Lincolnite

Who needs the Big Bad Wolf?

There is a lot of debate about whether or not ethanol is worth it from an energy standpoint. The question is, does ethanol result in more energy being output than it what it takes to make the ethanol in the first place? A recent study says no. The Journal Star didn't make a big deal out of the new report in this morning's edition, but this is actually a very big deal. If ethanol is a net energy loser, than so-called "green" energy initiatives -- such as the University of Nebraska–Lincoln's switch to ethanol and biodiesel -- are actually harmful to the environment and to taxpayers' pocketbooks. If this report and others like it are true, you are paying the government to waste energy, and as a bonus you get to choke on a bunch of excess pollutants as well. The report says that ethanol requires 29% more energy to make than it outputs. The ethanol industry says there is a net 60% gain in energy. Clearly one or both of those sources are lying. The ethanol industry likely does not include in its numbers the amount of energy required to harvest the corn, water the corn, fertilize the corn (and to make the fertilizer), and so on. That would explain why their numbers are so optimistic. Some reports I've seen have included such ridiculous energy inputs as the amount of energy put into the corn by the sun, so their numbers are untrustworthy. That doesn't seem to be the case in this report:

In assessing inputs, the researchers considered such factors as the energy used in producing the cro p (including production of pesticides and fertilizer, running farm machinery and irrigating, grinding and transporting the crop) and in fermenting/distilling the ethanol from the water mix. Although additional costs are incurred, such as federal and state subsidies that are passed on to consumers and the costs associated with environmental pollution or degradation, these figures were not included in the analysis.

It is clear that the public are not being given the straight facts on ethanol by the ethanol industry. That's not a huge deal to me; any industry will typically provide only those facts to the public that improve the public's perception of that industry. Fair enough. What does bother me is that both the feds and the State of Nebraska are in bed with the ethanol industry in the form of agricultural welfare subsidies, marketing, and direct endorsements. We can't trust the government's ethanol numbers any more than we can take at face value those from the industry itself. With so much at stake, and with so many people concerned about the issue, we need to force ourselves -- and our policymakers -- to take a long, hard, fresh look at ethanol policy.

I didn't make as much progress on Lincolnite this weekend as I had hoped. Oh well. It'll just have to wait until I get back from Utah.

I keep hacking away at Lincolnite in my spare time and I continue to make progress. I'm going to set a lofty goal for myself for this weekend: to have operability in the Articles, Blogs, Articles, News, and Directory sections. That doesn't mean they will be finished, mind you. Just that the skeleton of functionality will be there. The Blogs are already at that point, so I can check them off. The News section is close, I've hardly touched the Articles section, and the Directory doesn't even exist yet. Wish me luck!

Is it just me, or have there been more transients hanging around Downtown these past couple weeks? Having lived, attended school, and/or worked in and around Downtown since 1997, I've become pretty familiar with the transient population in Downtown Lincoln. I don't know them by name or anything, but I can tell you which men have been around for a while, which ones I haven't seen in a long time, and so on. There is always turnover, of course. But recently there seems to have been a sizable influx of new men hanging around. (Sizable is, of course, relative. I'm talking a half dozen or so individuals.) What makes them noticeable is that they don't seem to "fit in" -- they hang out in unusual places, for example. And most noticeably, they panhandle. The regulars almost never actively solicit assistance from the average passer-by. This new batch of transients hasn't caused any problems to my knowledge, so their presence isn't really something to be concerned about. But they have been noticed, not just by me, and not just by people who would be the type to notice these sorts of things. It really makes you wonder who these guys are, why and how they came here, and why they all showed up at pretty much the same time. In fact, that wonder may be a good thing. It may get the average Lincolnite to think a bit more about Lincoln's homeless and transient populations. Or it may have negative consequences, perhaps scaring folks out of going Downtown.

A number of e-newsletters are in big trouble, thanks to new laws in Utah and Michigan. I love how politicians think that regulating these sorts of issues will actually solve anything, as opposed to criminalizing innocent behavior and doing nothing to stop the behavior they meant to criminalize. Any law gurus (calling Mr. T!) care to analyze the situation?

