I am only half-kidding when I write this. Hot teanage girls have the power to change America. If, just once a year, or something like that, the guy with the highest math and science grades were to win a sexual episode with a hot girl in his grade, then you just watch how seriously and competitively average guys will start taking academics. Also, watch how it changes the self-esteem, posture, hygiene and grooming of the winner... and by extension his peers. Pretty soon, they'll all be socializing more. Now, instead of (or as well as) the captain of the football team getting all the girls, it will be the winners of the regional math and engineering contests. Think of how that would change America, from the grass roots up. And before you accuse me of suggesting that we whore these girls out, I maintain that it's happening already. They offer their bodies as rewards to the successful athletes, and then 10 years later, become trophy wives to nerds who've grown up and become successful and rich. I'm just saying, that we have a culture of hero-worship, and the hero always gets the girl. But at a young and important age, our heroes are athletes and soldiers. We need new Heroes in America, ones that will lead innovation, generate jobs and wealth, fix the planet and improve our quality of life. And right now, these boys are socially awkward and bullied. Teenaged girls, you have the power to transform America, by blowing one nerd at a time!

While hiking in Algonquin Park, the guide made some interesting suggestions about the connection between beaver dams and oil. The water in a beaver pond quickly becomes stagnant with almost no oxygen in it. Anything that dies and falls in to this water will not be eaten or decompose in the usual way, and will be preserved for thousands of years. Eventually, the pond or flood plain will become a peat bog, which is an excellent carbon sink, since it does not decompose the way a forest does. Now, throw an ice-age or 10 on top of that, and you eventually get oil. Thank the beavers for oil. I know it's not that simple, and that there are many origins of oil, but I'm a Canadian, and I like this one for now.

This spring I put together a computer out of spare parts kicking around in my basement. I installed Ubuntu just to see what it would be like. In many ways I am happy with this computer, although I have had some difficulty. I was very surprised with how much this article got wrong, though. Ubuntu is ridiculously easy to install. It comes with all the basic software you will need. Installing new software (and uninstalling it) is also ridiculously easy to do, and I don't worry about slowing down my system with obsolete registry files or spyware. Adding new hardware is also fantastically easy. That's the good news, and should be very front and centre in this article. Problems I've had: wireless networking. Logging in to my secure wireless network has been a nightmare, and I've given up. I now just steal my neighbor's unsecured signal. Trying to get support online DOES have the problems outlined in this article. Those providing advise use unfamiliar technical jargon, and the solutions generally involve typing in commands that can be scary to a non-techie, or even someone like me who is atleast partially techie enough to try to build a computer with spare parts. The other frustration I've had is with trying to run Windows games on this system. I understand that the Windows Emulators (Wine & Cedega) are better than they used to be, but unfortunately they aren't quite where they need to be yet. Overall, however, I like the premise of an open-source operating system, and I believe that the major commercial barriers will be fixed within the next 12-18 months. After that, I'd like to see software (game) companies porting over to native Linux versions. Given that the PS3 uses Linux, that might be even closer.

Many people bring up these semi-mysterious diabolical 'oil industry lobbyists' as the enemy of the electric car. While the oil industry certainly has trillions of $ at stake and wields enormous power, there is one group with even more to lose, wields even more power. That's the US treasury department. Why? Because regardless of what country the oil is coming from or where it is going, it is ALL traded in US$. So before you can buy oil, you have to buy US$. Increased global demand for oil = increased demand for dollars. That means that regardless of all other economic factors, the treasury department can create massive amounts of money with relatively little effect on currency values (I say relatively, compared to what would happen if another country tried to do the same thing). That is how the government funds its massive budget deficits. That is why US taxes are some of the lowest in the world. That is what is paying for the massive US military ($515,000,000,000/year). This also accounts for about 4% GDP. My point? Balancing the Federal budget and starting to pay down the debt is crucial to weaning ourselves off a petro-economy. Running deficits only increases our reliance on oil. If the demand for oil goes away, so does the demand for US$, and so the government can no longer fund its deficits by printing money without massive currency devaluation. But if there is no deficit, we'll be able to weather the stormy economic transition away from oil.

While the thought of cheap(er) access to space is exciting, I think the real potential, the one that should really drive this forward, is safer/cheaper access to space-based-power(SBP). I read somewhere that a 1km wide loop of solar panels around the earth at geo-synch orbit would produce more power in one year than all the fossil fuels (including Uranium) in existence on Earth. Ok, so that's a whole lot of solar panels, but with a space elevator it's not out of the realm of possibility. The space elevator would provide both a means of transport for all those solar panels (or solar fabric/foil) as well as a transmission system safer and more efficient than microwaves. You want to talk about global influence? What if you controlled unlimited access to the next generation clean-cheap power source? It would be worth Trillion$$ How much did the Apollo project cost? Something like 4% GDP for 10 years. What did we get out of it? How much did the Space Shuttle cost? What did we get out of it? How much does 1 month of war in Iraq cost? $10 billion for a space elevator? Multiply it by a factor of 10, and it would still be a bargain, and we would get far more out of it than improved access to space. I don't care if it's 20 years from now or 200, the space elevator, when built, will be a game changer.