College Tuition has Skyrocketed by 439%
Why does a college education cost so much?
“For more than two decades, colleges and universities across the country have been jacking up tuition at a faster rate than costs have risen on any other major product or service - four times faster than the overall inflation rate and faster even than increases in the price of gasoline or health care (see the chart to the right). The result: After adjusting for financial aid, the amount families pay for college has skyrocketed 439% since 1982.”
It certainly isn’t the quality of the teaching - most of your children are being taught by graduates students, and not the exalted professor’s for whom you chose the prestigious college or univerity. Once again, why does the cost keep rising?
The answer: Just keeping up with the Joneses!
“In the absence of any objective measure of the value of an education, price becomes the default yardstick. The more expensive a college is, the better the education it presumably provides. (After all, if other families were willing to pay this much to send their kids here, it must be worth it.)”
Source: CNNMoney.com
USGS Survey of Oil and Gas in Arctic Circle
A new US Geological Survey Report estimates the Arctic could hold “approximately 90 billion barrels of oil, 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids.” Key point in the report however, “approximately 84% of oil and gas reserves occur offshore.” Long time before it comes to market.
Source: USGS
Dyes Turn Window Glass Into Solar Concentrators
In the future window glass will be used as a solar concentrator to funnel the suns light to high voltage solar cells at the edge of the glass and produce electricity. A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology “has found a way to coat panes of glass or plastic with a mixture of several dyes that essentially replace the mirrors that are typically used as solar concentrators.
Source: BBC Technology News
Thin Film Solar Applications - Paint, Curtains
Architect Sheila Kennedy demonstrates how thin film could be used on textiles, in this case curtains, to capture solar radiation and turn it into energy. At present these are cost prohibitive, but the point is that alternative solar energy ideas are advancing beyond big silicon based solar panels.
The Swansea Solar Paint project aims to develop a solar coating that can be painted on to building products.
Source: Inhabitat
Peak Oil or Hefty Undisclosed Reserves
The book Plan B 3.0 goes into great detail to emphasize the coming decline of oil:
“discoveries of conventional oil total roughly 2 trillion barrels, of which 1 trillion barrels have been extracted so far”
“The whole world has now been seismically searched and picked over,’ says independent geologist Colin Campbell ‘Geological knowledge has improved enormously in the past 30 years and it is almost inconceivable now that major fields remain to be found.”
But this is just a myth according to Richard Pike, chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry. The oil companies have just not disclosed how much is really available.
“the published estimates of proven global reserves are less than half the true amount”
