| Friday,
November 9, 2007 The ethanol imbecility
continues, and I despair of rationality in these United States. We are all
for Free Trade in industries where US workers were becoming middle class.
We're happy enough to export the jobs of the mill workers and sewing machine
operators. Ethanol is different. We can import all of that stuff that we
want at far lower prices than we are paying for domestic ethanol. We've
doubled the price of corn, we're destroying the water ecology of half the
continent, and it takes enormous amounts of energy to make the fertilizer to
produce ethanol domestically. Meanwhile sugar countries like Brazil -- and
Cuber for that matter -- would love to sell us ethanol at much lower prices,
but we have a big tariff to stop that. And, of course, we subsidize ethanol
production here as well. All to the benefit of a few big companies (and,
yes, some small farmers).
If anyone wants to know how democracies fail, look at our
energy policy, or lack thereof. We have invested a trillion dollars in a war
to stabilize oil supplies -- does anyone sane or insane suppose that we
would have put the entire might of the empire into Iraq if it weren't for
Middle East oil? -- when a fraction of that invested domestically would have
given us energy independence. I said all this back before the invasion
when the costs were thought to be about $300 billion. Three hundred billion
is a lot of money, and that much invested in nuclear power, developing
domestic oil resources, and sponsoring X-Projects on efficient
transportation using electricity would have given the US energy
independence; and if $300 billion wouldn't do it, the $1,000,000,000,000 --
one trillion dollars -- the war actually cost certainly would have. We'd
also have Solar Power Satellites and a Moon Colony (you build the Lunar
Colony on weekends and third shifts while constructing Solar Power
Satellites).
Note that it wouldn't have mattered who won what election.
We still wouldn't have energy independence or have made the investments to
become essentially independent.
If that isn't depressing enough, think about what's
happening with the Great Global Warming Scam. We can't just establish
a Technocracy. Science generates bureaucracies, and Pournelle's Iron Law of
Bureaucracy governs there too. The bureaucrats will always run the show, and
the scientists and technologists will be subordinate to them. The Great
Global Warming Scam coupled with the Great Ethanol Scam to make some people
(think ADL) very, very rich. It also enriches those who sell carbon offsets.
Follow the money.
(and see mail)
==========
The good news is the bad news: it's Bell's Palsy,
apparently. We still have an MRI coming to confirm it, but all the symptoms
fit perfectly. Loss of control over one side of my face, inability to shut
my right eye (fortunately I can close both), strange tastes and sensation of
thickening tongue although no physical exam can find a thing wrong with my
tongue and throat; ringing in one and only one ear, hearing problems in that
ear, and drooping right eye making me think there is something wrong with my
glasses.
That's actually good news: it's not cancer and I didn't
have a stroke.
But if I have seemed distracted in the last few weeks (and
anyone spending time in Hell would be distracted anyway), that's what's been
wrong. That and being worried that it was something a lot worse than Bell's
Palsy.
All of which makes me feel a lot better.
==========
Niven says we're done and I agree. Of course I still have
a map and a Dramatis Personae to compile for Inferno II, and I will take one
more pass through the book to be sure that the style is consistent
throughout; but in essence it's done (for the third time this year).
On that final pass: one of the requirements for a
collaboration is that someone goes through at the end to be sure that it's
all in one style. With Mote, which was our first, and done with Selectric
typewriters, this was a real chore, and took me a couple of weeks of 8-hour
days. (Those were the days when I could and did work 14 hours a day, doing
my science columns for the National Catholic Press, Analog short stories,
and everything else.) Now, with small computers, we rewrite each time we
read over the work, so it's pretty polished by the time there's a "first"
draft.
=====
And now it's time for our walk. Sable says hello. She's
impatient.
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I wrote The Voodoo
Sciences about 30 years ago. At the time I thought it might have some
effect. Actually it did: not long after, a new Congressman named Newt
Gingrich called me, and for a while there I was his friend and science
advisor. If he had stayed on as Speaker, I do not believe the Republican
party would have self destructed in an orgy of greed and incompetence, nor
do I think we would have been as thoroughly engaged in sending the Legions
to the Middle East; but alas, that didn't happen.
Steve Possony used to tell me "You either believe in
rational thought or you don't. If you do, you must act as if you do."
I keep trying to remember that.
Liberals used to believe in rational discussion and
persuasion. I find that harder to find in any politically aware group. But
hope springs eternal, and despair is a sin.
=======
Georgia drought
Don't know the source of this official
drought information, but:
It's so dry in Georgia that the Baptists
are starting to baptize by sprinkling; the Methodists are using
wet-wipes, the Presbyterians are giving out rain-checks, and the
Catholics are praying for the wine to turn back into water.
Now THAT's Dry.
Dave
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