Nextel - Bee-beep! I guess dad, Chris, Michelle and I will be "Sprint" customers this fall. Their formal announcement says:
Sprint and Nextel Communications Inc. today announced details surrounding the brand strategy and logo to be used upon completion of the companies' merger, expected in the third quarter of 2005, pending shareholder and regulatory approvals. The new go-to-market brand name of the combined Sprint Nextel will be Sprint, with the Nextel name continuing as a key product brand.
It goes on:
Nextel, which currently enjoys among the highest loyalty ratings with customers in the wireless industry, is synonymous with wireless business-oriented products and services such as Nextel's instant, nationwide, digital walkie-talkie service. The combined company will employ the Nextel name as a product brand within the Sprint service portfolio for services provided on Nextel's iDEN network.
Do we get a new sticker to put on our phones? *grin*
Hey, Will, welcome me to the Sprint family.
Oil - Just another factoid I want to remember for future use (courtesy of Alan Reynolds)
We import nearly 58 percent of all petroleum, yet only 45 percent of each barrel is used to produce gasoline, and a significant portion of that gasoline is used in delivery vans and taxis. Commuter and leisure driving accounts for little more than 40 percent of the oil we consume -- far less than the amount we import. The rest of each barrel of crude is used for heating oil and diesel fuel for trucks, busses, farm machinery and ships (23 percent), petrochemicals (17 percent), jet fuel (9 percent), asphalt (4 percent) and propane (4 percent).
The reason I bring this up is because of the obsession about SUVs as excesses of evil consumption. Even if we all drove 50 mile per gallon vehicles, it would still only bring a small dent in our overall petroleum usage. And petroleum is just a portion of our energy sources. We also have nuclear, coal, and others. I won't own an SUV, but could we stop making SUVs the poster child of global warming?
On the flip side as petroleum is hitting $60 a barrel, we tend to focus on what it does to our cost at the gas station. We don't tend to think of all of the other industries it affects.