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February 28, 2006
Victory is mine
Today was the Big Gym Showdown, and I'm left standing.
Cell phone guy got a call on the treadmill today. My heart raced as I wondered whether he would pick it up. Should I say something? Should I grumble and stare and tsk-tsk? If I don't do anything, will he get more brazen?
He picked it up.
"Can't talk now. I'll call you later."
Hooray for manners! I really hope he complained about me to his friends (I picture them at a Houlihan's in Naperville), who set him straight on proper gym behavior. Whether it was me or was them, I get my peace and dignity.
Posted by rj3 at 3:48 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Follow that Ambulance!
I haven't been in law school for a year, and I'm already getting guff from doctors and medical students about malpractice suits. Sure, the whole "ambulance chaser" thing is an old joke that has spread far and wide (even to my parents) but the folks in aggrevied professions seem to recite the usual lines with an unusual bite, as if I'm making their lives harder simply by sitting in Property class.
So, about that medical malpractice crisis? It's over and done with - part of a larger trend of more expensive commercial insurance and an inability to get bad doctors out of the system. (For more information, see The Medical Malpractice Myth)
Now, about that bruise - did you get that slipping on ice in front of the public library?
Posted by rj3 at 9:09 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
February 27, 2006
Just when I thought I was losing my edge
Finally, MySpace comes in handy:
March 14th, DFA/Capitol Records will release LCD Soundsystem’s Introns, a digital album of b-sides from U.K. vinyl singles, remixes and other rare recordings previously unavailable in the U.S. The collection will be available strictly as a download, available through iTunes and other digital retailers.
If only I had a DJ gig out here to play this stuff!
Posted by rj3 at 7:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 26, 2006
This week in awesome
- Bless thee, YouTube. I'm a big fan of Talking Heads' "Crosseyed and Painless" as a dancefloor natural - the only reason why it doesn't get every last booty in the house to shake is because it has been somewhat lost in the sands of time. Luckilly, someone found this ancient music video for it and posted it online for the world to see the genius of this song. The flipside of being paranoid and jittery, as these Toni Basil-directed b-boys so amply show us, is an incredible energy. A seamless mix of uptown and downtown culture, this video should make it abundantly clear why the Heads are among the most underrated dance bands of all time.
- As of Saturday, our beloved Jays have won 37 straight at Homewood Field, tying a NCAA lax record set by Syracuse in the '80s. Finally, the one college sport I can follow starts its season.
Posted by rj3 at 7:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 24, 2006
Now I have to try to avoid scaring the normals
I have some friends in town this week, which marks the first time my pre-law school friends have interacted with my law school friends. See, I used to be a cool kid with a relatively popular blog, a DJ gig at a mid-sized club and a collection of fashionable t-shirts. I yukked it up with strangers.
Now, I occasionally wear sweater vests. I know two people in this whole city that aren't in law school, and they haven't met my law school friends.
On the first day they were in town, I went with the two guests, one male and one female, and a law student. We drank, we ate hamburgers, we drank some more. A few pitchers in, law student and I got into an animated discussion of whether pharmacists should be required to carry the morning after pill. But it wasn't really about that. We're both pro-choice, but the issue was really about the 14th Amendment and intermediate scrutiny and all that good legal stuff. The debate lasted half an hour, during which we didn't notice that the female guest was freaking out about the fact that two guys were arguing so passionately about the morning after pill. Really, we explained, it's not about the pill, it's about the interaction between the state's police power and due process requirements. To someone who hasn't been doing this for the last six months, that isn't a very satisfying answer.
Maybe I should just stick to news, weather and sports when I leave the confines of the law library.
Posted by rj3 at 11:20 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 22, 2006
The shame of the port mess
I'm more than a little surpised at the size of the mess surrounding the Dubai Ports World contracts to run six U.S. ports, especially since they won't actually own the ports and will employ American unionized longshoremen. Oil sheiks have bought U.S. properties before, as have the Japanese (back when we were afraid of their business acumen), but after the initial lament, we have learned to live with our foreign landlords.
It's bringing out the worst in people - exposing the latent racism or at the very least making it look like both parties have a blanket anti-Arab bias, whether or not it's true. Arab Muslim terrorism has its roots in oil and has its solution in ventures like Dubai Ports World.
Oil props up bad governments by concentrating power. Oil screws up foreign exchange, making exports too expensive on the world market, shrinking other economic activity. Oil is too capital-intensive to employ the workforce. Oil funds terrorism.
The solution is to see that oil will eventually dry up and to build up other power centers and economic engines. The UAE is a leader in this, using its vast oil and gas wealth to build up tourism, real estate, transport, banking and other major industries, including port management. Sure, it's owned by an emir, making it a state-owned enterprise, but due to the concentration of power that comes as a result of dependence on extractive industry, the emirs are the only people who can put up enough money to do it.
If we don't support these ventures, we're dooming ourselves to a Middle East that sees no outlet but violence.
