More good stuff on surveillance – 7-23-13

There are a lot of articles discussing the surveillance world we now live in. I would like to comment on many of them in a full post. Alas, time does not permit.

I will start putting up a list of good stuff that I’d like talk about but only have time to recommend with a quick comment. Hopefully this will be a frequent list of links.

Here’s my first list:

Foreign Policy – The CIA’s New Black Bag Is Digital – When the NSA can’t break into your computer, these guys break into your house – Continue reading “More good stuff on surveillance – 7-23-13”

Air travel at record level in North Dakota

Record increases in boardings over last year.  Statewide increase of 9%, according to Bismark Tribune, N.D. airports post highest June boarding ever.

Article says boardings out of Williston tripled since June 2012.

That makes sense –  United and Delta flights to Williston started since last June; last fall as I recall.

Jet service from Dickinson to Denver and Minneapolis started in June 2013.

Obviously the oil boom is driving that traffic increase.

New tech is changing undersea drilling too – peak oil #27

Amazing technology developments are making drilling in the ocean easier, reducing cost, and revealing the locations of hard-to-find oil.

Six Tech Advancements Changing the Fossil Fuels Game at Rigzone outlines the changes.

I like this sentence that points out what everyone knows (specifically that a particular well or field only so much oil and will eventually run dry) with what the peak oilers refuse to believe (that there is another field to drill which is now reachable with new technology):

Rig advancements are coming online in tandem with the significantly increased momentum to drill in deeper waters as shallower reserves run out. 

Oh, and advancement in technology is just one of several fatal flaws to the “peak oil” foolishness.

Here’s some of the new tech. One of the 6 applies to drilling on land – at least I think it doesn’t apply to deep-sea drilling.

Continue reading “New tech is changing undersea drilling too – peak oil #27”

The establishment pushes back against the education revolution

There is a revolution going on in education. Many writers are talking about the education bubble at the primary, secondary, and collegiate level.  My preferred metaphor is an open frontier.  You can see my posts here.

An article in Chronicle of Higher Education, The Gates Effect, gives good background on the role of the Gates Foundation in advocating education reform.

The long article attacks the Gates Foundation strongly and repeatedly.  It is the latest is a series of critical articles.  Seems to me most of the current article is focused on giving voice to those pushing back against the changes taking place in the education world.

What I hear as the primary theme of the above article is that only those inside the education establishment should speak to reform.

As to the substance of the criticism, that is the topic for widespread discussion for several years.

Gates Foundation is one of the movers behind the education revolution

Continue reading “The establishment pushes back against the education revolution”

North Dakota oil production sets another record in 5-13

Production state-wide hit 810,314 bopd in May, up 2.07% from revised April amount of 793,913 bopd.

Here’s a graph:

 bakken production 5-13

Six month increase

That is an increase of only 8.1% over six months, which was the last month before the winter impacts hit.

Continue reading “North Dakota oil production sets another record in 5-13”

The reach of federal data gathering is beyond imagination (most people call that spying)

Barry Ritholtz summarizes the currently known scope of information being gathered by the U.S. government in his post, How Much Is the US Government Spying on Americans.

There is an extensive list of the ways and means of data gathering in the long article. There are multiple dozens of links to other articles if you want more background on any specific point he makes.

Here’s a good summary: Continue reading “The reach of federal data gathering is beyond imagination (most people call that spying)”

Issues on hand from the oil-loaded train crash in Canada

Current estimate is around 50 people were killed in a train derailment in Lac-Mégantic, Canada a week ago. That’s a distressing estimate because many people are still missing and only a few bodies have been recovered.

A few articles for background:

There will be plenty of issues to deal with from the disaster: regulation, train safety, our reliance on oil, pipeline vs rail transport.

An article at The Globe and Mail, Harsh Lessons, imperfect answers in Lac-Mégantic, by Margaret Wente starts to outline the issues.

Continue reading “Issues on hand from the oil-loaded train crash in Canada”

Autonomous drone lands itself on aircraft carrier

Update – Third attempt on 7-15-13 unsuccessful. Frequent failures are the price of innovation. Two successful landings is very cool. 

Here’s an amazing first:  a self-flying drone, the X-47B, took off from land at Patuxent NAS, flew to the U.S.S. George H. W. Bush and landed itself. It was then launched off the catapult and landed again.

Check out the video in the WSJ article: Navy Drone Successfully Lands on Aircraft Carrier.

