Nice. That's better than one of my geology professors who has ROCKDOC on a stupid little Samurai that can't make it up the hills during field camp if there's a passenger. That's where you need a Jeep.

Quit complainin about 16mpg. truckers are payin more per gallon for diesel, -and- only average around 6mpg with a load..

Yeah, seriously. And that means I pay more for groceries.

correction: it means you pay more for EVERYTHING.

What gets me, are these supposedly "smart" idiots that have NO clue about the laws of economics. Supply & Demand. If supply decreases, relative to demand, costs go up, and the inverse is also true.. If supply INCREASES relative to demand, costs go DOWN.

some morons in the US congress want us to take oil from our strategic reserves, which, even if we totally DRAINED it, would net us about 10days worth of fuel. "We can't drill our way out of it" Bullshit. Perhaps if more people did their OWN research into the world's known petroleum reserves, instead of being stupid and lazy, and listening to all the morons saying "We're out of oil!!" They'd realize that the -KNOWN- oil reserves in Alaska are twice the size of the ENTIRE Saudi Arabian oil reserves, not to mention the oil and natural gas that can be found off our coasts.

As far as the argument "drilling will disturb the natural habitats" there's NOTHING THERE! the few hundred acres required for platforms reside on a solid, barren TUNDRA. Yes, part of Anwar is very pretty. BUT NOT WHERE WE WANT TO DRILL! ITS A BARREN WASTELAND..

"Offshore platforms are eyesores" YOU CANT SEE THEM FROM THE BEACH YOU MORON! They'd be 150+ miles out! Hell, CHINA WILL BE DRILLING LESS THAN 100MI off the keys if their plan with Cuba goes into effect!

If Clinton hadn't vetoed the anwar bill in the 90s, we'd be pulling out enough right now, that instead of getting 70+% of our oil from other nations, it'd be closer to 80% of all our oil would be domestic.. plus, with the added supply, it would've been alleviating the fuel prices before they EVER went up.

Who controls the Congress? the dems
Who -promised- back in '06 "You elect us, we'll fix these rising gas prices!"? the dems.. and guess what. They fixed em alright. Prices went from 2.50/gallon to 4/gallon. nice job with "lowering fuel prices" Pelosi..

Wow, someone else with some sense on these forums! Thanks for saying that, break, it's a real relief to know I'm not the only one online who thinks that.

The oil companies have all this land on the continental shelf, then it takes so long to go through all the paperwork to produce the oil they find, they lose the lease, and then they are accused of wasting the land they already have.

Worried about the caribou in ANWR? The best thing we can do is drill! At Prudhoe Bay just 60 miles or so west of the proposed ANWR drilling site, there are three times as many caribou today as there were before drilling. Guess what? They love the shelter and heat from the rigs and pipeline! Birds love the rigs, too; it helps them nest and is a good stop on their long migrations. Drilling doesn't bother hibernating polar bears either, of which there are five times as many today as thirty years ago. There are 13 populations of polar bears; 9 are static, two are declining (in places where the arctic is cooling!) and two are increasing (in places where the arctic is warming!)

How can Obama suggest we can't drill our way out of this problem, but releasing the oil from the reserves will help? How did we get the reserves? We drilled our way into the reserves. Another problem is that our refineries are already running at peak capacity. We've improved and expanded them, but we're not allowed to build any more and haven't since the 70s (or is it earlier than that?). The reserve is not refined.

Oil companies are gouging us with gas prices! Nope. The government is gouging us. Exxon-Mobil I think it is, is getting out of the retail gas business because it's not profitable. At the same time, the government, while mentioning here and there the idea of a tax holiday, is actually considering raising the federal gas tax by 10 or 20 cents. That way they get twice as much money from gas, while the oil companies get the blame for the price. The government tells us to conserve gas, then when people do, they panic about lower tax revenues. So I-70 through the ski resorts in Colorado, one of my favorite drives because of the scenery, is probably going to become a toll road. The same has happened with gas in California, water in several places, and other resources. The government says to cut back on their use, and when people do, they increase the price to make up for lost revenues. Why is it that we're supposed to do with less (and can), but the government can never do with less?

Hybrid cars use less fossil fuels, because they run on electricity! No, they don't. Where does electricity come from? We can't build hydroelectric plants, because they disrupt local ecosystems. We can't build windmills because no one wants to look at them and they kill birds. We can't build solar because they take up too much space and aren't efficient, and they get in the way of migrating turtles. We can't build nukular because it's scary. Oil is so expensive, that coal is looking good again as a cheap alternative. So the electricity you put in your ugly Prius comes from fossil fuels. Which is more efficient, burning fossil fuels to convert to electricity, moving that electricity to a battery full of nasty environmentally-unfriendly chemicals, then converting that to kinetic energy for your car? Or burning fossil fuels and directly converting that to energy your car can use?

The whole oil issue and global warming issue are both bullshit, both ways for the government to seize more control over our lives, nothing more than that. Wasn't it Algore in his book that suggested that the best thing for the Earth would be $4+ per gallon gas? He got it.

I'm totally getting 50MPG as the license plate on my motorcycle, to add insult to injury when I blow past the guys in the gas-guzzling vipers.

I might even get as high as 70MPG if I didn't drive it like a maniac... but over 100 peak HP is hard too resist tapping when you're accelerating.

