Matthew Simmons, chairman of the Houston based energy investment bank Simmons and Co. International, talked recently with Bloomberg’s Rhonda Schaffler about the need to address energy use, his view that global supply has peaked and the likelihood oil prices could reach as much as $300 a barrel.

To have someone like this, with his credentials, appear on Bloomberg saying what he does is really quite amazing. Peak oil as a theory is coming of age and moving out of the tin foil hat arena.

Schaffler was quite humorous at one point, sounding as if she wasn’t prepared well enough for the interview. She seemed overly shocked to hear the $300 a barrel price tag, amazed that it’s already happening elsewhere and that certainly there must be something to do. As if magic will make more oil appear underground. No, sorry Rhonda, we need to cut oil use and prepare for further declines in the oil fields.

As a van dweller, who makes my vehicle my home, I do wonder what the economy of car living will be in the nearish future. When I currently get nine miles per gallon in city driving planning trips will mean a whole new thing when I tally the miles at a couple dollar per turn of the odometer.

youtube video here

The nights here are not so dangerously cold but I made some commitments that will tie me to couch surfing for another week or so. It’s a good thing over all but I do miss my van.

I like sleeping in my bed with my pillows and linens. I like reading with my LED flashlight. I like being in the small space where I feel all cozied and cocooned. I like the changing vista and the quiet. Sure there can be traffic noises but unlike an apartment I don’t have plumbing noises or people walking above me.

A couple things I miss about living in a home

The bathroom: Showers on your agenda, running water and a toilet. In a van you can use kitty litter bucket toilets and a big bowl for washing in. Living life like it’s 1850 really isn’t all so bad.

The oven: In a van it is rather difficult to make a frozen pizza or a properly made baked potato–the kind with crispy skin. A toaster oven could work and would allow for cheese toast but I’m not hooked to shore power enough to warrant carrying one. Though this wouldn’t work well for potatoes and pizza but fresh cheese toast on tap may make me not mind that so much. The refrigerator is nice too but I really don’t miss it when I van dwell. I’m quite happy with foods that are shelf stable.

Standing up: my van is not a high-top so being in a home allows for that pleasing upright stance so fitting of a descendent of homo erectus. But then in a van everything you have is so near that you don’t have far to walk. Mostly you can just lean or stretch to grab what you need.

As a brief recap: In 2004 three teen boys befriended Rex Baum, a homeless man, at his camp in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and drank beer with him. Before long they were brutally attacking him and ended up killing him. They were caught and sentenced, aided by their bragging about the act around town.

This action was blamed on video games.

I’m hardly a big supporter of video games and I’ll not be an apologists here for them but I do feel scapegoats are a lovely thing to have rather than face the cold reality. Kids made choices and the choice in question was to kill. The Playstation wasn’t there to prompt them.

At penny-arcade.com the step mother of one of the boys allegedly wrote in to respond to a posting there two days previously. The original post is here, as the third item on the page, and the step mother’s response is contained within the second item on this page. Apparently the boy was not just a monster in the making–he was already well past the evil stage.

On the upside: attacks against homeless people may be officially declared a hate crime in California. Currently this is only the case in Maine.

The result of an actual dream by the artist, Harrod Blank’s Camera Van is covered with a collection of more than 2,000 cameras, ten of them functional Canon EOS cameras controlled by shutter buttons on the dashboard and a monitor that serves as the viewfinder. Harrod and his van have traveled across the United States, England, and Germany, capturing the expressions of a startled public. He now dreams of taking his unique rolling photographic studio around the world to document the reactions of other peoples and cultures.

Visit the Camera Van website and see photos of bewildered people captured by the van.

This V8-powered RV has four axles, one fixed, two steerables at the front and one steerable at the rear. Built from three vans stitched together, it’s stuffed with a genuine oak-wood kitchen with microwave, refrigerator, stove and sink, sofas around the kitchen table, leather LZ-boy, radio, communication radio, cassette player, mount-in-TV, toilet, Queen size bed, hardwood floors except bedroom which has carpet, 2 separate ACs for travel and camping, heater, sunroof.

Sold about a year back for some twelve grand on ebay.

I haven’t written of late and at some point perhaps I’ll address that fully. But, I have been reading my email and watching the comments here on the site and I’ve appreciated them even though I’ve not responded. Real life must of course come before websites but I’ve apparently left a bit of a hole that needs filling.

“Readers” is as good a term as any I think. Regardless of the term you have motivated this posting.

I am alive and reasonably well. And you’re right, it is wickedly cold. Last summer I had decided to move south for the winter if need be–should I need the warmth. But each week here brought yet another reason to stay yet another week. Eventually, before I knew it, it’s Super Bowl weekend and I’m still here.

For the time being I do have warm accommodations thanks to a kind friend. It is not permanent by any means but while things are life threatening I do have some traditional shelter. I have learned in recent months that I can camp out in weather dropping to about twenty degrees without using a heat source. It’s not the ideal but it is possible with reasonable comfort even if “reasonable” means frost on my top blanket. But right now it’s negative eight fahrenheit and that’s just a wee bit too cold. So indoors I am.

It’s funny though how accustom to the cold I’ve gotten. Normally I’m the one braving the winter with sixteen sweaters on and shivering. That was of course in the housed days whereas now I’m far more subject to the elements and have rather handily adapted to them. Now I have to turn off the heat in the room I’m sleeping in as I’ve grown used to ice cold air and plenty of blanket weight upon me.