The Great Ethanol Conspiracy

Ethanol


We know that ethanol use in this country was based on the needs of national politicians, all of whom want to be president, to cater to Iowa corn farmers. This is why the nation that is supposed to be for "free trade" and NAFTA has a 54 cent tariff per gallon of much cheaper sugar-based ethanol that comes primarily from Brazil. This is also why we all use corn syrup instead of sugar even though California and Hawaii are both sugar producing states.

Here is a great conspiracy to consider though. We are told that we need to use ethanol to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and clean up the air. Here is the problem. It requires twice as much farmland to produce corn-based ethanol than sugar-based ethanol. We have already seen food prices jump recently because of the increase price of corn which was brought about, at least in part, by an increased demand for ethanol (actually an increased requirement since consumers would not buy it of their own free will). Higher prices for corn should mean that increased production will become more lucrative. This, combined with the increased demand for ethanol means that a lot more land will come into production for producing corn. Keep in mind that right now we pay corn farmers not to grow to keep prices propped up.

So now more land in the U.S. will be farmed to produce corn which in turn will need to go through a manufacturing process in order to turn it into ethanol. What will power the tractors, the delivery trucks, and the manufacturing facilities? That's right, more fossil fuels. Not only that, but it may likely take more than a gallon of fossil fuels to produce a gallon of ethanol. This means that the gasoline will be burned quicker and our fossil fuel pollution would actually go up due to ethanol. In the meantime, agricultural production, which would be better used as food than fuel, will be diverted away from food markets, resulting in higher prices for food. This will mean that more land will need to be brought into production to make up for the shortfall in demand for food - requiring more fossil fuel.

If I were an oil company, where would I want to sell more fuel? Probably the place that buys the most, the U.S. And how could I get the U.S. to increase its demand for fossil fuels, thereby driving up prices? I could come up with a scheme that requires an increased use of fossil fuels across the board. And what is seemingly the least likely way to do that which would be completely undetected or unbelieved by the public? Push the production of an alternative fuel that will actually require more fossil fuels to produce.

It sounds fun and obviously like an overboard conspiracy, but have you heard a single oil producing company complain about the U.S. push to switch to ethanol? If each gallon lost at the pump to ethanol represented two new gallons sold toward production, would you complain?

Iraq? What Iraq?

Dem voters no longer fight battle of Iraq

As predicted, the dems are no longer worried about Iraq. We should hardly be surprised since the front-runner, Clinton, is just a culpable as any neo-con for this tragedy that has no end in sight. However, since it will be more of a burden to Clinton than to any of her Republican challengers, the issue has gone away. Or at least it has gone away from the Iowa campaign and among top democratic insiders. They know the issue will bite them in the fall of 2008 if Hillary is their candidate.

The question though is why Obama is pursuing the strategy he is pursuing. His advocating an invasion of Pakistan to show that he is tough on...well tough enough to declare war for no reason...seems to be for the sake of looking like he is not afraid to declare war or use force...however poorly formulated the policy or tragic the results. It shows he is looking toward the fall of 2008 and that this is not just a test run. That may be why he is not exploiting the one issue that would allow him to trounce Hillary among the anti-war left. But perhaps he already has these votes and doesn't need to remind voters of the fact.

Hillary has been suffering in the polls lately, but her numbers are still strong. If the majority of democratic voters had any integrity (you remember, the ones opposed to the war and who wanted to impeach Bush 15 minutes after he took office) they would be savaging Hillary for her vote and abandoning her in droves. But just like politics in the GOP, personality trumps issues and principles. Granted, every candidate makes sure to massage the voter bases soft spots on the way to making the kill, but few, if any, have actually results to show. Most do the exact opposite of what they say because it has helped to ensure their re-election. Democrats move the right, Republicans to the left. The side that wins usually gets the opposite of what they were promised.

This is why I am almost tempted to vote for Hillary. I have agreed with almost nothing she has said on the campaign trail. On the other hand, I know in my heart that her sole goal in life is power through becoming president. That means that she will say anything to get elected and by saying anything we mean no-holes-barred "lying". So if someone says the opposite of what you agree with constantly and you know they are in all likelihood either lying about their beliefs or lying about what they are going to do, then chances are they will be almost exactly what you want.

In my own opinion, Hillary's personal goal for power trumps whatever her beliefs may be and she will sell out her party's base just as quickly as the democratic Congress has done in this past session. The same mentality existed with Nixon. This is probably why lawyers should be banned from the presidency.

Science trapped by religious thinking?