Posted by rj3 at 10:32 AM | Comments (22) | TrackBack
February 21, 2006
We have a friend on the inside
Grey's Anatomy writer Krista Vernoff tried to stand up for the Georges of the world:
I was, for a very, very long time, WILDLY OPPOSED to Meredith and George hooking up. Like, shouting matches in the writer’s room opposed. Like, storming down the hall to my office and eating vast quantities of Trader Joe’s dark chocolate opposed. I was afraid people wouldn’t forgive Meredith.
Yeah, go ahead, eat that chocolate. That'll show 'em!
Problem is, a lot of people aren't very happy with Meredith to begin with since she treats George like he's a decoration on the mantle, won't get over the awful McDreamy and agonizes about it with him all up in Addison's face. Sure, we feel bad about her because of her family situation, but watching her mom re-live the events of decades ago (nice plot device, natch), we get a window into the kind of insufferable b*tch Meredith will one day become.
OK, back to thinking deep thoughts about energy policy... until Sunday.
Posted by rj3 at 4:18 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Roid rage? Probably not.
Remember my "leaving in a huff" over a guy who yapped on the cell phone on a treadmill at the gym last week? Well, I ran into him again today. After I had been there for about half an hour, he walks in, takes a treadmill two down from me and says, "do you have a problem?" I say "not unless you use the cell phone."
We snap back and forth for a few rounds, with Cell Phone Jogger claiming that he was allowed to use his phone everywhere but a movie theatre and me claiming that the right to do something doesn't prevent you from being a jerk by doing it. We get back to burning calories, and I leave before he does. He takes no calls.
Am I so wrong here? I use the smallish gym in my apartment building, so it's fairly quiet. There is no music on in the background and very little clanking of machines or weights, especially in the middle of the day. People at the gym are either trying to listen to music or concentrate on some physical task, so I'd imagine that those facts require a higher level of courtesy than, for example, a train station. Sure, people chat all the time, but we all know that people talk louder on a phone than they do to a person three feet away from them.
Vote in the comments: Who is the jerk, me or him?
Posted by rj3 at 3:28 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
February 20, 2006
The Abdala files
Just to reiterate what all the other law school bloggers have been writing, it is possible to be too big a jerk for the practice of law.
Posted by rj3 at 11:46 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
The oil curse illustrated
Bad news from Nigeria:
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said it attacked a Shell-operated oil-pipeline switching station and a navy vessel in southern Nigeria on Monday and blew up a military vessel. The group took nine foreign oil workers hostage over the weekend.
Still, we get more than 2 million barrels per day from Nigeria, since we need it. If we didn't, the Europeans, Chinese, Indians or Japanese would. This is a perfect example of why a poor nation should not rejoice if they find oil. If Nigeria instead derived export income from a shoe factory or a semiconductor plant, that foreign exchange would dry up in about two and a half seconds if rebels were running around taking workers hostage. Nigeria's government can't come to grips with rebels, corruption or much of anything else for that matter, but they will always stay afloat because they will always have money if oil sticks around $60 per barrel. Unlike foreign businesses, domestic small manufacture or agriculture, oil vests power in the government by way of royalties, with few other power centers apart from foreign oil companies that rely on the government for drilling leases. That combination creates both stronger and less effective central government, a truly awful combination with very little in the way of alternatives.
Posted by rj3 at 9:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 19, 2006
Sunday night questions
1. Is it possible for Desperate Housewives to get any more contrived and pointless?
2. If George gets what he wants and becomes happy, is he still George?
Seriously, the men out there who watch Gray's Anatomy have to identify with one of the male interns. Either you're an Alex, confident but reckless, or you're a George, put-upon but somehow morally superior for it.
OR
If Alex falls deeply in love with a frumpy, bookish woman who comes in to have her appendix taken out and they live happily ever after and have lots of frumpy, bookish children, he is of no use to the plot and all the Alexes who watch get alienated. Conversely, if Meredeth falls for George and he becomes a person who is happy with his love life, all the Georges of the world feel betrayed. It's not a sign of hope when a character you identify with gets over his shyness and self-doubt and is rewarded, it's a sign that you can no longer identify with him. Frankly, I don't think I'm as bad as George - I mean, he's just pathetic, and I'd like to think that if I was hopelessly in love with my housemate that I'd act sooner rather than later. Still, you're either an Alex or a George, and you don't see me in supply closets "feeding the beast."
I was furious when Meredith took George's shirt off at the end of tonight's episode - just because I root for George to get the girl doesn't mean I don't feel more than a little empty and betrayed by the writers when he wins. What's worse, the scenes from the next episode put out the fire, so I'm not pissed about it all week. Of course, there will be a plot twist that puts the clips into a new context, so we Georges are gonna have to put up with Happy George for a while.
Here's hoping that Alex will develop a hopeless agoraphobia that keeps him in the closet for good so I'll have someone to feel sorry for.
Posted by rj3 at 10:17 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack
February 18, 2006
Hot Damn!
Actually, more like "Cold, damn."
