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The world keeps turning and the resources get used up. It’s really quite simple.
Despite that fact, the debates rage over Peak Oil, Peak Food and peak everything else. It’s about as sensible as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. So the “experts” continue to debate whether or not resources are running low. But the evidence is pretty clear, at least to this trader.
In the past year, we have seen the oil and agriculture markets explode. And this could be just the beginning of the rally, not the end, as some would have you believe. Personally, I think we are about halfway to the new top for many commodities. That means $200 oil (easily) and gold at $1,500-2,000. The agriculture markets have even further to go, in my opinion.
Key commodities are becoming more and more scarce. So we can expect to see more suffering in the poorest countries first. Then the economic impact will work its way up the food chain (no pun intended).
The facts are fairly grim if we look at them closely. There is going to be less of everything. Yet there will be more people who want those things. Let’s face it - wars have been fought over far less.
In her famous book, On Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross describes the stages of grief:
* Denial: “It can’t be happening”
* Anger: “Why me? It’s not fair”
* Bargaining: “Just let me live to see my children graduate”
* Depression: “I’m so sad, why bother with anything?”
* Acceptance: “It’s going to be OK.”
In my opinion, the American public is going through the stages of grief right now. Rising prices are just a market-based signal that we are losing our economic and resource abundance. As the American dream fades away, it’s like a death in the family.
Right now, I think we are between the stages of denial and anger. Ask yourself these questions: What do you think when you pull up to the fuel pump and have to pay $4 for a gallon of regular gas, or nearly $5 for a gallon of diesel? Or how about when you go to the supermarket and have to pay $4 for a gallon of “store brand” milk, or the same price for a loaf of “store brand” bread? Are your emotions between disbelief and anger? Are you saying to yourself, “Hey, what the heck is going on?” (I’m cleaning it up a bit because this is a family-friendly publication.)
I think folks mistakenly thought prosperity would go on forever.
Dinner is always fun until the waiter brings the check. Or as my colleague Byron King once said, “It’s easy to look rich as long as you don’t ever pay the bills.”
No sector has recently hit Americans in the wallet harder than energy. But even with those dramatic price increases, major changes are still not happening. We have seen a very small decrease in gasoline usage - only about 1% or so.
But while some travel may be down as costs have gone up, the numbers are not really dramatic. No, I am not pointing fingers. I live here too. If I looked at my own lifestyle, I couldn’t say that I am making radical adjustments, either.
We still like to drive our big SUVs. We still drive alone to work. Most people rarely take public transportation (if there is any). And we love to run our air conditioners full blast while watching the documentaries on global warming and dying polar bears on our 62-inch plasma TVs.
Yes, we like to grumble when we fill up those big SUVs, mostly because it’s easier to complain than make the tough changes that are needed. We feel entitled to keep living as we do. Hey, after all, we’ve earned it. Right?
Rather than make difficult choices, we are in that denial stage and buy the line from the government and media that all is well.
The facts and the fiction often get mixed up when discussing the issue of “Peak Everything.” Take the surging price of crude oil. Some people (including a lot of politicians) want to blame the traders and speculators. Other people blame farmers and corn-based ethanol. A lot of people blame OPEC. The list of culprits goes on ad infinitum.
The fact remains that it’s not just one reason or another that we are in this energy disaster; it’s actually all of these reasons and others. It’s a culmination of many years of poor energy policy, shortsighted planning (if you can even call it planning) and an overdose of arrogance that only superpowers can have.
It’s like a football team saying, “We’re No. 1 and will always be that way.” So the team stops training hard. Players quit working out and coming to practice. The coaches just relax and forget about recruiting or developing new talent. Nobody designs new plays or bothers to scout the opponents to see what they are up to. And then the team expects to go out into the world and bring home the trophy every year. “Hey, we deserve it. Right?”
Or go back to the analogy of the Titanic. The ship was state-of-the art. It was not “supposed” to be able to sink. But now as the water rushes in and the ship is dropping lower and lower into the sea, the cold water is hitting us all in the face. Now our lawmakers are scrambling to plug the holes, and it’s not working. The smart people (or maybe they were just lucky) are already in the lifeboats.
Only time will tell if the United States can actually move into the acceptance stage. But in the meantime, commodities will continue to dwindle.
Regards,
Kevin Kerr
for The Daily Reckoning
ARE WE WITNESSING THE SLOW DEATH OF THE AMERICAN DREAM? | breaking ad news
Breaking Bad News: Man Cuts Off, Microwaves His Own Hand Because Bible Says “And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away”
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HAYDEN, Idaho — A man who believed he bore the “mark of the beast” used a circular saw to cut off one hand, then he cooked it in the microwave and called 911, authorities said.
The man, in his mid-20s, was calm when Kootenai County sheriff’s deputies arrived Saturday in this northern Idaho town. He was in protective custody in the mental health unit of Kootenai Medical Center.
