I found myself pulling into the gas station the other day, amid news of raising oil prices and record high summer prices at the pump, to find the price for regular unleaded at a less than friendly $3.39 a gallon. On the sign which advertises the prices, above the regular unleaded price, was a tantalizing price of $2.99 for the corn-gas by the name of E-85.

For those that don’t know, E-85 is a fuel that is compromised of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. The theory behind it is that the lower amount of gasoline in the mixture will reduce the cost of the fuel to less than that of regular fuel. The trade-off is that you will sacrifice some fuel economy and must have a Flex Fuel Vehicle (FFV). There is an additional environmental benefit in that FFVs have lower exhaust emissions than gasoline vehicles.

So, back to me at the pump. I’m thinking how nice it would be to be able to pay 40 cents less per gallon to save a couple bucks per fill-up. Then I remembered last summer, when I put the E-85 theory to the test.

My dad has a 2007 Dodge Ram that is an FFV with a 4.7L V8 engine. I needed to move some furniture from Toledo, Ohio up to Big Rapids. I needed to use the truck and I decided to fill up the truck with E-85 to see how it would perform.

During the trip, we got about 13 miles per gallon highway; and that’s with the air conditioning on. My dad tells me that on other occasions, with gasoline, he’s gotten somewhere between 17 and 18 on the highway. This validates the fact on most FFV Web sites, FFV vehicles get 25 percent less fuel economy. I figured this wasn’t too bad and that the lower cost was cool.

With this given data, I decided to do a little math. In the truck, I got 13 miles per gallon with E-85. At the cost I saw at the gas station this week, a trip from Detroit to Big Rapids (440 miles round trip) the total cost would be $101.20. Doesn’t seem bad at $2.99 per gallon, right? Wrong.

With regular gas at the staggering price of $3.39 a gallon the trip would cost $82.87, almost $20 less than with E-85. The biggest factor in this equation is the disproportionate relationship between the difference in cost and fuel economy. With the E-85 campaign in its infancy, I don’t see the prices coming down significantly anytime soon. So what if you had a car, like my little Plymouth Neon, that gets much better fuel economy than my dad’s truck?

My car gets about 30 miles per gallon on the highway, with the 25 percent reduction would be 22.5 miles per gallon. Using the same factors above, the E-85 trip would be $58.47 compared to $49.72 gasoline; a difference of just under nine dollars. Still not wallet-friendly.

Based on the 25 percent decrease in fuel economy, the two trips would never cost the same if the difference in price of E-85 is only 40 cents from gasoline, even if your car gets 100+ miles per gallon, which will never happen in the mainstream auto market. To recognize a break even in cost of fuel for my hypothetical E-85 Neon, the cost of E-85 would have to be $1 cheaper than regular gas; $1.15 for the truck.

Despite this, the idea of E-85 is catching on. The list of gas stations investing the $200,000 for E-85 pumps is on the rise and the list of FFVs has been climbing at a steady rate. But looking at the list of 2007 vehicles that can run E-85, located at alternativefuels. about.com, I see a problem that is holding the E85 movement back. There are absolutely no small cars, like mine, that are E-85 compatible.

It seems that the E-85 standard is reserved mostly for large vehicles, like trucks, vans and SUVs, with only a handful of midsize cars, with fuel economies in the mid-20s, in the mix. It’s just another ploy by the oil companies to trick these car owners into ‘saving the environment’ while the companies net higher profits from poorer fuel economy.

I didn’t even mention that the extra demand for corn to make the ethanol mixture is driving up the prices for milk and beef among other things. Thought you mike like to know that too.

Should the price difference get to a dollar and some change, great. Save the environment while paying the same amount. But until then, try walking or riding a bike to clean up the air and save on fuel. E-85 is a joke of an alternative fuel.

Biodiesel for everyone!

About two years ago, I ran into a roadblock of the cyber-kind. While trying to buy something online, I couldn't get my credit card information to go through.

I would type in all my info, click submit and get an error message. In this case, there was nothing wrong with my information, but rather the Web site wouldn't accept my last name as legitimate.

O'Gorman, it seems, contains the illegal character - the apostrophe. So I removed the symbol from the field and submitted again - and got another error. Now the name I typed in doesn't match the name on my credit card!

A recent article on MSNBC.com reminded me of my frustrations (although I never really forgot). It states that many 'common' names such as O'Dell, Van Kemp and Al-Hussein are 'commonly rejected' from web forms. The "John Smith" programmers out there are protecting their servers from spam by disallowing characters such as the hyphen, space, and of course the apostrophe (among other more unreasonable ones, I'm sure).

My dilemma led me to have a friend purchase the item while I paid him cash, but it seems as though others have had more serious hang ups with the issue.

