Is life far better than years ago?

Absolutely yes. In most measures, most people are better off than 30 or 100 or 250 years ago.

Life just keeps getting better and better when we look at things like life expectancy, health care, standard of living, number of people living in abject poverty (the portion of people world-wide living on inflation-adjusted $1 a day dropped from 42% in 1981 to 14% today), availability of air travel, astounding technology, and the rapidly dropping cost of that astounding technology.

That’s the overarching point of a new book, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, by Angus Deaton. The New York Times has a great review: A Cockeyed Optimist.

Continue reading “Is life far better than years ago?”

It’s getting harder to keep track of all the new big oil plays – add SCOOP to the list

Here’s another field to watch – the Southern Central Oklahoma Oil Province, or SCOOP.

Motley Fool is asking Could This Oil Field Be the Next Bakken?

Continue reading “It’s getting harder to keep track of all the new big oil plays – add SCOOP to the list”

More good stuff on surveillance – 12-23-13

Here is my eighth list of good stuff on our surveillance society that I’d like talk about but only have time to recommend with a quick comment.

  • Who do you trust? and
  • Lost sale for $4B worth of fighter jets

12-23 – Schneier on Security – NSA Spying: Who Do You Believe? – The worst damage from the NSA spying fiasco is the corrosion of trust. Continue reading “More good stuff on surveillance – 12-23-13”

More good stuff on the open frontiers – 12-20-13

It is so exciting to look at the change taking place around us. There’s no better time to be alive and no better time to be engaged in living a full life. Here are a few articles that caught my eye to show the wide open new frontiers. A new space race? Amazon might get avian resistance to their new aerial delivery systems. China puts a rover on the moon.

Space

12-8 – Bloomberg Businessweek – Let the Space Price War Begin – Continue reading “More good stuff on the open frontiers – 12-20-13”

A Christmas wish list – “An End to Quantitative Easing”

All I want for Christmas….

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PhgGixOLn_Q]

 

(Cross-posted from my other blog, Attestation Update.)

A few of the many funny lines –

Continue reading “A Christmas wish list – “An End to Quantitative Easing””

It is amazingly easy to create video content

(Cross-posted from my other blog, Nonprofit Update.)

Tech tools available today make it easy for a novice to create usable videos. No one will confuse what you create with what comes out of Hollywood or Madison Avenue, but it won’t cost thousands of dollars per minute of content either.

To show how easy it is, I’ve accumulated several of my videos and briefly discussed them on my other blog, Outrun Change:

Here is my most popular video, with over 3,600 views:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qeibzgSemY]

Making videos is incredibly easy. I hope my simple efforts will encourage you to try it yourself.

Keep in mind I’m working with a point-and-shoot camera, have zero editing experience, and possess a level of creatively that is only slightly higher than the average accountant.

Equipment that is not cheapest on the market, some minimal experience, and measurable levels of creativity combined with the astounding tools available today would result in great video for your organization.

Jump in, the water’s fine!

2 animated cartoons illustrate the ease of making cartoons

To show how easy it is to create visual material, I’m posting some things I created.  It is surprisingly easy to create content with today’s tools when you have just a little skill and a fun idea.

Previously posted airplane videos here and here.

Here are two animated cartoons that tell the story in visual form that I previously told in print form:

Bank reconciliations and offering count procedures:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qeibzgSemY]

Good procedures protect from false accusations:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KESsI04-XY]

How I made the videos and the time needed to make them

Continue reading “2 animated cartoons illustrate the ease of making cartoons”

Multiple wells on one site – Pad drilling

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A major part of the efficiencies well drilling in Bakken is putting multiple wells on one site. This saves a huge amount of time to set up and take down the rigs. Instead of disassembling/ transporting/ re-assembling, the still-assembled rig side-steps a few feet and the crew resumes drilling.

Continue reading “Multiple wells on one site – Pad drilling”

How to destroy a newly legalized illegal industry: Tax it to death

How could you shut down the newly legal recreational marijuana market in states that have legalized the federally illegal drug?

Well, you could pour on the taxes and regulations so heavy the legal stuff is twice or three times the price of illegal stuff.