Northbrook, Ill., 8:45 a.m. This has to be the coldest reading ever recorded by my car. Tell me again why people live here... I'm told it has to do with the fact that they put the tomato sauce on top of the cheese. I'm not buying it.
Posted by rj3 at 7:38 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
February 17, 2006
Guerilla advertising, or just a lonely fat man?
Are you an aspiring party promoter who doesn't have enough money to print flyers? Try posting your ad on the El, where it will probably get a few runs up and down the line before a worker takes it down. In that time, hundreds of people will see it. At least some of those people will want to enter a thong contest or pay $5 to drink in a stranger's house.
It's hard to see at this resolution, so this is what it said:
FATMAN TONG PARTYWhen: Feb 18 06 / This Sat.
Where: 6205 S. Hermitage (red house)
Time: 9:00pm - until
$100 Tong contest (women)
$5.00 for the man's (at the door)
Given by: James a.k.a. Fatman
Free drinks, food
I assume by "Tong" he actually means "Thong," However, it could be some sort of salad-serving implement reference.
On a side note, last night I was standing, shivering in the snow on the Belmont El platform, when the station manager announced a delay for northbound trains. Luckilly, I was going south, but I could see from my vantage point a large line of Red Line plains heading north backed up behind the train stuck at the station. I wanted to take a picture, but a CTA employee came up to me and said, "it's against CTA regulations to take photographs without permission."
"What kind of terrorist do I look like to you?" I asked, emboldened by the beers I just had at the show at Schubas' with Mme. Zunta.
"It's not about terrorism. No photos."
I mumbled under my breath and put my camera away, since my southbound train was pulling into the station and I didn't want to miss it because he had to get a supervisor to tell him that there is no such rule. I got on the train and took a photo of the worker as the train pulled out of the station. Unfortunately, the flash through the window ruined the picture, but I think I got the point across.
Posted by rj3 at 8:55 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 16, 2006
"Wow, this mall has everything!"
Like many people who move to Chicago after growing up elsewhere, a great deal of my initial impressions were framed by The Blues Brothers, since I watched it about once a month on TBS as an impressionable child. One of the more memorable scenes was the car chase through a mall in which Joliet Jake and Elwood ripped through a toy store and upended an Orange Julius stand. That mall is the Dixie Square Mall, long abandoned out in Harvey, Illinois, which is about 20 miles south of the Loop. Bldg Blog has a great post on (more recent) art using the decaying structure as a muse.
Posted by rj3 at 2:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Try not to choke on the sweet air of freedom
A warm Thrown for a Loop welcome to A. and Z., who have just returned to this hemisphere after many months enjoying the spicier cuisines of countries that make all of our cheap electronics.
Posted by rj3 at 10:21 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 15, 2006
Time to try not to f*ck it up again
Are you sick of posts regarding my as-yet fruitless job search?
Are you sick of the initial hope, the disappointment, the fleeting return of hope, so cruelly crushed?
I am too.
Great White Hope #2,308 comes on Friday, when I interview for a job with my favorite law school professor so far. Sure, it may not pay well, but this guy is a big name in some pretty cool circles. All I have to do is avoid the problems that plagued me last time: sounding desperate, nervous, over-chatty - Rain Man one-sixth of the way to a J.D. We'll see how that goes.
Posted by rj3 at 2:22 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
We are the champions
In honor of the Winter Olympics, I present the 2004 D.C. Canal Rules Curling post, a worthy rerun.
Posted by rj3 at 8:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Thought of the day
It could be worse. You could be in Kenosha.
Posted by rj3 at 8:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 14, 2006
A windfall of hot air
Oh, those inflexible conservatives... they won't comprimise their strongly-held free-market principles even when opponents bring up nagging little issues like "public good" and "fairness." Take the idea of a windfall profits tax on oil company profits when the price of oil reaches a certain point. Here's the well-worn Heritage Foundation talking point:
Since the 1980s, the cost of oil exploration and drilling has increased. These projects cost billions of dollars and last for decades, over which time the price of oil will fluctuate. Indeed, the price of oil was well under $20 per barrel for most of the 1990s, reaching a low near $10 per barrel as recently as 1998. Needless to say, oil industry profits were quite modest at the time, and many oil wells were operating at a loss. If producers have to endure periods of low oil prices but must forfeit extra proceeds to the government in times of high prices, they will not undertake as much exploration and drilling. OPEC and foreign oil companies would again be given a comparative advantage relative to U.S.-based firms.
Leave the oil companies alone when they are making money because they won't always be due to the cyclical nature of the industry. Sure, profits seem big now, but they are much more reasonable when spread out over the lean years. That makes sense, so the logical flipside of this free-market doctrine would require oil companies be left alone during the lean years to live off their windfall profits.
Reliable Petro-Republican Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) didn't think the lean years should be quite so lean and was willing to give up oil on taxpayer-owned lands for far less than fair value:
"It was Congress's intent," Mr. Pombo said in an interview on Friday, "that if oil was at $10 a barrel, there should be royalty relief so companies could have some kind of incentive to invest capital. But at $70 a barrel, don't expect royalty relief."
