Outrun Change – Page 4 – 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.

Response to attack on integrity of missile launch crews and reliability of our ICBM force.

Minuteman II on static display at March Air Base Museum. Photo by James Ulvog.

On 3/10/22, Mr. Cole Smith attacked the integrity of U.S. Air Force officers pulling alert across the northern plain states as they monitor their ICBMs and maintain readiness to launch in the horrible event the President were to make the decision to do so.

He also attacked the safety and reliability of the missiles and warheads with an unsupported claim that

“…there have been more near-misses than the world knows.”

His support for attacking crew integrity is citation of a drug-incident involving 11 officers in 2013 and a test-cheating scandal involving 34 officers. Those are old reports (I won’t bother looking up date of the cheating incident) and well know to all.

Support for the more near-misses claim is an accident at Little Rock Air Force Base back in 1980.

Um, that was 42 years ago.

The incident involved a Titan II ICBM. The Titans were liquid fueled. They have long since been retired with the last one pulled off alert in 1987.

Breaking technology news – Experiment to use gigantic kite to power a commercial cargo ship. Um, the Vikings perfected that technology 1000 years ago…

Some technology wizards are trying to adapt the above technology for use on modern cargo ships.
Image of Viking cargo ship courtesy of Adobe Stock.

… And the Romans had it figured out 1000 years before that.

Yet somewhere some technological wizards have developed an experiment in January to use a big kite to pull a cargo ship across the Pacific Ocean.

Gizmodo – 12/17/21 – Giant Kite Will Pull a Ship Across the Ocean Next Month – The experiment will involve a parafoil kite measuring 5,380 square feet. It will pull a ship that is 505 feet long.

As expected, legalized marijuana market is struggling with regulation and tax burden. – Part 33.

Source: Legislative Analyst’s Office, California Legislature

As I have long been predicting, the legalized marijuana industry in California is struggling. The illegal market is still dominant. Tax collections are far below projection.

Articles for your consideration today:

Legal-marijuana executives report their industry is on verge of collapse.
Tax collections fall short of projection.
Actual tax collections in state of California.

Previous articles on burdens the state of California has placed on the legalized industry can be found by clicking on the regulation experiment tag.

PJ Media – 12/18/21 – Pot Industry in California on Verge of Collapse – Entertaining opener:

“… getting the government involved in anything either makes it more expensive or ruins it completely.”

Production of crude oil in North Dakota in September 2021 has been flat for the last 14 months.

Crude oil production averaged 1,113,410 barrels of oil per day (BOPD) in September 2021.

Production has been in the range of 1.1 or 1.2 million BOPD since August 2020. Production was 1.44M BOPD back in March 2020 before the pandemic hit. Production quickly dropped to 0.9M in both May and June 2020 before climbing to around 1.1M since then.

Graph at the top of this post shows average production since January 2008. The blue line is total production in the state with the red line showing production from the Bakken pool only, which also includes the Sanish, and Three Forks pools. The blue line essentially excludes the old wells and areas which have been in production since before the current boom started in the 2008 timeframe. You can easily see the radical impact of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.

For a longer-term perspective, check out the average production in the state since 1990:

Guess what? Harsh regulations have throttled the legal marijuana market in California. Surprise! – #32

In what is an absolute lack of surprise to anyone who’s thought about the issue, the severe regulations imposed by the state of California on legal marijuana shops means the majority of marijuana sales take place in the black market.

After five years of legal recreational marijuana, sales in the illegal market are estimated to be twice the volume in legal stores.

This is the 32^nd article I have written covering the legalized recreational marijuana market. You can see my other articles by clicking on the regulation experiment tag.

Politico explains on 10/23/21: California’s legal weed industry can’t compete with illicit market.

One way to measure how severely the legal marijuana business has been restricted is to look at the number of licensed marijuana shops per 100,000 residents. For six Western states that allow recreational sales, here is the number of legal dispensaries per 100,000 people:

You cannot turn an economy off, then turn it back on. Here are the results when hubris makes you think you found the magic switch. Part 2.

