In defense of BP.

It is very fashionable to beat up on BP.Devil of the day .Everybody seems to be wanting to get their punches in.

Many of the commercial and industrial enterprises are risky.Life itself is fatal. The harm done by the BP gulf spill makes us wonder how safe are our other enterprises. Risk in finding ,extracting ,producing and distributing power is a risky venture.More than thirty thousand Americans die in road accidents , yet we drive more than 100 million cars on the road. We all have evaluated that risk of dying outways the benefits of mobility.Tens of our fellow citizens die in America in coal mines many other get sick and die in finding and extracting other energy sources in the country.

We are alwaays making cost benefit analysis of our risks.Insurance underwriters are always assessing our risks and are willing to insure us against the health ,property and casuality risks for a price.Now since 9/11 most undrwriters have exclusions for terrorism and acts of god risk.

Highly risky enterprises are insured by government as flood insurances in flood zones.Import export bank self insures against default and losses. Medicaid and medicare take care of catastrofic sickness by public insurances.

Insurance companies not only pays in case of losses.It also improves the situation so losses are reduced.Car insurance companies have helped us reduce the cost of insurance as weel make our product safer.Underwriters labs and other institutions play similar role. FM global an insurance company based in Rhode Island has thousands of engineers who help their clients reduce losses by improving processes and procedures for many industries.

What role the insurance industry is playing in mitigating losses from deep water drilling.If this type of job is too big to be done by a private company.I would suggest that a public engineering institution or several be formed to do this work and resources be deployed world wide at the hub of production centers so that losses may be reduced and dammage controlled.

To Start with as the words largest producer and even larger user of energy products we should have a tax to be paid on the basis of crude prices for the value of our natural resources.Most of the oil and other energy producing nations get the benefit of revenue as price of energy goes up(in terms of royalty).In America we subsidise the oil industry by not charging enough for the mineral rights .So even when price of oil goes up as a oil producer who uses extra oil we do not get any benefits of all the production .All the benefits go to oil companies and oil producing countries except USA.This anamoly should be fixed so in case of higher energy prices we do not have the double whammy.

Five dollars a barrel of oil tax to pay for clean up should be imposed .With in three years technology should be developed to safeguard and mitigate any accidents at any level.These technologies should be deployed and made easy to share as fire departments share their resources.

IT IS IMPORTANT THAT WE DEVELOP THESE RESOURCES AS A NATION SO THAT IF A DISASTER HAPPENED AND THE COMPANY DID NOT HAVE THE RESOURCES NATION COULD TAKE CARE OF THE PROBLEM WITHOUT GOING THROUGH A CRISIS and wondering how to take care of the problem.Luckily this time BP has substantial resources.

MIT deworming project for children

How MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Kristin Forbes is helping to improve school participation in developing countries for just pennies per child.

“One of the most cost-effective ways of getting more children in poor countries into school is deworming them with one or two tablets a year, which costs pennies per dose,” says Kristin Forbes, professor of global economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a founding member of Deworm the World (DtW), a group that organizes and supports deworming activities around the world.

The program cost in Andhara Pradesh(INDIA) has been only 18 cents per child while in Kenya it has be 36 cents per child.These costs have been well below the 50 cent price target they had set for themselves.The effect of the deworming program on children is miraculos.

This year they are targeting Bihar and Delhi for the project.Most of the work of the group has been in Africa and India. World bank and Clinton global initiative has helped in the project

Human longitivity and the current times

Human longevity is improving and most of the care is becoming the norm the united states.
At sixty i was wondering that i have 15 years to live.Not that it is a morbid thought to think of death.I have already lived twice as long as Jesus Christ and i have lived even longer than Shakespeare, the great poet.My lack of achievements humble me and increae the respect i have for the masters of the past.In spite of the computers and other tools i find that i am lacking the capacity to communicate any profound thoughts.

Today i am convinced that with the medical advancements and lifestyle improvements my chances of living another 20 years are better.Will we be able to live better and productive lives is still the question.

Our quality of life and quality of human life around the world will be better in the future because of miniaturization of technology.We are starting to look at people as resource.Human capital as a real capital.Sharing human ideas has made it possible for us to be aware of human problems much faster and hope is that cloud or crowd can come up with solutions much simply than any hierarchical organization even the US Government.

Behavioral changes in US have reduced the tobacco use in all population Now we are going to reduce obesity for the benefit of the human race.What america does impacts the rest of the world .Question remains will be still leaders and relevent to world in tfwo generations or will fall victim to mercantile gerimandering.