Hedging fuel costs sounds confusing, but it's nothing new. Some airlines, like the budget model Southwest, have managed to claim a profit in no small part because their masters were clever enough to buy most of its fuel when it was still sensibly priced. That can work out really well if gas prices go up, because those smart airlines will still be paying an older, lower price. Some experts think Southwest has saved $3.5 billion by doing this since the late '90s.

United Airlines, which has a management as sharp as a box of hammers and aging seating about as soft, thought it could imitate Southwest by getting into the hedging game, too. But, whoops! Timing is everything. It got in way too late, as the market prepared to peak. Prices went down. And right now it's paying almost $13 more a barrel than oil is actually worth, which could rack up as much as $544 million in boneheaded, unnecessary losses.

It's a lot like the guy down the street who bought his house a year ago for $400,000, only to find in this self-correcting market that it's now worth about $250,000, which everyone in the neighborhood knew was a more realistic price all along. He intended to flip it, but now he's got to live in it. Of course, if gas prices go back up a bit, United's loss may be mitigated slightly.

If you're looking to make some money-saving changes around the house, you know that kicking your thermostat up or down a few degrees is a small change that can save big bucks -- and that's just your personal electric bill. Think about the savings when we adopt the same practices in our larger buildings, like office complexes and schools.

Unfortunately, in many school buildings, it's not as simple as moving the thermostat up or down a tick. These buildings are heated by huge furnace boilers that can't be easily switched on and off -- so once they're on, they stay on. That's why a school board in Nova Scotia voted to push back the "on" date by approximately two weeks this year, to November 1.

With the rising cost of furnace fuel, this region was one of many that found itself way over its heating budget last year. This year, the school board estimates that the change will save approximately $1,000 per school in its system, adding up to approximately $24,000 in savings. Additionally, the board has asked that all cabinets and bookshelves blocking radiators in the schools to be moved so that the heating system can perform at maximum efficiency.

Sounds like a smart idea to us -- just don't forget to dress your kids in layers this year!

Despite the massive force that was Gustav, New Orleans avoided the brunt much better than expected, which is good news for the economy. Well, better news, anyway. Storms of this size by definition have an impact on the economy.

Even though damages to homes, infrastructure and energy production won't be known until later this week, several sources have already shifted their economic forecasts toward the positive.

Consumers across the board will be glad to hear that natural gas futures have already dropped slightly, as well as gasoline prices and the cost for natural gas in the month of October.

According to NewScientist, if Americans want to save their economy, they should go on a diet. Not only that, but ecologists say that "the apparently looming energy crisis could be averted if US residents cut their calorie intake."

On the surface, this sounds like it could be contradicting plain economic reason. The U.S. must consume more, not less, to save the economy, right? But is that long-term thinking in the face of higher food and energy costs?

The scientists who tried to bring their point across, David Pimentel of Cornell University and colleagues, showed how a few relatively simple changes can save energy. A lot of it. Changes include improvements in farming to more efficient bulbs, reduced transportation distances, cutting on packaging and more.

Fine, you say, what's that got to do with my diet?

I wrote blog post the other day for BloggingStocks which poked fun at Donald Trump for his attitude towards the big oil companies. Needless to say, that blog post garnered quite a bit of interest. One of our readers left a comment on that post which put forward a concept for selling gasoline which might merit some extra attention. That reader, identified as "gumbo koontz", suggests that gasoline be priced for individuals according to the fuel efficiency of the vehicle they drive. This idea may sound rather punitive or arbitrary, but I think it has a lot of valuable merit.

What better way could there be to make people really think about their fuel usage than to make their effect on the situation more personally tangible for them? As the driver of a full-sized pick-up truck, I'm not against the idea of paying five or six cents a gallon more for my gasoline that someone who chooses to drive a smaller, more fuel efficient vehicle. I do use my truck bed almost daily for various chores and payloads which a smaller vehicle couldn't touch, but the fact is that I use more gasoline to get from point A to point B. I can definitely see the merit in rewarding those drivers who trade off convenience for frugality.

How might a program like this work, and how could we administrate it accurately and fairly? Would it be viewed as punishment for those who use more gasoline or as reward for those who use less? Could it be administered at the pump or would it have to be handled with the government through the submission of forms and records? These are just a few of the questions which would need to be answered before a program like this could be made real.

I just learned about Frank Pringle. Get to know his name. He might be our savior when it comes to oil.

Let's get the elephant out of the room: for all of you wondering, he is not the inventor of Pringles. However, he can probably take a Pringles can and extract oil from it.

Pringle, 64, is the CEO of Global Resource Corp. (GRBC), in West Berlin, New Jersey, and he has developed a patent-pending emissions-free environmentally-friendly technology that uses microwaves to pull out fuel from shale rock, tires, plastic bottles, toxic sludge from river bottoms and other pieces of junk. Actually, I'm not sure if he can get oil from a Pringles can, but he has microwaved lawn cuttings into a substance that could be refined into alcohol fuel. It sounds like he can make oil out of about anything.

