A recent Economist article (short version online: Really Big Oil; full print edition "Oil's Dark Secret", Aug 12th 2006) took a look at the distribution of oil reserves around the planet. As much oil as Exxon, Chevron and the other big companies control, they only represent something like 10% of all reserves worldwide. That's not much.

So who has the other 90%?

Individual governments, like Saudi Arabia and Venuzuela, and those state-controlled oil reserves are sold into the market, too (ever bought gas from Citgo? That's a Venezuelan state-controlled oil company). The whole process of who controls, buys and sells oil is fascinating to me. Everyone wants oil, especially the countries that don't have enough to meet their own demands. The U.S. is obviously at the front -- we use more oil than everyone else combined -- but China is on a steep incline of oil consumption (they're the second largest consumer of energy worldwide).

It's interesting then to see that Venezuela is really kicking up oil production for China (China seals oil deal with Chavez). It's good news for China, as this increase will help them continue to meet their increased domestic demands for oil. But it's also good news for Venezuela, because Chavez can sell more oil to China and - more importantly - less oil to the U.S., all without decreasing overall Venuezuelan oil exports.

So what? For starters, U.S. gas prices will probably go up a bit (Venezuelan oil imports are about 12% of total imported oil), but that could be the last straw holding together the already-weak U.S./Venezuelan relations. Without Venezuelan oil to buy, and it seems possible that Bush and his war-crazy hotheads will insist we go down to Venezuela and kick their asses to "protect freedom" (also known as, "take control of the Venezuelan government in order to protect U.S. interests in their oil supply").

And there you have it: our next "war".

The word "macchiato" means "spotted" or "marked" in Italian. My drink of choice lately has been a double espresso macchiato, which is a double espresso marked with steamed or foamed milk. If it's made with steamed milk, it's "wet"; otherwise it's "dry" with foamed milk. Ratio-wise, my favorite coffee house makes it 1:1 ratio of espresso to milk, but other places use different amounts.

I'm sitting in Starbucks (not my favorite coffee house) right now. I got into a bit of a discussion about how to make this drink for me, since it wasn't part of their regular menu, hence the quick read-up and this post. Anyway, once I sat down, almost as though on cue, the barista walked around asking if anyone wanted a free caramel macchiato. Somebody made the wrong drink, I guess. I don't really know what's in a caramel macchiato, but I think it's a made-up, Starbucks-only drink.

So... nobody was interested, and she swore she was throwing that poor drink in the trash! For shame! Can't let that happen! It's now sitting here beside me, waiting for me to digest the double espresso macchiato I just drank like 4 minutes ago. I suspect I'll be awake late tonight...

This is brilliant! A group of scammers contacted AT&T claiming to be the owners of a pizza restaurant who were having phone problems. They asked AT&T to please forward all incoming calls to a new, different phone number. So all the scammers had to do was sit back, wait for people to order pizza, and insist they pre-pay for over the phone. Whaddya know, it worked like a charm. And why not? The customers initiated the call!

Pizza fraudsters get a slice of the action

When I was a kid, I idolized Steve Vai (along with several other guitar heroes, most of whom I don't listen to anymore). As an adult, I listen to very few guitar shredders, but if I do it's likely to be Vai, and even more likely a track off Passion and Warfare.

Anyway, I randomly stumbled upon vai.com and found the Video Vault. They've got a big ol' notice saying not to link to the individual videos, and it says they rotate videos often, so who knows what's up there right now. Go check it out for some whizbang guitar hero goodness.

Here are some bandwidth tests I use, and they usually produce reasonable-looking results.

• speakeasy.net
• dslreports.com

I regularly use OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle, and I'm still giddy about OmniDazzle. So I'm excited to hear that the Omni Group is offering a free trial of a new project management application for OS X. It's called OmniPlan. I haven't tried it yet, but they have a great reputation for making useful, intuitive applications, and I'm looking forward to giving it a whirl.