Prophecy

How can you get good information on where the next best energy source will come from? Perhaps from the high-tech and conglomerate energy companies themselves? But these companies are a bit tight-lipped, and quite understandably so. Fortunately, companies need specialized scientists and engineers once they come up with any innovation or expected breakthrough.

So I thought to look at Monster.com to find current job prospects.

Here are the results:

Job	Number of Job Postings
"Exploration Geologist"	1
"Petroleum Engineer"	8
"Environmental Engineer"	162

Things look pretty bleak for new blood in the oil industry. The one geologist opening is from a company called Piper-Morgan Associates, looking for people to work the Gulf offshore.

I write this as Art Bell is interviewing self-proclaimed prophet and Nostradamus expert John Hogue. Hogue believes the war is about oil and predicts Bush will be reelected. A caller challenges that the war is not about oil, since our prices at the pump haven't changed. Art says, to the caller, aren't you taking a short term outlook. Caller argues that Hogue's prophecy is bunk (I couldn't hear too well as they were yelling over each other).
Well, what does the Monster say?

Job	Number of Job Postings
"Prophet"	23

Now here's the strange part. All but two of these 23 "prophet" postings were for applicants with experience with a certain brand of enterprise database software. Another one was for a brand of audio recording system. The last one was from Piper-Morgan Associates with the following qualifications:

  Familiarity with economics modeling tools 

   (e.g. TERAS, Prophet, Excel)

As Carson would say, I kid you not.