Linky Friday #45
Energy:
[E1] The Denver Post on solar and wind. I will remain skeptical of such things until they actually start to compete with other energy sources on a similar level of subsidy, but I do remain hopeful.
[E2] Reservations contain almost a third of coal reserves west of the Mississippi, and some tribespeople are not pleased about the War on Coal. Government policy aside, the gas boom is taking its toll on Coal Country.
Hysteria:
[H1] Hold on tight, we may be about to undergo a Sriracha shortage.
[H2] The story of the octopus that almost ate Seattle is interesting on a number of levels.
[H3] How a non-consensual rat/duck tryst created a flesh-eating platypus that terrorized Australia.
[H4] A lot of smartypantses have been pointing out that there was no mass panic over the War of the Worlds broadcast. A world in which that did occur is more interesting than a world in which that did not occur, so I choose to ignore them.
Culture:
[C1] Are our public universities going private?
[C2] From Jonathan McLeod: Flinder Boyd travels across the country with TJ Webster, a street-baller who is looking for one chance to make it big.
[C3] From Vikram Bath: “[W]hen social and economic conditions were difficult, older, heavier, taller Playboy Playmates of the Year with larger waists, smaller eyes, larger waist-to-hip ratios, smaller bust-to-waist ratios, and smaller body mass index values were selected.”
[C4] Is this the beginning of the end of TV’s golden era? The patterns are potentially forming for a rut. Even so, I’d argue that recent success has been such while a rut is possible, the nature of the medium has changed outside of specific genre. Creativity is a part of it, but so is formatting. The most substantial changes are that TV isn’t so geared towards episode-friendly syndication anymore, and shows no longer require nearly such broad appeal. Those are fundamental changes, and it’s unlikely they are going away. (link via Christopher Carr)
[C5] Shockingly, receiving oral sex on an airplane will hurt your reputation.
Government:
[G1] Young entrepreneurs, meet the tax-collectors. (Kids told they have to explain why they don’t owe $200 on $14 they made at a craft sale.)
[G2] The return of the flophouse!
[G3] “The government overreach implicated in banning a harmless product because its testing regimen isn’t good enough to distinguish yogurt from mind-altering substances is apparently lost on the people who make decisions about such things.”
[G4] The Dutch welfare state is getting some increased scrutiny. The King says it’s over.
[G5] Esquire talks about our political center.
[G6] Deer-crossing and children-at-play signs don’t work. Sensible state that it is, Minnesota is getting rid of them.
Health Care:
[HC1] Darius Tahir argues that we should lift doctor-licensing restrictions. While opposition to this is always chalked up as financial – and often is – I’ve heard pushback on this even from doctors who genuinely want the shortage alleviated. There are other factors at play, both bad (professional arrogance) and good (concern over care).
[HC2] If you’re a liberal upset at your insurance premiums rising under PPACA, fortunately you have dKos contributors to tell you how stupid and ungrateful you are.
[HC3] Right now, all of the talk is about how PPACA will affect individual coverage. The other side of the coin is that it will affect group coverage, as well.
Work:
[W1] That different country called the past: Rebecca Rosen unearthed the internal memo that allowed IBM’s female employees to get married.
[W2] The Chinese like the American optimism of 2 Broke Girls think the French lazy are lazy. Some of the French are actually anxious to maybe work more.
[W3] According to the Atlanta Fed President, we have too much job stability.
[W4] Douglas Rothschild writes about the Juggalo Ethos and how it’s our future. This touches on some of my greatest fears with regard to inequality and what it will mean for our culture.
E1: How do we define “similar level of subsidy”? That’s a serious question, not snark. What’s a liability cap on a nuclear reactor worth? The loan guarantee on the new reactors being built in Georgia? Sub-market lease rates for coal on federal land? 50+ years of rate-of-return regulation on vertically-integrated monopoly electric utilities?Report
Not to mention our various military adventures in the Persian Gulf region.
Seriously, somehow all that, plus the various tax breaks and whatnot that oil and gas companies get is discounted when compared to tax credits and subsidies for wind and solar?Report
My wife inherited a (very!) fractional royalty interest in some gas and oil producing properties in SW Kansas. So for most of our married life we’ve been getting small checks in the mail from various drilling and production companies. It’s not a lot of money, no more than two or three thousand a year at best, but it’s totally free cash that basically falls out of the sky for us.
