Merry X-mas and Happy New Deal

Resolved:

This house is our house.

I admit that some part of me is still scared as ever it once most was. I'll even admit that I wish I could lie and say I need changes in my life, but just a bit more here and there. Really, I know with the few important things that a bit more is good, but won't do for long (relatively speaking of course). But, fact is that I can't behold the future me as progress if I drag all the heaviest chains with me as I go there.

There will always be one or two killer things that we need help making good choices on. Similarly, there will always be a few sacred places that we're on the verge of finding. In other words, there will always be a few things to stay away from and a few things to run towards.

I'll dare to endeavor and better whatever those things are every day. Meanwhile, to become that superhero I've always dreamed, I'll not let life's attempts to fasten my joy to smaller and smaller things get me down. I'll know if I've succeeded if I ever become drowned in those fears and various giant sorrows and still manage to pull myself up to do good for myself and humankind, Earthkind - even if it's just when it matters the most.

After all, pain and pleasure aren't intrinsic to the omniverse - they're relative to how we learn about them and how we re-perceive them every day. Knowing this, I recommend seeking the humility to enjoy the finer things more and more (the really rich things that get better with age and build our health to greater and greater carrying capacities). Doing this of course, is much easier if you're verily open to new ideas; practice that.

Headliner In Life

Today's Headlines:

Over-Pressurized Easy-Cheese Can Linked To Man's Drowning

Coca-Cola Announces: Cola Nuts Never Actually Added; CEO baffled to describe mysterious nut's flavor

Fashion Police Arrest Nudist For Withholding Evidence

Hopscotch Secrets Revealed to Area Boys; deal made with handful of jacks

Archie Comics Declared Bankrupt in Content Audit; cartoonists revealed to be a group of dusty Atari gaming consoles

Acid-Rock Persists in Moving Inebriated Listener from the 70's; sweat barely kept in check by fading red bandana

Area Dogs Break Tradition With Profound Moment of Silence

Hip-Hop Same As Rock-n-Roll in Local Violinists Mind

Upcoming Hip-Hop Hook Recounts Story of Genesis

Headline Typesetter Dies Premat opeij jfa;f i

Bistro Chef Declares Moratorium on Special #2;waitstaff unaided in cleaning up public relations mess

Student Publication Censored For Editor's Protection

Quote of the day:

It takes practice to get good at practicing what you preach.


Found this very interesting film.

From Liveleak.com

Khoda - Over 6000 paintings used to create this animated thriller. What if you watch a film and whenever you pause it, you face a painting? This idea inspired Reza Dolatabadi to make Khoda. Over 6000 paintings were painstakingly produced during two years to create a five minutes film that would meet high personal standards. Khoda is a psychological thriller; a student project which was seen as a ‘mission impossible’ by many people but eventually proved possible...

Dark night with Bright Streetlight Sweet Serenity Saving Grace and Growing Goliath

In all my years as a human being I've learned one thing more than anything else: that being a human being means that there is always the most pressing need to learn and grow wiser. If you were to ask me what it means to grow wiser, I would say that it means to learn lessons by conquering fears. Growing in hope and growing in learning are closely related things, though not the same. If knowledge is power, then fear is ignorance. If I were to serve this higher knowledge to its moral end-of-the-rope, I would tie a knot where the teacher is and make as much good teaching as I can before I die. One of the greatest gifts in life is to create life and be it's greatest teacher - as parents we hold the place our children will walk into someday. Simultaneously, we pour every hope we have into our children, which means sometimes teaching lessons about fear. Where we put our children together to have new hopes put into them by hope-experts, that is where the Profession of Teaching becomes a reflection of the idea of 'teaching'.

