Mike's Two Cents Worth

New photos of the 911 “attack” were just released, showing the dust cloud just after the collapse of one of the twin towers.  It prompted me to think again about something I don’t think about much anymore.  I don’t think about it, or discuss it because it frustrates and angers me every time I do.  The majority of Americans, including most of my friends and family, still buy the bullshit story that 911 was a terrorist attack.

Now take a look at these two photos.  The first is one of the newly released photos of New York City on 911.  The second is of the pyroclastic flow of a volcanic eruption.

The dust cloud on 911

You may be wondering “Okay… so what’s the point?”   The point is that this photo absolutely proves there were huge amounts of explosives involved in the collapse of the twin towers on 911.  But like any evidence it is only proof if it can be added to an understanding that leads to a conclusion.  One has to know that a dust cloud is not just a dust cloud.  There are differences.  The dust clouds in both of these photos are of the same kind.  They are pyroclastic flows.

Pyroclastic flow at Mayon Volcano

So what is a pyroclastic flow?

A pyroclastic flow (also known scientifically as a pyroclastic density current) is a common and devastating result of certain explosive volcanic eruptions. The flows are fast-moving currents of hot gas and rock (collectively known as tephra), which travel away from the volcano at speeds generally as great as 700 km/h (450 mi/h). The gas can reach temperatures of about 1,000 C (1,830 F). The flows normally hug the ground and travel downhill, or spread laterally under gravity. Their speed depends upon the density of the current, the volcanic output rate, and the gradient of the slope.

One of the identifying features of a pyroclastic flow is the distinct boundary between the cloud and the surrounding air.  A plain old dust cloud has a “fuzzy boundary” of dust particles and air mixing.  I’ve been in a dust storm in Iraq and seen the approaching wall of dust driven by the wind.  Fuzzy boundary.

The bottom line is that there was an enormous amount of heat energy in both of these dust clouds.  Much much more than could be generated by the relatively tiny amount of jet fuel in one jetliner.

You just can’t bring yourself to believe it… so you don’t.  And I’m tired of talking about it.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t have to vent my frustration when I’m reminded of it.  So I come here to my quiet corner of the web and blow off a bit of the lava that boils within my mind when I think of how the bastards got away with the most evil crime in the history of America so that once again its citizens would rally round the flag and defend their freedoms.

If they were only free to think for themselves.

February 12, 2010

I haven’t ranted for more than a week now because I’ve been busy.  I’m dusting off some old skills and having a good time doing it.  I’m designing and making handbags.  Yes, one of the many hats I’ve worn over the years was that of handbag designer/manufacturer.

It’s now March 17th and Kili and I have a website and a line of handbags.  You can see them here Vagabond Handbags.

When I was 26 I was losing my ass in the motorcycle helmet wholesale business.  The manufacturer was my very own father.  He was one of the first two manufacturers to mold helmets from polycarbonate plastic, which meant his helmets were stronger and cheaper than fiberglass.  He had ignored the motorcycle dealers in favor of selling to the large sporting goods wholesalers.  I saw the potential, built a network of wholesalers, was making good money, became my father’s second largest customer in my first year, with a half million in volume.  Soon my customers discovered my source… my dad… and one by one they began buying helmets from him.  For the same price he was charging me.  How stupid was that?

I was on my ass financially and looking for some way out.  I woke up one morning with the idea of making leather belts.  It was more than an idea, it was a certain knowledge that that was what I was going to do and that it would save me financially.  Everyone thought I’d lost my mind.

Handbag from a used sail trimmed in leather

The year was 1972 and the hippy thing was hot, with bell bottom jeans and latigo leather belts and bags were huge.  I’ll shorten the story… though there’s a lot to it.  I made some sample belts, having never made a belt before in my life.  Went to a trade show, established a crew of sales reps, added handbags to the mix and within one year had a $100,000 dollar month.  It was frantic.

The heavy leather look died and I transitioned into soft leather bags, and cloth bags.  One of my hottest lines was bags made from old blue jeans, lined with bandana.  How hot?  I was buying jeans from a rag dealer in Denver in 2,000 lb bales… one bale a week.  My last collection was quilted burlap trimmed in soft leather.  The returns were killing me.  Burlap is not a tough material and won’t take the abuse women give a bag.

I had three great years and then the economy went very bad during the oil embargo of ‘75.  I had bought an old line manufacturer in Newburgh New York and was commuting between Colorado Springs (where I had moved my factory from Olathe Kansas), and spread myself too thin, and grown too fast… etc.  I was for a time one of the largest and hottest brands in the market. Applescraps was the name.

