Sandy Eggo

I must be getting old, 'cause I am beginnig to dislike car trips of more than one day's duration. In my younger years, I loved travelling by car on long trips, but no more. More than anything else, I guess it's the boredom. Sure, I downloaded tons of podcasts and music to my iPod Nano, but even that gets old after a few hours. (Cripe! How spoiled we modern folk are, complaining about a trip that can be measured in hours instead of weeks or months.)

We arrived in San Diego on Christmas evening and checked into our motel. As it was already dark, we couldn't see a whole lot of the city, but I doubt it's much different than most other big cities. I'm finishing this post on the morning of Dec. 26, so that assumption may change; we'll see.

It's off to the shower now, followed by, I hope, a good breakfast somewhere. Of course, that' assuming I can get the rest of the family up and out before lunch begins being served at every eatery.

Take care.
DAL357

Through the past, darkly...

A few years ago I submitted this memory of a family ordeal to another site, where it still remains posted. I guess it's about time to publish it here. Perhaps you'll find it interesting and instructive.

-----

Way back in March of 1977 I learned firsthand the awesome, frightening power of nature. Up until that time, I hadn’t really experienced anything scarier than a thunderstorm. The lessons learned that day stayed with me, and to this day I don’t play chicken with Mother Nature.

After spending a little over three years in Germany, my father had rotated back to the States. His new, and final, assignment was Fort Carson, Colorado. After arriving at JKF airport in New York City, we proceeded via taxi through New York city to New Jersey to pick up our 1975 Plymouth Duster we had shipped weeks earlier. Of course, the weeks of sitting had resulted in a dead battery--an inauspicious beginning. After getting that taken care of, we were on our way to Colorado.

The trip was routine. Living in a military family, you get used to long, often boring, car trips. My two brothers and mother did their best to adjust to hours of sitting while my father drove. Around the third day of the trip, we found ourselves nearing our destination state, Colorado. While listening to the radio, however, we heard that I-70 was closed near the Colorado/Kansas state line due to weather. Since my father had planned on getting to our destination, Fort Carson, by early evening (it was then early afternoon), he decided to turn off of I-70 and go around the roadblock. This was a decision that nearly killed our family.

Turning south from I-70 onto highway 27, we headed for what we thought was an alternate, safe route. After a short time on highway 27, the wind started picking up and small wisps of snow (called snow snakes out here) began to appear on the pavement. A few more miles brought a steady, wind-driven snow, but visibility was still acceptable. Within the space of just a few subsequent minutes, however, all hell broke loose. We were being hit broadside by a genuine Kansas blizzard that made me think 17 years was all I was going to get on this earth.

Visibility had dropped to no further than the hood of our car. To this day I don’t know how we kept from running off the two-lane highway; divine intervention must have had a hand in it. There was really no way to turn around, and sitting still wasn’t an option, so we kept creeping forward for what seemed an eternity. If you have never been in a blizzard, it is difficult to imagine the sheer terror of being disoriented, blind, and surrounded by bitter-cold wind and snow.

Finally, mercifully, we made it to a small whistle-stop of a town named Sharon Springs, Kansas, thirty miles due south of I-70. Waist-high drifts were already forming up against anything that impeded the wind-driven snow’s progress. As I recall, Sharon Springs consisted of nothing more than a few houses, a gas station, a diner, and a motel, but it looked like a heavenly oasis to me. I remember begging my father to stop in the town, fearing he might have had a notion to continue. He assured me that there was no way we were going to continue. We got a room in the motel (we actually had to dig our way IN to the room because of the drift against the door), ate in the diner, and had a fitful night’s sleep.

The next day, the storm had passed and the sun came out. Looking outside, there was very little snow on the flat-as-a-pancake Kansas fields surrounding Sharon Springs. Against buildings, however, snow was drifted all of the way to second-story roofs. The contrast was amazing! Since there was almost no snow on the roads, after one last meal in the diner, we proceeded to our destination.

What were the lessons learned here? One, when an area is closed due to weather, do not try to find an alternate route into said area. Find out more information and then go home or find a safe place to stay. Two, don’t underestimate the weather and/or overestimate your ability. Three, keep your wits about you in a bad situation; they are really the only chance you have of surviving.

