Preliminary 2007 US greenhouse emission numbers are out:
I love readers
This morning at work, I threw out an idle question on the newspaper web site about how rising gas prices are affecting people. The response was rich and thoughtful.
Robert Rauschenberg, 1925-2008
Coming of age when I did, and having had the art of that age be like the water in which I, the fish, swam, I felt like I had to say something meaningful about the death of the fabulously influential Robert Rauschenberg, who died last week.
So here’s the story.
When I was growing up, there was a doctor who lived up the street who had a Rauschenberg painting. The story is that the doctor cared for Rauschenberg when he was a young man, and Rauschenberg gave him the painting.
The doctor’s wife always hated the painting. When the two divorced, the wife got the painting and sold it for a lot of money.
I don’t know if this is true, but that’s the story I heard.
most people like ketchup
Saw Gary Hustwit’s marvelous film “Helvetica” this weekend. Helvetica is the universal typeface, that which it seems cannot be improved upon, both loathed for its pedestrian ubiquity and revered for its comfortable functionality.
Reminded me very much of some of the issues raised by Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece a few years back on ketchup.
(h/t the hypothetical wren, who loves type and told me about this movie)
Elasticity Translated
Ajay Shah explains what’s hidden behind the economic term “elasticity” – people with empty bellies:
GDP growth yields fewer poor people who respond to higher wheat prices by purchasing less meat or wheat, i.e. we have less of a shock absorber. That generates a reduced elasticity of demand of wheat. So prices have to rise by more in order to clear a supply-demand imbalance than was required in the past when there were more poor people who would adjust.
Grammar Police
All right, enough already. I’m tired of being hassled by The Man. I fixed it, OK?
US Food Production
Simon Donner today answered a bunch of questions I had about US food production numbers:
[T]he extra corn for ethanol has to be planted on productive croplands, lands with the right soils, and most of that land is being used. In 2007, soybean planting – the other major feed crop grown in the midwest US – went down 16% in the US to make space for more corn. Soybean exports and use remained the same, but the ending stocks were down 72%. In other words, we’ve been cleaning out the cupboards.
Food Price Index
Food prices popped back up a bit over the last week, according to the Economist, but have remained relatively stable for the last month. Down 1.7 percent over the last month, up 58.7 percent over the last year. West Texas Intermediate is up 99.8 percent over the last year (that would be “double”), and gold, (which I’m told is “the new gold”) is up 29.1 percent year over year.
Energy Independence
When we talk about energy independence here in the United States, there’s a sort of tribal subtext. We don’t want to be dependent on them for our critical energy needs. Listening to a Platts’ podcast today about pipeline production south from Canada made me wonder whether them in our collective mind includes Canada.
I don’t know about you, but personally I am terrified of the potential cultural hegemony of Bachman Turner Overdrive and Mike Meyers.
update: In the comments, a helpful reader (thanks, Kelsey!) points out there’s a t-shirt to go with this:
Albuquerque Bike to Work Day
Diane Albert’s view of the city is different than the one you might get trapped inside a glass-and-steel cage on your morning commute.
Out along the Rio Grande bicycle trail on her morning commute, she sees the coming and going of ducks, the cottonwoods changing from green in spring to gold in the fall.
She sees other cyclists, who invariably wave, and she waves back.
“Instead of people flipping you off in your cars, you have people waving,” the 50-year-old lawyer said of her morning commute.