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I am only aware of one case were the presence of encryption software (PGP in this case) on the defendants computer was considered by the court. http://news.com.com/Minnesota+court+takes+dim+view +of+encryption/2100-1030_3-5718978.html
The article covering the case doesn't spell out what effect the consideration had on the outcome. It does, however, point out the conviction was based on the in person testimony of the victim, the defendants browser history (frequent searches for "lolita"), and frequently hosting sleep over for little girls.
You can find the result of his appeal at http://www.lawlibrary.state.mn.us/archive/ctappub/ 0505/opa040381-0503.htm
as well as the discussion of it here on /. at http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/25/00 19217

It would seem encryption or other methods for hiding data alone are not by their mere presence a sign of guilt.
In the case I mentioned above it seems the issue of having PGP was relatively minor in ultimate conviction of the defendant.

As for being ordered to turn over a key for an encrypted file, you can always claim you have forgotten. TrueCrypt as well as other programs offer plausible deniability with hidden encrypted volumes.

So does that mean that their either coated in ice or being dug up by MN/Dot?

If you use the internet to make a purchase from a business that has no prescence in that state, you are exempt from state taxes.

You are not exempt. Many states have a "use tax" which residents are supposed to file for and pay.

What if you live in a state without an income tax?

Some states have what's called a "use tax" residents are supposed to file and pay. This includes catalogue orders and online purchases.

This is explanation why it was impossible to fight child porn charge
in Minnesota
Minnesota supreme court reviewed recently child porn law.
They declared unconstitutional only part of law.
Law can not be partly unconstitutional, like woman can not be partly pregnant
I read Supreme court decision at
http://www.lawlibrary.state.mn.us/archive/supct/07 02/opa050811-0208.htm
They declared unconstitutional only subsection 8 which said
"Subd. 8. Affirmative defense. It shall be an affirmative defense to a
charge of violating this section that the pornographic work was
produced using only persons who were 18 years or older."
Government must prove age people in porn pictures, not a
defendant,according with this decision.
Supreme court said that this was harmless error, because it was clear
just by looking at faces these were minors. This sound like 'we all
know what child porn is, are we?'
Modern computer technology can create any faces and cut and paste to adult porn.
No computer expert can tell the difference ( US Supreme court struck
down child porn law in 2002 based on this argument )
  Arguments by court looks unprofessional, there was no real computer
forensic specialists and experts. Also why state should not prove
there was not spyware,
porn pop ups, trojan horses.
Too many holes in Supreme court decision. I am not a lawyer, but it is
clear for me.
This is very grey area of existing law. Judges just do not understand
how computer works,
and that everything is possible in digital world.

You are correct about the lead. According to this site, a CRT can have 5-8 pounds of lead in it.

They do use data from State DOT roadside sensors (such as found at rwis.state.mn.us (nearly every state's dot uses these google "RWIS and your state"), APRS stations such as those found at findu.com, and Citizen Weather Observer Program

The only reason to keep Netscape alive is brand recognition. Look at how many websites are still "best viewed"/"tested" or have bookmark or printing directions for only Netscape and IE, or just haven't been updated to say anything different: NOAA, part of NASA, NIH sites, govts of Utah and Minnesota, the IOC, a Consumer Reports site and college after college after college. If people keep seeing these notices, especially on government sites, there's no way they'll switch to some "other" browser, and keeping Netscape as a brand will be worthwhile. I mean, do I really have to mention AOL?

> happen to beleive that if there is a God and he did hand down true-word-of-God-Scripture...
Great, so you have a belief. And you've chosen to elevate your belief about the beliefs of others.

No I did not.

You are are perfectly welcome to disagree with the belief I stated. If you disagree with the belief I stated I will glady agree to disagree. If you disagree with the belief I stated, I will gladly agree that my logical argument built upon that basis falls down.

So lets try looking at the belief I stated. Lets look at the part you sniped out of that incomplete quote. I said:

I happen to beleive that if there is a God and he did hand down true-word-of-God-Scripture, I beleive that God would not and could not be an ABSOLUTELY INCOMPETENT MORON.