Comment From Slashdot:


I agree, but I disagree. So many people (Platonists) think these laws exist outside of human experience, and it's so obvious that they don't. WHAT they try to describe does, but there's a big difference. We can say a^2 + b^2 = c^2, but the very notion of a triangle is completely circumscribed by human experience, and the notion of abstract notation is also a human thing. To say such a relation exists a priori is where I believe rationalism runs off the rails into a kind of metaphysics of "belief" as opposed to empirical science, and where empirical science mistakes itself for reality.

We ARE creating the laws, but what we create them ABOUT is something we do not have control over. The universe and human evolution rolled those dice aeons ago. Yes, you COULD write a law that says gravity doesn't exist, IF the law you write permits the kind of observations we make regarding objects in space/time. In fact, this is an interesting example. The Einsteinian view is that gravity (in and of itself) doesn't exist. It is our perception of how objects behave in curved space time. In the other ring, you have physicists who are bound and determined to shoe-horn gravity into some grand design of particle physics, and are on a continuous (and IMHO, quixotic) quest for the Graviton.

So, you grab a brick, hold it out. Let go. It falls. The effect of it falling on release we can call "gravity", but whether gravity exists as a REAL force in the universe, or just some weird effect of space/time warpage is another issue. So, yes, you CAN write a law that says "gravity doesn't exist" as long as your law accounts for the behaviour exhibited in the test of your dropping the brick.

What is insightful about your brief post is the point that what we call "Scientific Laws" are merely descriptions of nature. The laws are Scientific, and are therefore, tentative. They will remain "true" only as long as they can be proven to be true. Once some genius comes along and disproves it, or, more likely, incorporates it into some larger understanding, it will cease to be "true". Science is not based on absolute permanent truth. Scientific truth is ALWAYS provisional. It is so, as it is a product of language - a tool of our species.


Science supposedly supplanted religion in the mind of the enlightened with regard to explaining the natural world. The one thing that many scientists have still not abandoned is that notion there is some supernatural force at the center that has decreed the way the world works. Early Christianity placed no limits on God and wrote off the investigation of the outside world as meaningless because it had nothing to do with spirituality or the next life. Later Christianity attempted to prove that God's mind was ordered and reasoned at that recurring patterns in natural phenomenon were a result of the dictates of God. The investigation of theologians/early scientists in the era was to "Discover the Mind of God."

Today, most scientist or at least those who purport to believe in science hold just as firmly as any fundamentalist Christian in the faith of a natural and mathematically precise order that is just waiting to be discovered once sufficient empirical evidence has been gathered an analyzed. While it may be impossible to ascribe the relative accuracy of Newtonian physics (something which is technically wrong, but still precise enough to work relatively well) to mere coincidence, it seems a bit arrogant or perhaps naive to think our tiny evolved brains can understand the Universe as we would a self-contained geometry problem.

For science to truly progress, we need to abandon our faith in a non-living, non-sentient, rationality laying down precise and discoverable laws governing the universe just as many have abandoned the idea of a living, sentient, rational being laying down precise and discoverable laws governing the universe. Scientific findings are great and often useful, but the irrational belief that each new empirically discovered law is "The Truth" leads us down false paths like (in all likelihood) looking for the GUT or gravitons.

Baseball

Baseball's Monopoly Status

Baseball is once again back in the news because of a report, by a former Senator no less, that about 100 players in the recent past, most of whom are still playing, took illegal steroids or other performance enhancing drugs.

They're are always calls for Congressional investigations every time this happens, and much like the tobacco warnings, all that happens is a collective mea culpa followed by a few surface changes. I am well aware the Congress never accomplishes anything with these spectacles and that they are mostly designed for PR purposes, but I always wondered what business it was of Congress.

The answer is that baseball is the only professional sport that has a monopoly. The somewhat confusing history of how this arose is in the article above, but there it is. Baseball is exempt from the Sherman anti-trust act and is not considered interstate commerce by the Supreme Court - although in the past the court has ruled that the gallon of milk that travels 2 miles from the dairy to the local store and then to your house without leaving your county is interstate commerce. Baseball players can engage in both collective and individual bargaining in contravention to federal labor laws. And, to boot, most baseball stadiums are funded by state and local (and perhaps federal) development money - because as we know, the American economy would come to a grinding halt if we couldn't watch steroid-fed overpaid 20 year-olds hit a little ball around.

So, at last, here is my point. Who cares if these idiots are shortening their lives and shrinking their privates for several million dollars? My problem is that no one else can start up a baseball league to compete. If you want to see baseball clean up its act, give it some competition. Nothing will make baseball start regulating itself faster than the threat of lost revenue with a direct competitor. Right now, their scandals cost them some revenue, but they can always bounce back. Why? Because they are a monopoly.

