A Future Look at Today

  Fifteen years ago, when Americans went shopping and came across the  phrase “Made in China” it usually was on small, inexpensive trinkets, toys and souvenirs.  Ten years ago we started to see these words on apparel.  Five years ago we started to see these words seemingly everywhere.  During the last five months, if we saw these words it might have meant the death of our pets, food borne illness or perhaps poisoning.

 This is the third in an on going series of interviews with some of the leading scientists and thinkers on the subject of energy.  The first was with Dennis M.

  It is important to realize that the way we power our vehicles today is based on the legacy of energy discoveries of the 1800s.  Oil was first taken out of the ground in Pennsylvania in the 1860s.  When the automobile industry came into being some four decades later, petroleum was the first candidate for the energy source.  Even though the quintessential American inventor Thomas Edison did build an electric car, electricity was not as wide spread as it soon would be, so the power of the Rockefeller oil cartel won the day.

  I have always been in the camp of those that think that there is life elsewhere in the universe.  Statistically, the universe is too vast, practically beyond human comprehension, for there not to be some form of life elsewhere.  Those that have argued otherwise always come from the point of view that Earth and its’ biosphere is unique and have a definition of life that is completely Earth centric.

Recently  we started this feature of interviews with leading scientists and thinkers on the subject of energy. The first interview was with Dennis M.

  On  Friday, June 15, 2007, a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere was lifted out of its’ underground vault near Tulsa Oklahoma.  It had been buried on June 15, 1957 to both commemorate the 50th anniversary of Oklahoma becoming a state, and to serve as a time capsule for the  100th anniversary in 2007.  This led me to immediately think about what might be put into the ground today that would be unearthed in 2057.

  This column begins a new feature for this blog.  Every week or two, for the near future, I plan to have an interview with a well respected scientist or thinker on the subject of energy.  Regular readers of this blog know that I believe that facing and solving the multiple issues concerning energy is the single most pressing problem that we face as a species.  There is a lot of media coverage about energy, alternative energy and global warming, but what has been missing is the knowledge and point of view of scientists, at least in the main stream media.  What do the best and b

  Recent events and news stories have had a familiar feel to me.  It is because many of them had been part of my predictions for 2007 that I published here in January.  When something I can see happening in the future actually happens, in a way it has already occurred for me.  For example, I have been on the record, and telling anyone that asks since January that not only would gasoline climb over $3 a gallon this year, it would also set the all time record, set in 1981 of $3.11 in inflation adjusted dollars, and that is many cities the price would climb over $4 a gallon.  Well

Last week it was reported that the ratings board of the motion picture industry is now going to factor in cigarette smoking as part of the overall rating of a film.Films with excessive smoking will now certainly get a PG-13, if not an R rating.The goal is to cut down on the influence on teen smoking behavior.There is clear correlation between the glamorization of cigarette smoking on screen and people smoking.

  A newspapers function is to report the news.  It is also to sell newspapers.  As a result we the readers usually are subjected to endless articles about national and local politics, the disaster in Iraq, the latest news of the celebrity or celebrity couple of the moment, and most recently all aspects of the global warming issue.  At least the last topic is getting attention, as the survival of our species could be in the balance. 

  The news out of Detroit last week was that GM had given up the title of the world’s number one auto company to Toyota.  This was a development that had been expected, but when both companies reported first quarter sales last week, the numbers made it official.  Toyota sold 2.35 million cars and trucks, about 100,000 more than GM. These numbers were expected, as GM had made a decision last year to cut back on bulk sales to rental companies which have historically been included in the total sales numbers.

 
A recent column discussed the historical context for the emergence of intellectual property as the new and most important valuation of a company.  While this point of view is becoming more main stream every day the current problem is that there is no liquid market that can help determine actual valuations.