The Written Peace:
Open Forum of April 28, 2006
A warm welcome is extended to the new commenters here, among them Father Tyme and blackdog, both of whom tend to be found in other quality joints like BlondeSense. We also have as relatively new regular commenters here ballgame and Stephen Benson, along with Ralph Hitchens. Kathleen Callon of Kat Callon and Rhodian Attic is now gracing The Dark Wraith Forums, as is Dave of Dave's Big Beef and Texas Shiva of Hole in the Bucket, who was gracious enough to use as the header on her blog a graphic I designed for her entry on blogScream.
Speaking of which, I quietly and without fanfare herewith note that the blogScream News Wire service passed the one year mark online as of this month. There are currently 27 regular syndicate members and two guest members in the news cycle, and the daily feed is seen by well over seven thousand people every day.
And if I haven't said so lately, I am ever grateful to the long-standing regular and occasional commenters here at The Dark Wraith Forums: non-bloggers My Pet Goat and OddJob are as close to Ancient Ones as we get around here, as are elf and charliepotato. Others include Gary of American Agenda, Peter of Lonetree and Liz of BlondeSense, Wild Clover of Clover's Field, meEE of Eternal Ecstasy, karen m of Evil Mommy, our old friend The Fat Lady Sings, our equally old friend SB Gypsy of The Gypsy's Caravan, Old White Lady of It's morning somewhere, the venerable Eric Hopp of Oh Well: A Commentary, the hard-driving PoliShifter of Pissed on Politics and Revolutionary Paradigm, our very own fairly people-friendly Stealth Badger, and the ever enjoyable Trailer Trash.
I should also give congratulations to Jen of donkey o.d. for recently crossing the 100,000 hit mark. Jen contributes at Night Bird's Fountain, where you can also find Barbi, Lizzy, dorsano, DeLLBerto, Cyn_NY, Bergs, Karen, and a cast of thousands doing some great blogging.
Among the new entries in the Dark Wraith's BlogRing are the delighful An Angry Old Broad, Scott at Macaroni Duck (don't ask me what it means; I haven't a clue), Fred Bieling's blog Making Conservatives Cringe, Mixter's Mix, and Neil Shakespeare (no relationship to Shakespeare's Sister... at least I don't think there is, anyway).
Also, Brian Keeler, known previously as NYBri, is running for the New York Senate in the 41st District. He'll need some votes. His Campaign Website has the specifics on his candidacy; so if you're in the 41st District in the State of New York, or if you're interested in the politics and issues in that part of the country, go and see what Brian has to say.
Finally, as far as links and such are concerned, I do want to welcome the new advertisers here at The Dark Wraith Forums. LegalZoom.com, started by attorney Robert Shapiro, is an online legal document service center, providing quality legal documents and document services at a fraction of the cost of an attorney. LegalZoom even reviews documents before returning them to the customer. Love and Pride is the number one online retail store for jewelry and accessories for the LGBT community. If those don't spur the rampant consumer in you, at least get some Starbuck's Coffee or something from Barnes & Noble for Mother's Day.
Enough commercialism. Let's talk topical news.
President Bush says he doesn't want to see a windfall profits tax imposed on the big oil companies, but he wants them to do what's right and invest in more oil exploration, new pipelines and refineries, and some new technologies. Meanwhile, the Republicans on Capitol Hill are still talking about sending every American a $100 check to ease the pain of high gas prices. So here we go again: money handed out like water (this time rather blatantly to buy votes) with no offsetting revenue for the federal government. Of course, the Senate is getting butch with OPEC and the oil companies, demanding something or other along the lines of accountability for something or other. Good theatre all around.
And while we're at it, suffer me a note on alternative energy resources, a rant that does nothing to mitigate my complete understanding that we need to get moving on alternative energy sources. My point here is that we need to do so without wearing economic, financial, and environmental blinders. None of the alternative sources of energy now on the table—and I mean none of them—come without extraordinary costs, the bulk of which are hidden. Take, for example, hydrogen for fuel cells. Hydrogen is generated by breaking down water, a process that requires a substantial energy input. The major proponents and firms pushing this technology have one and only one long-term source in mind for the input energy: nuclear power. Although other sources of energy do exist for extracting the huge amounts of hydrogen that would be needed in a hydrogen fuel cell driven economy, that's not where the big cats are looking. They have their eye right on nuclear power plants doing the work. Even the Department of Energy sneeks this point in at its Hydrogen, Fuel Cells and Infrastructure Technology Program Website. Go way down to near the bottom of the drool page, and you'll see the casual mention of nuclear energy in the context of the infrastructure for hydrogen generation. Unfortunately, other methods of getting massive amounts of hydrogen often involve some process that starts with a fossil fuel, with the idea being that the break-up of the hydrocarbons will release the hydrogen for capture. The problem is the by-products: reduced carbon compounds. The oil and gas industry claims all this carbon can be "sequestered" deep underground, but private scientists and the Department of Energy call such plans "very high risk."
