The top most banner with the girl and "totally silent.. no moving parts" is kinda creepy. She looks like a girl from one of those horror movies.

Notice how one of sections of the add has
... silent,
green,

[And the word silent is in green also].

Undoubtably the film is: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070723/

Soylent Green.....a creepy look at the future from 35 years ago, complete with a magic pill that solves all problems. We're not quite to the point a "green" pill is necessary, but we're getting there.

Think about it.....now we're turning corn into fuel for cars. Have you checked the price of corn at the grocery store lately? Maybe a "green" pill is the future...... but I don't want to be there.

this is only because of pork barrel lobbying by the Midwestern cornbelt states and counter-productive subsidies. you will notice corn-based ethanol/biofuel is a purely American phenomenon; no-one else is stupid enough to do it.

Yeah....but they've attached a "green" label to the practice. That makes it ok, right?

It's a big issue here in Michigan. Corn growers here are loving the whole thing, not only are they getting better pricing for their crop, but they're still getting all those wonderful gov't subsidies to keep on growing. Nevermind, that this whole experiment and even members of the Dept of Agriculture admit that this trend is unsustainable. Now if we switched to soybean-based biodiesel. Not only would you get better fuel mileage (instead of worse with ethanol), you get more diesel out of soybeans than you do ethanol out of corn, and we grow it in the same amount as corn. Hell we could even increase the soybean production dramatically if we cut back on the corn production slightly.

Better yet would be the switchover of all cars to diesel. Again better mileage, more diesel product per barrel of oil (than gas), and low sulfur blends are already mandated. Looking at the price of diesel at the local stations, it's no wonder the freight and delivery companies are going nuts with fuel surcharges and still coming up short.

http://www.physorg.com/news124439794.html
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/11 ... aust-.html

not that I'm against diesel; as you probably know, over 50% of new cars sold in Europe are diesels (including awesome ones like BMW 123d/335d/535d). however there is a reason the US and other countries have such strict emissions regulations regarding them. I wonder if biodiesel exhaust particles would be less harmful....

Or if they are going to make ethanol - should use plants that provide better yield (e.g. sugar beets, etc.)

At the very least should be required to post the total energy in (put into production) vs. out (what yield as fuel) in their advertising/etc. (last I saw corn was mostly a loosing proposition - consumed more than an energy equivalent gallon of fuel to make a gallon of fuel.) So really just a greenwashing of oil fuel (not to mention a way to use more oil.)

It's funny, that's what I usually tell my ethanol-ignorant friends, but neglected to mention it here. Where I grew up in Michigan is HUGE for sugar beet production .I stop driving there at the end of October because the truck drivers overload their trucks (beets overfilling the sides) and don't put up their containment tarps because it takes to long (1 minute). As a result, if you get stuck behind one of these puppies on a back road, one of these is bound to come flying off and you'll have a 7 pound missile headed your way at 40mph. I know many people that have had broken windshields from these things.

In case anyone wonders what this food/fuel thing has to do with the movie "Soylent Green"........ the movie was based in a time when we were running out of all types of food. People were living on various "food" pills. The Soylent Green pill was a new miracle protein pill of sorts.....and nobody knew where this protein came from.

The movie was based around the search for the truth about Soylent Green.... You don't want to know.....

There was another movie called Soylent Running which was about some guys from Norfolk on a space ship with a couple of robots and some bunnies.

But I guess that's only meaningful to people from East Anglia. Sorry.

Still, at least the bunnies survived.