All this talk about this or that biofuel technology, and this or that EROI, and ifs and maybes, misses the point.

Here is the point. Ready? Here it is:

Biofuels are what people stopped using because they DIDN'T PROVIDE ENOUGH ENERGY TO RUN LATE MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION! (Wood = biofuels.)

That's why they started using coal. Then we started using oil 'cause it was even better than coal.

That's why biofuels aren't gonna make a dent.

Period.

You can talk about better technology and this and that. But for biofuels to make even a dent in our energy use, biofuels would have to yield ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more energy than they did in the Middle Ages. Will "better technology" or "more investment" or breakthroughs in cutting-edge fungus research enable us to get ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times the amount of energy from plants today than they got from trees seven hundred years ago?

Even worse, wood represents decades of stored solar energy. Biofuels from this or that annual crop of grass or corn or whatever represents one year's worth at a time. Are we gonna get ten or a hundred times as much energy from one-tenth or one-hundredth the amount of primary solar energy?

And medieval people were just cutting down the trees and burning them--they weren't goosing them with natural gas fertilizers and oil pesticides and pouring energy into processing them into some cockamamie liquid fuel.

Talking about running the world on biofuels when the oil runs out is like saying "The Cray supercomputer crashed but no problem, we'll just do our work on clay tablets."

To paraphrase 28 Days Later... "This is a bad idea. Know how I can tell? Because it's, like, REALLY OBVIOUSLY a bad idea."

I think this vindicates all those who did not vote in 2000. After all, everyone knew that Bush and Gore were absolutely alike and so similar that it was not only pointless to vote, nay, it would actually be counterproductive in that it would Just Encourage Them.

Of course, now we can look around and see how everything is Exactly Exactly The Same as it would have been if Al Gore had been elected. Exactly! Y'know, sometimes I have trouble remembering who's actually the President, it was so close and inconsequential.

It just goes to show that all those "apathetic" "uninformed" people who Stuck It To The Man by staying home on Election Day were absolutely right. Fight the power! Yeah! Take that!

We who are not Americans and who therefore are free of the onerous and pointless obligation of voting in U.S. elections, yet enjoy the privilege of living in the same ecosystem as President Bush (or is it Gore? Ha ha, whatever!) salute you, the American Vote Resistor, and in particular do not seethe with venom and contempt for your alleged stupidity.

I think that once we hit that wall with computers--and there's a wall somewhere--people will start talking about Moore's Exception to a more general law.

In fact, unless someone's already got dibs on naming it, I'll formulate it here:

Chernobyl Kid's Law: Technologies generally do not double in power and become half as expensive every six months. Computers from the period 1975 to 20?? represent Moore's Exception to CK's Law.

Of course, it's doubtful that so many Americans would have gotten themselves into these messes, had the education system prepared them with the basic numeracy required to evaluate interest rates and what happens in five years when the introductory rate changes to the higher permanent rate.

This is one of the many interesting little land mines laid back in the good ol' Reagan years, when all manner of educational and other Big Gummint programs were starved out of existence. You don't notice it right away, but twenty-seven years later you have a generation of adults who are so badly educated they walk right into an obvious boondoggle like this.

Is homosexuality a choice? Put it another way:

Do you know anyone who gets to choose who they're attracted to?

Ninety-nine percent of the music ever recorded is about "Is she really going out with him" or "Why won't he look my way" or "My baby done gone away and I feel so bad."

Would any of these songs resonate with anyone--would anyone have bothered to write or record them in the first place--or write the novels or make the movies or paint the paintings that are all about forlorn, frustrated desire--if people could just decide "Oh, okay, guess I just won't be attracted to that person anymore."

Wouldn't that be nice.

Anyone who's ever had their heart smashed into jagged little bits by the lantern-jawed captain of the football team, or the cute brunette with the Louise Brooks cut and the librarian glasses, knows that this is a ridiculous question.

... except to the extent that the destabilization of Cambodia and the ensuing civil war and rise of the Khmer Rouge were a result of Henry Kissinger's illegal secret carpet-bombing of the country.