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Peak Crude, yes. Shale and any other sort of bitch-to-get-at sources are still abundant. The trick is to reach a cost:value ratio which makes it viable to tap into alternative sources of oil.

At this point I am confident that we'll be able to absorb the impact of the coming transition.
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Depends on the car, where you are, and who's doing the work. If you're doing the work yourself and building an electric VW bug as a practical application of your faith in Jesus, then it should cost like $2,500. If you want to turn a regular car into an electric, there are some specialty shops which charge anywhere from $20 to 40k. I don't keep up on the community, and don't know who is most trustworthy/effective/affordable, but this guy should give you an impression of the current state of things.

It'll be a while yet before this becomes a common thing to do. The biggest cost right now is still the batteries. Hybrids are more affordable than pure EV for that reason, but I'm not up on the state of hybrid conversions.
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- Anarchists like to conveniently gloss over the notion that most people are not anarchists themselves. Many people wish for stability, even to the point of self-deluding compromise. Consider how many people in America would rather believe in an imaginary friend than face a universe that doesn't empathize with them.

- I don't see why a laissez-faire system backed by precious metals wouldn't be gamed the way it always has. Market manipulators can, and have, and do still use their outsized holdings to pump markets. Furthermore, depending on who's holding hard gold during some arbitrary "Oh hey let's go back to a gold standard!" transition, we'll automatically have a mystery assortment of cartel-esque organizations in undue amounts of power.

- I still think QE would've been a dandy idea by itself, had we been addressing big banks' control fraud along the way. Otherwise, in an unregulated free market, "the mess of the last three years" would be traded for a collapse of all major investment banks, and all of the happiness-happiness that comes along with that.

Not to say I'm 100% opposed to letting them cut their own throats, it just ties into the first point. Right now we're running into problems defining which "people" get to have the most "stability" over which time frame. Anarchists can stamp around as much as they want, saying that stability is overrated, but everyone else is going to keep vying for their definition of it.
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Of course, at that point, we could comfortably say that most people don't know shit about economics, most journalists don't know shit about economics, most politicians don't know shit about economics, and most of the people actually running the Fed don't know shit about economics.

Collapse of Complex Societies comes to mind.
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Researchers are figuring out how to encode visual data into signals that the brain interprets naturally: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/65484/title/A_new_way_for_blind_mice_to_see

China catching up with US and Israel in the happy flying murder drone game: http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/11/25-different-chinese-models-of-unmanned.html

Japan really actually is trying to dampen Yakuza influence, apparently/supposedly: http://www.cnbc.com/id/40274190/

Which reminds me of this quote from a story so boring that I won't actually bother linking the whole thing (your time is too valuable): "In Russia, if there's $100 in the bridge-building pot, the official takes $90. In China, they take $30, and at least you know the bridge will eventually get built."

...out of styrofoam and dog bones, but nevertheless.
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Did anyone else read this article from last year? http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/7364/

That author's close colleague put out a nice thing this year, giving a sense of where we've come since then, and why. http://www.thestraddler.com/20106/piece2.php

Nutshell: they explain how American corporate culture, popular culture, and government culture have been pulled into the orbit of one sophisticated industry that was perceived as a shining example of success and granted increasingly large amounts of largesse until it became a systemic risk. This has happened before with developing nations, and in those cases the IMF has been needed to sort them out; America however is too large for it.

If you've been following this thread then you probably already get that by now, so unless you're interested in seeing more details, you may well just move along.


Edit: Oh man, watching these banks go to court reminds me of playing Diablo and getting randomly generated junk drops from named minibosses. http://tickerforum.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2275095 Are any of these bullet points worth equipping, or is it all just shop fodder?
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And for further edification: "Right now, a fear of “nationalization” on the right and confusion over “receivership” on the left has given the government cover to protect creditors by doing neither."

Even in the vocabularies of professionals, I see them being used interchangeably, though there's a distinction that we're gunning for. We don't want megabanks to become government entities in perpetuity, we just want to freeze them in place and defuse their financial WMDs.

