I think my username speaks for itself, it needs no explanation. However I have since wished that I had just used my real name. I really don't see a need for names that keep your identity anonymous. I think it all started in the heyday of CB radio when everyone had a “handle”.

A joke, circa the 1970s: Someone invented a computer that could talk to people according to their IQs.

A man approached who had an IQ of 150. The computer started talking to the man about Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Then a man approached with an IQ of 100. The computer started discussing sports, politics and religion.

Then a man approached with an IQ of 85. The computer asked: "Hey there good buddy, what’s your handle?"

Ron Patterson

I'm a Deadhead, and neither Sugar Magnolia nor Dark Star felt right for my name.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20dic8S3cWI

While many handles do speak for themselves, I am also curious about the stories behind the various contributors. "x" comes to mind.

My handle is fairly straightforward.

I have been fooling around with computers since the late 70's. My first VAX account name was sgage. My email address has always been sgage@something-or-other. Whenever I need to "register" for a forum or suchlike, I always try to use sgage. If I have to, I add a number or something. Nice and short, and just one less thing to remember.

Oh, btw, my name is Steve Gage.

My name was chosen pure cowardice. I had plans to, and still may, create a "start-up" business in connected with IT. Since IT people, and thus IT financiers, do web-searches compulsively I didn't want any chance of my name or known screen-name coming up with suggestions that I think BAU may not be possible in the near future. (I think almost all people "spin" their views to align with powerful people they hope to gain favours from, this story just makes it open and explicit in that I was thinking about it consciously in advance.) So I switched to another tab in my web-browser and chose the first long-ish word my eyes fixated on as a user name. I've never had anything to do with embryos, nor was I thinking about being "embryonic in my knowledge of PO" at the time. It's purely a random name.

(I use a different, consistent screen-name on virtually every other site.)

I worked for the US Fortune 500 technology company Xerox Corp for all my working life (except for the first six months) as a multi skilled Technical Consultant - I was called a 'specialist' by my managers, actually I am a 'generalist'.

My job was to fix difficult problems on the company's flagship product, the complex $500,000 high speed laser printer, iGen3 - the buck stopped with me from the East Coast of the US, East to India and all countries in between, after 33 years of that I was a fully qualified 'Xeroid'.

Since reading TOD I have discovered I have an INTJ personality type, I think there are several of us here!

http://typelogic.com/intj.html

Despite that everyone might think "Rockman" refers to my being a geologist it doesn't. It a referrence to my stubborness. If you don't believe just ask my wife.

I was a Customer Engineer (Field Service Engineer) for Applied Materials for 12 years. In 2000 I was promoted to CE 3.

Customer Engineer 3 2000

I liked amateur photography as a kid, and also wanted to indicate what part of the US I lived in, so appended my phone number area code.

I have tried to consistently use it in all internet activities, as then it is easy to self-research using google and such. It is also really easy to tell new friends, that if they ever want to get back in touch, just google 'mrflash818'

No where near as interesting a name choice as many, but I am probably in the 'good buddy' joke range :)

Mine is a nick name for my ex-wife.

ENTP

straight sexual preference

OOPS, to much information.

This guy is 94 so he has to be sincere.

http://tvnz.co.nz/close-up/extra-jaques-fresco-s-venus-project-25-05-vid...

I never really meant to post on this login, I just set it up so that I could keep track of what I'd already read.

Then I started posting and now it seems just too much trouble to change it.

My real name's Dan, so at least my handle is more distinctive ^^

Back in the days, I had such good eyesight that I could see microscopic protozoa with my bare eyes, even their nuclei in big, living ones swimming in thin walled tubes. Santa Lucia is the patron saint of eyesight and at the time I was doing Zoology in the river Santa Lucía, in a South American country. I saw a bug, less than a millimeter long creeping on some wet stone, caught it, and I baptized it M. santaluciae. That's why.
Many years before another zoologist had described some Protozoa in the guts of a water snail, he had some doubts about them. Pity he had to fix and dye them to study these microscopic ciliates.
I could see them alive, and some were Red and some not!
Easy peasy. So thanks to the saint with the pretty eyes on the gold plate.

I chose Road Warrior because those films are still the best portrayal of the post-peak Dark Ages that I’ve seen. I even look a little like Mad Max, with my leather outfit, shotgun and mutt sidekick. I haven’t added assless chaps to my wardrobe yet, but that may come later.

