One of the delights of science is its capacity for showing us that the world is not as it seems. A good example is the startling statistic that there are at least 10 times as many bacterial cells (belonging to up to 1,000 species) in your gut as there are human cells in your entire body: that "you" are actually an entire microbial zoo as well as a person. You are 90% microbes by cell count, though not by volume -- a handy reminder of just how small bacteria are. It has been clear for a long time that the microbes in your gut are not just passengers but colleagues that help with the digestion of food: releasing vitamins, breaking down toxins and metabolizing nutrients into more useful forms. What's becoming clear from such experiments is that they are also vital to the immune system's capacity to fight infection. It's as if they train the body's defense forces. For instance, breast-fed babies, whose gut microbes are dominated by creatures called bifidobacteria, are less likely than formula-fed babies to suffer not only from diarrhea but also from allergies later in life.

[Last Saturday (6/30), Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders delivered this speech at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver, Colorado.] Thank you, dear friends, ladies and gentlemen, for inviting me to the Western Conservative Summit. It is always a pleasure to come to America. I was here a few weeks ago to meet with my dear friend, congresswoman Michele Bachmann, to talk about Islam and the threat to America and Europe. I feel honored to have been invited to address you today about the situation in Europe and in particular in my own country, the Netherlands. This situation serves as a warning to what might happen in America if you fail to be vigilant. For make no mistake: Islam is also coming for America. Indeed, it has already arrived. Your country, too, is facing a stealth jihad - an Islamic attempt to introduce Sharia law bit by bit. Islam demands separate campus housing for Moslems; Islam demands that women have separate hours in gyms and swimming pools; schools are banning Christmas celebrations and are taking pork off their cafeteria menus to avoid offending Moslem students. And courts - even in America, we have seen an example in Florida - have begun to apply Sharia law. Be aware that this is only the beginning.

Last week in Part 1 of this series, The Dynamics of Crude, we discussed refineries and products.  Now we move to Logistics of Crude Oil and Refinery Products. Although Ayn Rand's 1957 novel "Atlas Shrugged" portrayed rail as important, especially for Wyatt's Refinery, rail was on its way out by the end of WWII.  Today's major transportation methods are via pipeline and water (barge & ship).  The reason is quite simple: loading and receiving infrastructure. Here is a great description of both crude oil and refined product pipelines from 2001:  How Pipelines Make the Oil Market Work. I have read lots of supposedly learned pundits wailing away how Warren Buffett and BNSF Railroad are going transport all that Canadian crude oil when Obama announced that he was blocking the Keystone XL's construction.  This is impossibly dumb -so dumb that Jack Wheeler is convinced it isn't dumb at all, that it's a crony capitalist payoff to Buffett for his supporting Zero.  Buffett bought BNSF for $34 billion in 2009, counting on graft from Zero to provide his ROI.

After celebrating her 60th year on the throne in style this past week, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II can now look forward to breaking some more records. She is already, at 86, Britain's oldest monarch (were she to die now, her son would immediately be the 12th oldest). On Sept. 10, 2015, she would pass Queen Victoria to become the longest-reigning monarch in British history. To beat Louis XIV (who succeeded to the throne at the age of 4) for the longest reign in European history, she would have to live to 98. Elizabeth II is still going strong, but the maximum human lifespan isn't rising at anything like the rate of average life expectancy, which is rushing upward globally at the rate of about three months a year, mainly because of progress against premature mortality. Indeed, we may already have hit some kind of limit for maximum lifespan-perhaps because natural selection, with its strict focus on reproductive success, has no particular need to preserve genes that would keep us going to 150.

This is Part I of a series on the changing dynamics of the single most important energy source for our economy, and will be for the foreseeable future - crude oil.  First, we all must know and agree that not all crude oil is the same.  Each source of crude oil has a different chemical and physical make up, and how it is refined into all its various products (just for gasoline and diesel would make all but the most remote refineries a black hole for investors). Further, types of crude oil being utilized in refineries have changed over the years. The days of the simple refinery consisting of a crude unit to heat and fractionate crude into say gasoline, diesel, kerosene (jet fuel) and fuel oil is long gone. 

