Bill Clinton flipped a switch and changed the world. On May 1, 2000, the former President instructed the Federal Aviation Administration to turn off the “Selective Availability” option on the Global Positioning System (GPS), which had made the network of satellite signals usable only by high-tech… Read More

“If you grow it, biofuel will come,” isn’t much of a slogan. So let me be blunt: Biofuel is important because we need it. My current prediction: Oil prices will hold fast and end 2011 above $100, and this will keep biofuel an important ongoing business and… Read More

Years ago, my dad and I were driving across his farm in his vintage Land Rover, which looks almost exactly like the one John Wayne used in the movie “Hatari!” The heavy-duty off-road tires were having a hard slog through the mud. Dad had cut across a recently plowed field rather than take the long way back to the road. The tires made slow and steady progress — Dad’s old Rover is a tank — and after a few minutes and probably five gallons of gasoline, the nose of the vehicle bounced up and the tires bit into the country… Read More

Years ago, my dad and I were driving across his farm in his vintage Land Rover, which looks almost exactly like the one John Wayne used in the movie “Hatari!” The heavy-duty off-road tires were having a hard slog through the mud. Dad had cut across a recently plowed field rather than take the long way back to the road. The tires made slow and steady progress — Dad’s old Rover is a tank — and after a few minutes and probably five gallons of gasoline, the nose of the vehicle bounced up and the tires bit into the country lane that circles the property. #-ad_banner-#Dad, clearly pleased with himself for conquering the field, didn’t take his foot off the gas and we were soon going nearly 70 miles per hour down a country road with grass in the middle of it. He looked over to me and grinned. “That’s what happens, son,” he said, “when the rubber meets the road!” It became a sort of catch phrase between us. Whenever something really took off, one of us would say, “Well, looks like the rubber met the road,” and we’d both… Read More

In 1851, Prince Albert organized the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London’s Hyde Park. Not only was the building itself a wonder but attendees could also see the most fantastic products available, from an early version of the fax machine to American photographer Michael Brady’s daguerreotypes. Another exhibit was of an unusual photograph of Prince Albert’s wife, Queen Victoria. The image was presented in 3-D. Attendees were shocked by the technology. #-ad_banner-#Yet it was almost another 100 years before movie studios came up with the first generation of 3-D… Read More

In 1851, Prince Albert organized the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London’s Hyde Park. Not only was the building itself a wonder but attendees could also see the most fantastic products available, from an early version of the fax machine to American photographer Michael Brady’s daguerreotypes. Another exhibit was of an unusual photograph of Prince Albert’s wife, Queen Victoria. The image was presented in 3-D. Attendees were shocked by the technology. #-ad_banner-#Yet it was almost another 100 years before movie studios came up with the first generation of 3-D technology in an attempt to lure audiences away from their living-room televisions and back into the theater. A generation later, the advent of digital projection, computer-generated animation and other technological advancements culminated in “Avatar,” which was the first film to be devised specifically for 3-D technology. This was a game-changer. It’s the kind of watershed moment that gets me in research mode for Game-Changing Stocks. One of the biggest gambles of the project was Avatar’s producers James Cameron and Jon Landau’s pitch to movie theaters about the advent of a new… Read More

#-ad_banner-#Years ago, when my cousin Andrea was in law school, she and my dad were talking about the “hottest” area in the law — water rights. This was probably 15 years ago and today Andrea is one of the nation’s leading experts on the death penalty. Dad and I were… Read More

Before the first word was uttered in the national health care debate, a significant change was put into motion to remake the U.S. health care system. It was nothing short of revolutionary, and the first major elements of that change are about to go into effect. Few… Read More

Big Oil is accustomed to a high return on investment (ROI). It makes some sense. After all, it costs millions to drill a conventional oil well and hundreds of millions to drill offshore, with no guarantees. With that in mind, it would be foolish… Read More

The price of oil is around $110 a barrel. This with nearly 9% unemployment, anemic consumer spending and less-than-robust growth in the United States and European Union. Even China and India’s economic juggernauts are beginning to decelerate. It’s time to think about the inevitable future. And I think things are going to get better. We’re in the early stages — leaders are starting to put forth serious, detailed plans to significantly reduce federal outlays, including a complete overhaul of Medicare and Social Security. I think… Read More

The price of oil is around $110 a barrel. This with nearly 9% unemployment, anemic consumer spending and less-than-robust growth in the United States and European Union. Even China and India’s economic juggernauts are beginning to decelerate. It’s time to think about the inevitable future. And I think things are going to get better. We’re in the early stages — leaders are starting to put forth serious, detailed plans to significantly reduce federal outlays, including a complete overhaul of Medicare and Social Security. I think we’ll see a balanced budget before the end of the decade, as well as an honest-to-goodness budget surplus. I predict that Washington’s spending, currently around 25% of GDP, will fall dramatically in the coming years as these events unfold. When that occurs — notice I’m not hedging my bets here with conditional language like “if” — two things will result: 1. Businesses will be created as the nation’s entrepreneurs begin to feel more optimistic about the long-term future and more comfortable taking risks. We’ll see this in… Read More

How does a $500 million company become a $1 billion company? The same way a $10 billion company turns into a $20 billion company: One dollar at a time. Investors have a lot of ways to count those dollars, or, more specifically, they have… Read More

While most energy-driven headlines today deal with $100-plus oil, dirty coal, dangerous nukes or solar dreams, one cheap, plentiful and clean fuel is usually left off stage out of the spotlight — natural gas. That’s odd, because Americans use about 62.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day, with some 2.1 quadrillion cubic feet in reserve. (One quadrillion is a thousand trillion.) It supplies 65 million households, 5.3 million commercial users and nearly 200,000 industrial-scale customers. Natural gas is critical to electrical power production and its importance in this area is growing dramatically. Read More

While most energy-driven headlines today deal with $100-plus oil, dirty coal, dangerous nukes or solar dreams, one cheap, plentiful and clean fuel is usually left off stage out of the spotlight — natural gas. That’s odd, because Americans use about 62.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day, with some 2.1 quadrillion cubic feet in reserve. (One quadrillion is a thousand trillion.) It supplies 65 million households, 5.3 million commercial users and nearly 200,000 industrial-scale customers. Natural gas is critical to electrical power production and its importance in this area is growing dramatically. In the past 15 years, the amount of U.S. electricity provided by natural gas has grown from 13.2% to 23.2%. The total number of kilowatt hours attributable to natural gas is up 102.3%. And there are two reasons this trend is going to accelerate in coming years. First, gas is super efficient; it can approach 60% efficiency, nearly twice that of coal, which makes it an easier and more cost-effective way to generate power. Second, natural gas is far less polluting than coal, which is similarly cheap and abundant, and is… Read More