Okay, there's always ethanol. The problems with this alternative energy source, especially for motorized vehicles, are many; but one of the issues that bothers me the most is a miscalculation problem very common in analyzing new projects. For every field that is planted to corn for ethanol production, that field is lost to other uses. This in economics is called opportunity cost—the cost of the best or highest-value opportunity foregone by committing to an action. The opportunity cost of standing in line to get a cheap price on some product is the value of your time at labor. If you can make $10 an hour at your best work, standing in line for half-an-hour to save some money costs you $5 in opportunity cost. That's a cost that never shows up in a receipt or a bill, and it's money that you never actually see leave your pocket; but it's a cost nonetheless. And opportunity costs often are the dominant costs in overall economic cost structures.
My favorite story about opportunity cost being unrecognized is the one about when I was teaching at a prestigious private college, and the city mayor and her finance chief came to speak about their plan for a new sports stadium in town. After the finance fellow had presented the numbers to all the wide-eyed business students and faculty, I asked him why there was no cost included for the land. "Oh, we own the land the stadium's going to be built on," he answered. I could see the look on his face: he had enough training in economics and managerial finance to know that he was about to get eaten alive for not including an opportunity cost. Yes, the land was not going to be purchased, but that didn't mean it wasn't a full-blown cost of the project since the land, by being committed to the stadium, was therefore unavailable to be sold, leased, or put to any other use. That was the beginning of the litany of hidden costs not included in the mayor's grand stadium plans. Not one hour of the cost of all the city workers being used to plan and execute the project had been included. The calculations also excluded all the physical and human capital facilities of the city, its law enforcement division, and its utility companies. These were costs to which the city had already committed, and they would stand as draining parasites in near perpetuity.
There's opportunity cost in action. So when you're thinking about alternatives to fossil fuels, don't just think about direct costs; think about total economic costs. We must indeed move on from fossil fuels, and we need to get started right away. Just don't think that it's going to be a relatively painless matter. The transition is going to hurt like Hell, and it's going to be expensive far beyond what the direct cost numbers indicate. It's not just a matter of, "How much do I write the check for?" It's also a matter of "What's the value of what I have to give up to do this?"
The numerical answer, honestly calculated, to that second question will probably dwarf the numerical answer to the first question.
Economics is not called "the dismal science" for nothing, you know.
Every topic is open for discussion. We'll be having some rousing rounds of the Hokey-Pokey later in the evening; and if the crowd feels up to it, we might even keep the espresso bar open all night. And to celebrate President Bush's stance that the Star Spangled Banner should be sung only in English, we might try a chorus of that great American song in several alternate languages, including Yiddish, Mandarin Chinese, and Creole. That ought to mess with some xenophobes' minds big time.
Say what you have to say, be as frisky as you like, but make sure the last one out turns off the lights and kills the neon "No Loitering" sign. And for Heaven's sake, someone please make sure to carefully put away that new copy of Binary Su Doku for Hegelians I just got at Western Zen Online.
The Dark Wraith awaits the rush.
Published 4/28/2006 10:40:00 PM
<< 36 Comments Total
One other problem associated with hydrogen use is its carbon dioxide output. The environmental impact will be just as great if not greater than oil. Actually, there’s a great big problem associated with just about every 'alternative' fuel out there. I have no idea what the solution will eventually turn out to be; I just wish these solutions had been worked on since 1979 - instead of ignored in the vain hope it would all dry up and blow away. We approach asteroid detection and elimination with the same laissez-faire attitude; and just like oil it too will rise up and bite us all in the ass one day. I only hope I won't be alive to see it. Problem is – I have this unreasoning fear that I will. By the way, Dark Wraith - I've written an article on The Bilderberg Group. Have you any thoughts or opinions on their effect/contribution to the world’s economic woes?
Actually, Fat Lady Sings, you sort of beat me, there. I'm putting that article of yours in my nightly "The Dark Wraith Recommends" because it's a good summary of a few aspects of one of the more disturbing cabals around.
I'm going to dig around to see if I can find the links to a couple of Mother Jones articles that will give you the Heebie-Jeebies about those cats and several other creepy groups crawling around in the woodwork. I don't want to get into what could legitimately be called conspiracy theory stuff, at least not on this blog; but I don't have to go into that kind of depth and detail to say that the Bilderberg has people way too convinced that they need to move the world along to their way of thinking.
Other groups have this same mindset, among them the Club of Rome and the Opus Dei. I'll tell you right now that there have been and still are factions within Freemasonry that are Hell-bent on one scheme or another. (The vast majority of freemasons are not, however, of that mentality at all.) Whether or not groups really affect the world as much as some conspiracy theorists say they do is beside the point: the people in these groups think they should, and they think they can. In at least a few cases, their convictions have actually manifest themselves in results that were wholly bad for others and even for nations.
I don't like most groups that scheme to make changes without broad agreement through pluralistic, liberal discourse; and I especially don't like groups that do this in the shadows where they think they can work out the world's problems according to their own parochial notions of what's best for everybody else, especially for everybody else who's not like them: rich, white, and male.
The Project for the New American Century comes to mind in this regard.
Some of these groups are nothing but bumbling, "Order of the Knife and Fork" brigades. They do nothing but pseudo-scholarly discourse over big meals. On the surface, Bilderberg fits this description perfectly. Other groups, however, have more claws, and they've ended up doing harm far beyond the measure of their own puny minds.
