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Monthly Archives: August 2008
Quote of the Day
Capitalism is the greatest system ever created for alleviating general human misery, and yet it breeds ingratitude.
People ask, “Why is there poverty in the world?” It’s a silly question. Poverty is the default human condition. It is the factory preset of this mortal coil. As individuals and as a species, we are born naked and penniless, bereft of skills or possessions. Likewise, in his civilizational infancy man was poor, in every sense. He lived in ignorance, filth, hunger, and pain, and he died very young, either by violence or disease.
The interesting question isn’t “Why is there poverty?” It’s “Why is there wealth?” Or: “Why is there prosperity here but not there?”
At the end of the day, the first answer is capitalism, rightly understood. That is to say: free markets, private property, the spirit of entrepreneurialism and the conviction that the fruits of your labors are your own.
For generations, many thought prosperity was material stuff: factories and forests, gold mines and gross tons of concrete poured. But we now know that these things are merely the fringe benefits of wealth. Stalin built his factories, Mao paved over the peasants. But all that truly prospered was misery and alienation.
I Love Egg!
Videos like this are the reason that the internets were created: I love egg.
Failed Technology Predictions
It drives me crazy when Congress and the President try to legislate new technology. One perfect example is President Bush’s to require 35 billion gallons of year of ethanol, 20 or so billion of which from cellulosic ethanol. Twenty billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol is a lot, especially for something that only exist in the lab and not in real-world applications, let alone a single commerical scale operation.
The problem is that we don’t know what the future holds. We don’t know which future technologies will work. If you have any question about that, just read this list of Failed Predicitons.
Sometimes we think that if we just let really smart people choose technologies, everything will work out. But from reading the list of failed predictions we see that isn’t true. Here’s what William Briggs has to say about what we should learn from this list:
Here’s #2, from Mr Bill Gates, a well known rich person who lives near Seattle: “We will never make a 32 bit operating system.” And #8 from Lord Kelvin, who was a mathematician and physicist, and president of the British Royal Society, 1895: “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”
Ho ho ho, we say to ourselves when we read these prognostications. How stupid can they be! We experience mirth. But that is exactly the wrong emotion. You might despise Bill Gates, but he is an incredibly bright person, an expert among experts in his field. Kelvin, who you probably haven’t heard of, was one of the smartest people who ever lived (not at the top of the list, to be sure, but ahead of all of us). These, and the other people with quotes on the List Universe page, were masters, yet they made remarkably huge mistakes.
You must also remember that when these men, superior in perception to their peers, made these predictions, there were not hosts of others saying the opposite. Most people believed the predictions, and with good reason. These experts had often been right before. What we should take away from this list is an increased skepticism, a belief that experts are not nearly right as often as they’d like us to think they are. Doubt, therefore, is the proper emotion.
Experts can’t predict the future. That’s the message.
Great pictures from the Olympic Opening Ceremonies
I was on a plane and missed the Olympic opening ceremonies. But here are some great pictures of the event.
Sad Irony–Italian Sports Car Desginer Killed While Riding a Scooter
Andrea Pininfarina, head of the world-famous Italian car design firm, Pininfarina, wasn’t killed by any of the sports cars his firm designed. He wasn’t killed by getting in an accident while driving a Ferrari 599 (which can go 0-60 in 3.7 seconds).
He wasn’t killed by wrecking an Enzo Ferrari while traveling over 200 mph.
Instead he died while driving a Vespa.
That is a sad, sad irony.
The USOC and China Need to Grow Up
The US Olympic Committee (USOC) and the Chinese need to grow up. You probably saw the pictures of the American cyclists who wore masks when they got off the plane in Beijing. Even though these masks were provided by the USOC and the lead USOC exercise physiologist advised olympians to wear the masks as soon as they arrived the Chinese got mad.
Instead of standing up to the Chinese like men and explaining that the air quality in Beijing was still poor, the USOC first threw the cyclists under the bus. USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel said,“We’ve said all along that it is the athletes’ choice whether to wear one if they feel it’s necessary,” Seibel said. “I’m no scientific expert, but walking through an airport doesn’t seem like the place where it would be necessary to wear them.”
