@shang-Mmmmm, mmm-Love me some game fowl, haven't had any inna while-Last time I was in Kansas I saw doves there the size of chickens-Hanging-out near corn fields and grain elevators they get a bit plumper than they do here in the southwest. Squab is good eatin'!

@visionep I come from a farm family in Kansas, so I'm a bit biased, but I tend to disagree with you on a few things. So upvote for your comment starting the discussion but here's my rebuttal --

1. "Not much" has the potential to be pretty good, considering that sources of ethanol are much more renewable than oil. Plus, a lot of the energy balance reviews of ethanol that I've seen or heard of talk about the input cost to produce the first gallon of fuel, ie. they include construction, fermentation tanks, etc. etc. That is fair, but it is worth noting that over the long term those startup input costs become less and less of a factor because the infrastructure already exists. The cost to refine the first gallon of crude oil into gasoline was higher than the bazillionth, also.

2. Some of the food production competition will remain long-term, and some is temporary. Right now in the US, we mostly use corn (field corn) to produce ethanol. Field corn can be ground into corn flour, but at least where I come from the majority of it went to feed lots to be used as food for beef cows prior to introduction of ethanol plants. Now, the produced corn is split between going to beef production or into ethanol.

Competition between beef vs. ethanol industries raised the price of corn some (both industries want that corn) which makes farmers happy. That in turn raised the price of beef a bit, but it didn't do much to prices for human-consumption food other than that, because field corn isn't used for that very much.

The reason that we use corn for ethanol now is that corn is plentiful; it is the major crop in my neck of the woods with wheat being the second but lagging far behind. Ethanol producers need something that ferments, corn fits the bill and is available. Minor crops like milo work basically just as well as corn, so if some weather event damages a corn field and it can be replanted with milo later in the season that is great for farmers because they now have a buyer that is willing to take milo.

In the future, we could use non-food cellulose crops like switchgrass for ethanol production, and the processing will only be slightly different. Switchgrass could be grown and harvested on land that is unsuitable for corn (corn does best with a lot of water), but there isn't a large supply of it right now because there hasn't been any demand for it historically.

So yes, there will always be some competition between what crop people decide to produce on a given piece of farmland, and that can affect food prices. But I think that over the long term, ethanol production could provide useful fuel that has positive benefits that outweigh impacts from potentially slightly higher food prices. Maybe. But then again, I am a biased source!

This is exactly what I was thinking. Why would you park cars (and people) down-range, when you've just equipped this moron with a 1-ton missile?

Bunch of idiots in front of, as well as behind, the camera.>> ^nothingbot:

We have a version here (called, of course, Canada's Worst Driver) and they do this very same challenge. It's not unusual for the 'bad driver' to get nervous, hit the boxes (obstacle), or panic and slide off course. In fact, the way he lost control is fairly common on early attempts. The worst mistake here, is parking a car in the RUNOFF AREA just past an obstacle! what were they thinking! In our version, when this happens, the driver goes through a corn field, and the host makes silly quips about owing the farmer for lost crops. It's funny(ish), not deadly.

We have a version here (called, of course, Canada's Worst Driver) and they do this very same challenge. It's not unusual for the 'bad driver' to get nervous, hit the boxes (obstacle), or panic and slide off course. In fact, the way he lost control is fairly common on early attempts. The worst mistake here, is parking a car in the RUNOFF AREA just past an obstacle! what were they thinking! In our version, when this happens, the driver goes through a corn field, and the host makes silly quips about owing the farmer for lost crops. It's funny(ish), not deadly.

It was pretty easy to spot the green screen in these shots when I knew ahead of time that there was one. A lot I would have never noticed normally and several of them were painfully obvious no matter what.

The trick to lying, though, is making your lies believable. That's why even those of us who are good at spotting this stuff wouldn't notice it in these scenes. All but a couple of these scenes are perfectly believable, so we don't take a close look at them.

If I had two doctored photos (claiming both were real); one of me standing in a corn field and one of an alien spacecraft landing in a corn field; which do you think people would be more likely to find flaws in? There's no reason to doubt I could stand in a corn field, so even pretty significant flaws would tend to be overlooked. The flying saucer, however, people would probably find flaws that didn't even exist.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'M A S T E R P I E C E' to 'masterpiece, 00s, corn field, walls, amon tobin, ArtemAmetra, france, filters' - edited by Eklek

If you're wondering why certain places are devoid of Wal-Mart stores, it's probably because those areas are the Rocky Mountains, the Nevada desert, the corn fields of South Dakota, and nearly all of Montana.

These places are devoid of humans, and thus, they are not suitable for the virus.

Edit: Fuck Wal-Mart.

It could also have been pulled because:

1. The writing stank ("we've just had a nuclear apocalypse what should we do?" "celebrate halloween! Wheeeee!").
2. The setting was created by people who'd never been out of New York or L.A. (what part of Kansas lets you see the Rocky Mountains? It must be that part that extends West of Denver. And blowing up "the only bridge into town" apparently stops humvees because driving one of them through a corn field to get to town is just undignified).
3. The first two episodes go on and on about radiation, yet they "harvest" a crop that should be lethal.
4. They make no effort to prepare for winter, which should have done us all a favor and frozen the lot of them.
5. When the world ends, you don't care about defending the town, finding resources, etc. Oh, no. You go down to the magic bar of neverending booze and talk about who's cheating on who.

It was the apocalypse by way of the Hallmark channel.

Wow, very cool - my sister and I were driving right behind that storm along I-80 on our way back from Colorado. The severe part of the storm was traveling east perfectly in line with I-80, so we got a good view of the extent of damages. We saw over 10 semis blown over, power line poles snapped in half with cables strewn across the highway, a few trees uprooted, metal guard rails wrapped around columns of an overpass, a large aluminum shed ripped to shreds, and we counted over 20 divots in the corn fields completely twisted apart and blown over.

We only experienced gusty winds and a little rain, but were so close behind the storm that they were calling the mile markers off on the radio where the tornado warnings were... between markers 369 and 381, right as we passed 360, etc. Literally ten minutes after passing certain portions of the interstate they were being closed down and re-routed. Despite living in Nebraska for 23 years now, I hadn't ever been that close behind the path of a tornado (at least while still being outside), so it made for an exciting finish to our torturous 8-hour ride back home.

>> ^swampgirl:
Yeah yeah fusion reactor, ion thruster, 6 disc cd player whatever, as long as it has a nice bathroom.


Or maybe just piss in the corn fields

You'll be accelerating all the time, which will feel like weak gravity.

Its always funny when people think that no engine = crash.
Every plane can land without an engine, even these fighterjets that dont give much uplift. Of course a runway has to be in range, but even without one they can use highways or whatever else is in range. Even mowed corn fields are good enough for it.

OMG, she was introduced by Buck Owens, which means this is a clip from "Hee Haw". I loved that show when I was a kid (in the 70's), mainly because of the HOT Hee Haw Girls who would always pop up in the middle of corn fields to tell stupid jokes. Be still my beating boner!

This moment of cheesy prepubescent reminiscing is brought to you by Aqua Velva. A man wants to feel like a man, goddamnit!

Standard IE7, I guess I'm on the harvest-first list. Is that like the "first ones up against the wall when the revolution comes", or are we supposed to walk out into the corn fields?

How long should we wait until the sift-bot does what it agrees to?