Petey's Pipeline E-zine

Issue #29

April 17, 2006

Business First A Clean Green Moneymaking Machine
Random Ramblings & Miscellaneous Musings Innovative Ideas Lead to Energy Independence
Write Thinking Mistakes Bear Unintended Consequences

Business First (Editorial)

A Clean Green Moneymaking Machine
by Phil Hanson

Looking for the next big business opportunity? Looking for a job with potential for long-term stability? Maybe it's time to hang up your dreams of instant wealth from running a copycat business on the Internet. Maybe it's time to start living in the real world, a world that grows increasingly warmer, a world where toxic pollutants threaten air, land and water, a world where increasing numbers of species find it difficult, if not impossible, to survive. These are the problems, and wherever problems exist, you find the seeds of opportunity.

Green technology is poised to provide the next real-world business, investment, entrepreneurial and job opportunities, particularly in energy-related fields. These include alternative and renewable energy resources such as solar, wind, hydrogen fuel cells, and biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel.

In the next two decades, green technology will reinvent transportation and other energy-using systems in much the same way that computer technology reinvented communications and other information gathering/storage/retrieval systems during the final quarter of the 20th century.

Part of green energy research will focus on maximizing energy-use efficiency in manufacturing processes, transportation, home heating, lighting and appliances, and other energy consuming systems and processes prevalent in today's consumer society.

Recycling, nanotechnology, air and water purification and environmental cleanup all stand to benefit from the clean green technology revolution. Clean green is destined to be the next big economic opportunity, one likely to impact all areas of the economy for the foreseeable future.

Already, venture capital is fronting the money as it prepares to follow the money. The true believers in venture capital firms invested 35% more in green technology in 2005 than they did in 2004, a clear indication that green technology is about to take over the lead in the race to outrageous economic fortune.

You can choose to be aboard the gravy train when it leaves the station. Or not!

• • •

Petey's Pipeline Blog has finally found a home at Blog Spot. Check out Petey's Pipeline Blog at http://peteys-pipeline.blogspot.com/.

Feel free to respond to blog postings at any time. Whether you agree or disagree, your thoughtful, carefully considered comments are welcome. However, anything suggestive of a temper tantrum, psychotic episode or hysteria will be deleted.

Running a spelling check on your text before making posts is strongly encouraged. Perfect Text, Petey's Pipeline E-zine and Petey's Pipeline Blog exist, in part, to make all of us better writers. Let's not defeat that purpose by being hasty or becoming careless.

Random Ramblings & Miscellaneous Musings

Innovative Ideas Lead to Energy Independence
by Phil Hanson

As growing global populations drive up energy use, traditional energy suppliers will be increasingly hard-pressed to keep up with demand. Now is the time for outside-the-box thinkers to come out of the box and unleash a mindstorm of creativity.

Few people understand the magnitude of the problem; fewer still understand that no single solution, short of a massive human die-off, can bring the demand for energy and available energy supplies into equilibrium. It's going to take more than a paradigm shift; it's going to take paradigm replacement, on several fronts, to bring the growing disparity back into sustainable balance.

Reducing energy demand is a necessary starting place, but there must be incentives and viable alternatives in place for any reduction plan to work. Energy rationing, user fees, consumption taxes, and energy credits are but a few of the tactics that can be used to reduce demands for energy by an insatiable public.

Once demand is under control, creative approaches to energy exploration and exploitation can go a long way toward ensuring that humans have a sufficient supply of energy resources to meet current and future needs.

In my editorial Reclaiming Wasted Energy (Issue #28) I broached a novel idea for generating power from energy expenditures that otherwise serve little or no useful purpose. If you thought that was a radical idea, what comes next will blow you away.

In the U.S. alone, one third of the population meets the clinical definition of obese. Another third are merely overweight, including a fifth of all school children. These statistics are disturbing in that they foretell the downfall of a once-great nation.

For how long will the fit 1/3 of our population be willing to fight battles on foreign soil to secure access to fossil fuel so that the unfit 2/3 can continue to drive the oversized vehicles they need to haul their oversized bodies around?

For how long will they be willing to wage war to liberate our oil from Iraq (and, soon, Iran and Venezuela) without a huge pay increase? Trust me, if the military rebels or goes on strike we'll be in deeper shit than we already are.

There are trillions of calories of stored heat energy locked up inside the bodies of nearly 200,000,000 overweight Americans. If there were a way to tap into this previously untapped source of energy, the U.S. could achieve energy independence and, at the same time, avert an escalating health crisis.

Well, there is a way, and it's probably easier and more practical than anyone thought. Can you spell l-i-p-o-s-u-c-t-i-o-n? Soon, anyone who feels apprehensive about their weight, or feels the need to shed a few pounds, can go to the nearest Exxon/Mobil Liposuction Clinic and make a donation (not altogether different than donating blood to the Red Cross).

The extracted lipids could then be rendered and converted into biodiesel for use as motor fuel or home heating oil.

Postmortem lipid extraction, in addition to expanding the nation's energy supply, will be a boon to pallbearers, too. The downside is that some physicians might suffer financial repercussions due to fewer incidences of hernias, back injuries and muscle strains.

In their ongoing efforts to identify and develop new energy resources, energy researchers and innovators must overlook nothing.

Like gold, energy is where you find it.

Write Thinking

Mistakes Bear Unintended Consequences

Not long ago I read an e-newsletter where the author/editor/publisher wrote, "Bare with me," in reference to something she was trying to explain. By the time I stopped laughing, I'd lost the urge to respond to her unintended gaffe with one of my own. Still, it would be gratifying to see the look on her face when I tell her I'll have to see a recent photo of her before I can agree to her generous invitation.

The context of the writer's article makes clear that she wasn't purposely making sexual overtures toward her readers. Obviously, she was victimized by her own lack of knowledge of the English language. Clearly, she meant, "Bear with me."

Mistaking sound-alike words is one of the most common errors writers make when they rely too heavily on spell checkers and not heavily enough on an acquired knowledge of the nuances of language.

The words listed below are among those that are commonly mistaken or misused:

air, ere, err, heir; bare, bear; boar, boor, bore; bole, boll, bowl; capital, capitol; cent, scent, sent; cite, sight, site; council, counsel; dew, do, due; earn, erne, urn; feat, feet, fete; flew, flu, flue; meat, meet, mete; oar, or, ore; pair, pare, pear; peak, peek, pique; poor, pore, pour; principal, principle; rain, reign, rein; raise, raze, rays; right, rite, write; sole, soul; sew, so, sow; stationary, stationery; to, too, two; vain, vane, vein; vice, vise; waist, waste

This is only a partial list; it's not all-inclusive. There are many other examples of sound-alike words that cause problems for unwary writers. Make yourself familiar with them. Your readers will have more confidence in you when you stop confusing them.

Disclaimer

The articles appearing in Petey's Pipeline E-zine are based on information believed to be true at the time of publication. Neither Perfecttext.com, Petey's Pipeline E-zine nor their publisher assume any liability or responsibility as to the accuracy or efficacy of any information, products or services that are submitted, advertised or rendered by contributors to Petey's Pipeline E-zine. While we make every effort to screen out scam artists and bogus offers, you should still do your homework. Caveat emptor!

Top of Page

E-zine Archive

Proofreading • Editing • Freelance Writing
www.perfecttext.com