First, a disclaimer. I don’t have experiential knowledge of the pot market, legal or illegal. My knowledge comes from the computer screen.

Why talk about this?

Three reasons. First, it helps me learn about change taking place around us in new worlds I’ll never personally explore. Second, this specific issue will allow us to see in real-time the damage caused by taxes and government regulation by watching what happens to a new ‘industry’. Third, I expect the state lawmakers and regulators are going to get an unpleasant lesson in unintended consequences. This post will be a marker for testing the idea that regulators can damage a new industry.

Having said that, check out an article in Daily Beast by Nick Gillespie:  Pot’s Black Market Backlash – How prohibitionists and nanny staters are trying to keep marijuana illegal – or at least inconvenient.

Continue reading “How to destroy a newly legalized illegal industry: Tax it to death”

First sliced eagles, then toasted migratory birds. Now sharks are getting in the way of clean energy.

Now basking sharks are getting involved. Not basking as in getting a summer tan in a chair on the beach, but basking as in appearing to lounge near the surface catching some rays when they are actually just catching plankton.  In this situation though, the sharks are shutting down a wind farm instead of getting killed by the farm, which is the way we do things in the US.

Wikipedia says basking sharks are not aggressive. They have large mouths and a different sort of gill arrangement so they can catch plankton, their main food.

Continue reading “First sliced eagles, then toasted migratory birds. Now sharks are getting in the way of clean energy.”

A long term perspective on the turmoil and change we see around us – The best primer I’ve seen.

The two best articles I’ve read that explain the massive shifts we are seeing in the economy were from Walter Russell Mead back in June 2011. Those articles put much in perspective and give a hint at a way forward. They were foundational to me starting to focus on the radical change taking place all around us.

The Death of the American Dream I compares the painful transition away from family farms to a suburban home funded with a cheap mortgage and paid by working a life-time job. We are now transitioning away from the model that has been in place since everyone reading this was a child. It will be painful, just as the disappearance of the family farm was painful.

Continue reading “A long term perspective on the turmoil and change we see around us – The best primer I’ve seen.”

More good stuff on surveillance – 12-16-13

Here is my seventh list of good stuff on our surveillance society that I’d like talk about but only have time to recommend with a quick comment. Check out the new Christmas carol –

ACLU – The NSA is coming to town –

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8pcWlyUu8U4]

and fictional illustration of the cascade effect in spying and also spying on the game world –  

Continue reading “More good stuff on surveillance – 12-16-13”

North Dakota oil production increases just under 1% in 10-13

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Production in the state increased to 941,843 barrels of oil per day in October from a slightly revised 933,191 bopd in September.

The Director’s Cut report says bad weather is the reason for a small increase in production: Continue reading “North Dakota oil production increases just under 1% in 10-13”

Full development of Bakken to involve ten times the wells now in place. Will take another 20 years.

Wow. Ten times more drilling than has already happened.  Speaking to the state legislature, Mr. Lynn Helms, who is the director of the Department of Mineral Resources, said

…the western part of the state had 6,447 wells in the oil-rich Bakken and Three Forks formations. Fully developing the formations will require drilling another 60,000 wells over the next 20 years …

Continue reading “Full development of Bakken to involve ten times the wells now in place. Will take another 20 years.”

The Great Recession just sort of happened. The Fed had absolutely nothing to do with it.

A long article from the Federal Reserve on the housing bubble and recovery from the great recession doesn’t mention the fed’s role in anything other than generating the recovery. See:  Subprime Mortgage Crisis. Absolutely no mention of the massive role played by easy money and Congressional policy pumping up the housing market.

The first part of the article is called How and Why the Crisis Occurred.

The short paraphrase is the runup in housing prices, increased demand for homes, surge in subprime loans, collapse of prices, and mass of foreclosures kinda’ sorta’ just happened.

No cause mentioned, especially no role assigned to the federal government in general or the Fed in particular.

Let’s look at the article in more detail.

Continue reading “The Great Recession just sort of happened. The Fed had absolutely nothing to do with it.”