I hope I have been able to convey the seriousness of respecting nature’s weather whims. Although we often like to think of ourselves as prepared for any eventuality, the best preparation is to not get into a dire circumstance in the first place. No amount of survival gear we could have carried (had we even known about survivalism then) would have saved us if we had stalled on the highway. Had we stalled, we would have been buried alive under 20 feet of snow.

Please, for your own sake, as well as the sake of your loved ones, learn a lesson from my family’s ignorance and respect the weather.

-----
Take care.
DAL357

Peek-a-boo(bs)

If you thought there was no silver lining to the continuing meltdown of the airline industry, think again. The fact that fewer people are flying on fewer airlines at rates soon to be prohibitive for all but the very well to do, means fewer American citizens will be subject to the following treatment.

*****

Scanners that see through clothing installed in US airports
Tue Jun 10, 5:11 PM ET


Security scanners which can see through passengers' clothing and reveal details of their body underneath are being installed in 10 US airports, the US Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday.

A random selection of travellers getting ready to board airplanes in Washington, New York's Kennedy, Los Angeles and other key hubs will be shut in the glass booths while a three-dimensional image is made of their body beneath their clothes.

The booths close around the passenger and emit "millimeter waves" that go through cloth to identify metal, plastics, ceramics, chemical materials and explosives, according to the TSA.

While it allows the security screeners -- looking at [and rating?] the images in a separate room -- to clearly see the passenger's sexual organs as well as other details of their bodies, the passenger's face is blurred [oh, okay then], TSA said in a statement on its website.

The scan only takes seconds and is to replace the physical pat-downs of people that is currently widespread in airports.

TSA began introducing the body scanners in airports in April, first in the Phoenix, Arizona terminal.

The installation is picking up this month, with machines in place or planned for airports in Washington (Reagan National and Baltimore-Washington International), Dallas, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Miami and Detroit.

But the new machines have provoked worries among passengers and rights activists.

"People have no idea how graphic the images are," Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union, told AFP.

The ACLU said in a statement that passengers expecting privacy underneath their clothing "should not be required to display highly personal details of their bodies such as evidence of mastectomies, colostomy appliances, penile implants, catheter tubes and the size of their breasts or genitals as a pre-requisite to boarding a plane."

Besides masking their faces, the TSA says on its website, the images made "will not be printed stored or transmitted." [At least not directly. Hey, TSA, ever hear of cell phones with cameras?]

"Once the transportation security officer has viewed the image and resolved anomalies [With what, a gloved hand?], the image is erased from the screen permanently [but not from the memory of a TSA officer]. The officer is unable to print, export, store or transmit the image." [They will, however, be allowed to make allusions to the size of passengers' body parts using cupped hands held chest high or the right and left forefingers held varying distances apart.]

Lara Uselding, a TSA spokeswoman, added that passengers are not obliged to accept the new machines [just as we are not obliged to let them board].

"The passengers can choose between the body imaging and the pat-down," [Heck of a choice there, much like being given the choice to be probed with or without a glove.] she told AFP.

TSA foresees 30 of the machines installed across the country by the end of 2008 [this makes the big assumption that there still will be airports to need them]. In Europe, Amsterdam's Schipol airport is already [inappropriately] using the scanners.

*****

This is just one more in a slew of reasons why I haven't flown in nearly 10 years. Flying used to be an enjoyable experience, but it sounds like too much hassle to bother with anymore. Oh well, I've seen a good portion of the world I want to see already, so it's not that big of a loss for me, and isn't it all about me? (Thank goodness my wife doesn't read my blog.)

Take care.
DAL357

Don't be a dipstick: it's supply and demand

To those woefully ignorant of basic economics, please read the excerpts of the following essay with as open a mind as you can muster. In fact, you should probably read it in its entirety.

*****

Wishful Thinking, Speculation and Oil (May 30, 2008) by Charles Hugh Smith


Everyone and their sister seems to have jumped on the "oil prices are being driven by speculation" bandwagon, but perhaps that is nothing but wishful thinking. From the very beginning of futures trading--back in the 1600s when traders in Antwerp would buy and sell contracts on the cargo coming from the East Indies--the easiest game in town has been to blame speculators for price movements.

