Belligerati

What do you make of the argument that the only way to lessen our dependence on foreign oil is to tap more oil wells here — in Alaska and off the coasts of Florida and California? When you consider that the oil we pump goes into a global oil market, offshore drilling makes no sense. We take the environmental risk, but we’d have to share the negligible price gains with Chinese consumers and every other user around the world.

A smart guy but no economist. Oil demand is highly inelastic over the short term. That's why the addition of a relatively small additional consumption from population growth, India, and China combined with basically flat levels of production created the enormous spike in the price of oil. So bringing more oil to market can have a huge impact on the price of oil even if it is a small fraction of current consumption.

Plus, even granting that it does only have a small impact it still raises a lot of money. Money that can be used to offset the enormous imports of oil into the US and pushes down the value of the dollar. The US is currently the 3rd largest producer of oil, about 7.6 million barrels a day. If we could boost that by 1 million day (the high end of the ANWR estimates) and it had no price impact then at today's prices could save on the order of $52 billion a year from leaving the country.

If so desired, that buys a lot of aid to poor Americans harmed by high fuel prices.The federal fuel tax raises about $30 billion a year and adds 18.4 cents to a gallon of gas. Using the revenues from the ANWR to replace this tax would be one method to do so.

Posted by OEM at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Think Before You Voicemail is a selection of strategies to reduce your voice mail load by a series of unprofessional and rude techniques in the guise of productivity enhancement.

When you work in an organization, unless you are the boss, you do not get to decide that certain forms of communication are inconvenient for you and so you'll ignore them.

More specific comments:

"It takes much longer to listen to a message than read it."

"And voicemail is usually outside of our typical workflow, making it hard to forward or reply to easily."

"Typical voicemail messages today include things like "Please don’t leave me a voicemail, I rarely listen to them. Please just email me at xxxx@xxxx.com" Many people don’t bother setting up their voicemail accounts at all. Then there’s my favorite method, the one I use personally - let the message box get full and then don’t empty it. Caller ID still tells me who called, and I can simply call them back."

One particular strength of the voice mail system is the way it reduces email. Because communication by voice is so much faster than by email, on the margin organizations should promote systems that discourage the later and encourage the former. Get people to call each other to hash out business problems,and leave messages for each other, encouraging call backs and rapid problem solving.

Posted by OEM at 8:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Montauk this year has become the alternative to the anti-scene scene kind of thing," Mr. Kasuba said. Many locals, however, are anti-alternative to the anti-scene scene.

The Yachtini Lands in Montauk

Posted by OEM at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday I flew across the continent on coach on Continental. It was the nicest flight I can remember.

I set my Continental preferences to give me a kosher meal (I finally remembered after years of flights) and it was the tastiest, most healthful airline meal I can remember. Ratatouille, eggplant tapenade, BBQ chicken, rice pilaf, non-dairy chocolate mouse, and a roll. I had an exit row all to myself. I sat across from an interesting property developer and had a long and multi-topiced conversation about golf courses, luxury marketing, Tiger Woods, theology, missionary work, and interfaith marriage.

The flight attendants were nice and attentive. Airport security was a breeze. There literally was no line. I even had an exit row all to myself. The flight was so empty that we couldn't change our seats until after take off or we'd throw off the plane weight.

Once in the right coast the Airtran was on time and arrived 5 minutes after I got to the platform.

It was great. If flying were more like that I'd do it more frequently and happily.

I strongly suggest flying on the 4th of July if you can work it out.

Posted by OEM at 9:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I read today on CNN that Utah goes to 4-day workweek to save energy next month in a year long experiment for state employees. Four 10 hour days will replace 5 eight hour ones which has big expected savings in fuel, energy, and commuting time. More than 2/3 of state employees are effected.

I am curious how they are handling vacation. Under the old system a typical state employee worked something like 230 days a year (260 work days less 10 days of holidays and 20 of vacation). Under the new system the base number of days is just 208 days, so if they still get the same holidays and vacation then they work 178 days. The old system would be 11.5% vacation and the new system would be 15.5% vacation. That's a lot more. It is hard to imagine them cutting down on the number of holidays, but I could see them cutting the number of vacation days by 25%. That would be equivalent to saying you have a certain number of vacation hours, (8 * old number of vacation days) and you can use them to buy new vacation at the rate of 10 hours per day or 5 per half day. I find it hard to imagine any way that this works out where state employees don't end up working significantly less in total.