And one would hope that in the act of dissection, we'd find ample enough evidence to realize that oh man, surprise we should never have repealed Glass-Steagal, and allowing banks to naked trade trillions of dollars of leveraged derivatives in unregulated dark pools is psychotically, suicidally stupid.

Oh but what do all those words mean oh gosh oh gosh hey what is Palin up to?? "Meanwhile Mark & No-Drama-Mama Bristol keeping good perspective@ dance studio;Fun!"

Fun! Hooray!
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Mmm. I have enjoyed Karl Denninger's recap of the recent security upgrades of America's airports. http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2278407 Next time I travel, should I opt for radiation or molestation? I'll probably go with the latter. Could make for a good bonding moment if I ever find myself talking to a Japanese office lady who has to ride the JR every day.

Misc snips of my favorite bits:

The terrorists already know how to stick a bomb up their ass. ... These scanners, and indeed all scanners, are ineffective against such attacks.

Since the point of terrorism is to cause terror, the more security theater you create and the longer the lines that result, the more likely it is that a terrorist will simply waltz into the line with a monster suicide vest on and blow himself up in the line before the scanner is reached.

The underwear bomber was on a plane bound to the US without a valid passport and was known to be a threat. DHS cleared that plane into US airspace knowing that it had an undocumented and threatening foreign passenger on board. Who made that decision and why? I've been asking this question for a year and so have others, but nobody will answer it despite the admission that they knew he was a risk. The responsibility for that attempted attack IS ENTIRELY WITH OUR GOVERNMENT, NOT WITH A LACK OF SECURITY.

In the case of 9/11, several of the terrorists were here on expired Visas. That is, they were here without authorization, and our government still, ten years later, refuses to track those people down and expel them.

The TSA should hire Toby Keith to write a patriotic little waiting jingle to loop for all the people waiting two hours for their screenings. I think that's a good idea. Guilty until proven innocent is a pretty good idea too, but they already thought of that one. 大笑 ;))
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Or reinstitution of Sparta.
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As I read along, I was wondering what the significance of burying women deeper in the pit was.

...Yeah.


OK, so, anyway, in finance, I am just going to drop a link to my favorite US economics talker guy as he speaks of my favorite EU economics talker guy's take on Ireland.

"the bottom line - intentionally expanding debt beyond the coverage of economic growth and then compounding it with increasing leverage via off-balance sheet games such as derivatives and promises of social programs that cannot be met - has remained constant." http://tickerforum.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2287568

We are so fucked. But, on the up-side, I'm told that citizens who manage to wriggle out of the pit during the execution can go free. HAHAHAha. :\
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The tea party has been hijacked. In short: it was initially about keeping the banks in check, but the movement got infiltrated by one of our political parties and redirected toward the usual partisan dog-and-pony show.

This covers the current state of it, if you're willing to put up with ten minutes:

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Wow, Joe Lieberman is a scumbag.

I hate that he has any clout in American politics. As much as Cheney is a heartless fucking psychopath, I really don't think Lieberman would have been any less destructive as Vice President. Perhaps less destructive to the middle east, but more destructive to American liberties.
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Heh. So the NASA astrobiology thing is just an announcement that they've found a bacteria kind of thing, on earth, which can apparently utilize arsenic in some way.

Attention whores.

Edit: I could have at least bothered to add a link, I suppose. Not that you all won't be seeing it elsewhere. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962846

This is so stupid to me. Oh man how shocking that biological processes might be able to work with other atoms than the ones most readily found on earth. Oh man. Far out. Far out.
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God it's awkward to have that guy sitting in the background, blinking a fraction as often as a normal person would.
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nobody cares that nobody cares sawtooth
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Hopefully the last time I'll talk about the damned arsenic thing:
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101207/full/468741a.html

"the authors have shown that the organism takes up arsenic, but they "haven't unambiguously identified any arsenic-containing organic compounds", says Roger Summons, a biogeochemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. "And it's not difficult to do""

"the organisms appear bloated, and contain large, vacuole-like structures — often a sign of sequestered toxic material."

"I fault the authors for not noticing these things and sorting them out ... We shouldn't have to do the thinking for them."

