"And why are these pieces of cloth tied around our necks, did someone try to strangle us?"

At that point I chuckled and thought about how much fun this particular comic was to make. Coming from the "I just woke up with total amnesia in my suit" school of Alberto Gonzales, you can go nuts weaving in observations about the petty ridiculousness we all accept without comment.

The fact of the matter is that making corn into ethanol in this country is just a pander to influential swing state farmers cloaked in fashionable environmental respectability. It ought to tell you something that a certifiable imbecile like George W. Bush supports it. (And, to Obama, I say, "For shame!" though I'll let you have this one because some pandering is always necessary.)

It turns out that if we turned ALL our corn production into ethanol, it would supply only 10% of our vehicular energy needs, and that's not taking into account the fact that it takes somewhat more energy to make ethanol from corn than that ethanol contains (in other words, that the whole thing is a thermodynamic sham).

The thermodynamics of making corn out of ethanol implies, then, that it makes more sense to leave those fields fallow and instead tap all the energy that WOULD have been used to plant, harvest, and process the corn. Or, better yet, why not just eat the corn, or perhaps (to help Mexican farmers) practice the free trade we preach and stop subsidizing it!

I enjoy being a troll at RedState.com from time to time, though it's tricky to post there given their constant hunt for mobys, purity trolls, and all the other things I might want to be. Anyway, recently there was an article there about the latest WMDs found in Iraq (such stories come to RedState.com with some regularity. This time the offending substance was nitric acid, a common industrial chemical that any civilized nation is going to have in abundance. But because it can be used to "make explosives" and because it "can burn the skin" - all these meathead armchair chemists were touting it as conclusive proof that finally the WMDs had been found! I pointed out that nitric acid was a common industrial chemical and was immediately shouted down. Nobody wanted to learn any chemistry if it meant they'd have to reassess their latest proof of the rightness of Bush's invasion.

Read it all for yourself, it's a hoot:

http://www.redstate.com/stories/war/more_chemical_weapons_found_in_iraq

The monitor (CRT or otherwise) uses a fat chunk of power, but so too does the processor of a modern computer. Indeed, we've been on the wrong side of a power law for several generations of Intel processors now, with us actually getting fewer instructions per watt of power than we used to. Modern processors are using 80 watts or more, equivalent (all by themselves) of a 19 inch CRT. It's time for computer manufacturers to start printing the power drain of their CPUs on their packaging and in their literature, and to also clearly express info such as millions of instructions per watt of power (MIPs/watt) - this would allow potential green consumers to make better decisions. Most of the CPU power in a modern Windows computer is wasted on Norton Internet Security anyway - so if someone were instead to buy a lower-energy PowerPC-based Macintosh (I know - they aren't made anymore - but you can get them used and they have a great MIPs/watt rating and don't require CPU-wasting anti-virus software) then perhaps Intel and AMD would have a greater incentive to produce lower-wattage processors.

By the way, though I have no interest in ponies, I built my own solar hot water system and replaced my CRTs with LCD screens. But I gave up my Prius because its relatively-weak energy efficiency and the impact of its manufacture rendered it ecologically (and financially!) less prudent than the 1996 Honda Civic I got for $3000 on eBay. The planet is served better by the strategic use of used equipment!

I'm no fan of desalination, since it implies that people are living beyond their hydrological means and should instead do something painless like, you know, practice birth control for Christ's sake - the ultimate and easiest solution to cure absolutely all of our problems. (I know, I know, it's in our genes, and even liberal friends who know better insist on producing additional American consumers who will one day have to live in McMansions of their own.)

But if desalination is what must be done, chances are there isn't much rain in the area and there aren't many cloudy days either. The implication of this article was that to desalinate water you need electricity, and generating electricity with solar energy is expensive. This is true, but using electricity to desalinate is also stupidly inefficient. The better way is to use the solar energy to evaporate the salty water directly, thereby greatly increasing efficiencies (we're talking orders of magnitude here). If done this way, the solar infrastructure is low tech, low price, and low-energy (glass or plastic as opposed to refined silicon attached to glass).