Leave aside for a minute the fact that the law was so badly written that oil companies are still claiming the "relief" despite the high price of oil and thing about Pombo's statement. At $10 per barrel, why on earth do we need more investment? So oil can sink to $5 per barrel and Pombo's committee can dole out yet another few billion to their buddies?
Free market when it works for the guys who write the checks and welfare for when it doesn't. It sounds like "picking winners" for me.
Posted by rj3 at 3:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Me and my yuppie problems
My lunchtime workout was rudely interrupted by a 50-ish man two treadmills down who thought that my building's exercise room was a good place to conduct business on the cell phone. Heavy sighing, stares of approbation and under-the-breath-but-audible muttering whenever he picked up his phone didn't get the message through (he was on his phone, after all) so I left in a huff and slammed the door behind me.
General rule: If you are important enough to need to talk at the gym, you should either get your own private gym or wait until after the business day to work out. If you aren't that important, turn your ringer off and focus on getting rid of that gut.
Next time, I'll tell him as much.
There, that should get rid of whatever residual cred I had, if any.
Posted by rj3 at 1:25 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 13, 2006
Lament of the digitally-enabled procrastinator
2005: If only I went to law school before YouTube, I could get some work done.
2003: If only I got my job before blogs, I could get some work done.
1999: If only I went to college before Napster, I could get some work done.
1995: If only I went to high school before Netscape, I could get some work done.
1993: If only I went to middle school before Gopher, I could get some work done.
1988: If only I went to elementary school before Oregon Trail, I could get some work done.
Posted by rj3 at 8:53 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Ace of Baseload, or why the free market hates even cheap renewables
Better technology, we are told, is the solution to our fossil fuel problems. Right now, wind and solar are too expensive and space-inefficient to cover more than a tiny fraction of our energy needs. Therefore, as time goes on and the researchers the government doesn't fire work their scientific voodoo, cheap, unlimited renewable energy will cover more and more of our power needs without causing any financial pain to the humble utility customer.
The only problem is that wind and solar, even if it becomes cheap and plentiful, aren't base load power sources.
What is base load? Wikipedia sums it up:
Power plants are designated base load based on their low cost generation, efficiency and safety at set outputs. Baseload power plants do not change production to match power consumption demands since it is always cheaper to run them rather than running high cost combined cycle plants or combustion turbines. Typically these plants are massive enough to provide a majority of the power used by a grid, making them slow to fire up and cool down. Thus, they are more effective when used continuously to cover the power baseload required by the grid.Each base load power plant on a grid is allotted a specific amount of the baseload power demand to handle. The base load power is determined by the Load Duration Curve of the system. For a typical power system, rule of thumb states that the base load power is usually 35-40% of the maximum load during the year.
Basically, wind and sun aren't automatically there when we need it. During a heatwave, when air conditioners are on full blast and the existing power grid creaks with stress, the wind isn't blowing. In the dead of winter, solar panels work only intermittently, only when the sun is out. Grid interoperability helps to a certain extent under the theory that it's usually windy or sunny somewhere, but there still has to be some sort of base load facility available, whether it's fancy new technology like pebble-bed nuclear or old-fashioned land-scarring and miner-killilng coal. Even hydropower is limited by things like winter snowpack and flood control.
The answer, it seems, should kill two birds with one stone. Hydrogen, the transport energy hype-fuel, requires a great deal of electricity to create by splitting water molecules. If renewables are sufficiently overbuilt, as they would have to be to maintain reliability, the inevitable and cost-free excess generation (i.e. wind power generated during pleasant fall night) would go to making hydrogen, filling our cars while funding peak capacity.
The only problem is that free-market economy gets in the way. The California Energy Crisis taught us that utilities, just like any other kind of company, want to save money by keeping excess inventory to a minimum. After deregulation, utilities in California played it close to the bone, and Enron traders took advantage of this by taking select transmission lines and smallish power plants off line just long enough to drive the spot market into a frenzy. Sure, the more redundancy and overcapacity built in to a renewables-heavy energy grid, the more hydrogen you can make, but the more hydrogen you make, the less you can charge for it.
Therefore, lower generation costs on their own will not raise the profile of renewables beyond their current speck-like presence on the nation's energy portfolio since they can't be relied upon to generate power as evenly as a power plant that takes a specified amount of fuel on one end and puts out a specified amount of power on the other. To expand renewables use in any meaningful way, utilities must solve the base load problem, which they won't do if they operate in a free-market system. Re-regulation would create monopolies bigger and badder than the old ones, since they would be responsible for making hydrogen - imagine a company with the combined pull of Duke Power and Exxon, or Exelon and ChevronTexaco. Granting power-selling licenses to companies only if they build a certain percent of overcapacity would create competition, but constant pressure to bring down the price of hydrogen for drivers would lead the government to shift costs to the utilities, which would then demand bailouts as often as the airlines.
Pretty depressing choices, eh?
If you have better ideas, the comments are there for you to use.
