YouTube Founders Explain their sale to Google for 1.6Bil

Real video announcement here.

Move to Moscow

Today there was a big announcement at work that one third of our department will be relocating to Moscow. The move makes perfect sense as it will probably cut down on some of the many flights that are made to and from Russia. My team doesn't know yet how it will be affected but I can tell you it will be a very warm January night in Red Square before I move over there. Life is cheap there and the Russians don't play fair by any stretch of the imagination. A senior TNK-BP offical was recently shot down during tough "negotiations" with Gazprom over a contested gas field. Reporters are also being shot for making Putin look bad. And plus, it's cold and very inaccessible for my wheelchair. This probably has mucked up my immediate plans for a return to Canada though...

Sakhalin Island Pics

For those that don't know, Sakhalin Island on the East Coast of Russia is where my current team is looking for oil.
Flaring is not so politically correct anymore but it still goes on.
Oil found by this rig could find its way to your gas tank in about 10-15 years.

Aleksey Vayner's Investment Banking Video Resume

This guy is absolutely classic. His resume is full of B.S. but this video resume has spread like wildfire and landed him in the international news. He has turned into a laughingstock though, probably for these outrageous claims:

• claimed to have KILLED 24 people in the caves of Tibet
• claimed that he has trouble flying on planes because he has to register his hands as lethal weapons each time he goes to an airport
• claimed to be one of four people in the state of Connecticut qualified to handle nuclear waste
• claimed "I am not certified in any Western sense of the word, neither in Chinese medicine, Tui-Na, Shaolin trauma medicine, nor in acupuncture, all of which I practice extensively never-the-less", and on and on....

Dallas and the iBot 4000

Yesterday I made a quick trip up to Dallas to demo an electric wheelchair that is based on the same technology as the Segways. The thing was really a great machine. It could drive up and over curbs, stand up on two of the four wheels and balance and even go up a flight of stairs (with minor assistance). I forgot my camera so I only have cell phone pics. What was really impressive was the balance mode that would raise me to eye level with a walking person. The rep for Johnson & Johnson even pushed on me as hard as he could and the chair just pushed back as shown in one of the clips below. When he let go, it swung over like a pendulum until it found the center again. Really cool stuff. It has been in the works for over a decade and is just now hitting the mass market. The chair is quite expensive though so it remains a dream for now.

Weird Fish

This fish was seen 122 meters below the surface by a ROV doing subsea well work in the North Sea. It kinda makes me wonder about evolution. Watch the clip to the end and see the big fish swim by him. I got this video off a Russian in the office this week. He was scared to let me download the clip to a BP computer because he was suspicous of his computer being infected by a Chinese spy virus. This is serious stuff with corporate espionage being a very real deal when you compete with the Chinese.

The Sheep and the Media Shepherd

"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." James Madison

I watched for years as the CBC in Canada demonized western conservative politicians because they threatened the Eastern Establishment. The media manipulation was so obvious it was sickening. It happens south of the border too. When President Clinton was drowning in the criminality of his Administration, from involvement in Whitewater bribery to the many "suicides" of associates, the media chose to focus on a sexual scandal that would suck up all the airtime and titillate the public.

Now, the media is feeding us a constant diet of Rep. Foley sex scandal as if it were the most important thing happening in the world. Dirt on Foley has been known for months if not years in Washington. Why did the media sit on it until now? Why, to trot it out when a snow-job is needed. What is this sex scandal covering for? Some say it is a partisan plot to hurt the Republicans before the election in November. Others say it is to create a replacement excuse for the Republican meltdown over Iraq. The real reason is the controversial "Terrorism Detainee Bill", which happened to pass Congress the exact same time the Foley Scandal broke. The bill:

• Allows the indefinite imprisonment of any U.S. or non-citizen (eliminates the right of Habeas Corpus) at the will of the President
• Allows the President to define what torture is permissible under the Geneva Convention
• Allows incriminating evidence to be obtain through "coercive interrogation tactics" (i.e. simulated drowning call "waterboarding" that was used by the KGB on "unlawfuls" such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn)
• Gives members of the current administration retroactive immunity for any war crimes committed after 9-11-2001
• Is justified by a war against terrorism that has no end.

How significant is a online sex-chat in the face of these implications?

Chicago Trip

Patricia and I had a chance to look around Chicago a bit after I was done with my work at BP's office outside Chicago in Warrenville. There are a lot of architecturally significant buildings there, along with all the associated symbology. For example, the most prominent building in Chicago (Sears Tower) is located in Zip Code 60606. Next door at the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) I was disappointed that they no longer allow visitors post 9-11. The driver we had into Chicago was a former member of the Army Air Calvary who actually flew into Iran in the special ops attempt to rescue the hostages held in 1979-1980. He said that he was caught between a Special Forces commander who had 32 of the hostages found and ready to go, and a colonel who said to leave them behind unless they had every last one. No pressure. He was also fully aware that Saddam attacked Kuwait in Gulf War One because Kuwait was directionally drilling under the border into Iraqi oil fields and stealing oil. Needless to say he was pretty disillusioned by the whole set up of military action through mass media manipulation that continues to this day in Iraq. Left picture is me on the BP bridge over millenium park and on the right is of me in front of the former BP-Amoco building that looks like a smaller version of the WTC. We took a boat tour up the Chicago River which was interesting. The highlight was the comedy show we took in at Second City. I didn't realize that Second City is like a rite of passage for comedians - almost everyone of note has been there, from Alan Alda to Mike Myers, John Candy, Stephen Cobert and on and on. It was really funny and I realized that the lady I chatted with out front before the show (while I waited to find out the accessible entrance) was one of the six performers. She played dumb with me while she had a pre-performance smoke and we discussed all the former performers names on the "wall of fame."