THE GRAND DELUSION OF CERTAIN ZEALOTS AND TRUE BELIEVERS IN ENERGY SELF-SUFFICENCY about "Abundant American Coal" being the magic key to ending dependency on gasoline and diesel fuel derived from imported gasoline needs some serious qualification, and then some.

For starters, maybe we should study the South Africans, where ersatz gasoline and diesel fuel derived from coal are considered a fact of life--and have been since the 1950's, when Sasol, the state oil company, perfected a process to produced an odourless ersatz gasoline from coal, and built the model city of Sasolberg around its coal-gasification works.

But then again, it's my understanding that much of the coal mined in South Africa is of the highly-polluting variety known as "brown coal."

In any case, perhaps some serious research might be in order to find out if these coal-based ersatz gasolines used in South Africa:

• actually produce exhaust emissions which can contribute to serious air pollution;
• whether the emissions from coal-based ersatz gasolines are comparable to those from traditional petroleum-based gasolines or biofuels;
• contributes significantly to air-pollution levels in the major South African cities (viz., Cape Town, Durban and the Witwatersrand, a/k/a the Pretoria/Johannesburg region), based on generally-accepted standards for measuring air pollutants; and
• whether such air pollution from coal-based ersatz gasolines and diesel fuels in major South African cities is comparable to air pollution from traditional petroleum-based gasoline in major United States cities, based on generally-accepted standards for measuring air pollution and its pollutants.

Not to mention whether such automakers as have manufacturing operations in South Africa (centered mostly around Port Elizabeth) have to modify their engines to accomodate the ersatz coal-based gasoline and its pecuilarities for the South African market.

Let alone the socioeconomic and environmental costs to the South African economy, particularly so in the post-apartheid state of affairs ... and whether these ersatz coal-based gasolines are priced comparably to traditional gasolines, taking into account the fact that South Africa sells gasoline by the litre and any fuel taxes which the South African government may assess.

Especially the so-called "Americans for Balanced Energy Choices."

(Let's just hope ABEC, a known and notorious front organisation with known connexions to energy interests, doesn't suddenly have oh-so-cozy friendships with apologists for the apartheid regime or suchlike sympathetic to the "plight" of the Afrikaner.)

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THE NOTION WHICH EXPECTS THE HOI POLLOI TO SUBORDINATE "SELFISH INTEREST" TO A "GREATER COLLECTIVE GOOD" would love to see such regarded as one with "common sense."

Judging from past experience with such "advice," usually in connexion with notions of "proper mental hygiene" and/or preparing oneself for work experience in the community via the sheltered workshop system, Your Correspondent really has to wonder if such advice of placing the collective above the self amounts to nothing less than enforced ignorance and stupidity, epitomised by the maxim of "silence is golden" as further expects "cooperation" with The System @ its most corrupt and perverse.

In its turn, reinforced by paranoia about "outspokenness" being possible grounds for reduction or denial of welfare or Social Security benefits, or winding up on privately-circulated "watch lists" of persons not to be employed under any circumstance whatsoever. In its turn, likely grounds for legal action for Deprivation of Livelihood, Denial of, or Interference With, Civil Rights and Related Conspiracies.

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AND IF YOU WATCH THE MR. MEN SHOW ON CARTOON NETWORK WEEKDAY MORNINGS, you could just imagine the "bumpers" between segments of the individual episodes serving as ideal lead-in to the sign-off messages of TV stations across the country, never mind their becoming an endangered species as TV stations begin 24-hour broadcasting all the more.

Come to think of it, would you consider sign-off messages something of an art form?

(Which brings up something of an Urban Legend involving the sign-off routine TV stations traditionally go through: A novice engineer on duty one night @ sign-off decided to liven up the otherwise boring routine by including stock footage of a broadcasting tower collapsing, as if symbolically marking the end of the broadcast day.

(As it turned out, the next morning, station management received plenty of irate complaints from their answering machine about the signoff routine turning macabre, prompting the engineer to be called on the carpet and warning against the stunt being repeated. Even if it included the tower-collapse film being shown in reverse @ sign-on, just before the test pattern and tone went on screen.) 

CERTAIN XENOPHOBIC-LEANING ZEALOTS AND TRUE BELIEVERS HOLD DEAR AS AN ARTICLE OF FAITH the belief that anyone who supports "peace" (especially so in the current misadventures-crossing-into-RAHOWA Against Terrorism) is really an unconscious Communist or Communist sympathiser.

By this logic, then, are we to assume that those supporting the ur-RAHOWA are to be regarded as "true patriots"?

Leave your comments in the relevant quarter....

WHAT THE ZEALOTS AND TRUE BELIEVERS OF HYPERCONSERVATISM would think of the following:

see more crazy cat pics

In any case, Mein Innkeeper Friend recalled where, some years back, he asked a service club's members to think for themselves who between these two choices was "the real patriot:"

• The soldier serving his country for a supposed defence of democracy and liberty, willing to sacrifice life or limb if need be; or
• The college or high-school student expressing his/her opposition to what may actually be an unpopular or otherwise misguided war.

