Today’s ethanol news brought to you by hot Brazilian girls

Sir Richard Branson, the bajillionaire behind Verizon Group, has had a few things to say about ethanol recently. And luckily, they weren’t bad. He’s been advocating a switch from corn ethanol to sugar ethanol in light of rising food prices. Normally, we’d question the opinions of a guy who parachuted naked into Times Square to promote a cell phone, but he brought up some interesting points. Sugar ethanol, according to Branson, is “seven times more efficient” than its corny counterpart, plus “you wouldn’t have to eliminate the entire current fleet of cars on the road,” which is a problem some people have foreseen with hydrogen fuel. He also mentions how well Brazil’s sugar plantations could supply the U.S., but we should let them work out their myriad labor issues before singing their praises too loudly. And before Branson gets refitted for his nude suit, parachuting naked into the Distrito Federal on behalf of their working classes will not help matters. It’s probably more shocking to actually wear clothes in Brazil.

But Branson’s not the only one responding to rising food costs. An ethanol processing firm in Kansas is unveiling new technology that would allow its processing facilities to make both food and ethanol. The new tech uses “a dry corn fractionation process” to separate out the corn germ for human food before it gets contaminated by the ethanol production process. Good times. Not as exciting as the first news item, though. We’d better spice it up with some more hot Brazilian girls.