Saturday, November 3, 2012

Cab Thoughts 11/3/12

"I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things." - Benjamin Franklin

A reason to vote for Obama: The Natural Gas Act or Pickens Plan that would increase the use of natural gas in transportation has been stalled in Congress. Governor Romney opposes it, and Obama says he is in favor of it.
Galileo died in January 1642; on Christmas Day that year, Isaac Newton was born. Reincarnation anyone?

One wonders why the press took Cindy Sheehan so seriously but not Charles Wood.

I know I didn't build this, somebody else did, but I have to work this weekend, could that "somebody else" do it for me?
 
Good news: Another "Star Wars" is coming. There are so many unanswered questions......

A new acronym has crept into the medical literature: HRQOL. Health Related Quality Of Life. One can only wonder where it will go. Acronyms do soften the blow.

The aerospace company Boeing tested a microwave missile last week on a two-story building on the Utah Test and Training Range where computers and electronic systems were turned on to gauge the effects of the missile’s radio waves. The missile, known as CHAMP (Counter-electronics High-powered Advanced Missile Project), fired a burst of High Power Microwaves at the building, successfully knocking out the electronic systems and computers, and even taking out the television cameras recording the test. The company implied that this technology might engender a new, more humane warfare.

Solar power is growing but just the new coal plants built in 2012 will produce about twice the electricity as all the solar systems in the USA and about 13% of the electricity coming from all wind farms.

A 2011 study in Applied Economic Letters entitled, Financial Wealth Effect: Evidence from Threshold Estimation by Sherif Khalifa, Ousmane Seck and Elwin Tobing found “a threshold income level of almost $130,000, below which the financial wealth effect is insignificant, and above which the effect is 0.004.” This means a $1 rise in wealth would, in time, boost consumption by less than one-half penny. Is this the wealth effect that Bernacki is trying to create with his "easing?"

St. Paul's epistle to the Galatians, which discussed an open approach to wel­coming converts: 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.' Theist or atheist, Christian or no, this is a revolutionary concept for its time.

There is some complaint in Ohio that non-English speaking foreigners--apparently Somalis-- are arriving to vote. What is interestuing is the demographics of the group. According to the Somali Community Association of Ohio’s web site, over 45,000 Somalis live in Ohio. Only 40 percent have become citizens of the United States, and only 25 percent speak English well enough to get a job.

The NYT reports America has 104 nuclear units and up to 25% of them have operating costs above competitive wholesale market prices.

A small note on the Libyan fiasco: "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. ” This from the CIA office. Obama supporters have been shielded by the certainty that Gen. Petreaus would have intervened if possible. His absence in the debate made everyone think he was a factor of nonintervention here. Now it seems he was not.

Obama's public position of opposing all drilling for carbon fuels is well established by friend and foe. If that is true, how can one explain Yergin's story in the WSJ on Tuesday asserting that the growth of oil production in the US since 2008 has been the highest of any country in the world. Perhaps we are just making progress from a small base while foreign sources are being pursued at full throttle all the time.

Sometimes (rarely) politicians and their accomplices reveal themselves. Obama may have uncloaked in the first debate. But this wonderful quote may sum up all of the Progressive: “I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men!”--Woodrow Wilson

A truly funny man from London summing up his employment path to becoming a bookseller: "I ended up in London as a vagrant after a stint in Eastern Europe as The Worst English Teacher on The Planet™ and got an emergency job in a bar frequented by drunken book-dealers in London's Chinatown. They decided I was overworked and underpaid as a barman and invited me to experience the same conditions in the book trade."

A huge auction of modern first editions recently closed in London with some surprising results. Faulkner and Doctorow did not sell so well, Ian Fleming did. A Watership Down first went for only 1500 pounds while Amis' Lucky Jim brought 7000.

One wonders why the press took the Valerie Plame flap so seriously but not Benghazi.
AAAAnnnnnd a graph:

Chart of the Day

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