In our society, one ought not inspire hope by running around creating fear lessons for everybody in the world. Except of course if you life depends on it - Emergency Human Resuscitators have fear training and filters, as do military, and many other emergency services. These groups' effectiveness at "fearing" someone into motivation/actualization/re-encouraging a calm center of bravery amidst a storm of physical or spiritual chaos are the legendary reasons they persist, despite their debatable outward repugnance. Most people expose themselves to some sort of fear training/fear dulling. Religion, horror movies, sports, and hazardous jobs are all known to produce people of character or burnouts from stress. These jobs are crucibles that test the mettle of people and break down all the barriers they've constructed regarding some particular dimension of their life. Fear only begets fear which only begets ignorance, which only ends up in less wisdom for the world. So if you want to hold true to your moral center, you have to fight fear though it discomforts. A healthy body requires some theoretical amount of rigorous use. A healthy spirit is signified by the fearlessness of cause and justifiably self-righteous courage. A healthy spirit requires some theoretical amount of rigorous use

Lifestyles which do not promote the health of the body take a dimension of capability away from people. Our collective effort is no longer worth as much if our collective effort has atrophied through apathy or luxury or plenty. Pulling our own weight is no longer possible - we have less towing capacity per kappita than previous kappitas, and we have borrowed our apathy, luxury, and plenty from the next ten generations at least... ALL THIS means that we have to pull our weight again, but our task has become harder - we now have to pull the weight of our selves, our parents and grandparents, our children, and their children's children on down the line for the next 9 or some other odd number of generations. Why did things get so drastic seeming? So we could buy lots and lots and lots and lots of stuff without consequence for as long as possible. I'm sure the concentrated dope-money of the Aristocracy-yet-to-be thanks us for our sacrifices. But hope remains yet, you story-loving listeners.

Lifestyles which do not promote the health of the mind are insidious ruiners of people and the downfall of civilizations. Every nation feeds itself physically and mentally. To god, we are naked pudgy ape descendents with complex facial organs and communication patterns, not the self-proclaimed hierarchy of virtue and order we claim to be at s'his feet. Technology has been brewed into service of our babble-ings. Math is the only babble we may yet have that isn't tainted by the biochemical progeny of ideas and words. By worshiping the stars and the shapes of the moon and sun, and knowing the planets and comets, and seeing the blueprints of life at each level, down to the grand unified level of the tiniest yet thing, the most complex yet, the most qualities of sides and explainations that cover all the turf with its unity in elegance and is magnitude in differences - by doing all that, we exercise our spirit with learning though the lessons not hit us in our face or our lives. Even if these lessons only hit us in our minds, they are the very things that will make up who we are, and where I implore everyone to think; every lesson you face will determine how fit or sick this society and geography will become; every choice that you make could help somebody else, or you, but the right answer will probably ever remain 'which choice benefits the most people' to which the answer you find is born of no ignorance, fears, hatreds, but we remain instead spiritually advanced in our enlightened worship of stars and trees and air and pure water. What makes a Saint is sometimes giving up all things for the greater good. Sometimes what makes a saint is capturing courage for masses of people who need to find courage. Sometimes what makes a saint is most kindly honoring that which was sacrificed despite the lack of kindness which destroyed it in the first place. Everyone can be a saint in someone else's life. The more we act for good, the more good we become, and then the place that our children step into, and their children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children will step into too.

I solemly release myself of the guilt of the price that was paid in History's blood to allow all these ideas to come so easily to my lips. Everyone dies, and the world will always be full of suffering. As long as I hold the lessons of the hard road of History in my heart as I speak and make the decisions of every day, I'm sure I will make some progress along this road. Then, one day, if fate is kind to us all, our children's children's...so on to the last set of children, will look back at all the struggle that continued on after I died and say, "well, I forgive him for not getting everything fixed, even though a lot of people suffered because he couldn't get everything right, after all he was born with an imperfect legacy, just like me, and look at all the progress he made despite his many setbacks." Likewise I forgive my own history and our collective history for all its flaws. I consider the matters over and done with, except where they bear some small issues to the present to be decided for the immediate future - that's life afterall.

Hope lies ever as the cream, on top of any foment and toil we swirl amongst each other in. Story telling is a form of hope, but only when combined with deep, still, or massive listening. We excel at certain types of story-telling, and we excel at certain types of listening. As we guide our children into the next generation of possibilities in a universe made microscopically of possibilities, let us accelerate their learning in the best kinds of story telling and the best kinds of listening. We'll seek not to censor, destory, defame, or demoralize, but only to nurture, to listen, to light, to walk, and to teach, that way better tomorrow is right on top, sitting at the tips of all our children's tongues.

Big oil? Earth to Big oil? Trickle Up?

Re-Posted From the NYT

Re: Energy and money and Utility Bills and the ever changing landscape of our collective livelihood.