So the other day my daughter suggested I make handbags from used sails.  It made sense to her since I am a sailor and once made handbags.  It appealed to me because my creative itch has needed scratching and… speaking of scratch… I could use a little more of it.

My girlfriend lives in California – near L.A. – and although she would love to move to Mexico and join me on my boat she can’t just yet.  So since she can’t come to Mexico I’m spending two-thirds of my time in California.  I brought my portable sewing machine so I could begin making handbags, and on the way up from Mazatlan I stopped in Guymas to visit friends with a boat in the “marina seca” (dry marina) and while I was there I bought a used sail from the owner of the marina.  He’s got lots of used sailing gear.  It seems from time to time a gringo abandons his boat and never returns.  So with sail and sewing machine in hand I arrived at Kili’s place and set up shop about the end of January.

The first thing I did was sell my sewing machine and buy a more powerful one.  I got lucky and found a used Mitsubishi commercial walking foot machine with table, motor and a great articulating light, all within an hour of Kili’s house.  The portable brought enough to cover the cost of its replacement.  Within a week I was sewing on a machine very similar to the Juki of my younger days.  Like riding a bicycle, it all comes back to you like it was yesterday.

Now I’m in the design process and I’ve come up with one I like.  It can be a frustrating process but the reward is worth it.  And, though I never have, nor do I intend to carry one, I enjoy making things that are functional.

This morning Tim Geithner helped the White House unveil a $3.8 trillion government budget for the coming fiscal year. If approved, the fiscal year 2011, which starts in October, will ring in a record $1.6 trillion deficit.

Has anyone pointed out that close to half of next year’s Federal budget is freakin’ borrowed?

And then consider this:

The U.S. Senate voted last week to raise the limit on how much the government can borrow to keep itself running, a move that while necessary has become highly political.  Senators voted 60-39 to increase the ceiling on the nation’s debt by $1.9 trillion, boosting the government’s borrowing power to a total $14.3 trillion, the highest in history.

But they really didn’t have a choice:

Speaking in favor of raising the debt limit, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said there was little choice: “The money has been spent and now it must be repaid.  We have gone to the restaurant, we have eaten the meal, and now the only question is whether we will pay the check. It is that simple.”

And billions of what they intend to borrow next year will be to create jobs.  Does it really make sense to borrow money to put the unemployed to work doing jobs that our economy says aren’t worth doing – because if they were worth doing there would be a demand for them and THEY WOULD ALREADY EXIST!  Why don’t we just do what the Soviets did and give everyone a job.  We’d have full employment then.  But wait.  That would be socialism.  And Americans are capitalists.  But capitalism is like… like… survival of the fittest – let the strong survive.  And recessions are really just corrections according to the rules of capitalism.  But what if you don’t let a correction correct?  Don’t you just make the ultimate correction worse?  Like the drunk who drinks more because he’s beginning to sober up and his head feels like it’s about to explode.

We’ve all had personal recessions.  Like when you’ve still got month left over at the end of the money.  It means you’ll spend the next few days in a recession, eating peanut butter and jelly samiches, until you get paid again.  You could borrow some money, but hey guess what… you’re just borrowing from another paycheck.  And if you do it too often you could get behind two paychecks… or three… or if you’re the U.S. Government… a whole freakin’ three year’s worth of paychecks.

Yep… they raised the debt ceiling to 14.3 trillion dollars.  And coincidentally, the projected GDP for 2010 is the same amount – 14.3 trillion!  Which isn’t really like Uncle Sam’s annual “paycheck”, but rather every goddamn dollar’s worth of total goods and services produced in the U.S. in a single year.  The paycheck would be more on the order of… well… the 3.8 trillion dollar budget they announced this morning.

So what that means in terms we can understand is that they’ve borrowed… let me do the math here… 14.3 divided by 3.8 equals… holy crap!  That’s 3.76 years worth of paychecks!  I think that might be financially irresponsible.  Or more like out of control.

Maybe I’m wrong but it seems like America’s problem is debt.  They’ve spent too much time on the midway.  Just look at this chart.  If you turn it upside down you’ll see American’s are falling off a cliff, but guess who lands on the rocks below.  Our children (if you’re my age) and grandchildren. 