My handle comes from my interest in Astrology.. Native is the term used to describe you and the present birth you have:

ETYMOLOGY:
Middle English, from Old French natif, from Latin ntvus, from ntus, past participle of nsc, to be born; see gen- in Indo-European roots

No real story involved, but that might represent a class of others as well.

I had been reading for awhile and becoming fond of the forum and comments; I don't post anywhere else in the world, period. The first several names I tried were taken. Moreover, at the time it seemed like there was a hint of purposeful idiosyncratic opacity involved with many names within the subculture, in somewhat the manner of New Yorker cartoons, so I went with that feel.

I kept it vague because that suited my feelings about blogging in general. It's a name nobody else would conceivably want, and was meant to be temporary. Yet I found myself commenting more often and feeling more at home, which was a surprise and remains one.

Well, I'm a Hydrologist by trade, hence the "Water", and my totem animal is the "Weasel"(long story there).

And then, does anybody remember back in High School or Junior High a water weasel was a rubber tube with a pen tip? Fill it up by jamming it in to a water faucet, hold your finger over the tip, or point and spray. This was before they had those "super-soaker" water guns, but same effect. And you threaded it up your sleave so you had the element of surprise.

Dragonfly41, nice thread.

Zadok_the_Priest

Partly, because Zadok is a character who surrounds himself with the wise (think Solomon), immerses himself in current events, and is neither afraid to get involved nor to take action.

Partly, because in real life, my job handle means I work Sundays and holidays. High Church Anglican.

Partly, because I like the Handel. Pun intended:-)

And yes, I am not shy about using my name.

Tom Henderson.

Sterling silver is 92.5% pure silver. If you check inside a piece of silver jewelry it will say "sterling." Other times simply 925. If it says nothing it's probably just pot metal.

I beat on (cast, form, and stamp) sterling silver to make jewelry. My wife's pretty well decked out but I don't sell much ;-)

I cast coins with my scrap in a tuffa mold. Look kind of ancient.

I live in Western North Carolina. I tend to post observations - commentary, from a generalist, multi-disciplinary perspective - rather than techie analyses with lots of colorful charts and graphs. Also, mountaintops were usually where the observer corps were posted, as they are good vantage points from which to survey the surrounding area. Still are.

When I post comments on other sites I usually use some variation of my name or location. I felt like a change here, so since all my work tends toward putting together watershed and stormwater plans, "waterplanner" seemed to fit.

Fuser is the nickname Ernesto Guevara had before he adopted the nick name Che. It's loosely translated as "The Angry One".

I'm interested in the fate of exurb areas post peak. I grew up in suburbia but worked in very rural areas and have since set up a exurban place.

Exurbs are often neglected in the conversation concerning rural vs. urban future viability and yet there are millions in the US living on hobby farms, ranchetts, and hideaways within say 50 miles of some large urban center.

About 20 years ago I started calling myself in print "The Old Woodchuck" in honor of my old woodchuck grandfather. Oldchuck is just the short form. I use it elsewhere. It is simple and easy to remember

Well, my "real" name is obviously Todd; especially since I've had a couple of key posts with my surname too.

But, what I find interesting is how I was named "Todd." My dad's family has a lot of history behind it. Part of the family came over on the Mayflower; part appears to have been part of the Jamestown Colony; and another part is related to a French Count..way back when.

Still, why "Todd?" It goes back to my great grandmother. On her death bed she says to my folks, "Name your first son "Todd." Why? Will it turns out that some relative was Robert Todd Lincoln's law partner and this was meant to honor him

Now I have to tell you that I'm 71 and NO ONE was named "Todd" back then. I used to envy name patches that people sew onto their work clothes. There was Ralph, Joe, Sam and on and on. But there wasn't any "Todd." People always asked me if "Todd" was a nickname for Theodore. No!

In fact it wasn't until college when I met someone who at least had the last name of "Todd."

Now, 71 years later there are lots of "Todds" but not when I was growing up - I was it!

Todd

Dragonfly,

If you want to be popular, just ask people to talk about themselves!

I chose Consumer because that is my relation to oil, and more broadly, my relation to the world at the moment. I am a consumer of resources. That is how I have been defined. We in the U.S. are no longer referred to as "citizens", we are now "consumers". The sad thing is that the change is probably an accurate reflection of reality.

I have a couple of names I'm considering if I ever make the changes I want to. If I get myself to a more sustainable, PO prepared life, I will celebrate by changing my user name.