Ok, so if you dissagree, if your next reply says that you believe God is or might be incompetent, fine. I will then gladly admit my argument bult upon that assumption falls down. On the other hand if you AGREE with it, then wouldn't you agree that you're being a bit silly in attacking me on it??

as I understand it you seem to think that if God spoke He must speak in a way that everyone would be forced to beleive He spoke

Not exactly, but close. I certainly wouldn't say "forced". I'm saying that if any of the various books were actually from God, that God's work would be infinitely above and beyond fiction written by any human, and there's no way it would linger at maybe 30% or less and being matched or out-competed by various peices of human fiction.

Stories of some guy driving a flaming charriot across the sky, infinite towers of turtles, talking snakes, and interstellar airplanes, they are all equally written by humans and all equally silly.

God doesn't live up to this then you write Him off

I did not argue against God. I did not write Him off. I said there may be a God, but he did not hand down any Divine Scripture of His Will, that all of the supposed scriptures are plain old human authored. I'm saying that everyone proclaiming What God Wants is doing so with a purely human voice and purely human claims.

Show me your athiest statistics.

The 1997 Federal Prisons statistics were 0.21% atheist, but after a while of searching I didn't locate that in an official document on a government website... and I am fully aware of the importance of citing an official government website. I did however come across an official Minnesota government PDF hosted on an official Minnesota government website, which shows less than 0.24% atheist.

the study may be wrong

If you were to site government statistics on a government website documenting the fact that atheists commit far more crime than the general public, and I were to resort to a completely baseless position that the official statistics are wrong simply because I dislike them, you would laugh in my face.

people may choose religion after they have been convicted or committed a crime

The figures were taken at intake. I don't think you can realistically to suggest that the majority of atheists run out and religion between committing a crime and getting admitted to prison.

And of course at best... you end up with a situation where you have a correlation which as we all know doesn't prove causation.

Yep. I am claiming a correlation. I did suggest a particular cause-effect explation for that correlation, and I explicitly used the word "suggest" in I would suggest it's exactly because Atheists need to actively and fully internalize morals/ethics in a way that mere religious decree does not involve.

I merely a suggested explanation. If you think the correlation is due to cause-effect in the reverse direction (good behaviour somehow makes someone more likely to become an atheists), fine. If you think behavior and atheism are both effects and are correlated

Here in Minnesota, there is a program called PSEO which allows high school seniors (and some juniors) to attend college and get college credit while still technically high school students. The state picks up the tuition and even the cost of books if I remember right. Most of the high schools were pretty quiet about it, as everytime a student in their school enrolled into it, the high school lost funding. I didn't even know about it until I got into college, and noticed high school students running around campus (I was then able to tell my little sister about it, who was extremely bored in high school, and she got accepted into the program and was quite happy about it).

I don't know where you live, but you might check to see if there is a similar program you can get into.

I believe he's talking about something like this -> http://education.state.mn.us/mde/Academic_Excellen ce/School_Choice/Post_Secondary_Enrollment_Options _PSEO/

They earn high school credit courses and, if students continue their education beyond high school, colleges or universities may choose to transfer their completed coursework through PSEO as college credits. More than 7,000 Minnesota students were in the PSEO program last year - including 321 students from private high schools and 700 students who were in home schools.

In Minnesota such a requirement is null and void. If you really are worried, consult a lawyer and find out your actual rights.

At one former employer, they sent such a "required" form to the newly acquired Minnesota office. Each and every employee filed it in the circular file. They couldn't even complain without opening themselves up to a lawsuit.

Ticketing for just over 5mph is becoming SOP in some cities. Some Minneapolis area freeways recently went from 55->60 speed limits, but troopers and police are pulling people over for far less than they used to. Lots more people are going close to 60 rather than going 65-68ish.

The program is called HEAT -- Highway Enforcement of Aggressive Traffic.

http://www.dot.state.mn.us/hottopics/speedlimits/i ndex.html

Rep. Jeff Johnson is about par for the social conservative course here now. He's not evil, he's really something of a moderate in the context of today's MN Republican party.

We used to produce better, more decent sorts of Republicans, whom I have voted for in the past. Our formerly proud Minnesota tradition of "Independent Republicans" has died hard. The state party stripped the word "Independent" from its title, even, in an effort to close ranks with the national party. They had a very popular sitting governor in Arne Carlson -- fiscally convservative, socially liberal -- whom they failed to endorse on his way to a resounding reelection a while back. Carlson wasn't asinine enough on social issues.

