Recently in Media Category

Most of the jokes and web links flying around the Internet about high gasoline prices are pretty predictable. As a result, they are not particularly funny.

But the embedded picture in this one, I must admit, made me laugh.

"Dire Predictions - Understanding Global Warming," a guide to the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is likely to infuriate climate skeptics because it is so user friendly that it could become a popular default source for information on what has been called the gravest environmental challenge of the 21st century (among a host of envirnmental challnges).

The book distills the more than 2,000 pages of the three latest IPCC reports, released last year, into 200 lavishly illustrated pages. It offers in broad strokes what the IPCC provides in so much greater detail. But while few casual readers are likely to plow through the densely written, heavily foot-noted IPCC reports, "Dire Predictions" is an easy read.

It's been said in recent years that to get the pulse of what America is talking about, check out the monologues of Jay Leno and David Letterman.

Here's what Jay had to say this week about a particular oil issue.

Former Platts' senior writer Jim Norman has written a book spelling out a rather different view of why the price of oil is climbing.

One thing is clear from the first episode of the new cable TV show, "Black Gold," on truTV: working on an oil rig in the Permian Basin (or anywhere, for that matter), is more dangerous than writing about oil in a Washington office (or anywhere for that matter).

truTV, formerly Court TV, has reinvented itself as television's "destination for real-life stories told from an exciting and dramatic first-person perspective." Not reality TV, it claims, rather "actuality," which actually is pretty much the same thing.

It's hard to determine what exactly to make of Rigged, the story behind the founding of the Dubai Mercantile Exchange and the role of its partner, the New York Mercantile Exchange. It's described as nonfiction, but the main characters' names have been changed. Two of the key characters -- Gallo, who represents the wildly successful, crusty old floor trader resistant to change, and Khaleed, the key representative of the Dubai government -- are described as composite.

(A review of Rigged can be found here.)
The Barrel heard that this newly-released book was a #1 bestseller. It is...under the almost comically subdivided category of Business & Investing/Industries & Professions/Oil & Energy. What's funny is the number two book in that category is Daniel Yergin's The Prize, which was published when the first George Bush was in office. So there doesn't seem to be a lot of fresh competition.

What we first heard here at The Barrel was that Rigged was about the founding of the Dubai Mercantile Exchange. But if you look over the advertising blurbs on Amazon, it looks a lot more personal than that. In fact, the book also is a number 2 bestseller in the category of Business & Investing/Biography & History.

So we note the book here at The Barrel, because it's certainly a subject of recent buzz.

...or maybe a cry.

Our friends at Slate have compiled editorial cartoons from around the world on the topic of oil.

The only way a cartoonist can be successful is if the cartoonist has a deep grasp of the complexity of an issue, and then take all of that complexity and reduce it to utter simplicity. The Barrel remembers hearing the late legendary cartoonist Jeff MacNelly say that he read hours and hours each day in order to draw one cartoon. (And MacNelly was one of the best, ever).

So what's interesting about these cartoons is the number of times that refinery problems keep coming up. It's clear from the best cartoons that the artists are well familiar with what went on in the refining sector these past few months. They then take that deep knowledge and make it simple, in some cases, too simple. You'll see for yourself.