Jim Ulvog – Page 24 – Outrun Change

Continuing devastation in Venezuela – #29

What economic system produces this result? Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

The political and economic conditions in Venezuela continue to deteriorate.

7/3/17 – Bloomberg – Venezuela’s Poor Rebel, Roiling Maduro’s Socialist Strongholds – The power base for the leaders of the socialist country is poor people.

From previous reading I’ve done, massive subsidies to the poor successfully bought their allegiance. The collapse of services including water outages, random outages of electricity, and empty store shelves are rapidly undermining support from the poor. Protests has spread to many of the poor communities in Caracas. There have been nightly protests in a number of communities for several weeks.

7/5/17 – Wall Street Journal – Maduro Supporters Storm Venezuela’s Congress – Continue reading “Continuing devastation in Venezuela – #29”

While on a long road trip, what economic system provided the goods and services I needed, when and where I wanted them?

How is it that services are available on the interstate highway system when and where I need them? Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

I took a road trip from the Los Angeles area to Williston last week. My wife and I drove there with our son and his family.

A few questions came to mind on the trip

Questions

1. What economic system provides a gas station within a few miles of the point that we decided we wanted to fill up the tank?

With four drivers in the car, we were planning to drive on through the night. We were too tired to do that so we decided to stop for the night.

2. What economic system provides multiple hotels and motels half an hour down the road from where we changed our mind?

3. Furthermore, when we wanted to stop, what economic system provided motels at multiple price points so we could pick the one that fit our price range and taste?

4. Why is it that the motel we choose included a full breakfast for all of us in the price?

5. Why did the motel even have two upgraded lamps on the night stands each with 2 USB charging points and two electrical outlets on the base of each lamp?

Answers

Continue reading “While on a long road trip, what economic system provided the goods and services I needed, when and where I wanted them?”

Increased interest in “The Overnighters” documentary – part 3 of 3

Flaring of natural gas. A common site in 2012 and 2013, but is rare today. Photo by James Ulvog.

There has been a lot more interest in my posts on “The Overnighters” documentary recently. This is the third and final part of this series of followup on the documentary. Previous discussions include my disclosures, and reporting with agendas.

This post will close with some lessons we can learn from this disaster.

Other articles

As I was looking for some source of the increased interest lately, I also came across some older articles I’ve not noticed before. Keeping in mind my extended discussion in part 2 about writing with agendas, these additional articles have a minimal agenda visible.

Continue reading “Increased interest in “The Overnighters” documentary – part 3 of 3”

Increased interest in “The Overnighters” documentary – part 2 of 3

There has been a lot more interest in my posts on “The Overnighters” documentary recently. This is part 2 of my followup on the documentary. Previous discussion, including my disclosures, is here.

Might want to get a fresh cup of coffee. This will be a long read.

Reading a story when I know more than the reporter

It is fascinating to read coverage of a story when I have in-depth knowledge of the issue.

Continue reading “Increased interest in “The Overnighters” documentary – part 2 of 3”

Update on military drones

MQ-9 Reaper flies above Creech Air Force Base, Nev., during a local training mission June 9, 2009. (U.S. Air Force photo/Paul Ridgeway)

A few recent articles on military drones: New US variations in use, shootdown of military drones in combat zones, anti-drone technology, and increasing exports of Chinese drones.

My observation: the military drone arms race is on.

7/2/17 – UPI – New Reaper drone variant performs first combat mission – The first in a new series of MQ-9 Reaper drones flew its first combat mission. Referred to as the Block 5, the drone dropped a precision bomb (GBU-38 Joint Direct Attack Munitions) and fired two missiles (AM-114 Hellfire).

Oddly, the article says targets were ISIS positions but does not identify the country where the strike took place.

USAF Staff Sgt. aircraft armament systems specialist inspects an MQ-9 Reaper at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan Aug. 18, 2014. The Reaper is launched, recovered and maintained here. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Evelyn Chavez/Released)

6/8/17 – Wall Street Journal – American Pilot Shoots Down Armed Drone in Syria – A drone, described as Predator-style, was shot down by a U.S. pilot after the drone fired on a patrol by forces the US supports.