This guy comes from the Twin Cities area -- notably liberal, nothing like outstate -- and says his priorities are "tax relief, education reform, and limiting government spending and regulation." Recent news items about him include eminent domain legislation meant to protect private land and a bunch of stuff about Meth laws. "Education reform" will mean vouchers for private school, almost certainly.

Probably this bill was a sop to "the base" given his relatively more moderate stances in general. We have much worse here now. (Meet Michele Bachman.)

Rep. Jeff Johnson is about par for the social conservative course here now. He's not evil, he's really something of a moderate in the context of today's MN Republican party.

We used to produce better, more decent sorts of Republicans, whom I have voted for in the past. Our formerly proud Minnesota tradition of "Independent Republicans" has died hard. The state party stripped the word "Independent" from its title, even, in an effort to close ranks with the national party. They had a very popular sitting governor in Arne Carlson -- fiscally convservative, socially liberal -- whom they failed to endorse on his way to a resounding reelection a while back. Carlson wasn't asinine enough on social issues.

This guy comes from the Twin Cities area -- notably liberal, nothing like outstate -- and says his priorities are "tax relief, education reform, and limiting government spending and regulation." Recent news items about him include eminent domain legislation meant to protect private land and a bunch of stuff about Meth laws. "Education reform" will mean vouchers for private school, almost certainly.

Probably this bill was a sop to "the base" given his relatively more moderate stances in general. We have much worse here now. (Meet Michele Bachman.)

"One of the most popular games in America teaches a little boy how to have sex with a prostitute and then beat her to death, and then rewards that," said Rep. Jeff Johnson, who sponsored the bill in the House. "I think some small restriction on that is reasonable."

Once More:
High Octane Gasoline high quality gasoline.

It has been adjusted, usually through adding chemicals, to burn a little slower. Too low of an octane for the engine's compression leads to knocking. Messing with the timing can fix some of this, but not all. Basically, if your car doesn't specify high octane, and it isn't pinging/knocking, you're better off with the cheap stuff. It's what your engine was designed for.

Now, a higher compression engine is more efficient and has more power for the displacement. Thus, it's popular for high end sports cars, planes, and such.

I ended up doing a bunch of research on this because I looked into converting my car to ethanol (with California switching from MTBE, my plans have been delayed. The cost of ethanol has skyrocketed from the increased demand). With a RON of 106 vs. 95 for gasoline, I'd be able to make up the difference in energy density(ethanol has only 2/3 the energy of gasoline) by increasing the compression in my engine by switching out the pistons.

DEET doesn't stop them now. They will swarm you for about 5 minutes and then ignore the DEET and bite anyway. They are absolutely insane.

The worst is when they swarm and hover outside of all building openings because they can detect the CO2 inside and wait for humans to exit. It's nasty.

I am a huge outdoorsman and I pretty much refuse to do anything in the woods from May through September. The ticks (deer, as I've had lymes already) and the mosquitos are just unbearable. Now we have to deal with even *more* invasive poisionous plant species like Wild Parsnip.

Minnesota sucks ;)

The red tint can easily come from bacteria called iron bacteria. I am familiar with water wells and the necessity sometimes for disinfecting and filtering the water before use from those microbes.(having the old lady go medieval on you from her losing a set of all-whites in the wash is a good motivator for research and corrective actions with said infected well :p ) Here is a URL for your perusal on this subject

http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/eh/wells/ironba cteria.html

Actually, that bit about encryption being used as "proof of intent" is crap. What the cnet article does NOT tell you is the host of other information that the judge wrote about in the case opinion: http://www.lawlibrary.state.mn.us/archive/ctappub/ 0505/opa040381-0503.htm There are several interesting bits of information in there, but they key one is that the person who wrote the report (Schaub) stipulated that such software was present on all new macs being sold.

The 1.3x figure comes from government study.

    See http://www.mda.state.mn.us/ethanol/balance.html

S3730.0 http://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/bin/bldbill.php ?bill=S3730.0.html&session=ls84

H3971.0 http://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/bin/bldbill.php ?bill=H3971.0.html&session=ls84

S3730.0 http://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/bin/bldbill.php ?bill=S3730.0.html&session=ls84

H3971.0 http://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/bin/bldbill.php ?bill=H3971.0.html&session=ls84

I hear ya! I just emailed one of the authors, Paul Thissen (pthissen@mn.rr.com) to show my support. Right now, the bill is in the Governmental Operations and Veterans Affairs Committee ... If you're from Minnesota, I'd encourage you to send them your thoughts...

