We need to learn quickly to keep up with the massive change around us so we don't get run over. We need to outrun change.
Café Hayek takes a leisurely tour though his newly acquired copy of the 1956 Fall/Winter Sears catalog and shares the preliminary results in The Future: Back to the Past.
Maybe things weren’t so great in the good ol’ days.
Continue reading “Hours of labor to buy basic home appliances – 1956 and 2012”
There is radical change taking place in the education world. Where will it go? How will we handle on-line cheating? What’s the credential going to look like?
Nobody knows. And that’s okay.
Huh? That’s okay?
Yeah. Continue reading ““Top of the first inning” in education reform”
Carpe Diem points to three places to find old catalogs on-line: Vintage catalogs back to 1933 now available online
Radio Shack Catalogs has two sets available:
So what can you do with these old catalogs? Consider this:
I make it a high priority to avoid corrosive humor, such as sarcasm or ridicule, in my writing. But when it comes to the foolish Peak Oil concept, laughter seems to be the only appropriate response.
factual background
In a 1949 article, Dr. M. King Hubbert was able to calculate the total amount of oil that exists on the earth. Don’t take my word for it. See page 105 of “Energy from Fossil Fuels, Science” [scanned, 260 kb]. Won’t link to any specifics, but the ability he had to calculate the total amount of oil that will ever be known is a skill still present today.
Continue reading “Three of the six biggest oil fields ever found cannot exist – Peak Oil #13”
On my other blog, Nonprofit Update, I have a post describing an essay that talks about the wild swings between optimism and pessimism of our perceptions about what is taking place in Africa. The underlying circumstances can feed either optimism or pessimism as you choose.
If we want to understand, we need to go beyond our mood swings and learn of the complexity that exists.
Why mention that post on this blog? Because it addresses at a deep level how we can deal with the change surrounding us. We need to go beyond our emotions and look at the underlying complexity.
Why post it on that blog? Because the main focus is an encouragement to address the unseen complexity in order to create change in the place where an NPO is working.
Check out It’s complicated, Africa version.
Here’s RBN Energy’s estimate for hitting 1M bopd, in their 11-19-12 blog post, From a Famine of Pipeline to a Feast of Rail – Giving Thanks for Bakken Delivery. The post graphs N.D. production by month and then adds a trend line:
Continue reading “RBN’s estimate on when Bakken production passes 1 million barrels a day”
(Cross-post from my other blog, Nonprofit Update.)
Last week I published my 1,000th unique post.
I suppose that’s not a big deal in the vast blogosphere, but still seems like a cool accomplishment.
Thanks to everyone who has stopped by to check out my blogs.
Why mention unique posts?
Pipelines take a long time to build. The rapid increase in oil coming out of the ground in North Dakota was leaving producers worried. How could they get all that oil to market? There was so much oil going through the existing pipeline to one location (Cushing) that there was a big discount on that oil.
People who wanted to make a buck stepped in. There’s now enough capacity to get all the oil to market and the discount for Bakken crude is gone.
That’s my summary of RBN Energy’s post, From a Famine of Pipeline to a Feast of Rail – Giving Thanks for Bakken Delivery.
Update: This is part 12 of my Peak Oil series.)
An article in Business Insider suggests There Is A Shale Oil Field Under Santa Barbara Four-Times Bigger Than The Bakken.
The article cites without linking (and I don’t want to spend the time finding the source) an EIA analysis:
According to the EIA, the Monterey Formation, which covers an enormous chunk of Southern California and terminates near Santa Barbara, has 15.4 billion barrels of recoverable crude — four times as much as the Bakken formation in North Dakota.
Continue reading “We don’t have to prosper, California edition”
Don’t ever make the mistake of projecting into the past what we know today about the result of an event. – from Prof. Gary Gallagher.
That’s a rough paraphrase of a comment by Prof. Gallagher in his course on the American Civil War from Great Courses.
That’s a powerful concept.
Check out the photo –
Thanks to capitalism all of these things now fit in your pocket.
If you wanted to move those things from one room to another, it would take half a dozen trips back then.
Continue reading “14 bulky electronics gadgets from 1980 fit in your pocket today”
Yes. That’s the forecast from the International Energy Administration.
Their report has been discussed in lots of places this week.
I’ll make note of their long-term forecast for future reference: U.S. oil production greater than Saudi Arabia by 2020. That’s only 8 years from now.
Mark Mills discusses some of the impacts of surging production in the U.S. in his post The International Energy Agency Catches Up With America’s Oil Producers.
Continue reading “U.S. to surpass Saudi Arabia in oil production by 2020?”
Likewise for everything you ever use – millions of people working together created it not knowing what they were actually working on. Why?
“Voluntary spontaneous cooperation”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYO3tOqDISE&feature=player_embedded]
From the waitress serving lunch for the lumberjacks cutting down a cedar tree, to the miners pulling ore out of the ground, to the engine room crew on a freighter bringing the ore to the U.S. to the engineer driving the train bringing the pencil to the regional distribution center to the forklift operator loading the truck that carries stuff to restock your neighborhood store, millions of people worked together to create the pencil you will hold in your hand during tomorrow’s staff meeting.
I’m making note of estimates of when Bakken will hit a million bopd.
John Kemp in an Reuters article asks Is Bakken Set to Rival Ghawar? .
He makes this estimate:
Continue reading “Another forecast when Bakken hits 1M bopd”
I’m so wet behind the ears that it isn’t funny, so its no surprise I’m constantly amazed at new info on Bakken, like the potentially huge size of the Bakken field.
John Kemp in a Reuters article asks Is Bakken Set to Rival Ghawar?
Some background:
Ghawar is producing around six million barrels of oil per day (bopd).
Many people think Bakken is approaching the point of having a million bopd of output. I’ve been tracking those estimates as I stumble across them.
Continue reading “Will Bakken be one of the 7 biggest oil fields ever?”