ZeroDibs

Found a pretty cool website the other day that basically puts all the best open source software in one place. The website is:

http://www.zerodibs.com/

I already have most of the programs that suit my daily life like Firefox and Openoffice, but there are definitely a few on there that I need to get. There are a few different genres on the site that you can look through, but the top ten pretty much gave me what I needed. Check it out before spending money on an overvalued product.

Oil dependancy

I have been struggling with the notion of how to alleviate the worlds dependence on oil, and more importantly foreign oil, for a while now. Not being able to produce all of the energy a country consumes is a risky situation during this chapter of human history. It allows other countries or cartels, OPEC, to influence how much you pay for a commodity, oil, that you need in order to survive.
Just as the Dutch dominated the Spice Trade in the 1600's, OPEC today dominates the market for oil, and has a lot of power over anyone that imports oil. This includes almost every country, notably all of the countries in the OECD.
In 2008, the Energy Information Administration calculated that the world consumed 85,462,000 barrels a day, which was down from previous years, I assume due to the financial crisis, and went back up in 2009 according to the CIA World Fact Book to 94,595,650 barrels per day.
That being said, we use oil with just about everything we do. Entire industries and economies rely on oil, and the more we import oil and refuse to accept the fact that we need different sources of energy the faster the US will fall from its position as a hegemonic power.