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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (107998)	6/11/2007 4:44:43 PM
From: SiouxPal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361992

Ethyanol. Can you drink it? I get asked that question a lot! Legend, as well as lots of documented stories have it that quite a few Kentucky Moonshiners went blind from drinking moonshine. This high-proof ethanol is a long way from Kentucky moonshine. First of all, those were very crude stills, which only condensed the vapors by running the exiting steam through a coil of copper tubing placed inside a bathtub. There was no "stripping" section, which refers to the bottom section of my still, where the hot steam first has to bubble up through some cold water. This immediately strips out a high volume of water, but in addition, it also traps the fusel oils and methanol, and other trace poisonous by-products. If you look at the alcohol produced by this still, it should be absolutely as clear as water, and if you look at the top surface, you will not see any oils floating at the top. That is what is poisonous, and it has all been removed by virtue of the fact that this is a triple distillation process. If you recall cartoons where they showed a moonshiner drinking out of a pottery jug with four X's (XXXX ) on it, that refers to the number of times the stuff has been run back through the same still, to remove more water (increase the proof). In case you never were told the definition of proof, 200 proof is 100% alcohol, 180 proof is 90% alcohol, etc. About the most a person can comfortably drink is 100 to 120 proof. Most whiskies are about 100 proof, and would make pretty poor fuel. Brandy might be 120 proof, or 60% alcohol, and could be used, but it would have to be a pretty warm day, or the engine already pretty hot from running previously on gasoline for it to work. When you have a lower proof, you have to preheat the fuel to get it to ignite. You can drop a lit match into 160 proof and it will go out. When a waiter serves something with flaming brandy, they have to hold the match for a moment at the edge of the liquid, which preheats it slightly, before it will light. Moonshiners often didn't have soft copper tubing which could be made into a coil, so they would solder short pieces together into a zig-zag assembly using lead for solder. The hot alcohol, being a rather effective solvent, would always pick up quite a lot of lead in the process, and these guys would usually die quite young of kidney failure. I never drank my own product: I do not like, nor have I ever liked hard liquor of any kind, as it will burn it. But 160 proof it much too concentrated for anybody's tongue. The highest proof drinking alcohol I have seen on the market is 120 proof Jamaican Rum. So, when you are making 170 or 180 proof, if someone wants to drink it, they will first have to mix it about 50/50 with water, or orange juice, or whatever, and it will still be too strong a drink. In the USA, it is illegal to sell this stuff without first adding something that first ruins the taste and smell, and completely poisons it so it cannot be used for human consumption. This is then called denatured alcohol. It started out as grain alcohol, which is what ethanol is technically called, but ends up smelling like rubbing alcohol from the drug store because they added benzene or something equally poisonous. When I went to Ukraine, they were very interested in buying one of my stills as they just really wanted it for making vodka. I wouldn't make one for them, as I am fairly anti-alcohol, as I have seen how it destroys minds, families, cars, and uninvolved bystanders. However, some of the stuff I made, especially when I used grape pulp from the winery, which yielded the smell of brandy, or the beer I used from the brewery in Boulder, which made a whisky smell, has indeed looked and smelled pretty pure. Because the alcohol is so strong,it is inadvisable to even taste it, as it immediately dehydrates whatever skin cells it touches, especially the tongue and cheeks. Alcohol this strong is hygroscopic, which means it draws moisture out of anything it contacts, even the air. So high-proof fuel must be kept sealed, or it will get diluted from the humidity in the air. running_on_alcohol.tripod.com

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (107998)	6/11/2007 4:46:34 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 361992

