Especially at a big place with complex IT systems...

Probably true.

used fryer grease from mcdonald's. it's no brainer. I tried doing it myself, but I bought a lemon mercedes. $1000 for a 81 mercedes , top of the line, beautiful leather interior, but of course it had a busted axle that I didn't notice because I'm a girl and it was pretty and cheap. and now if you're caught making your own biodiesel you're subject to EPA fines. Fuel industry caught on quick to that trend. and there's that regulatory capture you were talking about re: codex alimentarius.
it's the same shit w/ the banks. how can it be fucking surprising that the banks control the gov't and not the other way around. been that way every time we've had a privately held central bank. folks just seem to accept the Fed and capitalism as a way of life. it's not.
it's a temporary phase.

he who has the gold makes the rules. that is capitalism.
the concept of splitting a defined line infinitely is calculus.
economics is applying calculus to capitalism.
assuming that humans are mathematical equations is idiocy.
apparently someone named Alfred Whitehead calls this the fallacy of concreteness .

there. that's my summary of chapter 1 of for the common good :)
oh, I can see how well that's gonna fly. ;>

one thing about diesel is how good it works in conjunction with turbos. and automatic transmissions too for that matter.

so i googled up bio-diesel stuff. seems willie nelson sells it in durant, oklahoma. a 3 hour drive from here. i also looked for bio-diesel rabbits and found this page:
http://www.transmitmedia.com/golfTDI/

probably nothing new there for ya.

a good turbo motor can be small in displacement and yield high mpg if the driver doesn't have a lead foot...

You can put biodiesel in a diesel engine, but it's not straight used vegetable oil: you have to cook it first. Homebrew people do this in their garages. Large vats of yummy burny oil and alcohol reagents.

You have to convert the engine to use the veggie oil directly.

And I sympathize on the Benz. Had two old ones; great, solid, but expensive to maintain. The parts, you see, ripen on the shelf like fine wines, becoming more valuable with age.

De la Wikipedia:

Biodiesel refers to a non-petroleum-based diesel fuel consisting of long-chain alkyl (methyl, propyl or ethyl) esters. Biodiesel is made by chemically-reacting lipids, typically vegetable oil or animal fat (tallow), and alcohol. It can be used (alone, or blended with conventional petrodiesel) in unmodified diesel-engine vehicles. Biodiesel is distinguished from the straight vegetable oil (SVO) (sometimes referred to as "waste vegetable oil", "WVO", "used vegetable oil", "UVO", "pure plant oil", "PPO") used (alone, or blended) as fuels in some converted diesel vehicles.

"Turning Japanese I think I'm Turning Japanese I really think so da-da-da det det det det" - The Vapors

I had considered having my mechanically inclined S/O rig up a home-brew system, but once I read up on the ugly chemicals involved, I had second thoughts. You see, my S/O likes to tell the story of how in her youth, she rigged an old MG up to have nitro injection. And then she really likes to tell the part of the story of driving it down the freeway one day on fire, due to the lousy electrical systems of British sports cars. She thinks that's funny.

I value her life and my neighbor's lives just a little bit more than I value the ecological and economical tidyness of homebrew. :)

I did however find a customer who happened to have a system for doing 80 gallon batches. He stopped doing it due to the pressure of new fatherhood. Just as well, it was about the same time that people were getting fined for home-brewing and grease companies started paying for used oi again.

speaking of home-brew, I've decided that her diagrams for building a still might come in handy now that the price of copper and corn has started to come down ;>

is the killer. I did some research not too long ago and found that for all the engineering advances over the last 20 years (or so), fuel efficiency has actually gone down...across the board.

I find it absolutely astounding that my '87 Toyota Pickup gets almost the same mileage as a new Tacoma. And there's not much in the way of plastics on my truck.

It is, as so many other things, a matter of Americans wanting it all: power, safety, comfort, and now fuel efficiency. We also (almost) never calculate how much energy it takes to manufacture a vehicle. The Prius, for example, doesn't look so earth-friendly if you start counting the nickel mining and shipping back and forth to/from Japan. And an old Escort diesel gets equivalent mileage.

But even as a native Detroiter (who sees the beauty of muscle cars and cars being "cool"), i find automobiles to be overly complicated.

And, oh, you brought back childhood memories of sitting in the garage pretending to race the Porsche 365 that my uncle was restoring. I grew up in bugs and microbuses, and several uncles were 914 drivers. The late model that got the big engine was a fearsome beast...just as a sports car should be: underweight, overpowered and bordering on a death trap.

914's didn't soak up a lot of damage like ghias did. karmann ghias were surprisingly good that way. i had one wreck in one, that i caused, where i ended up being a hockey puck and got smacked by no less than 4 other cars. (the first one being a lincoln.) no 914 could have taken that abuse. the lesson for was dramatic; stout guard structure is great but the real key is soaking up kinetic energy. crumple power.

and yeah, fix the loose nut behind the wheel.

2000 M Roadster

eBay! woot! I dunno which version, it's the so's car, but the guy who fixed its dent was all excited by it. says its a rare version
time for a road trip. after tornado season perhaps