E85 is 85% ethanol, 15% gasoline, not the other way around. A 10% ethanol blend (10% ethanol, 90% gasoline) is called E10, not E90. Using E10 reduces your fuel economy by about 3–4%, and a 15% blend reduces your miles per tank by about 4–5%, assuming a modern, fuel-injected engine. I would expect the impact to be worse for an engine with a carburetor, but I don't know for certain. Either way, I'm pretty sure it's nowhere near 20% even with older engines.

Yes, if it were legal to sell E90, it would reduce your fuel economy by somewhere in the neighborhood of 20%. Of course, your car wouldn't start in the winter, and in most cars, parts of your fuel system would likely rust out pretty quickly, spewing fuel all over the hot engine, thus ending your life in a blaze of glory, so fuel economy would be the least of your problems....

And they say American beer tastes like...

And it makes sense to appease the environmentalists on this one - It creates few permanent American jobs and they are shipping and refining a corrosive, dirty form of oil (and is awful at the field, as you mention). That oil isn't even going to be used in the US - it is destined for use mainly in South America. So the US bears all the risk, gets almost no return and Canada reaps the profits. If I were Obama, I'd punt on this too - no reason to piss off the environmentalist Dems for a bunch of short term jobs and almost no permanent ones.

You can also track the changes in a somewhat friendlier format using FreshBSD. Full commit messages (up to a point) upfront, more useful Atom feed, breakdown by committer etc.

I repeat, legal oppression only exists because of government. If you cannot see that simple truth, you are wilfully blind.

Primogeniture and entailment were government laws which enforced class distinctions and warfare -- withotu government creation and enforcement of classes, there would be no class oppression and warfare.

Government laws prevented women from owning property, voting, or having much freedom at all, and made marriage rape legal.

Slavery and segregation were the direct result of government laws. Society was integrating on its own until government stopped it and reversed course.

It's very simple: government creates laws to justify its oppression. You claim to get your history from the People's History. It's not much of a history if that single lesson doesn't come through loud and clear.

People care about people. Governments do not. Any one who thinks the government is his friend is either a crony or a fool, possibly both. Governments' mission is to compel or prohibit; their core competence is coercion in the name of the status quo.

Before government made black self-defense illegal and enforced bigotry with government guns, blacks at least had a chance. Society was at least slowly intergrating even in the face of government sanctioned lynching, before government stepped in officially and made it illegal, backed by government guns and jails. The US Post office and military were more integrated than most people realize, until Woodrow Wilson came along and enforced segregation. That Louisian railroad was just one of many companies who integrated in pursuit of the amlighty dollar, until governments came along and stopped them with government guns and jail.

Progressives are an ignorant whiny lot, like all statists. All power to the government! The people, not so much.

That's a lot fewer jobs than the Republicans killed with their continual obstructionism and focus on social issues.

By the NRA fundamentalists' logic, we shouldn't have laws because criminals ignore laws anyway.

BULLSHIT. Slavery and Jim Crow were both the RESULT of government laws. Neither can exist in the absence of government. Jim Crow in particular owes its existence to a Louiana law requiring a railroad to segregate its railroad cars against its own wishes, said law being approved by the US Supreme Court.

You need to learn a lot of history before opening your yap next time.

The problem is that those in charge in the EU will sit on their collective hands and do absolutely nothing until any problem has become so massive that they are dependent on US military assistance in order to hope to survive.

The problem is that many EU countries are dependent on Russian oil and gas. US military can't solve that problem.

Of course, Russia is also dependent on EU buying said resources. A disruption of trade would, at the very least, topple Putin. He's counting on EU being unwilling to take the pain, but it's becoming increasingly clear he's trying to rebuild Soviet Empire. Sooner or later he'll miscalculate, and at that point it's a question whether he can gets removed from power before starting another (world?) war as a desperation move.

But no, Russia cannot win a war with the EU. EU has 3.5 times as much population and almost 8 times as large economy. Even with all the inefficiency inherent in coordinating multiple independent militaries, it could only end in Russian defeat or nuclear escalation.

What can a person, already born, do about it?

Pick whichever candidate promises higher taxes to fund more services? Stop believing corporate spin that tries to paint socialism bad? Stop voting right-wing, either the Obama or Bush variant?

I dunno, how do you effect change in a democracy?

I was dirt poor as a student in college, but I still managed to eat just fine and have a car I could get away with when I needed a break.

So you were dirt poor, except you had both property and income and could afford to waste them taking leisure drives? Good for you, but how is this relevant in a discussion about people who have trouble getting food?

I'm a little bummed about this. My first reaction was, "Oh, cool. This is just like the idea I had a few days ago." Then, I realized they're trying to do it from a single photo instead of taking advantage of the camera hardware to obtain actual depth info.

You have a lens that can focus. Take your shot, throw the focus off as far as you can (in whichever direction you can move the focus farther, by some definition of farther), then take a second shot. You can then compute some reasonable approximation of distance for every pixel without guessing. You can also likely compute a reasonable bokeh based on the size and location of bright areas in the out-of-focus areas and based on how much they spread in the out-of-focus shot. It's not perfect, but I suspect you could get close enough to fool just about anybody.

Lazy HR by keyword sorting is the culprit.

It's not necessarily laziness but another symptom of the oversupply of labour. When there's a 100+ applications for every position, it's impossible to evaluate them without resorting to data mining techniques. And at that point, if your application is not Search Engine Optimized, for example if you lack a diploma, sucks to be you.

The underlaying problem is that our current economic model, and our model of employment as its subset, is based on the needs of the Industrial Era, which is ending. Capitalism is breaking down just like Feudalism before it, and whatever will replace it hasn't emerged into the mainstream yet. The question is: how long and painful will the transition be this time around?

Right, but the point is that since Congress won't do anything, then we either let FDA make new regs on their own initiative or we potentially allow dangerous conditions to fester. There really ought to be checks and balances involved, but Congress won't do their job, so...