Posted by rj3 at 2:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 12, 2006
Notes from the weekend
- Saturday morning: road trip to the impossibly dreary town of Kenosha, Wisconsin. Meh.
- Glenn Greenwald wrote a sprawling, cast-of-thousands piece on the decline of the conservative movement into a cult of personality. Scary stuff, very well written.
- Thanks to Sadly, No, I pissed away a fair chunk of Saturday afternoon watching grainy Bad Brains videos. I'm finding myself experiencing a resurgence of interest in old school punk/hardcore. Am I rejecting corporate society? Not really. I'm at law school, for chrissakes. It's just that alternating between sitting in class and the library all day long makes me want to angrily hurl myself against people and walls.
Posted by rj3 at 9:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 11, 2006
Yes, it's that grey out there.
Posted by rj3 at 3:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 9, 2006
The Borfshank Redemption
DCist reports that The Man sent Borf up the river for a month. No, not up the river as in back to his tony house in Great Falls, but to prison. Jail. The Big House. The Slammer. A place where the only writing on walls involves hash marks (in Borf's case, 30 of them).
DCSOB (my old blog) on Borf:
Cover Bands United For Vandalism.
Posted by rj3 at 7:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
This is why I go to class
Professor quote:
“I guess if you teach at the University of Chicago, you can just make up wild assertions. It makes up for not having much of a football team.”
Posted by rj3 at 11:03 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Regrets, I've had a few
Going to this particular law school isn't one of them, but I can't help but wonder what my life would have been like at one of the other law schools for which I fell just on the other side of the admit line:
At Columbia, 8,020 would-be lawyers applied to start law school last fall, compared with 8,355 a year earlier. At New York University School of Law, the number fell to 7,872 from 8,220. At Stanford, the numbers fell to 4,863 from 5,040. At Harvard Law School, the numbers fell to 7,127 from 7,386.
Implicit in this fantasy is the egotistical notion that I was only a few slots away from landing at a higher-ranked school, which may not be the case. For all I know, I'm a "diversity" applicant accepted here only because they had a lack of Jewish males from big East Coast cities in the incoming class. In any case, I'm here, the people are nice, and (most of) the professors are interesting.
Posted by rj3 at 10:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 8, 2006
Follow that Prius!
Whether it was the State of the Union or the patronizing bumper stickers that hybrid drivers slap on their bumpers that turned the tide, but the hybrid backlash is now on. Frankly, I can't say that I disagree. The Times takes a swing:
First, hybrids have the most overblown mileage ratings in the auto industry. In the government's road tests, which are conducted in a world without much traffic or any air-conditioning, the Prius gets 55 miles to the gallon. Consumer Reports says the car really goes 44 miles on a gallon of gas. When I used one last week — and there is no denying that it's a great car to drive — I got 45 in Manhattan and on local highways.This is just the beginning of the story. The more time you spend looking at the economics of the hybrids, the less comfortable you get.
The most important reason is a government policy that, amazingly enough, seems almost intended to undercut the benefits of efficient cars. In 1978, Congress set a minimum corporate average fuel economy, known as CAFE, for all carmakers. Today, the minimum average for cars is 27.5 miles a gallon. (For S.U.V.'s and other light trucks, it is 21.6.)
YOU can guess what this means for hybrids. Each one becomes a free pass for its manufacturer to sell a few extra gas guzzlers.
The EPA's mileage issues, which date back decades, are a huge problem. They were designed for 1980s cars without fancy computer systems, charging cell phones and seatback DVDs. However, this may soon change:
Under testing changes proposed Tuesday by EPA, fuel economy stickers will show most 2008 models getting 10 percent to 20 percent less gasoline mileage in city driving and 5 percent to 15 percent less in highway use. Gasoline-electric hybrids will be affected even more, with ratings for city driving decreasing an average of 20 percent to 30 percent.
We'll see how that goes -- the EPA hasn't earned much trust of late.
More generally, the promise of hybrid technology isn't being used to its maximum potential. CAFE itself is a mess, leaving out most of the big SUVs that today's modern road-rager loves so much. Some new hybrid models are designed to improve acceleration, but not mileage. Giving drivers more power at the same level of efficiency is fine, but it frustrates the purpose of legislation giving tax breaks and HOV access to hybrid drivers on the grounds that hybrids use less gasoline.
Hybrid powertrains, just like better computer-assistated gasoline intake, aerodynamics and anything else automakers use to increase fuel efficiency, is a good thing, but it isn't any better or worse than any other technology that serves the same ends, all other things being equal. If the goal is to decrease fuel use, pass a gas tax or fix CAFE standards so they don't leave out Hummers and other monstrosities.
Honda and Toyota have done a very good job making hybrids appear to be the responsible purchase (witness the very, very culturally loaded hybrid Camry ad during the Superbowl) but when push comes to shove, strutting across the parking lot to your hybrid doesn't make you a better person. It just makes you a person who defines himself by why what he drives.
