In this case "costume" doesn't necessarily mean something you wear. People have tried to make good impressions on first dates since Ooka and Thag first shared a banana and watched the sunset together. This involves a myriad of things from clothing and grooming to boning up on things the date is interested in and pretending to laugh at his or her jokes.

What one eats is another opportunity for non-verbal communication. Asking if the coffee is certified fair trade and the veggies are locally grown sends a different set of messages than ordering butter on the steak or choosing ice cream-based drinks over bourbon-and-branch. Men and women both do this. Women tend to be more nuanced and better at it or at least devote more of their headspace to the endeavor.

So is there a fad for eating red meat because it transmits a large semiotic lump that will lead to a second date? Maybe. If there is it's not surprising. If there isn't, just wait a little bit. Sooner or later every step gets tried in the mating dance.

Fungal, sometimes it's used. Sometimes it isn't. An awful lot is burned or plowed back in. Besides, you're missing the point here by focusing on just one word out of the letter. There is a nearly infinite variety of cellulose byproducts produced in this country. Most of them are treated as waste. Silage is only one of them. In any case, it's still a hell of a lot cheaper per calorie - calorie of ethanol or calorie of milk - than the corn seeds that are the main product.

The DIY quadruple threat here is hemp. Yes, industrial no-THC industrial hemp. Here's how it works for the small farmer:

1) Harvest and sell the fiber

2) Press the seeds for their oil

3) Turn the seeds into ethanol

4) Feed the dry-distilled grain to livestock

The stuff grows like, well, a weed. It requires little or no fertilization, pesticides of herbicides. You can get anything from paper and cloth to chipboard and rope from the fiber. The oil is very high quality and extremely versatile. The seed is an excellent high-protein feed which also allows us to stick it to the corn lobby for once.

It's like saying "Which makes more sense to make shoes out of, ribeye or sirloin?" You could conceivably dry and process both in such a way that they could be turned into footwear. But they're expensive and don't make much sense. The correct answer would be "Leather. It's better suited, and it's a byproduct, so it's cheaper."

The same is true of biofuels. The only reason we're even thinking of turning food into fuel is that the corn lobby and to a lesser degree the sugar lobby are powerful and want both trotters in the Federal trough. They barely break even in energy budget. And when you factor in the petroleum-intensive way they are grown it may not even do that.

The best answers we have so far are cellulose and algae.

When you use different microbes to turn cellulose into ethanol you get about 16 times as much energy back as you put in. You can use waste products like corn silage, lawn clippings and sawdust. Garbage becomes fuel.

For diesel the only thing worth considering right now are lipid-rich algae. They are close to 50% oil by weight. Most of the rest is glycerol which can be used as feedstock or fertilizer. They regenerate quickly. They can be produced in the South 10 months out of the year.

Pilot commercial plants for both have just opened or are about to open. So forget the corn and sugar BS. Even the Administration is quietly admitting it's a fraud. Go with something that makes real sense. And please, do a little research before you write articles like this.

Sharpton has made a career out of hollering "nigger". And in fact, back during the Tawana Brawley fiasco that smarmy hypocrite called himself "The Biggest Nigger in New York." He doesn't go in for deep analyses and semantic nuances when he's trashing someone else. So screw him. Let him get exactly the same treatment when he steps in it. Make him grovel on SLC television and beg forgiveness from the Saints.