The article on MSNBC stated that in the 2004 Michigan caucuses, thousands of Dutch, Irish, and Iraqi descendants could not vote because of what one person referred to as "sloppy programming."

When I go to fill out my FAFSA, and have to input the first two letters of my last name, what do I use? O' or Og?

I know that there are many Gormans out there that have dropped the O' from the front, but I don't want to. Another option is to combine - Ogorman (eww, that's ugly!) - but that doesn't seem too good either. The telemarketers already have a hard time with it.

No, I think I'll just keep on keeping on. I would like to maintain my heritage in my last name. I say silent prayers every night that the internet community will stop rejecting me.

Erin go braugh and happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Happy Birthday Nakira Howard!

Editor's Note: The views expressed in this article are the views of the writer, and not necessarily those of the Torch.

A good definition of terrorism can be found in the U.S. code manuals, stating that terrorism is “the use of violence to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, or to influence the policy of a government through intimidation or coercion.”

Also found in the U.S. army code manuals is the policy we are officially committed to, for conducting “low intensity warfare” which is nearly taken verbatim, from the definition of terrorism.

America’s commitment to terrorism is deeply rooted in the objectives outlined in post WWII foreign policy planning, which can be read in declassified United States government documents.

Summarizing the position of state and corporate power structure, highly influential policy planner George Keenan noted in a 1949 memo to the state department, that the clear objective of U.S. postwar foreign policy regarding the third world, is to assure that it “fulfills its major function as a source of raw materials and a market” for the benefit of U.S. corporations, namely to produce for export, regardless of the said country’s popular demand or need.

As American intellectual Noam Chomsky correctly noted, all policy planners agreed that the greatest threat to the U.S. dominated world order was “nationalistic regimes” that are responsive to “popular demand for immediate improvement in the low living standards of the masses” and popular calls for production for domestic needs, rather than foreign export.

Of course, the general populations of the underdeveloped world, which includes most of the global population, would never accept this, so they have to be subjugated by the United States and its many proxy military forces it develops and supports across the world.

Only through wide scale terrorism, can the United States maintain this hegemony and corporate order.

During the Reagan years, the United States conducted several terrorist operations in Central America to assure that multinational corporate interests were protected and to be sure that “the threat of a good example” did not arise. These policies resulted in the massacre of hundreds of thousands of people along the way.

Possibly, the most prominent example is Nicaragua. When the popular Sandinista forces attempted to overthrow the brutal, U.S. backed right wing Somoza dictatorship, (Somoza fled the country) the United States funneled millions of dollars, weaponry, and military training to Somoza’s National Guard, which was renamed the Contra forces.

The Contras, who were entirely a U.S. production and able to sustain themselves only through American support, carried out Pol Pot style massacres of civilian populations in addition to bombing residential neighborhoods in the capital city of Managua. The United States also initiated a blatantly illegal economic embargo on Nicaragua, greatly crushing an already fragile economy.

Nicaragua, in accordance with global procedure for responding to international terrorism, took its case to the International Court of Justice at the U.N. in 1986. The court ruled that the United States was guilty of “unlawful use of force” or “unlawful aggression,” which is considered a far greater offense than “international terrorism,” due to its large scale and criminal nature.

The U.S. was ordered to halt its terror and pay massive reparations to the Nicaraguan people.

Not only did the United States refuse to pay, it increased the terrorist activity by ordering its proxy military Contra forces to escalate attacks on “soft targets,” meaning civilian centers. This could be described as “low intensity warfare,” the policy we are officially committed to.

After the dust settled, approximately 40,000 people lay dead, and sadly, Nicaragua would serve as a model of democratic economic development for no one.

It is important to recognize that Nicaragua itself, was not particularly significant in regards to U.S. international business. But postwar policy planning documents make it extremely clear that, as secretary of state to the Truman administration, Dean Acheson stated, “one rotten apple can spoil the barrel.”

This means that a good example of democratic socioeconomic development can spread to neighboring nations in the region, where governments emerge that respond to the needs of their populations rather than the demands of foreign investors whose needs are tantamount to the exploitation of the general public.

If these sorts of “nationalist regimes” began to sprout up with abundance around the world, an end to a U.S. dominated global order and economy would immediately follow. Under this formulation, and with the elite, unanimous assumption that the U.S. owns the world, it is clear why the United States elite power structure must indeed commit itself to consistent international terrorism in order to maintain its power and privilege.

The American commitment to terrorism is also evident in its voting record in regards to United Nations Security Counsel Resolutions, or international law. It is notable that the United States has vetoed far more resolutions than other nation. One special example illustrates our commitment to terrorism quite dramatically. In December of 1987, the United Nations General Assembly passed a powerful resolution condemning terrorism and calling on all nations to help fight against it in every way possible. Naturally, the resolution passed unanimously, with the exception of two votes against it, the United States and Israel.