The bill number in the House is H.F. 3971 (full text). I can't find a Senate version of it.

For purposes of this section, "open source software" means software that: (1) is free for anyone to use, without payment of a royalty or other fee; and (2) can be used effectively without payment of a fee or royalty in combination with other software commonly used to create, store, transmit, receive, and access data.

You can find out who represents you here. If they hear from a lot of people, they will get a theoretical warm fuzzy knowing that the issue is important to their constituency, and that they're doing the right thing. More importantly, they'll get a very down-to-earth political message, that if they don't vote for this thing it could be their ass in the elections coming up in November.

For purposes of this section, "open source software" means software that: (1) is free for anyone to use, without payment of a royalty or other fee; and (2) can be used effectively without payment of a fee or royalty in combination with other software commonly used to create, store, transmit, receive, and access data.

You can find out who represents you here. If they hear from a lot of people, they will get a theoretical warm fuzzy knowing that the issue is important to their constituency, and that they're doing the right thing. More importantly, they'll get a very down-to-earth political message, that if they don't vote for this thing it could be their ass in the elections coming up in November.

For purposes of this section, "open source software" means software that: (1) is free for anyone to use, without payment of a royalty or other fee; and (2) can be used effectively without payment of a fee or royalty in combination with other software commonly used to create, store, transmit, receive, and access data.

You can find out who represents you here. If they hear from a lot of people, they will get a theoretical warm fuzzy knowing that the issue is important to their constituency, and that they're doing the right thing. More importantly, they'll get a very down-to-earth political message, that if they don't vote for this thing it could be their ass in the elections coming up in November.

Thats is sloppy on the BBC's part, they should have put the State in there. In this case it is Minnesota.

http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_parks/soudan_unde rground_mine/physicslab.html

I didn't know what the term pro se in TFA meant...

I know you're trying to be funny, but Google is your friend:

Query:

define:pro se

Definitions of pro se on the Web:

* A person who does not hire a lawyer and appears for himself/herself in court.
http://clerkofcourt.maricopa.gov/glossary.asp

* To act on one's own behalf; appearing for oneself; representing oneself; to represent oneself in a court action without an attorney.
http://www.courts.mo.gov/osca/index.nsf/0/8b69295b 674dde2186256e15004ea27f

* Acting without the aid of an attorney; representing yourself.
http://www.oah.wa.gov/Glossary.htm

* Representing oneself. Serving as one's own lawyer.
http://www.uscourts.gov/journalistguide/glossary.h tml

* When the defendant is not represented by counsel, as he or she has waived the right to counsel in a criminal proceeding, or is otherwise not represented in a civil proceeding.
http://mova.missouri.org/cjterms.htm

* A person who does not have an attorney to represent him or her and who appears on his or her own behalf before the Court.
http://www.gaappeals.us/cguide/glossary.php

* Latin phrase ("in one's own behalf") applied to defendants who waive the right to counsel and act as their own lawyers in criminal cases.
http://www.mad.uscourts.gov/LocPubs/crimglossary.h tm

* A Latin phrase that means "for himself." A person who represents himself in a legal matter alone without the help of a lawyer is said to appear pro se.
http://www.nfa.futures.org/basicnet/glossary.aspx

* A person appearing without representation by an attorney for himself; in his own behalf; in person.
http://www.nysb.uscourts.gov/prose_man/glossary.ht ml

* When a person who chooses to act as his or her own attorney in a legal action.
https://www.co-childsupport.com/elpaso/glossary/gl ossary.htm

* When a party is not represented by a lawyer but is representing himself.
http://www.courts.state.mn.us/districts/fourth/Gen eral/LegalTerms6.htm

* Without the benefit of counsel; the act of speaking or representing oneself in a court of law.
http://www.alqlist.com/glossary.html

* A debtor who is not represent

Isn't it the case though that the energy required to produce bio diesel is more than the energy you get out of it? If this is the case then how is this a solution? It would seem to make the problem worse....

No.

Longer answer: Even ethanol is energy-positive now.

Longest answer: http://www.mda.state.mn.us/ethanol/balance.html.

