They definitely paid a visit to my neighbors. Go Texas! - Carla Thompson
Wow, Colorado is significantly lower than all the others. Any ideas why? - Jim Norris
This was posted separately and there was quite a bit of discussion about it. The Coloradans basically said that outdoor physical activity is a major part of the culture there. - ⓞnor
I say the thin air squeezes the fat out of them. - Steve Craft
Mean elevation: CO 6800ft, UT 6100ft, NM 5692ft, MT 3396ft, MS 300ft... - ⓞnor
This is obese - I don't even want to see "overweight." Colorado is the only state where it's not a granted that 1 out of 5 is obese (though by the looks of things, the average is 1 out of 4). Does this include children? Pre-edit: clicked on the article - the overweight numbers are amazing. I'm certainly in these categories - I must disclose. - Vince DeGeorge
cool chart - looks like our primary home (ct) is #3 & secondary (vt) is #5 :) - mike "glemak" dunn
Does anyone really put their all into a crazy startup just because they want to retire early? I mean, it's a nice carrot, but all the people I've ever known to burn the midnight oil at a startup are passionate about what the startup is actually doing, not the payday at the end. - ⓞnor
I share your incredulity Dan. The startup folks I've always been surrounded with have a genuine passion for making things and getting people to use those things. They choose startups in the first place because the environment gives them the opportunity to focus most or all of their attention on this passion for doing. I don't hear folks talking a lot about how they're going to retire when the big payday hits. More importantly, when the big payday does hit, I haven't seen many folks actually retire... - Kevin Scott
I thought doing the crazy startup was the goal, not the other way around. - Edward Ho
I don't know whether people who go into startups really think like this (can't think of any examples personally, but being in it for the money instead of the passion probably correlates with lower success and therefore lower visibility), but people like Paul Graham sometimes make it sound like early retirement is the goal: "Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. This pays especially well in technology, where you earn a premium for working fast." http://www.paulgraham.com/weal... - Ben Darnell
So you're responding to Graham? Because your post said "the classic argument", and I an unwilling to grant Paul Graham's natterings the automatic status of "classic argument". - ⓞnor
I haven't known too many people I've worked with that were shooting for early retirement, although being in control of your own financial security and how you manage your time is often a goal. I have to admit though, part of the fun of a startup is not knowing if there will be a big payoff. It's like a treasure hunt, and it's not just about money, but also about how big an impact your product might have on others. - Chris White
If anything, the pot of gold is for seeding your next startup, or launching a personal blimp factory, or something -- not for "retirement". - ⓞnor
My guess is that it's probably more about having the financial freedom to choose what to work on than being able to retire in the usual sense of the word. - Jim Norris
I'm not responding to Graham or anybody; I just shared this because it relates to some conversations I've had recently. I do think that striking it rich and retiring early is a key part of the silicon valley mythology (especially as viewed from the outside), although there is less interest in the traditional sense of "retirement". I think the main point of the post still works for non-traditional uses of the "pot of gold" - work on something you enjoy (which may be a startup) instead of seeing work as a sacrifice for a future payoff. - Ben Darnell
The LitterMaid sucked. The CatGenie is a pain to install (needs a water hookup). Is this the answer? Also available in the marketplace: Purrforma, ScoopFree. - ⓞnor
I would love to see Tiger get stuck in that. :-P - Jessie Norris
i concur that the littermaid sucked. it had this flimsy plastic liners for the poo that clipped into a holster. when you pulled it out to change it it would fling litter (and possible other stuff) at your face! - Karl Rosaen
Both Kevin and I are happy owners of Litter-Robots. Try it. it works. the cats took about 10 days to get used to it (there are some ideas on the website about how to get the cats to get used to it faster) but after that, there have probably been 2 "accidents" in the two years we've had it. - Tudor Bosman
egnor, I have a litter-robot that you can try for free. - Sanjeev Singh
