Oil Speculations...continued

In the New Yorker this month (I usually catch up on my issues during air travel), I read another article about oil speculation. This author also agrees that punishing the speculators isn't the answer to climbing oil prices, but he has a slightly different perspective.

A ruined woman

Most of the air travel I've ever done in my life has been spent sitting in a coach seat. You know, in the peon section. Not First Class. Not Business Class. Not even Economy Plus, whatever that means. I'm basically the passenger that barely got a ticket onto the Titanic - stuck in the bowels of the ship while the other passengers feast on duck and caviar.

So when I discovered that we travel Business Class across the Atlantic, I was super excited. The plush seat reclined a good 120 degrees. The leg rest came up. I even had lumbar support. The flight attendants served me vegetable lasagna and complimentary reisling and even ice cream for dessert. I had my own video monitor and a real blanket. "This is the way to travel," I thought. I knew then that I could never go back.

Until the flight back. The gods smiled upon me at Charles de Gaulle and I got upgraded to First Class. First Class across the Atlantic! No one has this kind of luck! The seat fully reclined into a bed - I got the best 3 hours of sleep on an airplane ever. Real pillows, a real quilt. A three course meal with salad, chilled carrot soup and tortellini. A choice of three desserts. My own little pod, where it was just me, my recliner and my cubby. An ameneties kit with toothbrush, mouthwash, toothpaste, lip balm, socks and face gel. When I got my "wake up" deli tray, I knew it was over. I was ruined forever.

I have another trip to the UK coming up in about three weeks. I'm slated for Business Class again. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can go back to Business Class. Now that I've tasted the duck and caviar, I just can't go back to the bowels of the ship. Maybe the Fergie gods will smile upon me again and grant me another First Class voyage.

A hop, skip and a jump over the pond

Today I leave for London and Paris! While most of the week in London will be spent doing actual work, we should have some time to enjoy the food and sights. Paris is purely for fun. I figured I flew 7 hours to get to Europe, I might as well enjoy things while I'm there.

The exciting thing is that the Tour de France will end in Paris on Sunday. I'm sure it'll be a mad house, but I'm thrilled to be able to watch it. We'll be squirming our way through the crowd, with cameras held high to catch the bikers on their final push home. Hopefully I'll get some good shots.

It's amazing, but it's been 7 years since I've been to Europe (wow, that makes me sound old). When I graduated college, my friend, Lindsey, and I backpacked for about a month through Europe, starting in London, circling around, and ending in Paris. My French has definitely rusted since then so I'm a little nervous about navigating around Paris, but I'm also excited to be back in two of my favorite European cities!

Enjoy the week!

SOS

In business school, Finance was never my strong point. There were concepts I found fascinating, but they seemed very nebulous to me, and lacked that concrete feel that you could wrap your brain around.

Last week, I received an e-mail from 12 airline CEOs, asking me to pressure congress to Stop Oil Speculation (SOS). Their argument: speculators have put upward pressure on oil prices, thereby causing their operating costs, and costs to the everyday consumer, to skyrocket. At the time, I didn't pay it much mind and deleted the e-mail.

But I came across it again this week. And I wondered if they had a point. Then I had a chance to read the counterargument by Walter Williams and all those lectures in Finance class came back to me. His argument: speculation allows for the distribution of resources over time. While speculation may increase prices a bit now, curtailing speculation now may decrease supply available in the future, thereby increasing prices by a lot more.

I think I have to side with Williams on this point. Yes, increased gas costs suck right now, but those prices will (hopefully) cause us to decrease demand (consumption) for oil, thereby increasing supply available.

Williams goes on to say that by drilling for American oil, we will effectively decrease the price of foreign oil. Even if we aren't able to realize the efforts of that drilling for another 5-10 years, OPEC will see the writing on the wall: increased supply will decrease prices in the future, so it's better to sell now while the cost per barrel is high. I agree, but...

Now we throw the environment into the equation. I do think we need to decrease our dependence on foreign oil, but I don't know if that means drilling at home. The implications mean a continued dependence on oil and the destruction of our environment. But Williams' construct should still hold true if we invest and invent new ways of creating energy - wind, solar, bio, nuclear. Some of these new ways means changing our infrastructure - wind power grids, more hydrogen fuel stations, easier access to biofuel - which could be costly and time consuming at the front end. But, like speculation, we have to look towards the future. The upfront cost now means a much lower cost for energy all around, including oil, in the future.