Modern Cargo container ship giving an idea of the amount of cargo that can be carried. Each of those containers is one semi-load on the freeway. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Seems like most industries have a tangled supply chain. The entire transportation system is sorely distressed.

The elitists in federal and state governments have a staggering level of hubris. They think waving their hands, clicking on their laptops, issuing press releases will make the entire economy bend to their will. What they accomplish is willfully causing disruption in your life and in my life.

Here are merely a few of the recent articles describing the tangled impact of Covid dictats and sundry government policies:

Lots of cargo ships are waiting to unload off the California coast.
Large port operator expects disruptions to last into 2023.
Workers in transportation sector warn of possible system collapse.
Chip shortage for carmakers will last into late 2022.

Looks like it might take another 15 or 18 months to untangle the worldwide supply chain.

Wall Street Journal – 8/17/21 – Cargo Ships Are Again Idling Off Jammed Southern California Ports – Back in the middle of August the tally of cargo ships sitting off to coast of California was 37.

A tweet I saw this morning (10/9/21) from someone flying out of Long Beach indicated the individual counted 50 ships waiting to unload.

At around 10,000 containers per ship that is somewhere around 370,000 containers waiting to be unloaded back in the middle of August and is now currently somewhere in the range of half a million containers sitting off the coast.

Article says a few months ago it was only nine. Normally it is zero.

You cannot turn an economy off, then turn it back on. Here are the results when hubris makes you think you found the magic switch. Part 1.

Random stock outages are still common. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

The supply chain in most industries is tangled up somehow somewhere.

The people in federal and state governments with the staggering level of hubris to think they can wave their hands and make the entire economy do their bidding are willfully causing disruption in your life and in my life.

What is going on around us?

I am struggling to figure out what’s going on around us in the economy. These are confusing times.

That is why I blog. Digging into news reports and statistics deep enough to write something coherent (hopefully) pushes me towards understanding. At least that’s the concept.

The next several posts I have lined up will explore some economics aspects of this confusing world.

Price of oil and value of crude oil produced in North Dakota – May 2021.

Previous post showed a graph of average daily production in North Dakota. After a record high of 1.52M barrels of oil per day (bopd) in 11/19, production dropped to a seven year low of 862K bopd in 5/20. Production recovered to1.32M bopd in 10/20 before dropping to 1.08M bopd in 2/21 and sitting at 1.12M bopd in 4/21 and 5/21.

The good news for the state is oil prices have been recovering.

Prices for North Dakota light sweet had been in the $40s to low $50s for 2019 and most of 2020 before dropping and hitting a rocket disrupted price of $9.16 in 4/20 and $7.92 and 5/20.

Prices recovered to $32.35 in 6/20 and then slowly increased to $63.62 in 6/21 and are at average of $50.50 in 7/21.

All those prices are from the North Dakota Director’s Report.

Graph at the top of this post shows the4 North Dakota Light Sweet, West Texas Intermediate, and an estimate for the average price realized in North Dakota.

What does the dramatic swing in prices combined with the dramatic swing in production look like in terms of the amount of revenue realized by producers?

North Dakota oil production in May 2021 slowly recovering from economic shutdown.

Graph above shows wild swings in oil production in North Dakota during the government shutdown of the economy due to the pandemic.

Imagine…results from communism. Every time it has been tried.

Above video is parody of the song “Imagine”, showing the actual results from communism every time it has been ever been tried: empty store shelves, hunger, poverty, repression, political prisons, and death.

I could go into depth on the consequences from adopting communism. In fact, have a very short discussion: Why is it necessary to have a nuclear defense?

To cut the discussion short, just watch the video.

2021 estimate of nuclear weapons held by all nuclear powers.

The missile trailer located in the compound of the Oscar -01 launch control facility at Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Air Force). No date or further attribution attached to photo. (Note – if the access door is open and missile transport is getting ready, that is actually a launch facility, not and LCF.)