How often do you empty the receptacle, and/or clean the whole thing? For cleaning the whole thing, what is the process like? For the LitterMaid, besides the problem Karl mentioned, I had to do this complicated disassembly and cleaning about every three weeks, and it took like an hour and involved screwdrivers, otherwise poop would build up between the rake tines, and oh, it was just all so gross. - ⓞnor
egnor, my cat never "took" to this :(, so I can't answer. - Sanjeev Singh
Empty the receptacle: once every 7-10 days (two cats). Clean the whole thing: once every 1-2 months. Process: lift the globe, wash it, pull out the drawer, wash it, put it back together; takes about 10 minutes, no tools are required. - Tudor Bosman
Ditto Tudor's comment. The nice thing is that gravity is the main tool, so there aren't tines that gunk gets stuck to. The design is very simple and elegant and we rarely have any problems with it. It's a bit noisy though. If I could make one change to it I would make it quieter or, failing that, put a timer on it so it would support 'quiet hours' at night and activate again in the morning. - Kevin Fox
I've found what works best is get the cheapest cat litter box available, and then throw out all the cat litter every 10-14 days. No screwdriver necessary. - Chris White
I'm surprised that a lolcat comment hasn't been submitted. - April Buchheit
Maggie's got one of these for her cats. I love the fact that I no longer have to smell the cat box. - Gabe Schaffer
I bought a "CITIKITTY" kit - see ads on Seesmic... supposedly now I can train my cat to use the toilet, NO more litter box crap! yeah! wonder if she'll hit the flush knob? - Susan Beebe
LOL a cat would crawl into that thing? - Harry Myhre
Our CatGenie has been completely awesome. After the initial setup work (a couple months ago), we basically have done zero work, except to flush the toilet every once in a while. I think the water hookup is the best thing ever, since there's no icky waste receptacle to deal with. I only wish we could hook it up to the laundry output, so we wouldn't even need to flush the toilet. - Jennifer Taylor
OMG-I just got one and it ate my cat...poor Felix... - Mark Forman
I adore our Litter Robot. Aside from the noise (as Kevin said) it is heaven. I pull out a drawer and dump it and then I'm done. It did take some time to train our older cat to use it. We just kept her old litter box beside the robot for a while and we didn't clean it. Over time she decided she preferred the clean robot to the dirty box. It took her some time to figure it out (had to tap her butt a couple time to get her to turn around so she didn't pee out the door) but once she got it was awesome. - Rachel L Fisher
In Chinese table manners, chewing mouth open is acceptable. I've even tried it, though i need keep reminding myself or else revert to Western custom. Air and/or oxygen does change the flavor and also cools hot (caliente) food. Japanese custom requires sucking bland noodles up quickly to draw up flavorful soup. I also prefer others slurp hot soup rather than having them blow it. - John Lam
Unbelievable: I would have guessed Matthew McConaughey. I think AC Slater has had a career resurgence of late, which may have bumped his numbers up. - Jennie Lin via Bookmarklet
Yes, I cannot remember the last time I saw McConaughey with a shirt... I do believe he would win the "total appearances:shirtless ratio" Oh, and they sure are liberal with that 'actor' tag... ;) - Michael W. May via twhirl
hee. i was just thinking, "well, but matthew mcconaughey..." and then i saw your and mwm's comments! :D - edythe
"A senior Democrat who worked for Mr Clinton has revealed that he recently told friends Mr Obama could "kiss my ass" in return for his support." - Anne Bouey via Bookmarklet
Kind of funny in a "What's next?" sort of way - Geoff Schultz
Next Story: An adviser for the Obama campaign later made a statement suggesting that seeing as Obama himself would be disinclined to like the person who beat his wife and, since he is not 12 years old, remains unoffended by Clinton's personal and private remarks. XP - Amy Tureen
I could actually see this helping Obama. Those who supported Bill Clinton are already on Obama's side, and those independents or soft-right folk who despised Clinton may be more able to vote for Obama if they see that he's not like Bill Clinton. - Kevin Fox
Another example of Governmental intrusion in the name of "security", and big business simply dying to oblige them... (As an aside, I wish FF included a link to the actual Reddit post, too, so that I could vote it up over there...) - Andrew Terry
wow this is the most bizarre invasion of privacy I have seen, but you know it could have some benefits to the goverment?? - Josh Chandler
