Oh, well done. You managed to cover at least two common liberal bullet points in that argument, but 3 or more out of 5 is preferred: 1) Name calling - make sure to call someone an idiot or a moron, insults always give your point more credibility!
2) Fox News - even if it has FUCK ALL to do with the topic, this is mandatory, or points will be deducted!

However, you disappointingly failed at several other golden opportunities here:
3) The Koch brothers - always worth a mention to drive home the "evil" branding, relevance not necessary (ala Fox News)
4) A knock on a Bush, preferably W., but nowadays Jeb is a good target
5) A Hate label: your political enemy *must* always be clearly labeled at least one kind of hater of some kind, made into a 2D caricature; from any of the following:
* Racist
* Bigot
* Homophobe
* Islamophobe
* Warmongering / Facist
or in this case,
* Denier
although you didn't actually state as such, so on second thought, you get a "C+", though originally I was leaning towards a "B-".

The worst offender is the flex-fuel E85 crap. If you want to run ethanol, run ethanol, build up an engine that is designed to take advantage of it's anti-det properties and runs dramatically higher compression for waaaaay better efficiency. And we definitely shouldn't be doing it with corn (Corn requires nitrogen fertilizer, largely negating the total energy boon of ethanol). We should be looking at switch grass and other fast-growing high yield options that can generate vastly more ethanol per acre with dramatically less costs.

Bio Diesel I actually like, sulfur is all but forgotten, and the increased lubricity actually makes it easier on your engine. But the idea of trying to convert a soy crop to BD100 is going to be dumb. Recycling waste vegitable oil from the food processing industry on the other hand, reduces waste and taps into an existing supply.

Even looking at different sectors than just automotive. I have a couple of dairy farming buddies that use methane recovery from their manure processing system to power generators for electricity around the farm. Less raw methane escaping to the atmosphere, and again it's a by-product of the existing manure processing system.

The linked article sure reads like a shill for the oil industry, but it doesn't discount the point that we need to look at using the appropriate tool for the job. Sometimes that will be biofuels.

-Rick

But in 2023 they debunked that experiment, as I recall..

Not justifying the massive spying, but simply addressing the core logic presented here: Even if something is not 100% effective, does not mean it's useless:
Why have cops? Crime still happens. Why have diagnostic medical tests, yet people still get diseases. May as well stop chemotherapy too, I still have about 5% of the original cancer cells left that the first four treatments didn't kill. Many plots have been thwarted, particularly lately, and except in cases where a previously unknown informant steps forward out of the blue, the information comes from their spies and monitoring.
I'm only saying the objection to the spying should be based on privacy and personal freedom, not it's effectiveness; that's a different argument.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
http://www.theguardian.com/pol...
Now, you easily argue, tally up all those thwarted attacks, are they worth the cost to our liberties? Again, I'm not debating that. Clearly privacy is dead, between the data-mining corporations, and the governments.
We are product. We are potential suspects.

Such humble acumen shall not be tolerated here; This is SLASHDOT!! **kicks you down an elevator shaft

Amen to that. They're already a monopoly in my area, and act like one. There is no way any good can come of this for the consumer. I've started calling them Con-cast. Their service leaves much to be desired, it's pushy and disingenuous. And, after trying to upgrade my subscription to HD this weekend, I never even received the confirmation email I was supposed to get, so I doubt it's even in their records.

Cause I got no points and that's a handy tip!

-Rick

This. Both Christie and Cuomo are taking flak.
The use of the term, "scaremongering" in the summary is childish paranoid bullshit. Some people are too stupid or arrogant to realize that hindsight is 20/20, and forecasting is and always will be (for the foreseeable future) an inexact science. So, some butthurt whiners were inconvenienced by the safety measures enacted, yet had the opposite been the case, where the threat of the storm was under-represented and it turned out to be catastrophic, ala Sandy, they'd have been the first ones to scream about incompetent government preparation. Add to this the fact that people might've been genuinely endangered in such a scenario, and it's obvious to anyone capable of reason that it's better to be safe than sorry.
Besides, as it was, New England got hammered, it's just that North Jersey and NYC got off light, since the storm's path was some miles east from the predicted model.

The chemistry set thing really sticks in my craw, as they say. You can find a decent one online if you look hard enough I suppose (and willing to pay a small fortune!), but the vast majority out there in stores are neutered crap compared to what I had as a kid in the early seventies.

Anthrax would be scarier and more damaging than a small explosive. I still remember the postal scare from 2002. If a hate/terrorist group manages to fly a drone or three through a window, (not sure if the White House allows those, at least, without bars), with a payload of anthrax, and that could get real ugly. Perhaps even ricin, though then again that seems to be nigh impossible to aerosolize. In any case, I don't think it's wise to get too wound up about them, but OTOH, it's not wise to get completely complacent either and trivialize the damage a drone could potentially do; people get creative.

Obviously a Harry Potter reference, but it seems like an odd choice. Perhaps after shutting down all the pedophiles, they can find the secret to immortality, and purge the mudbloods from the world too.

You sir, just made my day. Look out for button up shirts, they're really murder to figure out... especially if you wear a woman's blouse, they put the buttons on the wrong side! uhh... not that I would know from personal experience.. yeah.. *cough*

Pfft, I'm getting 1.1mbps over DSL on a good day where I am. And my 4g phone, when I can get a signal, pulls maybe 600kbps. A 1/4 mile down the road our neighbor has cable at 30mbps, but he pays roughly 4 times as much as we do. Even with that price tag though, they end their line at the corner he's on, there is no service for us.

-Rick

Sorry, that sounded meaner than I meant it.

You either don't understand what common sense is, or perhaps possess little of it yourself then. It's related to basic, common experience based judgement. I've known people who were math whizzes but had no common sense, and did really bone-headed things in regular life. Without a book or instructions to tell them how to proceed, they seemed a bit helpless, like a musician who can sight read perfectly but can't improvise a few measures.