Two decades ago, while a young reporter for the Pasadena Star-News, I convincingly debunked the official claim that a million people show up in person to see the Rose Parade. It took about five minutes of simple arithmetic to show that it was impossible*, and my colleagues and I then attempted to estimate the real …
Sooner or later the neo-Malthusians – those who grasp the fundamental difficulty posed by exponential population growth in collision with a fixed resource base – will turn out to be right. The problem is that, thus far, they have repeatedly turned out to be wrong. Today’s example comes (via Tyler Cowen) from a piece by …
Sunset Canyon is quite possibly my favorite mile of cycling in Albuquerque: View Larger Map If you like to climb (as I do) and you’re stuck in town either because of time constraints, or because it’s winter, there are a series of short, steep, lovely climbs on the neighborhood streets that make up the Sandia …
Fishin’ for help in thinking about NM’s water-population future.
On the horrifying simplicity of the H-bomb, and the possible unmasking of “Perseus”: Reed and Stillman suggest that the Soviets, desperate to solve the riddle of the H-bomb, returned to Perseus for one last favor in 1954. However they got the idea, by late 1955 the Soviets had built and tested their own H-bomb. h/t …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Armageddon Edition’ »
Today’s Inkstain Search of the Day: who is Eli Rabbett (sic) I’m happy to note that I’m in good company in misspelling the good Dr.’s “name”. But I’m hoping that with this post I’ll claim the number one Google ranking.
Economist James Hamilton, in his recent NBER paper, argues for economists’ inherent inability to predict oil prices. Luckily, we have Ana Anaya: “Gas prices will definitely go up, I have to tell you,” she said. “I’m sorry to say.” (ht Somegye)
My Christmas toy is a Kill A Watt, a cool little goober that you plug into an outlet to see how much electricity something uses. Today’s calculation: the desktop computer, despite being off, is responsible for about 2 percent of my average household electricity consumption. Die, vampire! With my power strip that has an off …
Continue reading ‘What I Learned Before the Sun Came Up This Morning’ »
I remain amazed at this graph from EIA: Consumption for the third week of December (the most recent available) jumped over the previous week, but it’s still 6 percent below the same week a year ago. Look at the right-hand tail on that graph! The price, meanwhile, is $1.44 per gallon below last year at …