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.
Here is my thirteenth list of good stuff on our surveillance society that I’d like talk about but only have time to recommend with a paragraph.
6/6 – Wired – Some Governments Have Backdoor Access to Listen in on Calls, Vodafone says– Continue reading “More good stuff on surveillance – 6/28”
Take any one of a variety of economic indicators. Per capita income. Life expectancy. Stuff people own. Average height. Child mortality. Number of pants and underwear owned.
Graph it over the last 2,000 years.
You will see a hockey stick. Flat with no growth for century after century. Brutal, hungry, and disease-ridden short lives were the norm 3000 years ago.
And 1000 years ago.
And 500 years ago.
So far, any graph you draw of any of those indicators is a flatline.
Then, about 200 years ago, every one of the graphs took off like a Shuttle launch. Something happened.
For the first in a series of videos, Professor Don Boudreaux explains what this hockey stick looks like.
And what made things get so mind-bogglingly better.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9FSnvtcEbg&feature=player_embedded]
Another idea for a hockey stick graph: number of natural teeth in your mouth at age 50.
Oh, wait. People usually didn’t live that long until a few hundred years ago.
link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9FSnvtcEbg&feature=player_embedded
The Washington Post has started a major investigative series on drones. First article describes losses in the military. Check out When Drones Fall From the Sky published June 20.
Looks to me like the implied conclusion the authors want you to reach is that drones are insufficiently reliable and unsafe for operation in U.S. airspace.
Several reasons for high loss rate come to mind. Institutional learning curve for brand new technology. Intentionally nonredundancy for an unmanned weapon system moved into use during combat. Not as much safety margins are designed in for unmanned systems in combat zone. Tradeoff of redundancy for reduced cost, increased range, and higher weapon payload.
Some great research from the article:
I read the news and see wide open frontiers in the worlds of publishing, technology, space, and energy. In terms of opportunities and growth, this reminds me of the wild west and homesteading days in the late 1800s.
Here’s a few of the articles that stretched my understanding of this amazing world we live in.
Perpetual Malthusian foolishness
4/25 – Wall Street Journal – The World’s Resources Aren’t Running Out – Ecologists worry that the world’s resources come in fixed amounts that will run out, but we have broken through such limits again and again – There are constant shouts of fright that we will run out of some resource in a decade or two. Maybe the day after tomorrow. Such predictions are as foolish as they are wrong. Matt Ridley points out that innovation, human creativity in other words, blasts through those limits over and over and over again.
Here is part of the blindness: Continue reading “More good stuff on the open frontiers – 6/25”
I’ve been wondering about that. Million Dollar Way quotes some comments from a Google Discussion Group that gives some info: Monthly Costs For Maintaining An Active Well…
Most companies estimate production costs at $6,000 to $8,000 per month per well…or $70,000 to $100,000 per year.
Keep in mind that a majority of wells require a week or more of maintenance each year with a workover rig with support equipment and crew at $10,000 plus per day.
You also have significant power costs in addition to general lease operations. A 6-8 well pad could easily require $750,000 to $1 million per year to keep everything in top condition to maximize production without any major operational downhole problems.
Since I’m an accountant, I’ll convert that background into a specific calculation adding in a few of my assumptions. Continue reading “What’s it cost to run an oil well for a year?”
Think I’ll start accumulating predictions for the highest point of oil production in North Dakota now that the state has passed 1,000,000 barrels per day.
In a feature article, N.D. oil production hits 1 million barrels per day, Amy Dalrymple, provides two estimates: Continue reading “Predictions for plateau in North Dakota oil production”
April marked the month that the average production passed the 1 million point. Preliminary number is 1,001,149.
Everyone has been waiting for this day. Yippee!
Here’s a graph of production for state-wide and Bakken-only:
Predictions
Iraq seems to have blown up in the last week or so. Is it really necessary to say I don’t have a clue what is happening? To see what give me a vague, fuzzy hint of something that looks like a clue, check out…
6/16 – American Interest – The Middle East and Beyond – Iraq: What a Way To Go – Adam Garfinkel provides deep background on how Iraq came into being and helps sort out the mess that is happening now.
Continue reading “Mali and Central Africa Republic update (and Iraq) – 6/17”
I’ve been referring to solar farms as wing-toasters and wind farms as slice-and-dicers for some time.
Found a few articles that explain why wind turbines have earned that well-deserved title:
4/30 The ECOreport – How Much Wildlife Can USA Afford to Kill? – Lots of footnotes.
Don’t go to the link unless you can stomach photos of large raptors sliced into pieces. Staff at wind farms are picking up chunks. One eagle was beheaded.
Those who have paid attention to the massive spying effort of the feds have learned how to parse corporate denials. Comments like We have never knowingly participated in program ‘AbuseOurCustomersTrust’, could mean one of three things:
All of which means the company was telling the technical truth while fully cooperating with the specified program and saying they didn’t.
Shall we apply this parsing ability to a denial from the UPS about shipping packages to the NSA for hacking?
Background
Keep an eye out for the idea of creative destruction. That’s the idea that a new way of doing business will replace the old way and consumers reap huge benefits.
Many people bemoan Wal-Mart destroying lots of small shops. I understand the damage since that phenomenon affected friends of mine.
Before Wal-Mart, the large chain grocery stores wiped out lots of small neighborhood markets.
Don’t forget what happened in the music industry.
John Bredehoft, writing at tymshft, reminds us What goes around comes around – the record industry.
Just like the wild west and homesteading days in the late 1800s, the frontiers of publishing, technology and space are wide open. Here’s a few of the articles that stretched my understanding of this amazing world we live in.
Publishing
6/5 – Daily Beast – Amazon is NOT the Vladimir Putin of the Publishing World – Until now, I’ve not tried to sort out the spat between Amazon and Hachette. Who is Hachette, I hear you ask? They are one of the big publishing house. They are not an issue in my life because they would never, ever talk to a little bitty author with sub-microscopic level of sales like me.
The visible part of the dispute is Amazon posting a higher price on Hachette books, allegedly removing the ‘you can order weeks in advance’ button, shipping slower than arrive-first-thing-tomorrow-morning, and suggesting someone else on the ‘net may have a better price.
Article above explains Hachette wants you and me to pay more and Amazon wants you and me to pay less. What Amazon is doing as a negotiating strategy is offering books at the terms, availability, and prices Hachette wants.
The horrible, cruel, cut-throatedness of Amazon is amusingly described: Continue reading “More good stuff on the open frontiers – 6/6”
Did you know the enlightened wizards of the New Deal worked out a plan that raisin producers had to turn over a percentage of their crop to the government and not get paid for the raisins?
Yes, that was actually a plan developed back in the ‘30s.
Did you know that plan is still in place? Eighty years later?
I discussed that a year ago – Economic destruction from the New Deal just keeps rolling on.
The lawsuit I mentioned back then involved farmers who were told to give 47% of their ’02 crop and 30% of their ’03 crop to the government without compensation. The case went to the Supreme Court, which ruled the farmers did actually have standing to sue the government. The case went to the 9th Circuit Court for consideration of their claims.
Guess what?
There is a huge amount of excess reserves just sitting in bank vaults (actually on deposit at the Fed). By huge, I’m talking around $2.5 trillion. That amount is from Charles Plosser, chairman of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank.
Marketwatch reports on 5/20: Chalres Plosser thinks there’s a ticking time bomb at the Fed.
Look at it a different way. Here is the M1 money stock, which I pulled from the Fed’s database:
See that huge increase in M1 from the start of the latest recession? Continue reading “I’m not the only one who thinks there is danger of major inflation – chairman of the Philadelphia Fed thinks so too”