The Original Parent (and possibly you) seem to be forgetting that all Lawyers are Officers of the Court first and employees of [x] second.

It is one thing for the police to coerce someone, it is another for a lawyer to make them perjur themselves. Ethically, a lawyer is obligated to try to convince their client not to perjur themselves and if that fails, they must withdraw from the case if they know someone is planning to commit perjury.

Ontop of that, they are obligated to notify the judge if they believe that someone in the trial is going to commit perjury. http://www.courts.state.mn.us/lprb/86bbarts/bb0506 86.html

This is Ethics 101 stuff and these lawyers failed.

Oh, because uh, this:

http://tips.metc.state.mn.us/mntest/cgi-bin/itin_p age_ie.pl

Has been around for a long time, and stuff. Transit route finder sites aren't anything new or unique. The fun thing about google's stuff is that its user friendly and works with one query, not 50 boxes to fill in. :)

A while back I was using Metro Transit's trip planner to get me from the rail stations that I commonly use to another location accessable only by bus.

Anyway, afterward, the trip planner asked if I wanted to take a survey. They were very blatantly interested in mobile devices and how people use them to utilize their trip planner. At the time I was using the first public iteration of the Sidekick II's OS and it rendered well and was fast to use. At the end of the survey it asked if I wanted to be contacted about a live group session to discuss the mobile use of their planner. I was never contacted...

Now I'm onto the Sidekick II's second OS (update that includes better rendering for CSS, etc) and is MUCH more usable on every site except Metro Transit's trip planner. I don't know if they changed something or what but I'd like to see it go back to a more usable and friendly state.

Onto my point about Google Maps. While this is great and all, Google Maps doesn't work well on MY mobile device because the GPRS connection is slow. What I want to see is ease of use and seamless mobile integration into transit planning. Who wouldn't? Most of us aren't connected via "broadband to the hand" or wifi jetpacks.

Let's get some useful stuff out there for technology that MOST people have available to them RIGHT NOW and take into consideration the speed of the bandwidth available for that technology!

China is full of amazing scientists that have been making huge advancements. Why are they pushing so hard for the space race and not for eliminating AIDS and opening their *real* numbers of infection to the world?

Oh wait, the world doesn't stop 'til we solved all disease, ended poverty, and assured harmony among all? Apparently not according to your hypocritical sanctimonious ass. Feh, you write in your /. journal about the decline of quality here and the rise of trolls, have the audacity to complain about others...

So how does "26, student records clerk, geocacher, drunk, deadhead" rank against, say, Telephone Sanitizer, in huge contribution to society?

In Minnesota, use of encryption on your system is evidence of crimminal intent.

"We find that evidence of appellant's Internet use and the existence of an encryption program on his computer was at least somewhat relevant to the state's case against him,"

There's also the fact that diesel engines can run on biodiesel without modifications.

How many "Future Fuel Vehicles" that can run on ethanol w/o modifications are there? How many of those are gas/electric hybrids?

Also, I've read that biodiesel gives much more energy per unit of energy put in obtaining it than ethanol. Take a look at this: http://www.mda.state.mn.us/ethanol/balance.html

So, yes, there's a point of diminishing returns if you're running on fossil fuels. However, on biofuels, the environmental impact is a lot better, going for diesel instead of a gas/electric hybrid. (And, yes, I know that a diesel/electric hybrid is possible.)

The Minnesota Department of Transportation has real-time traffic tracking capabilities (http://www.dot.state.mn.us/tmc/trafficinfo/map/re freshmap.html) in the Minneapolis-St.Paul metropolitian area that are completely anonymous. Mn/DOT embeds detectors in the pavement down the center of each lane of the freeway and on every entrance ramp to measure volume, occupancy, speed, and flow. They use this information to control the freeway entrance meters. We are one of the few metro areas in the U.S. that effectively uses on-ramp meters to assist in controlling traffic flow during the dreaded rush hours.

This seems like a much better way to gather really useful traffic information than tracking cellular phone movements, especially with how spotty cellular tower coverage can be.

Minnesota Constitution, Article 4, Section 17:

http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/cco/rules/mncon/A rticle4.htm

Sec. 17. LAWS TO EMBRACE ONLY ONE SUBJECT. No law shall embrace more than one subject, which shall be expressed in its title.

