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As I was driving to work today I began thinking about the 10% ethanol blend we Mainers have in our gasoline now. Odd I know but my mind wanders at times - you’ll see where I’m going with this in a moment. You see, most ethanol is made from corn (wheat and barley are being used as well but those fit here as well) and corn is, well, food. It seems absolutely absurd to me that of all the things that we can derive fuel from, food somehow makes the most sense to us.

I began thinking about how much food we burn in our gas tanks every day and then more importantly - how much food do I burn on my daily commute. So, I looked it up. It takes 26.1 pounds of corn to make a single gallon of ethanol and in Maine, we use a 10% blend of ethanol in our gasoline. So, that means roughly 2.61 pounds of corn per gallon of gasoline pumped into my car right? Well, I have a 13 gallon tank and have to fill it about every two weeks so I’m going to say that I use roughly one gallon of gas a day - burning over two and a half pounds of food each day.

How much does an ear of corn weigh? I don’t know and couldn’t find this information on the Internet but what do you think? quarter pound? half pound? Lets go with a half pound. That’s about five ears of corn I burn a day, 35 a week and 1,825 ears of corn a year. Maybe it sounds worse at 952.65 pounds of food?

That’s nearly a thousand pounds of food burned in my engine each year.

It’s hard for me to not imagine what this child would think of that.

What exactly does this do for us? Look it up, please. Find a reason why we burn food for fuel and post it in my comments section. It does not make our fuel cheaper. It is not better for the environment. It does not give me better fuel economy. Corn isn’t even the most sensible or economical thing we could use to make fuel with.

Simply, it only makes sense for corn lobbyists and an insanely over subsidized agricultural industry.

There are lots of issues that seem natural for me to roll into here, child sweatshop labor, children laboring over blood diamonds in Africa, girls sold into slavery in India but nothing seems quite so insane as the amount of food that this country could be feeding the world with but instead chooses to burn in our gas tanks (or feed to cows but that’s another post).

I’ve never felt quite so much like the fat cat banker lighting my cigar with a $100 bill in front of a beggar asking me for loose change while telling him that I don’t have any.

It’s not that I feel that it is our duty to take care of the entire world. It’s nice to think that we could build schools and hospitals in every corner of the world but I know that’s not likely. However, domestic production of ethanol has grown to over 4.5 billion gallons per year and that equates to more than 117 billion pounds of corn…per…year.

Again, it’s not our job to fix the whole world but I’d like to think that maybe it’s our responsibility to at least ensure that the world’s children have food and fresh water. The 143 million malnourished children in the world could eat an extra 818 pounds of grain per year if we simply gave up on ethanol and sent what we use to make it to the poor countries of the world. That’s an awful lot of extra food.

Think about that the next time you fill your tank, eat a hamburger, chicken nugget or drink a Coke.

Typically I would argue against the farm subsidies that produce these massive crops of corn and other grains that are largely not consumed by American appetites but now at the end of this post, I say go for it. I would happily support the continued taxation of my paycheck if only we would leave the food we grow as food and send it to those who are most desperate for that which we so easily discard.

This cracked me up…

So here is an interesting article, CNN Money - Radical Cheap Homes: $1,000 about homes for sale in depressed areas for as little as a few hundred dollars each. My question is, who is really buying these homes? The answer is probably developers who will invest some money in them, fix them up and sell them for a price that people who live in these areas can’t afford.

Here’s my suggestion - I’d like to see a community organization that buys these homes up and offers them to the people who actually already live in these depressed areas. Let’s face it, there are plenty of low income families living in Flint, Michigan who can’t afford even the $500 to buy one of these homes. So, lets buy the homes and allow people to “apply” to live in them. I think it’s fair that they simply take whatever rent they are paying for their apartment and pay that to live in these houses. The hope is that they move in, fix up the house and turn these run down neighborhoods back into the small, close knit communities that they once were. After 12 months of living in the house, someone from the community organization would inspect the place and if the family has made a noticeable improvement to the house or community in some way - they can have the deed to the house and land for free.

Seriously, some of these houses are selling for less than $1,000! What better investment can we make in our communities than helping people to live a better life? I’m damn sure that the last thing we need is a developer buying them all up to bulldoze and put up yet another condo community.

But that’s just me.