In customer / taxpayer facing work I see this as some benefits. For example, earlier and later DMV and permit granting hours for example could help working folks avoid missing work to do government work. But for government employees who don't punch a clock and never see anyone other than other state employees, monitoring costs of work shirking are already high and this would further raise them. To the extent that the 8 hour day made sense before, surely it had to do with some estimate of when a typical employee's productivity began to decline from fatigue. Yes, an extra day's rest on Friday would help with that, but not fully. For that reason in a private business I would expect this to lower productivity, but more complicated factors dictate government hours. They may only have eight hour days to match conventions of the private sector and thus longer days allow more project work and deep thinking, raising productivity. We'll have to see. This is an interesting natural experiment and I'll be curious to follow this and sees what happens to the number of forms, licenses, and other measurable aspects of government activity.

Of course, if this works, maybe they'll try 13 hour and 20 minute 3 day a week jobs if gas goes even higher.

Posted by OEM at 7:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I love a serious conversation about a ridiculous subject.

Over at the sci-fi blog io9, they diccuss How Far Is Gotham City From Metropolis? and many people offer their reasoned arguments.

Given how little effort is expended in cross-comic-continuity and the sheer magnitude of material written about Metropolis and Gotham, there is likely no correct answer.

My two cents is that it is definitely wrong that Metropolis is Chicago and Gotham is New York. Yes, they were based on those cities, but the comics make reference to NYC and Chicago as well as Gotham and Metropolis, and so there simply are more big cities and the DC world.

Posted by OEM at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

She's 232 years old and looking great. I'll be reading the Deceleration of Independence this morning, as is my tradition. This afternoon I will be flying across her great expanse on my way to NYC.

When founded she was alone among the nations as a republic, an infant among ancient empires. Now just a few countries, notably England, Iceland, and Japan are older, and Republican government (at least in name) is the most common form of government on earth.

Posted by OEM at 8:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Christopher Hitchens tries waterboarding and decides that
1) It is drowning, not simulated drowning

2) If water boarding isn't torture than nothing is.

Believe Me, It’s Torture

A very interesting and eye opening article. The first claim seems well established, as they time their techniques so as to minimize the danger to the recipients. The later seems weaker. If he hasn't been really tortured (fingernails torn out and the like), he doesn't seem to be in a good position to compare. But scary and ugly business it certainly is.

See video of the water boarding here:
On the Waterboard

Posted by OEM at 1:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So you think your life is weird? How does it compare with the life of Edward Charles Henderson Jr., a 51 year old homeless man who drives a pedicab he built himself and who's regular passenger is the sister of his estranged common law wife. Not feeling as weird anymore -- I imagine.
Checking Back In With June Bug

Posted by OEM at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For very good reasons, Facebook doesn't tell you when someone removes you are their friend. But all you have to do to see that someone is no longer your friend is check your friend list. So if you want to know you can find out.

This strikes me as a natural idea for a Facebook Plug-in Defriendster. It shouldn't be hard to write a plug-in that compares your friend list to older versions of that list and notes anyone who dropped off.

I think it could be popular. It would help keep track of your frenemies.

Posted by OEM at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From No Babies?, an interesting piece in the NY Times about the low birthrates throughout the developed world. Their conclusion:

So there would seem to be two models for achieving higher fertility: the neosocialist Scandinavian system and the laissez-faire American one. Aassve put it to me this way: "You might say that in order to promote fertility, your society needs to be generous or flexible. The U.S. isn’t very generous, but it is flexible. Italy is not generous in terms of social services and it’s not flexible. There is also a social stigma in countries like Italy, where it is seen as less socially accepted for women with children to work. In the U.S., that is very accepted."

I don't buy it. From a few paragraphs higher in the article we see that the Scandinavian have a birthrate of 1.8 (where the population shrinks) to the US's (a sustainable level) 2.1 per mother. That means American women have 17 percent more children! In any case, these European success stories still don't generate enough children to sustain each country's population. Slowing down the demographic collapse of Europe has value, but unless the technique actually results in a stable or growing population, it cannot be called a solution.

