MIT Technology Review looks at the Price of Biofuel. Despite considerable goverment support, the market limitations of corn ethanol are being realized as the high price of corn matched with the drop in the price of ethanol has eliminated profits. Other new biofuel technologies are still years away.

Other points the article makes:

• The production of ethanol from corn is contributing to the rise in the cost of food.
• There are high energy requirements in ethanol production, both to grow corn and convert the kernals into fuel.
• As energy policy ethanol is not making sense- even if all corn produced in US were used it would “the biofuel would still displace only 12 percent of gasoline consumption.”
• Other “cellulosic” material (such as wood, agricultural residues, switchgrass) take less energy to grow, but is too expensive to produce into fuel alternative using current technology due to costly distillation step required at the end of the fermentation process.
• SunEthanol a company in Amherst, MA is attempting to use natural bacteria to break down cellulosic material faster. Several other companies such as LS9 and Amyris are looking into the creation of novel hydrocarbons from genetically engineered microbes that eliminate the distillation step

To refute the biofuels naysayers Vinod Khosla, one of Silicon Valleys most successful VCs is quoted in the article with the following:

Biomass is the only feedstock in sufficient quantities to cost-effectively replace oil,…..nothing else exists……hybrid and electric vehicles, are just toys and any technology not adoptable by China and India is irrelevant to climate change….. environmentalists don’t focus on scala­bility….. if you can’t scale it up, it is just a toy. Hence the need for biofuels. Hence biofuels from biomass.” H

His views on corn ethanol is that it was a stepping stone to biomass fuels, which has allowed ethanol market infrastructure to develop.

Unfortunately, they find Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics,” while “elegant in their simplicity ……serve no useful practical purpose beyond their fictional roots,” and therefore must begin from scratch the discussion of utilizing autonomous robotic system architecture on the battlefield in a lethal but ethical manner that complies with the International Laws of War.

Source: Mobile Robot Laboratory, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology

The War We Need To Win,  Barack Obama’s foreign policy speech lays out a strategy that is keenly aware of the danger at hand,  but also more comprehensive, practical and in keeping with the values of America than the failed policy of the current administration. Like the sound of it:

Just because the President misrepresents our enemies does not mean we do not have them. The terrorists are at war with us. The threat is from violent extremists who are a small minority of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims, but the threat is real. They distort Islam. They kill man, woman and child; Christian and Hindu, Jew and Muslim. They seek to create a repressive caliphate. To defeat this enemy, we must understand who we are fighting against, and what we are fighting for.

The President would have us believe that every bomb in Baghdad is part of al Qaeda’s war against us, not an Iraqi civil war. He elevates al Qaeda in Iraq — which didn’t exist before our invasion — and overlooks the people who hit us on 9/11, who are training new recruits in Pakistan. He lumps together groups with very different goals: al Qaeda and Iran, Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents. He confuses our mission.

And worse — he is fighting the war the terrorists want us to fight. Bin Ladin and his allies know they cannot defeat us on the field of battle or in a genuine battle of ideas. But they can provoke the reaction we’ve seen in Iraq: a misguided invasion of a Muslim country that sparks new insurgencies, ties down our military, busts our budgets, increases the pool of terrorist recruits, alienates America, gives democracy a bad name, and prompts the American people to question our engagement in the world.

By refusing to end the war in Iraq, President Bush is giving the terrorists what they really want, and what the Congress voted to give them in 2002: a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.

It is time to turn the page. When I am President, we will wage the war that has to be won, with a comprehensive strategy with five elements: getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan; developing the capabilities and partnerships we need to take out the terrorists and the world’s most deadly weapons; engaging the world to dry up support for terror and extremism; restoring our values; and securing a more resilient homeland.

Washington Post four part series by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker demonstrates how the legisltature, the judiciary, and many of the administration’s own officials have rejected the positions Vice President Cheney and his staff have worked tirelessly to implement. Despite some failures in court, and because of his ability to remove anyone who would questions his positions, few dare directly challenge him and he persists in his efforts to change the character of our nation into one paralyzed by fear and willing to compromise its integrity to satiate that fear.

1. Working the Background
2. Wars and Interrogations
3. Dominating Budget Decisions
4. Environmental Policy

“The president must remember that the military is a special instrument. It is lethal, and it is meant to be.  It is not a civilian police force. It is not a political referee. And it is most certainly not designed to build a civilian society. Military force is best used to support clear political goals, whether limited, such as expelling Saddam from Kuwait, or comprehensive, such as demanding the unconditional surrender of Japan and Germany during World War II. It is one thing to have a limited political goal and to fight decisively for it; it is quite another to apply military force incrementally, hoping to find a political solution somewhere along the way. A president entering these situations must ask whether decisive force is possible and is likely to be effective and must know how and when to get out. These are difficult criteria to meet, so U.S. intervention in these ‘humanitarian’ crises should be, at best, exceedingly rare.”

Source: Andrew Sullivan offers quote from Foreign Affairs, Jan./Feb. 2000, Vol. 79, #1, p. 53