“It had been somewhat cooked by the time the deputy arrived,” sheriff’s Capt. Ben Wolfinger said. “He put a tourniquet on his arm before, so he didn’t bleed to death. That kind of mental illness is just sad.”
It was not immediately clear whether the man has a history of mental illness. Hospital spokeswoman Lisa Johnson would not say whether an attempt was made to reattach the hand, citing patient confidentiality.
The Book of Revelation in the New Testament contains a passage in which an angel is quoted as saying: “If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he, too, will drink the wine of God’s fury.”
The book of Matthew also contains the passage: “And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.”
Wolfinger said he didn’t know which hand was amputated.
Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press
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Breaking Bad News: Man Trapped In A Lavatory For 100 Hours
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LONDON (Reuters) - A retired Scottish school teacher was recovering on Monday after spending nearly four days trapped inside a men’s toilet with no food or mobile phone.
David Leggat was locked inside the bathroom at a lawn bowling club near the Scottish city of Aberdeen after the door jammed and the handle on the outside fell off.
The 55-year-old kept warm by dipping his feet in hot water but only managed to get about three hours’ sleep a night in the freezing temperatures, the local Evening Express newspaper reported.
He was rescued when the cleaner at the club, which is little used in winter, turned up to collect her cleaning equipment.
Leggat said a survival course he had once done had helped him endure his captivity. The cleaning lady said he looked shaken and grey when he emerged. Leggat was stoical.
“At least there was a toilet to use,” he said. “The only thing I regret is not getting trapped behind the bar.”
[Via - Reuters]
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Breaking Bad News: Top 10 Strangest Deaths Of All Times
1. The RoofFuckers
breaking bad news In 2007, a cab driver found the naked bodies of a young man and young woman at the base of a 50-foot building in Columbia, S.C. Later, authorities found their clothing on the roof, leading them to believe the couple fell to their deaths while having sex.
2. Jennifer Strange
A strange death for Jennifer Strange indeed. Jennifer Strange, seen on the right, died of water intoxication while trying to win a Wii console in a Sacramento radio station’s “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest. It involved drinking large quantities of water without urinating. Strange finished second.
3. The Starcraft Death
In 2005, a 28-year-old Korean, Lee Seung Seop, collapsed and died after playing the video game Starcraft for nearly 50 hours at an Internet cafe
4. Grizzly Man And His Girlfriend
Environmentalist Timothy Treadwell loved grizzly bears so much that he lived with them in Alaska during 13 consecutive summers. In 2003, one of them killed and then partially consumed him, and also killed his girlfriend. Treadwell was the posthumous subject of the documentary film “Grizzy Man.”
5. The Pizza Bomber
When pizza deliveryman Brian Wells was caught after robbing an Erie, Penn., bank in 2003, he told police he’d been coerced by people who’d placed a bomb around his neck. The bomb exploded. Four years after his death, police said Wells had been part of the plot all along.
6. Cher’s Hubby
Singer Sonny Bono survived years of marriage to Cher, intense local politics in Palm Springs, Calif., and campaigns for the U.S. House of Representatives, only to be killed in 1998 when he hit a tree while skiing.
7. The Dumb Lawyer
At an after-work party in 1993, Canadian attorney Garry Hoy was showing a group of visiting law students how unbreakable the windows were in the Toronto-Dominion Bank Tower. He threw himself against one and it held. He did it again, and it gave way. Hoy plunged 24 stories to his death.
8. R. Budd Dwyer
In 1987, Pennsylvania State Treasurer R. Budd Dwyer held a news conference after being convicted of public corruption. He pulled a large pistol from a manila envelope, stuck the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger — on live television.
9. Great Actor Indeed
In 1987, actor and comedian Dick Shawn was on stage performing in San Diego when he had a heart attack and died. For several minutes the audience thought it was part of the act.
10. Death By Helicopter
Actor Vic Morrow, seen here in the TV movie “The Glass House,” was perhaps best known for starring in the popular ’60s TV drama “Combat.” In 1982, while filming the movie version of “Twilight Zone,” Morrow was decapitated by a helicopter blade.
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Breaking Bad News: Brazilian girl forced to have sex for food while in jail
A teenage girl was locked up on theft charges in an Amazon jail for weeks with 21 men who she said would only let her eat in return for sex, according to authorities, setting off a national scandal over the treatment of women by Brazil’s justice system.
The 15-year-old said she was required to have sex with at least two inmates, police spokesman Walrimar Santos said by telephone Thursday from Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon River, where the victim was transferred after nearly a month living with male inmates.
She said her only reprieve from obligatory sex was on Thursdays — when intimate visits were allowed — and things “calmed down,” Estado reported.
Police and human rights officials said the girl was out of touch in Belem and would not speak to reporters. The Associated Press generally does not identify people who may have been victims of sexual assault.
The girl was arrested Oct. 21 on accusations of breaking and entering a house and jailed with male inmates in Abaetetuba, a city of 78,000 outside the Para state capital of Belem.
She was transferred to a jail for women in Belem on Nov. 17, although police claim they requested her transfer earlier but were ignored.
