Defiantone.com

Theories attempting to explain the current oil market are quite varied. Wired has compiled a list of the top eight reasons and delves into each one. Its worth a read if you’ve got a few minutes to spare.

I caught an interesting article about kids that built their own wiffle ball field in the middle of undeveloped city grounds. They cleared the land, put up an American flag, and put up their version of Fenway’s green monster.

Soon after - the lawyers came.

I’ll let you read the rest of the article for all of the gory details but I’ve got to wonder - what the heck is going on in our country? When I was a kid I spent most of my time running through fields or goofing around in the overgrown horse pasture that was next to my house. An odd tidbit - my mom tried to burn down that pasture and the city got to try out its brand new fire truck for the first time. The entire town was my playground and I could normally find something to keep me occupied - my parents might try to refute this statement as I was known to come to them complaining of boredom. Sure, I was destructive as heck while I was out but my creativity and energy level were the only things that could slow me down. Well it was almost the only thing save for my mother yelling for me to come in for dinner which often had a damper on whatever shenanigans I might have been up to at any given moment.

There were no lawyers. Neighbors didn’t complain - well, at least that I knew. I was free to be a kid. I didn’t destroy anyones personal property and neither did these kids - so whats the big deal? I’m not really sure - maybe some of us forgot how great it was to be a kid.

Another hilarious classic

This is hilarious!

Friedman and Zakaria are two of my favorite journalists/authors and they have written a pair of editorials that are definitely worth sharing.

Both editorials focus on the challenges we face as a nation and what we may see in the future. If you don’t read anything else today you should read these - and if you feel so inclined, let me know what you think.

The Rise of the Rest - Fareed Zakaria via Newsweek

Who Will Tell the People - Thomas Friedman via NY Times

I read an interesting post at Freakonomics where they discussed who was paying a higher percentage of total income in taxes - the super rich or those who aren’t as fortunate. It appears, through a straw poll of sorts, that the top 10% of wage earners who are said to earn 50% of the total income pay less than their receptionists. Warren Buffett has actually posted a challenge with a prize of 1 million bucks (chump change for him I’m sure) to all of the people on the Forbes top 400 list to find someone whose receptionist pays a lower percentage of income in taxes - so far - there have been no challengers.

Read on!

I’m not in the mood to write a full post so I’m going to give you a file and a couple of links. First off is the best appeal to an Article 15 punishment that I’ve ever seen. Its well worth the read - I had a feeling that I wasn’t the only sarcastic ass in the Air Force.

Next up is an writer that looks at our nation and its productivity if we completely eliminated obesity. Its more editorial than fact but she does bring the work of a few economists into the mix. Its an interesting read thats worth checking out.

Last is an article about corn and how it is and isn’t impacting the cost of food and gasoline in our country. For some reason, as an Iowa native, I feel compelled to write about corn whenever I get a chance. My home state only stands in the spotlight once in a great while. Most Americans only hear about Iowa once every four years during the Caucus. It’s a shame that most of them are still unable to point it out on a map.

I found yet another amusing comic on the internet yesterday - here is an example

You can find many more at Savage Chickens

If you’ve got too many random web pages in your rotation an easy way to keep them organized is with an RSS reader - a free one is available at Google. If you wanted - you could add my RSS feed. Included is a daily list of everything that I’ve found interesting on Digg - the list is exclusive to my RSS feed.

If you’ve been paying attention - we’re paying more for many of the things that we use daily. The rising cost of oil impacts the cost of transportation, consumer goods, and food. Companies are trying to cut costs wherever possible while trying to retain the most talented and hardworking individuals. Some would blame the war for our economy that is in a downturn. Everything is linked - I read a few articles and found myself hitting CTRL-B five times and I thought it was worth sharing. Each is tied to the other; lets hope that I can explain what I mean.

According to recent polls many Americans have stated that they have felt that it has been much harder to “get ahead.” Our standards of “ahead” have changed since the days when my father was growing up in the 60’s. I’m going to guess that getting an education, having shelter, a good family life, and something (anything except mustard greens) to eat. Times were tough but if you were to persevere you could make a better life for the next generation and hopefully yourself in the process. Now we demand consumer goods as a measure of how well we are doing. Measures of American success include an car (or two), a house, high speed internet, and cable TV. Without these things many believe that they are failing in the race to get ahead. We’re demanding more than ever while overlooking the basics. I’m going to go out on a limb but maybe we should be looking for a little less - check out the full text at the Washington Post.

Some who claim they are having trouble would point the finger at the ever rising costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the increasing price of gasoline. While the cost of the war far exceeds most if not all of the original estimates we’ve paid for most of it with credit. Its been added to our national debt and will probably remain for years to come - the price of oil is increasing rapidly due to increased consumption in America and in south east Asia in places like China and India. Companies outside of OPEC control have made few if any significant discoveries in recent years. It takes a considerable amount of time to find a sizable cache of carbon deposits, negotiate drilling rights, and remove them for refining and delivery. Simply put, even if there are reserves available we may not find them before demand outstrips supply. We have plenty of oil to last for the next 20 years but there has been rampant speculation of what will happen if consumption continues to increase at the current rates. If we cannot find additional reserves we might have a problem - we might find ourselves in a global energy crisis. (I hate the word crisis because I feel as if I am on a cable news network where EVERYTHING is a crisis). The futures market has seen this and that is why we are experiencing the recent increase in oil prices - sure - they could have seen this years ago but its happening now. I wonder if they took off their rose colored glasses at some point in the last two years and saw the error of their ways - the end result of their revelation is that we’re paying for it.

We can do our part to consume less but its going to take a concentrated effort. If we were to determine car insurance premiums based upon the number of miles that we drive we could leverage our savings against those who drive everywhere. They would be forced to consume less simply because they would be unable to afford all of the driving. Enacting immediate changes in MPG requirements and subsidizing companies that reduce consumption while taxing those that use heavily could help. The economic impact of such a decision can hardly be measured by me, but, it’s on the table.

Everything is tied together - change is going to impact our ability to “get by” and may impact our quality of life. We cannot continue to increase consumption at current rates or we are going to see a bubble - a big bubble - and only the those with the most resources in the end will be able to survive.