I would put the Bilderberg Group in this latter category.
To what extent the Group has had effect, I shan't say here. Not now, anyway. It's not quite time for that, although it seems to me that many people of sound reason and good skepticism have seen that there really are conspiracies out there. I don't think, however, that people in general want to hear too much. Not yet, anyway. I also don't want to let any kind of conspiracy theory discussion devolve into the all-too-frequent anti-Semitism nonsense.
As an old Jewish friend of mine told me a very long time ago, "Look, of course we're trying to take over the world. So are the goya. So are the Communists. That just proves how nuts we all are."
The problem is, the little trolls of the Project for the New American Century were of a group so nuts they really did take over a rather important piece of it called the United States of America.
And that's not a conspiracy theory, Fat Lady Sings: that's what really happened.
The Dark Wraith wishes people wouldn't try to take what's not theirs, like other people's freedom.
HEY! WHO DIDN'T TAKE OUT THE TRASH AND WHO LEFT ALL THE DISHES IN THE SINK FOR ME TO CLEAN??!!
but he wants them to do what's right and invest in more oil exploration, new pipelines and refineries, and some new technologies
Well THAT ought to solve everything in no time! The window on that sounds to me like five to fifteen years before results appear. You're the former oil guy, DW, what say you?
Re: Opportunity costs.
I completely agree with what you're saying, but I have a question. How do you plausibly figure out what the "best use" is? Obviously by choosing one future use you necessarily exclude innumerable other choices (many or most of which are of little value or even negative value), so of course opportunity costs are going to look like bogeymen if you think about them emotionally rather than brutally rationally.
Yet, how can one rationally, & simultaneously plausibly, expect to imagine the most valuable use foregone when people often don't realize the best use, and instead stumble upon it by accident?
For instance, do you suppose all those urban renewal gurus would have EVER imagined that the best use for much of what they wanted to condemn was to not tear it down, and instead encourage it to revive the way that damn nutcase Jane Jacobs insisted they do (God bless her soul, may she rest in peace :-))?
If they could not imagine that, how could they have possibly calculated the actual opportunity cost of their wonderful, proactive, incredibly awful ideas?
- oddjob
Go. Read. Enjoy! :)
(Hat tip, BlondeSense.)
- oddjob
Good morning, OddJob.
That question you're asking is the one my best and brightest hit me with. The first time I heard it some years back, I was caught flat-footed. Now, I'm a little better prepared, but the answer is to some extent what you anticipated.
In real estate, we use the term "highest and best use" to describe that use to which a piece of land is put most productively. As you rightly point out, there are innumerable uses for a given plot of Earth, but most of those uses would be entirely or largely unproductive.
Now, a word on productivity. In economics, we consider productivity in terms of the present value of expected future net cash flows arising from a project. This doesn't mean we're all about cash, cash, cash, either: just as there are implicit costs, there are also implicit revenues; and the whole realm of implicit cash flows is fraught with terrible difficulties. That's why accountants live longer than economists: accountants deal only with actual, explicit flows, mostly those that have already occurred, although some that are projected, but even in projections, the numbers are based upon tangible, contractual obligations in most cases.
Economists can't do that. Historical costs are irrelevant to economists: we call them "sunk costs," and they should not be used in decisions now for future returns.
Moving from that point, how on Earth can we determine highest and best use? Well, we can't—not with complete certainty, anyway. But what we can do is put limits on what is worth consideration. Yes, a 400-acre farm in the middle of Nowhere, Nebraska, might very well be ideal for a high-technology space port and shopping mall complex, but we're pretty sure it isn't. We are pretty sure that land in the area is owned and used by rational individuals who are implicitly maximizing an enormously complicated set of functions balancing personal satisfaction and profitability of the assets. So right there, we have a darned good starting point.
Now, unless someone can show me that a market defect exists that is systematically preventing all of the people in Nowhere, Nebraska, from moving the productive configuration of their land from farming to that space port/shopping mall complex, I shall work with the assumption that the highest and best use of the land is in agriculture generally, and probably in something like the type of agriculture being practiced around there, in particular.
That's the basis of opportunity cost analysis: what is the most common, most likely alternative that would be available for the use under consideration. When a person is at leisure, the only close substitutes are things he or she could be doing other than leisure. Yes, that's a 'Duh?' statement, and it's meant to be. But if a person isn't at leisure, about the only alternative (other than being dead) is work, and then the opportunity cost boils down to 'what is the most productive (in terms of money) work the person could be doing' instead of being at leisure? Again, the answer is generally fairly straight-forward: what the person actually makes when he or she does work? This might not always be the right question, though, especially these days when there is a severe (in my judgment) problem with "under-employment": people who could do much better as far as wages are concerned, but institutitional, physical, and even psychological barriers are keeping them from being their most productive in terms on monetary reward to their labor input.
This is a fiendishly complicated issue. My recent calculation of what I make on an hourly-equivalent basis indicates that my wage rate is now under eight dollars per hour. It's easy for me to lament that this just isn't what I'm worth, but it's not really that easy: subjectively, I think I should earn more; but from what I can tell, the market really is saying that this is right about where I should be. That complicates the calculation of opportunity cost of leisure terribly: when is the opportunity cost exactly what a person is making at labor, and when is the opportunity cost actually more than what a person is currently making at labor?
