It is a shame that, for the most part, we have stopped changing our own oil. I'm not saying thing itself is so important, but rather the virtue that arises from doing such a small, technically simple but high consequence task for one's self. Changing oil is a straight-forward affair, within reach nearly everyone. When it is completed, one is left with the consequences of their own work. If you forget to put on the filter and oil spills to the ground as you re-fill it, there is no one to blame but the mechanic. If the plug comes loose after forty miles, there is no one to sue but the person swearing in the rear view mirror.

He who changes his own oil also comes face to face with his own waste in a manner that is all too rare these days. Dirty oil must be placed in a bottle of some sort, usually the empties your new oil came in, and carried with all its weight and volume to be recycled. It does not magically disappear like when the speedy lube does the job while you drink coffee and watch...

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In the last week many news sources made hay over the observation that China has surpassed the United States in gross energy consumption.

American journalist Matt Taibbi employed a grotesque analogy last summer to describe the Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs as a "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money".

In the energy industry, a similar phenomenon has arisen to invite respect, admiration and fear - China's appetite for oil. No survey of the oil sector's present and future can now afford to omit the China factor and its multiple ramifications.

This major new reality in geo-economics has just been underscored by a report from the International Energy Agency

The Asia Times

Lets assume for a minute that if $147 a barrel oil did not result in a net...

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If you look at my hands, you can tell that the money I bring home is not earned with my hands. Comapre them to my father's, uncles or grandfathers and there is no doubt who went to college and is privilidged to work in climate controled comfort. Though I keep nearly every spare minute filled with a variety of maintance and expansion projects around the homestead, my hands do not show it; mostly thanks to good gloves.

This weekend I had a lot of work to do and I took off the gloves.

While I love good gloves and will still use them for more dangerous work, I have decided to start building some callouses and scar tissue now. Developing thick skin now reduce by one the number of things that might slow me down when I need to work with these hands in a more consistently rough environment.

The John Batchelor Show (Monday - Sunday from 9 PM-1 AM) is an essential tool for understanding the new order in the 21st Century. Each week John brings 77 WABC listeners breaking news with a carefully cultivated team of sources and correspondents around the world, providing information long before it hits the mainstream media. Described by some as a cross between Matt Drudge and Coast to Coast, The John Batchelor Show is for the thoughtful listener who wants to understand the major players in the great ideological battle of the new millennium.

WABC Radio

I discovered John Batchelor on accident. Flipping through the stations on my satellite radio one night I came across his voice, tuned in for a while and was hooked. I have since traded in the satellite radio for an MP3 play but still make listening to the show a regular part of my week.

What I find most annoying...

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A question was posed to me recently, "At what income level to you think that someone is 'making it' and at what point are they poor?"

This is a issue upon which I have some strong emotions stemming mostly from my biography. My parents were married at 18 and their path to their present level of success began with a newborn and one High School diploma between them. There was no seed money from their parents to get them started but there was an attitude and ethic worth more than the Hilton-family trust fund. For me anyway the nature of their beginings are neither a source for pride or shame. It is just what was. I do, however, take pride in the way they faced that beginning.

Between them they had an ability to get things done and make the best of what they had. In the late seventies and early eighties, when the unemployment level of my home county hovered around 20%, They worked hard, saved what they could, bought a house, went back to school and politely declined government programs...

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