Every year I have a variety of New Year’s Resolutions but they are typically the same recycled old cliches over and over again - exercise more, eat less junk food, be a better person, etc. This year, I’m changing “Be a better person” to “Be more like Julio Diaz”.

Here’s a guy who makes it his personal responsibility to make the world a better place - one deed at a time.

This is just a random few POV shots of my day on 10.16.2008. A friend of mine (Justin) created one and posted it to his Facebook account. I thought it was a pretty cool idea so I gave it a shot. In the end I finally had to upgrade to Quicktime Pro so I could convert the 3gp videos from my phone and then edit them using iMovie but I think it came out alright. I’ll try to make one of these every now and then just for the fun of it.

I know I haven’t written much lately but I just wanted to mention something that I heard on the radio today. I was listening to the only local AM talk radio show and a commercial came on for Dino Furs. Blah blah blah about furs…everyone knows how I feel about wearing dead animal carcasses as clothing but the part that really struck me was that they actually wanted to point out that their furs are made from USA Skins. As in, these skins were not made by dirty foreigners.

I just have one question. For those of you that do like to wear rotting animal carcasses as “stylish” clothing, does it really matter to you if those animals were skinned in the US or some other country? I’m thinking that if you don’t really have a problem with raising and slaughtering animals for their pelts then you probably also don’t have a problem with subjecting third world children to a life of slavery to ensure a steady supply of affordable fur clothing.

I’m in Virginia Beach this week for a client visit. Luckily for me, my parents also happen to live in Virginia Beach and therefore I get to spend the weekend with them when I travel down here for business. Today my Mom wanted to take a trip over to SandBridge Beach.

It’s a bit less crowded than the main “Virginia Beach beach” so it’s nicer in that regard. There were lots of people laying in the sun (86 degrees and humid today) and children swimming. When I first stepped into the surf I thought it was pretty cold but then I just stepped in and let my feet sink into the sand as the waves rushed over my legs again and again.

It was interesting. At first I was just standing there contemplating the surf and how cold the water was but within a few minutes my thoughts drifted to the events of my life lately and my future. Soon my mind was just clear and I was just staring at the surf - meditating if you will. I stood there for about twenty minutes until my feet were pretty red from the cold and I wanted to warm up but it was very relaxing.

My buddy Dan is a pretty good dart player but it’s not every day that you get to see something like this…

I swear that this is not rigged. He truly threw two bulls and then his third dart is actually stuck in the flight for what would have been a third bull. It all worked out since he only needed two bulls and won anyway but I thought the shot was pretty cool and took a pic to put up on here!

Here are some pictures that I took while at the 9th Annual NAPCP (National Association of Purchasing Card Professionals) in San Antonio this year. None of them are pictures of the conference itself but really, wouldn’t you rather see pictures of beautiful San Antonio?

Have you ever gone to a restaurant, ordered fish and had the waitperson ask you how would you like it cooked? I understand it with Tuna or Swordfish (I eat neither) and I really doubt that you’ll ever hear it with any kind of whitefish like Haddock, Cod, Halibut or Sea Bass but it seems like the trendy thing to do lately is ask how you’d like your salmon cooked.

I had a business lunch at the local Macaroni Grill today (not my choice) and ordered the grilled salmon with spinach and orzo salad (below).

When the waiter asked me how I would like my fish cooked, I cringed and said, “cooked”.

He responded, “cooked all the way through?”

To which I replied, “Please. Don’t bring me raw fish unless it’s sushi.”

I understand that you can cook salmon “throughout” meaning you take it off the heat when it’s done in the center of the thickest part or, because fish continues to cook even after you take it off the heat, you can take it off a few minutes before it’s done and by the time you get it on the table, it’s cooked all the way through. The second option tends to result in a fish that is slightly translucent in the center as opposed to a fish that may be overcooked by the time you get it to the table but really, we’re still talking about cooked fish. At no point do I expect that Macaroni Grill or anyone else is going to accommodate my request if I ask them for a “salmon fillet, medium rare, slightly bloody in the center”. They would be stupid to serve me undercooked fish and I would be stupid to eat it.

So really, we’re not talking about how I want my fish but rather, how would I like them to serve it to me: in a timely fashion while it’s cooked correctly or would I like them to overcook my fish to ensure I don’t get sick and then bring me a dry piece of cardboard? Well, my opinion is that if you have to ask how I would like my salmon prepared then I probably shouldn’t be ordering fish from your restaurant at all.