Before you read the article below and my additions and reflections of it, I just want to point out a few things. First, oil is the bread and butter of commerce, construction, manufacturing (especially chemical), medical, and transportation industries. It also has a large share in the American utility and heating bill, and on top of all that, how much money we spend at the levy every Wednesday. Drastic humps in prices should either concern you for your own welfare, worry you as an indicator of the economies welfare, or make you downright paranoid; any of these would be an appropriate response to ubiquitous fluctuations.

Second: the Grand Earth-is-a-Garage Analogy. Pretend the wind stopped blowing. Air stopped moving, except where we pushed it or plants and animals breathed it. The air in your home would largely stay in your home. The air in your street and next to your park would stay put. Every car would leave a line of unbreatheable air. To understand this effect on our health, picture next that the entire Earth were a garage, with just enough room for however many billions of people are on it now. Would we choose to turn on millions of cars and likely commit a slow suicide with a chemical more addictive than tobacco, more liberating than LSD, and more party oriented that clean cocaine? Oil and gas have built a revolution of industry. The sooner we find the next revolution, the less like a Dinasaur atmosphered planet we'll live in.

Also (third), you talk about U.S. image worlwide, and how important restoring our credibility is - how about the country that still uses more oil per kapita than anyone else by far actually giving a shit about the whole Earth's environment enough to sign the Kyoto protcalls. Or is that to God-Damned Socialist for your punk-patriotic-fuck-you-a-thon called Military/Industrial/Media/Commercial/Lobbyist-central/non-progressive bi-partisanism...sorry, I didn't mean to yell.

Big Oil Projects Put in Jeopardy by Fall in Prices

Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times

A 76 gas station in La Jolla, Calif., in December, left, and May, right.

By JAD MOUAWAD

Published: December 15, 2008

From the plains of North Dakota to the deep waters of Brazil, dozens of major oil and gas projects have been suspended or canceled in recent weeks as companies scramble to adjust to the collapse in energy markets.

Just as a reminder, the "collapse" in the energy markets was caused in large part by a simultaneous stock, real-estate, oil, auto, and credit bubble bursting. In fact, energy markets have been collapsing here and there for many years. My theory is that lots of people talk about energy markets collapsing because they are paid to...politicians for example. In the recent Illinois governor media/U.S. Attorney farce, one of the best quotes I read was about how the U.S. Secretary of Energy was the most lucrative of all Cabinet posting positions. Could be there is a lot of inner-workings of energy markets that don't see the light of day and are thus not accurately reported on in print.

Multimedia

Graphic

Oil’s Long Price Rise, Quickly Undone

Related

OPEC Looks to Halt Falling Oil Prices (December 16, 2008)

Times Topics: Oil and Gasoline | Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries

In the short run, falling oil prices are leading to welcome relief at the pump for American families ahead of the holidays, with gasoline down from its summer record of just over $4 to an average of $1.66 a gallon, and still falling.

-demand gets Happy.

But the project delays are likely to reduce future energy supplies — and analysts believe they may set the stage for another surge in oil prices once the global economy recovers.

-supply Strikes Back.

Oil markets have had their sharpest-ever spikes and their steepest drops this year, all within a few months. Now, with a global recession at hand and oil consumption falling, the market’s extreme volatility is making it harder for energy executives to plan ahead. As a result, exploration spending, which had risen to a record this year, is being slashed.

Hang on with that first sentance there. Before you suppose it is an unanswerable contention or a real sentence, lets break it down. Oil markets - afore mentioned, transport/manufacturing/chemical/energy/heating/commerce in general are taking predicted hits as middle class incomes go down, commodity prices are going up, yadda yadda, things look dim for Joe Carpenter and Plumber alike. Meanwhile Alaska companies, and Oil companies make record, record, record profits like nobody's business; world demand has been soaring with the industrialization/McDonaldization/Americanization of India, China, Russia, and a host of others. This is common knowledge and enough to make a sane man crazy. Yet, as economics go, the more demand something is in, the more it is worth - hence record profits. But, the afore mentioned bubbles were blindly telling everyone that money was growing on trees at a reliably fast rate. That is, until the forest-fire-sale when the chips were counted at last and most of the players lost their shirts (picture mortgage derivatives, ambitious home-buyers, and pause a moment to remember the Bush changes to Bankrupcy law). That all these jumping guppies flew out of the tank in one fiscal year is just a sign of the danger of the computerized-24-hour world we've stepped into. Neo would know what to do. Exploration spending rates are a silly/tiny slice of the pie to discuss. Furthermore, Energy Executives are a dubious lot whose stress levels are no doubt concerned with money, not energy.

