The Lost Oil

Oil, the most precious energy resource since the advent of the internal combustion engine, the lifeblood of nearly all of mankind's creations. Prospectors have searched for the last century for this black gold, and after having turned over every last inch of land on this planet in search of it. Now, after every rock has been turned, we fail to find new reserves and this limit has caused a wave of terror in the commodities market since the last decade. Prices of oil are rising, and with it, the price of nearly every other commodity, but is this planet really running out of oil?

To realize the full implications of that statement, one has to realize that only 30% of the earth's surface is land, the other 70% water, meaning that if the concentration of resources is the same on land as under water, there lies more than twice our current assessable reserves of oil and metals under the ocean.

We have only recently developed the technology to develop and extract resourcess from the ocean floor, and by recently I mean think back about 2 years, Gulf of Mexico, BP oil spill. Sure, the whole event was an embarrassment, but the fact that one poorly laid out oil well could leak enough oil to cloud up the entire gulf of Mexico literally speaks volumes about how much oil is out there, under the waves. For those who like hard statics over comparative imagery, a very gloomy estimate puts the worlds oceanic oil reserves at at least 30 trillion barrels, 800 billions of which are within the shores of America, compare that to the 1.4 billion barrels tucked away in Siberia.

The good news dont even end there, there are far more frequent and violent seismic activity occurring under the waves than on land, and while this is a good thing for us humans who live on land, its a great thing for underwater mineral reserves. In the Pacific "Ring of Fire" alone, where several tectonic plates come together to grind under each other, millions of tonnes of iron, nickel, copper, and even gold are being brought near the surface and deposited on the ocean-floor. There are already companies such as Nautilus who are expressing interest in these reserves which could very well hold enough metals to run the world for another century.

As mush as prices are rising, this planet is not going to run out of the black stuff any time soon. There wont be wars over petroleum or any other resource, just a lot of red tape about who gets to develop what, and speaking of red tape, my next post is going to cover one UN treaty that just so happens to get in the way of the development

Reasoning, Path to Truth or Verbal Weapon?

Reasoning, the ability of the human mind to apply logical thoughts and this thing called "common sense" to experiences and information accumulated, all with the intention of coming to a truth or conclusion. For centuries this ability to reason has been viewed as a path to truth and self-enlightenment, but recently, people credit the development of this skill to be based on the human desire for victory, be it physical contest, or in the case of reason, verbal contest.

Two people disagree on something, and when the facts alone are not enough to prove one side wrong and another side right, reason is used by both sides to try to see which idea is more right. But instead of both ideas coming together into one new idea, both sides usually hold firm to their own ideals, and will often bend the facts in an attempt to sway the public opinion. This phenomenon occurs daily on CCTV (I know, who watches that right?) and politicians trying to protect their own positions and benefits. They are the people who cant compromise because if they do they lose support, and so they must defend their starting positions to the last thought, usually with reason.

But at the end of the debate, reasoning is still used for other purposes, mathematics, theoretical science just to name a few, but then remains the most important question, was reasoning created just so we can "win", or is it really meant as a tool for finding the truth?

Automated Stock Trading

As I hope that you are aware of, the US stock market recently led the world in another panicked selling frenzy, crashing over 500% from what it was only weeks ago. Despite the fact that it is beginning to recover, I think it is safe to say that us ordinary citizens without the massive amount of capital needed to have a say on the market are getting tired of some multimillionaire who decided to make even more money that hes not gonna be able to spend by crashing an important stock. This bring up the question of why the heck are human beings still allowed to interact directly in the stock market?
When you get down to it, all stocks is is a numbers game, when the numbers bottom out and starts to grow, you buy, when it tops off and starts to fall, you sell. Its a simple game played by humans only for the thrill or profit and personal gain, and it is because of those human emotions of greed and panic that the market is so unstable. Why cant we have an exchange which is fully automated and managed only by computers, who sells and buys stocks on a programmed bias and will emotionless evaluate numbers?