So if debt is the problem does it make sense to rack up another trillion dollars worth?  And even if it was the answer, would it make sense to let the morons in Washington decide where to spend it.  For example they’ve budgeted $734 million to install 1,000 new full body scanners at airports.  Why?

Because some nutjob stuffed his panties full of pentaerythritol tetranitrate and got past those geniuses at airport security.  Personally I don’t think he could have brought down an airplane.  I mean seriously… look at the photo.  There is, however, little doubt that he could have done irreparable  damage to his dick.

But hey… thanks to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab they are now hiring at the body scanner factory.

1st verse:
I got nothing against man’s best friend
I’m just not sure it’s true
Cuz since the day that dog moved in
He spends more time with you

And by the way he wags his tail
I think I’d be better off
If you’d pretend you’re not my wife
And treat me like a dog

Chorus:
It’s not so bad… the life of a dog
You give him a bath and talk baby talk
You fix his dinner you pat his head
Hell he even gets the center of our double bed
Well it’s plain to see… I would be… a whole lot better off
If you’d treat me baby… treat me like a dog

2nd verse:
Tell me why a six dollar haircut
Is good enough for me
But a monthly trim for that mutt
Always costs us twenty three

The fool that said ya gotta work like a dog
To bring home the bacon
Never saw how high on the hog that dog lives
On the money I’m makin’

Repeat chorus:

© 1992 Mike Land all rights reserved

1st  verse:
Some guys spend the night shootin’ pool
But this cowboy’s a dancin’ fool
Saturday nights I never miss a chance

The preacher says that when I die
No honky tonks up in the sky
Means any weekend might be my last chance

Chorus:
I’ve heard so many times before that heaven is mighty nice
But if it don’t have a dance floor they can’t call it paradise

I’d trade my boots and hat for wings and a halo shinin’ bright
But if heaven don’t have a dance floor
I’ll be in hell on Saturday night

2nd verse:
A Texas swing, the Cotton Eyed Joe
Or a buckle polisher nice and slow
My heart beats to the rhythm of a country band

And since angels don’t play steel guitars
And I don’t two-step to a harp
I guess I’ll have to have a weekend pass

Repeat chorus:

© 1992 Mike Land all rights reserved

In my experience very few people understand money.  Judging by my bank account you’d have to say I’m one of them… but I’m not talking about how to hang on to it.  I’m talking about what exactly IS money.  They think it’s the Federal Reserve Notes (or their electronic equivalent) in their purse, pocket or bank account.  I’m here to tell you that ain’t money!

I read – and it makes sense to me – that money serves these three functions.

1. A means of exchange.
2. A store of value.
3. A way to measure the relative value of things.

I’ll contend that those “notes” in your pocket only serve purpose number one, and they fail miserably for 2 & 3.  The reason you can’t store value, or measure the value of things with dollars is INFLATION!  I’ll give you a couple of examples and you’ll soon see what I’m talking about.

I bought my first house in 1967 for $11,000.00.  It was an average two bedroom bungalow in Wichita Kansas.  Let’s suppose that on the same day I bought that house I’d put $11,000.00 worth of gold and 11,000 cash dollars in a cigar box and buried it.  Now let’s suppose I dug up that cigar box yesterday.  Which one would still buy that same house today – the gold or the dollars?  The dollars probably wouldn’t be worth enough to replace the kitchen cabinets.  But the relationship between gold and houses would not have changed all that much.

By the way, in 1967 those dollars were called Silver Certificates and were still redeemable for REAL money… steada just another Federal Reserve Note.  Back then you could go to the bank and ask the teller for a real dollar and she’d hand you a coin made out of silver.  Hand her a twenty and you’d get twenty of them.  Hand a teller a twenty nowadays and she’ll ask you if you want fives or tens.

What happened to the “value” that was stored in that cigar box?  Nothing happened to the value of the real money.  The counterfeit money lost about 90% of its value, and it’s not hard to understand how if you know anything about the boogers that created it, controlling the value of it, namely the Federal Reserve Bank.   Inflation is not like gravity.  People have come to believe that there is something immutable in the laws of finance that say prices on the stuff they buy has to go up from year to year, like the laws of nature.  But in nature the weights and measures don’t change.

Suppose I whipped out a tape measure and slapped it down on your dining room table and said “Your table is 48 inches long”.  You’d nod your head and say “Okie doke.”  But what if I came back a year later and re-measured that same table and announced that it had grown and now measured 50 inches long.  You’d probably tell me there was something wrong with my tape measure… that it wasn’t the same one I’d used the year before.  Why?  Because any fool knows that tables don’t get bigger.  They don’t grow.