The precipitous drop in oil prices since the summer, coming on the heels of a dizzying seven-year rise, was a reminder that the oil business, like those of most commodities, is cyclical. When demand drops and prices fall, companies curb their investments, leading to lower supplies. When demand recovers, prices rise again and companies start to invest in new production, starting another cycle.

New production is constantly invested in, and everything and nothing in the universe is cyclical - so what. The current market, from Oil Shales to Oil Sheiks, from Porsches to fertilizers, has been subject to rampant de-regulation and instability ever since a certain Legacy Fundamentalist and dare I say Rapture-Right-Leaning Plutocrat's son was most dubiously elected into office. Let us not forget that the modus operandi of the "cycle" of economics in America is the Game - who's who in power politicos - who's who in fortune's five-hundred - Benjamin's C-notes - and the pennies of the poor. How many times does the Times have to say Trickle-Down is a joke before the number of times the Times talks about problems facing Big Oil goes down.

As familiar as the pattern may be, the changes this time are taking place at record speed. In June, some analysts were forecasting oil at $200 a barrel and companies were scouring the earth for new places to drill; now, no one knows how low prices may fall.

World demand for oil will continue to rise, despite the way it's value spiked in this nation during the Double-You Administration. People will always scour the Earth for new places to drill because we've all watched Beverly Hillbillies.

“It’s a classic — if extraordinarily dramatic — cycle,” said Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and author of “The Prize,” a history of the oil business. “Prices have come down so far and so fast, it’s become a shock to the supply system.”

Anything that mitigates the windfall heroin-drip of cash into the Oil Titan's veins will cause much rumbling in the clockwork flappings of a corporate newspaper whose entire spasm of growth history was based on the Oil News. The supply system and myself are both shocked by the fields of un-ordered cars, the raise in energy bills, and our own conscious telling us we have a lot of work to do to shut down wal-mart while no longer over-packaging, over-buying, over-eating, and most of all, over-compensating with our vehicle choices.

The list of projects delayed is growing by the week. Wells are being shut down across the United States; new refineries have been postponed in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and India; and ambitious plans for drilling off the coast of Africa are being reconsidered.

I'd like to know if the growing list of delayed projects is in any way related to the growing list of companies who were tantilized into business models based on bubble-high-inflato-prices of oil. They should have spent all the drafting-plan-money on buying solar panels and fresh water stills for poor African farmers and herders who practice sustainable Trickle-Up economies.

Investment in alternative energy sources like biofuels that had flourished in recent years could dry up if prices stay low for the next few years, analysts said. Banks have become reluctant lenders, especially to renewable energy projects that may prove unprofitable in an era of low oil and gas prices.

Again, world oil prices will continue to rise. Banks will lend, or other banks will lend in place of those banks, which will now be called stupid banks. What is desperately needed in terms of investment in alternative energy is the kind of subsidies big Oil has been getting for millenia (given the rapid pace of today's information age, I thought some hyperbole was in order). Carter was about to make some good decisions for Energy Consumers of America when a sudden wool of GOP politics was thrown over the Executive Branch's Eyes. Since then we've paid for, as Taxpayers, stamped and collected: two Wars over oil, plenty of unmentioned (unmentionable according to Manufactured Consent) behind-the-scenes skullduggery regarding oil resources (Mexico, Venezuela, Isreal, to hint at a few), untold billions in tax subsidies/land grants/etc., and a national debt completely funded and fueled on the idea that America will some day be worth enough money to pay off all that national debt. When oil prices start kangaroo-hopping we start to wonder if that national debt number is going to punch us in the eye someday because we assumed it would never catch up with us.

These delays could curb future global fuel supplies by the equivalent of four million barrels a day within the next five years, according to Peter Jackson, an energy analyst at Cambridge Energy Research Associates. That is equal to 5 percent of current oil supplies.

Well, according to Peter Jackson of New Zealand where Lord Of The Rings was filmed, in the next five years the Kingdom of Men could overcome greed to launch an all-out campaign to rid the world of it's economic dependancy on the global oil trade. Shirefolk could touch the very heart of power in the world and teach us all that living active stress-free lives based on pastoral organic agriculture and handicrafts could lead to fabulous kegger parties and breakthroughs in song and dance. Once again, I wonder if the money spent on the 'delayed' activity and the money they plan to spend could build enough solar panels to provide hundreds of years of free "equal to 5 percent". It may not add up in the final analysis, especially depending on whose calculator you use to add the total costs, but so long as we're talking about 5 percent I think it is highly worth mentioning.

One reason projects are being shut down so fast is that costs throughout the industry, which had surged in recent years, are still elevated despite the drop in oil prices. Many companies are waiting for those costs to come down before deciding whether to go forward with new projects.

Ahhh, but that is the trouble with scarcity when it comes to 'business as usual'. As costs rise, so do expectations for returns. Welcome to inflation; you've arrived at the first floor: perception. The afore mentioned 'Game' of Wall Street and Main Street and it's backbone in Military/Industrial Spending is fueled by willingness to gamble on one axis and permissability of gambling on the other axis. One is the level of risk one is accostumed to and the other is the fuzzy maximums and minimums of risk the government and the banks will allow you to risk (the denominator of which is the insurance companies, which is why so much of the tendencies come from and are duly or dourly noted by the actuaries). Many of the companies the Times is talking about aren't the same companies that are poised to find their way through innovation to growth despite oil's fluctuational behaviors.

“The global market has been turned upside down since the summer,” the International Energy Agency, a leading energy forecaster, said in a recent report.

The global demand market has gone up and down as has the global supply market (maybe I'm making that up) but profits continue to soar. Big news. Things change, yet things always stay the same.

In today’s uncertain environment, a slowdown in spending is inevitable, according to energy executives who are devising their budgets for next year. Last year, spending on exploration and production amounted to $329 billion, according to PFC Energy, a consulting firm. That figure is certain to fall.

An increase in saving is definitely warranted. What little spending will go on will have to be carefully picked: bombs? or hospitals?, imported goods? or made-in-Americans?, burger joint? or CSA boxes?, efficiency?(organic - Welcome to the Super-Green revolution of Socialism, coming to a school and a homeless shelter near YOU! if you dare) or expansion?(fattening, status quo, enter Zoloft ad and defunct HMO full of doctor bills)

“We’re in remission right now,” said Marvin E. Odum, the vice president for exploration and production for Royal Dutch Shell in the Americas. But once the economy picks up, he said, “the energy challenge will come back with a vengeance.”

Wrong, Mr. Odum. You're in remission right now. By the time you 'come back' to feed on the mono-theism of Energy Policy in the U.S., we'll have a hydra of pro-active oversight to block you from being able to exploit resources cheaply or have more closed-door access to my wallet. That's right, we'll have a government Bailout for homeowners funded by Barack Obamas promises for change. We'll have German style smart and sexy socialism to help make doing business in America a hell of a lot cleaner, and a hell of a lot cheaper. You'll regret that you ever loosened your strangle hold on us - we've gotten smarter than that. What do you expect when the car manufacturers are giving low emissions and high fuel efficiency to Europeans and Asians and and...whoever the hell else their giving it to.

Oil demand growth has weakened throughout the industrial world. The International Energy Agency projects that worldwide demand will actually fall this year, for the first time since 1983.

Shit happens.

So much surplus oil is sloshing around the world right now that some companies, including Shell, are using oil tankers for storage.

Could this have anything to do with the new cars piling up in Long Beach and other Ports?

Oil prices have declined by more than $100 a barrel since July, returning to levels last seen more than four years ago. They settled at $44.51 a barrel, down $1.77, on Monday in New York, as concerns about the economy outweighed efforts by oil producers to stem the slide in prices.

Maybe the world is becoming more efficient.

Prices could drop below $30 a barrel, according to Merrill Lynch and other forecasters, if the Chinese economy slows drastically next year, which looks increasingly likely.

In case you haven't heard, OPEC won't let that happen. I bet Venezuela is going to make out well in the coming years.