So increasing regulation on speculation isn't our answer. It's looking for alternatives at home and changing our mindsets as consumers. The higher prices supposedly caused, in part, by oil speculation may be the best thing that happens to this country.

And I like it

It's a guilty pleasure. I really like "I Kissed a Girl" by Katie Perry. It has a really good beat. And it's kind of a fun, naughty song.

The problem is, I find myself singing it softly in the grocery store, in the airport security line, in Starbucks. Then I realize that I'm singing, and what I'm singing, and I look around frantically, to see if anyone has heard me and mistaken me for, er, a girl who kisses other girls...and likes it.

The funny thing is, this song would never have made it on the radio if the genders were reversed and if it was sung by a boy:

I kissed a boy and I liked it
The taste of his cherry chapstick
I kissed a boy and I liked it
I hope my girlfriend don't mind it

Why is that? Why can a girl sing about kissing another girl and we love it, but no one would ever - has ever - heard a song about a boy kissing another boy. I don't know whether I should be insulted from a feminist point of view (is it OK for a women to be an object, a plaything and not for a man?) or a social one (do we favor lesbians over homosexual men?). Maybe I'm reading too much into the song.

In the meantime, I'll continue singing it (softly) to myself and hope no one comes to conclusions about my feminist or social points of view, based on the song I'm singing.

The best movie of all time?

I'm going to call it. Best movie. Hands down. And yes, it's an animation.

It's true, though. Pixar has given us another gem that is not just clever, not just creative, but pure genius. The movie has so many meanings on so many levels that it's something you can turn over again and again in your mind and find a new nugget to consider. On the surface, the movie is about a robot that follows his love to explore new things. But there are so many other things that it touches on - mainly a call to take our heads out of the sand and make a change. That change can be to reach out to humanity or reach out to our planet or discover a world outside of the one we know.

And it's moving - after the movie was over, not one moviegoer left their seat. We just all sat there, taking in what we just saw. Who would have thought that the greatest love story this year would be between two robots? And that that love could be conveyed with only three words spoken between the two (Wall-E, Eva, Directive)?

The animation is incredible - the moment the movie started, I forgot I was watching a cartoon; everything is so realistic. I can't believe that the animators can create humanity in a pair of two-dimensional robot eyes.

So if you're looking for a good place to plop down $9 this summer, go see Wall-E. It's an incredible movie and you won't be disappointed.

California or Bust

We had a terrific time on our vacation! Between drinking lots and lots of wine, we also went up in a hot air balloon, canoed the Russian River, went horseback riding through Jack London's Park, squirmed in mud baths, biked across the Golden Gate Bridge and ferried to Alcatrez.


Of the eight wineries we tasted at, our favorites were Kunde and Benzinger. We found some amazing "winery only" wines at Benzinger. Can't wait for our UPS shipment to make it's way to our front door so we can relive the grape adventure.


The vacation, of course, wouldn't have been quite the same without our friends Abby and Nathan. This marks our fourth annual vacation with them and we can't wait for next year. Now we just have to find another location that starts with a "C" (we've done Charleston, Cape Cod, Costa Rica and California).

The view from our balloon...Before the big climb to the Golden GateGrowing baby grapesThar she blows! Old Faithful Geyser near Calistoga

Why, you don't say...

Last week, I zipped off to Boston and Chicago for a project (I landed in Raleigh on Saturday night at midnight from vacation in California and then boarded a plane at 2:00pm the next day to Boston for work).

While there, I was working with an external consultant for the client. The consultant and I chatted during our few days together, but I never once told her about my love for New York or my stint up there one summer. She had no back story, no idea what New York meant to me.

We were in Chicago one afternoon and were walking from the facility to the hotel. In the middle of the sidewalk, some "kids" decided to form a circle to better talk to one another. In the middle of the sidewalk.

So my colleague and the consultant paused and walked around the circle. I just walked through the circle. The consultant said to me, "You negotiated that like a New Yorker."

I glowed for a full day. I think I still may be glowing.