Happy St Patrick's Day!

Well, I just had a nice post about Friday night that will now be reduced to one sentence because of stupid wireless connections. I went to 5 pubs, stole the guinness pint glasses at the first and emptied the remnants out on the floor of the second because they charged me too much for alcohol, saw my friends, ate a delicious tortellini dinner and went to bed late.

Saturday I bounced out of bed at 10 to 7 and made my way to Notting Hill where my friend Sarah smuggled me aboard a bus bound for Stratford-upon-Avon and Warwick castle. I had originally planned to head up to Stratford at the end of April for the weekend, but now that I had the chance to get up there for free I jumped at it. Wouldn't have to pay for rail costs, hostel, entrance fees, several meals, etc. I probably saved 50 or 60 quid and only had to pay for lunch and snacks. What a deal! After visiting Startford, I was also quite happy I went today because I would have had a hard time spending a day in Startford and a half day at the castle, and transportation logistics would resemble a nightmare as that part of England is off the main line rail services. And I just freed up a weekend for myself at the end of April so it all worked out quite well. Warwick was quite nice with splendid views of the country side, but the hour and a half we had there was not quite enough. The castle itself is still inhabited, yet keeps its medieval feel to it. It was started as a moat and bailey about a millenia ago, and the very old parts of the castle still exist. Pretty sweet. Stratford was OK, perhaps the cold and very windy conditions put me off a bit, though there were some nice streets, buildings, theatres and walking paths along the avon and the London-Birmingham canal. The thing with Stratford is that the entire city seems to be centred around Shakespear, whom I find enjoyable in small doses, but not in the size of an entire town. Just to get into the Shakespear centre and his house cost 7 quid. I didn't go in, but it took the others about 25 minutes to go through it. I had some decent fish and chips so that always makes any situation better.

I just watched a CNN special about the future of the world if we take various paths down the road of energy independence. This is reaching Brits at 11PM on a Saturday night, but is it reaching the US? They showed clips of the congressional hearings and testimony of the oil execs and I became well pissed off (see my previous post) over the audacity of their words. I am pretty much frustrated over the whole situation, and the way CNN reports it makes it seems so black and white, but in reality is nothing like that. Example: Brasil is close to declaring "energy independence" because of its massive sugar cane ethanol program. 40% of transport fuel comes from sugar, and in the next 10 years, almost all of it will (compare this with 3% of US fuel that comes from corn-ethanol). CNN implied that these refineries were "sustainable." The fibre from the cane fueled the plant, now all that is needed is is fuel for the trucks, harvestors and other vehicles. It seems all well and good and CNN asked why the US hadn't emulated the Brasilian system. As I understand it there is a significant energy conversion between sugar cane and corn. Also, Brasil is as large as, if not larger than the US, with a smaller population that consumes fewer gallons of fuel will have a less difficult time supplying their own biofuel. I say "less than" because I am sure there will be competition for land use, but not on the scale there would be if a Brasilian biofuel economy were directly placed into the US. Another mantra: there is no replacement that is as powerful, as readily avaiable and as abundant in source as gasoline.

So it seems my posts are becoming more and more combined. I am thinking I should split my blog into 2: one political/financial/energy and the other about my observations and life in London and potentially elsewhere in the world. This could be too time consuming though, so for now I will keep them as one.