I saw Ice Man today! He was eating at Chipotle with some girl. I really wanted to go up to him and say "Dude, you were, like, so gay in Top Gun. That volleyball scene was soooo homoerotic. How come the director cut out the Ice Man / Maverick make-out scene?" But I didn't. Curiously, he looked just like he did in this photo, but he was wearing a green jump suit instead of a white dress uniform. And he hasn't aged a day. In fact, that's the strange part about the whole experience. I think Ice Man must have invented a time machine to hop from 1986 to today. He must be smart. He didn't act all that smart in the movie. Strange.

The Oven continues to impress me. I had been craving Indian food for a while, so The Missus and I went to The Oven last night on our weekly date night. The atmosphere, the food, and the service were all excellent as usual. I tried a new dish, chicken tikka madras. Oh my. I know very little about Indian food, but I know what I like. I really like chicken tikka madras. Most people would call the dish spicy; it was, but to my tastebuds it was nowhere near "oh my God call the fire department!" Nestled within, however, were several thin red chiles. Wow, they sure were fiery last night! The first one caught me off guard and gave me the hiccups. After that, though, I was prepared. They had a kick, but with a great flavor. I still can't get used to some of the colors used in Indian cooking. The bright yellow mulligatawny and fire engine red chicken tikka still catch me off guard. As a guy coming from a pretty straight-up southeast Nebraskan-style cooking background it isn't really surprising that the colors startle me. Growing up, the only bright colors I saw in my food were red (Heinz Ketchup) and yellow (Velveeta). But I'm learning!

Yesterday's Journal Star carried two articles that seemed to conflict a bit. Perhaps somebody can explain to me how the two situations jive with one another. On page 1B there was an article titled Hiker/biker bridge over North 27th planned. On page 3B there was Appeals court rules against city in bike trail. The LJS made no effort to connect the two stories. That strikes me as odd, considering the trail that the $1.76M bridge is a part of has effectively been cut off by the appeals court ruling. In other words, this new bridge will go...nowhere. The city could always reroute the proposed bike trail through the neighborhoods west of 27th Street. But that is, to say the least, a less-than-ideal solution. It could be argued that the bridge over 27th Street near Y Street is also valuable for your average pedestrian who just wants to cross 27th Street in a manner that doesn't involve dodging cars. Fair enough, there may be a few of those people out there. But using a pedestrian bridge to cross a four-lane street requires traveling way out of your way. Most pedestrians are lazy. They will take the risk of crossing the street rather than walking three times the distance via the bridge. Consider 27th & Highway 2. Pedestrians who just want to cross Highway 2 on the east side don't use the bridge, they cross Highway 2 (illegally) the old fashioned way. The proposed bridge won't require going nearly as far out of the way as the Highway 2 bridge, but the principle is the same. So if the bridge connects to a terminated bike path, a nd it doesn't serve any purpose for getting pedestrians across 27th Street, what is it good for? Not much, I propose. It strikes me as another silly -- and expensive! -- attempt to "pretty up" North 27th Street in a way that makes community leaders feel good about themselves without actually doing anything substantive to improve the neighborhood. In other words, the bridge runs the risk of falling into the same category as those silly -- and expensive! -- pseudo-antique street lamps in the area.

I'm a big fan of Firefox. It's a great web browser. I find it far more enjoyable to use than Internet Explorer, Opera, or any other browser I've ever used. I've loved Firefox ever since I first got my hands on it, which was sometime back in the Version 0.8 stage or so. That being said, sometimes Firefox really ticks me off. Lately, in fact, it crashes on me about once per day. They aren't random crashes, either. They typically occur when I visit pages that run heavy scripts or code of some sort. A page heavy on DHTML killed Firefox today. That was after an earlier crash, the cause of which I don't recall. Two crashes in one day is unforgivable, especially crashes caused by activities Firefox needs to be able to handle if it's going to claim to be the best web browser available. I don't have any proof, but I'm tempted to say that I have more crashes with 1.0.4 than I had with earlier versions; I don't recall this kind of grief happening a couple months ago. I realize Firefox is just at 1.0, and 1.0s will always be somewhat immature. But daily (or even weekly) crashes are something up with which users will not put. At least, not the users that Firefox needs to attract in order to become a true competitor to Internet Explorer. Firefox 1.1 is due within the next few months; I hope that version gets rid of some of the crashy behavior so that more people will be willing to give Firefox the chance it deserves.

