The New Saudi Arabia: Indiana, USA: Imagine with me that the pipe from the Middle East was suddenly shut off. What would be the result in our economy? Devastating. The price of gas would likely triple overnight, and the overall cost of goods would soar as the cost to manufacture increased. But, after some time we would learn to travel differently and there would be a rally around new technologies.

Why not work hard to make Saudi Arabia irrelevant? Wouldn’t it be so much better if we could just turn off that connection ourselves? I have been looking at the new ethanol technology and it is getting better and better each year. Just 9 years ago it was estimated to cost more energy to produce ethanol than the fuel could produce itself. No longer! Due to improved technologies and higher yields of corn ethanol has now come into its own. I spent some time plowing through a lot of studies and found that a bushel of corn can yield 2.68 gallons of fuel. Corn producers are now seeing yields of nearly 140 bushels per acre (partly due to new BT corn which is insect resistant). That means that for one acre of corn you can yield 392 gallons!

Now lets assume for a minute that some bright garage mechanic makes the necessary adjustments to his Honda Impact (sorry GM, Honda is the leader here) and converts his care from petroleum to ethanol. Assuming that he can replicate the same performance with ethanol he can now get a conservative 75 MPG (some are seeing closer to 90). That means that one acre of corn could propel this little cruiser for 29,400 miles.

There are the naysayer’s who will contest the validity of the figures, the realization of 392 gallons of fuel, or even the 75MPG (although it is being exceeded now), but the point is that things are changing. I read one report that said that to totally replace our dependence on foreign oil we would have to have 50% more land that we do currently (including all of Alaska). Sure, if technologies don’t improve things might be the same, but I am a firm believer in American ingenuity. First let’s start with trucks and fleet vehicles, busses and taxis. A few more years and we can enjoy a new freedom.

The Annual Preparedness Warning Message: Readers to my posts over the past few years know that I can be a little obsessive about emergency preparedness. This year I will back off for a variety of reasons. First, you don’t need me constantly carping about how ill prepared we are as a society, last year’s hurricanes proved me right. As I write it is day 9 in this year’s hurricane season and the first storm may be developing this evening in the gulf. Those who live there (including my parents, aunt and uncle, and dear friends) know what to do. The rest aren’t going to prepare one lick more just because they read it here.

But tonight I began to ponder real preparedness. I saw on The Weather Channel that they were doing a special this week on a feature that they did PRIOR to Katrina on the dangers of living in New Orleans (a city known for being below sea level on the gulf coast). I know that there were/are a lot of fine people who live there, but I am baffled at the surprise when a hurricane devastated their city. How can any community live with such blinders on? When we vacationed there a couple of years ago they almost bragged about how the city was built below sea level and the first major storm could sink it. Well, it did.

I then took inventory of where we live. What are the potential dangers of living here at the Digital Ranch. Well, nothing serious. We live in a rural area that will probably survive better than most, maybe.

So I stopped to consider some of the popular disaster movies and think how they might effect us. Volcanoes are pretty much a non-issue here, we don’t even have big hills. I think that the closest potential bad mountain is a thousand miles away. I was living in Seattle when Mt. St. Helens blew her top, I think that we are safe out here. Then there is the wildfires that tend to destroy hundreds of homes each year. Not a problem here. We are 50 feet from a forest, but the undergrowth was cleared two year ago and the woods never really get dry here.

Finally I came across the one that could really do damage, earthquake. We experienced a really bad one a hundred years ago at the other end of the state, and that is something that I guess could happen anywhere at any time. But what of those who live on a fault line, are they any different than those who lived in a city below sea level on the gulf coast? This year is the 100th anniversary of the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. A recent study said that if that were to happen again today (and all scientists agree that it is either possible or inevitable) it would displace some 250,000 homes (damaged to the point of being condemned), 10,000 office buildings, and 1,500 deaths. The total cost would be in the neighborhood of potentially $120,000,000,000.00 ($120b).

Then there is the question of what to do with the 250,000 families that are now without a home. What to do about that! And if you think that the folks in New Orleans made a stir about not getting taking care of, just wait until the core of the nation’s wealthiest liberals is displaced. Oh my! And if it happens in the next few years it will all be the blame of a Republican governor who get the full force of it all. And you know that you will hear all of the displaced people saying that they had no idea that it could happen. This despite the fact that they have seen some terrible earthquakes in our life times (okay, for old guys like me it is in our life times!) and every business and school has earthquake drills (I know, I was born there). Its going to happen and it is going to make Katrina look like a breeze in a field compared to the damage that can happen from “The Big One”.

Think I will go make sure the batteries in the flashlight are fresh.

Hurricane Preparedness Drill: Today FEMA decided to hold an emergency preparedness drill in New Orleans to test the effectiveness of the changes made since last year. Like all good preparedness tests, they didn’t announce it ahead of time, they simply launched emergency warnings on many of the government nets. The results were a little shocking.