Now, returning to the ethanol versus consumable corn. It is probably a relatively easy argument that the opportunity cost of an ethanol corn crop is the consumable corn crop that could instead be grown on a given plot of land. Although other uses for the land might exist, it is very likely that, if the land has been in agricultural use prior to the planting of corn for ethanol, it was in that use because market forces had guided its owners to that end.
In other words, we should assume that there is good reason why land is used as it is; and when we move it to another—albeit even a relatively similar—use, we must look at the prior use as the benchmark for opportunity cost.
Now, this goes to your note about gentrification. In urban economics, we talk about the "filtering" of a particular housing stock: this is the natural decline in value of improved property. Filtering is accelerated or slowed by outside forces, most of them man-made; but in and of itself, all housing stocks filter from higher value to lower value. To slow, stop, or reverse this process requires capital added to the improved property, and this isn't just a stock (or one time push) of money; instead, it's a flow of resources that must be relatively continuously committed to the housing stock to abate its degradation in value.
At any given point in time, improving an existing land form from its standing value to some other value requires the calculation of what it will cost versus what will flow in benefits from the improvements (original or extra). In the case of gentrification and other reversals of filtering, the problem boils down to this: what is the highest and best use of a given plot of urban or peri-urban land? This then goes to exactly your point: to what extent do we look for alternate uses. If we look too extensively, we'll never get anything accomplished; at the same time, if we look too narrowly, we might very well miss a particular use that hasn't shown up in the actual market because of some institutional barrier. One of the most common that I've seen in urban and suburban renewal is zoning, which has for years forced the uses of land to conform to very old ways that are no longer the most productive. Another is insurance: many underwriters would be uncomfortable with a proposed use of land that is radically at odds with the existing uses; and one reason for this is that pricing coverage on new uses would be difficult, given that actuarial analysis favors using existing data in a closely similar situation, and such data would, by definition, not exist for a brand new use. Another institutional barrier is competitive interests. It could very well be the case that an innovative, and definitely highest and best use configuration of land could have serious community proponents, but their interests are at odds with developers who see the land use in the context of larger projects on their agenda.
This happens quite frequently: locals might see a nice big green space in their little enclave as the highest and best use, but a developer planning a major downtown shopping complex would prefer that land be used to build rental and owner housing for consumers who would then provide the customer base for the commercial enterprises nearby.
And that, OddJob, is the worst part of highest and best use analysis. Although many financial economists would disagree with me, there really are calculations of value that are not independent of the individual or group for which the calculation is being done. The relative values of implicit revenues and costs can be staggeringly different for two different groups, and this can result in radically different conclusions on what constitutes the best use to which land should be pressed into service.
My hands are getting a bit stiff from typing. I hope I've confused and confounded you sufficiently for the time being, OddJob.
The Dark Wraith gets up to walk around for a few minutes, now.
Good morning All:
How nice to come in and find clean coffee cups for a change! I'm having my first coffee in over 36 hours...I slept/dozed all day yesterday-what a waste of a day off!- getting rid of an ear/sinus infection that had come to a head Thursday night. I'm hoping I'm over the low grade crud that has been putting me to bed early for the past week so I can enjoy some on-line time again.
On the topic of hidden "opportunity costs". Many years ago, a friend with the FAA was transferring to a location about 5 hours from his home. He had a moving allowance of several thousand dollars(2 or 3), and decided to make a few bucks by doing it himself. Hubby and I tried to tell him that the time involved for someone making around $20/hour, plus truck rentals, plus gas, plus storage rental, was going to take any of the so-called profit out of it. Our friend was single, with a multitude of hobbies, and a pack-rat mentality worse even than mine own. He rented a full-sized 18 wheeler moving truck TWICE. The first load I had nothing to do with-hubby and 2 friends were paid $10/hour+food to help. That first load was mostly the wood-working shop-things like industrial grade free-standing drill presses. Our friend our of curiosity went an hour out of his way to hit a weigh station, and the attendant was in awe-he had his load about 5000# above the truck's rating. Such awe that he was permitted to drive off with it. The second trip I helped load. I stood and asked why he wanted 3 broken dryers loaded(they were outside and full of water and ice-did I mention this was February?)"They have good parts". "Does the dryer in the house work?" "Yes""Then I'm NOT loading these rusted out water-filled thigs to leak all over the inside of your truck." I refused to load a twin matress from the outbuilding...he'd found the thing on the side of the road and I'm sure any yuckies were dead after the months of living outside, still, YUCK!. I managed to weed out the fish aquariums that had no glass left...I still had to figure out how to pack the rest with their cracks and missing panes. We took about 14 hours to load that truck to the gunwales. Picture an entire 12x12 bedroom floor to ceiling with boxes of things like an ammo-reloading kit and lead melting apparatus--heavy as shit-I'm amazed the floor to the doublewide had held up. Some furniture. He had a third truck he did himself later at the final move.
