The Certified Skeptic

Fuel prices are at record levels and people are having to adapt. It can be a hardship and the additional money spent for fuel has to come from somewhere else… food? vacations? entertainment? health care? Often, there’s not much one can do but pay the price and get mad… and maybe look for someone […]

Friday, May 16, 2008
NYT Headline Today: Bush Rebuffed on Oil Plea in Saudi Arabia
I find it sad and embarrassing to have our president pleading with the Saudi’s to produce more oil because the price is too high here in America. Saudi Arabia is the country that produced 15 of the 16 hijackers that perpetrated the […]

Tuesday, April 29, 2008 — Vancouver, WA
According to my bank, my piece of the Economic Stimulus Program — a stupid program from an incompetent federal government that you and I are responsible for by continuing to vote for the bastards — arrived today via electronic banking, zip zip zip, right from “their” account directly into […]

Monday, April 21, 2008
(from The Sabbatical Journal)
Increasing costs for food, fuel, air travel, and almost everything we buy is affecting all of us — and it’s really beginning to bite. Gas is approaching $4/gallon, diesel is well over $4. The price of cereal grains is at near record levels. The common denominator in this problem […]

January 2, 2008
You may, or may not, know that I’ve been very interested in the subject of the planet’s consumption of resources — oil in particular, but also clean water and the ability to produce enough food. I’ve read enormous amounts of material on the subject of peak oil. It’s a topic that’s barely visible […]

A short comment:
Have you noticed that while we were all high-fivin’ and slapping each other on the back as oil prices dropped to $50 and the price at the pump came down to under $2 in some areas — the price of oil has jumped back up almost 20% in the past couple weeks? […]

How about a good conspiracy theory today?
The more I hear about the Scooter Libby trial and the behind-the-scenes goings-on at the White House before the Iraq war, the more convinced I am that the real truth may still be lurking in the shadows. I usually discount conspiracy theories but this has me intigued.
Why did we […]

Thought Four: The population of the world has grown explosively over the past 150 years, as have the economic engines of the developed world. A graph of the world’s human population looks like a hockey stick — a line tracing along near the bottom of the graph and only slightly climbing for thousands […]

The built-in automatic hype-engine of our business and news media is at work again, redefining the recent drop in oil prices from the mid $70’s to the low $60’s and high $50’s as a collapse and proof that there’s nothing wrong with our economy, our way of life, or our energy future.  You can almost […]