Remembering Economics

Dr. Peter Peacock was my Economics Professor in Grad School and while that name seems fitting for the classes he taught, I still remember a couple of his lessons...

The first lesson he taught me was that there was no such concept as a FREE LUNCH...  

Now that I think about it, Dr. Peacock was a conservative and was really taking a political stand in the classroom...  he was opposed to people using the word FREE because the word was misleading...   while the student got a free lunch, someone else had to pay for it, and more than likely it was the taxpayer through the collection of taxes...  but, the Democrats were trying to convince everyone that the lunch was FREE...

At the time, my parents were Democrats as I was but for some reason, I never saw the lesson as a political statement...  and, looking back, I am glad I didn't.

The second lesson was a little more difficult for me to swallow (excuse the pun) but it dealt with LAST CALL at a bar...  

It was Dr. Peacock's contention that when LAST CALL was announced and everyone purchased their last beer of the evening, the beer did not really have to be consumed.

My parents taught me that if you ordered food, you ate all you ordered... so that same logic should apply to drinking.

Therefore, you ordered it you drink it.

"No!" stated Dr. Peacock.  "You don't need to drink it.  You paid the money for it whether you drink it or not is up to you.  If you don't drink it, you don't save any money."

At first, it was a little difficult, going against my parent's philosophy but the more I thought about it, the more I understood that Dr. Peacock was correct in his assessment...

Maybe that is why he was a Dr. and I was a student.

Why Should I Care?

This is going to sound either sarcastic or egotistical or perhaps both...  but, why should I care about all the starving people in the world today since they are not in my country?  OR...  why should I care about all the poverty in the world today, since I have all the money that I need to take care of my wife and me?

I mean for Christ's sake, I live in the world's greatest country and those who are hungry or live in poverty DON'T LIVE HERE...

AND...  if they did live here, I probably would not want to do anything to help them out, because it is not my place to help out the rest of the world...  even if I am a Christian...  besides, I cannot possibly help everyone....

What you are asking is like...  what if we asked all the wealthy people in America, the millionaires and billionaires to help out all those people in America who were not wealthy and living on minimum wage and on the verge of poverty...

What do you think all those wealthy Americans might say???

GO SCREW YOURSELF...

We are who we are because of who we are and we don't think it is our place to take care of the rest of the world...  however, we don't mind sending our military overseas to have strangers and foreigners fight their wars...  but, that is a different story because wars actually help strengthen our economy....

Helping poverty and hunger does not really help our economy...  it drains our economy...

Statistically, poverty and hunger will always be around...  it's just part of life...

You're Not My Friend

 

Eating Dog Meat

Medan, Indonesia – For civil servant Silas Sihombing, the reasons for eating dog meat could not be much simpler.

“Today I’m eating dog because I’m hungry,” Sihombing told Al Jazeera in between mouthfuls of grilled dog meat at Lau Dimbo Simalem restaurant in Medan, North Sumatra.

“And look, it’s making me sweat. Dog will do that, the meat makes you feel hot.”

Dog meat restaurants are found all over Medan, where the Indigenous Batak people are known for their taste for the protein.

About 7 percent of Indonesians are estimated to eat dog meat, according to Dog Meat Free Indonesia, a group that campaigns against the dog meat trade.

Although 87 percent of Indonesia’s 270 million people are Muslim and view dog products as haram, or forbidden, in the same way as pork, about 9 percent of the population is Christian.  READ MORE...

Wind Up

 

NASCAR: Electrified Stock Car Racing

Electric motorsport is a category of motor sport that consists of the racing of electric powered vehicles for competition, either in all-electric series, or in open-series against vehicles with different power trains. Very early in the history of automobiles, electric cars held several performance records over internal combustion engine cars, such as land speed records, but fell behind in performance during the first decade of the 20th century. 

With the renaissance of electric vehicles during the early 21st century, notable electric-only racing series have been developed, for both cars and motorcycles, including for example, the FIA Formula E Championship. 

In other racing events, electric vehicles are competing alongside combustion engine vehicles, for example in the Isle of Man TT and the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, and in some cases winning outright.  SOURCE: Wikipedia

NASCAR hasn't hidden its intention to electrify stock car racing in the coming years, but it may happen sooner than expected.

Documents uncovered by the Kickin' the Tires website reveal potential plans to launch an electric support series next year.

According to the report, NASCAR will demonstrate a prototype electric racing car during the Clash at the L.A. Coliseum pre-season event in February, then follow it up with a six-race series "aligned with Cup Series" weekends.

The cars will be modified Cup Series cars with fully electric, all-wheel-drive powertrains rated near 1,000 horsepower, compared to the 670 hp V8s used in the conventional vehicles.  READ MORE...

Purple Fish

 

Decarbonizing Fossil Fuels

FROM CANADA

Philip Cross: De-carbonize production not consumption of fossil fuels

Philip Cross - Friday



On Monday the federal government initiated a consultation on whether to use a cap-and-trade or a carbon tax to reduce emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector by 40 per cent by 2030 — eight years from now. The industry is being asked to slash emissions more than the 30 per cent national target by either paying more than the existing tax on carbon or by lowering its production, which hardly seems what the world needs as it faces a growing energy shortage.

The federal government’s singling-out the oil and gas sector for outsized emissions reductions may have a silver lining, however. There is growing recognition in the business sector, if not yet in government, that decarbonizing our fossil-fuel supplies is a cheaper and more efficient way to lower emissions than decarbonizing their consumption. The latter involves overhauling the trillions of dollars of capital stock invested in our existing “mines, oil and gas fields, thermal power stations, hydroelectric dams, pipeline networks, ports, refineries, iron and steel mills, aluminum smelters, fertilizer plants, railroads, multilane highways, airports, skyscraper-dominated downtowns, and extensive suburbia” in the words of environmental scientist Vaclav Smil.

Moreover, decarbonizing oil and gas will be necessary even in a net-zero future since some uses of fossil fuels cannot reasonably be expected to disappear (notably their widespread use as a raw material in manufacturing everything from clothing to plastics). This is why the International Energy Agency expects fossil fuel production to still be a substantial 24 million barrels a day in its net-zero scenario for 2050.

Lowering emissions from oil and gas production will be costly. Some reductions, such as eliminating methane, are relatively easy, which is why the government expects them to fall 75 per cent by 2030. Other reductions involving carbon capture and sequestration will require billions of dollars of investment to capture emissions and ship them by pipeline to be buried underground. More investment will also be needed if small modular nuclear reactors replace the natural gas currently being used to melt the bitumen of in situ oilsands operations.

The fact that decarbonizing fossil fuels rather than re-tooling our whole society to shift away from using fossil fuels would save trillions of dollars makes it attractive for governments to subsidize these efforts, either through direct grants or tax credits, as both the Alberta and federal governments proposed in their spring budgets.  READ MORE...

Ninja Bear

 

Sunday Morning

I drove down to my local convenience store to get me some cappuccino out of a machine but all the machines for that product were out of order and they have been out of order for over a month...  so, that tells me that a change is coming.

However,

While I was there, I noticed that the gasoline prices had dropped to $3.92 per gallon.  WHY?

President Biden has done nothing to bring prices down and the war in Ukraine is still going on...  so, what caused this reduction?

The last time I got gas it was $4.22 and that was about a week ago.

I had 3/4 of a tank left but I did not top off.

The intense heat and humidity have all but destroyed our summer garden this year.  I was able to have several meals of squash, zucchini, and bell peppers but I could have certainly eaten more.  Our biggest crop this year was the cucumbers which I suppose need lots of rain were so abundant that we gave several of them away to our neighbors...  assuming they liked cucumbers as much as we do.

I made some cucumber soup a few weeks ago that I froze and I got a container out last night to eat today.  I have cut up some pieces of ham in the container to see if that is a good combination or not.

Sunday is a day of calm.  No arguments...  no anger of any sort should take place on a Sunday.   It is a day for reflection and contemplation and maybe some planning...  retooling the mind to prepare for the coming week.

Being retired, it is sometimes easy to think that everyday is a Sunday and oftentimes I have missed Sunday because I was thinking it was just another day of the week.

I have been walking in the pool twice a day for 40 minutes each time as a way of building up my legs and back muscles after having back surgery almost 7 weeks ago...  but, today, since it is Sunday, I considering giving my body a break...  allowing it to simply be as it is without trying to make it something that it isn't up to yet.

The good thing about walking in the pool is that I can walk unaided which is a confidence builder for when I am out of the pool and limp when I walk.  I am hoping that over time, the limp will go away.

I have thought about meditating on Sundays but I am not there yet...  One has to have a state-of-mind before one tries meditation...  without that state-of-mind, it will not be successful.

Still...  it is something about which to think.

Who Do You Believe?

Unless I am mistaken, there are only a few reputable media news outlets:  CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX...  the first four have a liberal bias to their reporting while the last one has a conservative bias to its reporting.

However, I have watched all FIVE over the years and I can personally attest to the fact that there is different news being reported on each of these stations and as my brother likes to point out that he sent an email to Bret Baier while he was on the air that his reporting was misleading and incorrect and Baier did not alter his reporting.

So, according to my brother, this reporter and FOX were dissiminating incorrect information to the public.

I have no way of knowing if what my brother was telling the truth or not, but his comments bear out the fact that reporters do not always report the truth but their version of the truth or the version that their employers want them to present.

FOX covers the border crisis along our southern border but the other networks do not or if they report it at all, they give it minimal air time hoping that most of their viewers may have missed it.

Why would any media news outlet, withhold information from the public?

It does not matter if the news is slanted to one side or the other...  the fact that information is being withheld is not just censorship but a form of a lie...

A cheating spouse withholds that information from their spouse...  are they lying?

If we cannot believe our sources of information then how are we supposed to make intelligent choices?

Maybe that is exactly what is intended here...

Consider Hydrogen

A hydrogen vehicle is a vehicle that uses hydrogen fuel for motive power. Hydrogen vehicles include hydrogen-fueled space rockets, as well as ships and aircraft. Power is generated by converting the chemical energy of hydrogen to mechanical energy, either by reacting hydrogen with oxygen in a fuel cell to power electric motors or, less commonly, by burning hydrogen in an internal combustion engine.

As of 2021, there are two models of hydrogen cars publicly available in select markets: the Toyota Mirai (2014–), which is the world's first mass-produced dedicated fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV), and the Hyundai Nexo (2018–). There are also fuel cell buses. Hydrogen aircraft are not expected to carry many passengers long haul before the 2030s at the earliest.

As of 2019, 98% of hydrogen is produced by steam methane reforming, which emits carbon dioxide.  It can be produced by electrolysis of water, or by thermochemical or pyrolytic means using renewable feedstocks, but the processes are currently expensive.  Various technologies are being developed that aim to deliver costs low enough, and quantities great enough, to compete with hydrogen production using natural gas.

The benefits of hydrogen technology are long range on a single refuelling. The drawbacks of hydrogen use are high carbon emissions when hydrogen is produced from natural gas, capital cost burden, low energy content per unit volume at ambient conditions, production and compression of hydrogen, the investment required to build refuelling infrastructure around the world to dispense hydrogen, and transportation of hydrogen.  SOURCE:  Wikipedia

Believing is the Easy Part

 

I believe in the God that is described in The Bible and I believe that a man named Jesus lived and was crucified as this has been corroborated by the Roman historian Josephus.  Where I differ from The Bible and most religious historian is the fact that I believe both God and Jesus were EXTRATERRESTRIALS...

Do I have any proof of this?

Not really...  other than Jesus saying  "...my kingdom is not of this world..."

That phrase alone does not prove anything really but then where exactly is the location of heaven that all born-again Christians are going to be living in after death?

Now that our Federal Government has admitted to their being UFOs and former President Trump has created a SPACE FORCE as part of our military, one can easily construe that there is more going on than just admitting there are UFOs...  and, it is entirely possible that some very special global people have already met with aliens.

But, I am drifting off topic...

Moses left us with the 10 Commandments and regardless of what you think of religion, the 10 Commandments are an excellent list of items to follow if one wants to live an HONORABLE life.

Jesus lived a flawless life and trying to live like he did offers many challenges and many of us fail to live up to his standards...  but, that does not mean we should not try...

Being a "good" person is not a bad way to live one's life.

What happens to us when we die?

We don't know...

But, many religious leaders speculate and I think that is wrong as some people believe their speculations and their speculations may prove to be just as wrong as they might prove to be right.  That's a 50/50 gamble and not good odds.

What I do know is this:  If time is eternal, that is to say forever, what's the point of living 80-100 years?

This seems completely illogical to me and rather pointless.

Why do we live at all?

Therefore, it would seem to me that our alien creators have something more in store for us after we die...  and, once we experience that, we will understand the purpose of our 80-100 year existence on earth.

The other issue that coincides with this is the size of our universe and the fact that there might be other parallel universes as well...

So, what's the point of the size?

Earth is insignificant in comparison to the entire universe...

So, does it really make sense that we are living here on earth as opposed to somewhere else?

Why was earth selected?

Who selected earth for us to live on?

These questions and there are more, make it increasingly more and more difficult to live like Jesus wanted us to live...

Being created is just the easy part.

Goat

 

Should Trump Be Prosecuted

Elaine Kamarck
Founding Director - Center for Effective Public Management
Senior Fellow - Governance Studies
EKamarck

After eight congressional hearings investigating the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, one thing is clear: there is enough evidence to prosecute Donald Trump on a variety of charges. The committee has the option to refer cases to the Justice Department for prosecution, but such a step is not necessary. 

The Justice Department could decide to prosecute at any time, on whichever charges for which they find sufficient evidence. Already more than 800 people have been charged in connection with the January 6 events—although most have been charged with lesser crimes. So far only 50 have pleaded guilty to felony charges.

But all along, the issue has been not what the 10,000 people who came to Washington D.C. for the rally knew or even what the 2,000 people who made it inside the Capitol building knew. 

All along the issue has been what did the president know and what did he intend? Was this a rally that simply got out of control? Or was it the first attempt ever by an American president to stage a coup d’etat?

If it was an attempted coup, it was a pretty pathetic and incompetent one.

From the hearings, we now know that Trump did not even have the support of his own family and friends nor his handpicked White House staff. 

To pursue his plans, he had to rely on a close group of advisors known as “the clown show” led by Rudi Giuliani, a pillow manufacturer, and a dot-com millionaire—none of whom was in government and none of whom controlled the most important “assets” (guns, tanks, planes etc.) needed to take over a government. 

In contrast to most successful coups in history, Trump had no faction of the military, no faction of the National Guard, and no faction of the District of Colombia Metropolitan Police at his disposal.  READ MORE...

Classic Sunday Morning Newspaper Cartoons

 

Electrifying America's Roads

Within weeks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the average price for a gallon of gasoline reached its highest point in American history—a range where it has largely remained as the economic isolation of one of the world’s largest petroleum exporters looks to persist for months, if not years.

Ninety-one percent of American households own a car, meaning that almost everyone will feel the sting of elevated fuel prices when they fill up their tanks for the foreseeable future. However, the roughly 2 million owners of electric vehicles (EVs) will be spared the pain at the pump.

An oil shock of the magnitude not seen since the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo has sent Google searches related to EVs surging by 300 percent in the last few months. Thirty-six percent of Americans now say they plan to buy or lease an EV or are seriously considering doing so. The time is ripe to electrify American roads.

Increasing the ownership and production of EVs presents a strategic opportunity to not only insulate the public from price spikes in oil, but also boost the clean manufacturing workforce and decarbonize the transportation sector—the largest source of CO2 emissions in the United States.  READ MORE...

Tennis Game

 

Second Age: Rings of Power

Actress Sophia Nomvete plays the dwarven Princess Disa of Khazad-Dum

"We wanted to find a huge, Tolkienian mega epic!"


That's how showrunner Patrick McKay described his mission for The Rings of Power - Amazon Prime's hotly anticipated Lord of the Rings TV spin-off, as he unveiled a new trailer and unseen footage at San Diego Comic-Con on Thursday.


In his armoury: a huge cast of comely elves, a rare female dwarf, the Hobbits' ancestors, a seriously impressive CGI city, a mystery menace, an entwife and a surprise Balrog.


The Rings of Power is the most expensive show ever made, at $1bn (£832m) for five seasons - and this is fans' best guide to how it will look, sound and feel.


But what everyone really wants to know is, can it compete with Peter Jackson's beloved Lord of the Rings film trilogy, the winner of 17 Oscars, benchmark for composers, and populariser of Second Breakfast?


Wisely, it's not trying - instead setting the action 4,000 years before the Hobbits Frodo and Sam journeyed through Middle Earth.


This is the Second Age, where the 20 Rings of Power are forged and the evil Sauron, Lord of Mordor, rises to assault the realms' hard-won peace.


The source material is Tolkien's appendix to the Lord of the Rings books. The core question: "How far into the darkness would you go to protect the things you care about the most?" says McKay's fellow showrunner JD Payne.  READ MORE...

Aquatic Fish