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We can, and need to, co-opt myspace and Facebook but better than that is trying to get (more? some of us?) ahead of the curve.

It is still not well enough know or understood, in my opinion, that one of the worst offenders in the march of oil towards $100 per barrel is the individual trading oil on the markets.

The rest of the economy takes its toll on gas prices, but the purchase of crude sets the base price. So get this, reported Friday:

NEW YORK (AFP) - A lone trader out to win a little fame made the purchase that took oil prices to the historic 100 dollars a barrel level this week but he lost 600 dollars on the deal, analysts said.

I’m so sad. As a result, $100 is no longer the mental milestone it should have been, more so a roadblock. Sure it would have been overcome eventually. That it was breached in such a flip manner shows a severe split between how you and I budget and how the investing elite budget theirs.

One of the big efforts in media — known explicitly by those in media, or implicitly by those seeing newspaper brand names pop up in mySpace — is to find a way to integrate where you are as readers with where we are as content providers. That is done with varying degrees of finesse with some stomping out a hard news presence where it stands out like a sore thumb while others blend in more easily. At least one of the presumptions we in media have to give up to blend in better is that we know best how you should get the news.

Sometimes, though, I get this tingle in the back of my mind that tells me, it’s not so much how many different places we blog, but how we blog in the places we choose to that does the harm or good. As a kid, I never minded my parents being in the same town, but I sure didn’t want them hanging out with me.

And, of course, if they asked for help in being “in,” that was the worst offense of all. So I’m not asking if bell bottomed pants are back in style, or whether anyone wants to listen to my records (I would have said 8-tracks, but we might be a generation too late for that reference to have any meaning any more).

Great thinkers are applying themselves to how we should integrate social media and more into a new newsroom monopoly like this version, called a news diamond.

Our newspapers offer many of the described functions, but where do you as readers fall in what would be useful or interesting to you?

Like anyone I know who has ever worked in newspapers, he won’t leave the industry entirely, coming back in 2008 to continue writing for the Gaylord Herald Times, Petoskey News-Review and the Charlevoix Courier among other things. That’s a good thing. For all that experience just to go walking off into the sunset would be a crying shame.

It will also, perhaps, force some of us … OK, me … to develop further in our profession. I could always push questions and ultimately the decision making “up hill” into his office. Not so now.

It has been a pleasure working with you Jim

In the last week, we’ve quadrupled the number of subscribers to the function.

Some points to remember:

•  The only charge is that by a cellular carrier for receiving a message.

• We have nearly worked out a system with the National Weather Service office in Gaylord to automatically send the severe weather watches and warnings they generate. Weather, from the experts.

• We continue to contact northern Michigan districts to expand the number of those using our service to send closing and delay information. Users right now include: Johannesburg-Lewiston, Vanderbilt, Gaylord Community, Public Schools of Petoskey, Harbor Springs, Pellston, Charlevoix, Concord Academy — Boyne, and Northwest Academy.  Gaylord St. Mary and Otsego Christian follow closings for Gaylord and are listed there.

• Breaking news comes from all three of our print properties in Petoskey, Gaylord and Charlevoix.

We continue to look for more ways to serve you. Click here to subscribe.

Those who drink Bud and Miller may not notice, but craft brewers face the need to raise prices to keep pace with the rising cost of hops, one of the key ingredients in brewing beer.

Being a homebrewer myself, I grew a few of my own hops this year. Not enough, off of four vines, to  satisfy the 20 gallons I made. My alternatives are limited.

I usually order hops through Web sites with the rest of my ingredients for $1 to $3 an ounce.  While I won’t quit, I may cut back and experiment instead with other bittering or flavoring ingredients such as wormwood, yarrow, ginger and spruce. Each has its own history in the making of beer which we in the last couple hundred years or more have more narrowly defined to require hops.

If I can step outside of my expectations, this could be fun.

Oil costs nearly double what it did at the beginning of the year, and yet the price of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline sits only a buck or so higher than it did at that time. According to an Oct. 31 story in the Gaylord Herald Times, gas station owners, charging $3.09 per gallon were losing 9 cents per gallon. You can’t believe that’s going to last either.

What’s your best guess as to when that economic rubber band is going to snap?