Monday, June 13, 2011

Great headset, with mike, for your iPhone (these are hard to find in stores)

Perhaps you saw where the World Health Organization said that holding a cell phone close to your head "might cause cancer".  Who knows (no pun intended), but it makes sense that holding a device emitting so much microwave frequency energy right next to your head is probably not a good idea.

So you would think it would be easy to find a headset, with a mike, for your iPhone.  Not so!  It took us a long time to find this great product, and we have test driven it for over a year, and given away a couple of them.  I have spoken with many other folks who have looked and looked on the racks in stores, for something like this.  You can find Bluetooth devices (could be problematic, as well), ear buds (which tend to fall out of your ears), etc., but it is just plain difficult to find a headset with a mike, in a store.  The cord is really not that difficult to get used to, and the volume goes way up on this unit.  You can wear it slightly in front of your ears so you can hear what is going on around you, at the same time.  Neat product, so we feature it here:






They were $50, now they are only $24.95, so we are going to stock up on a few more, in case they go away, like great products sometimes do ...

A snip from 2009, Mechanical Engineering magazine

Recently, in cleaning out some articles we found this piece of clarity, from the August 2009 issue of Mechanical Engineering, the magazine of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME):

excerpts from: the Oil Age, by Frank Wicks

"Most oil producing countries have passed peak production.  The United States had been an exporter until production peaked in 1970.  It now relies on imports for about 60 % of the 20 million barrels per day that the country consumes."

"Another rough estimate is that the world started the Oil Age with about two trillion barrels of recoverable oil.  About half of that has been extracted.  The remaining trillion barrels represent about a 30 year supply at the current rate of consumption and will be much more difficult to recover."  [MP Note:  Unfortunately, it won't be possible to extract the last trillion barrels over 30 years, due to the physics of flow through porous media; so the rate of consumption will have to drop, each year.  A good guess would be that the last trillion barrels might last around 80 years - and in order to do that, the rate of extraction will have to drop continuously, and precipitously, once again due to physical constraints, not due to man.]

"The fundamental problem is that oil is too good.  It is required for most things that we do.  The alternatives are mostly inferior or less acceptable.  Adapting to the next half and the end of the Oil Age may be the greatest challenge our civilization has ever had to face."   [emphasis is ours]

Is it any wonder everyone's confused? Saudi's boost output ...

From Bloomberg, June 10, 2011:




Oil Falls the Most in Four Weeks on Saudi Output, Economy
Crude oil tumbled the most in four weeks after al-Hayat newspaper reported Saudi Arabia will raise oil production to 10 million barrels a day next month. Source: Bloomberg
June 8 (Bloomberg) -- Fadel Gheit, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., talks about the outlook for Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' oil production. OPEC ministers were unable to reach a decision on production quotas at their meeting in Vienna today. Gheit speaks with Betty Liu and Dominic Chu on Bloomberg Television's "In the Loop." (Source: Bloomberg)
Saudi Arabia signaled it’s ready to deliver on a pledge to boost the supply of oil after the collapse of OPEC talks two days ago.
The world’s largest oil exporter will increase production, though it’s too early to say by how much, a Saudi industry official with knowledge of the matter who declined to be identified said today. Al-Hayat, citing senior officials, reported earlier that the kingdom will boost output to 10 million barrels a day in July from the current 8.8 million. Oil fell as much as 3.3 percent, the most in three weeks.
Saudi Arabia “wants everyone to understand that they’re serious,” Olivier Jakob, an analyst at Petromatrix GmbH in Zug, Switzerland, said today by phone. “It’s important that the Saudis are signaling that they’re offering additional barrels.”
The June 8 meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Export Countries broke down after six nations led by Iran opposed a Saudi plan to replace lost output from Libya and aid the U.S. economic recovery, Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said on the day. The kingdom, along with Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, wanted to increase production by 1.5 million barrels a day. OPEC accounts for 40 percent of global supply.