Eliminate the monopoly, open baseball up to competition, and the problems will start to disappear as the threat of lost revenue appears. Competition may even drive down the salaries and open up the number of baseball jobs to potential players. Someone might take steroids to go from having no job to earning $5 million a year, but a lot fewer players will take steroids if it is the difference between a job that pay $200,000 per year and a job that pays $300,000 a year. Two or three competing baseball leagues (and the money is obviously there to sustain it) mean a lot more jobs for players and lot more competition for the fan's dollars.

The Sicilian Expedition

The Sicilian Expedition

In many ways, the Iraq war has now become the American version of Athen's Sicilian Expedition. There are, of course, many superficial similarities, but some day I will get into the deeper aspects and see if the average Athenian's view of the Sicilian expedition and why it was necessary bears any resemblance to the modern American's view of the war in Iraq.

The main idea though is that we have an empire that just emerged from a major war using a minor and unconnected causus belli to declare war on a smaller, but relatively powerful independent nation. The empire, with the full backing of its people, sends out a huge military expedition that essentially comprises the bulk of their military. Due to the far flung nature of the enterprise, the associated expenses are also a major drain on the finances of the empire.

Because the original goal of the planners of the expedition was different than the publicly announced goal, and because the planners were more interested in their own glory than any final goal, the war was plagued with uncertainty at the highest levels. This uncertainty led to confusion and contradiction in executing the war which resulted in several reversals even though the empire's military forces were superior in every way when compared to the rest of the world at that time. Frequently the civilian leaders ignored the assessments of the war from the commanders in the field.

In the end, the war dragged on for several years without accomplishment until the empire withdrew its forces. Because it was so badly depleted both militarily and economically, the empire's allies and tributaries, seething with resentment for decades, began to rebel. The empire's traditional enemies took their weakness as an invitation to renew hostilities to the point where the empire could no longer defend its own allies (leading to further defections) and was so weak that it could not defend its own territories. The resulting economic and political crises that followed saw the end of democracy in the empire and a quick succession of ruinous governments that could not prevent (and in some cases hastened) the fall of the empire.

It should be remembered that after the end of the second Peloponnesian War, Athens fades from greatness in history forever.

Warfare

Warfare is the most horrendous and counter-productive of all human endeavors. It is the decision to destroy (on the other side) and sacrifice (on one's own side) life, liberty, and property on a large scale. A defensive war, one waged against a person or country involuntarily is one matter. The decision to voluntarily undertake a war is another altogether. As an aside, proponents of voluntary wars constantly attempt to make the latter look like the former and even in democracies find many who are all too willing to suspend their disbelief and reason when their patriotism is called upon or into question.

In any event, a voluntary war should never be undertaken lightly by a democracy. Before making the decision to undertake a war, a democracy should make sure that it is capable of sticking to several principles throughout the course of the war:

1. The enemy must be clearly defined.
2. The goal must be total victory.
3. The details of a victory must be clear and achievable.

We have failed both in Iraq and Afghanistan on these counts and will likely do the same in future wars.

In Afghanistan, our fundamental failure was limiting our resolve to achieve victory by not clearly defining our enemy and seeking their defeat. The Taliban are back with a vengeance because we thought our goal was democracy in a land where none has ever existed. Our goal should have been the annihilation of the Taliban - no exceptions. That was the only way to achieve victory in Afghanistan and now that opportunity is long gone. That is why the resolve to enter the war must be 100% before it is undertaken. When wars are undertaken under less than true pretenses or with unclear and unrealistic goals, it often has an effect of lowering the resolve of those in charge of the war.

The Taliban waged a war of annihilation against the non-Taliban ethnic groups in Afghanistan. Thinking they would abandon those goals because some magnanimous foreign power attacked them was shear lunacy. We should have been prepared to go village by village and essentially execute their soldiers. That is why war should never be undertaken lightly. Once the decision is made, the resolve must be total to commit the seemingly worst acts of humanity. But that is how wars are won.

War should only be entered into voluntarily under the most extreme circumstances and should only be fought with the most extreme ferocity once that decision has been made.

The Iraq war needs a whole essay. Not only was the war undertaken with fake pretenses, the mission has changed from month to month. Our only clearly defined enemy was one person who is now dead. In the meantime a million new enemies have sprung up, leaving us without absolutely nothing to achieve as far as remaining in Iraq goes.