gu-u-u-uys, wake up, it is XXI century out there and privacy had been augmented from you significantly when you voted (or not rebelled against voting) last time :) - silpol
So, buy more open hardware, with open firmware and open software running on it. Or have your tech disabled when govt sees fit. - 9000
Scary. Dystopian Sci-Fi is cool....dystopias are not.... - Abby Martin
Open source hardware is a great idea, but tough to pull off unless we want to reverse the miniaturization trend. Moore's law pretty much requires some fairly expensive tooling combined with large numbers of highly specialized professionals. I'd be all too happy to sacrifice some on the spec sheet for the sake of broader understanding, but I suspect I wouldn't have a lot of company in that sentiment. - Jason Wehmhoener
Simply fighting kill switch legislation is probably a lot closer to being possible, but then again, democracy does seem to be as challenging as electronics engineering for many people. - Jason Wehmhoener
When do we get kill switches for authorities? - Jim Norris
Dude, if you buy a new Zune you'll get to experience the awesomeness of this first hand. Thanks, NBC and Microsoft! - Jennifer Dittrich
Miniaturization does not need to be sacrificed. That is, Taiwanese factories would gladly produce non-killswitch-conformant hardware, *if there's enough demand*. E.g. I've never bought a region-locked DVD drive, ever; all of them came region-free with region lock settable programmatically (which nobody in his sane mind uses). Also, there are open ARM and Sparc CPU designs at least, quite fit for gadgets. - 9000
“Evidence based law: Should there be a requirement that health or "public safety" type laws must be supported by credible scientific evidence? (to avoid "feel good" but ineffective or counter-productive laws)”
Think about how long it would have taken to get the anti-smoking laws passed. Quite frankly, I quite enjoy the non-smoking environments in restaurants. But given such a requirement, the tobacco companies would have kept restaurants smoky places for years. - Piaw Na
Evidence can be faked. Just squash or stretch the graph a bit and there you have it: evidence. - Stephan Miller
@Amit Morson: Laws, as any other rule for future behaviour, cannot be only based on facts. They need to have a judgment of value behind. Paul, your point is fair, to me the biggest issue is: who decides if the "credible scientific evidence" is there? - Simone
It would be great if law had sound basis, when it applied. But how would that work? Maybe the best you could hope for would be that it was Congress's policy that law should be based on evidence, and something like the OMB would somehow try to make that happen? - j1m
It would be great if lawmakers understood the scientific method. Heck, it would be great if voters understood the scientific method. - Jason Wehmhoener
Is hands-free actually safer, or just less obvious? If people are holding their phones, at least I can see that they are on the phone and be extra wary. - Bhasker Chari via Alert Thingy
Paul, who would validate whether they're backed by science or not? Remember a lot of the politicians in the US think "intelligent design" is perfectly good science. I'd rather not mix my science with politics... - Tad Donaghe
"all laws based on scientific facts" is most probably unfeasible model in any country in world, as there is no country where religion is not given a (un)written rights, and majority usually religious enough. I wish there was completely secular country in world, i.e. where churches of any kind were prohibited (but not beliefs) - I would consider emigration there RIGHT NOW. - silpol
just driving with a phone in your hand is not that unsafe, add a stick shift and a cup of coffee and i can see how it might make sense - Bryan Power
Is there any credible scientific evidence that that kind of law would work? - Jim Norris
This is coming at it from the wrong direction. We need to de-politicize *science* so that there *is* such a thing as "credible scientific evidence." What we have today is people waving around a single study "proving" that X causes/doesn't cause global warming, or Y is/isn't carcinogenic, or Z is/isn't a safe & effective drug, and these studies are funded by groups with political axes to grind. Once you have evidence that is truly credible, the laws automatically follow. - Karim
The problem isn't the evidence, the problem is the lack of understanding of the meaning of "credible". Science education is so poor in this country that far too many people have no basis for evaluating so called "evidence". The basic differences between "hypothesis", "theory" and "law" are widely misunderstood. - Jason Wehmhoener
