From me, in a podcast with Anthony Colangelo.
Category Archives: Business
California’s Universal Health Care
The cost would be larger than the current state budget.
Because, you know, taxes in California aren’t high enough.
The Outer Space Treaty
Ted Cruz is having a hearing on it tomorrow. Mark Sundahl warns against outright withdrawal, or ignoring the positive aspects of it.
I’m probably going to be at the Space Tech Expo in Pasadena, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to stream it.
Old Engines
Teaching them new tricks.
Between tech advances like this, and lower fuel costs from fracking and the end of OPEC, I think we’re going to get a lot more mileage out of internal combustion, Al Gore’s mindless hysteria aside.
The Uncertainty Monster
Thoughts from Judith Curry on the current state of knowledge in climate. The warm mongers never consider the possibility that their proposed cures may in fact be worse than the disease. I personally think it’s nuts to consider climate a greater threat to humanity than poverty, and particularly energy poverty. But then, many of them don’t really care about humanity, or consider humanity a problem in and of itself.
[Update a few minutes later]
A new paper on the epistemological status of general circulation models.
The Genius Of Roger Ailes
“What made Fox News so dominant for so long wasn’t just that Roger Ailes built a news network to tell just the right stories to gather a conservative audience, though he did make it a religion, but that his competitors in the news business had built theirs to drive that audience away.”
It’s often been said that he recognized a niche market that wasn’t being satisfied: half the country.
The Never Trumpers
Victor Davis Hanson on the nightmares versus the realities.
Trump has been about as terrible as I expected him to be, and I don’t expect he’ll change. I’m primarily happy that he’ll probably get another SCOTUS nominee. I’m still glad she lost.
[Update a while later]
Link was wrong, fixed now.
California
The state government and governor persist in their fiscal, environmental and regulatory insanity.
OPEC
Here’s your feel-good story of the day: The cartel lost $76B last year due to U.S. fracking.
I’m old enough to remember when Barack Obama told us we couldn’t drill our way out of the energy crisis. Oil reserves continue to climbe every year, as they have for decades.
[Update a few minutes later]
Sort of related: Three reasons natural gas prices may be headed higher.
We just put in a soaking tub in our renovated bath, and now our 40-gallon water heater isn’t quite up to the job. I’d been thinking about putting in an instant heater in the bath, but there’s no gas line to it, and at California prices, the electric bill would be a killer. I could replace it with an instant-gas heater, but I’m starting to think maybe just get a bigger tank, given that it’s almost thirty years old.
[Update a while later]
OPEC is dead.
It’s been a feature of my life for forty-five years. It’s not quite as big a victory as ending the Cold War, but good riddance.
Total Failure
When the Shuttle didn’t come home. An NPR story with Wayne Hale.