How many middling guys got extra base hits because of the juice? I say we disallow all extra base hits from guys WE THINK probably don't deserve them. And anyone who made a top 10 play fielding an impossible to get foul ball, especially if WE THINK he really shouldn't be able to do that? Yeah let's junk those numbers too.

Then let's break one finger of one sportswriter every time they get one of their claims wrong.

Hey - I don't particularly care one way or the other with Barry. But I do want to see is the news conference he holds the day he breaks the record. He should get up there and calmly say "Most of you hate the fact that I'm up here and have tried your damndest in whatever way you guys are able to ensure that I wasn't up here and all of you can kiss my ass." And then he should just sit there and refuse to answer any questions until they just get up and leave the room.

Now that's the kind of sportswriter fueled ninny nanner theater I can get behind. Maybe ESPN can declare a day of shame or something. Maybe Stephen A. Smith will wear a suit that doesn't make my eyes bleed.

Maybe it's just his dog telling him what to do.

Which of the 6 key points of the World Bank Group Engagement on Governance & Anticorruption plan do you object to so much?

They're based on the marketability of particular segments. Jordin won because she fit the demographic they were aiming for. It was simply put, her turn. I mean how many variations on Man, Woman, White, Black can you spin? They had to go for the 'classic' younger black female demographic. It's called an audience pool. Jordin fits to a 'T', millions of young ladies that age. She is exactly like them in basic look and outlook, shape and size. That is what they were going for. Positive stereotyping if you will.

See Rove is right. Bush isn't the problem. It's the minions who love him who are. Of course he reflects America's soul. That's what's so deliciously sanguine about it.

Let's not forget that Jackie Robinson wasn't the best player of his time either. Branch Rickey picked him because he felt it would be better for baseball and for the team and for the economics of Branch Rickey for Robinson to play as opposed to anyone else because Robinson was strong minded, probably wouldn't implode. Not everything about the desegregation of baseball is some mythological fight between the Negro angles of good who were all clearly better, and the cracker cavemen of MLB who were clearly worse. Flash foward a few years and Branch Rickey did EXACTLY the same thing with Roberto Clemente and you don't hear and endless stream of whining about how the 1927 Yankees didn't have to face the Dominicans, Cubans, Venezuelans either. People need to just watch, and if they are at all able, shut the hell up and enjoy the damn game.

I'll make you deal. Don't ever read, listen, watch anything remotely related to anything Barry Bonds for the rest your life. That way you won't be sullied. And in exchange I promise not to give a crap what you think anymore.

No not really not unless you've uncovered a whole new set of rules for chemical engineering.

One unit of energy input of corn yields approx. 1.7 units of energy out the other side in the form of ethanol. Compared to say sugarbeets where the ratio is approximately 1 unit in to 7 units out. Corn is just a poor choice, chemically speaking. Maybe the process is effiecient but the feedstock is for shit. It's simply a matter of how many hydrocarbon bonds are in the base chemicals you stuff into the process and how much work it is to crack them all apart.

You could get energy out of Borax soap if you wanted to. But the process to isolate pentaboranes is rather complicated. The problem is not whether it works but rather how well it works easily. That's why corn is a poor choice. We happen to grow an awful lot of it. Ergo some bright light decided it would be good to exploit it for ethanol. But if we grew something else, say sugar beets then that would be a much better choice. I think in the end we'll wind up in the thralls of the Sugar-Ethanol Cartel just like we're beholden to OPEC.

Yes we do. It's more than policy. It's agronomics as well. We grow corn because it's easy to grow where we grow it. Sugar cane, sugar beet are for warmer climes. We subsidize farmers for a wide array of crops but only the crops it's possible to grow. So if we want to exploit sugar beets we're going to have to pay the Brazilians to do it. Of course out the back end of that we'll have to slash and burn an awful lot of rainforest to plant it.

The Three Gorges Project on its own is probably the largest civil engineering project in the history of earth. China's hydroelectric potential is massive beyond massive. Setting aside the huge ecological effects of dam projects on this scale they could, given the time and capital probably offset a large portion of their demand allocated to nuclear plants. Much of the remainder could in theory at least be provided by Helium pebble slurry technology which can't meltdown and can't produce weapons fuel. But, the obstacles to the scale of the hydroelectric requirements and the nuclear requirements are daunting. Seems the devil will get his due one way or the other.