The trend in the last year has been noticeable with big oil companies pulling in record profits and their stock values going up. I remember back when I was a geology major finding out that the cost of U.S. oil exploration was largely prohibitive given the cost of a gallon of gas.
Times have changed.
If the big oil companies are pulling in record profits, it behooves them to use that money to prepare for the lean times. I'd like to call on them now to do their oil searching within the U.S., when they have the money and the economics favor the searching. I'd also like to suggest that any oil company should realize that oil based fuels and transport are an industry with a finite end. If they want to stay in the transport business, they need to spend some time doing alternate energy production research. I call upon them to use this capital they suddenly have to fund that research. I suggest to them the idea of a filling station where I pull in, take the standard sized drained battery from my car and replace it with a fully charged battery provided by the OIL COMPANY station for a small fee. Zoom, away I go. Convenience of a fill up, just call it a battery station, not a gas station.
Big Oil, now is the time to invest in your future.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Stupid car ads
Apparently, when it rains ideas for a blog post, it pours.
Over lunch today I heard a Lou Fuze ad on the radio. Lou Fuze is a local car dealership with about a hundred different brands of car. Here is their deal (I can't remember which brand it was for.):
If you buy a car of this brand at another dealership for less than their sale price, they will credit you 110% of the difference towards the purchase of that car from them.
So, who needs two of the same car? They aren't paying me cash for the difference? If I BUY a car, meaning I own it and everything for less that Fuze sells it for, I can go to Fuze and get bonus credit when buying the same car from them. Mind you, the first dealer is unlikely to take a return. So if the price difference is $100, I can buy identical car #2 from Fuze for $110 less (or roughly $10 below what I paid for the first car). Of course, I still have to pay Fuze the rest of the purchase price of the second new car.
What idiot would take that deal?
Over lunch today I heard a Lou Fuze ad on the radio. Lou Fuze is a local car dealership with about a hundred different brands of car. Here is their deal (I can't remember which brand it was for.):
If you buy a car of this brand at another dealership for less than their sale price, they will credit you 110% of the difference towards the purchase of that car from them.
So, who needs two of the same car? They aren't paying me cash for the difference? If I BUY a car, meaning I own it and everything for less that Fuze sells it for, I can go to Fuze and get bonus credit when buying the same car from them. Mind you, the first dealer is unlikely to take a return. So if the price difference is $100, I can buy identical car #2 from Fuze for $110 less (or roughly $10 below what I paid for the first car). Of course, I still have to pay Fuze the rest of the purchase price of the second new car.
What idiot would take that deal?
Not much time...
Getting married in just over a week. Yikes!
Tuesday NPR ran a discussion with a ex-colonel who felt that the insurgency suppression mission was driving the army and costing them capability in the areas of more conventional army like artillery. He had a bunch of reasons he didn't like it which aren't mine. Likewise, he pointed out the biggest argument for it is that counter-insurgency is likely going to be the main job of the U.S. Army in the coming century.
It seems to me that the first job of any army is to protect the borders of their nation from invasion by being able to fight and repel anyone else's army. (I realize that in some cases such as Great Britain, this is the job of the Royal Navy, while their army was used to control colonies, but that is vastly the exception.) Insurgents cannot foreseeably invade and take over our country, not really. Armies schooled in doctrines of tanks and artillery can (assuming they can get here). To train our army to play counter-insurgency at the expense of its capability in its first and primary mission, seems a dereliction of duty to me. It assumes that the only use we will ever need our army for is "over there" and not for our own protection. Yet, the answer to a counter-insurgency force would seem to be a main line army, plus then the people who are being the insurgency might be mad enough to take their army over here and use it on us. Making counter-insurgency our primary training model seems to put the cart before the horse.
Tuesday NPR ran a discussion with a ex-colonel who felt that the insurgency suppression mission was driving the army and costing them capability in the areas of more conventional army like artillery. He had a bunch of reasons he didn't like it which aren't mine. Likewise, he pointed out the biggest argument for it is that counter-insurgency is likely going to be the main job of the U.S. Army in the coming century.
It seems to me that the first job of any army is to protect the borders of their nation from invasion by being able to fight and repel anyone else's army. (I realize that in some cases such as Great Britain, this is the job of the Royal Navy, while their army was used to control colonies, but that is vastly the exception.) Insurgents cannot foreseeably invade and take over our country, not really. Armies schooled in doctrines of tanks and artillery can (assuming they can get here). To train our army to play counter-insurgency at the expense of its capability in its first and primary mission, seems a dereliction of duty to me. It assumes that the only use we will ever need our army for is "over there" and not for our own protection. Yet, the answer to a counter-insurgency force would seem to be a main line army, plus then the people who are being the insurgency might be mad enough to take their army over here and use it on us. Making counter-insurgency our primary training model seems to put the cart before the horse.
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