"ludicrous"

"absurd"

"the paper made no mention of the search for extraterrestrial life"


So whoever wrote the PR release was the attention whore / tribble-livered Big Bang Theory watcher with nothing better to announce the announcement of.
~fin~
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I still can't ever get over this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kK5xB_C9qQ#t=5s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob4KAWc07So#t=29s

The radical (ha) contrarianism manifests so hard in both of them. Makes me wonder if there are specific genetic similarities.

And god dang it I still have a crush on this girl. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDRbnmjzY7U
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Everybody act surprised: NASA peeps are now saying that climate models were half-assed, and we probably don't need to stress about CO2.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/08/new_model_doubled_co2_sub_2_degrees_warming/

It'll be interesting to see what the "other side's" response will be, but otherwise my only thought at the moment is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siuWZxDMGnk

Edit: The comment section on there is an ICP mosh of people debating whether 'models' are 'science', but there is one good and valid counter-argument: http://forums.theregister.co.uk/post/933978 "this negative feedback is not enough to alter the global warming trend" etc

Looking at other Register articles, I get the impression that they are biased anti-AGW, so I wouldn't be surprised if their color commentary was disingenuous. Still, what the hell is this about NASA and NOAA climate models not taking plants into consideration?
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Oh hi good timing.

I'm laughing that we're looking to half-baked models for all of this.

My stance: Taking a side between AGW and not-AGW is a false dichotomy, and we need to run screaming toward renewable and sustainable practices no matter what.
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I found this interesting to listen to in the background: http://www.cfr.org/publication/23563/new_media_new_standards_audio.html

Council on Foreign Relations discussion about the state of American media. People from NPR, NYT, MSNBC, and so on, speaking fairly frankly of their positions. Topics include WikiLeaks of course, disruption of profit models through new outlets, decline of robust international coverage, balance of opinions, among other things.

Nothing revelatory here, and nobody stands out as a genius with an eagle's eye view of the situation. Just a bunch of generally smart, generally experienced people who think that they're doing the best they can with what they have. Biased by their status quo in some cases, a little bit too proud of themselves in some cases, but what else would we expect.
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Most of the black dudes are in for 9 due to coke, not weed. Nearly everybody in for weed has been given probation. Nearly.

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This topic reminds me of a story that I read earlier in the year about a certain exotic cutting agent used on cocaine lately that is causing serious health risks: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/the-mystery-of-the-tainted-cocaine/Content?oid=4683741

Anyone in the community (CoSo?) who partakes regularly should be aware of this if they aren't already.
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Heh. That was the general response that I saw on hacker news. Couldn't we come up with a link less biased than that guy? Then some yayhoo recommended an NYT article sitting behind the paywall, and he got sighed at for a couple of reasons.

The gist I get is that nobody understands the total implications of "net neutrality" one way or the other, and the indecision is making it harder for providers of packets and IP alike to decide where they should invest their future infrastructure.

I get the feeling that they're trying to do "something" so "something" gets done. Nobody has defined what "something" is exactly. We're not even uniformly decided on what "net neutrality" actually means. Is it like Fox's "fair and balanced"?

The issue feels like a straw man to me. Either way the possible "goodness" or "badness" all comes down to specific details which nobody has decided on.

How do we decide what data should take priority? I DON'T KNOW GOD PUSH THE BUTTON QUICK! How do we decide what is really a problem to be addressed? I DON'T KNOW GOD PUSH THE BUTTON QUICK!! What would happen if we just did nothing? I DON'T KNOW GOD PUSH THE BUTTON QUICK!!!

Also they're trying to do this during another one of these lame ducky sessions. The whole excuse of "it's not a perfect system, but it works" does not satisfy me here.
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Hm. Kucinich is putting forward a bill to change how the money system works. http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2323337

I'll have to wait for more opinions from voices I trust, but on first blush it looks pretty fascinating. Not sure how the suggested changes would make up for the loss of liquidity and velocity that fractional reserve brings.

Chances of it passing are astoundingly slim of course, since it would eviscerate the outsized profits of the finance industry. Hats off to Kucinich for cutting through some bullshit and being audacious, anyway. I will watch this with interest.