A quick wander through some articles and things of interest:

• New DOE U.S. wind energy report (DOE)
• Great new series on geothermal/etc. underway at The Oil Drum (TOD)
• The future of energy (Mother Jones)
• Scenes from the tar wars (Mother Jones)
• Slide presentations from recent Milken Global conference (Milken)
• Google's U.S. search dominance hits 68% (Hitwise)
• Call options on $200 oil seeing action (FT)
• What should we do about insane governments? (Britannica)

There is impressive growth underway in the number and assets of commodity hedge funds worldwide. Check the following graph of the number of such funds extant.

Doing the math, the above works out to roughly a 50% compound growth rate in the number of commodity funds per year. For those of you as fond as I am of recreational extrapolation, that means everyone on the planet will be running a commodity hedge by the year 2050. Should be great.

[Source: Milken/Tellus/Cole]

I was hoping for more neat maps and glossy pictures, but even without 'em the current National Geographic has a worth-reading article on peak oil. No huge revelations, but lots of useful context:

Consider the issue of discovery rates. Oil can't be pumped from the ground until it has been found, and yet the volume discovered each year has steadily fallen since the early 1960s -- despite dazzling technological advances, including computer-assisted seismic imaging that allows companies to "see" oil deep below the Earth's surface. One reason for the decline is simple mathematics: Most of the big, easily located fields—the so-called "elephants"—were discovered decades ago, and the remaining fields tend to be small. Not only are they harder to find than big fields, but they must also be found in greater numbers to produce as much oil. Last November, for example, oil executives were ecstatic over the discovery off the Brazilian coast of a field called Tupi, thought to be the biggest find in seven years. And yet with as much as eight billion barrels, Tupi is about a fifteenth the size of Saudi Arabia's legendary Ghawar, which held about 120 billion barrels at its discovery in 1948.

More here.

There is a thought-provoking new BBC special out called "The Curse of Oil". It is admittedly not going to satisfy all political sensitivities, but it is still worth watching and much better than 99% of fare on this subject.

Here is Part 1:

And you can find parts 2 and 3 here.

For obvious reasons, the series had me thinking about photographer Sebastiao Salgado's wonderful work, some of which touches on oil and the costs of its recovery. Here is a photo from his collection Workers where he documents men fighting Kuwaiti oil fires after the first Gulf War.

According to Reuters late today, Carl Icahn has decided to go ahead with a full new Yahoo board slate tomorrow. Surprise, surprise. Many had thought he would do a partial slate, or maybe just push for change from the outside.

Me? I'm not surprised. I went through Yahoo's current board, asking myself who I would keep if I were Icahn ... and I couldn't come up with anyone. It's a faceless bunch who won't be missed.

In the interim, I have this mental picture of Jerry Yang hiding under Sue Decker's desk.

Now and then I like to check out recruiting trends, and today I compared two sides of the same employment coin: loans and collections. When things are going well everyone wants loans officers; when things are going poorly everyone wants collections people.

I know, I know. It's not science, but check it out:

loans, collections Job Trends

loans jobs - collections jobs

While I'm playing with job data, here is a recruiting-eye view of the private equity bubble. I'm not sure how much more obvious it could have been. Striking stuff.

private equity Job Trends

private equity jobs