Car oil dependancy

Q: Is the U.S. actually "addicted" to Middle Eastern oil? Who do we import the bulk of our oil from?
A: I love this question, because our own president bowed to the uninformed public's pressure (what a surprise). In a speech on January 31, 2006, the president announced that the nation was addicted to oil. He didn't name the Middle East per se, but said we import our oil from "...unstable parts of the world."
I think the general public assumes that the Middle East is the source of our imported oil. But that assumption is wrong...
We produce 40% of the oil we consume right here in the U.S. And as far as being addicted to Middle East oil, look at this breakdown of U.S. oil imports:

Country % of Oil Imports
Canada 18%
Persian Gulf 16%
Saudi Arabia 11%
Mexico 11%
Venezuela 10%
Nigeria 8%
Algeria 5%

As you can see, we import more oil from Canada than we do from all the Persian Gulf states. It's the Canadians' fault, eh? Both Mexico and Venezuela are on par with the amount we import from Saudi Arabia.

OPEC oil makes up not quite half our imports, but much of that OPEC oil comes from the African members Angola, Algeria, and Nigeria, not the Middle East. Still, like in 1980s Hollywood, Middle Easterners are the scapegoats.
And truthfully, I don't agree with the idea that we're "addicted" to oil. Saying we're addicted to oil is like saying we're addicted to electricity or copper. Oil is a commodity that has elevated our society. Without oil, you have no airplanes, no Google, no Indy 500... you get the picture.

If you really want to do something meaningful about our oil imports, forget the idea of a substitute for oil. It's not about ethanol or biodiesel... That's just trading crack for heroin. Reduce your gasoline consumption. Fifty percent of the oil we consume is to produce gasoline for our cars.
Sorry to break the news to you, but that's it, that's the solution. There is no pill or patch to make it any easier. Become a one-car family... take the bus... get a fuel-efficient vehicle instead of an SUV troop carrier.

Da Vinci Tower - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Da Vinci Tower - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Da Vinci Tower"

the future?

Dynamic Architecture Building) is a proposed 313 m (1,027 ft), 68-floor tower in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.[2] The tower is expected to be architecturally innovative for several reasons. Uniquely, each floor will be able to rotate independently.[3] This will result in a constantly changing shape of the tower. Each floor will rotate a maximum of 6 metres (20 feet) per minute, or one full rotation in 90 minutes.[3][1] It will also be the world's first prefabricated skyscraper.[1] 90% of the tower will be built in a factory and shipped to the construction site.[1] This will allow the entire building to be built in only 18 months.[1] The only part of the tower that will be built at the construction site will be the core.[1] Part of this prefrabrication will be the decrease in cost and number of workers. The total cost will be 23% less than a normal skyscraper of the same size, while only 90 people will work on the construction site.[4] The majority of the workers will be in factories, where it will be much safer.[4] The entire tower will be powered from turbines and solar panels, and five other buildings in the vicinity will also be provided with electricity.[2] The turbines will be located between each of the rotating floors.[5] They will generate 1,200,000 kilowatt-hours of energy from the movement of the floors, and the solar panels will be located on the roof.[2][5][4] Construction of the Da Vinci Tower, if built, is expected to be completed in 2009.

Google's Philanthropy Funds Renewable Energy, Electric Cars
By: GreenBiz.com
MOUTAIN VIEW, Calif., Jan. 18, 2008 -- Google.org's announcement to spend more than $25 million in new grants and investments includes money for monitoring and predicating the effects of climate change, producing renewable energy cheaper than coal, and supporting plug-in vehicles. Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, announced yesterday a number of initiatives it will support over the next five to ten years. Company founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have committed to devote about one percent of the company's equity and one percent of annual profits, as well as employee time, to philanthropy. The company’s Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal initiative was launched late last year, and it will give $10 million to eSolar, a Pasadena, Calif., company focused on solar thermal power, which uses heat from solar energy instead of fuel in power plants.

