Economics

Losing Reserve

I am reading The Ultimate Resource 2 by Julian L. Simon (Princeton, 1996). He makes the point that commodities prices tend to decline over the course of the last couple of hundred years compared to the cost of human labor. The average US wage in 1999 dollars is growing at about 2.1% per year geometric mean from 1900-1999. The real interest rate has been about 1% (in the UK anyway).

This means that if technology were constant and reserves were constant, the real price of a commodity would rise 1%. Otherwise, it would make sense to mine as much oil as possible and put the money in the bank, or leave the oil in the ground and wait for the price to rise.

In fact from 1860-2000 the price of kerosene (see figure 5) has dropped about a factor of 6. If you look at the service kerosene was providing (lighting), it has dropped a factor of 40 from

Political Commentary

The Academic Bestiary

Sara Townsley, a graduate student in biology (among other things–she should start a blog), offers a field guide to the Cornell University campus.

The Gray-Tufted Nostalgic Lamprey. Physically less imposing than their fearsome and often irreversibly tenured colleagues, comprising the bulk of the liberal arts faculty. These herbivorous throwbacks can be identified by their poor hygiene, old Volvos and apparent lack of vertebrae or testicles. As committed Marxists, a century of genocide poses a bothersome snag; thus, they’re prone to historical revisionism and faddish prejudices. These aging, conformist pseudo-radicals still regard themselves as courageous rebels, despite having built a habitat cleansed of all but lock-step sycophants. Found in organic markets, peace protests and pricey restaurants.

It sounds like a similar habitat to Ann Arbor, Madison and Berkeley.

Science And Society

Good News For Bill Clinton

They may have finally found a cure for herpes–licorice (sorry, subscription required). You can’t just eat it, though–you have to mainline it:

Researchers at New York University ran lab tests on white blood cells, some of which were infected with the herpes virus. Exposing the infected cells to the licorice ingredient, glycyrrhizic acid, shuts down LANA. That starts a chain reaction of biochemical changes in the white blood cells, leading to their suicide and the virus’ death. The uninfected cells showed no detrimental effects from glycyrrhizic acid, the researchers report in the March Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Cool.

Political Commentary

Have A Dos Equis

Today is my first Cinco de Mayo since leaving southern California, and clearly the holiday is much less a part of the culture in southern Florida than it is there. It’s not a day that I’ve ever celebrated myself, and given the ongoing disaster that has been Mexican governments, alternating between feudalism and crony socialism, since Independence and up to the present day, I’m often puzzled that the Mexicans celebrate it, though I suppose they’re still better off than they were as a colony, given who the colonialists were. It wasn’t, of course, the day that they won their independence–that happened much earlier–but it was almost certainly the day that they cemented it.

But for Americans, there is one thing to celebrate today–it was a spectacular (which is to say, typical) military disaster for the French.

War Commentary

Never Again?

Would that it were so, but we’ve seen comparable brutality and cruelty since, from Mao, Pol Pot, Kim pere et fil, Saddam and others. We now fight a new totalitarian enemy that would cheerfully do the same, should we grant it the power. On the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps in Europe, Chuck Simmins has some remembrances.

Space

Clueless Trekkers

In response to my previous post citing Orson Scott Card’s Star Trek critique, Tobias Buckell takes issue with my comment (and Jim Oberg’s concurrence) about Trekkers’ interest in space:

Boy, I’d have to quibble with that. I recall ST folk being excited enough to beg NASA to rename the first shuttle Enterprise. That hardly smacks of ‘not being interested in space activities.’

This little episode, dating back to the late 1970s, actually makes my point, not his. OV-101, the test article for the Approach and Landing Tests (ALT), was originally supposed to be called the Constitution, but the Star Trek fans were mobilized to rename it the Enterprise, despite the fact that it would never actually fly in space. Many (including me) attempted to make them aware of this, but they didn’t seem to care, and pressed on regardless.

It was kind of a drive-by interest, and whether or not the vehicle they were attempting to rename would actually be a space vehicle seemed to be of much less importance to them than that it be named after the Enterprise. If they thought that they could have pulled it off, they’d have probably signed a petition and sent in letters demanding that the astronaut uniforms be bell bottoms with boots, a la STTOS. If Mr. Buckell has any other data to indicate interest by Trekkers in space, or reality, I’d be interested to hear it, because this sure isn’t it.

Technology and Society

Cat Man Do

Expect to see a lot more of this sort of thing as the technology for body morphing (particularly genetic) continues to develop:

He charges $1,000 a day for his appearances, but the offers are sporadic. Avner said his agent is pitching a show for him on the Fox television network, but the details are still murky.

“If I could make a living at it, it would be nice,” he said.

He said his need to transform himself into a form of human cat stems from his Indian background as a member of the Huron and Lakota tribes. He grew up in Michigan and was given the Indian name of Stalking Cat. Following an ancient Huron tradition, Avner said he is changing himself into his totem of a tiger.

Not surprisingly, he has a web site.

Space

Launch Dry

The most interesting talk at Space Access was a fill-in that was not blogged by Rand, but was by Clark Lindsey:

a CEV concept [was presented] that Boeing is investigating that involves commercial delivery of fuel to orbiting depots. This so-called “dry launch” approach would mean that vehicles for in-space and lunar transport could be launched without fuel and so, being lighter, they would not need new heavy lifters. This would open a great opportunity for the new launch companies to provide fuel to the depots.

It involves an alternative concept (see page 32) from Boeing. The idea is to launch the lunar transfer vehicle dry and provide commercial propellant delivery. This could result in thousands of metric tons of fuel needing to be delivered to LEO. This might bootstrap the commercial launch industry. There are also opportunities for “the last mile” because some launcher companies will not want to have to figure out how to dock with a fuel depot.

1000 metric tons of fuel would be a cool $3 billion unless someone can undercut Elon Musk. 9000 metric tons through 2030 would be $27 billion at current prices, but would likely spur a tech drive and a bidding war to compete prices down to $1000/kg or less.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!