Mine's fairly obvious, but I'd like to vote for the TOD'er with the most creative moniker: Joules Burn

Mine is pretty straightforward. I'm a Canadian from Toronto; Canuck is a slang term for Canadian. I am also quite left wing (even for Toronto.) I was looking for a handle that combined these facts. Pat Buchannan made an insult against Canada in 2002, referring to our country as "Soviet Canuckistan". So it made sense to me to reclaim the insult and neuter it. However, I was not alone in this thought; if I'd known how many other Canuckistanis there are out there, I would have thought up something else. Also, it's hard to remember how to spell it (I'm always putting an "a" in place of the first "i"...and it takes a while to type...next time, fewer letters.)

"pi" just came out when I started typing something random to see what the keys would say when I decided to register. It was strange. I`m not a mathematician. But I did enjoy studying calculus and geometry back in high school so maybe that`s why I liked the name when my fingers typed it and I decided to keep it. I liked that it was short.

I later found out that economic cycles can (maybe) be calculated using days which are multiplied by pi (3.1415 times 1000). (Something called a pi-cycle). I don`t know much about this. But the person who argues for this insists that the basis for his theory is that energy flows through an economic system. So maybe the circumference of a circle is important in someway for that? Energy spreading outward like a circle....as each cycle of economic expansion is made, the needs of the system increase not linearly but exponentially.

I also like the shape of the Greek letter for "pi".

Also it`s an irrational number, and people have been quite irrational about oil, I think. In general, people can`t be rational...maybe. That is why we have these environmental problems!

Dragonfly41, first, thanks for such a delightful thread. It helps to learn more about those whose comments you read, and those who may read your comments.

I am an RVer, meaning I live in a portable home. In my case it is a 5th wheel trailer pulled by a pickup truck. My wife and I have been doing it for the past 12 years on a full-time basis. I had one of the first "blogs" online in 1998 at www.twopennytravels.com. At that time it was called a "web log" complete with GPS coordinates and weather as we traveled. It is amazing how things have progressed since those times.

I wrote a couple of books about the potential calamity of another major earthquake on the New Madrid Fault, and got into the problems of trying to teach people to recognize risk and do something about it. I began trying to find ways to be more self-contained, and got into solar power and LED lighting. When my LED light supplier asked me to sell his products, I chose the name PrudentRVer, and set up a website at www.prudentrver.com to sell LEDs and teach people to save power and live frugally. About the same time I stumbled across www.TheOilDrum.com. I also found www.CalculatedRiskblog.com, www.theAutomaticEarth.blogspot.com and some other high-grade, thought-provoking commentary.

I continue to be an avid reader of all the ideas and comments posted on TOD and other sources of reasoned, contemplative thought. I see in those blogs the efforts to warn people of resource depletion and climate change as well as the same frustrations I have had in trying to warn people in Memphis and the like of the need for earthquake preparation and planning.

Wife and I are now 73 and slowing down. Less travel, but we are still full-timing, keeping our wheels on the ground and ready to roll. Now, it is a matter of being able to escape a calamity if it happens as well as continuing to seek the best environment in which to live.

So my handle is a suggestion to everyone: be far-sighted, thrifty, wise, frugal, vigilant, & wary. In other words, be prudent in your choices. Someday it will make the difference.

Sam Penny
the Prudent RVer

710:

1. If you take 710, subtract the number of the beast, 666, add it to the year I was born, 1968, you get the year the world will end according to the Mayans, 2012.
2. Repeated application of the 80/20 rule on a planet with about 7 billion people results in about 700 people influencing 10% of everything.
3. It's "OIL" upside-down.

This Is how I felt when I became peak oil aware, hence the name

This Is how I felt when I became peak oil aware, hence the name

I use my real (Christian) name on this and other 'serious' boards. One web sites that are likely to degenerate into flame wars I use an anonymous moniker.

Because I sometimes post details of my personal and family life which might impact on my family if I was fully open, I keep my full name private. That way I can be more open and honest, and at least on this site I try to avoid hyperbole.

TOD handle comes from my post secondary education. I am an Environmental Technologist - don't take that as leaning towards a technocorpian attitude, it isn't. Rather I saw it as a method to enter a very stable and unlikely to disappear field of work/expertise, that being the supply of drinking water.

I can remember in '94 my Environmental Technology class professor, stating that oil was only likely to "be around" for another 50 years at most - I figured Water was a relatively 'peak resistant' field to take on as an occupation. Here's hoping.....