Different companies have different price thresholds for going forward with drilling projects. But across the industry, a price drop this big has “a dampening effect,” according to Mr. Odum of Shell. “The big uncertainty is how long this economic environment is going to last.”

The biggest cutbacks so far have been in heavy oil projects in Canada, where some of the world’s highest-cost production is concentrated. Some operators there need oil prices above $90 a barrel to turn a profit.

Oil sands, eh?

StatoilHydro, a large Norwegian company, recently pulled out of a $12 billion project in Canada because of falling prices. Similarly, Shell, Nexen and Petro-Canada have all canceled or postponed new ventures in the province of Alberta in recent weeks.

Producers are bracing for a painful contraction, and the drop in prices could crimp investments even in places where production costs are low. The Saudi monarch, King Abdullah, recently said he considered $75 a barrel to be a “fair price.”

Well, King Abdullah is knee deep in politics - fair enough, he should be. Interesting thing about a King is that they can be fair if they want to, or unfair if it suits them better. Either way, their subjects have to deal with the consequences. If "fair" is higher than status quo, then really someone is just trying to say, 'the price is going to go up'.

The kingdom, which has invested tens of billions of dollars in recent years to increase production, recently announced that two new refineries, with ConocoPhillips and Total of France, were being frozen until costs go down. In neighboring Kuwait, the government recently shelved a $15 billion project to build the country’s fourth refinery because of concerns about slowing growth in oil demand.

Sometimes the Times has the job of stating the damn blasted truth of everyday fleecing; supply goes down, demand goes up. Chinese people and Indian people get cars from their manufacturing, service, and tech jobs, oil prices go vroom vroom, ConocoPhillips and Total of France go wee wee wee all the way home. Fitting they should be able to boldly display their manuvering to stay on top - after all, they're on top, so that's where they deserve to be right?

The list goes on: South Africa’s national oil company, PetroSA, on Thursday dropped plans to build a plant that would have converted coal to liquid fuel. The British-Russian giant TNK-BP slashed its capital expenditure budget for next year by $1 billion, for a 25 percent reduction from this year.

Hmmm...sounds like a green technology. I bet the Chinese or the Bill Clinton/Gates initiative funds it instead, and makes money while improving the local economy, thereby strengthening the global economy.

In North Dakota, oil drillers are scaling back exploration of the Bakken Shale, a geological formation recently seen as promising, where production is more expensive than in conventional fields.

Sorry, we're not desperate enough for oil yet to be making a bunch of money off such a non-gushing-out-of-the-ground resource. Don't worry, we'll get to them soon enough.

“People are dropping rigs up there in a pretty significant way already,” Mark G. Papa, the chief executive of EOG Resources, a small natural gas producer, recently told an energy conference.

Another domestic producer, Callon Petroleum, suspended a major deepwater project in the Gulf of Mexico, called Entrada, weeks before completion because of what it described as a “serious decline in project economics.”

Further evidence of the top-heaviness of the Global Supply Chain.

According to research analysts at the brokerage firm Raymond James, domestic drilling could drop by 41 percent next year as companies scale back.

-which changes what will amount to a percentage point of our total over the course of ten years or so I imagine.

“We expect operators to significantly cut their activity in the coming weeks due to the holiday season, and many of these rigs will not come back to work,” the report said.

Jobs have been unfortunately lost lately, but the economic forces surrounding the U.S. have dictated that old jobs will be lost due to global competition. Sadly, we did not prepare for this day by devaluing our currency and increasing exports like China. Instead we limited our options by enjoying the high cost of low prices; our own manufacturing base has been undercut by our shopping choices so more money is flowing out of the country instead of in.

As scores of small wells are shut down, analysts at Bernstein Research have calculated that oil production in North America could decline by 1.3 million barrels a day through 2010, or 17 percent, to 6.14 million barrels a day. This decline, rather than cuts by members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, “will be the catalyst needed for oil prices to rebound,” Neil McMahon, an analyst at Bernstein Research, said in a conference call this month. The United States remains the world’s largest oil consumer.

As the largest oil consumer, will we just allow the price of oil to "rebound" from reasonable rates to overvalued rates because the analysts at Bernstein Research say that's probably what the market will force on the owners of relevant Capital.