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute publishes a huge yearbook every yeare. I just learned about this. Yeah, yeah, I’m slow to catch on. I know. That’s why I’m writing this blog – to slowly catch on.

Anyway, I will not be buying the new edition because it runs about $100. Recent copies will run $60-$150 on eBay so will not be getting any of those. Copies 10 years or more from the past can be had for under $10. Might get one of those.

On 6/14/21 SIPRI announced release of their hot-off-the-press 2021 edition. Scroll to the very bottom of the linked page and you can see a link to a free copy of chapter 10 on World Nuclear Forces.

Following tables slice and dice information in the press release and chapter 10 for their estimates of world nuclear forces as of January 2021.

In the following tables, “deployed” is estimate of the deployed warheads either placed on missiles or located at bases where there are operational forces, which would allow rapid loading of the weapons.

“Other” means the warheads which are stored, reserves, or retired awaiting disassembly.

A foot note reminds us the British previously had an announced goal of dropping their inventory down to 180 but they announced this year they will increase the ceiling to 260.

The estimates for North Korea are guesses on how many weapons could be built based on the amount of fissible material they have produced.

Our weapons, along with our closest strategic allies:

In case you didn’t have enough to keep you awake at night, our adversaries are expanding their nuclear arsenals.

15U168 TEL 15P158 Topol ICBM by Robert Sullivan is in the public domain (Public Domain Mark 1.0)

Grim news – – China, Russia, and North Korea are expanding their nuclear inventory. From new reports in the last week:

6/16/21 –19fourtyfive – North Korea Might Have Up To 50 Nuclear Weapons: Report – The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI, updated their estimate of the nuclear inventory in North Korea.

A year ago they estimated North Korea have between 30 and 40 nuclear weapons.

America is Land of the Free, Because of the Brave. My ‘thank you’ to those who made it so.

Heavy bomber crewman, U.S. Army Air Force, World War 2. Photo from Legacy Flight Museum in Rexford, Idaho by James Ulvog.

Our freedom is under rapidly increasing assault by many politicians who think they are kings and queens appointed by divine right instead of having merely won a few more percentage points of the vote than their opponent in the last election. In the last year public health officials at the federal, state, and county levels who lack self-awareness of how often they beclown themselves have joined in the efforts to shred our liberty.

As a result of these attacks, it is ever more important that on this Memorial Day we remember those who shed all their blood so that we may be free.

A ‘thank you’ from me is so trivial, yet that is all I have.

I will demonstrate my appreciation for freedom purchased by others by exercising freedom.

Yesterday I exercised my freedom of religion. Tomorrow I will exercise my economic freedom, also called pursuit of happiness, by running my business the way I choose.

I have posted variations of the following ideas several times before. I will continue to make these points routinely.

To everyone on active duty today, I often accept a ‘thank you’ on your behalf.

Union Infantry private, U.S. Civil War, 1961-1865. Photo from Legacy Flight Museum in Rexford, Idaho by James Ulvog.

While touring the U.S.S. Midway Museum in San Diego early this month, I wore a “U.S. Air Force” ball cap with various stuff pinned to it, such as the rank I wore, a missile badge (“pocket rocket” for those who know), SAC logo, and a rectangular piece of metal that declares “Combat Crew.”

During the course of walking around, I got lots of glances and several comments of “thank you for your service.”

Also got some joshing comments from the retired Navy guys about them ‘allowing’ me on their ship. Since we were all on the same team back in the day, the kidding was pure fun.

I was on active duty for only four years and that was decades ago. I never got within 3,000 miles of hostile action. (Of course if the flag had gone up, I would have been radioactive dust at 20,000 feet altitude about 40 minutes later.)

As a result, I was uneasy for a long time when someone said “Thanks for your service.”

It took me a few years to get to get comfortable with those comments.

I now graciously and proudly accept those expressions of appreciation from my fellow Americans, but not because of what I did so long ago.