Apart from the sub-salt fields, Petrobras is exploring 270 blocks in the Gulf of Mexico and over 200 more onshore in Brazil.

ECONOMIST: Brazil's Petrobras

Green aficionados are familiar with the statistic that the sun bathes the Earth in trillions of barrels of energy (in oil equivalent terms), and less familiar with the fact that total known hydrocarbon resources are also countable in the trillions of barrels (from the oil-sands and ultra-deep-water sub-salt fields, to methane hydrates and coal, not to mention shale gas).

FORBES: Steve Forbes Is Wrong

For example, researchers in Arizona are using real-time kinematic global positioning systems, an ultra-precise version of GPS that can measure positions with sub-inch accuracy levels, to control weeds in cotton fields with steel cultivators.

FORBES: American Agriculture's 'Sputnik Moment'

In most high-tech fields today, the know-how needed to make a component, sub-assembly or finished product has progressed too far and too fast for the average worker to be able to propose any useful innovations.

ECONOMIST: The land of disappointments | The