Biodiesel has been getting a bad name because of the potential for competition with food production. It has always struck me that some of the loudest voices criticizing biodiesel has come from the oil, coal and nuke lobbies. But it did seem like competition with food production may be a critical problem with biodiesel.

When I had the opportunity to review a new book (really a substantially updated edition of a previously published book) called Biodiesel by Greg Pahl, published by Chelsea Green Press, I was quite interested in learning about this technology. Is it a viable alternative? What is it's potential? And what is the danger of competition with food production.

Greg Pahl's book is extremely well researched and fair. It brings up all the pros and cons about biodiesel.

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John McCain was out of the torturous grip of the North Vietnamese for approximately one year when Congress passed Public Law 93-531 in 1974. Public Law 93-531 was called the Relocation Act, and was falsely justified by what "Peabody Coal Company's public relations and lobbying firms" falsely constructed  as the "Hopi-Navajo land dispute." This "range war" was not true. What was true, was lawyer John Boyden with the assimilated Hopi Tribal Council.

Source

Boyden formed a Hopi Tribal Council that consisted of several First Mesa Hopi who had been converted to Mormonism, based on an election in which about 10 percent of the Hopis on the reservation voted. The newly elected Tribal Council then hired Boyden as their lawyer.

John Boyden with his assimilated Hopi Tribal Council wanted Peabody Coal to strip mine Black Mesa after the natural resources had been discovered. More than 10,000 Navajo and 100 Hopi did not want Black Mesa stripped.

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If you study behavioral psychology, you'll learn about a concept called "the extinction burst." 

The specific example I use when I teach is this:

You've got a child who is throwing tantrums.  In the past, the tantrums have gotten the child attention, which is exactly what the child wants.  Therefore, you have been providing positive reinforcement to that child's behavior.  It's "positive" because you're adding something (attention), not because it's good.  It's "reinforcement" because it increases the behavior.

The much more effective approach to reducing tantrums is negative punishment.  "Negative" because you're removing something and "punishment" because it reduces the behavior.  When we talk about "punishment" in behavioral psychology we don't necessarily mean anything specific; it's just any act in a behavioral context which reduces the frequency of a given behavior.

But here's why many parents don't use negative punishment: the extinction burst.

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An elder told me that the Navaho took Geronimo's bones and gave them a proper burial before the U.S. Army only thought that he remained buried at Fort Sill after they buried him there. I told her I'd been to the grave site. She asked me, "Did it feel like he was in there?" "No," I said. "They `buried' him in the grave stone by stone, so he wouldn't ever come back," she said. I personally don't believe he is at Fort Sill, and I don't believe this either -

Whose Skull and Bones?

"The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club & the K -- t [Knight] Haffner, is now safe inside the T -- [Tomb] together with his well worn femurs[,] bit & saddle horn."

Geronimo died in 1909, that letter was in 1918, and Geronimo's great-grandson wrote Bush about that letter.Curiously, that all makes me wonder - Why didn't they want him to "come back from his (alleged) grave?"

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