Linky Friday #75
Energy & Environment:
[EE1] Germany hasn’t kicked its coal habit, which is coming at a cost. On the other hand, they’ve reportedly set a record for renewable power generation (though, according to Patrick, they sort of gamed the statistics).
[EE2] Russ George wants feverishly to stop global warming, and scientists and environmentalists want to stop him.
[EE3] “Carbon caps have not led to emissions reductions or even limitations anywhere. China will be no different.”
[EE4] Coal is still king.
[EE5] Eleven maps on American energy production.
[EE6] From Johanna Aitch: The music of tree rings.
Fashion:
[F1] Hadley Freeman is worried that the fashions of the 90’s are making a comeback. I’ll take the 90’s over the 80’s any day.
[F2] The phenomenon of tattoos endlessly baffles me. Mostly because things change, and they’re so hard to get rid of. Getting rid of them, though, is booming business.
[F3] The Washington Post has a good piece on the history of Dockers pants (specifically their reputation for being Dad pants). I don’t buy them, because I am a cheapskate and Puritan (Walmart brand) does the trick, but I have always loved them dearly.
Multimedia:
[M1] Piracy hasn’t lead to less music, because most musicians don’t expect to make much money. I suspect, if piracy or extreme price pressures were to hit books, the same would be true there. It’s film and TV I’m worried about, because it’s hard to justify the expense if you’re not going to make money. And yet… we have simply seen no sign of abatement, yet, and more rather than fewer outlets are creating original programming.
[M2] Ghostbusters! The Infographic.
[M3] How well do you know your fictional world maps?
[M4] It’s become fashionable in some circles to predict the death of the NFL. Aaron Gordon looks at the various scenarios proposed and their (un)likelihood.
[M5] Everyone remembers when Tom Cruise was jumping on that sofa and being all freaky on the Oprah Winfrey show. The thing is, how we remember it didn’t happen. Amy Nicholson explains why this is important to our national popular culture.
Housing:
[H1] According to Wendell Cox, the vast majority of metro growth between 1990 and 2010 was in the suburbs. In 1990, 82% of metro areas were suburban, and in 2010 it’s 86%.
[H2] Introducing a $22,000 home. Not exactly child-friendly, but pretty neat all the same.
[H3] I’ve found myself wondering about North Dakota scenarios in the event that something happens to Clancy, and specifically what I’d do about housing. It’s surprising how much room they can put into mobile homes, these days. It makes me think of how poorly-managed our regular houses often are.
[H4] Clancy has become interested, lately, in those “build your own home” things. I have a thing about pre-fab homes.
Education:
[Ed1] Nick Kristoff argued that academics are too removed from the ground to participate in policy discussions like they should. Daniel Drezner responds. (via James Hanley)
[Ed2] David Leonhardt sparked a conversation about student debt, citing a study suggesting that the problem really isn’t people that racked up huge amounts of debt and graduated but rather those who racked up smaller debts and didn’t. Peter Coy added on. Cloire Sicha takes serious issue with the methodology. Freddie defends the study and Matt Phillips argues that the skew in coverage (towards graduates with a lot of debt, instead of drop-outs with less) is steeped in class.
[Ed3] People often talk more sciency than they should. Here are ten scientific ideas that are frequently misused. (via Mad Rocket Scientist)
Progress:
[P1] All reigns must come to an end, and so may it be with Moore’s Law.
[P2] Bill Gates wants to know… have you hugged a concrete pillar today?
[P3] Mozilla is going to sell a $25 smartphone in India. I wonder if it’s a better or worse phone than some of the old smartphones I have around here that I have no idea what to do with.
[P4] Chinese employers are moving to Africa.
[P5] In the future (perhaps even the near future), smartphones may be powered by sand. (links via Mad Rocket Scientist)
World:
[W1] I learned this a little while back in conversations with Jonathan McLeod, but apparently the North Pole has become an expression of Canadian nationalism.
[W2] Even unpleasant journeys often end up looking glamorous.
[W3] Mexico has a vigilante squad of Good Gals With Guns.
