Gas Prices

A Facebook friend stole this from someone and reposted it, so I stole it from him.

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I keep hearing people complain that gasoline is over $4.00 a gallon. And yes, I'd love to see it at $2.00 again. But before we declare gasoline the most outrageously expensive liquid on Earth, let's put things in perspective.

For $4.00, I get a GALLON of gasoline. I pour it into a 4,000-pound machine, turn a key, and that gallon will haul me, my wife, the groceries, the golf clubs and half the junk in my trunk almost 30 miles down the highway.

That's actually a pretty impressive day's work for $4.00.

Now let's compare.

A restaurant sells me a 5-ounce glass of wine for $9. That's about $230 a gallon. And how far does it transport me? Usually from the dinner table to the men's room.

A fancy coffee shop can charge $6 for a 16-ounce latte. That's $48 a gallon. It doesn't transport me 30 miles. It transports me from "Leave me alone" to "Okay, now you may speak."

Bottled water at a convenience store might be $2.50 for 20 ounces. That's $16 a gallon, for something that occasionally falls out of the sky FOR FREE.

A 12-ounce energy drink at $3.50 works out to more than $37 a gallon. Apparently caffeine becomes a precious mineral once you put lightning bolts on the can.

Buy one of those little 2-ounce bottles of "energy shot" for $3. That's $192 a gallon. At that price, it shouldn't give me energy. It should mow my lawn.

Maple syrup at $8 for a 12-ounce bottle? About $85 a gallon. And its principal technological achievement is making pancakes sticky.

Vanilla extract at $6 for two ounces? That's $384 a gallon. For $384, I expect the vanilla bean to come to my house and bake the cookies.

Printer ink can cost thousands of dollars per gallon. And unlike gasoline, it sometimes refuses to come out because the printer has decided cyan is low.

Even that $9 glass of wine deserves another look. At roughly $230 a gallon, filling a typical 15-gallon gas tank with restaurant wine would cost about $3,450.

Of course, after drinking 15 gallons of wine, transportation would no longer be your biggest concern.

So yes, $4.00 gasoline is expensive.

But it's also a remarkable bargain when you think about what you're buying. You're purchasing enough concentrated energy to push several thousand pounds of steel, glass, groceries and humanity nearly 30 miles.

Meanwhile, we'll cheerfully pay $6 for coffee, $9 for wine and $3 for water, then stand at the gas pump staring at the numbers like we're watching the national debt clock.

Maybe gasoline doesn't need better pricing.

Maybe it just needs a fancier name. "Handcrafted Premium Petroleum, locally pumped, small-batch refined, with subtle notes of octane and dinosaur." Put it in a 12-ounce artisan bottle and charge $14.

We'll line up around the block.

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To me, this is common sense. You get what you want and have to pay the market price for the products. Restrict the supply, you get higher prices. Increase demand, you get higher prices.

Walking is good for you

From my email --

Walking can add minutes to your life.This enables you at 85 years old to spend an additional 5 months in a nursing home at $7000 per month.

My grandpa started walking five miles a day when he was 60. Now he's 97 years old and we don't know where the hell he is.

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.

The only reason I would take up walking is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.

I have to walk early in the morning, before my brain figures out what I'm doing....

I joined a health club last year, spent about 400 bucks. Haven't lost a pound. Apparently you have to go there....

Every time I hear the dirty word 'exercise', I wash my mouth out with chocolate. I do have flabby thighs, but fortunately my stomach covers them.

The advantage of exercising every day is so when you die, they'll say, 'Well, she looks good doesn't she.'

If you are going to try cross-country skiing, start with a small country.

I know I got a lot of exercise the last few years,......just getting over the hill.

We all get heavier as we get older, because there's a lot more information in our heads.That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Every time I start thinking too much about how I look, I just find a Happy Hour and by the time I leave, I look just fine.

Have you heard about this?

From my email:

The U. S.. Geological Service issued a report in April 2008 that only scientists and oil men knew was coming, but man was it big. It was a revised report (it hadn't been updated since '95) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota; western South Dakota; and extreme eastern Montana ..... check THIS out:

The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels.

Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable... at $107 a barrel, we're looking at a resource base worth more than $5.3 trillion.'When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea.' says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature's financial analyst.'This sizable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years' reports The Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

It's a formation known as the Williston Basin, but is more commonly referred to as the 'Bakken.' And it stretches from Northern Montana, through North Dakota and into Canada.

For years, U. S. oil exploration has been considered a dead end. Even the 'Big Oil' companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken's massive reserves.... and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels.

And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL!That's enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 41 years straight.2. And if THAT didn't throw you on the floor, then this next one should - because it's from TWO YEARS AGO!

U. S. Oil Discovery- Largest Reserve in the World! Stansberry Report Online - 4/20/2006 Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world. It is more than 2 TRILLION barrels.

On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. In three and a half years of high oil prices, none has been extracted. With this motherload of oil why are we still fighting over off-shore drilling?

They reported this stunning news: We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth. Here are the official estimates:- 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia- 18-times as much oil as Iraq- 21-times as much oil as Kuwait- 22-times as much oil as Iran- 500-times as much oil as Yemen- and it's all right here in the Western United States .

HOW can this BE? HOW can we NOT BE extracting this? Because the environmentalists and others have blocked all efforts to help America become independent of foreign oil! Again, we are letting a small group of people dictate our lives and our economy.....WHY?

James Bartis, lead researcher with the study says we've got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East -more than 2 TRILLION barrels untapped. That's more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in the world today, reports The Denver Post.

Don't think 'OPEC' will drop its price - even with this find? Think again! It's all about the competitive marketplace, - it has to. Think OPEC just might be funding the environmentalists?

Got your attention/ire up yet? Hope so!

By the way...this is all true. Check it out at the link below!!!

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911