Portrait of a Predicament: Putin's Face, or Medvedev's?

Ordinary Russians are also snapping up pictures, according to Maria Valiyeva, who works in a photo shop in central Moscow. "People are buying them for their offices, for presents and for themselves," she said. "We had a couple who bought a portrait of Medvedev and Putin together and the wife said, 'It's for our bedroom.' "

I've got some blank space on my wall that needs some decoration, so I was hoping that allposters.com had a Putin/Medvedev portrait, but when I typed in "Putin" this was the only result:

UGH?!?!?! Seriously WTF?

Posted by Lindsay at 09:12 PM | Permalink | Comments? (0) | TrackBacks (0) |  Subscribe in a reader |

Tomorrow afternoon I am heading to NYC for the weekend. Hopefully, this trip will be free of idiotic cab drivers and the resulting bloodshed. I have no desire to become involved in multiple lawsuits.

I am going there with some Russophile friends, and we intend to make this a Russified weekend. We will be visiting a banya, followed by a trip to Brighton Beach (aka Little Odessa) to purchase Russian products and gorge ourselves on Russian and Georgian cuisine. Since I will not be taking an international vacation this year (depressing, I know), I have dubbed this my fake Eastern Europe vacation.

Tracy, one of my former roommates at GWU, has been kind enough to let me crash at her apartment while she is in Italy. This note accompanied the set of keys that she mailed me:

Lindsay,

No wild parties and don't drink all of my vodka.

- Tracy

Damn, I wasn't that bad of a roommate, was I?

Posted by Lindsay at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments? (2) | TrackBacks (0) |  Subscribe in a reader |

The results of a recent Field Poll on Californians and their views on various energy issues were released today. Here are a few of the questions that were asked, and the breakdown of the responses received:

"The building of tanker terminals, pipelines and facilities for liquefied natural gas should be allowed in California."

63% agree, 19% disagree, 18% no opinion

"The building of more nuclear power plants should be allowed in California."

50% agree, 41% disagree 9% no opinion

"Oil companies should be allowed to drill more oil and gas wells in state tidelands along the California seacoast."

43% agree, 51% disagree, 6% no opinion

"Current government restrictions prohibiting the drilling of oil and gas wells on government parklands and forest reserves should be relaxed."

44% agree, 52% disagree, 4% no opinion

Honestly, I was a bit surprised by these results. I expected that the opposition to LNG facilities, nuclear plants, and oil drilling would be much higher (especially the LNG facilities. I'm guessing they didn't poll Pierce Brosnan, Ryan Seacrest, and David Duchovny).

Personally, I am in favor of expanding offshore drilling. Apparently my views are even having a bit of influence on my mom. When I called her a month or so ago, she and my dad had just started driving home from a weekend in Santa Barbara.

"We are passing the oil rigs. You know, you can barely see them out there. I don't know why they just don't put up a few hundred more out there."

Word.

Posted by Lindsay at 12:23 AM | Permalink | Comments? (0) | TrackBacks (0) |  Subscribe in a reader |

This op-ed by by Kenneth Medlock is one of the better ones out there:

According to the Department of Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS), the OCS in the Lower 48 states currently under moratorium holds 19 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil. Some analysts claim that opening the OCS will not matter that much, as the quantity of oil is only about two years of U.S. consumption. But a more appropriate way to look at the issue is this: If the OCS could provide additional production of 1 million barrels per day of oil, our import dependence on Persian Gulf crude oil would be reduced by about 40 percent. Moreover, at 1 million barrels per day, the currently blocked OCS resource would last about 50 years.

Of course, opening the OCS will not bring immediate supplies because it would take time to organize the lease sales and then develop the supply delivery infrastructure. However, as development progressed, the expected growth in supply would have an effect on market sentiment and eventually prices. Thus, opening the OCS should be viewed as a relevant part of a larger strategy to help ease prices over time because an increase in activity in the OCS would generally improve expectations about future oil supplies.