When I report it on our taxes I can immediately deduct 15% off the top for “depletion” allowance, I guess to account for the diminishing value of our “investment”.
I’m not an idiot, so I take the deduction, but there’s absolutely no justification for it. Even putting aside the particular circumstance of this being an inheritance, even if we had actually put money down to purchase those rights, the fact that they’re finite would have been incorporated into the price from the getgo.Report
My dad actually invested in a beaver farm back in the 70s as a tax shelter. We used to get pictures of his beavers and reports on their health status.Report
Yes, they were much more common in the 70’s.
Tax shelters, I mean.Report
Rod:
Isn’t “depletion” just a form of depreciation? That is, if you pay $1,000,000 for a plot of land that produces $150,000 worth of oil (net of expenses) per year for ten years, then you’re not making $150,000 in profit each year. You’re making $50,000, because you’re using up 10% of your $1,000,000 investment.
*Assuming for the sake of simplicity that the land is worthess once the oil is drained.Report
@kolohe – yes, in the 70’s they flourished, a veritable tangled thicket of productivity, well-protected from the ravening shears of The State.
Tax shelters, I mean.Report
Well at least beavers are a renewable resource.Report
Where can I get more info on beaver husbandry?
Don’t tell my wife I am asking this question.Report
@brandon-berg , it’s a similar concept but not, I think, identical. I have a long drive today (when don’t I? ) so perhaps I can offer a better answer after some rumination. My initial thought is that an oil lease is more akin to an investment instrument such as a MBS that is projected to produce a particular stream of income over a set time frame. Compare that to a tangible capital asset that is consumed in use, like the truck I’m sitting in.
It has features of both but isn’t wholly like either. I suppose that’s why it has a distinct terminology.Report
Growth industry!!Report
Stranger than fiction…
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19840227&id=a4FQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=OBIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1835,5537618Report
@glyph
The best-known textbook is this
@Roger
Dam!Report
@roger – that newspaper link is great, the ads in particular (“Hair-Loc”, to keep your toupee in place).
Though it looks like investors took a bath on those beavers.
Oh well, my wife would probably pelt me if I brought a bunch home anyway.Report
@roger
Beavers were more common in the 1970s based on photos I’ve seen.
I couldn’t resist. I just couldn’t. It is sophomoric and adolescent but…..Report
I blame global warmingReport
Come on, Schilling, surely you know that book was just about shooting beaver?Report
There are a number of ways of looking at it – and debating how we should look at it – that are better, in my view, than simply saying “Everybody gets subsidies so it doesn’t matter!” or “It’s really impossible to judge.” (Though both of these are better than trying to shift the argument to total amounts rather than per-kwh amounts). But it all matters. Even if we are totally cool spending money on clean energy subsidies (my comment actually wasn’t meant to be critical of them, actually), it’s going to be really hard to make worldwide change when there are cheaper – albeit dirtier or potentially more dangerous – alternatives available. Regardless of whether or not I think it should happen, I just don’t think it will. Making the transition has to be solved by technological advance. Which is happening, but hasn’t happened yet to the degree that I can comfortably look and say “Renewables are indeed the future.”Report
“…it’s going to be really hard to make worldwide change when there are cheaper – albeit dirtier or potentially more dangerous – alternatives available.”
But isn’t the question whether or not it is actually cheaper? Sure, a gas-powered car is cheaper than an electric one if we simply look at sticker prices and cost of ownership and fueling. But given that the US has spent how many billions or trillions of dollars fighting wars at least partly in service of protecting our overseas oil interests, can we necessarily say that the gas car is the cheaper option?Report
Probably shouldn’t use phrasing that implies that clean energy gets more subsidies than other sources.
And if we are going to wait for technological advances to guarantee the switch to clean energy sources, I’ve got some future beachfront property in Sacramento I’d like to sell you.Report
DaveNYC, it terms of per-KWH energy, they do get more subsidy as far as I know, though I know you can get otherwise if you count things like “foreign wars.”
