Holly at Hen Waller opened my eyes last week to a wrinkle in the biofuel debate I hadn’t considered — given that they aren’t making any more acres, is it more worthwhile to grow food or fuel? And this NYT article from a couple of days later breaks it down further, clarifying for me yet another problem with ethanol subsidies — it makes less economic sense to grow food when the government is sending piles of money down the ethanol production chain.

The message I’m taking home is that we could concentrate a lot more efficiently on alternative fuel and oil independence, plus free up a couple of billion dollars of government money to grant alt fuel research if we’d just bump the Iowa caucuses back a few weeks.

And a bonus question: How many miles per gallon do you get if you’re riding a bike? I’m a machine, you’re a machine, and that food we use for fuel has to get a ride to our house somehow (at least most of it does).

And for the top of the pile: New Company to Produce Biodiesel From Algae

Caveat: It feels wrong to encourage any type of violent conflict, but…

I feel like some note of acceptance should be given to the Palestinan militant group that attacked an Israeli military outpost, kidnapped a soldier and is now making demands for the soldier’s release. Not only is it an attack that didn’t involve civilians, but their request to release imprisoned women and children actually resembles a reasonable request. Both of those actions hopefully show some growth towards acceptable behavior — at least for warring societies.