UPDATED: DLP Commenter Wishing In Vain Banned From Barbados Free Press

UPDATED: Wishing In Vain Apologises, Will Be Given Another Chance

We have received an email from WIV offering an apology on one hand and saying he / she didn’t quite understand why they were banned.

Frankly, we went through the same thing a number of months ago with Wishing In Vain – which is another reason that we wonder about how many folks the DLP had/has writing under the moniker “Wishing In Vain”.

So… WIV, here’s the deal…

We don’t allow folks to call their political opponents or other folks homosexual or lesbian unless that person has come out of the closet themselves. No innuendo. No smart comments sliding in sideways. Nothing.

That is our rule, which you were cautioned on many months ago.

So… Wishing in Vain can return to Barbados Free Press.

You may come out of the corner now, if you agree to play nicely with your brothers and sisters!

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Original Article…

Our old friend “Wishing in Vain” has proven to be a valuable contributor to the public discussion here at BFP and at many other other blogs. He or she is obviously a well educated and well-connected DLP insider and we appreciate the part that WIV plays in contributing to the discussion.

During the past election we started to consider the possibility that WIV was more than just one person. There were slight differences in vocabulary and writing skill between some of WIV’s comments – but different moods and levels of sobriety could account for that.

What really set us to wondering was Wishing In Vain’s 24/7 presence on the blogs during the election. No matter which one of us BFPers was on duty, no matter the hour – WIV always seemed to be there too! Once we plotted WIV and they were online something like an average of every 1.6 hours for a 48 hour period (!)

BFP can do that because we have a few people available for spam around the clock… but it seems to us to be an incredible performance for a single individual.

Too incredible – but still possible, I guess.

But then there is the subject of this post.

Many times BFP moderators have cautioned Wishing In Vain that unsubstantiated comments about the sexual orientation of any person will not be tolerated on this blog. It is a part of Bajan politics that we don’t support and don’t allow at BFP.

Wishing in Vain has violated our rules so many times that we have lost count. Sometimes we don’t publish the comment or we edit out the offending passage. We have edited WIV’s comments so many times that we can’t remember – but no more.

Wishing in Vain also tries to “slip one in” on us every so often – not always, but infrequently enough that we don’t always notice – saying a foul thing in the middle of an otherwise reasoned and valuable comment. WIV did that again this morning.

So Wishing In Vain… we don’t know if you are one person or several, but the name “Wishing In Vain” is now banned from Barbados Free Press.

If you wish to resume using that name here, you must write an apology and a written promise that you will not violate the rules again.

Yours truly,

Marcus, Robert, Shona, Cliverton, George & Auntie Moses

What Will Become Of Barbados’ Ethanol Project? … Also: Virgin Atlantic To Test Biofuel, Perhaps From Algae

What Will The Current Barbados Government Do With The Cane-Ethanol Project?

First, a reminder that finding new and better energy sources is one of the most critical worldwide problems that we face in this generation. But as scientists and business are discovering, not every alternative fuel makes technological, economic or environmental sense.

This truth that not every alternative fuel source is viable is illustrated by an experiment being conducted by Richard Branson, Boeing and General Electric Aviation…

Virgin Atlantic said Monday that it would conduct a demonstration flight next month of one of its Boeing 747 jets using biofuel – the first airborne test of a renewable fuel by a commercial jet.

The airline, founded by the British billionaire Richard Branson, said a 747-400 plane would make the journey lasting one hour and 20 minutes from London Heathrow Airport to Amsterdam in late February using 20 percent biofuel and 80 percent conventional jet fuel. The test, without passengers, is part of a joint research project announced by Virgin, Boeing and the aircraft engine maker, GE Aviation.

The airline declined to identify the source of the biofuel, though Paul Charles, a Virgin spokesman, said the carrier had rejected fuels derived from crops like palm oil because of the huge land area that would need to be devoted to cultivation for fuel production.

“It will be a very sustainable fuel source,” Charles said, adding that its production would not compete with food or fresh water resources.

Engineers at Boeing and its European rival, Airbus, estimate that supplying all the airliners in the world with pure soybean-based biofuel would require planting an area the size of Europe. Biofuel researchers have also identified certain varieties of algae as a possible feedstock, noting that they have a much higher energy content than oilseeds and would therefore be far less demanding on the environment.

Boeing estimates that supplying the aviation industry with algae-based fuel would require just 35 square kilometers of ponds and that the algae could even be cultivated in salt water.

Read the entire article at the Herald Tribune link here.

Is Cane Ethanol A Viable Project For Barbados?

Prime Minister Thompson Should Re-evaluate Everything Started By The Corrupt & Incompetent BLP Government!

Proponents of a Barbados cane-ethanol project point to Brazil as proof that fuel from sugar cane is an economically viable proposition. They don’t like to talk about the huge economies of scale enjoyed by Brazil, or that Barbados might be better off economically to forget about ethanol from cane and instead grow corn for domestic food use.

The rationale for Barbados replacing cane with corn is that as ethanol from corn takes off in the North American market, it will cause a significant increase in the price of food and feed corn. In short, if making ethanol from cane on Barbados is as inefficient and expensive as is becoming apparent, we might be way better off to grow food instead of cane and find other solutions to powering cars and generating electricity.

What we don’t need is another dubious project that requires hundreds of millions of tax dollars for no guaranteed results or return… and we sure don’t need to favour a cane-ethanol project on the basis of an emotional and historical attachment to growing sugarcane.