Category: Stuff

Nat is Crazy

Nat, that is crazy.
You are not exactly 25 years old anymore.

Ok, I have done worse, i.e., I have done 200 miles a couple of times.
That takes about 12 hours, all breaks included. Some things you ought
to know in advance:

  • Your route looks somewhat dangerous, traffic-wise. Wear something
    with screaming colours.
  • Your behind will be as sore as your jaw was recently.
  • Your ability to control various muscles you did not even know you
    had will be temporarily affected. Do not drive a car yourself for a day.
  • If you get wet, say around Quincy, the trip is not going to be
    any fun. You will end up with a mixture of water and road dirt thrown from your own wheels all over yourself. It will make an unpleasant sound on your teeth. (Been there, done that.)

More Burgers

Robert, I am not at all
disputing the claim that electricity costs are slow to adapt. I will
take your word for that.

But the claim you proxied was different, namely that slowness in
adaption was somehow related to lack of international trading. Yet,
the slowest adapting price you mention is for a perfectly fine,
internationally traded commodity, complete with a futures market. The scientific solution here is to discard or at least
amend the hypothesis that slow adaption is related to whether there is
international trading. Wearing my mathematician’s hat, I do not
accept proof by “widely considered”.

For the record, and without thinking too deeply about it, I would
guess that electricity prices adopt slowly is mainly because the
building of power plants and distribution network starts with a
huge initial capital expense which has to be earned back (or not,
depending on your economical system, 🙂 over a long time.

I do recall you implying that without a minimum wage there would be no unemployment. That is pure reaganomics aka nonsense. Do a fact check, i.e., look for times
or places with no minimum wage and see if unemployment occurs. For
example, during the great depression there was widespread unemployment
but no minimum wage. (You could find newer examples, but then you would have to find them abroad.) Science: hypothesis has been
proven wrong and
gets discarded. Politics: let’s hope no-one notices and draw a cat.

Totally unrelated, I agree that seizing people’s property, even with economic
compensation, really ought to be based on something a bit more
essential than the love of strip malls.

Burgers

To The Economist’s credit, The Big Mac Index is for a large part a
joke. Just think of how many RMB you would have to pay to get a
Big Mac on the moon. It is incredible how much the RMB is overvalued
by that measure. Think about that the next time some clown tells you
that the RMB exchange rate is the cause of all US budget problems.

Robert, my bogus-meter is blinking. Why did you forward an obviously-wrong claim like electricity not being internationally traded?
Remember Enron?
(And check out DoE and this list of electricity exporting countries.)