If the price of a commodity is rising, then the villains are speculators. If the price is dropping, it's the short sellers' fault.

Speculators are active wherever and whenever speculation is allowed. It's wishful thinking to expect oil will fall from $130/barrel back to $70/barrel if only those darned speculators would leave the market alone.

Note to hand-wringing, finger-pointing pundits: those darned speculators are the market.

*

As for the "solutions" to supply:

1. The Iranians have 20 supertankers filled with oil floating around somewhere. Nice, but it's heavy crude, and the few refineries able to process it are already running flat out. Also, 20 supertankers is a drop in the bucket of global demand.

2. Deep abiotic oil is abundant. The Russian have the technology. If the Russians have the technology, why is their production declining so rapidly? Where are the pipelines from their deep wells?

3. It's all the weak dollar. Once the dollar starts rising, the bubble in oil prices will pop. Then how come oil is rising in all currencies and even when priced in gold?

4. Canada and the U.S. have nearly unlimited supplies of shale oil and tar sands. Great, but real-world production will top out at 2.5 million barrels a day, about 10% of North America's consumption, and the process uses vast quantities of natural gas.

5. If only the tree-huggers would let us drill in the Alaska Wilderness. The U.S. consumes 22 million barrels a day or 8 billion barrels a year. The Alaskan North Slope everyone talks about contains about a billion barrels--a whopping 45 days' supply for the U.S. Whoopie.

In other words--it's all wishful thinking, folks: that it's all the speculators' fault, that new supplies will magically come on line and save us--there is simply no credible evidence for either supposition. It's supply and demand. Prices are set on the margin, and as a result a shortfall of a few percent has an amazing leverage on price.

Go ahead and ban speculation, and see what happens then. Prices will not drop, they will simply become more disorderly/chaotic.

As for demand destruction--let me know when China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Venezuela, Nigeria, Mexico et al. stop subsidizing the price of fossil fuels for their hundreds of millions of consumers.

And as for supply, let me know when global production of oil from any source exceeds 90 million barrels and day and keeps climbing as producers take advantage of the high prices.

*****

Those same people who believe this is a contrived crisis for the purposes of extracting the maximum amount of moola from the pockets of Americans often are also the ones who simultaneously detest government intervention and yet want government to do something so that they can continue living their cheap-oil lifestyle. One thing to remember is that "Big Oil" companies actually control a relatively small share of the marketplace relative to several decades ago, approx. <20%. The real players in the market are national oil companies where countries own the oil wealth: Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, etc. They don't answer to shareholders, so they can do as they please, even if their actions contradict rational economic principles. Couple this with the apparent fact that there just isn't that much easily-pumped crude to meet demand (that's WORLDWIDE demand, not just American demand, which may see demand destruction due to a faltering economy, but there are a lot of folks in India and China who are becoming first-time car owners and each vehicle will need fuel) and you have a recipe for upward-spiraling prices. Don't look for this to change anytime soon, if ever.

Take care.
DAL357

We, the oblivious

Wouldn't it be something if the candidates displayed this much insight into the massive problems now battering America and addressed the following points squarely and honestly while campaigning? Please read the following op/ed piece to reference what I'm talking about.

*****

Wake Up, America. We're Driving Toward Disaster.
By James Howard Kunstler
Washington Post, Sunday, May 25, 2008

Everywhere I go these days, talking about the global energy predicament on the college lecture circuit or at environmental conferences, I hear an increasingly shrill cry for "solutions." This is just another symptom of the delusional thinking that now grips the nation, especially among the educated and well-intentioned.

I say this because I detect in this strident plea the desperate wish to keep our "Happy Motoring" utopia running by means other than oil and its byproducts. But the truth is that no combination of solar, wind and nuclear power, ethanol, biodiesel, tar sands and used French-fry oil will allow us to power Wal-Mart, Disney World and the interstate highway system -- or even a fraction of these things -- in the future. We have to make other arrangements.