[W4] Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry says that Europe’s desire for a “Right to be forgotten” is emblematic embrace of its own decline.
[W5] From Christopher Carr: Fragile States index for 2014
Statistics:
[S1] Statistics can be a great tool of self-deceptions.
[S2] It’s too easy and often overly dismissive to say “Correlation does not equal causation”… but seriously, people.
[S3] These, on the other hand, can be nothing but causation.
[S4] I never miss an opportunity to introduce people to this awesome song:
F1: I think in some ways the 90s have never left. I’ve argued this before and so have others but I think there have been fewer cultural changes (including fashion) from say 1994 to 2014 than many other 20 year time periods. A lot of the music that is popular today is at least directly descended from music from 1994 whether rock or hip hop or pop. Bands I listen to now would do quite well in the 1990s alternative rock scene. Clothing did get slimmer (I have a leather jacket from 1995 that is very boxy compared to jackets purchased more recently) but the styles are largely the same.
F3: If you want a non-dad pant alternative to Dockers, I recommend grown and sewn:
http://grown-sewn.myshopify.com/collections/all
Pants don’t need a slim leg but should at least have a straight leg fit.
Ed2: I think everyone here is right but I am largely on the side of people who think the real problem is with first generation college students who take out modest sums and drop out. Also for profit places that commit fraud like this:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/06/03/for_profit_college_sleaze_everest_admits_a_student_with_a_third_grade_reading.htmlReport
$200 khakis?! More like ‘Grown, Sewn and Cash Blown’, amirite?Report
They might be expensive but they last a really long time. Terry Pratchett has a very famous passage about the advantage about this. My personal clothing philosophy is having fewer pieces of clothing that are of high quality than many pieces of clothing that are low in quality.Report
Lee,
I agree with this on general principle (particularly when traveling), but my expensive clothing tends to top out at ~$50, a good deal of which is materials.
I still look like a nerdy CEO in them…Report
I sometimes have the opposite problem, that garment that fits me perfectly, but is rather cheap-ass fabric and I know it won’t last. I have a few pair of jeans in that category.Report
F3: I am also perplexed about why so many guys think fashion is something to be scared of or they are proud “not to give a shit” about fashion. Something something fear of being seen as feminine for liking clothes something.Report
Also socio-economics-cultural issues.Report
I don’t give a shit about fashion because it’s a stupid, arbitrary game and a perfect example of conspicuous consumption. And not worrying about it frees up time for more important things, like baseball.Report
So we can all wear burlap and look frumpy?
Does your wife own a piece of clothing that you think she looks breathtakingly beautiful in? Perhaps a nice summer dress?
Congratulations, you care about aesthetics.Report
But not fashion, unless
1. I think she looked great in it a few years ago but old-fashioned today, and
2. I have no idea how she looks until I know where the dress comes from and how much it costs.Report
Consider that in Medieval times unless you were of the nobility you had perhaps 2 tunics. in the 17th century in order to move more cotton from India, the East India Company created the idea of fashion, and changing fashion to move more merchandise. So from day 1 fashion was a scheme to get (originally the upper classes) to spend more money, and has remained so till today. Today it has moved down the economic ladder and is re-inforced by the need to keep up with the xyz’s,Report
unless you were of the nobility you had perhaps 2 tunics.
Which is why they’re called that. A noble had 4 and could also afford to keep a mistress (which is why it’s called that.)Report
A pair of jeans, a denim shirt, a denim tie, and a denim sport coat. None of them distressed, merely worn.
Oh, and maybe a half billion pockets distributed among them. Like, even on the tie, a place to hold your lighter.
And, perhaps, a denim ball cap to top it off. Pull your ponytail through the hole in the back.
Sigh. I miss the 90’s.Report
a place to hold your lighter.
What is a…ligh-ter?
Moments in “look how fast things changed” from just today:
In an animated program my kids were watching, the animals were watching a CRT television, but our POV is from behind it, so the screen isn’t visible.
My 5-year-old asked, “Why are they watching a suitcase?” and I had to explain that televisions weren’t always thin and flat, and it wasn’t all that long ago.