Kazzy, it’s not a question of what’s good policy. It’s a question of what policy countries are ultimately going to go with.
Or put another way, there is a reason that the estimates for how much of our energy will come from renewables 25 years down the road are still somewhat meager… stuff’s still expensive. It needs to get cheaper. Helping people in Colorado afford these things may be good policy, but it still papers over the additional cost which policy-makers and consumers won’t, over the long run, in my opinion, ignore.Report
But Will, ALL energy is expensive. If we didn’t spend trillions on war and instead spent it on wind or solar with zero effect on the budget, would we still see them as expensive?
I get what the likely reality is. But we shouldn’t pretend that wind/solar are expensive and gas is cheap. That isn’t supported by a macro view of the costs involved in each. The former might be MORE expensive, but all of it is expensive. And at least wind/solar don’t cost thousands of lives a year.Report
Kazzy, my comments on this post are dedicated solely to the predicted realities rather than what would be best or most right. On the question of right my views are more complicated. I support carbon taxes, to better reflect externalities, though am wary of some other approaches.Report
Solar & Wind just CAN NOT provide enough power in any reasonable time frame.
If it is a questions of where to best spend subsidies on energy to avoid fossil fuels, we should be spending it on nuclear.Report
MRS,
supplyside thinking is very narrowminded.
(perhaps necessary in a global economy, though).Report
Taking a different tack than Kazzy, are the other technologies actually cheaper, or do they just have more negative externalities that aren’t being properly priced in the market?Report
James,
How much of a pricetag do you put on genocide?
… that’s 20 years away (and may not occur because of regime change, to be fair)?
… and half a world away?
Or on what godforsaken portion of the Ogallala disaster is because of climate change??
I don’t know. I’d feel reasonably comfortable pricing in “current deaths” because of smog/asthma/etc. The future deaths are a LOT more troubling… and somewhat unpredictable.
Say… if we take climate change as a given, and us not stopping it effectively…?
Then all we’ve got is the time-value of lives. Hmm… I think that actually simplifies things greatly. Say climate change is going to cost us 1 billion people…(eventually. maybe 100 years from now) Yeah, I’d say that’s us not pricing in negative externalitiesReport
@michael-cain
If this is to be believed, the cost of this solar project can never be recouped.
I thought most nuclear reactors actually get paid off, and that is even with the cost of the regulatory burden that is considerably more than what solar or wind enjoy.Report
MRS,
I’m going to call bullshit here. Solar prices have been cratering,
and while there are FAR BETTER places to send money– well,
you aren’t mentioning them.
Every dime we sink into solar is another dime that pulls towards
better technology (yes, I’d rather sink billions into research. I’m
practical like that).Report
Big difference between the price of PV for the home & PV at an industrial scale.
You can call BS all you want, the guy cites his sources.Report
MRS,
are you saying that the home price is actually lower?
(haven’t looked at commercial, myself).
I’m making a fairly straightforward argument that
investments now have a not entirely linear payoff later,
because this is not a stable, “completed” technology.
(and we all hate the hippies who hate nuclear energy).Report
http://www.midwestenergynews.com/2013/10/28/qa-karl-rabago-grandfather-of-the-value-of-solar-tariff/
Karl Rabago’s Q&A on solar is rather interesting.
Also…
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/2013/07/10/the-global-outlook-for-renewable-power-in-one-graph/
There’s this.Report
MRS,
I don’t doubt it. At this point in time, I regard the truly industrial-sized solar plants as applied research, and government funding of same is no different than the funding that went on (or is ongoing) for fission, fusion, clean coal, and a number of other energy technologies. Some big applied research projects fail (often just as a matter of scale), but you don’t know until you try.
With respect to subsidies for reactors, I was thinking about the federal government cap on liability that the owners could face in the event of a serious accident (in effect, the government acts as an insurer). Although, IIRC, the per-kWh tax credit on new nuclear and on wind are of the same order of magnitude (1.8 to 2.0 cents per kWh or thereabouts).Report
W4: It’s true: America has developed a permanent class dedicated to the destruction of our traditional values of family, vocation, religion, and community. If this country is to have any hope for survival, they must be stopped. They are called bankers.Report
On the topic of PPACA, I’m interested in making some wagers. I keep hearing from leftists that the US has low life expectancy because of our health care system. This was explicitly and loudly pushed as an argument for passing Obamacare.