The public, and especially the mainstream media, misunderstands the "peak oil" story. It's not about running out of oil. It's about the instabilities that will shake the complex systems of daily life as soon as the global demand for oil exceeds the global supply. These systems can be listed concisely:

The way we produce food

The way we conduct commerce and trade

The way we travel

The way we occupy the land

The way we acquire and spend capital

And there are others: governance, health care, education and more.

As the world passes the all-time oil production high and watches as the price of a barrel of oil busts another record, as it did last week, these systems will run into trouble. Instability in one sector will bleed into another. Shocks to the oil markets will hurt trucking, which will slow commerce and food distribution, manufacturing and the tourist industry in a chain of cascading effects. Problems in finance will squeeze any enterprise that requires capital, including oil exploration and production, as well as government spending. These systems are all interrelated. They all face a crisis. What's more, the stress induced by the failure of these systems will only increase the wishful thinking across our nation.

And that's the worst part of our quandary: the American public's narrow focus on keeping all our cars running at any cost. Even the environmental community is hung up on this. The Rocky Mountain Institute has been pushing for the development of a "Hypercar" for years -- inadvertently promoting the idea that we really don't need to change.

Years ago, U.S. negotiators at a U.N. environmental conference told their interlocutors that the American lifestyle is "not up for negotiation." This stance is, unfortunately, related to two pernicious beliefs that have become common in the United States in recent decades. The first is the idea that when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true. (Oprah Winfrey advanced this notion last year with her promotion of a pop book called "The Secret," which said, in effect, that if you wish hard enough for something, it will come to you.) One of the basic differences between a child and an adult is the ability to know the difference between wishing for things and actually making them happen through earnest effort.

The companion belief to "wishing upon a star" is the idea that one can get something for nothing. This derives from America's new favorite religion: not evangelical Christianity but the worship of unearned riches. (The holy shrine to this tragic belief is Las Vegas.) When you combine these two beliefs, the result is the notion that when you wish upon a star, you'll get something for nothing. This is what underlies our current fantasy, as well as our inability to respond intelligently to the energy crisis.

These beliefs also explain why the presidential campaign is devoid of meaningful discussion about our energy predicament and its implications. The idea that we can become "energy independent" and maintain our current lifestyle is absurd. So is the gas-tax holiday. (Which politician wants to tell voters on Labor Day that the holiday is over?) The pie-in-the-sky plan to turn grain into fuel came to grief, too, when we saw its disruptive effect on global grain prices and the food shortages around the world, even in the United States. In recent weeks, the rice and cooking-oil shelves in my upstate New York supermarket have been stripped clean.

So what are intelligent responses to our predicament? First, we'll have to dramatically reorganize the everyday activities of American life. We'll have to grow our food closer to home, in a manner that will require more human attention. In fact, agriculture needs to return to the center of economic life. We'll have to restore local economic networks -- the very networks that the big-box stores systematically destroyed -- made of fine-grained layers of wholesalers, middlemen and retailers.

We'll also have to occupy the landscape differently, in traditional towns, villages and small cities. Our giant metroplexes are not going to make it, and the successful places will be ones that encourage local farming.

Fixing the U.S. passenger railroad system is probably the one project we could undertake right away that would have the greatest impact on the country's oil consumption. The fact that we're not talking about it -- especially in the presidential campaign -- shows how confused we are. The airline industry is disintegrating under the enormous pressure of fuel costs. Airlines cannot fire any more employees and have already offloaded their pension obligations and outsourced their repairs. At least five small airlines have filed for bankruptcy protection in the past two months. If we don't get the passenger trains running again, Americans will be going nowhere five years from now.

We don't have time to be crybabies about this. The talk on the presidential campaign trail about "hope" has its purpose. We cannot afford to remain befuddled and demoralized. But we must understand that hope is not something applied externally. Real hope resides within us. We generate it -- by proving that we are competent, earnest individuals who can discern between wishing and doing, who don't figure on getting something for nothing and who can be honest about the way the universe really works.

James Howard Kunstler is the author, most recently, of "World Made by Hand," a novel about America's post-oil future.

*****

I can't say I'm totally convinced about the Peak Oil Theory just yet, but it is something that bears serious, substantive discussion. All I know is that current oil production is not meeting (and perhaps cannot meet) demand and that's cause for great concern.