• Mayor for Life Ray Nagin apparently didn’t know that it was just a drill. He called a press conference and immediately proclaimed that this wasn’t his fault and that if the government would spend more money on rebuilding levy’s than they would be safe. He again called for a chocolate city despite a 22% drop in minority population since Katrina. One of the press members told him that it was just a drill to which he complained that this was just a white wing conspiracy against him.
  

• Senator Mary Landrieu also hadn’t heard it was just a drill and took to the senate floor asking for $500 billion in aid relief and the resignation of President Bush for not signing the Kyoto Treaty which would have stopped this hurricane. Senator Lieberman whispered that the treaty was enacted during the Clinton administration and that he didn’t push to have it signed, to which she replied “Never mind”.
  

• President George Bush left for vacation to his ranch in Crawford. It isn’t clear if he knew it was a drill or not, he just does this from time to time.

To all my friends and readers down south, remember that we are now in the second week of the official hurricane season. Prepare!

I am a digital pioneer: I was reading C|Net tonight and ran across this article about Seth Godin's blog and that he doesn't allow comments. Hello? I have been doing that since almost the inception of The Digital Life. But alas, I am not Seth Godin and don't write books orhave high priced public speaking venues. But, I am a digital dude who doesn't allow comments, so that says something.

The reason that he doesn't allow posts are somewhat similar to mine, but I have a much greater reason. He states that it takes too much time to reply and think about all the comments, and that if he allows comments he will start writing differently in anticipation of the commentors. Great idea, but my main reason was much more simplier. I don't allow comments because I care for you. I tried the comment thing for a short time (I think it was something like a week) but I started getting comments like "Try my hot new babe site" or "Viagra available here!". So I shut it off because I don't want the readers of my posts (both of you) to have to be bothered with that kind of stuff.

So, Seth Godin may have millions of dollars and a great book series, but I think that I may have been first with the "one way blogging" idea.

A Question without an Answer - Terrorism: It used to be so easy. We had a country that we were at odds with and we knew who they were. It didn't matter who the country was, take your pick. At different times in our history it has been lots of countries. But the fact remained that it was a country. Then 9/11 changed everything. Now there were people who were not with a country but wanted to destroy us, or actually anyone who didn't believe like them (and apparently even some who believed like them). They didn't wear uniforms so it made it so much harder.

But like so many "protected" groups, we were told not to profile. We were told that we were being racists because we looked at certain ethnicities as potential terrorists. So today when I read that a group of terrorists were arrested in Canada I was hoping to find that my inner racism (and yes, it is developing) would be proved wrong. I wanted to read that the names of the terrorists were Jose and Angelo, or Gunther and Frederick, or even Chen and Wo. So was I shocked when I read that those arrested were named Ahmad and Shareef. Ahmad has a degree in health sciences and Shareef works for the Canadian Atomic Energy. Wow, that is a bad combination!

So the question is how do we stop this? London broke up a terrorist ring this week, Canada did the same. This is not something that is going away. We can't attack a country, we are in all the ones that originally supported 9/11 and look where that has gotten us. We can't deport the illegals because the Democrats get all upset at us infringing on their rights (although the Constitution doesn't provide rights to aliens). Even this weekend's arrests in Canada showed that doesn't always work, some of those arrested have been in country for over 20 years. So what's the solution?

Fairness in Sentencing (Warning: Political Rant, Common Sense): For years I have been complaining about the incredible unfairness of sentencing of pedophiles (purveyors of child porn or those who sexually abuse children). These criminals take away the innocence of children and often get a slap on the wrist and sent back on the streets to reoffend. This past week a man was convicted of repeatedly abusing a 12 year old girl and was given probation because the criminal was too short to be able to survive in prison. This is an amazing decision. The judge was more concerned about the welfare of a sexual predator (who is only 7 inches shorter than me!) than the abused 12 year old girl. It is time for judges like this to go away. If he was so concerned about the deviant then he could have sentenced him to 10 years of isolation. The pervert would probably even appreciate that kind of sentence.

But Kansas isn’t sitting still for these kinds of judges. Rep. Patricia Kilpatrick has proposed a state law requiring first time offenders of those who abuse children (14 and under) to be placed in prison for 25 years. The governor signed the bill into law.

This to me is the beginning in the right direction. If a person commits a crime but knows that they are going to serve a short time (or no time), what is to stop them? Instead we need to have a punishment that is actually a deterrent. Here is a thought for some of the judges out there, don’t send them to the special sexual offenders prisons within prisons that are everywhere, send the perverts into the general population. Why do they deserve special protection? I can hear some of the liberals out there “But they have rights too.” Bull, they have no rights, should be afforded no protection, and should feel the full force of the law.