Nobrainer’s Think Tank

After reading this story about a topless woman, I noticed the link to another article about the increasing interest in ethanol as a fuel.

E85 is a blend that is 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. The article notes that many of today’s cars can run on this blend. Furthermore, it notes that per gallon you save about 45 cents.

Of course, E85 isn’t taxed at 18.4 cents per gallon like gasoline.

Of course, 44 cents of every gallon is subsidized by the government.

Of course, ethanol doesn’t work well in cold environments.

Of course, you can expect to lose 5 to 15% fuel efficiency (or maybe more) using the blend.

Of course, most states don’t tax E85 like gasoline.

Using the average gasoline price of $2.24 provided in the article, and the 45 cent savings E85 is $1.79 per gallon. I’ll assume that state gas taxes are part of the actual cost of a gallon of gasoline and that there is an average 10% efficiency loss. Correcting for the other factors I listed above, gas is $2.056/gallon and E85 is $2.48/gallon.

Of course, since road funding comes from gas taxes, E85 will have to eventually be taxed instead of surplused.

Of course, I imagine most of the corn being used to produce the E85 is the leftover that no one wants to eat and is very cheap. So a huge increase of demand will make it even more expensive.

I’ll add onto and update this post later tonight as I should be preparing for a 2 o’clock meeting right now. I managed to dig up more interesting information on this alternative fuel source and its side effects that I’d like to summarize for you, my loyal readers.

Add-OnsFrom the World of Molecules

Critics contend that it is economically absurd to consider ethanol from grain as a replacement for petroleum, when industrial ethanol is made from petroleum feedstocks because it is far cheaper than fermented ethanol.

(more…)

I know some of you have had problems with your comments in the last few days since I upgraded to SpamKarma 2. Unfortunately, I do not understand why the change is considered an upgrade. I find the options to be unnecessarily difficult to understand. But I have made my best attempt to change those options so that you regular commenters will not have problems.

If you have problems, please contact me.

What? You’re a politician? Sheeiiittt!

After the Senate passed a controversial energy bill Tuesday, Rep. Bob Inglis [R] promoted hydrogen as a safe and abundant fuel source that would help wean the United States from imported oil.

Ah yes, safe. It’s so safe, in fact, that it is never used in things like blimps. Now why is that?

Well I’ll let you know if I can remember why hydrogen isn’t considered so safe.

Plaxo is a handy little tool for Outlook users, particularly those using Outlook on several different machines. It serves to synchronize one’s contact lists and appointments. The service is also handy if you’re friends use it. Once you’re connected, you can easily update your contact information with your pals my merely logging in and making the necessary changes.

At this point, you probably don’t want to know what’s behind door #3 because this service is invaluable and free.

Why then am I upset? Plaxo has a nasty habit of creating multiple entries. I like my friends, but I do not need their information stored in triplicate. But hey, it’s free. I can deal with that.

Today via email they announced, “Kerry, Plaxo just got better!”

I’m listenin’.

. . . Plaxo Address Book Optimizer is one of our recent additions of high-value, low-priced options that extend the power of the free service you’ve been enjoying.
[…]
Easily eliminate duplicate entries in your address book.

There are many ways in which redundant data can infiltrate and clutter your electronic address book. Plaxo Address Book Optimizer is the best way to set things straight. Never go cross-eyed again wading through an unnecessarily cluttered address book.

What a bunch of asshats. They got me hooked on free software that they know doesn’t work quite right, and now they want me to pay them to scoop up the mess they left in tightly coiled piles on my lawn.

No thank you.

I’m not about to pay $30/year so that these pricks can give me the logic statements they left out the first time. When two entries have — gee, I dunno — the same name, email address, or phone number, it would be oh too natural to ask the user if the two entries should in fact be one, and if so how should the data be merged. This is a simple concept. I grasp it. You grasp it. It’s so simple, you should be mad that I spelled it out because I just unnecessarily wasted 1 second of your life.

Plaxo and UC suck!

Update: At 7:22 PM someone from Mountain View, CA (corpgw.plaxo.com (66.151.128.22)) used bloglines to find my screed. I’m sure they were pleased.

We need strippers - lots of ‘em.

My day started off reading about the fresh Koran abuse charges this time coming from Pakistan. But something caught my attention:

Pakistanis freed from Guantanamo Bay claimed they saw American interrogators throw, tear and stand on copies of Islam’s holy book, and one former detainee said naked women sat on prisoners’ chests during questioning.
[…]
Rahman claimed female interrogators at Guantanamo stripped in front of prisoners despite pleas for them not to — echoing allegations leveled by other inmates, although not by the other five inmates who spoke to AP on Monday.

“Girls would interrogate us. They would take off their clothes in front of us. They would make different poses in front of us and they would sit on our chests,” said Rahman. “This was shameful.“

So maybe they weren’t necessarily hot naked women. But when you’re in a prison camp, there is absolutely no reason to be choosey. Perhaps today’s islamofascists have merely caught a case of the gay. I don’t know.

But there’s more naked news this time from India:

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Women in an eastern Indian forest are stripping naked to distract police and to help a criminal gang avoid arrest while illegally chopping down trees, the Hindustan Times reported on Tuesday.

Some of the women belong to a timber mafia in the heavily-forested state of Jharkhand while others are paid to strip in front of the police, who are too embarrassed to arrest them or too distracted to hunt the gang down, the daily said.

[Side note: A timber mafia? Timber as in trees and wood? Where’s the gambling, bootlegging, illegal firearms, and illicit drugs? What a lame mafia! At least they’re on the right track with the strippers though.]

So all these mafiosos have to do to successfully get wood is convince some girls to take their clothes off? Why it makes so much sense it has to work.

Now let’s use this knowledge to defeat our enemies abroad. Instead of sending soldiers, send some sluts. Tell the sluts if they take their clothes off they’ll be in a movie. You can easily recruit plenty of them in Hollywood — or mobile home parks. The evidence I provided above clearly demonstrates that the key to victory in Southwest Asia is by shaming, embarrassing, or otherwise distracting the enemy with the beauty of the female form.