On Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:18:45 -0600, Kurt Lochner wrote:

Jesus guys, can we elevate the discussion a little bit? If you guys would
swagger a little less, and put a little more effort into your research,
I'd find the discussion interesting (although off topic, what does this
have to do with home repair?).

Oil companies are thoroughly selfish entities, with a long standing record
of disregard for the law, not to mention human rights, the environment
(and the children who inherent the ****ed up planet their constructing),
etc. I completely agree.

On the other hand, if you make a claim, you should be able to back it up.
If you can't, you have to qualify your claims by saying that your sources
are unreliable (your personal human memory and judgement, like mine, are
unreliable). If you admit what parts of your argument are verifiable
fact, and what parts are conjecture, analysis, and conclusion, you improve
your own credibility, while at the same time you force yourself to look at
how sound your opinions and conclusions really are.

Is todays oil shortage manufactured? Well, it could be. I certainly
wouldn't put it past the oil companies. On the other hand I have yet to
see any convincing evidence to support the claim.

On a side note, I'm oh so tired of this "Al Gore claimed he invented the
internet" meme. If you pull that lame-ass joke, you are just showing that
you don't bother to research your claims. I was watching the political
campaign where that lie got propagated, so I can verify it first hand.
But since I'm not a reliable source, consider snopes.com:
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp

What Al Gore did say was:

"During my service in the U.S. congress, I took the initiative in
creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole
range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's
economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in out
educational system".

Okay, his phrasing is crappy, but he's not saying he 'invented' the
internet. What he is claiming, and accurately, is that he was partially
responsible, in an economic and legislative sense, for the technology
which makes up the internet. All the other bull**** political spin. It
amazes me that people are still willing to parade their willfull ignorance
in an attempt to further propagate this myth.