I use the same moniker in every forum and it dates back a dozen years or so. I was just sitting and looking for a descriptive and unique name, and came up with this one.

I found that my character and ability to think had been "freed up"# when I moved to New Orleans, so I wanted to be defined by that.

Certainly less evocative than many others, but it suits me (despite the # of letters required to type).

Alan

# I believe that the explanation for New Orleans bizarrely high level of creativity is the absence of social pressure to conform.

but I can't be sure.

chuckled at that.

Andre Angelantoni == aangel

Plus, back in 03 and 04 I had a camp at Burning Man in which we dressed as angels, created an Altar of Acknowledgement and asked people what acts of love, kindness or courage they had never been acknowledged for. Then we acknowledged the kind of people they were to express that in the world. I think our altar was was of the best places in all of BM because it's pretty much impossible not to have love present when acknowledgment is present.

People do some truly amazing things that we found out only because we asked. The whole camp became experts at acknowledgment and after being acknowledged some people would come back a few hours later dragging their friends and saying, "You've got to acknowledge this wonderful person!", which we promptly did for whatever act they told us. We wrote down each acknowledgment on a giant scroll, which got burned on Sunday night during the Temple Burn. The temple burn of course is to remind us all that we are just borrowing these molecules for a spell and then we give them back to the universe for who knows what purpose (if any).

The first year we acknowledged about 500 people the second year we acknowledged over 900 people. I've been thinking of going back this year to Burning Man because it's been way too long and I miss the vibe there.

This was the Temple the first year I attended at sunset, then lit up at night, then at ground level during the day:

BTW, those are seats in the picture above. On the left are people writing out whatever they are "giving" or "releasing" to the fire or perhaps they leave behind a picture of someone they've lost. The Temple space was magical, especially on the top floor looking out over miles of desert at all the people biking to check out the next art installation or just wandering around the desert meeting people.

It was very sad watching the Temple burn, it was so beautiful, but that's the other point: to feel.

Click refresh on the Image Gallery page to see some of the wonderful art and costumes people create:
http://www.burningman.com

I gather that you are no relation to Holden Caulfield. ;-)

He, (Holden Caulfield), finds the hypocrisy and ugliness of the world around him almost unbearable, and through his cynicism he tries to protect himself from the pain and disappointment of the adult world.

I have found that cynicism doesn't really help.

Ron P.

Always liked your nomiker.

Wow! It looks like someone chucked The One Ring into it!

that first is one of the most amazing shots I have seen of a volcanic eruption.

I cannot believe what I read - that the flight cancellations have disrupted importation of fruits and flowers into the UK from Africa - it's really profitable to load high-bulk items like that and fly them that far?

That would be great, Navigator. Hopefully our paths cross.

I mentioned this further up, but to add to that, but basically OPEC is near peak supply - except for are about three unusual things also affecting 'supply'.

KSA appears to have some capacity to increase supply, but mostly of lower quality oil that is not desired by refiners (beyond the amount they currently use). Due to US and UN sanctions, Iran is ending up with some oil that can't be sold. Finally there have been at least three attempts to either hijack and/or severely damage oil tankers this last month, although it is unclear to me if there are zero, one, or two tankers currently under control of 'pirates'.

So in sum, OPEC is lying by saying that lack of supply is not driving prices.

It's another brick in the Great Oil Wall China is building. Inside the Wall are oil supplies and reserves unavailable to American bidding.

And the ethanol blend wall is near:

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20100418/BUSINESS01/4180338/Eth...

Ethanol production now runs at about 1 billion gallons per month nationally. The 12 billion gallons to be produced this year will push close to saturating the 130 billion gallons of gasoline U.S. motorists will buy this year.

The blend wall effectively kills cellulosic ethanol as well as Brazilian ethanol. Brazilian ethanol has its own sugar price production wall as well.

Oil exporters have hit a wall as Westexas often points out. And looming just ahead is the Peak Oil production wall according to the Pentagon and many posters on this site.

The United States is having walls built around liquid fuel supplies by ourselves, others and geology.

All in all the move by China is just another brick in the wall:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_bvT-DGcWw

This news plus the recent sale to China by Conoco of its oil sands interests for $5 billion last week is evidence of China securing oil that the US had thought was headed for the US.