Soft Bigotry

"The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations"

The soft bigotry of a bad law

This has nothing directly to do with the article, but this phrase, which apparently came from a George W. Bush speech on the dreaded "No Child Left Behind" program, is something I've been searching for, for many years. I've usually expressed it as paternalistic notions of government treating non-whites as children in the way that government seems to express the goals and methods of programs. I often hear just as much racism in these supposedly altruistic goals as anything else short of a Klan member.

Think of Joe Biden talking about Indians working at the 7-11. Never mind how many doctors, programmers, engineers, and other professionals living in this country have Indian ancestry. This is the type of bigotry that comes from whites who have lowered expectations of non-whites and therefore think we need to help them overcome what Hunter Thompson called their "racial handicap".

These are absolutely horrible sentiments that only make the problem worse since it often appears that some members of these groups start to buy into other people's sense of low expectations. It becomes a social construct after a while. Like your Irish friends who pride themselves on having drinking and fighting problems. They think it is part of their identity.

I've been trying to think of ways to classify different types of racism, since people cry foul over racism all the time in this country. We have a gut reaction some times as to whether something is or is not an example of racism and I believe our varying notions of what constitutes racism in a given instance is usually determined by our subconscious notions about what type of racism is being exercised.

A. There is outright racism. The kind where people want someone killed or otherwise physically hurt because of their race. This is obviously the worst kind. It can be completely irrational drive against everyone encountered of a particular race or (perhaps worse) a methodical, albeit insane, notion that the elimination of an entire race will somehow be a benefit. Call this Hitler racism.

B. There is what I call "petty" racism. This is when a person has a notion that is or might be considered racist, but does not otherwise act on it in any discernible (or at least aggressive) way. This is the sort of racism where people outright believe and think that a particular race is inferior to their own and/or others in one or more particular areas for whatever reason. People may even be able to point to some basis in fact for arriving at their conclusions whether or not they are correct. People who have these particular beliefs can usually function with the race that they find inferior. In fact, I have noticed that they are often much better at social interaction with the races they believe inferior than those in category C or D. Call this Dog the Bounty Hunter racism.

C. The "low expectations" racism. This is the notion that special exceptions need to be made in order to help members of a particular race because "they don't have it as well as we do" or some other false pretense that brushes everyone of a particular race with as broad a stroke as any real racist. It usually practiced by those who like to cry racism where none exists - often as a way to alleviate their own self-doubt about their beliefs. This is the quintessential "white guilt" that really accomplishes nothing. This type of racism, to me, is more detestable than that in B above, because it is contrary to the notion that people are and should be treated as individuals and also since it helps enable the beliefs of people with type-B racist tendencies. When you say group X, where X is defined by a particular racial or cultural characteristic, needs special treatment different than the rest of us, you are ultimately saying group X is inferior on some level. The problem is that if you are giving away money or other benefits, you may have no trouble finding a large number of members of group X willing to play the part of the needy inferior. Only a fool would reject free money. The problem is when it starts to infect people's individual pride or translates into a social construct that members of X are ALL inferior. Hence the phrase, the "soft bigotry of low expectations" - you're inferior, but it's not your fault. This is how you treat an infant or a young child - never an adult. Call this Joe Biden racism.

A final note is that I almost called category C "Michael Richards" racism. I believe that people who fall into category C are really people who are in category B but feel that since racism is wrong they have to make up for it somehow. They cannot get past the idea of judging people by categories. The idea of making individual assessments never enters their minds because they have never done it. When they have pent up these thoughts long enough, they sometimes come out in outbursts like the Michael Richards' rant. Is he a racist? Yes. Is he a category A racist? No. Chances are he has followed the rest of Hollywood by calling everyone else in the world racist and saying we need to give money to people of a particular race because they are less fortunate than us. Then two black hecklers come along and instead of treating them as hecklers, he treats them as black people, you know, the ones he has been helping in order to sooth his white guilt and show what a non-racist person he is.

D. Post-modern "other" racism. This is another bad form of racism and I will have to say that I likely suffered from it from time to time. This is the notion that members of another racial group are somehow "superior" to our own in some manner. This is where you have white kids pretending to be black. This is where Mrs. Costanza completely throws away someone's advice because she thought she was Chinese, but wasn't. The idea that the "other" somehow has more wisdom and knowledge than you because they are a different race is still racism - not judging individuals as individuals. I view this type of racism as just a different stage of B and C. You believe that all members of a particular race are inferior, so you compensate by convincing yourself that they are superior in some other way whether in music, fashion, language, or some other sense.

I probably have the start of a good doctoral thesis here although I'm sure someone has already come up with these notions. Something to be explored later perhaps.