South of the border, way south of the border, down Brazil way they seem to have found a way out of oil dependance on less-than-friendly Arab states. The Brazilians turned to something they know very well -- the soil, and from that soil came sugar cane and from that sugar cane came alcohol, beautiful, 200 proof, absolute alcohol that cars run on. It too 'em years to get it right, but not as many years as we've had to get it right since the oil embargo of the 70s. There's a lesson there. A guy named David Pogue writing in The New York Times (http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=24) has a neat story about how they did it, along with a nifty twist on a long distance rally.

Here's the bottom line: Oil here is about $70/barrel. Alcohol in Brazil is about $30/barrel. Even Junior can do that math. True, you don't get quite as many miles to the gallon with alcohol but the difference isn't that significant. In a pinch Brazilian cars can run on either ethanol or gasoline.

Now I ask you, how, with a miniscule auto industry compared with the U.S. did Brazil manage to make itself independent from the rapacious ragheads and oil company plutocrats? Fact is, they wanted to. The gumment wanted to, the people wanted to and the auto companies had to.

Given this little story we have to wonder what our central government was or wasn't thinking about from the time Jimmy Carter pointed out our problem? No, don't answer that one, it'll just make you think about other government ineptitudes.

Arjay