Lifting the current moratorium in the OCS would also provide almost 80 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable natural gas that is currently off-limits. A recent study by the Baker Institute indicates that removing current restrictions on resource development in the OCS would reduce future liquefied natural gas import dependence of the United States and lessen the influence of any future gas producers' cartel.

[...]

Lifting the moratorium in the outer continental shelf should not be rejected on the grounds that it will not provide an immediate, "silver bullet" solution. Ultimately, we must develop a comprehensive energy strategy that encompasses a portfolio of options including drilling, conservation, energy efficiency and alternative energy.

Posted by Lindsay at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments? (0) | TrackBacks (0) |  Subscribe in a reader |

As I've mentioned before, Southern California was the site of several major oil discoveries in the early 1900s, and was the main driving force behind the growth and economic success of the region. Although California's oil production has decreased significantly over the years, many wells throughout the state are still pumping a combined 762,000 barrels of oil per day. Some of them are even located in the urban areas of Los Angeles County, near locations such as the Beverly Center mall and Beverly Hills High School. This is an interesting article about the hidden oil wells of Beverly Hills, which produced almost 1 million barrels of crude oil in 2007.

Britney Spears, Jay Z, Adam Sandler and Plains Exploration and Production Co. have one thing in common. They've all been sighted at Beverly Center, an eight- level mall near Beverly Hills, where celebrities shop for clothes and the oil company pumps crude.

The rising price of oil, which hit a record $142.99 a barrel today, has sent exploration companies scurrying to squeeze additional supplies from the fields underlying Los Angeles and its celebrity-rich neighbor.

California, the fourth-biggest U.S. producer of crude, behind Louisiana, Texas and Alaska, has received 16 percent more notices from owners planning to rework old wells this year, while plans to drill new ones are up 23 percent from 12 months ago, according to state Department of Conservation data.

"In the Middle East you might have 300 barrels of oil per cubic acre, but in the Los Angeles Basin you might have 4,000 barrels per cubic acre,'' says Mike Edwards, vice president of Denver-based Venoco Inc., which has 24 active wells in the Beverly Hills area, including one alongside Beverly Hills High School. ``In terms of the land that produces oil, the basin is very rich.''

Beverly Center's kidney-bean shape was designed to accommodate drilling. It's one of two sites within blocks of Beverly Hills, a city of about 35,000 where Houston-based Plains, the fourth-biggest producer in California, is expanding. The 26-year-old mall houses 160 retailers, including Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Burberry. Pumping operations are hidden behind a wall between Macy's and Bloomingdale's.

'Weird Things'

"This is one of those weird things about Los Angeles,'' says Jeff Brown, the mall's general manager. `"There are oil wells all over the place. Drive down the street, you see hotel, beautiful house, oil well. Here, I don't know if shoppers know there's one or not. They probably don't.''

Posted by Lindsay at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments? (0) | TrackBacks (0) |  Subscribe in a reader |

Yeah, this is pretty accurate:

(Via my new favorite website, Graphjam: "Pop Culture for People in Cubicles")

Posted by Lindsay at 05:39 PM | Permalink | Comments? (3) | TrackBacks (0) |  Subscribe in a reader |

I'm currently attending a three day course on ArcGIS so I can learn how to create cool looking maps and what not for my employer. Our first hands on exercise involved manipulating a map of roads, railroads, and donut shops (yes, donut shops) in Redlands, CA (I thought the reference to Redlands was pretty random until I learned that ESRI, the author of ArcGIS, is based in Redlands). Step six was:

"Now you will identify all donut shops that are within 1,000 meters (0.62 miles) of Interstate 10 for all those hungry commuters driving between Palm Springs to Los Angeles."

WTF? Who commutes from Palm Springs to Los Angeles (and has time to stop for donuts)? That's over 200 miles roundtrip.

Posted by Lindsay at 10:19 PM | Permalink | Comments? (3) | TrackBacks (0) |  Subscribe in a reader |