No, I didn't fall off the face of the Earth. I didn't go on vacation. I just haven't had anything to write about the past few days. I was just thinking about the price of gas, which has reached 94.9 cents a litre here, which is...some number or other a gallon. Hey, you want the right amount, you figure it out. In any case the thought came to mind that as the price of gas goes up we should see more and more car engine oriented scams, and more folks falling for such scams. "You can get 90 miles a gallon with my special carberator, but you'd better buy it before the oil companies suppress it" cons have been around forever, but they're ever more attractive with world oil prices at their current level. A little common sense shows that such conspiracy theories are silly for one simple reason: the US military. If some super duper ultra efficient internal combustion engine existed you know the US Army would put it in their vehicles, and tens of thousands of Army grease monkeys would know about it. Logistics is a core concern of any military, and if they could hugely reduce the amount of fuel they needed they would, as this would allow them to transport lots of other stuff, like parts and ammo, in its place.