So we’re at that stage of life that many would, and have, described as “dying.” True enough, we’re noticing some of the icky stuff – creeping paralysis and numbness on the left side, and the weakness and reduced mobility that go with it. We have less stamina, particularly late in the day and there’s creeping fatigue – I’m napping and sleeping more. Things I used to do relatively easily are getting harder – dressing, getting in and out of cars, walking, especially late in the day.
That I’m able to do these things at all at this point in the progression of my disease has a lot to do with my “Heidi muscles,” the legacy of three years with trainer and rehab specialist Heidi Engel. She’ll be the topic of a post in the very near future, complete with her exercise regimen for dying people (yes, it makes sense!).
Matt Simmons, Author of “Twilight in the Desert” and Peak Oil Speaker, Dies at Age 67
In his view (and in ours, too), way too many people hear about the huge reported reserves of Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries, and assume that this oil is really available for extraction. Matt makes the point that these reserves, and many others around the world, have not been audited. In fact, they seem to be political numbers, so we cannot depend on them. He also points out that we also do not have detail data with respect to historical oil extraction from individual fields in the Middle East, so we really do not know how close to decline Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries really are.
In 2005, Matt Simmons wrote a book called Twilight in the Desert. In it, he summarized what he learned about Saudi Arabian oil production by reading 200 academic papers. He concluded from his analysis that the oil extraction techniques being used there were techniques that one might use if the fields were quite depleted. Because of this, he doubted that we should believe stories that Saudi oil production can be greatly expanded. Instead, he raised the possibility that in the not too distant future, Saudi oil production will suddenly decline. Matt’s research underlying the book was no doubt behind his concern that oil reserves and oil production rates are not audited.
Another thing Matt is known for is his educational graphics about “what is really going on” with respect to oil extraction. For example, in his talk at the 2009 ASPO–USA conference, he shows this graphic of the amount of conventional oil discovered by decade.
Community Yoga
The End of the Guidebook
I am in Tate Modern with no Baedeker. Nor Lonely Planet, Rough Guide, Time Out or any other type of guidebook. For Lucy Honeychurch, heroine of EM Forster’s Room with a View, this would be a desperate situation. Without a guidebook in Florence’s Santa Croce, she is bereft, close to tears, unsure what she should be looking at, unable to recall any of the building’s history and upset at having no one to tell her which of the sculptures and frescoes is most beautiful.
I, however, am supremely confident. I may not have a guidebook but I am equipped with “Google Goggles”, and thus have at my fingertips more information than exists in any guidebook ever written – perhaps more even than the combined wisdom of all guidebooks ever written.
Disappointingly, Google Goggles are not physical goggles, or glasses of any kind, but an app that will soon become available for iPhones and already works with Android smartphones. Put simply, whereas Google lets you search the internet using keywords, this allows you to search with an image. You use the phone’s camera to take a photo of something – a church, a monument, a painting or a sculpture – then wait a few seconds for the image-recognition software to scan it, before being offered a full range of information about it. The implications for travel are huge.
The Style of an Elegant Bookstore
An August Fannie Mae an Freddie Mac Debt Forgiveness Surprise From Obama?
Main Street may be about to get it’s own gigantic bailout. Rumors are running wild from Washington to Wall Street that the Obama Administration is about to order government-controlled lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forgive a portion of the mortgage debt if millions of Americans who owe more than what their homes are worth.
Fascinating. I don’t think this will help during the November election.
Portland Cello Project
The fabulous Portland Cello Project performed in Madison for the first time this week at the High Noon Saloon. More photos, here.
A great evening at a bargain price, $10 per ticket. A brief iPhone 4 video is here.
Lunch with Alan Greenspan
Escaping the latest of a string of steaming hot summer days, I duck gratefully into the cool interior of Tosca, an Italian restaurant in the lobbyist quarter of Washington DC. From the pavement it is not prepossessing, curtains entirely screening off the interior and presenting a blank face to the world. But the busy, clubby interior hums with power. Situated conveniently between Capitol Hill and the White House, and in the neighbourhood of some of Washington’s most powerful political consultancies, it has a reputation as a location for political deals and power-broking at the highest levels. It was here, legend has it, that Tom Daschle spent a five-hour dinner persuading Barack Obama to run for the US presidency. It is very DC.
The GM $50,000,000,000 Taxpayer Bailout and The $41,000 Volt
By taking a loss on the first several years of Prius production, Toyota was able to hold its price steady, and then sell the gas-sippers in huge numbers when oil prices soared. Today a Prius costs roughly the same in inflation-adjusted dollars as those 1997 models did, and it has become the best-selling Toyota in the United States after the evergreen Camry and Corolla.
Instead of following Toyota’s model, G.M. decided to make the Volt more affordable by offering a $350-a-month lease over 36 months. But that offer allows only 12,000 miles per year, or about 33 miles per day. Assuming you charged your Volt every evening, giving you 40 miles of battery power, and wanted to keep below the mileage limit, you would rarely use its expensive range-extending gas engine. No wonder the Volt’s main competition, the Nissan Leaf, forgoes the additional combustion engine — and ends up costing $8,000 less as a result.
In the industry, some suspect that G.M. and the Obama administration decided against selling the Volt at a loss because they want the company to appear profitable before its long-awaited initial stock offering, which is likely to take place next month. For taxpayers, that approach might have made sense if the government planned on selling its entire 61 percent stake in G.M. But the administration has said it will sell only enough equity in the public offering to relinquish its controlling stake in G.M. Thus the government will remain exposed to the company’s (and the Volt’s) long-term fate.
On Blog Comments
A colleague over at Democracy in America (DiA), The Economist‘s blog about American politics, has written a very interesting post on the nature of online commenters. While the formality of composing a letter to the editor continues to generate considered and often polite prose by even the most aggrieved readers, the immediacy and anonymity of online commenting seems to encourage a tendency to insult and attack. "Faceless communication leads to disinhibition, whether it’s online, in a car or on the phone with a customer-service representative… Psychologists even have a name for the online phenomenon: ‘online disinhibition effect‘."
Publishers keen on a solution to nasty commenters will follow what happens at the Buffalo News. The paper has just proposed requiring readers to supply accurate identification if they want to weigh in, which is promising. (As one of the 65 commenters on the DiA post wrote, "I used to think anonymity was a good thing… However, over time my view has changed to the opposite. For every unique voice, there are thousands of mindless, thuggish screams.")