Continue reading “Update on military drones”

Increased interest in “The Overnighters” documentary – part 1 of 3

There has been a lot more interest in my posts on “The Overnighters” documentary recently. In particular, my 7/2/15 discussion of Where are they now? Follow up on people you saw in The Overnighters documentary has been getting a lot of page views. It has been running between 100 and 130 views a month for the last six months, with a peak of 217 views in January. Yesterday, 7/16/17, there were 62 views.

While those counts of page views are trivially small for the internet world, that’s a lot of attention to one of my posts, especially one that is two years old.

Did some searches online and cannot find what in particular is driving that growing interest. Did find a few things that I wanted to mention.

“Overnighters” streaming on Netflix in July and

running on lots of PBS stations

Continue reading “Increased interest in “The Overnighters” documentary – part 1 of 3”

Average daily oil production in North Dakota down 0.98% in May 2017

Oil production in the state dropped about 1% in May, falling from average of 1,050,476 bopd in April (final) to 1,040,131 bopd in May (preliminary) That is a drop of 10,345 bopd for the month.

Million Dollar Way highlights the NDIC says a shortage of experience workers is slowing down completions.

Article also points out it will take another month to see what impact DAPL will having on the amount of oil shipped by rail. This is a big deal on the revenue realized by producers.

The spread between West Texas Intermediate and what Bakken producers get is about $11 a barrel. That is the cost of transport. The spread is expected to be $6 or $7 for oil shipped through DAPL.

Here are a few graphs to tell the production story:

Average production for state and Bakken only:

Value of monthly production, which seems to have stabilized in the last six months or so:

Continue reading “Average daily oil production in North Dakota down 0.98% in May 2017”

Mali and Central Africa Republic update – 7/1

Here are a few articles on the ongoing turmoil in Mali. Haven’t noticed much, but perhaps that is because I haven’t been watching closely.

3/3/17 – France 24 – Three jihadi groups active in Mali announce merger – The three groups that have merged include:

Ansar Dine
Al-Murabitoun
Macina Brigades

The new name will be Group to Support Islam and Muslims.

Continue reading “Mali and Central Africa Republic update – 7/1”

More on the downside of unreliable wind power: paying for decommissioning costs

I count 64 turbine towers in that view. Photo by James Ulvog, somewhere southwest of Williston, en route to Denver.

There will be major costs involved in decommissioning wind turbines. Who will pay?

3/8/17 – Stop These Things – Farmers “Hosting” Wind Turbines Faces Massive Clean Up Bills & Other Legal Liability – Legislation is under consideration which would force wind power companies to set aside money to decommission the turbines. At the moment the corporate shells holding the producing assets have nothing set aside. Without some requirement for accumulating reserves, neither the holding company nor the entity’s parents will have any responsibility to clean up the site. There will be no recourse by landowners or regulators to force the then-empty shells to clean up the sites. That will leave the landowner or the local government or the national government holding the bill for decommissioning.

Disposing of a wind turbine means finding some way to get rid of the toxic blades, the generator containing large amounts of rare earth metals, and 1000 metric tons of buried concrete.

Still more amazing news from the open frontier of space: several successes and one, um, learning opportunity.

“Intelsat 35e Mission” by SpaceX is in public domain – CC0 1.0

It’s been a good month for SpaceX. Three launches and one recovery of an already recycled Dragon capsule. China has demonstrated that rocket science is rocket science, meaning launches don’t always work.

7/3/17 – Space.com – Back Again…Again: SpaceX’s Dragon Makes Historic 2nd Splashdown – A Dragon capsule that had previously been recovered from a trip to the International Space Station has just returned from the ISS a second time and successfully landed in the Pacific Ocean.

This is the first successful reuse of a Dragon capsule.

SpaceX’s cameras can track the Falcon 9 until after start of 2nd stage. Fantastic live feed. “Intelsat 35e Mission” by SpaceX is in public domain – CC0 1.0

7/5/17 – Space.com – Three Launches in 12 Days! SpaceX Lofts Heavy Communications Satellite –

Continue reading “Still more amazing news from the open frontier of space: several successes and one, um, learning opportunity.”