But you’ll believe that $11,000.00 house I bought in 1967 is now worth $158,000.00.  It’s still the same house, and it’s not located in a particularly hot piece of property, like some sunny beach, or mountain view.  It’s an older house, and 43 years closer to falling apart.  Probably would have fallen apart by now except for the annual upkeep and new paint necessary to keep it livable.

The point is this… functions number 2 and 3 can not be served by anything that is constantly shrinking in it’s value relative to the goods and services of an economy.

In 1913 our illustrious representatives in Washington gave the franchise to create money out of thin air and loan it to the U.S. Treasury at interests to some private bankers.  They turned over a perfectly good dollar, then redeemable in gold and silver, and today that dollar is worth less than three cents.

The bastards, try as they might to control the value of gold for the past thirty years, still could not reach into that cigar box and tamper with the value of the gold.  It didn’t lose it’s value.  That 11 grand would have bought 314 ounces of gold, which at today’s price of just over $1,000 per ounce means you could probably buy two or three of those Wichita bungalows with the gold.

Bankers have pulled the paper money switcheroo many times throughout history, and every time… every single solitary time… they’ve inflated the value of the money to worthlessness.  And every time there has been a return to the only thing that has ever been portable enough, rare enough, and unchanging enough to serve all three functions of money – gold and silver.

Climb aboard a time machine and take a one ounce gold coin with you back in time… say 2,000 years to ancient Rome.  It wouldn’t matter that the Romans couldn’t understand the words U.S. Eagle or Krugerrand on the face of your coin.  They’d know it was gold and they’d be able to weigh it, and they’d give you plenty for it.  And I have to think that if you turned the knob on that time machine toward the future and went 2,000 years in the other direction you’d find the same thing was true.  Your money would have maintained it’s purchasing power.

Take Federal Reserve Notes with you instead and I think you’d go hungry.  And I don’t think you’d have to go that far into the future for those notes to be worthless pieces of paper.  Set that dial for 2015 and you’ll be lucky if a pocket full of twenties will buy you a coke.

Roeder admitted he stalked and shot to death Dr. George Tiller, 67, on May 31 last year as Tiller attended church in Wichita, Kansas. He argued in court his actions were necessary to protect unborn babies.  “Abortions were being done every day,” Roeder testified. “My honest belief was that if I didn’t do something they would continue to die.”

This guy Roeder killed an abortion doctor last May in the town I was raised in – Wichita, Kansas.  That’s where I was thoroughly indoctrinated in one of the more fundamental Christian dogmas while attending the First Church of the Nazarene on East Kellogg Street.  Part of what I was taught was that if a child dies before it reaches the age of accountability it goes to heaven.  Yep.  Straight to paradise, bypassing all the crap the rest of us have had to live through.

Holy shit!  Do you know what that means? Think about it.

It means that this guy Roeder – and I’d bet my free pass through the pearly gates he’s of the Christian persuasion, though I don’t know which flavor – didn’t save any babies at all.  Instead he has condemned them to a life on Earth!  Now instead of being ushered straight into paradise they’ll be born, where more than likely they’ll grow up and suffer through school, dating, marriage, a job they can’t stand, disease, and for the majority of them, die and go to hell.

The majority you ask?  Sure.  Just ask the next Christian you meet what percentage of adult Americans are going to go to heaven.   The last one I asked (though it’s been many years ago) said she thought it would only be 10%.  That means 90% of us had better start packing our asbestos skivvies!

So from an orthodox Christian perspective who was protecting babies, Tiller or his murderer Roeder?  Tiller had a 100% salvation rate.  And I know that’s better than Billy Graham’s or even Jimmy Swaggart’s.

All this kinda makes me wish I’d been aborted.  Cuz if I had been I’d be in heaven now instead of… well I think you all know where I’m headed.

My father was a tailor.  My grandmother taught him how to sew and while he was in the navy he made a few extra dollars altering the uniforms of fellow sailors aboard an aircraft carrier in the South Pacific.  A child of the depression he wanted to learn a trade that would keep him employed even in hard times.  After apprenticing under old-world craftsmen in Oklahoma City then moving up to positions as “head tailor” first in a small menswear store in Enid Oklahoma and then a large store in Wichita Kansas, he began his own manufacturing business in the basement of our home… when I was about ten years old.  His business prospered and by the time I was a teen his factory was manufacturing cut-and-sewn items for the government – things like, coveralls for pilots, bathrobes for the V.A., grenade carrier vests for the Army.