Posted by rj3 at 9:51 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
February 7, 2006
Switchgrass, pt. 2
To a certain extent, this is a silly argument. If you're going to have biofuels, it won't involve plants grown in pavement cracks on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. In addition, if the goal of this research is to bring cellulosic ethanol technology to a point where it is just profitable enough to make mass-production feasable, nobody thinks we're creating right-wing switchgrass sheiks as a new Republican power base.
(via Froomkin)
Side note: I probably should analyze the new budget, but it is one of the few documents larger than my combined textbooks and I have too much reading to do. Besides, there are better analyses elsewhere.
Posted by rj3 at 10:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
I hate Illinois Nazis (whose salary I pay)
The following email arrived in my e-mail this morning (link added):
Northwestern University Associate Professor Arthur Butz recently issued a statement commending Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s assertion that the Holocaust never happened. Butz is a Holocaust denier who has made similar assertions previously. His latest statement, like his earlier writings and pronouncements, is a contemptible insult to all decent and feeling people. While I hope everyone understands that Butz’s opinions are his own and in no way represent the views of the University or me personally, his reprehensible opinions on this issue are an embarrassment to Northwestern.[...]
Butz is a tenured associate professor in electrical engineering. Like all faculty members, he is entitled to express his personal views, including on his personal web pages, as long as he does not represent such opinions as the views of the University. Butz has made clear that his opinions are his own and at no time has he discussed those views in class or made them part of his class curriculum. Therefore, we cannot take action based on the content of what Butz says regarding the Holocaust – however odious it may be – without undermining the vital principle of intellectual freedom that all academic institutions serve to protect.
Back in 1976, Butz wrote "The Hoax of the 20th Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry," several printings of which which are available at our library.
You'd think that there would be some way to kick the guy out, especially because he probably doesn't have all that many friends on the faculty. Could they move his office to a leaky spot in the basement shared between a trash compactor and a noisy water heater? I wonder how many students sign up for his engineering classes.
The Trib has more.
Posted by rj3 at 8:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 6, 2006
Super riot-inducing comix
Fafblog, as usual, has a just-lucid-enough-to-be-freakin-hilarious piece on the Mohammad cartoons. "Pudding Jesus" is invoked.
Alicublog tempts fate with some original artwork.
In the meantime, all this mess makes me want a cheese Danish, preferrably not on fire.
UPDATE: Jeez, you don't read Wonkette for 2 hours...
Posted by rj3 at 5:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
All you need is a dollar and a dream
Last week, I was thinking about buying a lotto ticket last week. It's not something I usually do, but every now and then, a dollar thrown away on the idiot tax is about as bad as a dollar thrown away on an unhealthy snack or a cab where a bus would have sufficed. The line was long, so I decided against it.
Today, I find that someone won the $20 million jackpot at the very convenience store I would have purchased the ticket from (no, not the one I accidentally broke in to - I'm not going back there).
How does this missed chance make me feel? Meh. My senses are as dulled as someone who spent two weeks anticipating a major sporting event only to find it boring and badly played with mediocre advertisements.
Posted by rj3 at 10:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 5, 2006
Switchgrass
The Energy Blog has more information than you ever wanted to know about switchgrass, the energy savior du jour.
Posted by rj3 at 10:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 4, 2006
There's oil in them thar communist dictatorship!
For nearly half a century, the U.S. has maintained an embargo against Cuba that hasn't done a whole lot to force Fidel Castro out of power. The policy, a failure in nearly every way, exists mainly because the group that supports it, the Cuban-American community and the anti-Communist right, cares a lot more about it than the majority that knows an ineffective policy when it sees one. Perhaps the only interest group that could possibly change the balance toward lifting the embargo is the oil industry. New technology has allowed for exploration of offshore deepwater sites that had previously been considered worthless for energy exploration. Spanish oil firm Repsol has signed some exploration contracts with the Cuban government. According to estimates, there could be over 1.6 billion barrels in the Yamagua-1 field alone.
If oil companies get excited about this unexplored area so close to our shores, it could put two of the pillars of modern Republican hegemony into conflict by making the Bush Administration choose between winning Florida and seeing a lot more oil money fall into the hands of Democrats.
How worried is the Administration? Very worried. So worried that the government is using every arsenal in their posession, including the power to inconvenience, to keep the oil majors from talking to the Cubans, according to the Houston Chronicle:
After Friday's meetings between Cuban energy officials and members of the American energy sector at the Sheraton Maria Isabel Hotel, the U.S. government informed the hotel's parent company, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, that its Mexican subsidiary was not allowed to have the Cubans as guests.[...]
"U.S. law prohibits U.S. persons or entities to supply services to Cuban nationals, persons or entities," said Judith Bryan, spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. "The Sheraton (Maria Isabel Hotel) is subject to U.S. law because it is a subsidiary of a U.S. company."
How often do you think the "no Cubans in U.S.-owned hotels" rule is enforced around the world? This us hardball.
Posted by rj3 at 7:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 3, 2006
The Bud Fox school of Law & Economics
Via C.B. comes the story about a Prof at my law school who may be asked to testify on the defendents' behalf at the Enron trial, presuming the judge allows it.