Santos said separate jails for men and women do not exist in most towns in Para — a sprawling, largely lawless state twice the size of France.
Days after the case was divulged, the Brazilian Bar Association announced that a 23-year-old woman had been obliged to share a cell with 70 men in a police detention center in Parauapebas, in southern Para. It was not clear if she was forced to have sex.
Para Gov. Ana Julia Carepa said she was outraged by the alleged abuse at Abaetetuba. She suspended three top police officials pending an investigation and promised that the guilty parties would be “punished in exemplary fashion.”
“There’s no excuse for what happened,” she said in a statement. “I’m also shocked and indignant, as a woman and as governor. … A woman can never be jailed in the same cell as men.”
The federal government on Friday sent a task force of human rights officials to Belem to accompany the investigation after the girl and her family reported receiving death threats.
“First we will guarantee the safety of the minor, who will be included in the program for the Protection of Children and Adolescents threatened with death,” Marcia Ustra Soares, a director of the program, told reporters.
The victim’s father insisted in a televised interview that she was 15, and that police threatened to arrest him unless he produced a certificate showing she was 20.
“I want justice. The situation can’t stay like this,” he said.
Amnesty International said Brazilian women “are the hidden victims of a crumbling detention system,” and many cases of women abused under government custody go unreported or uninvestigated.
“We receive extensive reports of women in detention who suffer sexual abuse, torture, substandard health care and inhuman conditions,” said Tim Cahill, Amnesty’s researcher on Brazil.
Carepa said the government also was investigating reports that the girl was arrested purposely for the sexual gratification of the prisoners.
“This is an unfortunate practice that regrettably has been occurring for some time,” she said. “But it would be good to make this public, so that all society will be mobilized and we can end these practices. … We won’t allow this to happen again.”
The Brazilian Bar Association voiced skepticism that officials would take effective action.
“What has happened in the state of Para’s prison system shows that for authorities the concept of human dignity is only useful as a rhetorical instrument, not something to be taken seriously,” Britto said.
If police did not have the required separate cells, the government “must recognize its inefficiency and … release those citizens it cannot hold,” he said.
[Via - USA Today]
Breaking Bad News: Doctors untangle the strange case of the giant hairball (warning: picture is not something you want to see after meal)
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It may not be the most appetizing reading before a hearty holiday meal, but the New England Journal of Medicine is devoting part of its Thanksgiving issue to a giant hairball — and not the feline kind.
The prestigious journal details the case of a previously healthy 18-year-old woman who consulted a team of gastrointestinal specialists.
She complained of a five-month history of pain and swelling in her abdomen, vomiting after eating and a 40-pound weight loss.
After a scan of the woman’s abdomen showed a large mass, doctors lowered a scope through her esophagus.
It revealed “a large bezoar occluding nearly the entire stomach,” wrote Drs. Ronald M. Levy and Srinadh Komanduri, gastroenterologists at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois.
For the uninitiated, a bezoar is a hairball.
“On questioning, the patient stated that she had had a habit of eating her hair for many years — a condition called trichophagia,” they wrote.
“It seemed like she’d been doing this for several years,” Levy told CNN.
The woman underwent surgery to remove the mass of black, curly hair, which weighed 10 pounds and measured 15 inches by 7 inches by 7 inches, the doctors said.
Five days later, she was eating normally and was sent home.
A year later, the pain and vomiting were gone, the patient had regained 20 pounds “and reports that she has stopped eating her hair.”
Reached at his home in Chicago, Levy said he had no idea whether the journal’s timing of the publication on Thanksgiving was intentional.
Either way, he said, it would not affect the gastroenterologists’ holiday dinner plans — “We don’t get fazed by much.”
Source - The New England Journal Of Medicine
Breaking Bad News: Halo 3 player punched mom after she took away game
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A juvenile fan of the video game Halo 3 is accused of punching his mother after she forced him to end his game Sunday night and fighting with sheriff’s deputies as they tried to restrain him, according to reports released Wednesday.
Indian River County Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Harnage reported responding to the family’s home at about 11:30 p.m. Sunday in reference to an “out-of-control child.”
The parents told deputies their son was playing Halo 3, and it was getting late and he needed to shut it off. When the son refused to turn off the game, the parents reportedly took the air card out of his machine so he couldn’t play anymore.
Reports show the son became enraged, went through the house looking for the air card, and then punched his mother, prompting the parents to call the Sheriff’s Office.
After the boy retreated to his bedroom and locked it, the mother knocked on the door and told him he needed to come out and talk to the deputies, the report stated. But the juvenile allegedly responded with profanity.
Harnage and another deputy entered the room using a key from the parents to arrest the son, according to the report. The son fought the deputies - at one time punching Harnage on the lip - until they handcuffed him.
He was later turned over to state juvenile authorities on charges of battery-domestic violence and battery on a law-enforcement officer.
The son’s and parents’ names are being withheld because of the juvenile’s age.
[Via Sun Sentinel]
