China, Electric Cars, and the Future

Leave a Comment Posted by on October 12, 2010

With all the hand-wringing in the business press about China manipulating its currency, we may be missing the big picture. In a recent op-ed piece in The New Your Times, Thomas Freidman (The World is Flat) calls attention to how China is aggressively investing in the future. Thankfully, the US government helped save GM from [...]

Capitalism, China, Energy, Environment, Globalization

Gulf Oil Leak News, Images, Data, and Diagrams – 7/5

1 Comment Posted by on July 5, 2010

For More Technical Information and Updates The Oil Drum Blog (latest updates and commentary) The Oil Drum Channel Resources (comprehensive summary) Atlantic Tropical Storm Forcast A History Presidential Promises About Energy Policy (From The Daily Show, 6/16) Diagram of Relief Well Drilling Operation First (large) diagram shows approximate scale for depth operations. Second (smaller) diagram [...]

Energy, Environment, Gulf Oil Disaster, Public Policy

Unconventional Natural Gas: A Game Changer?

1 Comment Posted by on March 17, 2010

Perhaps. You may have heard about hydraulic fracturing (“fracing”, pronounced “fracking”) and horizontal drilling, a technique to release natural gas trapped in hardy shale-rock formations. These sources of natual gas around the world have been known about for some time but not thought to be economically viable. This article from The Economist has major implications [...]

Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Politics, Uncategorized

Conference on India, China and Beyond

Leave a Comment Posted by on February 10, 2010

Contemporary South Asia: Emerging Trends and Voices (link to web site) This multi-disciplinary seminar explores the timely cultural complexities of South Asia, with special attention to the globally strategic areas of India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, and will focus primarily on the social, political, and economic roles these countries play in their region and throughout the [...]

Globalization, Politics, Public Policy

Bill Gates, Climate Change, & Conservation

Leave a Comment Posted by on January 23, 2010

In a recent article in The Huffington Post, Bill gates suggests that we should focus on innovation rather than conservation in order to bring about the CO2 reductions needed to stave off climate change. I think he does make some good points here. Why We Need Innovation, Not Just Insulation (1/20/2010) If the goal is [...]

Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Politics

Wall Street Bankers Pretending to be Clueless

Leave a Comment Posted by on January 16, 2010

1/14/2010 – From the testimony of four of the nation’s top bankers before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission charged with determining the causes of the nation’s financial debacle. Whatever we did, whatever the standards of the time were, it didn’t work out well. – Lloyd Blankfein, CEO – Goldman Sachs Somehow we just missed that, [...]

Capitalism, Finance, Financial Crisis, Satire

Climate Change Update

5 Comments Posted by on January 7, 2010

Copenhagen Postmortems from the Becker-Posner Blog The Copenhagen Debacle: Where Do We Go from Here? (Posner) Failure in Copenhagen (Becker) Climate Cover Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming In the book ‘Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming,’ James Hoggan says the campaign to create skepticism about climate change is ‘by far and [...]

Climate Change, Environment, Politics, Uncategorized

Public Discourse: If Socrates were alive today

1 Comment Posted by on December 30, 2009

Socrates in America: Arguing to death From The Economist – 12/17/09 This article comments on the sorry state of discourse in politics and public policy in America as it might be seen by Socrates if he were around today. For those who are interested, the full article provides a primer on the life and times [...]

Philosophy, Politics, Psychology & Sociology

November Employment Data in Context

Leave a Comment Posted by on December 5, 2009

10% Unemployment Rate (from a high of 10.2% in October) -11,000 in nonfarm payrolls (from a high of -747,000 in January) The November jobs numbers were much better than anyone expected. Even if some of this is attributed to noise (statistical variability) in the month to month data, it s is still a very positive [...]

Uncategorized

Baby Boomers – What a Mess We Made

Leave a Comment Posted by on November 17, 2009

Sometimes I find great nuggets (along with a lot of nonsense and stupidity) in the comments to blog posts. Here is a comment I found to a recent blog post by Paul Krugman (see further below). The mess the baby boomers are leaving their children is so extreme as to be without precedent in American [...]

Government, Issues, Politics, Uncategorized

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