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What you didn’t know about crude oil might be the key to understanding just how crude it really is.
We live in a world of waste.
In fact, it’s a world we created; humans are constantly building things which are far less efficient than nature — far more wasteful. We do it almost by definition. This is not to disparage humanity, of course. We tend to be quite inventive and we *do* eventually come up with lots of things you’d find nowhere in nature.
Take the ballpoint pen.
What an amazing invention! With it — well, and something to write on — you can draw or explain any number of different things (and do so very particularly.) Charcoal was just so…well, crude.
But let’s remember something about pens:
Pens didn’t begin with ball points.
They didn’t have springs, or plastic, or little hangy-things to hang them on the front of your shirt pocket. They had their origins long before pocket protectors were needed — probably before button-down shirts with pockets on the front were worn with khakis to the office.
They used to be quills. And actually, that used to be good enough.