The Trib story hits all the major points: defendeder of Milken and Keating, forced out of a position at U. Chicago, a caricature of everything wrong with the '80s Wall Street attitude. Is the article an accurate representation of his philosophy? I sure hope not.
Posted by rj3 at 4:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Learn on the 'Cob
Chicago Carless has everything you need to know about Marina City, a.k.a. "The Corncob Buildings," a.k.a. "Those Buildings on That Wilco Album That Too Many People Like Way Too Much."
Personally, I think that Marina City is a failure on the pedestrian level. From afar, they're pretty cool, as Mike from Carless says, a "modernist alternative to boxy Miesianism." But when you get closer, either from the other side of the State Street bridge or Kinzie Street, it's nothing but a giant parking garage. There is so much parking in that building, all unshielded from public view, that it often requires a few steps back to see that people actually live there.
Well, I suppose that's what it took to get a building built in the last half-century.
Posted by rj3 at 1:06 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Does Norway have it right?
Norway is perhaps the only petro-state where ordinary people live nice lives. Other places where oil pays for most of the government are dangerous, corrupt, stifling and generally nasty. Even though $60 a barrel oil should mean sparkling public parks and free backrubs for everyone in places like Nigeria, Angola and Saudi Arabia, the concentration of power created by oil means that government doesn't really need to cater to the wants and needs of its citizenry. Perhaps because they already had some progressive and industrial tradition before they struck oil, the home of Annie didn't descend into kleptocracy like most other oil states.
Any country that gets so much of its revenue from one commodity is treading a dangerous line, and some in Norway want a way out:
The Socialist Left Party, or SV, seeks to impede oil and gas development in some of the last-known petroleum development areas. The party cites environmental concerns and the perceived need to encourage development in sectors beyond oil, which dominates Norway's economy and provides much of the funding for the government.[...]
The amount of oil Norway supplies to the world market is falling, and the oil industry warns that a failure to find and develop further sources would hasten that decline. Worst-case forecasts show a 70% drop in Norway's total oil-and-gas output over the next 10 years. Moving ahead with development could reduce that decline to between 20% and 40%, based on Norway's estimates of unproduced resources.
Like ANWR, the fields in question represents a very small percentage of remaining reserves. So, why wait? If the petro-optimists are to be believed, oil shale and tar sands are the future production centers, saving the carbon economy from the decline of Middle Eastern monster fields, we're probably at the backstop price in the long term, barring increasingly rare major finds in coming years. Getting the oil out of Alberta's sandy mess requires large amounts of water, natural gas and equipment and has only become worthwhile at current prices. As oil companies do more of this type of extraction, expertise will grow and the costs will decline. However, gas and water will grow more expensive as demand from the tar sands increases, possibly neutralizing the productivity gains. Of course, any estimates about tar sands extraction costs, possible big cheap oil finds and anything else is highly speculative, but any good government plans for the worst.
Back in Norway, this means that any government thinking past the next election or two would be wise to keep the oil in the ground and spread the pain of de-oiling the economy over many years. We don't have a government that does that, according to former insider, ex-Faith Based Initiatives guru John DiIulio:
There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything—and I mean everything—being run by the political arm.
Posted by rj3 at 11:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The fun never ends
Remember the Great Job Hope of Tuesday?
I had a drink with the guy who got the job last night - he told me about it before the professor, who still hasn't got around to sending an email.
Perhaps I came off as too desperate. Maybe I apologized for ideological differences a bit too much. Maybe he didn't like the color of my shirt. Whatever it is, Superbowl Sunday morning will now be spent with stamps, envelopes and fancy paper.
Posted by rj3 at 10:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 2, 2006
Ethanol is in the race, but it's dragging a cinder block
Despite the fact that it betrayed a stunning ignorance of basic facts and was extremely narrow in its goals, the one good thing to come out of President Bush's energy initiatiaves in the State of the Union is that it is stimulating debate.
The dumbest premise on which the speech was based is that we can stop using oil from the Middle East, draining terror funding and decreasing the need for American soldiers to go there. Say it with me.. 1..2..3..
While some oil may be higher or lower in sulfur and other impurities, once it's been refined, you can't tell whether the gas in your tank came from Venezuela, Saudi Arabia or Texas in the same way you can't tell whether the water in your $1.25 bottle actually came from an artisnal spring in Maine or a filter drawing from the municipal water supply. Therefore, if we stop buying oil from Saudi Arabia, we will get more from Nigeria, which well then send less to Europe. Where will Europe get its oil? That's right, where some supply just got freed up: Saudi Arabia. Even if Europe is on our side with this, China, India, Japan and Korea need oil. In fact, the only way to really stop the flow of Middle Eastern oil is by full embargo and blockade. We tried that against Iraq, but since oil is less distinctive than, for example, elephant tusks, it slipped through cracks and ended up in global supplies.
Therefore, the only way to stop using Middle Eastern oil is to stop using imported oil at all, which isn't likely given our declining production and limited untapped supplies.
