"Also inherent is the presumption that all decisionmakers are rational decisionmakers who always do what is best for them and their company economically."

-- LeCastor

What we are doing here is taking anecdotal evidence and applying it to explain a larger sociological phenomenon. Unfortunately, doing so taints the findings.

Essentially we are saying, I have experienced discrimination, and have found data that coincides with that discrimination, therefore the cause to the data must be discrimination.

Since we are not discussing automatons, or equations, but real world people in different situations the cause of the numbers seen can not be uniformly attributed to all instances. Some may be because of active discrimination (though such an active policy would I think produce much more visible effects in an individual work place) while others may be caused by passive acceptance of societal norms, and still others may be caused by differing socially acceptable options for men and women. As such drawing a single rational based on the data is a false presumption, and likewise causes a deceptive rational for correcting the data.

In our modern world, where such actions are illegal and detrimental to corporate performance, it is unlikely that active policies of discrimination are wide spread. Managers who engage in such behavior are unlikely to be subtle about it, and leave themselves and their company open to a wide range of negative publicity and negative legal outcomes. This is not to say such situations do not exist, simply that to presume it being wide spread, and presuming that it is the primary cause of the perceived wage gap is just that a presumption with little actual evidence supporting it.

There are men who will happily trot out their own experiences where they felt they were discriminated against due to their status as men, black men specifically often believe this to be the case. Although there is no doubt truth to such an individual case, to attribute the larger social trends to this cause alone would be to assume facts not in evidence.

The problem is with the mixing of anecdotal and statistical evidence. Upon deeper analysis of the statistical evidence we can find certain trends in outcomes but with out direct case by case analysis it is impossible to tell the cause of those outcomes.

The wage gap may exist, and no doubt does exist in some form be it 2%, 5% or 20%, however if our goal is to combat this we should be open to the possibility that the fault lay not in the stars, nor our genes, but in ourselves.

I seem to remember a real problem back in the day with cellulose film stock bursting into flames killing projectionists and theater goers as the ensuing fireball ripped through the local bijou.

So that leads us to the next question, why exactly is it important to break it down cellulose to sugar and build it back into ethanol?

If I remember my high school chemistry correctly you shouldn't be able to get more energy from building something derived from cellulose than you can get from burning the cellulose itself, it's just a question of what's easier to burn.

But if refined cellulose is flammable, couldn't we just toss a few thousand tons of that in a coal fired power plant, and whiz bang get an instant "clean" renewable fuel?

Yes I know I am missing something here, but really maybe there's something else to explore, why are we spending energy to convert one thing into another, when the thing itself has the potential to produce just as much energy?

Maybe what we need isn't better ways to break down cellulose, but better furnaces in which to burn it.

Just a thought.

"Of course, you can just burn the cellulose and make electricity. You'd have to build new power plants or seriously modify the old ones, though. You can't just take an old coal plant, load it up with switch grass and start making electricity.

Of course, the whole point of this ethanol endeavor is to make motor fuel. You can put ethanol, or at least E85, into many vehicles with only minor modifications. More electricity isn't going to help us get our cars from point A to Point B."

-- Chuchundra

Point 1)is that rather than trying to unlock some desperate microscopic secret to convert cellulose to sugar on a molecular level, we should be focusing on the macroscopic level of making better engineered devices to take this plentiful fuel and convert it to energy more efficiently. I would think a better furnace from a strictly engineering point of view is more practical and much more acheivable than trying to unlock the cellulosic ethonal mystery.

Point 2) We don't need gasoline for cars. Electric cars, trains and electric mass transit are production ready and very efficient, we loose a little felxibility for long hauls with electric cars over gasoline cars, but that's a small price to pay once we run out of fossil fuels, and don't have a choice. The pursuit of cellulosic ethonal is an example of exactly what's wrong with the entire thought process on alternative fuels. We are creating new technology to fuel old technology as opposed to creating new intergrated systems to acheive our needs.

You can't put raw cellulose into an old coal plant and expect it to work, but modifying the furnace in a coal plant to more efficiently burn coal, or anyother carbon fuel (including cellulose) is the first step in overcoming our energy concerns, rather than trying to for example make coal from surplus diamonds, which is essentially what celluosic ethonal is.