The Big List #8

• New Blog - Hoosier Insider

This is an IU blog by Star sports writer Terry Hutchens. Some of you may have picked up a hint of criticism of the Indianapolis Star here in the ol’ Blog-O-Rama, and it’s true that, generally speaking, I think the local news rag blows. There is the occasional diamond in the rough, though - and Terry’s writing is one of those diamonds.

• NCAA Enforcement Staff Case Summary - PDF (Option-click to download)

This is the case summary the NCAA used during IU’s hearing (which took place last Friday) on the Kelvin Sampson charges. There’s a book in all of this, I think - and I would love it if John Feinstein winds up being the guy who writes it. I’m very curious to see how far back the mea culpas go, and where the blame for this fiasco really lies.

• Paging Kermit The Frog

Yeah, who in the world needs a 10,000 square foot mansion, right? Probably not many people, especially not those of the empty nest set. Thing is, though, Al and Tipper bought an 80-year-old house and greened it up - it is noted in the article linked above that a number of the green improvements to the house could only have been made by people of fairly extraordinary wealth, such as the Gores. The folks at Snopes looked into an e-mail from early 2007 that compared the Gore home to the Bush summer home and noted that the Gore home was much less “green” than you would think it would be, being owned by an enviro-hippie like Al Gore. Trouble is, the e-mail was obviously created and circulated by conservative Gore-bashers and contains absolutely no context. It’s just a straight up-and-down comparison of energy use, and also happens to cite incorrect electricity consumption data published by a conservative think tank and which was later corrected by the Associated Press. The e-mail also does not mention that the Gore home is 80 years old, compared to the Bush summer home, which is less than ten years old. The Gore house also contains the offices of both Al and Tipper Gore, which ramps up the energy use. Oddly, though, the e-mail doesn’t mention that, and neither does the Snopes analysis. Conservatives and Republicans don’t go in too much for context, though - it makes their simplistic assertions way too complicated for their rank and file.

•Ethanol’s Advantages Far Outweigh Costs

Note the paragraph near the bottom of the letter where the writer mentions how efficiency in the production of ethanol has improved over the course of five years. I really hope that we the people are smart enough to stick it out with ethanol as part of the wider solution to the fossil fuel crisis. The long-term solution is renewable fuel sources that cost more to produce and yield less energy than fossil fuels - sad but true. There’s a finite supply of fossil fuel out there, and we can’t make more. Click here for a really good article on the topic from a recent issue of Mother Jones.

• Give Me Fuel, Give Me Fire, Give Me That Which I Desire

Finally, from the Intersection blog, a story about Craig Venter, the chap who decoded the human genome a few years back - and who is now working on creating an energy bug, an organism that will feed on carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight, and then turn those things into petro-based fuels that people can use in their cars. Sounds maybe too good to be true...but what if it worked? Either way, Terry Gilliam should take some part of the idea and make a movie out of it.