This blogging thing is catching on with me. Probably my writing instincts are awakening or may be I just have too much free time these days.

I read this poem today. Its by William Ernest Henley. Something about this poem touched me. Probably its what i want to be.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Right from the first verse this poem says "defiance, in face of all odds" in a way thats both very measured and very firm. Eminently quotable and frequently quoted, its something that really resonates with me. Especially the first four and last four lines.

Its 5:45 AM on a Friday.

I am writing this blog piece when I should be writing an assignment about customer segmentation in Indian markets.

Instead I read an article about "peak oil theory" and thought I should blog something about it.

I had this link from Slashdot.org which discusses an article about the world having passed its peak oil production point.

The wiki article is a good place to start if you want to know more about the peak oil theory. It links to some critics' articles as well. So you can study both sides of the picture.

Basically it says that the maximum oil production rate has been passed and now the productions per year are only going to see a decline. It seems the peak production date was on December 16th 2005. He somehow calculated that we have a total of 2.013 trillion barrels of oil reserves. This is done by some sort of extrapolation from some data points. I don't know if his estimates are right or wrong.

In fact everyone agrees that oil is finite and there will be a peak production point. The debate hinges on the point as to how much of oil actually is there and is retrievable. Doomsday Sayers believe it to be pretty low (2 trillion as above) and their critics peg this figure to be much higher (upwards of 3 trillion barrels) . There are lots of uncertainties in these figures because of various reasons: the major oil producing countries of today, i.e. the gulf countries, do not allow independent audits of their oil reserves, the technological and price pressures may make unfeasible oil reserves feasible and unexplored areas like central Asia and Antarctica etc.

If the doomsdayers are right then, the world today does not have much time before the oil production cant keep up with the demand and the small amount of time available would mean that alternative sources of energy and resource generation wont be available soon enough. This is going to translate into panic and consequent chaos.

But if they are not right, then the world has time to let science and technology find a viable source of energy which can replace oil, thus avoiding chaos.

Actually oil has two major types of uses: as an energy source and as a raw material for multitude of things that are made out of petroleum.

As an energy source, it is viable only till the point the energy cost of extraction of oil is less than the energy extracted in form of oil. Formally this is termed as Energy Return on Investment. It was 1 barrel of oil needed for 50 barrel of production in 1950s. Today it is around 1 barrel of oil needed for producing just 3-5 barrels of oil. So this means that the day when oil will be unviable to be used as energy source depends on how much oil reserves do we have. But anyway, the day when this ratio is going to become adverse does not seem very far off. But I think that even if the doomsayers are right, we will have time to switch to other power sources, most probably nuclear power. France already produces about 80% of its power requirements from nuclear power. The opposition to nuclear power is mostly from dangers of an accident which can be overcome/controlled by technological improvements. As far as nuclear waste handling is concerned, we will simply be storing them up for about 50-100 years. By that time we should have the technological resources to fling these wastes back into sun or out of earth at least.

As a raw material, it is going to be much more difficult to replace oil. And It will continue to be used as a raw material even when it costs much more to produce. There is not much we can do about it right now. There are no substitute products available. And in fact it is as a resource that all the biodiesel or shale oil or tar pit oil is going to be used. They are too expensive to be used as fuel.

So from my point of view, there might be oil shock, but it wont be as severe as doomsayers predict. In fact, I think, in next 10 years, we would see both china and India , the major consumers of oil as fuel switching to alternative energy sources, of which nuclear is the most prominent. That will ease the pressure on oil prices and oil extracted will be mainly used as raw material till science and technology can discover alternative ways (mostly biotechnology related) of producing oil.

But then it does not mean that we need be too worried about conserving oil and all. I think our future generations are going to curse us for wasting so much oil by burning it for fuel. And of course wastage of any resource is never a good thing. Who knows when you might need it for a rainy day.

Its been a long time since my first post. My diary writing skills are expressing themselves I think. But hopefully, I will be able to overcome them.

The problem is most of my posts tend to decend into serious self-analysis which is something I decided I would not do on this blog. I have some other blog for my rantings about my self. This blog was supposed to be for expressing my thoughts, not my feelings. And the posts so far refused to deal with my thoughts. So i refused to let them deal with their existance.

Anyway, coming to thoughts, the most recent thoughts I had were concerned about the rumors of Aishwarya and Abhishek marrriage. You see, I share my first name with this dude and of course any news regarding Aishwarya is really interesting. So there I was, browing through googlenews and i come across the headlines. Its a spicy piece of rumor and as a true i-hate-gossip-yet-buy-times-of-india guy, i looked around a bit. Seems junior bachchan's bro consulted some astrologer with their horoscopes, that astrologer talked to some media groups, people, in past, have seen abhishek and aish dancing togather and acting togather and naturally, consequently, they must be geting married.

I am not sure if the rumor is true or not. People do tend to rumor monger innocent conversations to into passionate liasons but as far as i know, images of both Abhishek and Aishwarya have been carefully managed. I doubt such a rumour would come up unless there was some reality or at least stage management of reality behind the scenes.

There was one comment in a report which was interesting -

A leading actor, on condition of anonymity, points out, “There seems to be a pattern in Aishwarya Rai’s relationships. She got involved with Salman Khan when he was at the peak of his career. She started seeing Viveik Oberoi when his career was on the upswing. And now that Abhishek is doing well, we hear that she’s seeing him.”

There does seem to be some sort of publicity management going on.

And with this inconsequential assumption of truth I will lay this blog to rest.