Yesterday's bomb scare outside Oso Burrito was a bust. The Journal Star reported this morning (article not available online) that the suitcase was empty. That's a good thing, of course. But either a bomb or a whole bunch of size 54DD bras would have made for a much more exciting story.

If you've ever been to the Wilson homestead you know that my garden takes up about 40% of my back yard. That's not saying a whole lot, of course; because the house sits on a corner lot, the back yard is only large enough for the garden, a patio, and a small patch of grass. The Missus and I made the conscious decision to give the garden a big chunk of our precious back yard real estate for two reasons. For one thing we wanted the garden to be close to us, so that we would tend to it and keep it thriving. The other reason was more practical: it's one of the few spots in our tree-dominated yard that gets a decent amount of sun. Anyway, I've learned over the past year and a half that I really enjoy gardening. I'm not any good at it, mind you, but I like working in the garden, and I love that I have access to all sorts of fresh food a mere dozen steps from my back door. Recently the garden has really begun taking off, renewing my interest after a bit of a ho-hum period in June. Our yellow squash, zucchini, and cucumber plants have been going strong for a couple weeks now. Our acorn squash plant is going strong, but the fruits won't be ready for a while. Our pumpkin plant is flowering like crazy, so hopefully we'll have a bunch of big orange pumpkins in time for Halloween. But what's really grabbed my attention recently is the growth spurt put on by our pepper and chile plants. Our green bell pepper plants are beginning to fruit (no sign of fruit yet from the yellow and red pepper plants, although they are blooming). Our kung paos (thai chiles) have been out for a while, and I noticed our serranos, anaheims, and jalapenos are all beginning to show up. (Along with some fruit on a plant creatively called "big chile." I'm guessing it's an anaheim or NuMex variant, but who knows. Hopefully the fruit will be good for chiles rellenos.) Sadly, my little habanero plant, although healthy looking , doesn't seem to be doing much. Given how well the garden seems to grow, you'd think I actually knew something about gardening. Ha! I don't know a darn thing about gardening. I know the difference between live and dead plants, and I'm pretty good at noticing the symptoms of dying plants. Beyond that, though, I'm pretty useless. A friend of mine is a soil scientist -- I know, sounds boring as heck, doesn't it? -- and during his most recent visit he commented that the garden soil seems to be of fairly high quality. That was good, and surprising, news, especially considering the fact that the previous owners of the house had obviously neglected the soil in the back yard over the years. If anybody out there wants some garden-fresh vegetables, let me know. If this year's harvest is like last year's we'll have plenty of extras to go around. And with the garden being 50% larger this year, well, we could really have our hands full!

Brian Rosenthal is reporting that Tom Osborne field is "colorful." It sounds to me like he's not a big fan of the new look. He compares the field to Oregon's football field, which means it looks something like this.

What an exciting lunch! Right after I ordered at Oso, the owner, Nader Sepahpur, came in and began speaking with his employees behind the counter. He asked if they knew anything about the suitcase sitting outside, how long it had been there, etc. In a rather "do I really have to do this?" sort of tone, he said something to the effect of "I suppose I should call the police." Sure enough, police officers and fire fighters soon began blocking off the area with their vehicles and caution tape. Unfortunately, that also included blocking the entrance to most every business on the south side of O Street between 14th and Centennial Mall. We had to use the back fire door to get out of Oso. When we did we saw that there was a large burgundy suitcase sitting on the sidewalk not far from the now closed board sports store (a half building west of Oso). As we left, the bomb squad was prepping their nifty suicide robot to investigate the suitcase and, I assume, to blow it up if necessary. There were several camera crews on scene, so I'm sure more details will be made available on the news tonight, and in the Journal Star tomorrow. It'll be interesting to hear what sorts of exciting things were inside.

You know what I love about Tuesdays? I get to eat with my father at Oso Burrito. I love Oso. Great food in a local joint served by friendly people at reasonable prices, and all within walking distance of my office. My dad and I have been doing the Tuesday Oso routine for quite a while now. I don't remember for certain when we started, but I'd guess it was over a year ago. We chose Tuesday because the special is jerk chicken burritos. Tasty stuff. The bad news is I have to wait another 15 minutes before I start my walk toward O Street. That makes my stomach very angry.