My story has to do with a contract he received from the Air Force to design a parka to be worn in extremely cold weather.  A garment that had more pieces than a twenty dollar jigsaw puzzle, with a lining and insulated inner lining, a fur-lined hood, elastic inner cuffs, patch pockets, slash pockets with zippers, and one of those military style pockets on a sleeve, for pencils and stuff.  It was an amazingly complicated piece of sewing.

As I had done countless hours in my youth I was sitting beside dad’s machine watching as he sewed together the parka.  I was amazed that he could keep it all straight.  He was literally surrounded by parka parts, bent forward in concentration as his powerful hands guided fabric under the presser foot of the sewing machine.  I asked my dad “How do you know where you are?  How do you keep it all straight?”  I’ll never forget his simple reply, one that applies to more in life than just piecing together a garment.  Without looking up he smiled and said “All I have to think about is the part that’s under the needle.”

I’ve reflected on that piece of wisdom when my life has been complicated or the future uncertain.  I’ve reminded myself that all I have to worry about is the present – “the part that’s under the needle.”

This rant was inspired by a recent post to facebook by a friend of mine.  (I’ve since learned this same post is being passed around the internet) Here it is:

Shame on you America: the only country where we have homeless without shelter, children going to bed without eating, elderly going without needed meds, and mentally ill without treatment – yet we have a benefit for the people of Haiti on 12 TV stations.and major cable stations, movie channels.

Other than the fact that she is either sadly ignorant of the world outside America’s borders, or she was just sloppy in making her assertion, she is expressing a view that was – judging from the “amen brother”s she received from like-minded friends – not uncommon among gun-toting, right wing, conservative Americans.  There is a common opinion that America does too much for other countries.  To the point where some are sympathetic to a critcism of helping the poorest of foreigners in the most miserable plight imaginable.  These poor ignoramuses evidently don’t have a clue that for the past few decades America has been the major recipient of foreign aid… perhaps more so than any nation since the bloodsucking Roman empire.  Let me explain.

Let’s use an analogy.  I like em.  They help clarify the otherwise complicated.  I don’t think it would be too big a stretch to say petroleum is to the economies of the world what blood is to the human body.  They are both liquid and without them there would be a failure to function.  (nor would it take a total loss of either to precipitate a total collapse… but that’s another issue)

In 1971 the big fat guy we’ll call US began to need the blood of others to continue living his rich lifestyle.  He could have economized… exercised a bit more by walking or riding a bike… but he liked riding around in his big automobile so he tapped into the blood supply of his neighbors.  A freaky image may now be imagined of this fat guy going to the door where the Venezuelan next door or the Nigerian from down the street hands him a bag of fresh plasma in exchange of course for the going rate.  The guy isn’t stealing the blood… he’s paying for it… with IOUs.  IOUs he may never be able to redeem, but hey… he’s paying interest.  With more IOUs.  So it’s a fair exchange.  Right?

US is the fattest guy in the neighborhood, and it’s mostly because he’s getting the most nourishment.  Of the neighborhood’s blood supply he is actually mainlining 25%, and yet he’s only one of twenty.  His actual share of the blood would be 5%… but he could never live on that meager amount of blood, because… hey…  he’s fat!

Some of his neighbors, like the Saudi three doors down, can spare the blood, but the Mexican family just gets by on less.  They need his IOUs… or at least they think they do.  Wait until they find out the fat guy can’t pay them back cuz he’s broke.

The point is this.  Today America receives 60% of its blood… errr… oil from its neighbors.  And in return they get what?  Dollars?  And when they come knocking on America’s door to redeem those dollars what do they get?  Lots of things.   But not enough to cash them all in.  You see, every year Americans suck more blood out of their neighbors veins than they can afford to pay for.   I’m talking pay for in “things”… goods and services.  It’s called the deficit and it’s approaching a trillion dollars per year.  They pay in dollars… hell that’s easy.  Just print some more.