The U.S. political system at the Fed level is preoccupied with the battle for party dominance. It is so all consuming, that efforts to secure our energy future in a manner similar to what China is doing, are absent from the radar screen. Once oil production begins to descend from its current peak plateau, the U.S. will be so unprepared, their leaders will claim it as a big surpise. And, yes, it will be a big surprise to them because they were busy lobbing insults instead of procuring contracts, acting as obstructionists instead of enablers, because the battle for party dominance is much more important than energy security. Well, I guess that must be the case, because that's their motus opperandi.

I believe that the term 'Peak Oil' is indeed anathema in both the dominant media outlets/networks, as well as in office and personal conversation.

Like many others here, I am very circumspect about mentioning resource depletion, limits-to-growth, over-population, pollution, changes/simplifications/downshifts in the consumerist American (U.S.) lifestyle...you get the picture.

I mentioned to my 20 year old son and 18 year-old daughter last week that their lifestyles will be different when they become my age (~25 years hence) when "gasoline will be $12 per gallon" (no analysis there, I was 'firing for effect'. No one else outside the family was present, and my wife 'shhshed' me and said that I was being ridiculous with such talk... She said that gasoline would never reach that price, and, in fact, that the price at the pump had been remarkably stable. She is very intelligent in general, but she has definite 'no go' conversation areas, and obviously fears 'unhappy talk' about the future.

Again, as many have said at one time or another on this forum, maybe her attitude leads to happiness... 'ignorance is bliss'. Also, as many have opined here, maybe the price will never get that high due to economic factors (recession, unemployment, demand destruction) and folks will never realize that peak oil was a contributing factor.

Many people I know ape the 'drill, baby, drill' mantra, the 'it's all the fault of environmentalists', 'the government strangles the FF industry with egregious taxes and regulations', etc. Many of them would likely elect Don Blankenship for Congress.

I understand the thinking by certain of the TOD staff that 'the PO debate is over' and that the site should move on, and that is their prerogative, but outside of our own bubble I think the matter is not only not decided amongst the masses, but it is not even on the radar for most.

As far as the U.S military's 'getting it', we will know the DoD 'get's it' when it commits to replacing its current Arleigh Burke DDGs (Guided-Missile Destroyers) and Ticonderoga CGs (Guided Missile 'cruisers') with nuclear-powered vessels. Currently, only aircraft carriers and subs use nuke propulsion.

A CRS report summary mentioning the oil-nuclear cost issue here:

http://opencrs.com/document/RL33946/

I am a proponent of reducing U.S. military spending and our tendency towards empire...but barring that, if the U.S. decided to recapitalize its DDGs and CGs, if they choose nuclear then you will know they really 'get it' wrt PO.

Another signal would be from the airline industry: If more turboprops are fielded, and 'open rotor' Un-ducted fan-powered airliners are fielded, then we will know the airline industry and the airframe manufacturers 'get it', since there are RDT&E, maintenance, noise, speed, altitide (ceiling), and passenger perception penalties to these designs. Only more expensive jet fuel costs will trump these issues.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/12/nasa_open_rotor_trials/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propfan

http://www.atraircraft.com/

No, I do not work for airframe or engine Mfrs, nor naval shipyards or naval nuke power plant mfrs., nor do I own stock in them (directly anyway).

Thanks for this report from New Zealand. For years now a lot of doomers have been advocating NZ as a good bet for a PO retreat. Obviously they are going to be in a lot of trouble just like everywhere else. I still think the southern hemisphere will be a better place to be though - probably avoid most of the fallout.

Odd. I also live in NZ and yet would not recognise it from microhydro's description - but then we carefully chose to live on the mainland (the South island) where there are few Maori/imported Pacific islanders - and very much reduced racial tensions/gang activity.

The North island will not be such a happy place post-peakoil; mind you its all relative - it will still be a lot happier than 90% of the rest of the world. Certainly it will be just fine for the JAFA's.

We will have pretty efficient border controls for entry to the mainland by 2015 I suspect - so don't all try and rush down here (particularly if your from that desert island to the west of us).

Consider today an experiment in a post peak world. I now know who I would invite to live in my tribe and who I would not. Thanks.

Meanwhile the stock market knows no bounds, as it keeps marching upward without any security blanket level with which to adhere

Futures are well down at the moment.
http://money.cnn.com/data/premarket/index.html

U.S. Stock Futures
Data as of 7:11am ET

S&P -25.20 / -2.09%
Level 1,183.30

Nasdaq -32.75 / -1.61%
Level 2,002.00

Dow -141.00 / -1.27%
Level 10,936.00