Take care.
DAL357

Bummer

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Take care (snort!).
DAL357

That'll show 'em!

This is newsworthy?

Wis. man won't buy gas for 31 days, maybe longer
Fri May 16, 3:37 AM ET
Brian LaFave couldn't care less how high gasoline prices climb these days — he's parked his pickup truck and is refusing to buy gas for a month, possibly longer.

"The goal is to not use one drop of gas for 31 days," LaFave said, calling it his personal stand against the oil companies.

Now LaFave, 31, is riding his bicycle or walking everywhere he goes. He won't even let friends pick him up unless they already planned on being in the neighborhood.

"If they're not going out of their way, I can take the ride," he said. "But if they're going out of their way, then ... I'm still consuming gasoline so it kind of defeats the purpose." LaFave started the effort May 11. He bikes to his third-shift job at Aldrich Chemical in Sheboygan Falls, a 9-mile commute.

"I did like a practice run ... two days in a row to make sure I could do it," he said. "I'm not in the greatest shape. The mornings are the worst. It feels like it takes forever. I get like a mile down the road and I want to die."

It's a big change for someone who put 300 miles on his truck the week before he stopped driving it.

LaFave fills out a chart each day listing how many miles he bikes, the destination and the gas price that day, among other things. He plans to compute his savings and donate that amount to a charity that provides food to children in Africa.

"I think just with the gas prices being so high, everybody complains about it but no one ever really does anything about it," LaFave said. "People continue to drive nonstop and not think about it, but I just wanted to take a stand and say, `I'm not gonna pay this much money for gas.'"

I’m not sure what’s more dumb: the guy being reported on or the fact that this story ever saw the light of day.

Look, LaFave, your little stunt, based on incomplete knowledge, aka ignorance, doesn’t amount to anything. The abiotic theory of oil aside, there’s only so much crude oil available and the demand is outstripping supply (worldwide demand is 87 million barrels a day vs. production of 85 million barrels a day). I’m sure you’re well aware, LaFave, as a resource becomes more scarce, its price will increase if its demand doesn’t slacken. That’s part of what’s going on today, along with an inflated dollar, courtesy of the Fed., not the vilifying rhetoric the politicians spew: the greed of oil companies.

And to AP, the press agency that put this story out, was it a slow news day? I know, I know, you had to fill up space and there’s no better way to do it than with a cheap, populist story about one ignoramus’s fight against the system. You really are at one and in touch with the common folk, aren’t you?

Take care.
DAL357

Free advice!

Let’s revisit some basic driving techniques for getting the best MPG from the ever-more expensive gasoline you buy.


1. Take advantage of gravity by using every hill you crest, whenever practical, to shift into neutral and coast. This assumes, of course, you have a manual transmission--it might work with an automatic, but I’m not sure.

2. Drive no faster than 60 on the highway, at least for trips of less than an hour. I know the road gets monotonous when tooling along at 60 for hours on end, but for relatively short commutes, it really helps mileage.

3. Try to keep your vehicle moving, even if it’s only a couple miles an hour, rather than coming to a complete stop at red lights. This takes a bit of practice, and it’s not always doable, but it is worth your time.

4. Slightly over inflate your tires. I keep my tires inflated to three pounds over the recommended pressure, and I check them every two weeks, although weekly wouldn’t be overkill, especially in cold weather.

5. Accelerate at a moderate pace. If you have a tachometer (I do not), I have heard it should not rise above 2000 RPM when you accelerate to get the best mileage.

6. Get a tune-up. I’ll have to admit this is one I need to do ASAP. I bought some high-performance spark plugs to be installed when I do get the tune-up; we’ll see if they were worth the extra cost.

7. Use synthetic oil, which is supposed to make for slipperier engine-part surfaces and, hence, less internal resistance. According to experts, this will translate into better mileage. I haven’t tried this one yet.

8. Change your air filter regularly. I did notice a tiny bump up in mileage when I changed my air filter.


That’s about all I can think of. If you have anything constructive to add to this list, please post it in the comments section.

Take care.
DAL357