Most of the price of your fuel is in taxes. The US Federal tax on gasoline -which goes to pay for maintenance on the the Interstate highways- is somewhere around eighteen cents a gallon and hasn't changed in thirty-something years. States also have individual sales taxes that are a fixed amount or a fixed percentage of the sale price -with Florida being the highest (with a sliding scale) the last time I bothered to look.

The root cause of the increase in the price of oil and gasoline is speculation by large banks, brokerage firms and commodities traders. Most of these 'traders' never take actual delivery of the product. If the Obama administration would get off its ass and re-regulate the commodities markets to prevent all the 'paper trading' of commodities, then the price of oil and gasoline would drop by fifty percent and we wouldn't be talking about this.

It goes a lot deeper than just the components. It goes down to the minerals and metals that make up those components:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltan#Ethics_of_Coltan_mining_in_the_Democratic_Republic_of_Congo

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/section002group3/coltan_mining_in_democratic_republic_of_the_congo

Apple gets the spotlight thrown on it because of its popular following. But every company that makes anything electronic or that contains electronic components is just as culpable.

They should have used an inanimate carbon rod.

It's all about bucks, kid. The rest is conversation.

Where are the atomic-level sharks with atomic-level lasers attached to their heads?

They have this guy, too:
Chris Dodd, Ex-Senator, Named MPAA Chairman
at $1.3 million/year.

Stretching the truth to pass SOPA:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111214/04100017081/chris-dodd-resorting-to-outright-lying-desperate-attempt-to-get-sopa-passed.shtml

More:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/05/24/christopher-dodd-as-mpaa-chairman-can-he-save-hollywood.html

There is a lunar eclipse every 29.53059 days (29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, 2.8 seconds). It's just not always visible from the Earth's surface. The complete calendar for the next decade is here:
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/LEdecade/LEdecade2011.html
so you may plan ahead.

So there isn't a repeat of this:
http://www.archives.gov/st-louis/military-personnel/fire-1973.html

As a scientist, don't author your paper with the font set to Comic Sans.

Stock Split

Glagnar's Human Rinds. Now with flavor.

The Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity Rover) is powered by a RTEG. No reason we couldn't design a new, more efficient, version for use on the Moon.

You forgot these:
Harvey Birdman, Hiram Mightor, Myron Reducto, X the Eliminator, Peanut, Mentok the Mindtaker, Zardo The Funky Phantom, Cumulus the Storm King, Captain Caveman, Azul Falcone, Stan Freezoid Apache Chief, Garok, Shazzan, Atom Ant, Nitron, Vulturo, Black Vulcan, Birdgirl, Murro the Marauder Elliott The Deadly Duplicator, The Perfectionist.

Bilderburgers laugh derisively at your attempts to undermine the World Bank, IMF, ECB, and the 'Almighty Dollar' with your pathetic 'currency'. However...Bernie Madoff is intrigued by your ideas and wishes to subscribe to your newsletter.

In a 1997 interview with Ric Ford of the Macintouch website, Steve Jobs said that he would; "milk the Macintosh for all it's worth and then kill it." A citation would be nice if someone would like to search for it in the wayback machine. I came up blank on this so this is just from memory...