Google.org will also invest amounts from $500,000 to $2 million in selected for-profit companies working on commercializing electric vehicles. One of the group’s initiatives, RechargeIT, aims to accelerate the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid technology. An additional environmental investment, $600,000 will go to Clark University to develop a system for monitoring, analyzing and predicting the impacts of climate change on ecosystems, food and health in Africa and the Amazon. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation will provide an additional $600,000 for the effort. The system is aimed at providing environmental, health and development data, information and analysis tools over the Internet for free. The other philanthropic initiatives include money for improving detection and response to global health and humanitarian crises, strengthening national and sub-regional disease surveillance systems in the Mekong Basin area, assessing education and bettering planning in India, and supporting enterprises, job creation and poverty alleviation globally.
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Photos: Solar power for the masses of gadgets | TechRepublic Photo Gallery

Photos: Solar power for the masses of gadgets TechRepublic Photo Gallery: "Photos: Solar power for the masses of gadgets"

interesting

new energy technology

Coskata's process is feedstock flexible, and enables the use of cost- effective, locally abundant materials to achieve the lowest ethanol production cost targets in the industry. This groundbreaking approach addresses many of the constraints lodged against current renewable energy options, including environmental, transportation and land use concerns.
Using patented microorganisms and transformative bioreactor designs, Coskata ethanol is produced via a unique three-step conversion process that turns virtually any carbon-based feedstock, including biomass, municipal solid waste, bagasse and other agricultural waste into ethanol, making production a possibility in almost any geography. Coskata's process technology is ethanol- specific and enzyme independent, requiring no additional chemicals or pre- treatments; environmentally superior, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 84% compared to conventional gasoline; and has the ability to generate 7.7 times as much energy as is required to produce the ethanol, compared to corn ethanol which generates approximately 1.3 times as much energy according to Argonne National Labs.
"Our technology and proprietary process have been validated by some of the world's most renowned research labs, universities and energy companies," said Bill Roe, CEO of Coskata. "Coskata is poised to revolutionize the ethanol industry with the backing of GM and our partners. Together, we can make ethanol a viable transportation fuel with production costs of under $1 per gallon."
Coskata is working closely with leading research institutions focused on renewable energy to bring this compelling syngas-to-ethanol process technology to market, including Oklahoma State University, The University of Oklahoma, Brigham Young University and Argonne National Laboratory. Founded in 2006 by Todd Kimmel and Dr. Rathin Datta, the company has compiled a strong IP portfolio of patents, trade secrets and know-how and assembled a first-class management team.
"Coskata's announcement is a perfect example of the evolutionary state of the ethanol industry," said Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association, the national trade association for the U.S. ethanol industry. "Building on the solid foundation grain-based ethanol production has provided, and partnering with companies like General Motors that have demonstrated a commitment to renewable fuels, Coskata demonstrates what is possible when financial and intellectual capital are applied to solving the growing energy crisis in the United States."

principles of success

personal growth Jack Canfield's Seven Principles of Success and Happiness
jack Canfield has made the study of success in one's personal and professional lives his own life's work. He has interviewed hundreds of successful people, read more than 3,000 books on success and given thousands of lectures on the topic. Now Canfield has boiled down everything that he has learned about success into his new book, The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be (Harper). Some of those principles, such as the importance of goal setting, are well-known. Others are just as crucial but not commonly understood.
Here, Canfield reveals the principles of success that are most often overlooked.

Develop four new good habits each year. Most of everything we do is based on ritual. We eat at certain restaurants... wear certain clothes... brush our teeth in a certain way... and watch certain TV shows simply because that is what we have always done. These are our habits, and we perform them without really thinking.

The trouble with habits is that they preserve the status quo, making dramatic improvement unlikely. If we want more out of life, we must be willing to evaluate and replace some of our rituals with more productive ones.

