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Archive for 2011
August 24, 2011
HUGE OIL SHALE DEVELOPMENT BEGINS: “TomCo Energy is a London-based company which owns leases on over 3000 acres of oil shale land in Utah’s Uintah Basin. As I have noted several times (most recently just last week), the Uinta Basin is the site of the massive Eocene Green River Shale formation – potentially the largest reservoir of unconventional petroleum in the world. With total reserves estimated at up to 1.3 trillion barrels, and ultimately recoverable reserves of 800 billion barrels or more , this formation holds three times or more the amount of Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves. Unlocking this formation would change the energy outlook of the nation – and of the world – for a century or more.” Expect environmentalists to fight this tooth-and-claw since changing the energy outlook of the nation (for the better, at least) is anathema to them.
TWITTEROLOGY: Tweets Turn Negative On Obama.
DEAN LINDA AMMONS’ DEBACLE CONTINUES: Widener Law School loses major donor over Connell case.
ECONOMICS: Iran being priced out of power?
THE TREND IS YOUR FRIEND: Irene’s Track Shifts East: “Now the late-night 0Z GFS computer model is out, and — guess what? — it shifts Irene’s landfall point to the east, again. Now the target landfall location has moved from NYC/Long Island to Cape Cod.” When the model’s further refined, I think we’ll see that Irene is heading straight for Martha’s Vineyard, consistent with Barack Obama’s track record in general . . . .
THIS DESERVES A “YES, BUT:” Jaded West Coast Chuckles Over East Coast Quake. What’s notable about the East Coast quake is how far away it was felt. This suggests that a really big East Coast quake — which could happen — would create much more widespread damage than a comparable West Coast quake, where the very density of fault lines tends to diffuse the earthquake waves before they travel too far. I imagine that scientists looking at seismograph readings are learning some new things about subsurface geology based on the pattern of transmission.
Meanwhile, when the West Coast gets a blizzard, expect the same kind of chuckles!
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Is Higher Education Worth It? Or Is It The Next Big Bubble?
These estimates of high lifetime earnings levels make a common error: They assume that the current generation is going to get the same financial benefit from college that people did who graduated 40 years ago.
But things are different today. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 70% of all high school graduates go on to college — compared with 45% in 1960.
Then, only the brightest and best-prepared students attended college and the schools offered academically rigorous courses that prepared students for the future.
Now even middling high-schoolers attend college — and often learn very little.
Read the whole thing.
READER CARLOS MYERS WRITES: “The one thing that the August 23 earthquake demonstrated is just how vulnerable and unreliable our cellular networks really are during an ’emergency.'” Well, pretty much any communications network will fail if everyone tries to use it at once. Note that text messages often get through when voice connections fail.
GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN: The comments on this higher education post keep accumulating.
ENERGY OBAMANOMICS: No Green Jobs, And Plenty Of Red Ink. “The unintended but easily predictable consequence of burning our food supply in our gas tanks is that grocery prices have skyrocketed. When the limited supply of farmland is diverted to ethanol, the demand for the remaining land goes up, so all food prices are affected. Simple economics. Food shortages are being felt around the world. When Mexico runs short on corn tortillas, you know there’s a problem.”
HOUSING FIX: End the Government’s Subsidy ‘Ponzi Scheme,’ Says NYU Professor.
NYU finance professor Viral Acharya writes in his new book Guaranteed to Fail that the only way to fix the housing market is to end government subsidies like the mortgage interest tax deduction.
The less told story on such subsidies is what they have done to generate more demand and push up prices, he says. “One the one hand you are actually getting all your subsidies, but you are actually paying more for the property you would have liked to consume,” says Acharya. “Therefore the real subsidy goes only [to those] at the very top. It is for people who are buying a second house. It is for people who are buying more land than they would otherwise.”
Not only have government subsidies failed to really help everyday people, except to “prop up the housing market artificially,” says Acharya, but the big question also remains: Who’s paying for all these subsidies? “It’s sort of a Ponzi scheme, because the current generation is reaping all its benefits, but we’re basically scaling up our government debt in response, and someone else is going to pay for it down the road.”
Sounds like some other government subsidies I can think of. Meanwhile, if the GOP wants to let the blue-state crowd experience the joy of tax increases, they should get behind plans to eliminate or cap the mortgage interest deduction, which will hit residents of higher-priced blue-state houses harder.
IS THE CHEVY VOLT the automotive equivalent of the Apple Lisa?
To begin with, the Lisa didn’t deliver what it promised. The display wasn’t as big as we’d hoped, the resolution wasn’t as good, and performance inside the applications was dog slow. The proprietary floppy disks were hideously expensive and difficult to find. Peripherals were nonexistent. Even if you didn’t care about any of the above and possessed a new car’s worth of cash to drop on a Lisa, your local Apple dealer might not be able to get you one due to production issues.
Does any of this sound familiar? I bet it does — to Volt intenders. The Volt has consistently under-delivered on its promises, from the styling to the open-road fuel mileage. It costs more than anyone outside of GM’s own insane maze thinks is reasonable . The man on the street doesn’t want one and the the Volt true believers couldn’t take delivery thanks to restricted production.
Read the whole thing.
August 23, 2011
UPDATE: Moe Lane emails that this post originally came from his blog, and that “I didn’t give them permission to use my post in full.” That’s rather rude, then.
SHOCKING IMAGE: D.C. Earthquake Devastation. (Hmm — that looks kinda familiar).
Plus, an interview with a young survivor.
Tweet of the day: “As all of DC leaves work at the same time, the United States experiences a brief economic recovery.”
ROBERT FARAGO: ATF Death Watch 62: Chaos vs. Control.
FASTER, PLEASE: Stem Cells From Ear Can Create New Cartilage.
MORE ON IRENE, from Weather Nerd Brendan Loy.
A DEAN’S LAMENT: I wish I’d never gone to law school.
THESE WOMEN PACK HEAT:
Anyone thinking that Betty Lacy can’t take care of herself better think twice because the 81-year-old widow from Meridian is packing heat.
“I have a permit to carry my .38 and I know how to use it,” says Lacy.
Lacy is one of three remaining charter members of the Lauderdale Association of Women Shooters, LAWS, that just recently celebrated its 30th birthday. She says the organization, formed with the help and instruction of Meridian Police Department officers in August 1981, is still going strong with about 35 members.
An armed society is a polite society.
WHEN HOLLYWOOD IS HYSTERICAL.
BIGGEST COLLEGE REGRETS: “The day that I signed on the dotted line of my promissory note, I didn’t even understand what it would mean to have to pay back more than $40,000 in student loans. I’ll tell you what it means: living in a crappy apartment in Queens well into my 30s. I vaguely remember my dad trying to get the message through to me, but I must have had cotton in my teenage ears.” As stories like this spread, the higher education bubble will deflate.