This is one of those signs that, just as people with financial skin in the energy game didn’t believe last summer’s $140-plus oil prices, neither do they believe that $40-ish will be the going price for very long. From Bloomberg last week: Rental rates for deepwater drilling rigs continue to surge as a worldwide shortage …
Saul Hansell explains the underlying economic reality that comes with the Internet’s unbundling of the previously bundled product that my various employers over the years have been tricking you into buying: [T]he bad news for anyone who actually likes reading about where they live is that no one seems to be able to develop an …
Continue reading ‘Elephant Diaries: The Economics of Local News’ »
My daughter, Nora, notes by way of metaphor the story line in the sixth season of Buffy when Buffy realizes she can’t support herself saving people from vampires. “Her younger sister and one of her friends suggest that she start charging people for saving them,” Nora said. Me: I’m guessing that didn’t work out well? …
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The search for a solar-climate link continues. James Annan reports: [T]he field basically consists of little more than people data-mining for correlations that usually fail to hold when tested on out of sample data, and for which there is no real evidence or even plausible modelling to support the hypothesis that there may be a …
On being careful to distinguish what you know from what you don’t: Carl Caves (no one calls him “Carlton”) is the smartest person I know. My wife laughs when I say that, pointing out that I often describe someone as “the smartest person I know.” She is right. As the Journal’s science writer, I have …
Auto sales:
One model being discussed in the journalism world as an alternative to the faltering for-profit newspaper model for the production of local news is what we call “the NPR model” – not-for-profit, supported by philanthropies. That is how I would describe the Independent, for example. My aforementioned smart old pal Chuck, one of the founders …
Standing outside the Kwik-E-Mart this morning while on a cycling break, my mates and I had occasion to converse with a homeless guy, who made several important points: Lance Armstrong has been wrongly accused of doping. He is clean. The microwave in the Kwik-E-Mart is broken. (It was cold and our homeless friend was apparently …
From Staci Matlock: A well-known Taos attorney’s proposal to develop a wind farm has angered some residents near the site, including people in the Cielito Lindo subdivision, where homes rely primarily on solar energy.