While looking for information on current oil refinery capacity and utilization, I run across this Wikipedia page describing exactly the same kind of crap that is happening today happening back in 1911.

Exxon’s 2006 profits, $39.5 billion. BP’s 2006 profits, $22 billion, Shell’s profits, $25 billion, all while 2006 was a year of “weak oil demand” (wonder if it has something to do with the price? Nah couldn’t be).

Peak oil advocates keep telling us that the sky is falling even though production for both OPEC and non-OPEC sources reached record levels in 2006. Of particular significance is the fact that production of deep abiotic oil in Russia continued on a steep upward trend throughout 2006.

So having some difficulty convincing us there isn’t enough of the raw material (even though the CEO of Exxon has repeatedly stated that he has never had any problems getting sufficient crude for Exxon’s refineries), now they are saying that refinery capacity will result in gas prices ranging from $3.50 a gallon upwards this year.

Isn’t 100 years of this crap enough? Obviously, they’ve got plenty of money to build refinery capacity, the only reason they don’t is to create an intentional shortage and jack prices through the roof.

US refineries operated at 85.2% of capacity in early February 2007. This is actually below the world average and leads to the obvious question of just how much of this are we going to take? Here, take a look the numbers yourself in this US Department of Energy report.

Consider trading in that SUV for a nice Prius or other efficient vehicle, let’s get that refinery usage down another few notches.

It used to be that a scientific breakthrough was something truly revolutionary. In the early days of search engines, before Google, back when Alta Vista ruled, if you searched on breakthrough you could be pretty much guaranteed that what you would stumble on was more than just mundane.

I blame the release of Jesus Christ Superstar for a lot of the modern day hype. Prior to it’s release in 1970, there were “stars” and there were “models”. But it wasn’t long after it’s release that media started to portray ordinary or even mediocre actors and actresses as “superstars”, and then it spread to models, and every model that makes it is a “supermodel”.

Gradually, it has spread, and now everything is mega or super or ultra. Ordinary things are gone. I suppose this is acceptable in the world of marketing. I can accept that commercials are going to make totally exaggerated outrageous claims because they need to generate excitement for whatever crap they are trying to sell.

Marketing hype does not belong in the world of science. Marketeers have entered and corrupted this field as well. Even the most mundane incremental improvement is a “breakthrough”. Sometimes only the restatement of something that has been known for thirty years is a “breakthrough”.

There is no significance to this post really other than to express frustration. Trying to Google breakthrough’s in various fields that I’m interested in have only yielded so much marketing hype this morning.

For example, did you know the Atomic Force Microscope is a new invention? Neither did I. It was invented in 1986, but that’s one of the items I came across that was hyped as if it had just been invented.

Microsoft, in an attempt to limit how fast viruses can propagate crippled the TCP/IP stack by restricting it to ten half-open TCP/IP connections.

Many perfectly legitimate applications use more than this and this limit slows things down considerably and causes unreliable operations.

I first discovered this while troubleshooting a problem with Shareaza, a peer-to-peer file sharing program. It was behaving erratically, refused to connect to gnutella1 or edonkey, and it’s firewall test thought it was firewalled even though it was not.

After much hair pulling I finally determined this was cause by Windows XP SP2’s silly restriction.

I found a third party patch that fixes this problem! Originally, I was just trying to get Shareaza to work right. To my amazement intermittent weirdness in MySpace, DeviantArt, and a host of other websites I visit went away after installing this patch. Sites which have a large number of images and used to crawl now come up very fast.

After you do that there are some tweaks you can do to Firefox that are collectively referred to as Firefox on Steroids that make it go even faster. If you have windows XP SP2, do not apply these until you’ve applied the above patch or it will cause flaky operation. Only apply these if you have a broadband connection, cable modem, DSL, satellite, high-speed wireless, etc. These fixes will particularly help if you are connecting over a high latency connection (wireless or satellite).

These things together will really help make your browsing experience a lot more pleasant.

Now, you may wonder why, if this makes such a big difference in performance, why doesn’t Windows XP and Firefox come preconfigured this way?

Firefox doesn’t come preconfigured this way for two reasons:

1. On a dial-up it may cause slower unreliable operation. This change should not be made to Firefox used over a dial-up.
2. Without modifying windows XP SP2 as described, Firefox will try to open too many connections at once and fail.

Windows comes with this limitation to restrict the rate at which viruses can propagate by restricting how many IP addresses they can try at once.

Personally, I don’t buy Microsoft’s explanation. If they want to stop viruses from propagating they need to fix the swiss cheese security of the operating system so it can’t be infected with viruses in the first place. I suspect the real reason was to make the operating system useless as a server so as to encourage you to buy more expensive server software for server applications.

Whatever the motive, this patch fixes the problem and makes your computer a lot more pleasant to use on the Internet. Spread the word, tell your friends, together we shall overcome the evil empire!

Read this article which tells about how they are putting radioactive pollutants into our drinking water supply.