This never mind the almost-constant pronouncements of Fox Prolefeed and other bastions of conservative propaganda claiming their entitlement to a Sole and Exclusive Monopoly on Patriot Love Made Manifest.

Come to think of it, there are many innumerable possibilities in this vein worth asking--and for which the answer should be thought out carefully, without giving needlessly to emotion or insincerity.

I can think of a few right here:

• The businessman who treats his workers fairly and honestly, with due regard for their welfare and workplace ... or the businessman whose sole interest is profit above all else.
• The farmer who produces the biggest yields @ the lowest cost, with due regard for the land and environment ... or the farmer simply content with producing the biggest yields.
• The motorist who shows due regard for fuel economy and the environment, using public transportation or riding bicycle instead from time to time ... or the motorist who sees driving as one with "Americanism."
• The consumer interested in getting value for money based solely on price ... or the consumer interested in getting value for money in more ways than price alone.
• The blogger who is brainwashed, as it were, to blindly follow hard-wired beliefs in their reportage ... or the blogger who accepts truth as more important than ideological subservience.
• The consumer who boycotts certain businesses out of conscience  ... or the consumer who boycotts because he's blindly following the appeals of certain groups who sponsor, or otherwise call for, said boycotts based on potentially dubious arguments.
• The broadcaster who offers worthwhile programming out of good business practice ... or the broadcaster who offers worthwhile programming just to appease certain special-interest groups whose agenda may really be against public interest.
• The businessman who honours all warranties and guarantees as advertised out of good business practice ... or the businessman challenging accepted business practice just to score points with what may be a misguided agenda.
• The cosmopolitan, who believes that "it's a small world, after all" ... or the bigot, who sees America as The World, and vice versa.
• The mother who chooses an abortion out of conscience, or because of medical advice ... or the mother who avoids abortions because of a hard-wired Zealotry and True Belief in "national and racial duty" justifying larger families.
• The parents who prefer to send their children to public schools for the sake of their children developing Healthy Social Interaction ... or the parents who homeschool their children @ the cost of social isolation, usually because of misguided religiopolitical Zealotry and True Belief--and all the while unaware of the possible consequences.
• The innkeeper who offers travellers only what they really need ... or the innkeeper who offers travellers all manner of unnecessary or otherwise frivolous amenities based on a warped belief that such is what travellers "really want or need."
• He who sees thrift and self-reliance as all the more important ... or he who sees wasteful and frivolous shopping as all the more important.

In offering these choices, I hope you will think carefully of your answers before you offer an answer, particularly so in the comments section.

Giving in to emotions and latent prejudices may only be disastrous.

"Think about it."

YOUR CORRESPONDENT DOESN'T EXACTLY KNOW HOW MANY OF THIS BLOG'S REGULAR READERS COME FROM THE DALLAS/FORT WORTH METROPLEX, let alone remembering the use of cowbell to signal when radio stations WFAA ("Working For All Alike" or "World's Finest Air Attraction") and WBAP ("We Broadcast A Program," "We Bore All People" or--especially so during Prohibition--"We Bring A Pint") switched frequencies between 570 kHz (526 metres), 600 kHz (500 metres) and 820 kHz (365 metres) under a time-sharing agreement as prevailed from 1929 until May 1, 1970; the better to maximise the clear-channel positioning (with 50 kHz power full-time, meaning their signals could be heard across the country @ night) of WFAA @ 570 kHz and WBAP @ 820 kHz.

In other words, when WFAA was switching from 570 kHz to 600 kHz, or vice versa, three strokes of a cowbell signalled the change of frequency, @ which point WBAP would use the other of WFAA's such.

(Put another way: When WFAA was on @ 600 kHz, WBAP would broadcast @ 570 kHz in addition to its licenced such of 820 kHz. And vice versa.)

Hopefully, such will be remembered when those of the Metroplex who read The Exaggerator see this famous "More Cowbell!" routine from Saturday Night Live as parodied VH-1's Behind the Music documentary series around the turn of the Millennium:

More Cowbell - video powered by Metacafe

(And speaking of time-sharing among AM radio frequencies, I understand that the last such in effect is with a station in Decorah, Iowa as switches time with one owned by Luther College in that city.)

So: Would "More cowbell!" remind you of the WFAA/WBAP frequency shifts, especially so in the Metroplex?

Let alone Crazy Water Crystals....

see more crazy cat pics

THANKS TO CONSIDERABLE SOUTHERN WINDS TODAY AS COULD REACH 45 MPH IN THE ODD GUST OR TWO, the Minnwissippi region couldn't be happier to see springtime arrive in dead earnest seriousness.