There is a very clear reason why the United States and Israel, which votes reflexively with the U.S., would vote against an anti-terrorism resolution that condemned terrorism in the U.S. terms. The last paragraph in the resolution made clear that nothing in it “infringes on the rights of people struggling against racist and colonial regimes or foreign military occupation to continue their resistance in their just cause.”

The most obvious reason why the U.S. could not accept this was simply because the racist South African Apartheid regime was an official ally, whereas indigenous freedom fighting organizations, such as Nelson Mandela’s ANC, were official ‘terrorist’ groups.

Other reasons include the U.S. and Israeli collaborating efforts to maintain an illegal occupation of the internationally recognized Palestinian state, consisting of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Countless examples of the U.S. commitment to terrorism exist, dating back to the American Indian genocide, the invasion of Vietnam, the funding and collaboration in the genocidal ethnic cleansing in Turkey, our long standing proxy military force in Columbia, the massacres of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians through the Clinton years, and of course, the current bombing of civilians in the illegal occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, which by our own Nuremberg standards, constitute the gravest war crime of “unlawful aggression.”

Clearly, the hypocrisy of the United States is unmatched to date.

The best way the United States can contribute to the so called “war on terror,” is like Noam Chomsky said, “stop participating in it.”

One of the most commonly advertised statistics for postsecondary school institutions is the instructor to student ratio. Ferris is proud of its smaller, more intimate class sizes with a rate of 16 to 1, the Ferris Web site assures prospective parents that the ratio will allow a greater understanding of the course by establishing a more personal rapport with the educators and other students. That may be true, but there is another statistic that sheds a far less positive light on the higher education industry.

In a press release from United States Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY), Ranking Member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Senate Committee, shared a multitude of education based facts at a recent Committee Hearing on Thursday, March 5.

“Nearly half of all college students are required to take remedial courses, after graduating from high school, before they can take college level course work.”

Requirements in many degree granting programs mandate either a passable ACT or SAT score to opt out of a remedial math or English course, and other courses at Ferris such as entry level Information Systems (ISYS) classes, require a test to be passed with a score of 70 percent or greater in most cases.

This test challenges the student to change the color of the font in Microsoft Word, copy and paste information in an Excel spreadsheet and numerous other tasks that are commonplace for performing at a college level.

Under guidelines that support remedial courses such as these, Sen. Enzi pointed out that of students seeking a bachelor’s degree at four year colleges and universities, four out of 10 will be successful in that goal within four years and only 6 out of 10 will be successful in completing that goal within six years.

The university’s action is passive at best on this matter because the more classes that Ferris students are required to take, such as remedial courses that students should have achieved a grasp for in high school, the more time they spend at the university and as a result the university is able to squeeze another $4,230 per semester from the students for the additional credit hours necessary to achieve a bachelor’s degree.

In the post World War II era, America represented the best and brightest in the greatest numbers on the planet. 60 years ago, 80 percent of the jobs held by Americans were categorized as “unskilled.” Since that time, the number has shifted completely and now over 80 percent of all jobs are said to be classified as “skilled,” meaning they require more education and training to be carried out at an adequate level.

In the late 70s and early 80s, the United States contributed a little less than one third of the entire world’s college student population. In the 30 years since that time, our standing has decreased to a meager 14 percent.

We can blame our high school teachers for not doing a good enough job preparing us or unfair testing that makes it hard to pass AP and equivalency exams, but blame is only able to distract us from the truth.

If we are to maintain an acceptable and enjoyable standard of living in our country and combat long term economic downfall, we must take action to improve our individual situations.

It’s no secret that the economy is tanking, the unemployment rate is on the rise, and college tuition is stacked against the student. Michiganders, more specifically the students of Ferris, are growing increasingly familiar with these challenges.

If we are to see a positive change, we must be tenacious in our endeavor to represent an educated and skilled workforce; bearing the charge of a new generation of American Workers dedicated to continual improvement and regular struggles for success.

On March 3, 2008, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm traveled to Washington, D.C. to accept a prestigious honor for the State of Michigan. The Pew Center on the States’ Government Performance Project and Governing magazine presented Michigan with a B-plus for its management of people, infrastructure, and money.

Besides giving the state an overall grade, the Pew Center broke down the grade into four detailed sections of information, infrastructure, people, and money.

The information section received the highest grade, an A. The way information is gathered, analyzed, used, and shared with the Michigan people attributed to this very high grade. Also, it was noted that informed management decisions based on strategic direction and the ability to provide pertinent information to citizens was also an excellent attribute. In the last report released in 2005, information received a B-plus.