Is anyone hear willing to put some money behind that claim? What I have in mind is a bet that the life expectancy gap between the US and the fifteen countries with the best health care systems (as judged by my counterparty) will not narrow by more than six months in the next three years, although I’m very flexible as far as the specific terms go.
I’m willing to accept bets from multiple counterparties.Report
Brandon,
Let’s say we were to end multiple known carcinogenic inputs.
Benzene if you want to be tricksy, or smoking (and smoked meat) if you want something that’s got less corporate approval to poison us.
I’d expect you’d see the improvement in life expectancy over a 20 year timespan. Because affects are cumulative, and you’d have a lot of cancers still cropping up.
PPACA, by any measure, is likely to have less affect than ending blatantly evil stuff.
Your timespan is flawed. I’d be willing to take a bet on the US life expectancy, but I want to choose the timescale. (Yes, I’d be quite willing to let you renegotiate the narrowing).Report
With carcinogens, yes, the improvements would take decades to materialize fully. With changes to the health care system, not so much. People don’t generally die because of the health care they did or didn’t get thirty years ago, unless it’s something like an HPV vaccination.Report
Brandon,
Okay, let’s fine tune the bet a bit.
5 years. Statistically Significant Decrease in Hospital Acquired Infections?Report
I’d be fine with five years for overall life expectancy, but I have no strong beliefs regarding what’s going to happen with hospital-acquired infections. The reason I want to bet on life expectancy is that the left has been making ridiculous claims about the reasons for the life expectancy gap between the US and western Europe that I’m almost certain are not true.Report
If memory serves, when you adjust for violence and accidents, the US is pretty run of the mill now. I just saw a chart on life expectancy rates with cancer and the US was pretty much at the top, though this was not true for blacks.
My expectation is that we are on the path toward universal care run by a massive bureaucracy of enlightened Mandarins. This will eliminate the last bastion of market dynamics and lead to worse service but similar outcomes. Over time, the potential creativeness of this industry will stagnate and future generations will miss out on the longer term rewards of creative destruction and constructive competition.
On a positive note, I predict an emerging market in international care. The upper middle class and above will discover the best care at the lowest price will come via medical tourism with emergency care and a GP at home. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how this could work. This will keep market based innovation alive and will partially offset the socializing of medical care. Thus we will see a bifurcation in the market, with good coverage at a reasonable price for the upper half of the income groups, and socialized medicine for all.
Over time, our King (or Queen) will declare the welfare state was a failure, and we will see something more viable emerge out of its ashes. Societies evolve.Report
*snort* you haven’t met the old enlightened Mandarins have you?Report
Actually my link above on the beavers has an add for the Mandarin restaurant and bar where all the Mandarins, new and old meet. The modern equivalent of the old Dutch coffee shops of the 17th century. These links are all interconnected.Report
The Flesh Eating Platypi. My new favorite band.Report
The link to item G3 should be this I believe.
It’s easy to say ‘you need a better testing regimen’, it’s much harder to actually do one.
The fact that members of an all-volunteer military are prohibited from using marijuana & cannabinoid products and their derivative, and are frequently screened for their use is really the least objectionable thing about the war on some drugs.
imo, it’s not that objectionable at all – military service is a choice, and has all sorts of getting-up-in-your-grill aspects, some purposeful, some pointless. But everyone knows that going in.Report
I’m not surprised it’s the Atlanta Fed complaining about that.Report
That author from Forbes is being kinda a dick.
When less than half of all Americans have $1000
in the bank, it seems rather disingenuous to say
that the older workers have “had their entire lives”
to save for healthcare.
If Obamacare’s health exchanges are getting
below COBRA prices, we’re doing a good thing.
(see the article from the Atlanta Fed).Report
The link for C4 is a bit of a tease.Report
Also, since you go to read the link you have and not the one you wish you had, I have to say that that Grantland piece seems a bit premature at best.
