nanocompendium

If all the atheists left the USA, it would lose 93% of the National Academy of Sciences but less than 1% of the prison population.

— ascribed to Scott Hurst

In 2035, the average real price of crude oil in the Reference case is about $145 per barrel in 2010 dollars, or about $230 per barrel in nominal dollars.

— Projections in the Annual Energy Outlook 2012

(Source: eia.gov)

…imagine my astonishment when the newest threat to free speech has come from none other but the United States. Two bills currently making their way through congress — SOPA and PIPA — give the US government and copyright holders extraordinary powers including the ability to hijack DNS and censor search results (and this is even without so much as a proper court trial). While I support their goal of reducing copyright infringement (which I don’t believe these acts would accomplish), I am shocked that our lawmakers would contemplate such measures that would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world.

— Sergey Brin (via azspot)

Most Americans won’t notice these lost opportunities. They don’t get out much or realize America’s growing backwardness. They don’t comprehend that a modern rail network, including high-speed rail, is a given is every populous advanced nation. They are stuck in 1970, when gas was cheap, when we had 100 million fewer people and less congested urban areas, when in many places it was like those car ads on television that show only one vehicle on an empty road. Somehow they think highways and airlines aren’t subsidized; they think many things that are not true, including this. Every transportation system is subsidized. In our case, we just have fewer choices. It’s an outrage that there are not frequent and fast trains linking, say, Phoenix and LA, Phoenix and Tucson. No, they’re happy to spend a huge portion of our lives stuck in traffic, changing the planet for the worse. Too bad that reality, in the form of oil scarcity and higher prices, increasing congestion and, ooops, climate change, will throttle these American delusions.

— Rogue Columnist (via azspot)