With the next highest grade of an A-minus, infrastructure’s capital planning, intergovernmental coordination, and project monitoring were noted as very strong. This grade is slightly higher than the previous one.

The people of Michigan received a B-plus for the state’s hiring, training, and development of employees. This section’s grade is up from a B in the 2005 report.

Finally, money received a C-plus, the lowest grade of them all. The Pew Center’s report stated that, “revenue streams are in trouble and the state’s credit ratings have dropped.” This was the only section that was lower than the 2005 report. Back then, money received a B.

An item that does not receive a grade, but was noted in the report, was the state’s Web site. According to the Pew Center, Michigan’s internet portal is a national model because both businesses and citizens have access to a wide range of online services. Easy access to information through video streaming and RSS feeds was also noted.

The reports director, Neal Johnson, said, “Michigan is one of the best examples that… it’s possible to manage well even in the most difficult of times.”

Only three states received the highest overall grade awarded, an A-minus; Utah, Virginia, and Washington. The other states that received a B-plus along with Michigan were Texas, Missouri, Georgia, and Delaware. Eighteen states received the national average of the report, a B-minus.

The grades were awarded based on information gathered by the report’s authors who interviewed dozens of state workers in each of the states. They also looked at more than 12,000 pieces of data, noting those governments that are costing less but are working better.

In a statement released on March 3, Gov. Granholm said, “Year in, year out, we want to ensure that we are spending tax dollars efficiently and in a way that provides services that citizens need and depend on. We appreciate the recognition that even in tight budget times, we have made improvements in the way we operate state government.”

I guess Republicans cannot accept the fact that Governor Granholm is actually getting praise for something, and they are not. Phyllis Washburn, a spokeswoman for the former Republican Speaker of the House, Rep. Craig DeRoche, said, “This study must not have factored in the pain families and businesses are actually feeling.

What the study does show is that we have a great state and a great foundation to build upon.”

Since taking office in 2003, Granholm has had to re-build that foundation that was eroded away after 12 years of Republican control by John Engler. During his time as governor, Engler cut taxes and spent millions of taxpayers’ dollars. This cut and spend policy is what is to blame for our current economic downturn as a state.

In regards to what Washburn said, the pain that families and businesses are feeling is remnants of the Engler administration. Granholm, along with the House and Senate Democrats, have had to make tough decisions on raising taxes, and what to cut from the state government.

It was obvious in 2006 that Michiganders did not trust the Republicans to get us out this mess, as they reelected Jennifer Granholm to a second term. Maybe the Republicans should get back to governing with the Democrats and stop Monday morning quarterbacking.

It’s 3 a.m. and I wake up to the annoying beep of a text message. Who would text me at this ungodly hour? I crawl out of my nice, warm, extremely comfy bed and search for my phone.

By the time I find it, my toes have been stubbed numerous times, my shins are in pain after walking into a table, and I’m extremely crabby at whoever sent me the text.

It’s not one of my friends texting me though, it’s some unknown, now severely hated test spammer informing me of a casino in some po-dunk town AT 3 A.M.!

I’m not the only one these text spammers are targeting. According to ABC News 1.1 million text spam messages were sent last year. With phone companies charging a minimum of 10 cents per text received, that’s a minimum of $110,000 paid by cell phone owners.

ABC News reported a 13-year-old girl was charged $10 for spam text she received almost instantly after buying her phone.

Anti-spam expert Hugh McCartney told ABC News only 5 percent of text messages in the United States are spam texts. This doesn’t make me feel better after ABC News reported spammers are able to generate millions of messages per minute.

McCartney predicts global spam is going to quadruple in the next year, leaving cell phone users stuck. We won’t know if we’re being spammed, or if it’s a friend until we open the text and realize there’s a casino in North Dakota.

ABC News reported a 13-year-old girl was sent a text for a screen saver, she opened the message-costing her $80.

Hmmm, I have two problems with this. One, she opened the text and thought the screen saver was cool. I know I’m crazy conservative when it comes to downloading media off the internet, but seriously who downloads a screen saver off a text?

Apparently this girl, and now she’s stuck with an $80 charge…which wouldn’t have been if she didn’t open the message.

“They shouldn’t be able to rip kids off like that, if they say it’s free it should be free,” she told ABC News.

Yes, it should be, just like free ring tones should be free, just like free downloads should be free, but they’re not. And we need to recognize that no text message will be free.

It’s not so much the charges that bother me, yes an additional 10 to 30 cents on the cell phone bill isn’t all that fun, but what bugs me is that I put my cell number on the do not call list to block the crazy telemarketers that plagued my voicemail.

I was naïve enough to believe that the do not call list also applied to text messages. I know it's just another way for people to get the message out about their product, but at least when my e-mail is spammed I don’t have to pay for it.