Americans are good people.  They don’t hesitate to say thank you when they’ve been done a favor, or when a neighbor does more for them than they are able to do in return.  And, I’m sure they’d all be grateful to their immediate neighbors to the south, if they knew that last year Mexico sent America more stuff than America sent in return – 40 billion dollars more. (down from a high of 75 billion in ‘07, due to the fact that Mexico has less oil to export)  Trade balances with Mexico ‘85 to ‘09 Instead, Americans are constantly berating Mexicans.  But Mexicans were only number two on a long list of neighbors willing to help out.  I’ll just list all 15 in order of blood donated… er… oil traded for IOUs.  Canada, Mexico, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iraq, Angola, Kuwait, Brazil, Algeria, Colombia, Russia, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, and Libya. Petroleum Imports Top 15 Countries

No… poor little Haiti isn’t on the list.  So I guess we don’t owe them a damn thing.

The summer before last I helped my son-in-law dig ten holes for the  foundation of a patio room.   They were about two feet in diameter and three feet deep.  I’ve got considerable experience jobbin’ a post hole digger into hard ground under a Kansas summer sun and wasn’t looking forward to it.  I estimated each hole would take two or three hours.  So we rented a little tracked vehicle called a “boxer” with an auger attached to the front.  The point of my telling you this is that we dug those holes easily in a couple of hours and used about a quarter gallon of gasoline.  What was that gas worth per gallon?  Well… if it had been the last gas on earth and up for auction and was going to save me 30 hours of back-breaking-blister-making work… a whole hell of a lot!  $100 per gallon wouldn’t be out of reason.

Some day when gasoline is in short supply – whenever that may be – our grandchildren are going to wonder why we wasted the precious stuff.  Wasted you say?  I don’t mean spilling it.  I’m talking about like when an 18 year old girl climbs into the SUV and drives to the mall and back.  We don’t currently consider that a waste of gasoline, but what if it was the same quarter of a gallon someone could have used to power a labor saving device?  It’s not unreasonable to say she’ll burn more than the quarter gallon we used to dig those holes.

And why did it take so much gas to get her to the Old Navy store and back?  Cuz she took 4,000 lbs of steel and rubber with her!  Her grandchildren might look at that as a frivolous waste of energy.  I can hear her grandson cussing, as he thrusts that post hole digger into the hard ground, “Goddamn grandma… why didn’t you walk, or ride a bicycle like I do.”

I don’t mean to pick on 18 year old girls.  We’re all guilty.  Maybe we need to start filling up those unused carpool lanes and save some gas for the hard work that we’re going to have to do when the Mexicans all go back to Mexico.

It might amaze you to know exactly how many hours a healthy male would have to work to equal the energy, or potential for work in a barrel of oil.  I found this reasonable estimate  courtesy of  lettheSunwork.  Can you believe that at minimum wage a barrel of oil is equal to, or in other words worth, over $100,000!

A barrel of oil contains about six gigajoules of energy. That’s six billion joules or 1667 kilowatt-hours. No, we don’t have any idea how much that is, either, so let’s think about the equivalent. Sit a reasonably healthy male adult – let’s call him Jim – on an exercise bike wired to an efficient generator, and he can produce 100 watts for you. So after Jim has pedaled an hour he’s produced 100 watt hours of energy, or 1/10 of a kw-hour.

To produce the same energy as that in a gallon of gasoline, 33 kilowatt-hours, Jim would need to pedal 33 X 10 = 330 hours. We need to be legal, of course, so Jim only pedals 40 hours per week. Jim’s desperate, so let’s assume he agrees to take no breaks and never stops working to chat at the water cooler or to check in with his friends on Facebook. He pedals straight through for 40 hours per week. He will have pedaled enough to equal the energy in a gallon of gasoline in a little more than eight weeks. Because Jim’s desperate, he gladly works for minimum wage, so your energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline is a bargain at $6.55 X 330 = $2,194. How’s the price of gasoline lookin’?

Jim likes working for you, so let’s ask him to pedal long enough to produce the same energy as that in a barrel of oil, 1667 kw-hours. Easy to figure. 1667 divided by 1/10, or to say it another way, 1,667 X 10, or 16,667 hours of pedaling. That’s 417 weeks. Jim must love pedaling that bike, because he never takes a vacation. Jim will have pedaled enough to produce the energy in a barrel of oil in 417 divided by 52 = 8.01 years. Congress has cooperated with you during this entire adventure and kept the minimum wage stable at $6.55 per hour, so your energy equivalent from Jim will cost you only $6.55 X 16,667 = $109,169.

You’ll never remember $2,194 or $109,169. We sure don’t. Cheat down. Remember $2,000 per gallon of gas and $100,000 per barrel of oil. Those you can remember.