Later, I had to explain to him what “encyclopedias” were.Report
“daddy…what does ‘dial up modem” mean?”
“why is that person standing in a big glass box talking some weird giant phone?”Report
“daddy…what does ‘dial up modem” mean?”
It means the internet is so slow you want to get out & push.Report
“daddy…what does ‘dial up modem” mean?”
It means they upgraded from their acoustic coupler. (Which, for all you kids, is when you used to dial the number manually with one of these,
and plug the handset into the modem so it could hear the beeps.)Report
Honestly, even I never had one of the “put the handset on the modem” modems. Although I do remember they existed back then.Report
Because fashion isn’t just about making yourself look nice. It’s about having to replace those $200 khakis with a different pair of $200 khakis in a year or two because you looked so hood kn them then, but now you look like a dweeb because some mad hatter in New York or Paris yelled “switch!”Report
Ha. Fashion is, like it or not, mostly about wearing clothes that fit You. If you can rock an out of style look — do it — try it flamboyantly, it’s rather fun.Report
some mad hatter in New York or Paris yelled “switch!”
They do tend to be mercurial.Report
Jeebus, @saul-degraw , does there always need to be some deep psychological reason for liking or caring about different things than you?
I don’t care about fashion in exactly the same way and for the same reason I don’t care about hockey, romance novels, or the Kardashians.
I just don’t. Some things interest me and others don’t. What the duck is so hard to understand about that?Report
If you do care about p0rn but not about romance novels, then yes, there is a deep psychological reason for it. Perhaps a more universal, and less personal reason, but that doesn’t make it less worth discussing.Report
Isn’t the preferred expression around here “what the fish?”Report
I think some of these comments are too harsh to Saul . Fashion can be defined as throwing away a perfectly good $200 pair of pants because charcoal black is now in and sapphire black is out, or vice-versa, but that’s only one component of fashion among some of its adherents. It also is about making yourself look nice. Taking advantage, to some extent, of the fact that you have to wear something and so you might as well wear something that reflects your interests or tastes.
F3 does sort of represent the more… distasteful aspects of it. The hyperacceleration of fashion trends. But I will confess that I do kind of like the fact that people in the thirties have one aesthetic and the seventies another (and F1, comparing the 90’s to the 80’s). That’s due, of course, to fashion.Report
Fashion is defined very much by who is talking about it.
Talk to Makeup Consultants/Costumers on stage… they define
fashion very differently. And they’re experts at making people look good
(which is boring) and making pretty people into ugly people (which is significantly less so).Report
Thanks Will.
@glyph @james-hanley
1. Who said I paid full retail?
2. There is a reason to spend more money on an item and that is quality over quantity. There are lots of companies like H&M, Zara, Forever 21, etc. that put out clothing at very low prices but the problem is that this stuff tends to fall apart very quickly. A friend of mine got an interview suit at H&M and it was bursting apart at the seems within months and I doubt he was playing contact sports in the suit.
http://www.amazon.com/Cheap-High-Cost-Discount-Culture/dp/0143117637
There is something to be said about looking for quality over quantity. So a few rather nice things that will last a long time and are classic over purchasing cheap stuff that will need to be replaced and thrown out very quickly.Report
@saul-degraw
Quality does matter, but a $200 pair of pants will have to last 10 times as long as a $20 pair of pants to be a worthwhile investment. And that is very, very, very very very rarely the case.
Now, if you prefer the $200 pair for whatever reason, go for it. But let’s not pretend it is strictly an economic decision.
Me? Most of my clothes come from the Gap or JCrew, with me skewing towards the former recently because of some weight loss that made them fit better and a slight turn towards dressing more casually at work. Most of my dress shirts I get from Brooks Brothers because they fit me really well and I like most of their styles.Report
Dude, I am with you on the ‘quality’ argument on many items, but khakis for anywhere near that price? No freaking way.
1.). They are light-colored, so they don’t last anyway due to staining. I once ruined a pair with a banana stain.
Let me repeat that – a BANANA can defeat khakis.