Fire destroys Hedderich’s, a combination museum and antique store in Williston, N.D.

Photo by David Ulvog. Used with permission.

In a tragic loss to the beautiful downtown area of Williston, the approximately 120 year old Hedderich’s building was gutted by fire on July 10.

The building had been used as a department store until 1988 but in recent decades was a combination museum and antique store. The current building was constructed in 1918 (I’m not sure how that gets the age to about 120).

Visible condition morning after the fire

Continue reading “Fire destroys Hedderich’s, a combination museum and antique store in Williston, N.D.”

More on the downside of unreliable solar power: Paying to get rid of excess electricity.

There is so much excess electricity from solar power that sometimes California has to pay utilities in other states to take it. Also, what will we do with all those panels when they wear out?

6/22/17 – Los Angeles Times – California invested heavily in solar power. Now there is so much that other states are sometimes paid to take it – There are two non-negotiable physical laws that undercut the value of solar power.

First, electricity must be used the instant it is generated. Second, solar power is generated when the sun is bright not necessarily when the electricity is needed.

Some days, there is so much solar power in California that “we” have to pay utilities in Arizona to take the electricity in order to keep from overloading the grid in California.

Continue reading “More on the downside of unreliable solar power: Paying to get rid of excess electricity.”

Nevada joins the list of states allowing sales of recreational marijuana with heavy taxes on sales – #29

Haven’t had an update on regulatory oversight of the recreational marijuana market in a while. With Nevada now allowing the sale of recreational marijuana, it is time to check out the regulatory world.

As readers of this blog already know, I am watching developments in Colorado and Oregon for the newly state-legal recreational use of marijuana. Just as a reminder, my interest is not in marijuana. My curiosity is focused on how much trouble a burdensome and expensive regulatory structure will create for a newly legalized industry.

My hypothesis is the heavy-handed regulations will be crushing and severely restrain a new industry.

11/29/16 – Brew Bound – Beer Volumes Declining in Markets Where Recreational Cannibas is Legal – Consumption of domestic beer is declining in Washington, Oregon, and Colorado. The business word used is that beer is ‘underperforming’, meaning sales are lower than would otherwise be expected.

Article says the 18-25 demographic is consuming more recreational marijuana and less domestic beer.

Continue reading “Nevada joins the list of states allowing sales of recreational marijuana with heavy taxes on sales – #29”

The massive economic and environmental impact of fracking.

Wells being drilled by that rig have long since gone into operation and contributed their share to increased US production.

The impact of fracking is massive. Large increases in production of natural gas and crude oil has created a long list of favorable economic and environment impacts.

7/6/17 – Victor Davis Hanson at National Review – The Fracking Industry Deserves Our Gratitude – Prof. Hanson provides a fast survey of how much fracking has improved the American economy. Fracking is the combination of horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing.

The impact of fracking is staggering.

Ten years ago eeeeeeverybody knew for an absolute certainty that Peak Oil was here and we were about to run out of oil. The Secretary of Energy was wishfully musing that gasoline would rise from $4 to $10 a gallon.

In the last five years, gasoline prices are down about $1.50 a gallon, surge in natural gas production displaced coal consumption which has reduced our CO2 output by 12% in the last decade (surpassing the EU in cuts), and reduced our oil imports by five million barrels a day.

Let me rephrase that part about CO2…

Continue reading “The massive economic and environmental impact of fracking.”

Happy Birthday America!

Two hundred forty-one years ago today marked the start of this wonderful, fantastic, heaven-blessed, messy, delightful, powerful, flawed, and glorious experiment called the United States of America which has delivered unimaginable levels of freedom to hundreds of millions of people here in the US of A and contributed massively to the freedom of hundreds and hundreds of millions more around the world.

Happy birthday America!

“4th of July” by Matthew Blouir is licensed under CC BY 2.0

If you want a really short description of this day, consider a photo of a sign on a store’s door I saw while browsing the ‘net:

Closed on July 4

in observance of

Brexit 1776

If you are looking for a brief description of the string of events which led to signing the Declaration of Independence and the follow-on events leading to full independence, Continue reading “Happy Birthday America!”