@Simone: Thats obvious, we do want our laws to be reasonable. - Amit Morson
whatever happened to natural law...we try to govern chaos far too much already... - Julian Baldwin
How about for laws in general? I'm sure Bruce Schneier woud have something to say about this in regard to security as much as public safety. E.g. the assault on photography in public places based on the idea that you might be a terrorist. - Robin Barooah
I'm with Julian....natural law...personal responsibility....not Nanny State. - Chris Rossini
That won't help; you can get statistics to say anything you want. - Gabe Schaffer
Why is everyone assuming Paul's question was related to driving with a cellphone in hand? I thought it was the ban on cigarette smoking in Amsterdam coffee houses. :) http://rinf.com/alt-news/break... - Chris White
You would implement this as a Constitutional amendment, to be enforced by the judiciary? I'm pretty sure the legislature would route around that, but I'm not sure I've seen any examples where a Constitution limits the *rationale* for a law rather than its *effect*. - ⓞnor
What about morality laws? The definition of 'harm' differs between the individual and societal level, and how can we empirically determine what constitutes 'harm'? I'm all for keeping abortion legal and protecting gay marriage, but depending on your definition of harm it would be easy to produce numbers saying that abortion is not in the interests of 'public safety'. - Kevin Fox
Also, if we normalized laws based on harm, cigarettes would be instantly banned, and cars would be soon to follow, not that I would mind if federal spending followed the same pattern, and we spent a trillion dollars on the War on Cancer. - Kevin Fox
How about preventing harm to the economy? - Chris White
And what about harm to the environment, or to people outside our own country? - Kevin Fox
I think this is heading in the direction of the "Futarchy" concept, a proposed system of government where the electorate (indirectly) creates metrics which represent their values, but actual policies are set according to whatever prediction markets say will maximize those metrics. The futarchy motto is "vote on values, bet on beliefs", but critics point out that values and beliefs are hard to separate. - ⓞnor
It's a noble sentiment in theory, but an unworkable one in practice for the many reasons already enumerated here. All laws *should* be grounded in facts and reason and reality, but that's a lot to ask for - Eric
If laws had to have some sort of evidence to back them, at least there would be some sort of operational definition of their intent that could be reviewed later, rather than an opinion that has one meaning when it is framed, and a different one when it is interpreted years later. Science is wrong about almost everything, but it at least has a mechanism for relating purported facts to behavior to enable iterative improvement. - Robin Barooah
I had a friend who speaks Farsi translate the comments. 1) The pink, bloody bear is called Gloomy Bear. He's a 2m tall, violent, pink bear that eats humans and is supposed to be the antithesis to cute, cuddly characters like Hello Kitty. 2) I work at Polyvore, not FriendFeed. - Jess Lee
You mean the cute cuddly bear isn't supposed to be? - Jim Norris
"The British designer Vivienne Westwood has caused controversy by using Roma gypsies as catwalk models, complete with gold teeth and enormous medallions." - Jessie Norris via Bookmarklet
From a related article: "Mr Berlusconi’s government has also drawn up plans for 10 new “Centres of Temporary Permanence” in which to hold immigrants until repatriation." I assume the immigrants will be held on the outskirts of the Centre. - Jim Norris
Dude is hotttttt!!!! I hope Janine doesn't see this article. - Steve Craft
"The Codex Seraphinianus was written and illustrated by Italian graphic designer and architect, Luigi Serafini during the late 1970's. The Codex is a lavishly produced book that purports to be an encyclopedia for an imaginary world in a parallel universe, with copious comments in an incomprehensible language. It is written in a florid script, entirely invented and completely illegible, and illustrated with watercolor paintings." - Jason Wehmhoener via Bookmarklet
"THEY are maps where X Marx the spot. Thankfully, the Iron Curtain has been pulled down and the Cold War has defrosted.
Now the top secret Soviet maps of Scotland which the Red Army drew up with the goal of occupying the country can be revealed. The charts prove beyond any doubt that agents of the Kremlin created detailed charts of huge swathes of the nation.