Then the USOC forced the forced the cyclists to apologize for offending the Chinese because of the dirty air in Beijing. The USOC claims they didn’t asks the cyclists to apologize, but I’m not buying it.
The USOC needs to stand up to the Chinese and their dirty air. The opening ceremonies are tomorrow and the air quality in Beijing is still not good. The smog is so thick that “passers-by on the street fail to cast shadows.”
Thanks USOC for siding with the Chinese. It’s not the athlete’s fault the air quality in Beijing is horrible. The Chinese need to act like big boys. It’s their fault the pollution is so bad. They should accept that fact like adults.
I Love Amanda Beard’s Hypocrisy
You have to love Amanda Beard. She’s a good looking, two-time gold medal Olympic swimmer who has posed for a PETA ad naked (safe-for-work picture here). According to the PETA press release, Beard said:
“[T]o see animals … slaughtered to be worn as fashion is awful to me, so I’m definitely against wearing fur.
…
I’d much rather go naked than ever put a dead animal on my body,” Beard said.
Deceiver.com did a little research about Beard and found that she’s a bit of a hypocrite. Beard told shoe blogger Meghan Cleary last year when asked, “What pair of shoes would you want to be buried in?”:
“Something that just screams ‘me.’ All of my friends would agree that it would be this pair of leather sandals that I wear all the time. I wear them on the pool deck, at the beach, and even sneak them into my wardrobe for dinners.”
Note to Amanda–leather is animal skin (not that I’m complaining). She also like leather jackets. She told Smart Money:
“You don’t take 50% off the leather jacket you use to ride on your motorcycle,” she says. “When you’re skidding across the highway you want something that fits.”
More from Deceiver.
Thank you Amanda for showing us how silly PETA’s campaign really is. If their spokes-bade doesn’t go animal-free, why should we?
Don’t Trust T. Boone Pickens
You will be seeing and hearing a lot from T. Boone Pickens over the next few months. His publicity blitz have been very impressive as Nancy Pelosi even invited him to talk to the Democrat Caucus even though he financed the Swift Boat group in 2004.
As beguiling as Pickens energy plan is, it is disingenuous. His energy plan will not get us off of foreign oil. If you read the plan, it is obivous that Pickens is not serious. He is obviously not serious because his answer for getting of foreign oil is–wait for it–to use wind power. This non-sequitur is the cornerstone of Pickens’ plan. Just read this page from his website.
If you don’t want to read Pickens’ plan, here’s a condensed version. Foreign oil is bad. The wind blows a lot in America. We can produce electricity from wind. Cars can run on natural gas. Wind power can displace natural gas used for electrical generation. That’s his argument, but just doesn’t work.
Oil and electricity have very little to do with each other
Pickens states that we use a lot of foreign oil and then notes that “The United States is the Saudi Arabia of wind power.” That’s fine and good, but oil and electricity have very little to do with each other. In 2006, only 2% of the electricity in America was generated using oil. Two percent. Eliminating that 2% isn’t going to “get us off foreign oil.”
Wind does not produce electricity in the way we use electricity
We want on-demand electricity. We don’t just want electricity when the wind is blowing the right speed (wind turbines only produce electricity when the wind is blowing hard enough, but not too hard). We want some electricity all the time–to run our computers, refrigerators, etc. We also want to have more electricity at times of high energy use–such as the afternoon when we want to run our conditioners more.
But even in the best locations, wind only produces electricity 35% of the time. People don’t want electricity just 35% of the time.
Wind power can only displace a very small amount of natural gas
When new wind farms are built, we have to have natural gas-powered electricial generation for when the wind doesn’t blow. Natural gas turbines can quickly spin up, making them ideal to use when the wind quickly changes. But as a result, wind can only displace a very small amount of natural gas. In fact, as there is more wind production, we need more and more natural gas-fired turbines to make up for the slack when there isn’t more wind. This does not free up natural gas to power our cars.
Pickens has large investments in natural gas
Unsurprisingly, Pickens has large investments in natural gas. By increasing the amount of wind generation only makes natural gas more valuable, increasing the value of his holdings. Becuase the subsidies are so lucrative for wind prouction, Pickens will also make money from his wind turbines (even though he thinks they are ugly and so he doesn’t have any on his ranch).
Where in the world is my wife?
Beijing.