What’s scary about this is that it’s real. I’ve known about the Potassium / Polonium connection for a long time. It is a significant contributor to smoking related cancer deaths that for some reason is never mentioned.

Tobacco rapidly depletes the soil of potassium. Artificial fertilizers which replace the lost potassium also have some polonium, a radioactive element, in them. Many of the lung cancers that result from smoking are the result of inhaling radioactive polonium.

This is a large part of the reason why you don’t see a statistical connection between pot smoking and cancer like you do with tobacco.

Well, now it gets worse. It turns out that pollution concentrate taken from scrubbers in Florida’s phosphate mine processing plants includes 19% fluorosilicic acid and is being used to fluoridate city water supplies because it is less expensive than sodium fluoride which was purchased from aluminum manufacturers and pulp mills. The fact that it contains polonium, radio active isotopes of lead and bismuth, radon, and other radioactive elements doesn’t seem to deter city officials from adding it to drinking water.

Read the above article for details. I’m in agreement with dentists that it’s good for our teeth but it’s not good for our bones, and the radioactive elements certainly are not good for us.

Incredible how accurate the almanac has been this year, snowed every single time that it said that it would. It would be cool if this year wasn’t a fluke and one could actually make plans. I love how un-ugly things get once they’ve got a few inches of snow on them. Ugly power lines, no longer a problem, white streaks across the sky. Ugly roads, much better in white. Ugly houses white. Everything’s bright.

When you get a good coating of snow across everything and then a heavy overcast at night, the light bouncing back and forth between cloud and ground makes it almost seem like daytime.

Weird game being sent around MySpace, I played by the rules here, results too weird!

If your life was a movie, what would the soundtrack be?

How to do it:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc).
2. Put it on Shuffle.
3. Press Play.
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing.
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button.
6. Be honest.

OPENING CREDITS

WAKING UP
Meds – Placebo

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL
Dream Police – Cheap Trick

FALLING IN LOVE
Happiness Is A Warm Gun – Beatles

FIGHT SONG
Stoned Love – Dianna Ross and the Supremes

BREAKING UP
Bye Bye Love – Everly Brothers

PROM
Gimme Three Steps – Lynyrd Skynyrd

LIFE IS GOOD
Valentino – Bowling for Soup

DRIVING
Jerk It Out – Ceasars

MENTAL BREAKDOWN
Sign of the Times – Petula Clark

FLASHBACK
I’ll Be Your Mirror – Velvet Underground

GETTING BACK TOGETHER
Me and My Bobby McGee – Janis Joplin

WEDDING
Venetian Silhouettes – Aqua Velvets

FINAL BATTLE
Message In A Bottle – Sting

DEATH SCENE
Fortress Around Your Heart – Sting

FUNERAL SONG
One Minute Past Eternity – Jerry Lee Lewis

END CREDITS
Orgy – Blue Monday

New medicine today… Feeling a bit more present and clear but a bit shaky. I guess you can only do so much with selective poisoning.

There are a lot of things I wish I could have in life but if there were one thing it would be a magical button that guaranteed that nothing would ever separate me from my wife.

Our neighbor lost his wife of nearly 87 years lately and since that time I’ve been obsessed with the knowledge that sooner or later either my wife or I will be separated, and I neither want to leave her alone in grief nor to be left alone without her.

More spiritually evolved individuals seem to not only tolerate the impermanence of all things but actually take joy in it, for to them it gives the presence meaning. For me, knowing that all love ends tragically, makes it difficult to fully vest in and enjoy each moment in a relationship.

I’d like to know how the Buddhists manage it. I’ve heard about Tibetan monasteries where they use human skull caps as drinking vessels to remind themselves of the impermanence of all things.

Bush tells us we need a troop surge in Iraq, need to send another 20,000 troops, it’s essential to the success of the mission. Tony Blair announces that Brittan is pulling half of their 7500 troops out, and Bush says, it’s a sign that things are going right in Iraq.

I met Elke on MySpace. She goes by the handle Adults Are Obsolete Children and invited Tina and I to go watch her and her friends (Plane Site) make music at Mr. Spots Chai House in Seattle (Ballard).

Watch out for the driving instructions on Mr. Spots Chai Houses’s website, they’re wrong. It’s not 1.6 miles past 20th, it’s two blocks past. Market, Leary, and 22nd Ave NW come together at a common intersection.

Plane Sites’ Mariah Reed plays sitar and guitar, Jeff Kimes plays didgeridoo, both do volcals. Also doing vocals but not pictured here was a fellow with long red dreadlocks named Liam. Baca fellow with darker shorter dreadlocks also played drums as did Liam at times.

Before attending this performance, I couldn’t imagine how they would work together. As it happens, incredibly well, that and African drums and some very capable vocalists and some MIDI tracks.

The music was remarkable but as remarkable as it was, the energy of the people there really made the experience. Nothing like this have I experienced in decades.

If you get a chance to see Plane Site make music, do it!