Religion on history
Thursday, February 28th, 2008 
“Every major question in history is a religious question. It has more effect in molding life than nationalism or a common language.”
Hilaire Belloc
Archive for February, 2008
China coal money
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 
The opening year of China this year had not been really pleasant for one the winter blizzard crisis shows the amount of work that the State needed to overcome to restore confidence in the public about the energy mishap.More so since the Asian giant is holding the olympics this year.
The demand for coal in China will raise the price of the black rocks and also her imports from overseas.With more than 80% of her imports coming from ASEAN and Australia, more investors will be putting their money into this coal companies in the next decade.
Coal is basically toxic and bad for the health and environment but the free market unbridled control to maximise profits failed to take into account of how fragile our ecosystem is and with huge populace like China taking in all this energy, one doubts the effects it has on the air quality of her big cities.
Napolean once said when china awakes it will shake the world , let’s hope the shake out of the energy resources that produce carbon will be a mild one.
Prepare for a powered down world?
Monday, February 25th, 2008Many of you folks out there reading this blog and other oil materials knows about the importance of fossil fuel so I won’t go into details about it.But to the well prepared, the transition towards a less consumer based fuelled by more pricey oil barrels would be less painful especially to the urban folks like me.
So how do average joes like me get prepared, I list out 3
a)Awareness of the energy depletion and the spillover effects on our modernites way of life
b)Get a religion preferably a non new age one to instill some hope
c)Get a guard dog like german shepherd to protect yourself especially those who have no firearms.
The above are just simplified way of dealing with the new or rather old world that is coming back to us like a boomerang.Of course for those who have deeper pockets you can do more like buying a small piece of land in the countryside to hold out till the initial storm subsides but most city slickers cannot and do not wish to move into rural areas so getting along with rural neighbours with a different mindset and outlook of life can be a challenge too.
Screensavers not saving?
Thursday, February 21st, 2008 
Screensaving is not actually saving emergy on your Mac/PC the last study shown.Basically designed to prevent phosphor burn in on the CRT(cathode ray tube) computer screens.Filled in images when computers are not used but it does consume energy as the study proved.
2 ways to save energy to limt the use of screensavers:
a)A screensaver not only draw power for the monitor but keep the CPU from shutting down so better put it to sleep mode instead.
b)Use flat screen monitors as they use less energy and not hard on your eyes.
Hitting 100USD and blah..
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008Yeah, all the predictions of oil hitting 100 bucks have came true and why does anybody not surprised.Amidst all the election fever from USA to Malaysia, our energy demand went up and the only outcome is this so what’s new?
Down here in Singapore we are faced with higher inflation this year , the crude price is a large factor for this as we import everything from food to gasoline.Though our government tax budget was lauded by analysts here and other asian cities like Hongkong and Taipei for being pragmatic and pro business, we cannot fight the inflation rate, this is the predicament living in a small island state.
We have our desalination plants and get the water from our sea because we wanted some independence from our water supply coming from Malaysia but unfortunately the world has not figured out whether one can grow oil or not.
Tradition
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 
“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.”
Gk chesterton
14 challenges in the next 5 decades!
Monday, February 18th, 2008Down in boston USA, many experts around the world comprised of scientists, thinkers and entrepreneurs summed up during the meeting at the American Asscociation for the Advancement of Science last friday to list 14 main challenges for our world:
1)Make Solar energy inexpensive
2)Provide energy form nuclear fusion
3)To try to capture C02 produced by fossil fuels & tackling global warming.
4)Manage the rate which human activity removal of nitrogen from the air, worsening global warming
5)Provide access to clean water
6)Improving urban infrastructure while preserving the environment
7)Utilising health info so that doctors can teack patients biological data.
8)Engineer better medicines
9)Reverse engineer the brain and find out how it works
10)Prevention of nuclear terror by finding ways to secure energy sources
11)Better security in cyberspace from identity thefts and viruses.
12)Enhance Virtual reality used to train experts and treatment of patients
13)Advanced learning by using the net
14)Engineer the tools for scientific discovery
Agrarianism and the Popular Education Culture
Thursday, February 14th, 2008by Allan Carlson, Ph.D.
My purpose this morning is to tell you about a remarkable band of thinkers and writers who cut against the grain of the 20th Century: the New Agrarians. I will underscore their broad themes, and then focus specifically on their views regarding education.
Who were the New Agrarians? They were more diverse than usually supposed. Best known are The Southern Agrarians, a group of twelve authors centered at Vanderbilt University during the late 1920’s and 1930’s and architects of the book, I’ll Take My Stand. Yet others came from the Northeast and the Middle East. While the majority were Protestant, a large minority were Roman Catholic; still others were Jewish and there were committed atheists in the group as well. Their work has been called, at different times, the “country life campaign,” “agrarianism,” “traditionalism,” “distributism,” “de-centralism,” “anti-urban,” and “anti-industrial.” In my analysis, I label them “The New Agrarians,” borrowing that phrase from one of their number, Herbart Agar. I do this to set them apart from the simpler Jeffersonianism found in the 19th Century and to emphasize their deliberate confrontation with modernism or modernity.
Their platform was, at once, socially conservative and economically radical. Broadly put, they were advocates for a unique brand of “radical conservatism.” What might this curious phrase mean?
Election Oilsense!
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 
Looking at the current US presidential elections heating up from the far east thru cable TV and internet, it almost feel that our world is getting to be one New World Order?
It seems like all the candidates from Clintons to Mccain are well prepared…or are they ?Economic downturn, terrorism ,Iraq war are the main issues bugging the hopefuls to the White House after Bush departure by end of the year.Fossil energy depletion will be the main concerns for the US administeration though not much coverage about it from the mainstream media.
Does the republicans and democrats know the long term effects of fossil decline has on US and the world economy?And most importantly the solutions for this if not will make our world a bigger and more foreign as it was a century back.
It’s like the public are too caught up about the election general issues and forgot the main issues.Even if they do remember and remind the presidential hopeful, can they grow oil in the ocean away from middle east turmoils?
World leaders are not scientists and of course will not relate the to same type of anxiety of intermediate and long term have nots of the non fossil world but if not now, then when.The rich elites may be sheltered from this energy apocaplypse but eventually it will reach them when the island that insulate itself ran out of oil.
Raising the banner!
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008I’ve just raised a banner on the top of my site replacing the adsense that seems to be a distraction more than an income source.The banner leads to a store and an extension of my blog which I hoped visitors will go and take a look.
Daily Oil Blog Gear is officially open this year!