Figuring things up later, he "cleared" something like $200. He used a couple weeks vacation time, and a lot of aggravation-as well as having to move all this shit again out of storage when he found a new place. Now, if he had paid for it to be done, the FAA would have picked up the entirw tab. Doing it himself, there was a monetary limit, as well as some budget cruncher to "disallow" expenses if he saw fit. Our friend had a fit. We had warned him. IIRC, help he paid for(us) didn't get compensated since we weren't from some temp agency.
I always have looked at time considerations unless it was the case of not having the cash, period. If I don't have $20 to get my oil changed but have $10 for the materials(yeah, I'm way low on these numbers), then spending 2 hours of my time to do it($16) is a neccessary evil. Spending a couple bucks on stuff like yogurt and pre-packed fruitcup for the Implet's lunch rather than taking an extra 15 minutes to make sandwiches and stuff is cost effective for me-especially since I can spend that 15 minutes here :)
I mistrust any scenario that purports a money-for-nothing scenario, especially as put out by anyone with any ties to our present government.
Speaking of money for nothing...how many gallons of gasoline does it take at $3/gallon to pay the CEO of Exxon for one day? Kind of makes you think....(BTW-this is one of my discussion topics with customers..heh heh)
Good afternoon, Dark One.
Have you ever read an economic impact analysis in a categorical standard issued by the EPA?
These are pollutant emission laws for entire industries as defined by SIC codes, for examply: porceline enameling. They would always attempt to bring in the cost of not promulgating the regulation by estimating the health costs of the injured or dead people affected. Made for some tough reading for me back in the 80's, but it also gave me respect for economics where I will remain a dunderhead.
But it is a pleasure, although a somewhat difficult one, to visit this site and maybe learn something. For that, I thank you.
Oops. It can be difficult when on the web to believe any of the BS you are reading or listening to. As to my earlier comment on acetone here is something to consider, from Tom abd Ray, click and clack the tappet brothers.
http://www.cartalk.com/content/columns/Archive/2006/January/08.html
I tend to trust these guys. And sorry for the misinformation. Oh Dark Wraith, I abase myself by getting another Saturday beer.
good afternoon dark wraith and all others:
this is a paste job of a comment i left at lindsey beyerstein's. it pissed a few people off so i might be on to something. the subject was what the policy of progressives should be regarding immigration.
estoy utilizando español porque puedo contar mejor que Custer. vivo ocho millas de la frontera mexicana. vivimos juntos bien abajo aquí. trabajamos juntos, jugamos juntos, criamos a nuestros niños juntos. mi madre estaría en una clínica de reposo sin el cuidado que ella recibe de la gente a que otras desean proscribir. deseamos que Washington y Ciudad de México saldrían de nosotros solos. simplemente dejan nos sola. esta discusión entera no es nada solamente una distracción de las aplicaciones verdaderas el desastre en Iraq, incompetance en la casa blanca, corrupción en un nivel magnífico y del venal, y el jugar desvergonzado en los miedos del ignorante. otra vez, por favor, del nos deja solos.
i will provide a translation upon request. the economics questions were giving me a headache, administration policy is tweaking my ulcers, i'm losing money on basketball games, time to work on my tomatos and peppers in the garden.
Request. I barely speak english, I'll take all the help I can get. BTW, the PHC is on now, I recommend it to all. On NPR.
blackie, no problem at all. . .
I am using Spanish because I can count better than Custer. i live eight miles from the Mexican border we live together well down here, we work together, we play together, we raise our children together. my mother would be in a nursing home without the care that she receives from people to that others wish to outlaw. we wish that the Washington and Mexico City would leave us alone. simply leave us alone. this whole discussion is only a distraction of the true issues, the disaster in Iraq, incompetence in the white house, corruption on a grand scale and a venal one, and shameless playing in the fears of the ignorant. again, please, of leave us alone.
Good evening, Stephen Benson.
You touch upon a point that is really mystifying to me, especially in Texas. I swear that most of the Texans with whom I worked—and many of them were almost archetypes of how non-Texans think of Texas men—never said the first word about Mexicans being some kind of "problem." We had two Mexicans in our little oil and gas group. They worked like dogs, and I don't recall ever hearing a negative word about them concerning their ethnicity.
Now, don't get me wrong: there were all kinds of redneck sorts who had a problem with anyone who wasn't White, but there was a broad, unspoken social agreement that Mexicans were generally off limits among those with whom I worked. These guys were more than willing to let out a racial slur against African-Americans (although they didn't do it openly unless they were absolutely sure they were in the exclusive confidence of like-minded people), but not against the Mexicans, especially because the Mexicans were usually busting their butts working like dogs.
And beyond Texas, I don't recall hearing hardly any of the racial and ethnic slurring that attends so many people (even to this day) when they refer to African-Americans or other groups. In fact, it seems to me there's almost an affinity among many people in this country for all things Mexican.
Then suddenly, as if out of nowhere, BAM! there's a giant issue and ethnic problems are popping up all over the place.
It's stupid. Even at the local junior high schools, there's a simmering war brewing between the Hispanic students and the kids who are African-American and Caucasian. One woman of color who works with disadvantaged minority students was talking with me about this issue, and said she had never thought that the Black and White kids would all finally get together and like each other only because they had found a common enemy. I told her it was sounding like the beginnings of some kind of multi-racial West Side Story.