I see this as a process that will sort itself out. As I mentioned in The theists will out breed the rest, we will see conservative, faithful, male-headed households supply a disproportionate fraction of the next generation, and these people will choose family lives and political strategies that will reflect their values. Then we will see a less populous Europe with lower housing prices and shorter commutes (from lower population) allowing these people to have larger families.

Posted by OEM at 10:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A military blogger noticed what eluded the supreme court and her many researchers. The court noted in their ruling on the death penalty that for child rape that there was no federal death penalty for child rape. But it seems that there is. Congress revised the sex crimes section of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in 2006 to add child rape to the military death penalty.

Caught by a lawyer blogger and not even one working on the case. Just an expert stranger with a passion for blogging.

Two interesting facts from the NY Times article: In Weighing Death Penalty, a Flaw in Fact

1) The last execution by the US military was on on April 13, 1961, when Pvt. John A. Bennett was put to death by hanging. His crime: the rape of an 11-year-old girl.

2) Any losing party in the Supreme Court can file a petition within 25 days asking the justices to reconsider their decision. Granting such a petition requires a majority vote.

Posted by OEM at 6:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

District of Columbia v. Heller, No. 07-290 is upheld and the US Supreme court holds that the second amendment protects the right to own a handgun in self-defense in your own home. Congratulations to all the free citizens of these United States and especially the residents of the District of Columbia who may now protect their lives with handguns. May thousands of petty thieves, car jackers, muggers, and house robbers sleep more poorly tonight.

This is a real conservative success story. They spent decades changing popular and legal opinion on the meaning of the second amendment, putting in place judges who could respect the new legal consensus, and electing presidents who would do so. They should be proud of their victory. The next few months may bring them little else of comfort.

Justices Rule for Individual Gun Rights

Posted by OEM at 4:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I went to San Francisco and Sequoya national forest with my brother and mother for a bit of summer R&R. I enjoyed the food, but I guess I had read too much hype about the SanFran food scene because I didn't find it as good as I expected, even for the fancy stuff like One Market and Jardiniere . Service at the Empress of China was rushed and cold, but the food was tasty and the view of the sunset breathtaking.

We had freakish weather during our trip, with clear skies and hot weather. For example, check this out:

I took that picture from a top Sather Tower on UC Berkeley's campus which we ascended on our tour of the campus and the Berkley neighborhood. In the distance you can see the golden gate bridge and downtown San Francisco. We also had amazing pizza at The Cheese Board. And had a fun time visiting a great game store (Games of Berkeley where I picked up a copy of Acquire and Ticket to Ride 1910) and comic book shop (Comic Relief). The botanical gardens there are nice, I recommend a visit, even if they are a short cab ride from the Bart Station.

We also biked across the Golden Gate bridge (to Tiberon and then took a ferry to San Fran), visited fisherman's wharf (touristy but I had a good fish sandwich) , toured the Jewish museum (boring and very little Jewish about it), walked through China town, had lunch in the Ferry Building Marketplace, and marveled at the numerous and aggressive homeless population (never seen anything like it in the USA). We stayed at the Palace Hotel with a nice glassed in pool. All and all I found it a livable modern city with a lot to like.

A 5 hour (the first four hours is mostly ugly but untrafficked and the last hour is a beautiful mountain drive) to Sequoya park where we stayed in the John Muir Lodge, cooked out meals in cookouts at the picnic sites, and went on a few hikes to tour those amazing, ancient, and epic trees. Really an astonishing place of beauty and wasn't busy at all. We mostly had trails and eating spots to ourselves once we left the park's commercial center. There is something special about campfire food, and the steak, BBQ chicken, grilled onions, and baked potatoes hit the spot.

Unfortunately we had to cut our trip short by a day when my mother fell on a trail and broke her wrist. After two months in a cast she's going to be fine, but it gave us a scare and she's canceled her other summer plans.

All and all a good trip and I'll send out pictures soon.

Posted by OEM at 8:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)