In fact, we all were reminded here in Minnesota of this constitutional article not too long ago, when the courts struck down our concealed-carry law, not because the law itself was illegal, but because it came attached to a DNR-related bill. (that was unrelated to guns, arms and the like)

(Copy and pasted from my post on http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=150232&cid =12598707 here)

Now we just need to get our national representatives to agree to such a provision. How about it, boys and girls?

And you can tell by reading the first two paragraphs where the author presents a complete parody of the attitudes of OSS as if it had anything more than a faint resemblence to the truth.

And I don't think OSS software developers are captivated by the idea of a free lunch. I think there is even greater awareness among such of money issues, payment for services rendered, and the value of a professional's time.

Also, deconstructing the three main sections...

This section of the WA statutes, and this section of the MN statutes (the two states I've researched) explicity limit 'work for hire' IP ownership transfer to work done during work hours, and/or using the employer's equipment or resources. So, the IP ownership issue is significantly less fuzzy than the article's author makes it out to be.

As for conceptual integrity, ESR has written an excellent essay entitled "Homesteading the Noosphere which talks about project maintainers and how projects move from maintainer to maintainer, thereby maintaining conceptual integrity. It's my experience, having working in several different software shops, that OSS typically has greater conceptual integrity because the maintainers feel a significantly greater sense of ownership over the software. There is no manager or marketing person with the power to tell them what must, or must not go into the software. It's their personal decision.

As for professionalism, I see no greater boost for overall code quality than for it to be seen by potentially hundreds of other programmers who have every incentive to pick it apart and find problems with it. Sure there are 100s of low quality text editors on Freshmeat, but that isn't actually very important. It quickly becomes known which ones are worth anything.

Lastly, the 'innovation' bugaboo. To anybody who's actually familiar with Open Source projects, the existence of innovative ideas is clear. Small things like Virtual Folders in evolution to big things like Bittorrent. There are valuable new ideas to be found by the hundreds in OSS. And many projects get started because someone has an interesting new idea. They have a lot of incentive to see that idea through.

Innovation isn't churning out stuff that's so brand new everybody has to learn something completely different in order to use it. It's finding some idea that creates a valuable change and integrating it with all the other stuff that already exists. Linux is a spinoff of Unix not because the process is only capable of creating copycat software. It's a spinoff because Unix was something everyone knew, and it was good enough to not bother tossing it all out.

Brand new application categories are few and far between, and OSS has had its fair share of those. Apache was the first webserver around. And Wiki's are another category that has its genesis in OSS.

So, in short, the article is complete bunk by some guy with a preconcieved notion of how things are who can't be bothered to actually look around and figure out whether or not he's right./p.

Sure, here's a lot of links for you to read over :) .

Some links are by obviously biased parties (for example, NCGA is the National Corn Growers Association). Others are not. This is just a start, of course - I gathered these in about three minutes of searching. Again, if you can find a single "net negative" study done by anyone - university, corn-industry, government, environmental group, anyone really - that didn't have Pimental and his bad data involved, please let me know, because I've never found such a study.

... On the one hand, you have the most blatant forms of corporate welfare, on the other you have a process that has recently become (or been found to be) net energy positive even with grain-based sourcing.

Biodiesel is still a far better choice, as its energy balance is undeniably and strongly net positive. Also, TDP should be included in any energy subsidy planning, since it combines effective waste management with fuel and energy creation with displaced CO2 (the process generates CO2, but that CO2 would have been created anyway or, worse, methane would have been created).

I'm still a fan of hydrogen, though, even if you have to build out local natural gas reformers piggybacked on the gas infrastructure as a stopgap to get you to a hydrogen pipeline system with nuclear-electrolyzed hydrogen (with anti-NIMBY legislation, the transition would take no more than 20 years). And yes, I'd have a reformer in my garage if I could, and frankly you wouldn't even need fuel cells to start: go with LNG-style conversions first.