(It gets worse, by the way: the local community of students whose parents are from India and China are beginning to flex their political muscles in the school system, and this is causing no end of simmering anger among Black, White, and Hispanic parents.)
God. But of course, it's not the fault of the hate merchants on the Right. No sir. They're not responsible at all.
The Dark Wraith really needs a break from this stupid reality TV show... it's just too confounded real.
Good evening, blackdog.
Well, I'm impressed by your comment on the EPA impact estimates. You seem to be telling me that you really do understand opportunity cost—in this case, the opportunity cost of not enforcing a regulation!
This was a legislative effort back in the '80s and into the '90s to counter-balance the constant whining about the cost to industry of environmental regulations. The supply-side economists and assorted other Right-winger econ types were constantly bawling about the burdensome costs the government was imposing through the "hidden tax" of regulation, and these impact statements were the institutional rejoinder, pointing out that there's a cost either way; and in fact, the cost of non-compliance was staggering compared to the cost of compliance.
Now, we don't hear that. All we hear is the battle cry of the industry shills to get government off their backs, to lessen regulations, to let "the markets" deal with problems.
I swear, it's almost enough to turn a rational old conservative like me into a raging Socialist.
The Dark Wraith puts on his revolutionary military fatigues.
Good Evening DW,
I don't know if Robert Heinlein (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - 1966)was the first to use it but TANSTAAFL seems to apply; There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. So much for the ethanol.
If you really want to screw up the kool-aid crowd, add Arabic, Persian and Korean to the languages for presentation of our beloved English Drinking Melody. Can you imagine seeing an Iraqi, Iranian or North Korean singing under our flag? To make it worse should they be U.S. citizens or not? Maybe they could raise their fists?
Binary Su Doku for Hegelians? Right or Left? PNAC right! Outstanding, and I thought Hex would be easy!
The Bilderberger - sshhh! I'm still worrying about the "Knights who Say Neigh".
I'm afraid that's all for now as my saucer is leaving for Agharta.
Good evening, Dark Wraith.
Thanks for the mention and the linky! I was just over at your message board and noticed you haven't updated the streaming headlines for some days, now.
After reading this latest Open Forum, The rampant consumer in me was unleashed! I used your Starbucks link to order a coffee that sounded very tasty. They request a minimum of two items ordered, so I figured a nice tea would be good, too. I won't give them to my mother, as she gave up coffee some years back for hot chocolate.... I guess I could give it to her for Mother's Day, then make the sacrifice to drink it, myself;)
Good evening, Old White Lady.
There's a reason I haven't updated the news: I can't get into the backroom of my own stupid board!
I tried to do an update of the whole architecture, and now my own codes won't work, and the whole thing is locked up tighter than a drum. I made the original architecture really airtight as far as security goes, and I didn't set a trap door for myself because that creates a vulnerability. Now, I'm paying the price as I must slowly, methodically work my way in. It's taking me forever, and it's about the stupidest thing I've done in quite some time.
I'll get in eventually, but it's going to take me some time.
And thank you for stopping by Starbucks. I was pretty proud of myself when that company agreed to let me run their ads. I had sort of hoped that the products at Starbucks would be better than some others to offer on the Internet. Clothing is still a hard sell online. Many people—especially women—are still really wary of purchasing clothes without trying them on unless they are already very familiar not just with the company, but also with the clothing maker, since that gives them some assurance about how the sizes work. I know this is also true with men's clothes: with most brands, 30-inch waist/32-inch inseam is just right, but with one or two brands, I've had to go to 31-inch or 32-inch waist. Shirts are always a pain: 30 inches at the waist and 42 inches at the chest makes for a difficult fit unless I find a brand that's "full cut." International Male sells lots of shirts like that, but I'm still furious with them for finally deciding that my Website didn't "fit into" their advertising business model. They can bite me. So can the Gap and Old Navy for telling me exactly the same thing.
Anyway, doing effective advertising on the Internet is a whole lot like work. Most of what I think might generate decent sales turns out to be a dog; but some of the advertisers, just by their presence, lend a certain degree of reputability to The Dark Wraith Forums, so I keep them even though they're generating zero in residual.
Interesting stuff to do though... well, at least for a business geek like me, anyway.
The Dark Wraith needs to think of a slam-dunk winner of an ad campaign, though.
And speaking of coding, good readers, yes, I do know that this blog is loading with an infuriating slowness in Internet Explorer, and I am almost literally pulling my hair out trying to figure out what's wrong.
If my timings are accurate, the site is loading very quickly in Firefox, but that's probably (again, if my timings are accurate) because Firefox does like the AJAXing I've done to content in the sidebar. But the slow loading in Internet Explorer is about to send me around the bend. My worst fear is that my coding is fine, and it's the server that's getting weak. That suspicion has been heightened in my mind because the loading has gotten progressively slower over the past couple of weeks, and some of my sequential timings were done when I had made no attempts at code modification.