A public relations colleague of mine represents him. Late last year, he was covered in Time Magazine (which named his invention as one of the best of the year) and Popular Science, which also said he had one of the best inventions of the year. Why his technology hasn't caught on yet, assuming it works as well as it's been reported, is beyond me. But maybe our $4 per gallon of gas will make Pringle more in demand.

Relative to the operations of my own household, rising oil prices have had little negative impact, although we have had to change the way we do some things here. We now group our motor trips better to make better use of our miles per gallon. We also think a little harder about our power usage, but that's what we Americans do, we adjust.

Basically, up to this point, rising fuel costs have increased the expense of our household operations here by perhaps ten to fifteen percent. We've absorbed that increase quite nicely by planning our driving more carefully, by making sure lights are turned off in unused rooms and by cutting out a few foodstuffs which we probably shouldn't be eating anyway. I'd like to think that rising energy costs are leading us to give greater consideration to our spending and energy usage. In some ways perhaps increased energy costs have done us a favor, yes? Personally, I estimate that my household could withstand an increase in the price of gasoline up to $6 a gallon before going into serious stress. I hope it doesn't come to that, but it could.

It's a collection of little things which make up the body of our readjustment. I pick up items or do errands on my way to work, whereas in times past we would probably have made an extra trip into town. We more closely estimate usage of certain grocery items such as bread, toilet paper and milk so purchases will last through until the next weekly grocery shopping trip. We think about what things we're going into the refrigerator for before going in there to get them and we try to keep things in there somewhat organized so we can find what we need and get out. My wife is the light switch police and she reminds my daughter and me to turn off the light as we're leaving rooms. She does it almost intuitively even before we exit. Doors get closed tightly the first time. Telephone calls have been shortened. We spend more time together in the same room. Leftovers get fed to the dog less often.

Online banking saves us trips to the bank. Paying our auto insurance quarterly rather than monthly saves us about $125 every six months. Coffee is made at home and carried out in thermal cups. We use our debit cards religiously, saving us money on the reordering of checks. It's a matter of giving logistical scrutiny to the things we had previously been taking for granted. The real upside is that fiscal, social and consumer responsibility come with their own silently compounding benefits and we're building the savings accounts to prove it.

Earlier today, reported CNN and a slew of other media outlets, a giant slab of ice in Antarctica collapsed -- and by giant, we're talking a piece of ice that's nine times the size of Manhattan.

But fear not, there is some promising business news to be had from a situation like this, if we assume what's good news for the North Pole is also good for the South. According to a story in today's Vancouver Sun, the melting ice fields are making the northern seas a more attractive place to drill for oil.

In recent years, Russia, Norway, Denmark and America have all been jockeying to dominate the Arctic Ocean's oil industry. There's even a company called the Arctic Oil & Gas Company. As its CEO Peter Sterling recently stated in comments picked up by this press release, "We are fortunate to live in a time where technology is catching up with our aspirations. Today, offshore technology can cope with weather conditions and other environmental challenges that would have been impossible two decades ago. Fortunately, we at Arctic Oil & Gas live at the right time in science, technology, and history, and we expect our company and its shareholders to benefit greatly as a result."

And so if the ice keeps melting at the bottom of the Earth, maybe Antarctica can be our next oil frontier. Why does everything going on with our oil industry and the melting glaciers sort of remind me of the plot of that global warming, apocalyptic movie, The Day After Tomorrow?

Of course, this good business news may someday be considered bad business news, if Manhattan is ever ankle-deep in water thanks to melting glaciers. I wonder how many oil executives live in Manhattan.

Geoff Williams is a business journalist and the author of C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America (Rodale).

We all know it's coming. We read the headlines about $100 oil, and hear talk about how oil prices are closely-tied to the market at the moment, and we think, any day now.

Some analysts say it'll never happen. The man on the street is getting cynical. Indeed, a survey released yesterday reveals that a vast majority of Americans, 71%, think we'll see $4/gallon gasoline come summer.

How would $4 gas effect you? The first and most obvious would be to dramatically impact the kind of car you drive.

Want to save money on gas and protest President Bush's policy at the same time? Some say the way to go is Citgo gas. That's because it's a wholly owned subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company. Yes, that would be the Venezuela currently being run by that nutjob Hugo Chavez, who calls our president "the devil." But still, he is hated by Bush and he is probably the only president who is said to be elected on a platform of using his country's oil revenue to benefit the poor. That's something.

Finding a Citgo gas station isn't hard, since there are about 14,000 of them across the country. According to CommonDreams.org, a left-leaning website, buying your gas at Citgo means you are helping to provide health care, literacy and education to the poor in Venezuela, rather than merely subsidizing rich, fatcat oil companies. One report said that President Chavez is offering gas and heating fuel at low prices this winter to help the poor and needy in this country.

Not everyone is a fan. Check out Citgo Boycott Headquarters for the opposing view. They say Chavez's allies are pro-Communist, and that he sponsors worldwide terrorism. So is Citgo gas really cheaper? And if it is, is it worth buying it? Decide for yourself.