The latest news from the EU Crisis Front:  Southern Europe's debtor states must pledge their gold reserves and national treasure as collateral under a €2.3 trillion stabilization plan gaining momentum in Germany.  The German scheme -- known as the European Redemption Pact -- offers a form of "Eurobonds Lite" that can be squared with the German constitution and breaks the political logjam. It is a highly creative way out of the debt crisis, but is not a soft option for Italy, Spain, Portugal, and other states in trouble. The plan is drafted by the German Council of Economic Experts and inspired by Alexander Hamilton's Sinking Fund in the United States -- created in 1790 to clean up the morass of debts left by the Revolutionary War. Flourishing Virginia was comparable to Germany today. Germany would have a lockhold over the fund, able to enforce discipline. Each state would have to pledge 20% of their debt as collateral. "The assets could be taken from the country's currency and gold reserves. The collateral nominated would only be used in the event that a country does not meet its payment obligations," said the proposal. This demand could enflame opinion in Italy and Portugal. Both states have kept their bullion, resisting the rush to sell by Britain and others. Italy has 2,451 tons of gold, valued at €98bn in March.

Today (5/220, Fitch Ratings has downgraded Japan two notches to A+ -- just above Spain and Italy -- citing a surge in public debt since the Lehman crisis and the lack of any plan to restore fiscal probity. Key indicators are deteriorating on almost every front, raising concerns that the world's third largest economy is running aground after two "Lost Decades". Japan's debt has jumped by 61 percentage points of GDP since 2008, compared to eight points for the AAA bloc. Public debt is expected to reach 239% of GDP this year, uncharted levels for a major economy in peace-time. `Net debt' - subtracting Japan's vast holdings of foreign bonds - is nearer 137% but this is rising at an even steeper trajectory. "Japan's addiction to public sector spending is way beyond the boundaries or remedial `austerity'," said Dylan Grice from Societe Generale. "Political pressure on the Bank of Japan to crank the printing presses into top gear will become irresistible. We see no alternative."

If they did not put our troops, our citizens and our country at risk, the Left's fantastic lies about terror and terrorists would be hilarious.  The problem, of course, is that many of our national leaders have been brainwashed with the same slogans.  The Left has mastered another technique dictators forged long ago: Repeat a lie often enough and it will be taken as truth.    And, of course, our media play along. So let's give the slogan-hucksters a brief time-out and dissect just seven of their favorite lines: One:  Killing terrorists only turns them into martyrs.  Nope.  Killing terrorists turns them into dead terrorists. 

Yesterday in Jerusalem (5/09), a new unity Israeli government was created by a deal between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud Party, and Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz.  Together they have 94 out of 120 seats in the Knesset. Bibi has made a very smart move.  Netanyahu was presented with an offer he'd be an idiot to refuse. In return for essentially nothing, he built himself the strongest and largest coalition Israel has ever seen. Here's how it works.

On April 1 and May 27 of last year, two tiny tremors were detected by seismographs with magnitudes of 2.3 and 1.5 in England's Blackpool region of Lancashire.  They are being blamed on fracking.  The same claim is being made in Ohio. It is now official: drilling for shale gas by fracturing rock with water may rattle the odd teacup. But is highly unlikely to cause damaging earthquakes. That much has been obvious to anybody who has followed the development of the shale gas industry in America over the past ten years. More than 25,000 wells drilled have caused a handful of micro-seismic events that can barely be felt. To call a two-magnitude tremor an earthquake is a bit like calling a hazelnut lunch. Such tremors happen naturally more than 15 times a year in Blackpool but go unnoticed and they are a common consequence of many other forms of underground work such as coalmining and geothermal drilling. So can we now get on with fracking and get over fear of it? The economic and environmental benefits are vast.

"A conservative," the old cliché goes, "is a liberal who has been mugged." But some liberals who are mugged refuse to admit that it happened. Observe the rough treatment to which the new American ambassador in Moscow, Michael McFaul, has been subjected since his appointment last January. Since his arrival, the ambassador has been constantly accused in the media of stirring up anti-government protests, and lately he has been ambushed by Russian state-TV crews at his meetings, official and unofficial, suggesting that his phone was tapped. This comes on top of numerous other strong indications that the Obama administration's attempts to "reset" relations with Russia - a policy spearheaded by Mr. McFaul - have failed. But while McFaul has complained loudly about his recent treatment, he does not seem to realize that he, along with his boss Hillary Clinton, have been mugged in a much broader sense.