If it's the server, I have a major problem on my hands. Of course, if it's my code, I've still got a major problem on my hands given that I've stripped the code down to nearly the bones. The last thing I'll probably do if nothing else seems to work is to remove the hit counter at the very bottom. I've made that thing way too complicated anyway in my efforts to keep it counting honestly. Right now, it's set never to count my own hits and not to count anyone more than once in any 48 hour period. It also has hit suppressors for blocks of IP addresses so that someone who uses two different computers within the same IP range doesn't get counted twice as a hit. Unfortunately, all of those bells and whistles might be what's slowing everything else down as that script has to do its run every time there's a page load.
Like I said, that hit counter might have to go. The big one is the only one that matters to me anyway. It counts only brand new, never-before visitors to this place. Although it's nice to have information about total hits, total pageloads, and other aggregates, I can get those statistics from raw data at the server level and from the advertisers, since they collect information about how many total "impressions" of their ads are being generated by their displays here.
So, over the next week or two, you might see the blog acting a little weird as I try my best to shake out whatever it is that's causing this ridiculously long loading time. One way or the other, I'll solve the mystery.
The Dark Wraith does not let go until he either fixes the problem or shoots it.
Good morning, Dark Wraith.
I was sorry to read about the problems you're having with the architecture of the message board. It sounds as though you enjoy coding and once you figure out the problem, which is likely to be soon, you'll probably be out on that dance floor, dancing in celebration! :)
As for Starbucks, they do have some wonderful sounding coffees. I think I've been to an actual Starbucks coffee shop exactly once! The coffee I chose has a "slight citrus flavor", if I recall correctly. I'm so darned excited to try it!!!
Good Afternoon, Dark Wraith,
Just wanted to share an interesting article about BushCo's still-coagulating plans for Venezuela. If you've already read this (it's from March), please forgive. By the way, there are also some amazing photographs of the wounded on this site, Voltaire, with captions in Spanish (it's a multi-lingual site), though non-Spanish-speakers will find the pictures tell the story very effectively. They're pictures you haven't seen in US media, and it's highly unlikely you'll ever see them outside of the Internets and foreign media.
Good evening, litbrit.
I have for some time been concerned about the trouble brewing in Venezuela in particular and Latin America in general.
That article doesn't even begin to cover what's going on down there. The Central Intelligence Agency has been sponsoring rag-tag bands of thugs, mostly of Colombian origin, who have been encamped just beyond Venezuela's borders, from where they had been staging cross-border raids. Most of their activities were appallingly amateurish: poor planning, modest objectives, bungled efforts seemed to be their consistent hallmarks. Fortunately, some of that activity came to an end with the decommissioning of such groups, some of which included current and former soldiers of the Colombian army.
Other efforts by the CIA have been equally bizarre. Last year, there was a totally weird incident where "dissidents" in Venezuela distributed pumpkins—pumpkins, mind you—with anti-Chavez messages on them all over the streets and sidewalks of Caracas. They just showed up early one morning in what had to have been one of the goofiest, if perhaps notably well-coördinated, anti-Chavez efforts to date.
As Peter of Lone Tree noted, there was an incident several weeks ago in which the U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, who was curiously traveling without benefit of Marine guard escort, was chased in his limo and pelted with vegetables and bottles. Interestingly, that looked for all the world like an American spook-inspired gambit that was supposed to lead to some kind of shooting or other harm to the Ambassador. Fortunately, nothing of the kind occurred, and so the U.S. didn't get the pretext it had been seeking from that odd, spur-of-the-moment, impromptu clash.
I'll tell you this much, litbrit. We have John Negroponte in charge of National Intelligence, now. That man was the architect of unbridled Central American savagery in the Reagan era, and the fact that he's even still a free man is a tribute to the enduring power of the Right-wingers to protect their most illustrious beasts. He and a whole slate of other Reagan-era trouble-makers are in the halls of power again, and I have no doubt whatsoever that Latin America is right at the top of their list of hotspots for regime change, what with the way so many countries are veering seriously to the Left down there.
While the current focus of regime-changers is the Middle East, it won't be long before the corporate world starts to press its case that Central and South America are just as much our backyard as countries on the other side of the world. The few contacts I have tell me that we're going to see "incidents" before the end of this year, and those are going to end up being a portfolio of pretext for much more open American action in our own hemisphere.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The Bush Administration is the collective punch of utter failure in statecraft. They have let the Chinese out-maneuver us commercially all over the globe, they have allowed anti-American interests to fester everywhere, and they can't imagine anything other than brute force and menacing bluster as the tools of engagement in dealings with other countries.
That, above all else, is the stunning failure of this Administration, comprising as it does, failed and failing amateurs on a world stage filled with powerful, intelligent, savvy men and women heading into a future we in American are less and less likely to see as we wallow in the mounting legacy of neo-conservatism.
The Dark Wraith has taken up grumbling to himself as a somewhat satisfying habit.
Dark Wraith,
I'm not so sure that the Bush Administration isn't a sort of "community college" for present and future dictatorships all over the world. With the rest of the leadership ilk watching, they're conducting distance learning classes in how to totally subvert a country's laws, screw the people and then have those people ask, "Thank you, sir. May I have another?"
The question is, who will be the first graduate of The Bush-Cheney School of NeoCon-Nazi-Fascism? I think the Media will matriculate Cum Laude. Fox News will get an honorary Doctorate.