The maps show Scotland's major cities, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee, but also less obvious strategic targets such as Kilmarnock and Dunfermline." - Amy Tureen via Bookmarklet
Was this their secret backup plan if they ran out of vodka? - Jim Norris
Similar maps were discovered of Ireland where they intended to gather a lifetime of ammunition for their potato guns. - Steve Craft
"In 2006 and 2007, separate specimens collected off the coast of Iceland were found to be more than 400 years old, making the Arctica islandica clam the longest lived animal species ever recorded." - Shannon Bauman via Bookmarklet
http://books.google.com/books?...: "Some ocean quahogs have a very strong taste, described as being like iodine or seaweed; but this is greatly diminished by removal of the liver..." - ⓞnor
“Time to get me some Windows: VMWare Fusion or Parallels? I'm on a 2.4GHz C2D MacBook Pro with 2GB of RAM. Won't be doing anything too intensive on XP.”
I've found VMWare to be infinitely more usable. Parallels has had all sorts of stability issues on my workstations, and I've had to use a windows restore CD on 2 parallels images. I've heard people who love Parallels over VMWare Fusion, which leaves me believing it's a wash either way. - Mark Trapp
I've been happy with Fusion for a while now, although I'm only using it for Linux and run everything via Apple's X11 rather than the VMware window. Upgrading to 4GB RAM seemed to help a lot. - Jim Norris
That "Mindset of a Belgian Motorist" elective back in grad school is finally paying off. Been mentally committed to $6/litre for *years*. - matt shobe
I'm looking forward to the progressive energy mindset of Obama. No nuclear energy. No drilling for oil. Just grow a lot of corn and use ethanol. Sweet. - Charles LePage
That's a false caricature of Obama's energy policy. - ⓞnor
Indeed, isn't that pretty much the opposite of anybody's energy policy, including Obama's? - j1m
The only one close to offering a realistic and operable energy policy is McCain, and even he is off the mark. - Charles LePage
McCain's energy policy is pretty much just to do a lot of oil drilling, it's very "status quo only roll back the clock somehow". The important thing isn't in the fine points of cellulosic ethanol vs. nuclear energy, it's in getting off our national asses and actually moving forward in a big way with dozens of initiatives to escape the twin hammers of global warming and peak oil. I have a lot more confidence Obama could actually get things moving than McCain, though ultimately it's up to Congress. - ⓞnor
If they aren't aggressively pushing nuclear, they aren't being realistic. Global warming is the monster in the closet we've created to scare us into polluting less and use less oil, which are fine things, but we don't need to create boogeymen to do it. We already know how to do it, we just need the bold vision to make the leap. - Charles LePage
I remember reading some article online (http://www.salon.com/news/feat...) that claimed nuclear power wasn't even cost-competitive with solar or wind power, much less natural gas or coal. It didn't actually explain why nuclear was expensive though. Any better links? - Jim Norris
Why not have both nuclear power and solar / wind programs? - Chris White
solution looking for a problem. Very few sites have the number of comments you are referring to. As part of a broader package, maybe, but I think this is what NoiseRiver is aiming at, or maybe I read the post wrong (Giovanni has a point) - Duncan Riley
Given the number of Friendfeedsters and ex-Googlers who immediately "liked" this post, something is rotten in the state of Denmark. - Mark Trapp
I don't think anything is rotten, but there's an opportunity. Relatively few blogs have that many comments, but a lot of us read those blogs, and letting us make conversation on our own terms, slicing through noise to tune in the voices we're interested in hearing, could be awesome. - ⓞnor
@Giovanni: Having failed once, I'll probably fail again, but here's what I mean: Just like FriendFeed contains many commenters, but I just see the comments of about 100 people I follow, I'd like to be able to choose who to follow on other blogs. So it's Friendfeed's selection mechanism that I want to let out into the wild. - j1m
+1 Giovanni Slash.dot and many other websites never got me to participate because the noise-level was too high (aka quality-level too low). Being able to tune people in/out (while still hearing people though "friend of friend" or "everyone") is great! - Mitchell Tsai
And wasn't the constant discussion of FriendFeed why j1m unsubscribed from some of us in the first place? Hmmm? :-) - Louis Gray
"You have 85 million barrels a day of oil available in the global energy market and 86.4 million barrels a day of demand. So the price of oil is going to go up until you can kill demand." - Chris White
Or increase supply—at some price point it becomes profitable to extract oil from tar sands, or oil shale, or squeeze it out of turnips. - Jim Norris
Yes. In the near term (6-12 months) supply and demand are both quite inelastic. How elastic are supply and demand over the next 5 years? That seems like a really interesting question. - ⓞnor
Mark Thoma's thoroughly worked out model of the commodities market (including futures, storage, and speculation). Krugman gives this guy props and agrees with the conclusion, which is that the data does not support speculative investment in commodities, but instead a repricing due to changes in supply and demand. I think some factors are left unaccounted-for, though. - ⓞnor
I bet Krugman owns an oil index. Just watching the markets on Thursday and Friday have me convinced this is money flowing from the stock market (primarily financials) into the commodities markets. There was no new economic data to support the rise in oil prices last week. - Chris White
You mean you think Krugman is corrupt? Because I think that's ridiculous, and doesn't bear on the validity of his arguments anyway. Or you're making a point about how widespread indirect ownership is? In any case, I don't really buy your proof by inverse correlation, and I think the points raised by Krugman et al. really have a lot of validity of them. Oil supply and demand fluctuate like anything else, and everyone gets bearish when people see oil prices putting the squeeze on the economy. - ⓞnor
Prices are being passed on to consumers, that's why the gas prices are going up. Supply and demand are roughly what they were 6 months ago. If lots of people invest in a stock, it goes up. It's not different for the commodities markets. Eventually the stock market will turn around, and then oil prices will come down. Will people be saying there is decreased demand then? - Chris White
Just to clarify, oil demand is inelastic because it's a necessity for many people. They have to drive to work, heat their homes, or travel for business. This makes it a good target for price increases. You don't need decreased supply to raise prices if the demand is inelastic. Some blame OPEC, which could be true, but I think more likely it is institutions bidding up the price of oil through index funds. The oil isn't being stored because it's being used at these high prices. - Chris White
The only way to fix the problem is change the minds of the investors. This could be through vastly less demand, more supply, alternative energy, or threatened legislation against speculation by institutions not associated with the oil industry. I think the last one is probably the quickest remedy. - Chris White
Trying again: speculators cannot raise the spot price of oil without stockpiling it somewhere or convincing producers not to pump it in the first place. There's no good evidence either of these are happening. On the other hand, since oil demand is inelastic, very small changes in supply or demand can make very large differences in price. - Larry Greenfield
(I think Chris may have gone output-only?) But as Krugman himself admits, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. At this point I don't fully buy Krugman's theories about signals in the forward price curve: crude futures have wandered between contango and backwardation for as long as we have data; investment pressure ("speculation") is clearly not the only thing driving that curve. Futures can push spot by putting pressure on that curve whichever direction it is going. - ⓞnor
Also, the cheapest way to store oil is to not pump it. In an arbitrage situation the cheapest solution should dominate, so I expect futures pressure to show up as less source pumping, not overflowing storage tanks. It's hard to tell whether supply is dropping (and it is dropping) because the oil producers can't pump any more, or because they choose not to for pricing reasons. - ⓞnor
Are producers deciding not to pump oil speculators? I don't think so. - Larry Greenfield
@nor, output-only made me laugh. :) No, I was joking about Krugman owning an oil index fund, sorry, but he does seem to speak from a particular political point of view, which makes me wary. Larry, no I don't think producers not pumping are oil speculators. I don't even think oil speculation is inherently bad. I do have a series of questions about the oil market though. Maybe I'll ask them separately. - Chris White
Oil speculators could drive up futures, which would cause producers not to pump, which would drive up spot. Or producers could engage in some speculation of their own. (Surely ginormous oil companies employ smart people who spend lots of time trying to forecast prices and understand markets, and speculation is the next logical step.) - ⓞnor
@Chris: there's a big difference between stocks and barrels of oil—oil is consumable. The price should be determined by the equilibrium between rates of supply and demand (buffered by inventories), not by the aggregate total. - Jim Norris
The assumption behind investment impact would have to be that these funds aren't just holding a big pile of oil, they're actively buying more over time. (Which means that by now they should be sitting on the equivalent of an enormous hoard of oil.) - ⓞnor
That would explain the squishy feeling in their pants... - Jim Norris
I'm sure I'm missing something, but couldn't the index fund just sell the option to buy oil back to the oil importing companies when the futures come due at slightly below spot prices? - Chris White
That's what they do, selling the futures off to people who actually want the oil. But they want to maintain asset allocation, so they turn around and buy more futures further out ("rolling forward"). So they never own *actual* oil (that would be squishy, as Jim says), they own virtual oil, in the form of an ever-increasing pile of constantly-rolling futures. - ⓞnor
But that means they're exerting a downward force on the spot price, since they're selling an ever-increasing pile of oil for near-term delivery. The argument for speculators influencing the price is that if they convince producers that oil prices are forever going up, the producers drop supply. - Larry Greenfield
Qatari Oil Minister denies supply problems: "There is no coordination between supplies and the oil price. We believe that the market is not facing any shortage of supplies at the moment. There are some cargoes in floating storage. More crude will not benefit the market." - Larry Greenfield via Bookmarklet
OPEC keeps saying that the world is "saturated" with oil. It's such a bizarre thing to say. Production is down, consumption is up, prices are through the roof, and they are really claiming that increased supply would have *no effect* on prices? What exactly are they claiming is going on? Is this anything but the kind of lie that's so staggering that you sort of halfway believe it? - ⓞnor
"I never get a call from my customers asking for more supply but we always hear concerns about high oil prices. This shows there is no correlation between the oil price and supplies." That's such a bizarre statement I barely know where to start. The comments about "reservoir management" are also strange; what does it mean to "damage" a reservoir? Isn't "reservoir management" just a way of limiting current supply and betting on future price increases? - Jim Norris
OPEC is in a PR bind, I think. They can't admit that they are unable to supply more, and they can't admit that they are unwilling, so they have to make up a weird story about how it's all speculators' fault. And people buy it, too: Congresscritters just the other day were actually citing OPEC to support their claims that we needed to crack down on speculation. - ⓞnor
Reservoir management: if you pump too fast, various bad geophysical things happen, I don't know the details. When the Saudis went on their pumping binge in the '80s it apparently had a bad effect on their reservoirs, which took a lot of time and money to repair and work around in the decades since. Though in this case it seems like an excuse. - ⓞnor
"The following technique is a painless way install 32bit Firefox and proprietary 32 bit binary plug-ins into your Ubuntu amd64 bit installation. It is accomplished without the complexity of establishing a 32 bit chroot environment." - Jim Norris via Bookmarklet
"Winemakers in southern France have burned two police cars and vandalized supermarkets during protests to demand government aid." - Jessie Norris via Bookmarklet
Sounds like an average weekend in Napa. - Jim Norris
They do that to stop traffic before accidents sometimes. Maybe they changed their mind. - Sanjeev Singh
They also do it for traffic congestion, they slow down traffic to relieve congestion further down the road.. - Derek Collison
I saw a CHP motorcycle do that one time to stop traffic and move a huge chunk of metal that was lying in the middle of the road. - Jim Norris
Yeah, afterwards I was wondering if he was trying to set up some sort of roadblock, but I didn't see any obstacles or accidents further up the road. A few years ago I'd seen a car go out of control in a very similar manner, so this really worried me when I saw it. (The car I saw a few years ago ended up doing an end-over end flip into the ravine at the side of 101.) - Laurence Gonsalves
Android was a means, a seed intended to grow an entire new wireless family tree. Google was never in the hardware business. There would be no gPhone — instead, there would be hundreds of gPhones. - Trisha Okubo
"Google says it has learned the rules of the game — sometimes the hard way. Not long ago, the company enhanced its mobile version of Picasa, a photo-editing, storage, and slide-show service, so users could instantly upload images from their camera phone. Google took it to a phone company for placement but couldn't get the necessary sign-off. The service, which was free, would have competed with a similar proprietary offering the carrier was rolling out — and charging $10 a month for. The idea of instant mobile uploading to Picasa was quietly shelved." - Jim Norris
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