Tag Archives: off topic

From Reason:

This incident unfolded in Beaverton, Oregon, on January 16, according to The Oregonian. It was about 9 a.m., and the mom needed milk and meat. She put her four-year-old in the back seat, buckled him into his booster seat, and headed to the grocery store. She made sure to park right near the door and ran inside, leaving the car running and unlocked.

She was never more than 15 feet from the car, according to police spokesman Matt Henderson. Nor did she dawdle. She was in the store very briefly, a clerk at the store attested.

But the carjacker saw her walk in, saw the car running, jumped in, and raced away. Realizing just moments later that there was a kid in the backseat, he did a U-turn in the parking lot next to the market and came straight back, whereupon he ordered the mom to remove her son.

The thief then drove off again, and if you happen to see a 2013 silver Honda Pilot—license plate 357 GLV—please call the Beaverton police to have him arrested.

From the Portland Biz Journal here:

… The plaintiffs are seeking compensatory damages “in excess of $10 million.”

… The lawsuit charges that “independent lab testing” revealed that Cura’s Select Elite products “contained only 55% THC (i.e. 550 mg), despite promising they would contain 76.9% THC (i.e. 769 mg).” That calculated to 28.84 percent less of the intoxicating compound than promised, the suit states….

The first one was of course Teddy – and the circumstances were remarkably similar, though the ultimate outcome was different. From Power and Responsibility, the Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt: W.H. Harbaugh (New York, 1961).

Pages 113-114, posted, sadly, without permission of the author:

… The campaign [in Cuba] had also proved what there had been no need to prove: Theodore Roosevelt was an inspiring leader of men. He had, Leonard Wood later wrote, the all-important virtues of the soldier. He was courageous, solicitous of his troops’ welfare, and accessible to those who bore complaints; and he commanded in consequence the respect of both his men and his officers. Stephen Crane, who observed TR in the field hospitals between engagements, wrote at the time that he “worked like a cider press … let him be a politician if he likes, he was a gentleman down here.”

It was perhaps inevitable that even in Roosevelt’s hour of greatest glory he should thrust his bull neck into controversy with those who had it in their power to do him honor. Yellow fever raged through the camps after Santiago fell, and when a group of ranking regular officers asked TR, who was by then a brigade commander, to request Secretary of War Russell A. Alger to expedite the army’s transfer north, the Rough Rider consented. With the tacit approval of the commanding general, W. R. Shafter, he wrote a letter that was given out to the press before it reached Washington.

President McKinley and Secretary Alger were understandably outraged. Roosevelt’s letter, together with one which the regular officers had drawn up on reconsideration, was an indirect, but damning indictment of the administration’s conduct of the war. It also advertised to the Spaniards, who were then negotiating peace, that the American Army in Cuba was no longer a disciplined and effective fighting force. Furthermore, Alger had made the decision to evacuate just the day before.

On August 15, 1898, the disease-ridden but all-conquering Rough Riders disembarked from the transport Miami at Montauk Point, Long Island. A month later Roosevelt was called from his tent on the sands. The First Volunteer Cavalry Regiment was formed in a hollow square with the officers and color sergeant in the center. Roosevelt strode into the square and one of the troopers stepped forward and presented him with a reproduction of Frederick Remington’s famed bronze, “The Bronco-Buster.” It was a gift from the enlisted men. TR was visibly moved as he now addressed his troops for the last time. “I am proud of this regiment beyond measure,” he declared. “It is primarily an American regiment, and it is American because it is composed of all the races which have made America their country by adoption and those who have claimed it as their country by inheritance.” He closed with a tribute to the Negro soldiers who had fought with distinction beside the Rough Riders. Then, as the entire regiment, many of its members in tears, filed by him, he shook hands with each man and officer. The great adventure had ended.

There was an epilogue. Roosevelt had been recommended for the Medal of Honor. He wanted it painfully, partly because he believed it would help him in his political career, mainly because he needed throughout his life to surround himself with the outward symbols of achievement. After the original recommendation had been made, TR had written numerous letters on his own behalf, sought affidavits from those who had been with him in battle, and beseeched Lodge to obtain the War Department’s endorsement. But Secretary Alger refused to make the recommendation to Congress. …

into the simplistic libertarianism of my youth. Some days are harder than others.

