fun facts

FUN FACTS


Usually every time I read about our local library, some bunch of fools or another is doing a fund raiser ( The Fund-Raiser [HD] ) for a computer system upgrade or another batch of equipment. No one ever makes a big deal about raising extra cash for books, so I can only conclude that all the taxpayer money actually goes to that and everything else is from charity. This is about one of the best libraries I’ve come across, especially for a town its size. I never run out of good books to check out, even at four or five a week for the last two years. This weekend was “The Big Short” ( The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine ) by Michael Lewis. You might have watched the “60 Minutes” ( Tell Me a Story: Fifty Years and 60 Minutes in Television ) episode earlier this year, about the trader with Asberger’s ( I think that’s how you spell it, my spell check doesn’t compute ) who was actually focused enough to wade through hundreds of pages of documents per company per trade and the first to figure out that the investment houses were leveraging thirty or forty to one against toxic mortgages that the rating agencies gave ratings on par with Treasury Bonds ( The Bond Book: Everything Investors Need to Know About Treasuries, Municipals, GNMAs, Corporates, Zeros, Bond Funds, Money Market Funds, and More ) to. The book isn’t absolutely critical, must read reporting. It is interesting to get an under the hood look at the Morons Of Wall Street, but it won’t do a whole lot as far as figuring out where we are headed economically ( in my case, the amounts of sludge the Fed guaranteed just underlined the inevitability of inflation and doom, but your mileage may differ ). If you like economics and have the time and/or money to spare it is a well done book.

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Every other month we have USDA commodities food distribution at work. You would have known this was due if you had been paying attention to me earlier. I don’t have a finger on the pulse of that government agency, so I’m just guessing here, but it seems that lately their offerings reflect the countries food and materials situation. We used to get an inordinate amount of produce, reflecting the desire of our elites to wean us off real meat and on to Soylent Sludge ( Soylent Green ). If it was a toxic bunny food, we had it. But for the last few shipments, we are getting less and less vegetables. The fruit we get isn’t from California. See a pattern? Also, the packages are not metal as much as they used to be. Now, I could be drawing the wrong conclusions, perhaps the food offerings are nothing but which company bribed which CongressCritter ( Ben and the critter congress ). Make your own informed guesses here. Another reason I bring this up is that the first day of USDA food, this place is a madhouse. I got as ready as possible last week, but there is only so much you can do. For instance, you pre-make the Senior boxes. Seniors get their own government commodity food every month, but as soon s the USDA food comes in they revert to form and all pile in the first day, trying to look all raggedy and famished. Our average monthly Senior box numbers are half filled in the first two days of USDA. I’m running a mile a minute, in itself not a bad change of pace since it keeps my mind off how much you all abuse me. But it also doesn’t allow my mind to wander on the coming articles subject. So today you kind of get a leftover stew of fun filled Peak Oil ( The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil ) facts I gathered on the weekend and had planned on just using for beginner filler. Instead, they have become the article.

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In 1960 the US pumped 40% of the global oil. A mere decade before OPEC crashed and burned our economy by nationalizing their oil operations and cutting off our shipments. That was the beginning of the end to our manufacturing economy. Everything that followed from GM ( Why GM Matters: Inside the Race to Transform an American Icon ) being nationalized to all our frothy economic bubbles could have been projected from that event but of course wasn’t. Anyway, not to get off subject, that was mostly from wells and fields in the lower 48. Today, after we add in oil from Alaska and the Gulf Of Mexico ( and, hell, for all I know, ethanol ), we are only pumping 7% of the global supply ( and using a fifth ). And remember, in 1960, we had roughly only half the population we do now. Reading this alone, you should be bolting upright in your computer desk chair, spewing out your mouthful of Doritos as a chill runs down your spine and quickly shoot off an e-mail to me begging to be allowed in the inner circle of the Bison War Council ( Star Wars Otc Jedi High Council Scene IV ) since you are at this very moment buying land in Elko on Bullion Road and will be moving in two weeks after you give your work notice. But you won’t. Hell, I’m not even charging for the privilege of being my cannon fodder and still I won’t get any takers.

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In WWII, we used one gallon of gas per day per soldier. In the Gulf War ( Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War ) it was four gallons per day per soldier. In our current War On Terror To Restore Democracy To A Country That Only Coincidentally Has Ten Percent Of Global Oil Reserves But Might Have Had Weapons Of Mass Destruction ( which is so long that all of us, even those that know better, just go along with Operation Iraqi Freedom ) we are using a whopping 16 gallons a day per soldier. As our population almost tripled and our military shrank in total numbers as well as percentage of population. And as our own wells produced one seventh the oil. As we depend more on oil to steal the oil we need, we have far less to do it with.

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As the Birkenstock ( Birkenstock Arizona Birkibuc Sandal,Stone Birkibuc,39 M EU / 8-8.5 B(M) US Women / 6-6.5 D(M) US Men ) tree hugger granola crowd starts using electric cars run off electricity generated by natural gas ( oooh! AAAh! Look, Rainbow, no carbon emissions! ), they might want to be reminded that natural gas discovery peaked in the 1980’s. And our country only has 3% of the global reserves. Which means their conveyance is unsustainable. Get to the friggin Love In on a bicycle ( Planet Bike Blinky "3" 3-Led Rear Bicycle Light ), you freak of nature ( but remember, don’t hate them- grass fed meat tastes better than meat fed meat ).

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Globally, the biggest oil finds were from 1950-1960. We found 480 billion barrels. By the 1990’s, only 150 billion were found. For the first time, we failed to find more than we were using in the 1980’s. By now, consumption exceeds discovery two to one. And remember, the average lifespan on a oil field is forty years. The giant elephant field in Saudi Arabia is forty years old ( or a smidge over ). Oil production doesn’t glide down smoothly after peak, it shoots down.

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I’m sure none of you will panic, as you never do. But I’ll keep trying.

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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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