Tobis on the Lawnmower Dilemma

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Michael Tobis models the lawnmower problem:

If you have a typical American house, you have a typical lawn in front of it, a lawn that is in need of occasional trimming. Unless you contract out for lawn services, you almost certainly own a lawnmower too. Most likely it has a cheesy, loud, polluting little engine.

You only use this for a half hour every other week, or 1/336 of the time. OK, you don’t want people mowing lawns at night, so say 1/168 of the available daylight time. So you and your 167 nearest neighbors own 168 times too many lawnmowers. If you could coordinate your lawnmowing, you would need to spend 1/168 as much on a lawnmower.

Sasol Tightens Belt

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Sasol, my bellweather for the future of non-traditional fossil fuels (they’re the South African company that’s a world leader in coal-to-liquids) is retrenching, according to Bloomberg:

A recent deterioration in market conditions means Sasol now expects “a moderate reduction in earnings” for the year ending June 30, compared with a previous forecast of “robust growth”, it said in a statement to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange News Service today. The company is also reviewing its 70 billion rand ($6.9 billion) capital expenditure plan over the next three years, it said.

“They are going into cash conservation mode,” Nedcor Securities analyst Mohamed Kharva said by phone from Cape Town. “Only time will tell how aggressive the decline in oil prices will be.”

Elephant Diaries: The French Model

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The French seem to really love their newspapers. At least, their government does:

The French state will help provide free newspaper subscriptions to teenagers for their 18th birthdays, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced Friday. But the bigger gift is for France’s ailing print media.

Sarkozy also announced a ninefold rise in the state’s support for newspaper deliveries and a doubling of its annual print advertising outlay amid a swelling industry crisis.

Sarkozy argued in a speech to publishers that the measures are needed because the global financial crisis has compounded woes for a sector already suffering from falling ad revenues and subscriptions.

In a speech to industry leaders, Sarkozy said it was legitimate for the state to consider the print media’s economic situation.

“It is indeed its responsibility … to make sure an independent, free and pluralistic press exists,” he said.

(h/t Slinger)

Water In the Desert: Surrealism Edition

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Around the corner from my house, something truly strange is under construction. It looks kinda like the Alamo, albeit with tilt-up concrete sides and weird tubes coming out the sides. It’s our new “water park,” which has been haltingly under construction for ages. It’s part of a hotel up the street from my house, an attempt to create a “destination” for residents of a parched land. Troy Simpson posted a video yesterday of an interview with the guy in charge of the project:

Sean Olson also did a story (ad gated) on water use at the park:

Building a water park in conservation-conscious New Mexico seems like a water-waste fiasco waiting to happen.
But the state’s first indoor water park, currently under construction at the Radisson Hotel on Carlisle near Interstate 40, will be fairly stingy in its water use, project developer Dan Serrano said.
“At the end of the day, you’re reclaiming 97 to 98 percent of the water,” Serrano said of the park.
That amounts to using between 10,000 and 12,000 gallons per day, Serrano said. It is also roughly what 20 Albuquerque homes use in a day, city-county Water Utility Authority water conservation manager Katherine Yuhas said.

Education Spending

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Win Quigley, from the front page of yesterday’s Journal, on the way New Mexico chooses to implement the Hartwick rule:

New Mexico has amassed billions of dollars over the almost 100 years that we’ve been a state, mostly from oil and natural gas extraction, that is hoarded in rainy-day funds.
The idea is that when oil and gas run out, we’ll be able to tap the funds and pay our bills going forward. That is to say, New Mexico in another 100 years will be pretty much the way it is today, because we don’t invest in our people now.
In 100 years, we will still have one of the worst high school dropout rates in the country. We’ll have too many impoverished children, too many kids killed by suicide, murder and accident.

Elephant Diaries: Economies of the Times

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Brad Delong on the news of the New York Times’ financing deal, which sounds a bit like the Gray Lady went to one of those brightly painted car title loan places you see in former gas stations:

Good God almighty! 14% interest with short-term inflation at zero plus a share of the upside if the stock price recovers! … Hard to see this deal as anything other than a forecast that the New York Times will be in bankruptcy court within a decade.