Falling gasoline prices are a reflection of the broader economic collapse, says a local oil industry analyst, and it probably won't be good news if they stay low.

Richard Heinberg is the author of Peak Everything and The Party's Over, among other books on oil and energy policy issues.

Heinberg says that pump prices and the per-barrel cost of crude were not the only things that peaked last summer.

Reining in oil speculators would be a constructive response to the events of the past year, Heinberg says, but that's only a first step.

Profanity on the airwaves is outlawed, and subject to steep fines, at least some of the time. But why do these forbidden words carry such an emotional charge?

Steven Pinker is author of seven books, including The Blank Slate. He is a professor at Harvard University. His new book, The Stuff of Thought, tackles the wide world of semantics, and how they can reveal the truth about human nature.

Pinker says he wrote his latest book to explore and explain the links between the ways we speak and the thoughts and feelings that shape that speech.

No matter what language or culture one examines, says Pinker, the same general types of linguistic taboos can be found.

In this analysis, commentator Michael Schwartz demolishes the myths used to sell the U.S. public the idea of an endless "war on terror" centered in Iraq, and shows how the real U.S. interests in Iraq have been rooted in the geopolitics of oil and the expansion of a neoliberal economic model in the Middle East.

Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology and Faculty Director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University has written extensively on the war in Iraq at sites including TomDispatch, ZNet; Asia Times and Mother Jones, and in many print outlets, including Contexts, Against the Current, and Z Magazine.   

The dynamics of the debate  and speculation over the war in Iraq changed during the past year, as defenders of the administration pointed to what they called the success of the "surge," the boost in troop levels in 2007, in damping down the levels of violence there. Schwartz says that comparative quiet was a byproduct of widespread factional cleansing that was actually enabled by the military surge.

The election of Barack Obama as America's next president has boosted hope that he will take actions to expediently wind down the Iraq war. Schwartz cautions, however, that  as a candidate, Obama's position papers did not show a marked break from the polices that got us into the war.

Opus has been a part of Breathed's creative world for three decades, but the cartoonist says his original choice of a penguin as a featured character was driven by some quite practical considerations.

 What will happen to Opus when his days in the comics come to an end? Readers are invited to guess in a nationwide contest that ends TONIGHT.

Berkeley Breathed is a screenwriter, author, cartoonist, and one of America's most popular illustrators.  Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for cartooning in 1987, Breathed is perhaps best known for his comic strip Bloom County, which ran for nine years and appeared in over 1,200 newspapers all over the world. Now that he is moving into other realms of  more collaborative endeavors, Breathed is bracing for the loss of autonomy he enjoyed as a cartoonist.

 To find out more about his new children's book Pete and Pickles, click here .

Berkely Breathed will make a rare Northern California public appearance Oct. 18 at the Charles M. Schulz museum in Santa Rosa. Get details here .