Oil World

I am really interested in alternative fuel sources, especially lately as gasoline prices go through the roof. I have three oil refineries surrounding my city and yet I still pay $3.15 a gallon for gas, and my cars only get 17-24 miles to the gallon. I hate math, so I'll leave the doing of it to you, but needless to say I, like most other Americans, pay a lot of money for gas every month. So I started looking into alternative fuel vehicles before I bought my most recent vehicle, and it seems the progress we have made in this area is surprisingly limited. On a lot of models it seems like the car manufacturers just slapped the word "Hybrid" on their vehicles to make people feel better. In all models that I looked at except the Toyota Prius, gas mileage was no better than 25 mpg! My Toyota RAV4 gets that on a regular gas engine. So why should I pay the extra $10,000 to get the same mileage? Fuel cell vehicles look promising, but they are also at least a year or two off and promise to be even more expensive than hybrids. So what if, for $7,000 to $10,000 , you could retrofit you current vehicle to run on a fuel that is plentiful, environmentally friendly, and that you can manufacture yourself? Well guess what? If it wasn't for your government looking out for your safety, you could!

There is a company in New Mexico, United Nuclear, that has designed and successfully tested a retrofit hydrogen fuel system that will work on modern gasoline engines. Check out their site and read the information. http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/ And even better, part of the package is a hydrogen generator that will create all the fuel you will ever need out of nothing more than air, water, and electricity. Too good to be true, you say? There must be a catch? Well, you're right. There is a catch. The Consumer Product Safety Commission shut down United Nuclear's program because some of the main components in their system could also be used for illegal fireworks manufacturing. Now, call me crazy, but do we really have an epidemic of illegal firewoks in our country right now? I know we have toys imported from China that are poisoning our children, and yet they still flow over the borders. I know that some of the commissioners were busy taking luxurious trips paid for by lobbyists and manufacturers, so they probably didn't have time to make sure that imported toys didn't have significant levels of lead paint, but they did take time out of their crowded travel schedule to take notice of the fact that some of the key components of United Nuclear's hydrogen fuel system could possibly be used to manufacture illegal fireworks. Here's a link to the CPSC's injunction against United Nuclear, if you are interested in reading the actual document. http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PREREL/prhtml07/07249.pdf

Who, I wonder, would have anything to gain by shutting this cutting edge technology down? Who would have the most to lose if this technology became prevalent? I think you already know the answer too. Big oil. And who is a major influence for big oil? Why, it's the President of the United States, George W. Bush, who continues to push Congress to give billions of your tax dollars to oil companies like Exxon, even when they are reporting record profits! Can you imagine what would happen to those companies if we could suddenly make our fuel with solar panels and water? I can think of many scenarios, among them a huge shift in our economy and a major change for a lot of people. People would lose jobs, and oil moguls like the Bush family would have to look for new ways to exploit Americans so they can maintain their standard of living. But at least our children might be able to look forward to having a planet that they could still live on. That would be nice.

Now, I know people love a good conspiracy, and many of us have heard stories about the guy who posted the design for an engine that gets 100+ mpg on the internet, and the next day the plans were gone and no one ever heard from the guy again. And Bob Lazar, the gentleman who runs United Nuclear catches some flack because he claimed to have worked at S-4, a super secret military base near Area 51 where he claimed to have studied and worked on the reverse-engineering of the propulsion systems of extraterrestrial space vehicles. Regardless of what you think of this, the fact remains that Lazar is a physist who has worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, so it would be an understatement to say he knows his science. The facts still remain that the US government, with whom Lazar has tangled before, took notice of this small science supply company. Why? Because they had a revolutionary idea that threatened interests at the highest levels of our government. With something like this hydrogen system powering our vehicles, we would no longer be beholden to the middle east for our oil and the costs for shipping products would drop dramatically. There would be difficulty, without a doubt, but this country has faced and overcome adversity far worse. That's part of what makes America great.

Feedback

Okay, this is going to be a blatant case of down-on-the-knees begging. I'm gonna do it, and I'm not ashamed. Ready? TALK TO ME, PEOPLE!! :-) I know there are a few of you who read this, and I appreciate it. I love it that there are people reading my words because I am an egomaniac and I need to be validated by having others tell me how much they think of me. No, what I really would like to see is just your comments or your thoughts on the subjects that I put out there. Boring? Fine, tell me. Lame? I know. What do you think is interesting? Let me know. Though I indulge my own little fantasy that people like to hear what I have to say, I know that I would like to hear what YOU have to say. Let 'er rip!

Age

I am 38 years old this month. That is getting dangerously close to 40. There is a lot of pressure to "succeed" before the age of 40, and though I don't usually think a lot about those sort of landmarks, this one is weighing on me. My 20th class reunion will be this summer and I don't think I will be attending. I tell myself that I there is really no one that I need to reconnect with, but I hereby admit that part of me is embarrassed that I am twenty years out of high school and still just plugging along. I never became an actor or a musician or made a million dollars. I still live in the same town, just a few blocks from the high school from which I graduated. I have a wife and three great kids, and I am proud of them, but I have no need to parade them in front of these people hoping that they will pat me on the back and tell me how wonderful my family is. Their opinion of me never mattered all that much then, why should it matter now?

I'll let you in on a little bit of geek truth. Yes, I was a geek in high school. Not a full-blown nerd, though I don't think I was very far from that, but still, I didn't play football or basketball or wrestle. I was in choir and drama, and I did pretty well. I was in the most prestigious choir in school, and my partner and I won the state championship for serious duo in competitive drama. Thanks for holding me together on that one, Traci. I still remember having to cut a couple of minutes out of a scene that we had been performing all season when one particularly competitive coach (TED!!!) timed us and found that we were over the allowed time limit. He threatened to file a complaint if we didn't get under the time limit, and I freaked. Traci held it together, though, and we did it and won state. That was a good year. However, the fact that I lettered in choir and drama was, and still is in some cases, a joke to a lot of people. So the bit of geek truth is, no matter how much we hated and resented those people who ostracized us because we didn't fit their ideal, we still want them to be impressed with us now that we are adults. We want to come to the reunion with better jobs and hotter wives and smarter kids than those jocks that laughed at us back in school. But WHY, for God's sake? Why should I care what they think? My wife loves me for who I am now, and my kids love me because I am their dad, why should I give a rat's ass what a complete stranger that I barely knew twenty years ago thinks about me? It upsets me to even acknowledge it.


But to return to the focus of this entry, when I think about my 20th class reunion, I begin to feel old. Not ancient, but at that point where a majority of people no longer consider me a young man. I have mentioned before that I have always had a youthful perspective on life, and think that I have a pretty young attitude, but if I ponder how old I am, I begin to feel older. So that got me thinking: how much of aging is dependent on how old you feel? I know that I am wiser in some areas of my life than I was when I was sixteen, and I know there are some things that I used to do when I was sixteen that I can't now that I am thirty-eight, but I still feel sixteen in my mind. So at what point to I begin to feel thirty-eight? Is sixteen the age at which I finally became fully aware of myself as a person and therefore am permanently fixed there, rooted in time? I just don't know, but when I'm sixty-four and my mind thinks I'm sixteen, I foresee problems.