We're Number One!

How can we be the leader of the Free World when we have more people in jail, in total numbers and per capita, than any other country in the world? Even China, who I complain about regularly, isn't as bad.

RATES OF INCARCERATION
USA: 750 prisoners per 100,000 people
South Africa: 341 per 100,000
Iran: 222 per 100,000
China: 119 per 100,000

As for total numbers:

"While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine."

The total of 2.3 million adults held in prison - or one in every 99.1 adults - puts the US far head of other countries.

China, with its far greater population, has 1.5 million people behind bars, and Russia has 890,000.

The Hartford Courant version of the story is here. In it they mention how Connecticut is one of five states that spends as much or more on its prisoners as it does on education. The state's prisons are overcrowded and, IIRC, earlier this month there was talk about either building another prison or releasing 10% of the prison population.

The article also says:

"...the consistent increase in the country's prison population over the past 20 years has been driven by policy choices, not by spikes in crime or the nation's population."

I'd say that the War on Drugs has had a lot to do with that. With mandatory minimum sentencing commonplace, it should come as no surprise that the prison population is booming.

Maybe if we eliminated mandatory minimums for non-violent drug offenses and decriminalized marijuana from a Schedule 1 to a Schedule 2 drug we could take some of the pressure off.

Could we do more? Sure. But the country needs baby steps. After all, someone in Washington might have a temper tantrum.

Maybe we should let non-violent criminals (no convicted rapists or murderers) work off their offenses by serving for a year in Iraq. That would cut down on prison overcrowding and help the Army meet recruitment goals. It's a win-win situation! ;)

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Cargill Pauses Plans For Ethanol Plant

Corn-based ethanol has lost some of its luster. From NPR's Marketplace.

Cargill is suspending construction of a $200 million ethanol plant outside Topeka, Kan. The agribusiness giant says market conditions for ethanol are deteriorating. Jeremy Hobson reports.

KAI RYSSDAL: Corn closed down a couple of cents today, a bit more than $5.25 a bushel at the Chicago Board of Trade. Still, that's double the price of a couple of years ago. It's part of the reason food prices are going up. It's also part of the reason why Cargill has announced it's scrapping plans for a $200 million ethanol plant outside Topeka, Kan. The agribusiness giant says market conditions for ethanol are deteriorating. Reading between the lines here, what they really mean is that corn's gotten too expensive to make any money on, and if you want to make ethanol in the U.S., you've got to have corn.

Jeremy Hobson has the story.

JEREMY HOBSON: Cargill spokesman Bill Brady says it's pretty obvious why the company is suspending the Topeka plant.

BILL BRADY: "The cost of corn is high. The cost of infrastructure to build ethanol plants is much higher than it was, and the price that you can get for a gallon of ethanol is not enough. The numbers don't crunch, basically."

When I asked him whether suspensions were on the way for three other planned Cargill plants, he said this.

BRADY: "The other locations, there have been no decision yet."

HOBSON: "But it's possible that those also may be suspended?"

BRADY: "Well, I mean it's, the economic environment that we're talking about is industry-wide."

It sure is, says John Skelley, who operates an ethanol plant in Arizona.

JOHN SKELLEY: "It's a more mature industry now and you're going to see more mature type of return on investments that are certainly not going to be as crazy as they were a couple years ago."

He says 50 or 100 percent returns have turned into a more realistic 15 percent, but Duke Energy Professor Richard Newell says don't expect a wave of plant closures. Remember last year's energy bill, with its mandates for ethanol production in the years to come.

RICHARD NEWELL: "There is a law in place that basically says that a certain portion of our fuel must come from these types of renewable fuels. That's going to mean that there's going to need to be more ethanol."

He says companies are going to have to build new plants to meet that demand, even if they're not as profitable as they once were.

KAI RYSSDAL: "Cargill, we should tell you, is an underwriter of this program."

Emphasis mine. Thanks to Tammy for the link.

What's surprising is that this comes with already existing ethanol subsidies. Apparently, they're not enough for some companies to continue down the road. What does this mean for food prices, which have already been on the rise? Nothing. Unless demand for ethanol subsides, which isn't bloody likely considering the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 requires ethanol production to hit 36 billion gallons by 2022 (from 4.7 billion gallons in 2007), don't expect food prices to improve. To be fair, 21 billion gallons of the 2022 total must be derived from non-cornstarch products (i.e. sugar, cellulose). But that's still room for 15 billion gallons on corn-based ethanol, more than triple what's in use today.

Of course, laws can be repealed.