There wasn’t an operator on the ground controlling the drone – it flew itself. Very cool.

Continue reading “Autonomous drone lands itself on aircraft carrier”

Mali update – 7-10-13

Not much news from Mali that I’ve noticed. There is progress, but at a deeper level than I can see in the few news sources I watch. I suppose that is only a commentary on me.

7-8 – Economist – Secure the Sahara, if you can

Three pieces of very good news, at least from my limited perspective. From the article: Continue reading “Mali update – 7-10-13”

Education revolution is underway

Two articles in The Economist provide an overview of the major upheaval underway in education.

The lead article is E-ducation.  The in-depth article is Catching on at last.

The articles cover much of what is going on the education world.  I’ve tried to touch on those issues on this blog.

Check out the two articles for better explained, more in-depth descriptions.

Here is a recap of several of the major trends, from the lead article. I’ve split two very long sentences into key ideas: Continue reading “Education revolution is underway”

Survey of shale oil; also the Peak Oil Myth – #26

Matt Ridley provides an overview of the flood of fracked shale oil in his post, The dash for shale oil will shake the world.

He points to The Shale Oil Boom: a US Phenomenon, a newly released report from Leonardo Maugeri.

I’ve mentioned this in the past, but look again at the explosion of estimated recoverable oil in Bakken: Continue reading “Survey of shale oil; also the Peak Oil Myth – #26”

Be careful when predicting who will win the tech battles – search engine illustration

Don’t be too confident when you guess who will win the battles for market share and who is destined to disappear. Remember when Yahoo was the dominant search engine provider?

When that upstart outfit, Google, appeared on the scene in 1998 who would have predicted it to be the dominant search engine in 2013, a mere 15 years later?

My friend John Bredehoft creates a forecast from 1998 using information available at the time in his post, In which I apply the wisdom of 1998 to an old Salon article.

If he was blogging at the time, he guesses he would have not given Google much of a chance to succeed against Excite, Lycos, AOL, MSN, and Yahoo. He would have guessed the new Disney search engine would fare better than Google and several others.

His hypothetical comment about Google: Continue reading “Be careful when predicting who will win the tech battles – search engine illustration”

2 graphs that show how dramatically oil production has increased in the U.S.

Carpe Diem has two graphs that give a visual on how much the energy field has changed in a very short time.

Check out the first one – More on the spectacular rise in Texas oil production — maybe the most remarkable energy success stories in US history

The smoothed red lines are amazing. Slow decline in production from 1985 to about 2003. Flat production until about 2011. Then a space shuttle imitation. Almost, but not quite straight up for the last two years or so. Since 2010 or 2011, production in Texas has soared back to 1985 levels.

Now look at the second graph. The article title tells the story: No. 1 US produced more petroleum in March than: a) Saudi Arabia, and b) Europe, Central and South America combined.

Continue reading “2 graphs that show how dramatically oil production has increased in the U.S.”

A view of the top of the publishing world. The whole publishing world is an open frontier.

The wide open frontier of publishing is fascinating because anyone can publish. The biggest barrier to entry (a fancy economic term meaning how difficult it is to enter a business) is the desire to publish.  I have published 4 books and have had a blast doing so. The very bottom of that world is where I operate.  So what does the top of the publishing world look like?

It has also been transformed, as discussed by Jeff Bercovici in a Forbes article, The Hunger Games Economy. I’m about two solar systems removed from the top of the publishing biz, but it’s still fun to look.

Technology has concentrated sales. Look at this:

To understand the scale of the trend, think about this: Of the total number of copies sold in 2012 of the 400 highest-selling titles, two authors, E.L. James (Fifty Shades of Grey) and Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games), together accounted for a full 25%, according to data tracked by USA Today. Between them, the Fifty Shades of Grey and Hunger Games trilogies claimed all six top slots on the year-end bestseller list. 

Continue reading “A view of the top of the publishing world. The whole publishing world is an open frontier.”

Compromises developing in conflict over fracking

That’s the observation from William P. Barrett in his article at Forward – Fracking’s Resilience – with compromise afoot, environmental and political objections to the controversial energy extraction technique are likely to fade.

There are several indications that some compromises are developing that would allow fracking to continue and still meet the concerns of some people who are currently critical of the technology.

Check out the article for a survey of several indicators.

The article also points out several rounds of the battle of the documentaries. A healthy debate is underway.

Continue reading “Compromises developing in conflict over fracking”