Now Who Could Have Seen THAT Coming?

Well, me actually. (Pause while I shine my MENSA badge.)

"Americans face sizable increases in their grocery bills this year as a boom in ethanol production diverts more corn from the nation's dinner table to its gas tank. Indeed, their pocketbooks could feel the pinch for years to come." The Wall Street Journal

See, here's the thing. If you take FOOD, and turn it into GAS, you are, by definition, reducing the amount of FOOD available. Because of the laws of supply and demand, prices go up.

When they first started talking about ethanol, I remember saying to several people that it was not a good idea to mess with our food supply to provide gas. And corn isn't just a food - it's THE food. It's in everything! (Well, as high fructose corn syrup it is, anyway. Plus we feed it to animals we eat.)

This whole thing is giving me a headache. Here's how my brain train is running:

1. We want to stop buying gas because the arabs are meanie-bobeanies and everybody's complaining about the high cost of gas. (not that I blame them.)
2. We look for an alternate source of energy.
3. We settle on a food crop, thus driving the cost of food way up on top of the cost of gas still being up. (And, BTW, the Wall Street Journal is estimating that food prices will go higher than they are now, and stay up for TEN YEARS.)
4. We get into a situation where people have to gas up their cars to get to work, but cannot afford to pay their bills, buy gas AND feed their families.
5. All of this causes a recession, or, God forbid, a depression.
6. Not only that, but (can I just remind you) that a food crop is vulnerable to weather patterns. Just ask the citrus farmers in Florida. So, when there's a bad year, a drought or whatever, and we are dependent on corn for fuel, what do we do then? We aren't addressing the basic problem - reliance on fuel.

You know, it's really sad that the only econ class I ever took was in high school (and I remember being really confused, largely because the teacher was a sweet old man who should have retired 10 years earlier) and I get this, why don't the people in charge? Why don't people have the sense God gave a squirrel?

Oh, and, in case you love irony, get this:

We used to use sugar in all the places where high fructose corn syrup gets used, right? Remember that? OK. Lots of that sugar was grown in the Philippines, which was an American protectorate. Well, when corporations realized they could use HCFS for way cheaper than sugar, lots of those sugar plantations shut down. Those areas of the Philippines have become hotbeds of Radical Islamists, because when a man doesn't work, he has all kinds of time to get indoctrinated and stuff.

Anyway, here are a couple of links:

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117667991954270669-Oglbl5YepJfTYwDNgEWSt54OTB8_20070423.html?mod=regionallinks

http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/29/news/economy/beef_prices/index.htm

Another Sheryl Crow Post

So apparently now Sheryl says the whole "one sheet of TP per sitting" thing was a joke.

But I think that's a fib, and here's why: Go to the link I included on my original post and read the whole thing. Done already? Wow. You're a fast reader. Now let's test your comprehension skills.

Did you see what I saw when I read that? The entire blog is so achingly sincere. I mean, if this was the 1930s, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland would be telling the gang that they can surely raise enough money to repair the roof of the orphanage if they just threw a big hootenanny in Farmer Clem's barn. Golly gosh gee willikers. It's sooo... earnest.

Now, I'm not criticizing that necessarily. My point is that there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of joking going on.

So, Sheryl, since you appear to be interwebs-impaired, here's a crash course in the blogosphere:

People cannot see your face when you type a blog entry. So, even if you are giggling hysterically as you type, don't automatically assume that everyone is going to get your joke. Therefore, there are methods of ensuring that people "get" your humor:

1. Type the word "grin" at the end of the funny. Like this... grin.
2. You could say "Sarcasm Off" (which indicates that sarcasm was "on" previously
3. You can make a winky face with only 3 keys: the semi-colon, the dash key, and the close parenthesis. Like so ;-)
4. Some modern computing machines will give you choices of funny faces to put into a document. They are called "emoticons." Some people don't like them, but I have it on good authority that those people are Nazis. grin.

See what I did there? I used one of my suggestions!

Try it for next time, mmmkay?

File Under: Smoked Too Many Doobies in the 60s

Many moons ago, when I mentioned to my seester (not The Clam, the other one) that I was going to rent "The Wall" (the Pink Floyd movie), she told me that, unless I was planning on getting stoned first, the movie wouldn't make sense to me. I scoffed at her, but at the same time never rented the movie. Well, now I understand what she was saying. There are things which (apparently) make perfect sense when you're stoned out of your gourd that are beyond those of us in the sober world...

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/18/commentary.plate/index.html

Plate: Let's lay down our right to bear arms

This was the part that really got me:

"Let me explain. Some misguided people will focus on the fact that the 23-year-old student who killed his classmates and others at Virginia Tech was ethnically Korean. This is one of those observations that's 99.99 percent irrelevant. What are we to make of the fact that he is Korean? Ban Ki-moon is also Korean! Our brilliant new United Nations secretary general has not only never fired a gun, it looks like he may have just put together a peace formula for civil war-wracked Sudan -- a formula that escaped his predecessor.

"So let's just disregard all the hoopla about the race of the student responsible for the slayings. These students were not killed by a Korean, they were killed by a 9 mm handgun and a .22-caliber handgun."

I'm sorry - I know I haven't been following the story 24/7 like a good little girl, but who exactly is focusing on the fact that the shooter is Korean? (Except for Koreans themselves, who are apparently mortified that one of their number could do such a thing. I simply found it hugely ironic that, much like SAT scores, Asians even out-performed your average white guy in this horror. Bell Curve, indeed.)

OK. That was tasteless.

But back to my point. What in the hell is this guy talking about? Does anyone have a clue? And does the fact that the new SG of the UN is Korean, and ostensibly a nice person, somehow exempt all Koreans from committing crimes?

I'm not trying to get in the middle of the whole gun control argument. I think it's tacky to discuss this this early - kind of like the people who asked, when I told them my aunt had lung cancer, "Does she smoke?!"

As far as the issue goes, I know where I stand and why, and I'm so over having this debate, because nobody has the slightest intention of even listening to the opposition with an open mind any more. So why should I waste my breath trying to make my point?

Besides which, 2 guns did not wake up one fine morning and decide that they wanted to take down some college kids. That's absurd. And the kids weren't killed by a Korean. They were killed by a mentally disturbed person. That he was born in Korea is beside the point. That Ban-ki-Moon is Korean is beside the point. That he may have come up with a peace plan for Sudan is beside the point (and I'll believe that when I see it).

The guy was sick in the head. He killed them. That's the point. Period.

From The "Those Who Ignore History" File

From The "Those Who Ignore History" File - Originally posted April 2

I can never remember who said that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it...http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article1600686.ece

"Teachers are dropping controversial subjects such as the Holocaust and the Crusades from history lessons because they do not want to cause offence to children from certain races or religions, a report claims.

A lack of factual knowledge among some teachers, particularly in primary schools, is also leading to shallow lessons on emotive and difficult subjects, according to the study by the Historical Association.

The report, produced with funding from the Department for Education, said that where teachers and staff avoided emotive and controversial history, their motives were generally well intentioned.

"Staff may wish to avoid causing offence or appearing insensitive to individuals or groups in their classes. In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship," it concluded.

However, it was concerned that this could lead to divisions within school, and that it might also put pupils off history."

What the heck happened to the Brits? Didn't they used to be tough??