Chart by Stuart at Random Useless Info.
For the previous 30 years, 1950-1979, price was steady at about $0.30 - 0.40/gallon before spiking near the end of the 1970s.
What I'm thinking about, and planning on writing (and podcasting) about soon:
Figments of Reality: What we think of as 'us', headquartered in our minds, is merely a complicity, a figment of reality. In reality our minds are the battleground between our bodies' organs, which invented and co-evolved our minds as their
problem detection system, and our society, which seeks to co-opt our
minds to (as ee cummings put it) "make us everybody else" as part of a
collective army to fight that society's imagined enemies. There is no
'us'. Yet what 'we' can do is referee the battle, take sides. I am
coming to believe that our bodies' organs co-evolved our minds for a
purpose other than their immediate selfish self-protection. The second purpose of our minds, I think, is self-restraint.
Why? Because self-restraint of creatures with exceptional capacity to
influence their ecosystem is essential to the health of that ecosystem,
and hence to the interest of all creatures within it. Most creatures do
not need self-restraint because, at their worst, they can do little to
perturb the balance of life. But larger, fiercer, smarter creatures can
wreak havoc, so their minds (in the collective interest of
all-life-on-Earth) should inevitably have evolved self-restraint as a
critical characteristic and determinant of decision-making. Most
mammals clearly exhibit this self-restraint (they 'voluntarily' reduce
their numbers to keep them in balance with the rest of their
ecosystem). I believe we did too, until, as an unexpected consequence
of our sophisticated brains, we invented civilization, and its
artifacts, including the suppression of our 'natural' self-restraint.
"To be nobody else" is indeed, as cummings said, "the hardest battle",
and it requires that we rediscover our instinctive self-restraint,
become truly natural creatures again, each one of us, alone, and free
ourselves from the slavery and propaganda that our society, with the
best of intentions, has imposed on us.
Why Are Gas Prices So Low?:
Since May, crude oil prices have jumped from $60/bbl to $83/bbl. In the
past, when crude oil prices have risen, gasoline prices at the pump
have risen faster. But, as the chart above shows, the recent run-up of
oil prices has been accompanied by a drop
in gasoline prices. Why is that? As the regression chart below shows,
gasoline should now be selling at close to $6/gallon. But it's selling
at about half that level. How can oil companies suddenly afford to sell
gasoline that is costing them 40% more at a lower
price? (BTW Canadian prices have been tracking US prices; price today
is $.97/litre or $3.67/gallon with the Canadian and US dollars at par;
in May it was, currency-adjusted, $1.12/litre or $4.25/gallon)
Vignettes: Coming up soon, vignette #6.
Blog-Hosted Conversations:
Delayed one more week. So
starting this week, this blog will feature
30-minute conversations, initially on the subject of "What is your
model of a better way to live, and what capacities do we need to
develop or re-learn to live that way?"
Possible Open Thread Question:
If gasoline prices suddenly doubled, by what percentage would you, realistically, reduce your consumption? |
12:12:04 PM 
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