Today Nigel Jaquiss and Rachel Monahan reported in Willamette Week that the State of Oregon is losing money on its new sports lottery. How the hell do you lose money running a sports book? And if you did, who the hell would trust you to run a carbon cap-and-trade scheme?

That is a trick question. No one could answer that question. The ’87 Caballero didn’t come with a vacuum distributor. It came with a computer controlled distributor. However, if you were to retrofit it with a vacuum advance distributor for $55 off ebay, the correct ignition timing would be 10 degrees before top dead center:

From the daily roundup that UO’s news service sends out:

Return of the Reefer-Crazed Killer
Reason Magazine (232K Twitter followers | 3,170,033 unique visitors per month | 42,000 circulation): University of Oregon W.E. Miner Chair and associate professor of economics Benjamin Hansen provides expert commentary.

The Scottish National Health Service thinks I should stop whinging until I cough up blood:

The American Lung Association thinks I should go to the doctor for an X-Ray:

Another year, another panel data observation.

And the winners are a matter of public record:

At one point the Oregon Health Plan couldn’t afford to cover all low income applicants, so they had monthly lotteries. But this is new to me – Kyle Iboshi of KGW8 has the story here:

… Last year, the OLCC created a drawing that gives the public a chance to buy rare bottles, like the elusive Pappy Van Winkle and the Buffalo Trace Distillery Antique Collection.

A total of 7,663 people entered the December drawing for the opportunity to purchase one of the 106 rare bottles.

“We really leveled the playing field so anybody from Portland to Enterprise to Philomath can have a chance to purchase a bottle that they otherwise may not have a chance to,” explained Matthew Van Sickle, spokesman for the OLCC.

Van Sickle admits only a fraction – roughly 4 percent of the state’s rare bottles – go into the drawing, although the OLCC is looking to continue and possibly expand the drawing system.

As a hobbyist collector, Lehr, would like to see either a first-come, first-serve policy for everyone. Or, Lehr argues, the OLCC should put all limited-edition bottles into a drawing so everyone has equal odds.

“It’s really frustrating that there’s this inequality in the market,” said Lehr.

Why not an auction?

CNN has the latest: Trump says troops on US border can use ‘lethal force’.

You can donate to HIAS, the international refugee resettlement group that the Pittsburgh terrorist despised, here.

Sometimes I wonder if politicians can really be trusted. Michael Tobin has the answer in the Eugene Weekly here.

12/23/2019:

Ever since the 1973 oil embargo our country has had to suck-up to murderous potentates like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and send our soldiers to die in endless Middle East wars to keep the imports flowing.

Meanwhile, some clever and well incentivized entrepreneurs figured out how to frack oil and gas from previously worthless shale formations in North Dakota, Texas, and Pennsylvania. And, as of September, we are now a net oil exporter. for the first time since 1949. If current trends continue, in ten years we will be exporting more oil to Europe and China than Saudi Arabia does:

Of course current trends will not continue. Alternative clean energy sources are already cheaper than oil for many uses, and that will only accelerate the ending of this phase of history.

7/18/2018: Peak Oil Fears

Back in 2006 EWEB invited author Richard Heinberg to Eugene, to give a talk about Peak Oil. Heinberg had just published a scary book about this, claiming :

The world is about to run out of cheap oil and change dramatically. Within the next few years, global production will peak. Thereafter, even if industrial societies begin to switch to alternative energy sources, they will have less net energy each year to do all the work essential to the survival of complex societies.

This got an enthusiastic response in Eugene. Since I’d spent some time in the oil fields doing seismic exploration, and had been hired by UO in part on the basis of my claim to be an environmental economist, I thought I should respond. So I wrote this Op-Ed for the RG, which they published in Feb 2006. It’s no longer on their website, so here’s the version I submitted:

Peak Oil and Other Fears

I’ve been following the reports about the enthusiastic reception that Professor Heinberg’s talk about peak oil and industrial collapse have received in Eugene. Here’s a related problem that I give in class: World oil reserves are 600 billion barrels, and we are using it at 20 billion barrels per year. How long until we run out? Please write down your answer before you read any more of this op-ed.