I wonder what the tuition is?
Hu was a guest lecturer.
Tony Blair should be drafted as their first visiting sycophant. Anyone else with suggestions on professors, aides and possible students?
Here's looking forward to the first alumni reunion; probably around 2008.
Good evening, Father Tyme.
I have no doubt that Condoleeza Rice, gifted as she is with such natural talents (especially for Scary Lady scowls that could curdle sweet milk), will one day be memorialized as one of the famously successful graduates of the Neo-Con School of Authoritarianism & Fiscal Mayhem.
Paul Wolfowitz has already done good by his time at the old school, what with his current position as President of the World Bank.
And even though the curriculum was particularly hard on young Scooter, he will surely go on to become a noted lecturer and lifer at some Right-wing think tank.
That, or he'll become the mayor of one of those neo-Nazi villages in Idaho.
And I do see great things for alumni such as Douglas Feith and John Bolton; but my hopes aren't high for the likes of Scotty McClellan, who might very well end up in some hippie commune on the outskirts of Buffalo, where he'll develop a new religious cult devoted to memory-erasing drugs and fervent calls to Jesus in the middle of the night.
Take note of my predictions, Father Tyme. Remember: I've been a professor for a long, long while, now, so I do have a good sense of how young undergrads eventually turn out.
The Dark Wraith hands out the hall passes.
It's getting late, for me anyway, but thanks for the forum and interesting folks. Before I go I'll sing for you, before we all join in singing that damnable anthem and recite a Limerick, too.
Just a click away!
Thanks DW.
Always a pleasure having you here, meEE.
The Dark Wraith should seriously consider turning this place into a permanent condo complex with a giant community living room.
DW: Thanks for the mention. The attention and intellect you bring to bear for your blog and its participants is truly amazing.
As to the Bush administration's total lack of statecraft, I am occasionally given to wonder whether we are really witnessing utter incompetence, or the deliberate and calculated destruction of the U.S. 'brand' so as to ensure maximal competition between nations/peoples and minimal effective coordinated regulation of multinational conglomerates. Under this perspective, the 'war on terror' would really be a 'war to create terror' so that any potential domestic opposition can be destroyed through the stripping of civil liberties from the masses (a la V for Vendetta).
I keep waiting for something to happen in reality to falsify this bleak hypothesis.
Big dollar slide may be in the immediate future. (Hat tip, Buzzflash.)
- oddjob
ShrubCo's. foreign policies fomenting destabilization thwart the policies' very goals and squander international clout as well. (Hat tip, Buzzflash.)
- oddjob
Good morning, OddJob.
Concerning your link to the article about the U.S. dollar, you might recall my graphical post, A Walk-Down Primer on the U.S. Trade Deficit with China. The very bottom statement in that graphic is where we are right now.
The Dark Wraith shouldn't be such an alarmist, however.
The Dark Wraith shouldn't be such an alarmist, however.
People would wonder why you hated America if you were to be that way.
- oddjob
Bolton speculates aloud about ending televised press conferences. (Hat tip, Crooks and Liars.)
- oddjob
And this is sure to attract attention in some capitols. (Hat tip, Buzzflash.)
- oddjob
Good evening, OddJob.
I wanted to tell you that I had been working on a post about the Federal Reserve, but that article about the falling value of the dollar to which you linked got me thinking about something concerning the dollar's recent slide.
I'm looking at some numbers that bother me. Although I don't go into apocalyptic economic scenarios all that much, I'm a little agitated tonight.
I'm going to switch gears and try to get a post up tomorrow about this drop-off in the greenback. I won't go into some wild speculation about the end of the world as we know it, but I do want to put a little background knowledge under people's belts for the ride ahead.
There's actually some good news in all of this, but there's some pretty grim news as well, and it's not just for the Americans.
God! but these neo-cons have made a mess.
God! but I wish the people who voted for Bush could take responsibility for their little affair with redneck imbecilic politicians.
The Dark Wraith would very much like to conduct a public, mass paddling.
oddjob suspects that what you are intimating is the economic version of said mass paddling.....
Isn't that what shakeouts are usually all about?
(I'd be surprised if it was any worse than the decade long slide the Japanese appear to just now be emerging from. At least I thought I'd read somewhere or other that they appear to be finally moving beyond it.......)
- oddjob
Good evening, OddJob.
Yes, the Japanese are just now emerging strongly from their adjustments.
The American version of the correction will, however, not be as gentle as was the Japanese version; it will, instead be for all the world like some kind of... well, yes: economic paddling.
The Dark Wraith hollers, "CLEAR!"
It's interesting that you see things headed this way. The last time I saw my father (a couple of weeks ago at a family funeral) I overheard him mentioning that he was looking into transferring some of his portfolio into gold and foreign investments. He's one of those investors generally derided as wackos for having an interest in technical analysis, but regardless of his modus operandi, he's done quite well for himself. He's come to the conclusion that in the not too distant future things will get rather rough, and it will not necessarily be a short term phenomenon.
Time will tell.
- oddjob
thank you Dark Wraith! and thank you for the education. I always learn so much on your blog.