Yes, it’s Earth Day again. Time to celebrate all things making our world a better place, for us and our kids and our grandkids and so on. And what better way to make the world a better place than to reduce our dependency on dirty nasty oil consumption by using biofuels.

Maybe.

It sounds good on paper. Grow some corn. Make some moonshine hootch ethanol fuel. Mix it in with your gasoline. Now you’re less dependent on oil and saving the planet from evil CO2 emissions.

Well, that’s at least half right. You are using less oil. But while the emissions from your exhaust pipe may be a bit cleaner, and the corn grown may have absorbed all sorts of nasty carbon from the air as it grew, it may not be quite that simple. You see, the process of producing the ethanol also releases CO2 back into the air. It doesn’t make itself. So there’s that amount that has to be counted too. And on top of that, some farmers use artificial fertilizers that are full of carbon, which muck up the Earth-friendly theme just a tad more. And then there’s transporting the ethanol, and so on. The closer you look, the less clean ethanol really is.

But ethanol also has another down side: It’s food! If we had a great surplus of food in the world and no one ever went hungry, then there’d be no arguments. Unfortunately we do not live in such a utopia. And in fact the concern over how biofuel effects food prices is so great that the European Union may even postpone or drop their plans for biosource quotas in motor fuel.

All is not so bleak however. Right now ethanol is produced mostly from corn and sugar. But it need not be so. Algae may provide another, more efficient, means of producing any number of biofuels, ethanol included. Also, while ethanol might be the most thought of and talked about biofuel, we do have others. Biodiesel for example is basically just vegetable oil. It’s much easier to produce and thus better for our environment. And then there’s methanol, or wood grain alcohol, which isn’t made with food crops.

We need to stop overlooking these other alternative fuels and start putting as much research and support into their production as we do into ethanol. Because we really can make the world a better place. If we try.

The countdown begins to the punting of Dubya and the return to society. Thanks to   Bush’s Last Day  I now have a countdown timer. Sweet! This, my friends, is what the internet is all about: geeks helping geeks ensure freedom of speech*.

*= Sanity check clause: Now some might consider my words “unpatriotic”. However I would like to point out that I do support my country. It’s the pseudo-elected village-idiot puppet-in-charge that I don’t support. Just as I can support troops without supporting the oops … I mean the “war on terror”.

Hey, speaking on the “War on Terror” how are things going in Afghanistan lately? Oh, I’m sorry … don’t I mean Iraq? No. I don’t. Makes you wonder though.

Now, I would hope that everyone knows who Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. is. I mean how can anyone not know about the man that drug the United States kicking and screaming into modern thinking like civil rights, and by doing it through peaceful means at that? He was a man of the age. He was an icon.

But does he really need to close down the banks, schools, and post offices?

I mean “Presidents’ Day” is questionable enough. George Washington at least founded the country though. And Lincoln - who was just kind of thrown into Washington’s birthday for the heck of it I guess - was another major founding father - who coincidentally also did a lot for civil rights. But do we really need a holiday to be patriotic on when we have, oh, I dunno, the 4th of July. Or Veterans Day? Or Memorial Day?

Don’t get me wrong, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. certainly was an awesome guy. But compared to the scope of what defines the other national holidays, does he really stack up? Or is giving him his own holiday like this just some politician’s way of pretending to care about civil rights to quiet the angry oppressed black folk?

I mean what about people like Rosa Parks? Or why isn’t there a holiday for someone who did great things during women’s suffrage? We have a Susan B. Anthony dollar coin that no one uses. Is that supposed to be equal?

In a decade or two will we have some notable gay rights movement leader with a face on a three dollar bill? (That no one uses.)

It just seems to me that today not only do we not yet have all of the civil rights that so many have fought for, but we even fail to equally recognize the people who have done so much. Were we really so desperate for a holiday that we singled out Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.? Or is it more like “equal opportunity” where you pick someone based on color to make it look like you’re not picking based on color?

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was a great man who did awesome things. I hope we can all learn from him.

But is he and he alone worthy of his very own holiday? Or should we do to Martin Luther King Day what we did to George Washington Day and make Civil Rights Day where we can promote everyone who did great things for all civil rights: race, gender, religion, age, sexual preference, etc.?

To me it’s sadly ironic that today this use of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. is in fact oppressing other civil rights. I have a feeling if he were alive today, he’d agree. I’m sure he wouldn’t want us to concentrate just on race.

Though, being a reverend, I’m not sure where he’d stand on gay rights.

Yes, so a lot of this blog entry is tongue in cheek. If you’re looking to take it seriously and you get offended by it, I apologize. But it’s meant to make light as well as bring light. The United States of America, for being a “land of the free”, still has a long way to go and a lot to learn. And I hope one day we can get there, and even get there with laughter and smiles.