Essential Facts & Pointed Observations

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

VICTORY! "One Subject" Introduced in Congress!

VICTORY! "One Subject" Introduced in Congress!:

'via Blog this'

Saturday, January 7, 2012

THINGS ARE GETTING BETTER: Battery Breakthrough

Twice the energy density of lithium ion batteries? Electric cars with twice the range? Good storage for the grid? Perhaps.

FuturePundit: Zinc Air Battery Design Slashes Costs: 'via Blog this'

PUBLIC OPINION: Global Warming

Energy Update - Rasmussen Reports™: "A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters finds that 64% say global warming is at least a somewhat serious problem, including 30% who say it’s Very Serious. One-in-three voters (33%) believe climate change is not a serious problem, with 14% who feel it’s Not At All Serious. "

'via Blog this'

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

ENERGY: Natural Gas, Fracking, Water Pollution

EPA: Natural Gas Fracking Linked to Water Contamination: Scientific American

In the 121-page draft report released today, EPA officials said that the contamination near the town of Pavillion, Wyo., had most likely seeped up from gas wells and contained at least 10 compounds known to be used in frack fluids.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

What you learn from running an organization

Amen brother! From Arnold Kling . . .

I was explaining to someone at dinner the other night that I came to Austrian economics in a very odd way. I did not study the sacred texts. I spent the prime of my career outside of the academy, experiencing the behavior of organizations. I saw first-hand the challenge that large organizations have in dealing with innovation. I saw the tenuous grasp that bosses have over their organizations. Above all, I saw how impossible it is for top management at firms to have the sort of information and control that is casually assumed in mainstream economic models. It is a relatively small leap from that insight to the insight that government officials also lack the information that they need to exercise the sort of control that is casually assumed in mainstream economics.
I came to Austrian economics because that is how business in the real world felt to me.

Shorter Dierdre McCloskey, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Fannie-Freddie subsidies favor the rich

A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research reaches this conclusion:

"Low-wealth households prefer to live in a world without the subsidy, whereas high wealth households prefer to live in a world with the subsidy. This can be explained by the fact that low-wealth households hold little or no housing, and thus do not benefit from the subsidy, as compared to high wealth households that have large homes and mortgages."

HT: Mark A Calabria Want to Stick It to the Rich, Get Rid of Fannie and Freddie | Cato @ Liberty

Monday, October 31, 2011

Old or young: when do people innovate most?

In Time’s dystopian world gets human longevity wrong. - Slate Magazine

And, despite well-publicized stories of young tech entrepreneurs creating the next big thing, the reality is that innovation is a late-peak field. Leonardo da Vinci was 51 years old when he started painting the Mona Lisa, and Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was 50 when he discovered the X-ray. Though they might seem middle-aged by our current standards, they were actually on the elderly side for their time periods. Benjamin Franklin was 46 when he conducted his famous kite experiment verifying the nature of electricity, but he didn’t stop there. He was 55 when he invented the glass harmonica and 78 when he invented bifocals. If Franklin had the opportunity to live longer in a healthier state, one wonders what else he would have contributed to society.

Trickle-down has been speeding up

In Time’s dystopian world gets human longevity wrong. - Slate Magazine

Historically, the time necessary to distribute new technologies across socioeconomic borders has been speeding up. For instance, it took 46 years for one-quarter of the U.S. population to get electricity and 35 years for the telephone to get that far. But it took only 16 years for one-quarter of American households to get a personal computer, 13 years for a cellphone, and seven years for Internet access, a promising trend for those who wish to see the widespread use of longevity technologies. Yes, these examples are all communication innovations—but actually, health technologies themselves are fast becoming information technologies. Just like computers have a code based on 1s and 0s, so too do humans have a code, based on DNA. For example, prices for human genome sequencing are falling, which will make personalized medicine—one potential source of extended lifespans—cheaper in the future. Even if there is a gap between the life expectancy of the rich and the poor, it likely would not be a case of the rich gaining extra years at the expense of the underprivileged. Instead, the opposite is true: The rich have an incentive to make the technologies accessible to everyone, because that means more customers. Hoarding the technology would offer no advantages and would result in an unstable world.

In Time’s dystopian world gets human longevity wrong. - Slate Magazine

Scholars at the University of Chicago have approached the population/longevity question in an interesting way. If the entire population of Sweden were to become immortal, they asked, how much would population increase? Their model suggests that Sweden’s population would increase by only 22 percent over 100 years. (For comparison’s sake, the number of people in Sweden grew from 5.1 million in 1900 to 8.8 million in 2000, or 57 percent.) One of the reasons that cutting death rates doesn’t affect population as much as we might think is that heavy population growth actually comes from births, not from fewer deaths.

Teepees and Trailers: The World’s Quirkiest Hotels - Slate Magazine

Cool places to visit.

The truth about supposed U.S. Income Inequality

Political Calculations: The Real Story Behind "Rising" U.S. Income Inequality

The reason that the income inequality levels recorded for families and households are lower than those for individuals are because most families and households may have one high income earner, who is balanced out by individuals within the families or households who have low or no incomes.
But, if people with very high income earning potential join together to form families and households, and increasingly do so over time, perhaps because such people might have things in common that make forming themselves into families and households an attractive proposition, then income inequality among families and households will increase.
The same holds true for the opposite end of the income earning spectrum. If people with really low income earning potential join together to form families and households, or perhaps if they choose to split apart, and increasingly do so over time, then the resulting low income family and household will also make income inequality among families and households rise, even though there has been no real change in the amount of actual income inequality among individuals.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Research and Development Funding, By the Numbers | The Scientist

A useful breakdown of where science funding comes from and goes to.

55% Want U.S. Troops Out of Europe - Rasmussen Reports™

More and more poll results are turning libertarian.

Monday, October 24, 2011

My letter on red light cameras

Letters to the editor

Lead letter in AZ Star this morning . . .

City Councilman Paul Cunningham said he would need to see evidence that the red-light cameras are making us safer. This implies that he would only support their removal if it is shown that they don't improve safety. This is the wrong standard.
A "safety first" standard argues for eliminating driving altogether, because it is inherently dangerous. What really matters is the cost of safety. We citizens are willing to endure some costs to improve our safety, such as having red lights in the first place, but not others, such as red-light and speed cameras.
High fines are needed to pay for these systems, and the size of those fines make any safety gains not worth the cost. I would say, in general, that Tucson is spending too much on traffic enforcement.
Get rid of the cameras. Raise the speed limits on the major roads from 40 to 50 mph, reduce the number of traffic cops and increase the number of neighborhood patrols to help prevent violent crime.
I have a self-interest to maximize my own safety while driving. Extra help from the Tucson government is not wanted by me.
Perry Willis
Ward 2 resident, Tucson

The Chinese "miracle" has always been suspicious to me, if only because of the amount of Statism there. It seemed certain to me that the Chinese State must be directing resources to un-economic ends. Well, it appears they have ordered the creation of whole cities in which no one lives.