The drop in energy consumption could afford some breathing room for producers, which had been straining in recent years to match fast-rising demand. But analysts warn the world can ill afford a lengthy drop in investment in energy supplies. To meet the growth in global population and the rising affluence expected in the future, the world will need to invest $12 trillion in order to increase its oil and natural gas supplies, according to the International Energy Agency.

...I'd like to know the reasoning behind the last $12 trillion figure there - is that assuming the highest profit or current profit rates and rate increases. Analysts are really just warning that the relative increase increase in energy output has trended slower than it has before for the first time since it had before. What? Yeah, analysts sometimes forget that less can be more if we share it better and distribute it more cheaply. Maybe once shrinking resources is crossed with growing demand, the inefficient distribution systems of the past will be thrown down in favor of socialized over privatized systems. Investing $ 12 trillion in systems that will only absorb large swaths of that investment in profit would be inefficient; efficiency dictates that we invest in a system with high sustainability rates, high rates of return in reducing the cost of living - peace, health, education, and infrastructure - oh my. Spend your bonus on that.

“If we cut back dramatically on investments, we could end up in a situation where supply growth goes flat when the economy starts to recover,” said Mr. Jackson, the analyst. “The steeper the decline, the steeper the response.”

For the economy to recover, we'll need to see more people getting good jobs next year than we had this year. In order to do that we need to make the wisest of investments today to make sure tomorrow sees investments' value blossom bigger than ever. Those investments will come in the form of sacrifices, and those that blossom will be hidden among the ones that don't. How fast we get there depends entirely on how much we sacrifice, how closely we participate in our own affairs, and how much we're willing to risk losing to get there.

The State of the Anchorage Column

My friends, the column is strong, as are the people who stand nearby it. Despite the cold, the snow, the adversity of finals and foibles, things are going along apace towards progress.

Finals are finished and I'm looking forward to the next set of classes. I'm more anxious to see my grades than I have been in a long time. Guess that's the hope of improvement speaking. I'm very thankful for all the opportunities I've been graced by, and I am astounded to look at my progress and see some.

The world at large is getting smaller. Where would we be without the internet? I wonder. With so much information available, it is a very exciting time for someone like me, who is obsessed with perspective and words.

My plan for the holiday is to send gifts, find work, play music, clean house, and just play. Oh, and the cross-country skis are being used again, mostly at night so far. Such sojourns are good time to catch up on all that thinking there is to do. Bas-relief shadow and color of nightscapes make for interesting backdrops on which to post musings.

Most of my thoughts lately are focused on destroying my costs of living in favor of unselfish-sufficiency; though pragmatic matters of gentility's manners may prevent a pure reckoning of my reasoning. I have been craving fried chicken for some reason...

The Anchorage economy is sheltered so far, though I often think that will abruptly change whenever it changes. Though, maybe people just can't help but be addicted to a little doom and gloom, and not really that much will change even as we watch all the financial balls dropping (or sucking back in, if you know what I mean). With the economy showing some primary indicators of continued job loss, unpredictable changes in rates of commodity and currency valuations, and with the omnipresent bandwagon of doomsday scenarios (did someone step in Y2K?, cause there is something ripe-smelling coming from the general direction of media and other affluent quagmires), all indicators are that humans should remain being humans and not voluntarily discorporate as much as we do.

Yes, I'm talking about war. There is a lot I'll work towards in the coming year, but they will all be things within my reach. War is something that words can fight against by winning over the tide of people in the pool party of Nationalism we're all participants of. If you build it, they will come. If peace is sexy, prudence will come around to join the party.

So I hope not to see military actions. For far too long have economic interests dictated policy in the United States. Without the many voices of dissent in Washington, we've all agreed on certain radically destructive things for a couple of generations now (the munitions factory, the trickles of the economy, the hopeless pursuit of chasing evil with lobbying dollars, to name a few). Without the chorus of anger and despair having voice, the equilibrium of policy will ever be deaf to reality. Until ideas wield battles, the decor of Congress will strike banally bland notes to our eyes.

