I was listening to a morning talk show on my way in to work this morning. They had Darryl Hannah on talking about how she has an old El Camino automobile that she runs on recycled fast food vegetable oil. They asked her what conversion she did with her engine to take that for fuel, and she said none. Turns out that all diesel engines can run off vegetable oil, that diesel engines were invented in 1900 to run off peanut oil, and it’s cleaner-burning than petroleum and does not give off reactive organic gases (“greenhouse gas,” she called it, the stuff that reacts with sunlight to create smog). She said the byproduct toxicity is something in between that of table salt and maple syrup. Her engine runs smoother and quieter, and she gets better mileage, too. She did admit, however, that her car exhaust sometimes smells like French fries. Why aren’t we all doing this? Aside from the fact that my car doesn’t take diesel. I think the heavy tankers and big rigs should run off vegetable oil.

Speaking of big rigs, a juror in our trial called in this morning saying she was running late because all the major freeways were jammed due to two major incidents which, according to her, are on the news. The first is a big rig that flipped over and killed a guy. The second, according to the juror, was caused by a guy getting robbed by some other guys, and the victim chased the robbers down the freeway (presumably in their respective cars), and the robbers ended up shooting him. Ick.