Month: December 2012

Growing attention on Mali

Two major articles in the Wall Street Journal taking up a full-page in the first section.  The U.S. may get involved in Northern Africa.  Why?  An area the size of France with no functioning government serving as a safe haven for terrorists.  No wonder there’s growing interest.  (Both articles behind paywall.) 

The first article, Terror Fight Shifts to Africa, suggests senior level people might want to get official authorization for military action in the Sahara.  There’s a debate whether current authorizations are sufficient.

Second article, Mali Gambles on Warlord as Peacemaker, provides background on Ansar Dine and its leader Iyad ag Ghaly. Also provides background on the current bad guys, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM.

Might be time to learn those names.

Continue reading “Growing attention on Mali”

More background on huge Eagle Ford field

Check out the graph of production in Texas, which shows output …

roughly doubled in just the last three years, from 1.08 million barrels of output per day in September 2009 to 2.05 million barrels per day in September of this year.

That observation and cool graph is from Prof. Perry’s post Eagle Ford Shale: the most profitable oil field in the world with dozens of “monster wells” producing up to 5,000 bpd.

He points to another article by Jennifer Hiller, Finding the sweet spots of the Eagle Ford at Fuel Fix blog.

Two fun tidbits from the post.

Continue reading “More background on huge Eagle Ford field”

Want to start your own educational institution? Go for it.

The educational frontier is wide open. Want to start your own institution of higher education? With today’s technology, some time, and a few dollars, anyone can do it.

Continue reading “Want to start your own educational institution? Go for it.”

“Deck the Halls with Macro Follies” – Economists sing your favorite holiday carols

(cross-post from my other blog, Nonprofit Update.)

Remember the rapping economists we saw here and here?  They’re back!

Just in time for Christmas, EconStories imagines their fantasy Christmas album featuring the classic hits from Keynes, Hayek, and other renown singers you know and love.

Enjoy the greatest collection of economic hits ever aggregated.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=7uKnd6IEiO0#t=41s]

Continue reading ““Deck the Halls with Macro Follies” – Economists sing your favorite holiday carols”

Battle of the 4 big tech giants

Wow. If you want to keep up with the rapid change around us, you really need to keep an eye on The Economist.  I’ll have 2 posts and a comment in another post based on ideas in this week’s edition.

Magazine cover has four deep-sea monster squids fighting each other. Nearby is a bathysphere with two little people watching the battle.  Labels identify the giants of the deep as Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook.

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Record passengers at Williston airport after Delta and United flights begin

KFYR-TV in Bismark has the report:  Williston Airport Breaks Record.

It is about a month that United and Delta have been flying into Williston.  The article reports 5,000 passengers through the airport in November. That is the record, surpassing the previous record of 2,000.

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Another change around us that we ought to ponder is nuclear proliferation

Sometimes the change around us is grim, like having nine countries with nukes.

When the world had the U.S. and Soviet Union staring at each other with nuclear weapons, we focused clearly on the implications. Since the fall of the Soviet Union (which reduced the nuclear war risk, the conventional war risk, and the overall level of suffering & misery around the world) we’ve spent less time thinking about how nukes affect everything else.

That is a mistake, thinks Paul Bracken, in The Second Nuclear Age.

Continue reading “Another change around us that we ought to ponder is nuclear proliferation”

700,000 barrels of oil a day out of North Dakota is no big deal. It’s all hype. – Peak Oil #14

Bruce Oskol, writing at Million Dollar Way, gives some background why he started that blog:

Again, one of several reasons for starting the blog a couple years ago was to counter the naysayers.

The original naysayers doubted the Bakken even existed — hard to believe, I know; and then, when the numbers started coming out of the Bakken, the naysayers said the Bakken was good for North Dakota but that was about it.

I particularly enjoy citing this post from another blog as an example: “Don’t believe it. There’s some oil to be gotten out of Bakken, and it’s going to be exploited. But the “bonanza” is nothing but hype.” — June 25, 2010.

“Some oil to be gotten out of the Bakken … Nothing but hype.” Wow.

I checked on the link and found Bakken Oil Hype at The American West at Risk blog.

Wow is right.

Continue reading “700,000 barrels of oil a day out of North Dakota is no big deal. It’s all hype. – Peak Oil #14”

Under what economic model did the pilgrims almost starve? What different economic model allowed them to thrive?

Here’s the arrangement the Pilgrims used when they first landed:

“Although they planted household gardens almost from the start, they collectivized initial field and livestock operations. The settlers had some agricultural successes, but they were unable to grow corn in their common field. Within six months of reaching Plymouth, almost one-half of the population had perished from disease.

That’s a quote from Professor Robert Ellickson in Prof. Don Boudreaux’s article The Pilgrims’ economic progress.

A collectivized farming system didn’t work too well.  Starvation was the result.

So, they changed their plans: Continue reading “Under what economic model did the pilgrims almost starve? What different economic model allowed them to thrive?”