@ least Your Correspondent thinks so, considering where milder temperatures than recent days can be discerned along with the wind having a kindness as was not there yesterday, paraphrasing Shakespeare there for a moment.

In a related note, he'll be working tomorrow @ the house of Mein Innkeeper Friend raking lawn, so if you don't exactly notice an essay straight away, you will know why.

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TALK ABOUT GOOD CONCEPT, BUT NO SENSE--WITH SUBTLE OVERTURES TOWARDS CHEAP POLITICAL PLOY, and then some:

Your Correspondent hath it that Senator (and GOP Presidential candidate presumptive) John McCain (a/k/a The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang) is calling for a special tax holiday on Federal fuel taxes during the summer driving season; the better, in theory, to drive down fuel costs and "help taxpayers."

I say "good concept, but no sense" because such turns out to, in the end, translate into a significant shortfall in the Federal Highway Trust Fund, itself financed by the Federal gas tax ... which, in the end, only translates into further serious deferred maintenance on American highways and bridges which can only make our transportation problem worse. Has Sen. McCain considered that possibility, let alone look for ways to compensate for the ensuing Highway Trust Fund shortfall without "needlessly" raising taxes, consistent with prevailing conservative articles of faith?

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AND WITH NYMEX LIGHT SWEET CRUDE OIL FUTURES HITTING A NEW RECORD HIGH OF SOME $113/BBL., it seems rather ironic that the ongoing oil and natural gas discoveries in the Bakken field of extreme western North Dakota, extreme eastern Montana and into the Canadian province of Saskatchewan are making barely any dent into the oil markets.

Especially considering where, by some estimates, some 500 million barrels of recoverable crude oil may exist in the Bakken field ... and quite a quantity of cubic feet of natural gas, much of which is now flared off @ wellhead.

The problem, no doubt, being a lack of decent storage and pipeline facilities which would transport the Bakken field's production to terminals and refineries, many of which are shut down or otherwise producing @ reduced levels (perhaps deliberately, methinks, and then excused as being necessary "to stabilise market prices," with tax incentives likely coming into the bargain).

And yet again, there are several oil companies as make it a point of pride to avoid buying their crude from politically-unstable regions, notably Amerada Hess, Kerr-McGee, Marathon, Murphy Oil (Spur) and Sinclair; no doubt they might be especially interested in the Bakken fields as a new and viable source for American crude oil supplies consistent with their business practices.

Until and unless the news of the Bakken field's potential turns out causing indigestion in the crude-oil markets to the point where the price eventually falls below the $100/bbl. benchmark.

Come to think of it:

How do we know His Fraudulency's Great Within isn't secretly investing substantially in crude oil futures, hoping to make substantial windfall profits before he leaves office--yet unlikely to realise that developments in the Bakken fields could make things worse?

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THINGS WHICH SHOULDN'T HAPPEN (IN THEORY) TO GOOD CHRISTIANS, LET ALONE ZEALOTS AND TRUE BELIEVERS: His Fraudulency has let slip from his very lips over ABC Television the fact that he had authorised the use of torture as an interrogation tactic against real or suspected terror suspects.

Officially to be excused as "preemptive war," theoretically preventing further Notorious Terrorist Attacks while officially whipping up terror-related hysteria and paranoia "just to keep people scared"--reinforced, as required, with the obligatory dose of patriotism.

And which could wind up, with one fatal slip of the pen, being used against innocent and blameless Americans in ways that could rival the Nazi regime's reaction to the unsuccessful plot against Hitler on 20 July 1944--as in charging blood relatives of those who were actually involved with the assaination attempt with "complicity" and "disloyalty," subjected to the indignity of show trials in a hastily-arranged "people's court" as was a front for the actual back-room pronouncements of guilty which led, inevitably, to hanging from piano wire off abattoirs' hooks.

Which is enough to prompt this petition drive @ Democrats.com calling upon Congress to timely launch impeachment proceedings against His Fraudulency for explicitly authorising torture in violation of various international treaties and conventions to which the United States is signatory. Treaties which the "inside of the inside" of the Great Within want regarded as no better than toilet paper.

THE PEOPLE, UNITED,
WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED!

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AND JUST HOW SURE ARE WE THAT IT'S NOT AMERICAN TROOPS AS ARE REALLY BEHIND the recent spate of "terrorist" bombs going off in the Sadr City district of Baghdad, blaming Iraqi militias for such in what could really be "false flag" campaigns to justify furthering the cause of ur-RAHOWA all along?

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OHHHH, THOSE FRENCH--or as Bill "No-Spin Zone" O'Reilly wants us to think, " the cheese eat the surrender monkey:"

The French National Assembly is now considering legislation as would make it an offense to "publicly incite extreme thinness," particularly so in the couture department; the better to prevent bad ideas (as in anorexia nervosa) being promoted in the impressionable.