Watthead has a good list of ethanol articles.

Cargill's website.
"Why are wheat prices rising?" from the BBC.

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Beer in Review: Cuckoo Bock

Continuing along with my newfound love of bock beer, I picked up Otter Creek's Cuckoo Bock. It's another installment of Otter Creek's World Tour through beer. This stop: Germany, for a Mai Bock, a lighter, but still potent, version of traditional bocks.

On the first pour (this is a 22 oz bottle after all), I got a clear, golden lager with a stable head. I found it to be mild in both hops and malt. A little sweet. Light bodied. It was crisp with a clean finish. It would make for a good beer to drink in Spring and I'd be willing to try it in Summer too.

Otter Creek divulged that they used "Vienna malt, pilsener malt, two types of Munich malts, and hops and yeast all the way from Germany, in an effort to make this beer as authentic as possible."

Actual alcohol content unknown, but the category runs 6.3% to 7.2%. You wouldn't know it though. I didn't get any of that extra tongue twist that I've encountered with Imperial beers.

The second pour was different than the first. This one was cloudy, and thus a little darker. My guess is that there was a bit of yeast sediment in there. Nothing any craft beer drinker can't handle. ;) Otherwise, it tasted the same.

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Mercury

WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court said Friday the Bush administration ignored the law when it imposed less stringent requirements on power plants to reduce mercury pollution, which scientists fear could cause neurological problems in 60,000 newborns a year.

A three-judge panel unanimous struck down a mercury-control plan imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency three years ago. It established an emissions trading process in which some plants could avoid installing the best mercury control technology available by buying pollution credits.

Environmentalist and health experts argued that such a cap-and-trading mechanism would create “hot spots” of mercury contamination near some power plants. Seventeen states as well as environmental and health groups joined in a suit to block the regulation, saying it did not adequately protect public health.

Full article

This is good news. While a cap-and-trade system might be ok to use to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, mercury is far too nasty to show that sort of leniency towards. While a broken thermometer (100 mg or less) or fluorescent bulb (5 milligrams) isn't much, coal power plants emit this stuff by the ton. 48 tons/year in fact.

That's not to say broken thermometers and fluorescent bulbs should just be tossed in the trash. If it accumulates in any one spot, it has the potential to become a problem. But one doesn't need to call in the EPA to clean it up. There are procedures one should follow.

I used to work for a environmental testing lab and we handled mercury all the time. If a soil or water sample was contaminated with high levels of sulfur (which obscures the signal of the pesticides, herbicides, PCB's and other contaminants we were checking for), we would add mercury to the sample to react with the sulfur. We'd then extract the mercury from the sample and dispose of it in our mercury waste container. The amount of mercury we would need for any particular sample would be on the order of a few drops. If any spilled, we'd pipette it up. The fume hood picked up any vapors.

Remember the saying, "Mad as a hatter"? Mercury was once used to press the felt on hats. Unfortunately, people didn't wear gloves or have adequate ventilation back then so they absorbed the mercury through their skin and inhaled the vapors. Connecticut used to be the hat making capital in the US. Danbury was known as "Hat City." While the nickname continues to this day, the industry is long gone.

But back to coal. Since the US and China are going to continue to burn it for energy, it needs to be cleaned up. Coal gasification technology is already being used to strip out sulfur, nitrogen oxides, and mercury. It's about time that the regulations for new coal plants require mercury emissions, among other things, to be eliminated.

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Fiction

I've given up on trying to get my short story, "Tile", published. I'd written it with a particular zine in mind, but it went under before I finished the story. I tried sending it elsewhere, but no luck. While I think it's a decent story, I've finally accepted the fact that it's predictable, which means no one is going to buy it. Rather than let it languish any longer on my hard drive, I've uploaded it to my website for people to read. If I can think of a way to improve upon it, I'll take it down and try again. In the meantime, I get to move on.

Silvio's tiling skills are top notch, but his luck isn't. He's hired to rebuild an ancient ceremonial bath for a private collector of antiquities. Although the job pays well, he suspects that his work will be put to use for something other than a creepy fetish.

It's horror. A bit Lovecraftian, in my opinion, but not overly so. If you're interested....

Rated R for adult language, situations, and violence.

UPDATE: 3/16/08. I've submitted it to "The Harrow" so I've taken it down from the site until I hear back from them, which should be 5-6 weeks. If they reject it, I'll put it back on the site.

UPDATE: 5/23/08. The Harrow has accepted "Tile" for publication in their September 2008 issue!!! I'll add the link to it when it goes live. HOORAY!!!

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