Despite wealth's popularity, I don't fear the Earth's ability to cope with our pusuit of it - I fear only for the difficulties our collective progeny will face. I know how much despair can sting, and I'd hate for our unwillingness to grant them a Sea Change be a tarnish on the perfection of our legacy. Unfortunately for all of us, the only cross on the map representing a doorway to economic salvation is the most personal and obvious of beginnings: We have to start at home, holding the whole of humanity in our minds as we day to day do things. Then we take our lucrative proficiency to work with us, and strike down the corridors of destruction. Difficult part is, we'll have to rely on what few avenues of beautification we currently have to sustain us while the demolition and construction occur. In the past, this difficult part has cheifly kept us and change apart, since no one wants less when given the option of more.

More is no longer an option.

Please live simply, that others may simply live, and please keep your scope right where you can see.

Garlic Head

Today's Headlines:

Garlic Clove Dies After Heroic Battle with Vampire

Area Dogs Wage War On Latest Blurry Hint of Motion

Studded Tires Still Fear Lonely Scourge of Summer

Harpoon Collectors Pine For Good Ole Whalin' Days

Drill Enthusiast Mourns Flickering Battery Indicator

Idle Sled Dogs Implicated in Neighbor's Yard Poo; Owner Weary of Action

George W. Bush Confused by Own Confusion - Confused by Middle Part Too;neo-Con Implicated

Okay, really, that last part has become a cheap shot - let's move on as a nation to get to the serious work part. The WE Change part. The one from the: "make change" and "be the change you want to see."
So, we let sleeping dogs lie, let the old ways be old ways and only hinder them as they clash with the new ways, but mostly we do things like new ways are good ways are usually hard ways.

I know. That wasn't even a sentence at the end.

But, that isn't the end of it is it. What is it? It's punishment. How many more Cheneys and Rumsfelds and I know, I know, there are more like a statistician would know where the ever-elusive truth of an entity like government lay exactly - exactly how many favors and deals are on the up and up, and how many are on the take, and how many many many of them are one part one and another part both. oOOh la la. Howdy holler. Did someone say profit motive? But, what is legislation but opportunity knocking. Who's checking? Chequeing? Who checkered the board and grew up playing checkers?

Was that even a question at the end? Government obviously would benefit from transparency to air out dirty laundry, that left to itself must be relatively festering. Their higher selves won't mind the intervention. They obviously need someone else's discretion to help direct them to appropriate venues for their adversarial predilictions, like hockey matches or NASCAR beer lines. Who doesn' t want to stand in a beer line?

Whatever. I've never been to a hockey game. But in any one idividual's life is the government really that much of a problem? Well, maybe yes for some, maybe some places many, but our problems usually reside closer to home, where we could act locally.

Now that Obama doesn't need our help being lifted to the highest office, our collective energies will be where? Ascending? Dissipating? Who will we lift up now?

We're all bastards unless we quit spending so much money on bombs and other ways to kill people. No One Person wants to kill people (though we're all revved up and anxious so...), we'll discount the rediculous few of you who do - so let's not ever be the aggressors. Let's work within whatever systems have been created to do the good we want to do, and then solve our aggressive problems with cooperative powers. Of course we reserve the rights: to change our minds, to help fix the system we're working in (the UN? too scary to give up a bit of sovereignty for the good of the world - okay we'll start with all these crazy trade agreements instead), to be proud of who we are and what we do so much that our skills and products and information are sought after the world around. God bless THAT America - the one that sees past the noise of our pollution informational and otherwise, and squashes the idea that it's ok to finish your job as President with SUCH UNREASONABLY ANSWERED QUESTIONS (U.S. LEGAL MILITARY TORTURE, DOMESTIC SPYING AND OTHER DISEASES OF THE PATRIOT ACT, BANKRUPTCY ACT RE-REFORMING, FAIRNESS DOCTRINE REINSTATEMENT, PUTTING "CLEAN" BACK IN CLEAN AIR ACT, CLEAN WATER ACT, AND how about...

...sending our sons and daughters to die solely on the basis that you thought it was the "right" thing to do. There is evidence Mr. Bush that you took this country for a killing spree intentionally for baseless reasons. You fooled us twice. Shame on us.

We're starting all over again. Not easy, but this time we'll pay more attention. This time we'll find time to. This time we'll disregard all the meaningless things that distract us from the larger picture. This time we'll negotiate a better deal for ourselves, finding ways to work harder and pay ourselves first and pay our community too. We could rely on bread and share it too, so why can't money do that too, and time and truth, count those in too? Of course we will, of course we do.