Example: Instead of spending the hour after dinner watching TV, go for a brisk walk... study a second language... read a book... or make the extra sales calls that you need to advance your career.
It takes a minimum of 25 days for the brain to build the neural links required to make a new behavior a habit. I suggest practicing a new habit for three months to ensure that it sinks in. Once it becomes second nature, add another new habit. At three months per habit, there's time to add four each year. In five years, you will have 20 new habits that will help

fuel your success.
Practice appreciation. Studies of employee motivation inevitably find that feeling appreciated is the single greatest motivator in the workplace, even ahead of higher wages. Yet many people fail to put the power of appreciation to full use in their business and personal lives.
When you show people that you appreciate them, you not only make them feel better, you make yourself more successful. People are more likely to help you achieve your goals if they believe that you appreciate their efforts. There's no downside -- appreciation costs nothing, and no one has ever complained about being over-appreciated.

Helpful: I used to carry in my pocket an index card with 10 circles on it. Every time I let someone know that I appreciated him/her, I filled in one of the circles. If at the end of the day I hadn't filled in all 10, I sent out appreciative E-mails. After a few months, showing appreciation became second nature for me, and I no longer had to carry the cards. I haven't had anyone leave my nine-employee company in more than five years. I attribute a big part of that loyalty to everyone feeling appreciated.

Solicit and respect feedback. Rather than guess how you're doing, ask. Periodically ask employees, employers, customers and loved ones to rate your performance on a scale of one to 10. If the answer is anything less than 10, ask, "What would it take to make it a 10?"
If you follow this strategy, you're encouraging people to help you become great. The main reason that people don't solicit feedback is because they're afraid of what they might hear -- but the information we can obtain is worth facing such fears.

Not all feedback is accurate, but watch for patterns and never get angry at the source, even if you disagree.

Keep all of your agreements. When you break an agreement, the person you let down loses faith in you and is less likely to want to work with you in the future. Even more important, you lose some faith in yourself. It's all but impossible to become a success if you don't have faith in yourself.
To avoid breaking agreements, teach yourself to say no to things that you would rather not do. Then you won't have to back out later. Write down everything you agree to do on your calendar as soon as a commitment is made -- you would be surprised by how many people don't do this.
If you must break an agreement, let the other parties involved know as soon as possible, and do everything in your power to fix any problems that the broken agreement creates for them.

Exceed expectations. Don't ask yourself, How can I get a little more out of this situation? Instead, ask, How can I give a little more to those around me? Sacrificing usually isn't a sacrifice -- it's a path to success. If you consistently go the extra mile for clients, colleagues, employers, family and friends, you'll earn their loyalty for life.
Example: When UPS went on strike, David Morris, the owner of Dillanos, a small, Seattle-based coffee roasting company, rented a truck and drove 2,320 miles to deliver an order to a small client in Southern California. That client, It's a Grind Coffee House, is now a large franchise with 50 stores and an additional 100 planned. It is Dillanos's largest customer and has remained loyal to Dillanos because of the extra effort Morris put in years ago.

Reject rejection. Rejection does not prevent success -- fear of rejection does. What stops a man from asking an attractive woman out on a date? What stops an inexperienced salesman from asking the most successful salesman at his firm for advice? They're afraid of rejection -- afraid that if they ask, the answer might be no. But there's absolutely no rational reason to fear rejection.
Example: You ask a successful person to give you career advice, and he says no. You didn't have his advice before you asked, and you don't have his advice after. You're no worse off than when you began, so why be afraid of asking?
If you want to be a success, you must treat rejection as an illusion -- a negative response conjured up by your mind that really doesn't exist.

Eliminate small obstacles. Make a list of the problems that you would like to remove from your life -- include even minor things, such as a lamp that doesn't work right. Schedule a day or two to fix as many of these problems as you can, starting with the easiest to solve.
In this way, you'll get into the habit of thinking, I know what I want, I know how to get it. Once you're in this mindset, you'll stop resigning yourself to your current situation and start making larger positive changes as well.