Just be aware that Pimentel releases this "finding" every other summer, Looking at the dates below, he's a month ahead of schedule this year.

http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/01/8.23.01/P imentel-ethanol.html

http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/03/8.14.03/P imentel-ethanol.html

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July05/ethanol .toocostly.ssl.html

I can't speak to this newest report, but Pimental's work has been repeatedly critiqued, and one of the main compliants it that he uses out of date numbers for yield and conversion efficiency:

http://www.mda.state.mn.us/ethanol/balance.html

http://www.usda.gov/oce/oepnu/aer-814.pdf

http://journeytoforever.org/ethanol_rooster.html

http://www.ncga.com/public_policy/PDF/03_28_05Argo nneNatlLabEthanolStudy.pdf

http://www.ethanol-gec.org/corn_eth.htm

All that having been said, Pimental is right that soy and corn alone cannot replace our petroleum addiction. You can read more about this in the archives at TDIclub.com.

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board =UBB14&Number=946804&Searchpage=1&Main=941398&Word s=%2Bethanol+%2Bmoney+DrStink&topic=&Search=true#P ost946804

Take a look at this article

Six times more energy than end product delivers, not six times more energy than gasoline; there's a big difference.

If you look at the site a previous poster mentioned ( here ), you'll see that ethanol's energy yield is 1.34, while gasoline's is 0.805. Obviously, that is nowhere near a 6x difference.

Also, the thing about portable fuel sources vs how much energy it takes to make them gets people thinking the wrong way. I'll put it in terms nerds can understand. It's like a desktop machine vs a laptop. A desktop machine is more powerful and a lot cheaper. So why would anyone ever buy a laptop? Because it's portable. Same thing with liquid fuels - it's not as efficient as plugging directly into the power grid, but guess what, extension cords don't run very far. You're giving up efficiency for an ability that you completely lack otherwise. The energy going into gasoline isn't 1:1, either. Think about all the energy that goes into drilling for oil, transporting said oil, refining said oil into gasoline, then transporting _again_ to the final destination.

Is the higher cost of ethanol & biodiesel directly attributable to its pump price? No, it's value to consumers reflects mainly two things: 1) much less production means economies of scale don't apply as well, and 2) better environmental impact. Much like the 'eco-friendly' brands of various products cost more. You pay for what you value.

Also to note about biodiesel: you get more power, better milage, and longer engine life than with diesel, so there is a long-term monetary benefit to using it.

Minnesota Department of Agriculture has a comparison of energy costs to produce different types of fuel. Treat this as a starting point for information.

People seem to forget that we don't pump oil out of the ground and into our gas tanks, it requires some serious refining. I've also heard that ethanol processing essentially removes the sugars from the corn, leaving a high-protein slurry that can be used as animal feed. Since it's high in protein and low in carbohydrates it's a more efficient feed and causes lower emissions from the cows. Heh.

In case you're wondering who's in your neighborhood...

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"Because of Galena's inaccessibility and the necessity to ship diesel fuel by barge, residents pay from 20 cents to $1 per kilowatt hour, while the national average is less than 9 cents. With nuclear power, residents could pay a third of what they now pay to power their homes, Yoder said.

I'd be that if the total costs of nuclear power were included it would be more than a third. The government subsidizes and protects the nuclear power industry. If they had to compeat in a true free market economy the costs of nuclear power would be much higher than they are now. Especially there in Alaska I'd bet wind genies could hold their own in a free market. There's potential for more power from wind in Alaska than there is in Minneasota, yet MN generates several gegawatts from wind, and continues to add capacity, Minnesota's wind-power industry is picking up speed. In Oregon, Windfall from the Wind Farm Sherman County, Oregon, 5 wind projects generate 255 Megawatts.

"Nuclear power is something folks might frown on, but it's self- contained," said House Speaker John Harris, R-Valdez. "It has a lot of potential for areas" that have high fuel costs.

No it isn't, with current technology nuclear power generates toxic and radioactive waste with half lifes of millions of years. New technologies such as pebble bed modular reactors, PBMR are reducing risks but those hazardous wastes still need to be stored somewhere.

That depends on how you define a lake.

Minnesota DNR defines a lake as being larger than 10 acres. Of which there are 11,842. http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/faq/mnfacts/water.html

From Wisconsin's own DNR:
"Of the 15,081 documented lakes in Wisconsin, only about 40 percent have actually been named. The majority of the unnamed lakes are very small, less than 10acres." 60% of 15.081 is 9048. A majoriy of 9k would be about 6k-7k. Therefore about 9000 lake is accurate. http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/water/fhp/lakes/Lak es1a.pdf

If Minnesota counted all body of water less than 10 acres, there would be well more than 15k.