First, it explicitly acknowledges Game of Thrones, a current, wildly-popular, high-quality, high-critical-rep show that is seen as a real game-changer for what types of shows can be made.
Second, Breaking Bad‘s finale aired all of FORTY DAYS AGO.
That’s IT! It’s OVER, people! I can’t live in this world of diminishing returns anymore! Tell my mother I loved her!
Is there an internet race to see who can call “first!” on the “end of an era”?
Or is it really the sort of thing that only becomes apparent in hindsight?Report
Yes, there is. See “The end of the PC” commentary.Report
Also, when have TV networks ever not been obsessed with spinoffs of successful properties?Report
There was an HTML error in that combined C4 and C5. It’s fixed.Report
W4-I’m concerned about inequality but I’m pretty sure that the moral panic over juggalo ethics is pretty much only moral panic. Even in times of low inequality and affluence, there have always been a decent number of people that can not or will not conform to how society thinks people should behave. Sometimes this is for the good. A lot of artists, actors, and other creative people can’t conform to societal expectations and the result is art and entertainment. Sometimes the inability to conform is a bad thing, lots of criminals are in the can’t or won’t conform to societal expectations either. Other times, the inability to conform is neither a positive or negative for society.
Some people are just proudly dysfunctional and nearly every human society has to dealt with such people in one way or another.Report
C1: I’m not surprised for a variety of reasons. One is the continued conservative attack over academic research and freedom. Potentially not true in states like California and Oregon but often true on a Federal level and in purple to red states. Conservatives seem to love red-meat about the wild and outrageous things that academics do plus their belief that campuses are indoctrinating people in Marxist rhetoric even in supply-side management programs. Plus states have been cutting educational budgets for universities and educated for decades now so it seems like a win-win.
I don’t think this is good though. I’m a firm believer in public universities that can give excellent educations at reduced costs. I also think it is a sign of maturity and stability if a government can allow a state university to exist with complete academic freedom and not being moral panicky about research done at said institution. Or shutting down research because the coal industry or whoever donates does not like it but I’m quaint.
G5: Again I’m not really surprised. Center and moderate like independent are words that sound good to most people and most people do not spend vast amount of times thinking about politics and/or their ideology. We are kind of weird for participating on this site. Center and moderate are very tasteful words that show one is not going to be filled with rage over politics. They imply a certain amount of maturity and calm.
W4: I’m split between you and Lee on this issue. Lee is right that this could seem a bit like a moral panic and there have always been people who refuse to conform to middle-class mores for a variety of reasons. We’ve discussed this on the community before about blue-collar and white-collar people viewing their jobs and life-work balance in very different ways But I have enough middle-class/urban norms that I look at juggalos and see people being willfully dysfunctional. Not necessarily their fault based on what the article states, they are the victims of a rapidly changing world but on other internet communities I’ve interacted with people from more rural and working-class backgrounds and we might as well be from different planets. Our ideas of art were very different. I think most people know mine on this community. Their idea was stuff like photographs of “girls and guns” or HR Geiger type stuff. Again very different worlds.Report
“Negro bands are not art”
… you know who I’m quoting, right?Report
G5 – Could you understand the article? I couldn’t. They wouldn’t say how they defined the Center. It doesn’t make much sense to describe a group without identifying its main characteristics; otherwise, you’re just describing some dudes you talked to.Report
With regard to C1, one notable thing to me is that there is virtually no correlation between the universities mentioned, and state politics. I could actually understand it in both ways: Red states for the reasons you describe. Or blue states for another set of reasons (the set of reasons being why red states tend – though not uniformly – to have more accessible flagship colleges). But it seems to mostly be a matter of highly-regarded schools – whether in red states or blue – kind of realizing that the state needs them more than they need the state.Report
That is undoubtably true but if I were a state legislature member in Oregon or one of these other states, I would make this a cri de ceuor and say no.
I find it shocking that legislatures are okay with this happening.Report
It may not exactly be for the same reasons, but we both have the same view of the phenomenon. If I were a legislator, I’d be doing what I can to rein these schools in.Report
ND, the other thing we don’t know is how much of juggalo culture is permanent way of life for people, something that they do twenty-four/seven. It could just be like people who do cosplay or historical reenactments, something they do in their spare time. Other times they are normal people with normal jobs and following the dictates of American society. There are more than a few people that are normal most of the time, especially at work, but go kind of weird in their free time.