My students do the math and they tell me 30 years – maybe just 20, if we add growth in consumption and population. Good try, I tell them, but these numbers are from 1950. Hmm.

The idea of economic collapse from resource exhaustion used to be mainstream economics – a long time ago. In 1798, Thomas Malthus argued that population would soon outstrip food production, and that mass starvation would result. During the potato famine, English politicians used his economics as an excuse not to waste money on relief for the starving Irish. Stanley Jevons, in 1865, argued that England’s industrial revolution would soon come to a halt because the country was using up its supply of coal.  Actually, England still has plenty of coal, though not much use for it. As for the starving Irish, well, today 57% of them are now officially “overweight or obese.” Whoops.

While this embarrassing failure to explain reality sent economists back to the drawing board, apparently it has left the peak oil cult untroubled – their forecasts of doom and gloom are just a recycled version of Malthus’s logic, which treats humans as if we are mindless sheep, and which shows no understanding of markets or incentives.

The new model that economists came up with starts from sensible assumptions – business people aren’t idiots, they want to make money, and consumers don’t like to waste money. As more people use up an exhaustible resource like oil, the owners see the scarcity coming and they start demanding higher prices. This gives consumers an incentive to conserve, and oil companies incentives to find more oil. Companies that don’t own oil start to develop alternative energy sources. Combine these effects, and scarcity tends to go away. Add in a little technical progress and prices will fall, not rise. Sure enough, measured by how many hours we have to work to pay for a barrel, the long trend of oil prices has been downward, except for a few short spikes during wars.

The list of alternatives to oil is very long. On the production side, there’s solar energy, wind energy, nuclear/hydrogen energy, coal, tar sands, or just plain drilling more oil wells. On the consumption side, there’s insulating your house, buying a small car, or riding your bike. (If you haven’t ridden it since the last oil crisis, lube the brake cables first. I learned that one the hard way.) We don’t use these substitutes much, yet, because they are still a bit more expensive or inconvenient than oil is. But they are still out there, waiting for us.

Here’s some evidence of how painless the transition to these alternatives will be. Since it peaked around 1970, US energy use per dollar of economic output has been falling steadily. It is now half what it was. You are probably surprised to hear this – unless you are in a business that uses a lot of energy. If you are, you’ve worked like a dog to make this happen, and you’ve increased your profits along the way. But for the average person, all this has been done without much trouble or even notice by you. This is why we call the market “the invisible hand.”

I don’t understand why people continue to give predictions of resource exhaustion and economic collapse so much attention. The prior history of these predictions is simple – they have always been wrong. The theory they are built on is also simple – and also obviously wrong. But then I don’t understand why people like reading Stephen King either. Is it possible that a nice simple story about imaginary scary things is just a fun distraction for the evening?

What scares me is that with all the attention they are devoting to oil scarcity and the coming collapse of civilization, Eugene and its politicians are getting distracted from working on the many things that markets don’t reliably deliver – like health care access, affordable housing, transportation, good paying jobs, and education – and which we rely on good government to help provide.

Bill Harbaugh, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Oregon

I soon started getting angry emails about my claims, including one from a Portland businessman who accepted my offer to bet that the price of oil wouldn’t go above $200 in real terms within the next 10 years. He backed out when he realized I was prepared to put $10K on it.

So what’s happened? I haven’t been keeping an eye on global production, but today the Dept of Energy’s weekly report is out, and US oil production has now hit 11M barrels a day, up from 5M in 2006:

The price of sweet West Texas Intermediate, which was $78 at the time, briefly got up to $161 in 2008, but it’s currently about $70. (All in 2018 dollars). So what are the predictions for future oil output and prices? If you’re still asking that question, you didn’t understand my op-ed.