2.) The POINT of khakis is that they are neutral and unobtrusive, so they can be paired with many colors and textures. Spending that kind of dough on them is like spending all your money on the canvas, rather than the painting.
Tell you what- next time you buy one of those khakis, buy a $50 pair of Dockers-equivalents too (they won’t burn your skin, I promise). Wear them equally. I’ll eat my hat if the $200 pair lasts 4 times as long as the $50 pair.Report
Glyph,
I’m still pretty sure that the depreciation of khakis is a hell of a lot slower than that of new cars…Report
…throwing away a perfectly good $200 pair of pants…
For some reason, I cringe at this. Can we at least say “recycle a perfectly good pair of pants”? Or “donate to charity”? I have read that following the Denver Broncos’ uniform redesign in the 1990s, there was a sudden surge in sightings of the old jerseys in parts of Africa.Report
Michael,
that might have been “never been sold in America” clothing, fwiw.Report
Let me repeat that – a BANANA can defeat khakis.
You should have dropped a 16 ton weight on it.Report
I think we have a new version of rock/paper/scissors here.
Who wants to play banana/khakis/16-ton weight?Report
@glyph
Bananas can defeat many things. How many silent film comedians have been felled by the peel? How many men has Mae West made blush? I’ve done worse to clothing and had it survive.
The point is also the tailoring and fit of the pants. Nothing super tight but something that is well-fitted. The problem with Dockers and other cheap pants is that they are very ill-fitting and boxy as the article noted.
I am probably being too snooty with my follow up post and showing that I am basically a NY-SF coastal elitist. There is plenty of really expensive clothing that I find horrible looking and also lots of stuff that I find good looking but would be horrible on my short and stocky body frame. A nice pair of khakis like grown and sewn works well for me as opposed to something like this:
http://www.johnvarvatos.com/hendrix-slim-embroidered-pant/d/6396C11436
The person who could pull this off is very tall and very skinny. Possibly with zero body fat.
And there is stuff that does get to an absurd price point and I wonder who can afford it. I saw a pair of pants for 1800 dollars yesterday and it was clearly meant for a 20 something rock star type (Adonis basically). I imagine there are very few 22 year old rock star types who can afford 1800 dollar pants unless they are boy toys. But maybe I am wrong.
Dockers look good on practicality nobody.
I admit that my comment was snooty and I should have phrased it differently.Report
http://archivesf.com/collections/pants/products/carbon-grey-heavy-jersey-pants
These are extremely expensive pants. They look cool but not at that price point but the store was obviously able to sell them. You can get a very nice suit or two for the price of these pants and I do wonder about who bought them.Report
@michael-cain
A lot of old t-shirts do end up in Africa and other developing parts of the world as you mentioned including shirts that announce the wrong winner of a big championship like the World Series, old camp t-shirts, a t-shirt announcing you attended Debroah’s bat mitzvah in 1985, etc.
Interestingly this tends to kill local garment industries and might increase poverty.Report
Relevant:
Report
@will-truman
http://www.nudiejeans.com/recycled-rugs/Report
@saul-degraw
@will-truman
Oh, good. Taking your comments in combination, in a few years China can shoulder the blame for killing off African textile and clothing industries, rather than the US.
I have a friend working for a start-up that thinks they can make a combination of molten metal and plasma gasification of anything with carbohydrate or hydrocarbon chains and catalytic reforming of the resulting syngas into liquid fuels profitable if they don’t have to pay for the feedstock. They’re looking at opportunities where they can actually get people to pay them to take such waste — and other than the metal bits, clothing would be high-quality feedstock for their process — by undercutting landfill tipping fees.Report
Once again, while many Americans might like to imagine that there is some poor, underdressed African who wants our worn and tattered duds, the African used clothing market is very particular
So they stopped wearing Broncos gear in February.Report
There is nothing wrong with consistently being the best team in the AFL.Report
You’re right, they would totally kick ass in the Arena League.Report
There is nothing wrong with consistently being the best team in the AFL.
Ask Jim Kelly if he feels his career was complete.
That said, I have enjoyed the last two seasons, watching the man who is without doubt the greatest regular-season passing QB of all time do his thing. I just don’t expect a whole lot once the zebras shift into play-off mode. When the five-yard contact rule that’s interpreted to mean seven yards in the regular season becomes ten yards in the play-offs, precision route-running and passing goes out the window.Report
@will-truman
Sure it’s about looking good, but who gets to be the authority that determines khakis don’t look good? It’s still about meeting arbitrary standards determined by someone else.Report
@saul-degraw
I think you’re wrong to conflate fashion and quality. For quality and longevity, I’ll put mt Carhartts up against any pant you own and give you favorable odds. But the only people who’d call them stylish are some Nevada ranchers.Report
Markets!Report
@james-hanley
Apples and Oranges.
Of course clothing meant for workwear is going to rule over all else in terms of durability but in terms of comparing one suit to another. A suit from Belvest or a well-tailored suit is going to last longer than a suit from H&M. A well-made Bespoke Suit should last longer than a Belvest suit.
In terms of dress shoes, a pair of Allen Edmonds or Aldens do cost a good deal of money but will last for a long, long time and will almost certainly not go out of fashion. They will certainly much longer than a pair of Eccos.Report
@will-truman – Awesome.Report
Apples and Oranges.
Sorta my point, right?
And the question you haven’t addressed yet is how we know that your expensive pants make a fellow look good and Carhartt’s don’t, and why that’s not simply snobbery.Report
@will-truman
I’m perfectly fine with that answer. It makes it clear that what “looks good” is in fact subjective, whatever the mass thinks at the moment. Fashion is like pet rocks and mood rings, except nobody was ever sneered at for not having a mood ring.Report
Let us examine, for example, jeans penis. This is when you sit and your pants bulge upward at the crotch, giving the appearance of a massive erection. It happens because the pants have too much material in the waist and not enough around the hips; it’s what you get when you buy off-the-rack pants instead of having them tailored to fit.
And it’s an example of what fashion actually means. It’s not just “hey check out the brand names”, that’s display.Report
We prefer the term “pants boner”.Report
“Let us examine, for example, jeans penis.”
I would prefer not to.Report
Very good @bartlebyReport
“when you sit and your pants bulge upward at the crotch, giving the appearance of a massive erection.”
Pfft.
Yours only give the appearance?Report
W4 — that’s almost like a George Will column. Start with something that, judging by the writing, you don’t actually understand, free-associate for a bit, and come to a large and totally unsubstantiated conclusion.Report
You just described 99% of my comments.
But hey, at least they’re free!Report
Oh, and I just read the linked piece, and spot on.Report
Er, I mean Mike’s description is spot on. Not the piece.Report
Could you elaborate on what he doesn’t understand (about the right to be forgotten, I assume)?Report
He doesn’t seem to understand much of anything about it. “That means that if there is embarrassing stuff about you on the internet, you should be able to ask people to delete it” is as accurate as saying libel is “That means that if someone says some embarrassing stuff about you, you should be able to sue them.”Report
My understanding of the “right to be forgotten” was the ability to have yourself removed from aggregator sites, not to have your misdeeds hidden. So The Smoking Gun would, if you asked, have to remove the post it has with your mugshot, but you could not ask for the department that handled your arrest to pull it from their online archives.Report
Link w5 seems to be broken (since it’s a fragile states index, perhaps the brokenness is meta).Report
Thanks. Fixed.Report
EE2- Geez its not like anything bad could come from large geoengineering experiments. We might actually try some Geo-E in the future but, holy mackerel, we need a large dose of humility before we think we can easily or correctly tinker with nature. We’ve sporked up plenty of things just be introducing a new animals to eco-systems that couldn’t handle them.Report
greg,
oh, totally.
That BP disaster had a totally non-trivial chance of ending all life on earth.
Talk about cutting corners.Report
H1- My opinion of Wendell Cox is similar to your opinion of Richard Florida. He is basically an unreliable narrator on this because he has an ax to grind and his own agenda. How do you even determine who lives in the suburbs and who does not? A person that lives in Manhattan is obviously a city dweller but many cities outside the North East consists of suburban neighborhoods like Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, and Charlotte. Are they urban or suburban? Can a suburb beam urban by densification and changes in zoning to allow mixed used land use? How about the explosion in public transportation systems that occurred during this time period? Does that make something suburban or urban.
Wendell Cox is devotee to the cult of the car and the single family home suburb. He is not to be trusted on urban issues.Report
Unlike that guy on Slate, Matthew Yglesias?Report
Has Lee ever given a favorable opinion about MY?Report
Saul, actually I have given a favorable opinions of Yglesias. I agree with him on housing, density, and land use issues. I also agree with him that historical preservation is used for NIMBY purposes too often.Report
Yeah MY is on the side of the angels regarding housing policy. But hell, there isn’t really much intellectual oomph on the side of rent control/zoning absolutism/urban land use girdle belt regulation. The problem is that nearly every home owner in the country is, via naked self interest, on the side of the devils.Report
MY is often an idiot who can write columns with titles like “Different countries have different safety standards and that’s okay” when a factory collapses in Bangladesh and kills hundreds of people if not more.
He tosses around NIMBY to anyone who opposes any development for any reason. I might have to work on my SIMBY manifesto. Sometimes In My Back Yard.Report
What was especially erronious in MY’s comment on Bangladesh was that Bangladesh had safety standards that the collapsed factory didn’t adhere to but the Bangladesh Government hadn’t enforced them for a variety of reasons (some typical, some nefarious). That said I reject entirely the idea that you can just dismiss his entire position based on one badly put together comment on an unrelated subject.
You should definitly write a SIMBY manifesto, that might promote some good discussions.Report
Regarding Housing: It would make sense in the DC metro area. Everyone flocks to the center of the empire to feed off of the largesse.
Tatoo Removal: Guess after a few years and the skin wrinkles and the ink fades, that tat is looking less and less like a wise decision. 🙂
Glamour: “adopt a viewpoint that downplays the difficulties of your journey and highlights its pleasures. Expect the plane delays and enjoy the view. Focus on the beauty of Venice and ignore the stink.” Best line of the article, and true.
Mexican good gals with guns: When the law won’t help, screw the law, and help yourself. Kudos to them.Report
EE5: Broken record here… US nation-wide statistics on electricity generation are a waste of time. There are three power grids in the US, with minimal flows between them. Three very different generating profiles. Eg, in 2012, the Eastern got 65% of its power from coal and nuclear, Texas got 40% of its power from those sources, and the Western got 35%. Based on various decisions made at state and local levels, different trajectories for the future are also likely.Report
P1: I’ve long said that Rock’s Law — the cost of a fab on the leading edge of Moore’s Law doubles every 36 months — will be the limiting factor. We’ve already seen statements from some of the Far East foundry companies that they can’t afford the fab lines to go below 20 nm. A number of analysts have speculated Intel and Samsung are the only two private companies that will be able to afford 10 nm fabs, and only large governments will be able to afford the risk associated with 7 nm fabs. The risk is that you can’t keep the line busy enough to be profitable — Intel has been renting out capacity on its 14 nm fabs because the demand for their own parts is not enough to make keep those fabs busy.Report
[H2]: I want one.Report
Me too. I am always fascinated by these microhomes (BoingBoing features them a lot). Problem is, I can’t see having one until the kids are all gone – and even then, what if they want to come visit (spoiler: they won’t, I’m a terrible parent)?
I guess I could put them up in tents or something. Or, hell, get two of these things and design the second one to be mostly just sleeping space….it’s not like at $44,000 I’d be breaking the bank, compared to most other scenarios.Report
I’d be afraid of falling off that very high up couch-bed thingie. Otherwise, pretty cool.Report
I’ve never been a fan of sleeping lofts. Also circular stairways make me nervous. I am sure I can handle them now but I always wonder what would happen if I was living in the same space in my 70s and 80s.Report
Yeah, I was actually thinking buying two of these isn’t that much more than a down payment on a normally-sized home. Just keep one as the guest house. It’d be great if you could put it on a lot with a lot of trees. Little home tucked in the trees sounds about perfect.Report
I was thinking you’d need a second one just for your books, unless they are all on Kindle by now.Report
Ugh, I have books everywhere. R. bought me the Kindle, and I’m pretty sure that’s the primary reason.Report
There’s something wildly American about wanting to buy a small house and then thinking about getting another because you can afford it and want more space.Report
Have you ever been to Eastern Kentucky? it’s kinda like that.Report
Heh. I think the thing is, when you see these microhouses done right, they seem “correctly” priced (based on size and materials/finish). My house now is a fairly modest size (1500 sq. ft, for 5 people and two dogs) , and it doesn’t seem like it should be THAT much more expensive than these microhouses, but it is.
I look at those things and think “I could get by with that (or maybe two) and still be paying WAY less than I do!”
The other thing is, these articles are also a bit (unintentionally) deceptive, since I am paying not just for my house, but for the land that it sits on, and for the amenities nearby, something that is (rightly) not focused on in these microhouse articles.
Drop that $22,000 microhouse on a lot somewhere near me, and suddenly it’s a $122,000 microhouse, and the cost-benefit calculations get all out of whack again.
“Buy *that* thing for $122K? No way, it’s way too small!”
I think the “modularity” aspect is appealing also. I could start with one, add another if I have kids, sell one off once they are grown, etc. It’s a lot more complicated/expensive with fixed-location houses to alter the structure to fit your current needs, and moving’s a real headache.Report
What I mean by the mountains comparison is you buy a small home for you, another for your kin, and you keep the family together. It’s American, perhaps, but old world in America American.Report
@chris
I totally thought you meant double-wides.Report
F2- I knew this would happen. I have no doubt that many tattoo bearers are going to love their tattoos their entire lives but a decent pluarlity or even a slight majority are going to be filled with regret about their tattoos and piercings because they form barriers to a middle class or upper middle class lifestyle. The real big boom in tattoo removal is going to occur when people in their twenties and thirties know hit their thirities and forties in a decade or so. I wonder if there is also going to be a related boom in plastic surgery to reverse extreme piercings.Report
I looked over Jeffrey Sachs’ report on Deep Decarbonization that he delivered to the UN. It’s reinforced to me the impression that you can guage an environmentalists seriousness regarding AGW very well by seeing how open they are to nuclear power. I mean Sach’s isn’t a fan of nukes but even he had to reccomend nuclear power generation of around 30% for the US and that was with him assuming that carbon capture was remotely economically feasable (it currently isn’t- at all).Report
Per my comment above, I’m always surprised — in a bad way — when experts ignore how the US/Canada power grid is structured. The Eastern and Western Interconnects will almost certainly take different roads to lower carbon. The Western has enormous undeveloped renewable resources, fairly obvious transmission strategies, and population patterns that lend themselves more to electrified transportation and building efficiencies. The Eastern, not so much on any of those fronts (lumping the Quebec Interconnect in helps with renewables, of course). The Western Interconnect is rapidly committing itself, by design or otherwise, to a plan that is both lower carbon and nearly nuke-free. And based on nuts-and-bolts sorts of studies done at the national labs and elsewhere, a pretty good chance of pulling it off.Report
That is a good point Michael, also one might consider that the eastern interconnect (with the borderline exception of the southeastern US) is mainly located in geography that is highly amenable to the use of nuclear power. The Northeast and Midwest have large supplies of cool fresh water which is the one thing current nuclear plants like to have (in order to avoid the ecological problematic problems of overheating the lakes and rivers they use) and are geologically very stable. That’s prime nuclear power location. On the other hand it wouldn’t surprise me at all if renewables can be developer much more easily in the windy, clear, vertical* and sunny west supplanting some need for nonrenewable nuclear base load.
*Though my understanding is that hydropower in the west is mostly at full utilization without serious ecological diminishing returns.Report
What I don’t see, though, is how to manage national policy that allows both to go forward reasonably. For example, the market-oriented re-regulation that occurred in the 1990s assumed dispatchable power — that is, that all generators could effectively guarantee their output at any given time. Renewables are all intermittent on some time scale, and are at a significant disadvantage under those rules. Experience in Europe and the US both suggest that you can make renewable power quite a bit less expensive if you have a different set of dispatching rules. Interstate commerce is involved so the rules need to be set higher than a state; a single set of national rules don’t make sense unless everyone is going to use the same sources; the ISOs and Interconnects where setting rules is appropriate are management not policy bodies. Even there you have powerful embedded interests: a big company heavily into coal-fired generation is going to fight tooth and nail to avoid having to spend money to accommodate the peculiarities of wind and solar.Report
Absolutely. I’ve read articles that suggest that mass implementation of electrical vehicles could offer a solution in that when they’re not being driven and are plugged into the network the thousands of batteries they represent could smooth out the intermittent power flow of renewable power but A) vehicles are parked most consistently during non-peak demand times, B) ya gotta get to a mass electrical fleet which is no small matter and C) everything, just everything, is set up with base load on demand expectations and all the vested interests like it that way.Report
@kazzy
Re: Quality.
Generally yes.
I had a pair of Frye boots that I got when I was 18 and they lasted until I was 32. I still have a leather jacket that I’ve owned since I was 15 and it looks good. Another pair of boots is 6 years old and is still in top shape. Plus some shirts, etc.Report
The ~15 dollar slacks I bought for high school still fit and are mostly still in good shape. Same with the blouses.Report
will a $1200 pair of st crispins last 3x to 4x as long as a pair of allen edmonds with the same use? will they even see the same use?Report
Probably the same use or longer. They are not exactly my style nor ar Allen Edmonds usually.
I like Alden’s but have yet to buy a pair. The most I’ve paid for a pair of shoes was 300 something down from 620 and those were worth it and possibly the coolest pair of shoes I will ever own.
http://www.dmarge.com/2013/01/paul-smith-chuck-burnished-leather-shoes.html
There are some shoes by guidi I love that are in the St. Cirspin’s range but I doubt being able to afford them anytime soon (if ever) unless a random event lands me in the category of having hundreds of millions of dollars or more. I don’t know of any chances to inherit a fortune by spending a night in a haunted castle though.Report
How ’bout that LeBron thing? (I find it impossible to believe that The Decision was now 4 years ago.)Report
M4 – Perhaps it’s just personal bias (I’ve been clean for two seaons), but I do think football as a whole is due for an eventual fall. There’s a growing awareness of the damage the sport does to atheletes. I think society will eventually find subjecting uncompensated high school and college kids to these types injuries unacceptable.
At best, the game will be significantly altered from how it is played today.Report
Something similar happened in the early 20th century. College football was a very big thing back than and it was a rather lethal sports with lots of injuries. There were calls to ban or change the rules to make football safer. The later happened.Report
College football is very big now with the same debates plus debates about whether players should be paid.Report
On S1, this is why I rather like machine learning, since you kinda know if you got your stats right when your program actually works. Like, either your classifications are doing a good job and folks are happy or the opposite.
I think the difference is this: in ML you don’t exactly “publish.” Instead you “release.” And when you release you get more and more and more data to test your conclusion.Report
W2 – I used to go on business trips to Nigeria. I invested in a nice camera and fancy myself a photographer. After getting them developed, I would show them off to people. After a few trips, when I told people I was going again, they would say “Oh, I bet you can’t wait.”
I was initially confused, but eventually I figured out it was the pictures. Since I was showing off the nice pictures, they assumed that the pictures were representative of the things I saw there instead of exceptions to what was mostly just depressing. Taking pictures of the extreme poverty I saw felt some kind of pornographic to me.Report
Love your nickname, by the way.
You’re lucky if you haven’t had someone’s daughter pressed into your arms, with the father saying “marry her, when she comes of age.”Report
Kim, thanks I think?Report
Since you’ve got a section on fashion, I thought I’d share this article on fashion that would get you arrested for going topless.Report