Running a close second in the battle to power our transport is ethanol or biodiesel. Existing cars can use at least some plant-based fuel in a blend, which is a huge advantage over electricity and hydrogen. If we switched to E85 or B85 (85% biofuel, 15% good old gas) right now, most people's lives would change very little, aside from slightly higher fuel costs. Some analysts are concerned that it takes more fuel to make ethanol than it yields by the time it reaches your tank, but people in the know disagree.
The big problem with ethanol is that it can come from a variety of sources - sugar cane, corn and abandoned corn husks are all top contenders. This should be good, since it reduces risk from some sort of crop disease, but it opens up ethanol to a political risk, namely from farmers who can use the difference between the corn used to make ethanol here and the cane-based "alcohol" they use in Brazil to great effect. Our farmers, who are enjoying higher corn prices as a result of state ethanol mandates and a federal ethanol subsidy, don't take too kindly to foreigners cutting in on their turf:
Brazil is the world's largest ethanol producer. They make it from sugar cane, which has the highest starch content of any plant stock. 25 percent of Brazil's transportation fuel is now ethanol. And it's still growing its capacity, because the nation is still forced to import energy. Brazil would be exporting ethanol to the US were it not for a 50 cents per gallon tariff that the power of the US farm lobby makes unlikely to go away anytime soon. China, India, and the EU are all negotiating to import Brazilian ethanol.
That's good for farmers and bad for drivers. Shout-out in the SOTU or not, this won't change absent some major realignment of interests. Ethanol is king in the Iowa primaries, with any candidate seeking to win there bowing and scraping to the subsidy idol, which is why McCain didn't campaign there in 2000. Environmentalists don't want Brazillian fuel imoprts because they worry (correctly) that land converted to sugar cane growing comes from newly slashed-and-burned rainforest. Miami Cubans are wary of any plan that would increase the world price of sugar cane. Oil companies are... oil companies, so they won't support lower tariffs or increased blending requirements. As consumers, Dick and Jane Driver could stand to save a little money a decade down the road if the country starts moving to biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel, which deserves its own post) now, but the amount of the savings is too small per person and too far off in the future to fight for as hard as the special interests.
Maybe it's time to get a bike.
Posted by rj3 at 11:25 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
To put it bluntly
Over the last couple of months, I have become something of an expert in the field of rejection letters. While they vary in length, the rule is that when crushing a law student's hopes and dreams, it is a minimal courtesy to say somethihng about either how qualified the rejected applicant is or how many qualified applicants there were to choose from. To the rejected applicant, it's meaningless piffle... or is it?
A rejection letter arrived from a judge that said only this:
Dear Mr. [you-know-who],
I would like to thank you for your recent application for an internship position this summer and to inform you that I have selected another applicant.
I wish you the best of luck.
Sincerely yours,
[Judge]
There is a spectrum of rejection letter quality, with this one sitting somewhere near "F*ck off, loser."
Posted by rj3 at 7:44 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
February 1, 2006
Oil is oil, wherever it comes from
To follow up on a previous post, let's ask OPEC where its member nations' oil goes:
Since we have neighbors with oil and more than a little on our own territory, we don't import nearly as much of the stuff from unstable nations as do Japan, China and South Korea, who don't have much of a choice, given geography and geology.
What does this mean? Well, for one thing, reducing oil consumption won't stop terror-funding petrostates, nor will it cure corruption and Dutch disease. It does, however, mean that we can insulate the domestic economy from fluctuations in the price of inputs, which would create a competitive advantage.
UPDATE: A promise even as ineffectual and worthless as the one made last night during the State of the Union can't be kept because there are 50 people in a congressional district somewhere who worry that it will imperil their God-given right to have that 15th cupholder in the family SUV.
Posted by rj3 at 2:46 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Shorter State of the Union on energy policy
We have an energy problem, but to do anything about it would mean that people would have to make minor sacrifices in terms of the size of their cars and the amount of money they spend on gasoline. I didn't get elected by requiring that people who are old enough to vote right now make any sacrifices to achieve national goals, so let's throw some money at our woefully inefficient and backward auto industry in exchange for no promises or even targets.
UPDATE: And there's more:
[A] fact-checking article in the LA Times notes that Bush's call to reduce our Middle East oil imports by 75% is a little less dramatic than it seemed last night: "Experts point out that the U.S. gets only a fraction — about 10% — of its oil imports from the Middle East. In fact, the majority now comes from Canada and Mexico — and Bush said nothing on Tuesday about them." In other words, he called for reducing our use of imported oil by about 7% in 20 years. Yee haw!
More on that in a later post.
Posted by rj3 at 9:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Stupid historical comparison watch
Bush says:
"In 1945, there were about two dozen lonely democracies on earth," Mr. Bush said. "Today there are 122."
How many of those newly-minted democracies were colonies of those two dozen democracies in 1945? Just like the kleptomaniac who steals things they already have, our President misleads even when it doesn't further a goal.
Posted by rj3 at 8:09 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack