoted above illustrates how the media frequently does a 180 when conservatives comment (as Falwell often did) on their sacred cows.

Compact Fluorescent Lights contain mercury - get over it.

American Thinker Blog: If you break a CFL light bulb...:

"A quick calculation shows that the 5 mg of mercury in an energy-conserving CFL is enough to fill an average size room (100 cubic meters volume) with the 0.05 mg/cubic meter vapor concentration that is considered hazardous for long term chronic exposure. Since this is the rule for laboratories, it probably does not account for people who might be especially sensitive, including infants, small children and pregnant women. As with allergies, different people can have vastly different responses to exposures to toxins.

The admonition to open the window for 15 minutes after a CFL break does not account for the various sizes / shapes of rooms, placement of windows (or absence thereof) and whether there is adequate cross-ventilation. And of course, it is not so convenient to ventilate a room thoroughly with outdoor air during the dead of winter in a northern clime."

Mercury is a useful element that happens to be harmful to humans. Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFLs) are made overseas and contain mercury. I have seen both of these facts cited recently as reasons to avoid using them. I disagree - CFLs emit good light and much less heat while using less energy and lasting a very long time. If those attributes are useful to you, then try some.

If you're worried about mercury, you could avoid breaking them and save used ones for your local hazardous waste collection, or get LED bulbs instead.

The desire to limit energy consumption doesn't always have to be linked to social causes - sometimes, it is just a matter of saving money.