India To Increase State Budget To Acquire More Hydrocarbon Assets In 2015 -- Rigzone -- November 27, 2014

Rigzone is reporting:

India’s state-owned Oil India Ltd.’s next fiscal budget will be increased to $635.44 million as the company seeks to purchase more hydrocarbon concessions globally, chairman and managing director Sunil Kumar Srivastava commented in Singapore last week.

Wanna bet China is thinking of doing the same thing?

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Living The Dream

A Note for the Granddaughters

A UC-Davis economics professor says the "American Dream" is a myth. Another silly story. Only a white male professor in a dead-end job over the age of 30 could come to that assessment.

It would be interesting to see his definition of "the American Dream."

Sports
The odds of becoming a professional athlete may be abysmal, but a lot of NFL players, NASCAR drivers, and PGA golfers are living the dream. Our younger granddaughter's "dream" is to get a college soccer scholarship. I can almost guarantee that will happen. Our older granddaughter dreams of a becoming a marine biologist. That will happen, without a doubt, if her dream does not change (spoiler alert: there are already hints that her dreams have changed).

Liberal arts education
For many students, their "American Dream" is simply the opportunity to graduate from a liberal arts college. Until recently, the vast majority of graduates from a liberal arts college had something their parents often wished they could have had: a college degree.


Military experience
Everyone in today's US military is a volunteer. Many are there because they lived achieved their childhood dream: to attend one of the military academies.


Medicine
Through the 1980's it was very, very rare for women to be accepted to a US medical school. I could be wrong, but I believe more women now apply to medical school than men, and the ratio of female medical students in the US may be tilting in favor over males. The share of medical degrees earned by women increased from 5% in 1952 to 48% in 2011. 

Aviation
Every commercial pilot is living her dream.  

Living longer and in better health than one's parents
It almost goes without saying that this is happening.

Quality lifestyle
Without question, one American dream is to enjoy one's life with a rewarding occupation. Increasingly, technology is eliminating mundane jobs, leaving in place the opportunity for more rewarding jobs. 

It's sad that a professor looks at the "American Dream" only in terms of dollars and no sense. The professor might want to read "When G.M. Was Google," in the current issue of The New Yorker, and concentrate a bit on the bits about Google and Microsoft:

Google doesn't stress out about work-life balance among its employees: work this meaningful and fulfilling isn't just work. When Laszlo Bock talks about what he's learned at Google, he isn't just giving you career advice; he's giving you life advice.

I have a friend whose daughter worked for Microsoft for several years, to earn enough money to pay for medical school. She is now a physician and living the American Dream, with a husband and two children. She was extraordinary in her talents, but ordinary in her background.

To your "American Dream," whatever and wherever it might be: