A wild ride through the all
shouldn't Miss:'Monkeemobile' performer diesBeach Chalet soccer field hearingHaven a Jack London Square oasisBike to work today'Y star dies49ersRaidersGiantsA'sWarriorsSharksQuakesNFLMLBNBANHLCollegePrepsGolfOutdoorsOtherOn TVTicketsShopVideoMoviesMusic NightlifePerformanceArtEventsBooksTV RadioHoroscopeComicsGamesThings To DoHome GardenStyleOutdoorsSki SnowHealthGreenLGBTHouzzDatingMomsPetsSponsored ContentNAN A. TALESE/DOUBLEDAY; 324 web sites; $26 Ninetenths of a single thing. what's that about? It won't buy you a sheet of penny candy, <a href=http://www.goodchristianlouboutinsale.com>www.goodchristianlouboutinsale.com</a> But it will buy you a gallon of natural gas, as well as,as well 200 or 300 more pennies.
it's name is the hidden penny. Not it's mostly a penny, since it comes up short, And not it's far hidden, Since something so puzzling is not likely to escape notice. Yet it is also unlikely that we give it much thought. that fits the oil companies just fine: a year, those nearpenny adds $1.26 billion back to the coffers. That's a bunch of penny candy.
Surprising nuggets similar to the hidden penny come by the fistful in "Oil on the mind, Lisa Margonelli's casting light on, enjoyable stories of "people who oversee oil's long journey to our cars, Starting at her locality filling station, She scurries within pump like Alice down the rabbit hole, to realize and chronicle the delivery trucks, Refineries, going rigs, a new, The oil demand and, as a rule tellingly, The voracious residents, Who daily go about changing the world with as much concern as they furnish that hidden penny.
gym, Oil legislation. It is an indispensable part of our omnivorous diet: meat, vegetables, fruits, super food, grain, nuts, petroleum. Our nation's infrastructure of roadways and interstates is a result of oil. It fuels our military services and our economy. We will go to war over can download it, And our dangerous policy will bend to its demands. It keeps us about the run. and, Often too much, We are see the gas station.
mobile are the great energy oligopolies, But the object of our immediate ire, When fuel prices tick up another dime or quarter, Is the filling section. We live and eat our cars. when we're denied, As during periods of shortage or embargo, Our very characters are destroyed. "The whole specification of being American was that we drove our cars anywhere we wanted to. Public transit and waiting in line was something communists did, blogs Margonelli, language in cheek.
In Margonelli's colorful profile of her local service station, <a href=http://www.bestredbottomshoeshop.com><b>Red Sole Shoes</b></a> The proprietor is to be pitied as an alternative of scorned. For these establishments, Gas one is more a loss leader than a windfall. The stock investing of gas has become an alchemist's art, And if 5 cents manufactured on a gallon sale, you have to sing hallelujah. Any a lot of profits come from impulse buys. your investment gallon of gas; It's the gallon of soda that pays the invoices, Along with eyeglasses, candies and salted whatevers.
Margonelli next hitches a high and jouncy ride with a truck driver named Roger as he negotiates his shiny tanker truck the particular misery of Los Angeles <a href=http://www.bestcheapsunglass.com>http://www.bestcheapsunglass.com</a> <a href=http://www.goodchristianlouboutinmall.com><b>christian louboutin shoes</b></a> traffic to get the goods to stations before they run dry. His is another thankless job in keeping the actual in <a href=http://www.bestdiscountoakleysunglasses.com><b>discount sunglasses</b></a> a flow state. He works an absurd involving hours a week. This is where readers get more closely informed about the refined stuff, With gasoline's iridescent gloss and bewitching fumes.
to a sulfurous tour of a refinery, The wild wheelings and transations of the crude market, An outlandish week at a wildcat rig in east Texas where the epic geologic story of oil comes into focus, With its faults and folds <a href=http://www.bestredbottomheels.com>http://www.bestredbottomheels.com</a> and sedimentation and metamorphosis "As compelling as subplots in Russian literary mastery" And then visiting the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Our emergency stockpile <a href=http://www.oakleysunglassescheapzone.com><b>cheap oakley</b></a> on the political weather of big oil, Which wouldn't serve national needs for many days but bespeaks how large is our need, How deep our fears and how oil should be employed as a political football.
Running with the book, undercover but ever present, Is our preposterous interconnection to oil, An institutionalized addiction that attempts strategic <a href=http://www.goodchristianlouboutinmall.com><b>christian louboutin</b></a> change. We feed the rat as setting a trap for it.
Today's petrostates are hazards boost the local tissue: Margonelli's portraits of Venezuela, Chad, Iran and Nigeria are cases in location. "lurking within [Those united states] Were instability, low income, Nationalism, And deep antiAmerican pride. The 2001 country's Energy Policy, Written after secret consultations between vice president and oil executives, concluded as much.. Many people interpret it as a virtual promise of war, Weapons of mass destruction doesn't have to be bombs; Oil is adequate quite nicely.
Oil is our mythic molecule: successful, chaotic, charming, Crudely outstanding. It has spawned the creation of a culture of warlords, Petrotraffickers, angry, SUVs coupled with 10,000squarefoot houses. costly outsize story, Both hateful and slow, And ably used by Margonelli.
in spite of everything, To end on having a positive note, petroleum saved the whales, At least long. Whale oil was once the defacto standard for indoor lighting, And whales were hunted with discontinue. A gusher in Pennsylvania put an end to that, Just as it opened a totally new can of slippery worms.