At least it's not a hybrid. If I drive my Jeep aggressively at all (not hard in a town where the nicer the car the slower they drive... very frustrating drivers in Idaho), I can get as low as 11mpg. Yikes. Offroad is also bad on the mileage, but that's what I need a Jeep for (I do mean need, for a geology research project; real offroading is done between five and ten mph). I did, however, make it all the way through Grand Teton National Park up to Yellowstone and back, 350 miles in all, on 16 gallons the other day.

The thing about cost and demand is that high costs diminish demand. Regardless of why gasoline is expensive, it is expensive, and that will make alternatives more appealing. I can hardly see why researching new methods of fuel can be considered a bad thing. And consider; it is not the gun, nor the missile, nor the atomic bomb which is the cause of the fiercest wars; it is the vehicle. That is the only true weapon of mass destruction.

Why do you think people go to war over "the vehicle"? It's because of what the vehicle is part and parcel: progress, building, growing . . . basically, living. So, yes, human life is the "true weapon of mass destruction." What else is new?

Having determined this blindingly obvious truth, let's get back to focusing on all that really matters--being better at it than the rest of the planet.

Disorganized human life is hardly massively destructive, as the general increase in population over the last dozen millenia shows. I'd say we have an overall creative trend. The massive part comes in when you can coordinate lots of people to all kill at the same time, and by a similar token, bombs wouldn't have much use if you couldn't insert them into enemy territory swiftly.

As to your second point, immobilize your enemy of course. What do you think death is!

There's no way you can make the obsolescence of the ICE less of a truth, no matter how hard the companies do research to increase efficiency.

The future belongs to electric motors, for obvious reasons such as:

Efficiency, production cost, independence of the type of power generation and thus essentially fuel type and last, but by no means least, miniaturization.

You're being incoherent, Mynt. I could counter your argument if I knew what it was.

Chaos: what's new? :P

Human life, however, is an inherently organizing force (see, i.e., its systematic march of progress over the millennia of its existence).

And a necessary part of that organization, given the finite number of resources available to us all on this wet ball of mud, is taking and holding resources by physical force--which, of course, necessitates what you describe as "coordinat[ing] lots of people to all kill at the same time" and that the rest of us call War.

Not sure what your point is about death--I agree that meting it out as needed to any and all who oppose us is a good thing.

'Organizing': On what scope, Lecter? Because Humans excel at creating chaos, in my opinion (not as a bad thing, such is life).

It is just that they create order on a local scale, while, at a more global perspective, total chaos increases. I think you are saying that yourself, I would just like to know if I caught your meaning.

Death is nothing short of permanent immobilization. I wouldn't mind being injured if it didn't make my body sluggish and unresponsive.

I claim that the key to enforcing a civilization is the ability to send soldiers to a specific location in a nation. The quicker you can send them, the sturdier your laws. The farther you can send them, the large your kingdom. Consider that yes, although the Nile's fertility aided the ancient Egyption culture, what allowed it to be ruled successively was the ability to traverse water quickly. Sails caught the southern wind, and otherwise flowed on the northern current at a time when boats were the highlight of locomotion. That is the cause of the organization of Egypt.

Nuke's wouldn't be much of a threat to the world if they didn't have a traumatic method of delivery. Only a mad man would build one, either because the risk of blowing up your own country, or the difficulty of sending them to your enemy. With ballistic missiles, any national leader who's sane wants one.

Not everyone believes that all death is is immobilization. I define death as the separation of body and spirit, which usually happens because the body is no longer able to function (though it's possible that some people who are brain dead are actually dead, but their body is still functioning just without anything to guide it).

Your description of effective boundaries of a nation's influence is valid, and applicable to more than just nations but to any organization from nation to corporation to family.

I am confused, though, is it insane or sane people who want nukes? You seem to contradict yourself, though it may be that I just didn't catch what you tried to say. I say that because insane people like Mahmoud Ahmedinejad want nukes (and in the past the USSR) it would be insane for a major world power such as the U.S. not to have one. Although the situation is different now: Out-producing the USSR prevented a nukular war, but Ahmedinejad doesn't care how many nukes we have, if he has one he'll use it on Israel, period. He has said so, and I see no reason not to believe him.

So this isn't too off topic, here's a license plate suggestion: NUKULAR.

EDIT: Speaking of nukes, today is a notable day.

Only a mad man would want nukes if nobody had a delivery system. Only a mad man (nation leader) wouldn't want nukes if everybody had a delivery system.

Edit: Oh man, that link... xD "specifically the consequence of securing an unconditional surrender from the Emperor of Japan, resulting in millions of innocent lives being saved".

Of course! We net lives using that method. Just another example of the beauties of what a Capitalist society can accomplish.

Please elaborate. You're being vague and cliché.

Without a delivery system other than feet, the function of a bomb is twofold: either blow up everyone around you, or delivery by foot to your enemies. Either situation would make you a 'mad man', either because you're rogue, or because you're stalwartly determined.

With a delivery system other than feet, you can fire bombs without regards to your personal safety. However, so can your enemy. Therefor, your personal safety is dependent on the threat of having them, whereas in the prior situation, having bombs always endangers your personal safety.

I found it amusing that author of that page considers our bombing of Japan a positive thing, since we essentially (according to the author) profited lives in that engagement. I find it disturbing that the author feels that killing innocents justifies saving soldiers. I find it disgusting that the author feels lives can be counted like coin. Therefor, I wrote a satirical remark that plays on a capitalist attitude of maximizing your profits, beginning with "Of course!" to indicate sarcasm.

Cliché? Show me one other person who has had these thoughts.

You can't counter my argument, because I don't have one! Only words. Only words...

Oy, toshiro... Isn't gasoline combustion electric?