Your also not the first intellectual leftist or rightist with tastes leaning towards high culture that is shocked to find out that your working class allies like to spend their leisure time differently.Report
I will contribute to the fund to send NewDealer on an OT investigative assignment to the next Gathering of the Juggalos; I’m thinking the result could be New New Journalism, an Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test for our times.
I envision a weeklong series of in-depth posts (or perhaps a number of frantic distress calls, increasing in frequency and intensity.)Report
Distress calls. Absolutely distress calls.
I haven’t seen a Blue Bottle Coffee or issue of the New Yorker in 36 hours!!! Stat! Please help!!!!Report
12:27 PM: Natives growing restless. Some dude calling himself “Jack Whack” threw my iPod into the Port-A-Potty after catching a glimpse of my “Belle & Sebastian Epic Megamix”. And I worked on that playlist for, like, a week!
4:13 PM: Atmosphere here getting ugly, not sure how much longer I can stay. Crowd’s mood darkened noticeably after I made the incontrovertible observation that Faygo tastes like warm platypus urine.
Hold on – I think I hear something outside the teReport
I’m pretty sure that Belle & Sebastian is going to lead to more make-out sessions than Insane Clown Posse.
Now that you mention it, a Belle & Sebastian epic megamix sounds like a good idea.
Potential songs: Wrapped Up in Books, Dog on Wheels, Piazaa New York Catcher, Lazy Line Painter Jane, I’m Waking Up to Us, Expectations, Like Dylan in the Movies, Family Tree, etc.Report
I’m pretty sure that Belle & Sebastian is going to lead to more make-out sessions than Insane Clown Posse.
You can see the extended pinky from here.Report
Glyph, I see high comedy and low drama.Report
Lee, I think you are defining juggalo culture more literally and narrowly than the article does (or at least how I read the article). There are literal juggalos, of course, but I think the important part is what they are emblematic of. Most of which won’t involve the makeup or ICP. Rather, it’s emblematic of young people checking out of society and its norms. Disregarding social and societal acceptability.
A guy a knew a long time ago who was young, smart, and although not ambitious had a whole lot of potential. I have reconnected with him, sort of, on Facebook (he’s not friended, but he’s friend-of-friended-friends) and the degree of bitterness that has consumed him is depressing. It’s not just that he has lost faith in the ability to work and get ahead, but he has lost the incentive to act the way intelligent people act, communicate the way (mainstream) intelligent people communicate. He’s not a juggalo, but what he’s become represents the same rejection of the cultural and social norms a functional society depends on.
If I met him today, it wouldn’t even occur to me that he is friendship material.
Of the various reasons why I might be inspired to care about inequality as inequality (and apart from poverty), this represents a very significant one.Report
Plus states have been cutting educational budgets for universities and educated for decades now so it seems like a win-win.
Citation needed.Report
Found one. As I expected, it shows that inflation-adjusted per-capita state and local spending on higher education has more than doubled since 1980. In general, you should avoid making up your own facts.Report
Oh, and I’m as devoted to Vigo the Destroyer as the next guy, but what inspired the picture choice? I didn’t notice any links that related to the Master.Report
I had intended to take the Ghostbusters 2 logo (Linky Friday took a hiatus, but then came back – it was between Ghostbusters or Arrested Development), but when looking for it I stumbled across the Vigo pic and liked it.Report
So, when you looked at the picture of Vigo, you felt a need to obey its will? Did you hear his voice when it happened?Report
I have been told to comment no further.Report
From W4: “The annual “Gathering of the Juggalos,” which since 2007 has been held in Cave-in-Rock, Illinois, attracts tens of thousands of fans to an annual music festival that includes concerts as well as events ranging from bare-knuckle boxing to horrorcore karaoke. And, of course, plenty of alcohol- and drug-fuelled fighting, fornicating, and frolicking.”
I’m curious what the response would be to a similar gathering of predominantly black fans of the rap equivalent of ICP (if such a thing exists).Report