A quote from the US Senate Commitee On Energy and Natural Resources from the January 10, 2,007 hearing: "General WALD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for the opportunity to discuss the global oil balance and its impact on U.S. and national security. I recently retired from the Air Force after 35 years of service and during my career had the opportunity to fly combat over Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq and Bosnia and learned much regarding how to use military assets to effectively solve national security problems. But I also learned that many believed the U.S. military is solely responsible for security. I like to call this the ‘‘Dial 1-800-The-U.S.- Military’’ syndrome, because it reflects how people assume the U.S. military is a toll-free resource that can be called on to perform tasks that no one else has either the capability or will to execute. I recall a recent meeting with several major global oil company executives in Kazakhstan. Before we began our discussion, one of the executives thanked me and the U.S. military for protecting the free flow of oil around the world. The executive’s world view included the expectation that the U.S. military will be there to provide worldwide security and to ensure the free flow of oil without any assistance from others. This struck me, and frankly, does not seem like a good model, particularly for the United States. The U.S. cannot and should not be everywhere to protect all the vulnerable components of the global oil infrastructure. With regard to the oil dependence issue, military response and capabilities are by no means the only effective tools available and in many cases are not appropriate. In fact, the single most effective step the United States can take to improve its energy security is to increase transportation efficiency. The transportation sector is responsible for nearly 70 percent of the oil the United States consumes." General Wald states later: "Then the last thing I’d like to mention on this, on the security aspect, is since 1980, the U.S. Government, through military application, has put about $50 billion to $60 billion a year into the Persian Gulf. That doesn’t count the current Iraq war or the 1990 Iraq war. And that’s good for our country, for security interests, but the problem is, we’re subsidizing world energy. There is nobody else in the world doing this, and really, if you look at how much we’re paying per gallon, me, as a U.S. citizen today, for gasoline, you could almost say it’s $7 a gallon, based on the fact that we’re subsidizing world security on this issue. So I think none of these things are silver bullets. We have to do all of them. And I would appeal to you, as the U.S. leadership and as Senators, to do something comprehensive, across the board, as soon as possible." So, 7 bucks a gallon was the General's rough estimate based on tax dollars subsidizing "oil security" provided by the US military. Add in health care costs, global warming contribution and other environmental degradation, and the true cost could easily exceed $10/gallon. "True Cost" or "Full Cost" accounting for energy seems to me to be a powerful way to understand our petro-problem. Note that the NYT and the rest of the media did not pick up on the General's comments. Neither did the Senators in terms of policy development. theoildrum.com

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (107998)	6/11/2007 5:21:12 PM
From: James Calladine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361992

THIS TERRIBLE 9/11 CONSPIRACY DISCUSSION MUST STOP! There has been too much discussion of this foolish subject between you and Cirrus and even me and Cirrus, and even others! I thought in the circumstances I should restore some sanity to the thread. Below are the REAL ANSWERS, the real facts: The entire North American air defense system did NOT fail that day because of Operation Vigilant Guardian and the three or more others that operated that day. There was a PILOT strike that day in the Military. It is assumed that this never occurs in the military, but that is a false assumption. There has never been any official confirmation of this, but the facts are well known to those privy to the inside story. While the 2 WTC buildings hit by 757 planes which were actually lighter than the 707 planes that the buildings were designed to withstand, the engineers did not take into account LARGE FUEL LOADS so the fires burned some minutes longer, overcoming the shortfall of close to 1,000 degrees of heat needed to melt steel. So the buildings came down. WTC7 was not hit by any planes but was either brought down by diesel oil burning for a while or as Larry Silverstein said "We had to pull it". If the latter, Larry meant (as Cirrus has pointed out) the Firefighter Force resulting in no controlling of the burning oil, and as we all know, burning oil brings down buildings every time. Just try burning a barrel of oil! While the fellows with boxcutters were apparently on NO flight manifests of the airlines, normally produced by computer printout, as is well known many passengers travel on a standby basis, and while not widely known, all the boxcutter boys were go-show passengers which are not always put in the computer, due to human error. The passports of one or two of the highjackers found at the WTC site after everything else was atomized fell out of the jackets of the infidels at the moment the plane hit the WTC and broke apart. It fell to the ground and was buried under much rubble, but was dug up and put on top of the soil by a plucky German Shepherd dock by the name of FINDEN. The phantom highjacker planes that landed in Cleveland and disgorged their passengers were not phantom planes at all but vacationers returning from holiday weekends in such destinations as Curacao, Cancun and Caracas. When Donald Rumsfeld in Iraq spoke of "the people who shot down the plane in Pennsylvania" while visiting in Baghdad, he misspoke. This was confirmed the following day by the Pentagon. The fact that there was no wreckage in Pennsylvania was because of the vertical dive of the plane to oblivion caused by the fight between highjackers, flight crew and passengers, causing all to be buried deeply. All passengers were identified by government sources using advanced classified techniques. The same techniques were used for the passengers in Washington. That there were next to no remains of the 757 at the Pentagon was because of the tremendous speed of the 757 at impact, virtually vaporizing everything. Fortunately the advanced classified identification techniques could be used for the passengers. The rumors that certain of the highjackers were alive and living in Europe and the Middle East, interviewed etc were just what the word says, rumors. I could go on and on, but you get the drift. The whole facts are contained in the OFFICIAL REPORT. Conspiracy theories are the errant mind-moments of the insane. If anything else happened than in the Official Report, the government would have had to lie to you. Has your government ever lied to you? I rest my case. Namaste! Jim