Greydon Square Interview

I've uploaded my interview of Greydon Square to Internet Archive. It's about two hours. I haven't edited it yet.

Found new blog

I just found a blog that is publishing Marcus Bachmann's leaked diary.

What the Middle East Keeps Yelling

Libya got way too complicated for me to talk about with any expertise. I forgot that Libya was not a signatory to the ICC treaty, which complicates how the NTC may deal with Gaddafis. It is in their best interest to turn Muammar over, as they can force Gaddafi to pay restitution and likely have a much clearer grasp on his assets. In part because the US and Europe have quite a bit of them. The possible movement of Gaddafi’s weapon stockpile may become a major player in threats from non-state actors.

But I can talk about oil, economics, and how we are totally fucked. Middle East turmoil once again showed us that our dependency on oil is a terrible idea. Oil is a perfect example of the fundamental economic problem, scarcity. Most consumable goods are finite and the health of an economy is based on how efficiently we utilize and distribute those goods. Sometimes the incentives to do this are pretty low. Wasting massive amounts of food has a relatively small impact on a wealthy nation’s economy. Food is relatively cheap and easy to come by in developed nations. This is one example of free-market’s inefficiency.

About 15% of the world lives in developed countries. Yet, both developing and developed nations lose or waste pretty close to the same total amount of food, about 650m metric tons. This does not take into account the large amounts of available calories lost when using resources to produce meat rather than non-sentient foods.

 Food loss in developed countries comes largely from consumers and has little to do with poor infrastructure. In developing countries the opposite is true. Things such as poor food preservation and unreliable transportation severely affect the total food available to consumers. And when you live on a dollar a day, you cannot afford to throw away food. As a result each consumer in sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and south-east Asia waste only about 8 kg of food a year. This is compared to around 100 kg in Europe and North America. Food prices are directly affected by the price of oil. Increased petroleum prices raise not only the transportation costs but fertilizer and pesticides as well. Oil is used an ingredient in both of these chemicals and of course oil is often used as an energy source for their production.

***A Brief Explanation of Elasticity***

Elasticity is important in looking at the change of consumption of pretty much everything. It’s a way to quantify supply and demand. Prices go up, demand goes down. How much that demand goes down is elasticity. Here’s a great chart and description from Wikipedia:

Value	Descriptive Terms
Ed = 0	Perfectly inelastic demand
- 1 < Ed < 0	Inelastic or relatively inelastic demand
Ed = - 1	Unit elastic, unit elasticity, unitary elasticity, or unitarily elastic demand
- ∞ < Ed < - 1	Elastic or relatively elastic demand
Ed = - ∞	Perfectly elastic demand

· relatively inelastic when the percentage change in quantity demanded is less than the percentage change in price (so that E_d > - 1)

· unit elastic, unit elasticity, unitary elasticity, or unitarily elastic demand when the percentage change in quantity demanded is equal to the percentage change in price (so that E_d = - 1)

· relatively elastic when the percentage change in quantity demanded is greater than the percentage change in price (so that E_d < - 1).

E_d = 0 and E_d = - ∞ don’t happen in real life. Any increase in price will not cause the demand of a good to drop to zero, nor will the demand stay the same at any price.

Medicine, especially for children is highly inelastic. If the government taxed these services it would be a great source of revenue. Of course, it would be incredibly unethical to discourage something with such a high positive externality, so it is avoided. This also shows why goods with negative externalities are highly taxed. Highly addictive substances such as tobacco are relatively inelastic, but the demand still decreases as prices go up. Tobacco companies know that their revenue will increase at even extremely high prices, which is why they have increased prices at a much faster rate than taxes have increased. Just another example of how tobacco executives are complete pieces of shit who invent terms like smokers rights and blame the government on all the problems smokers face. Fuck them.

***Back to oil***

Oil has is pretty inelastic, especially in the short term. In other words consumption of oil does not decrease much relative to price increases. However prices are extremely vulnerable to changes in supply, or eve possible changes in supply.

Finite energy sources suck. Greenhouse-gas producing resources are terrible for our environment and they contribute to volatile markets. Rebels took over Tripoli, futures dropped. Seems we were overly optimistic about the possible stability, prices go up. Before the war Libya produced 2% of the world’s oil. Two percent, that’s it. Saudi Arabia even picked up the slack. But markets sometimes look at the long game. Saudi Arabia won’t increase its production forever therefore supply will drop, of course prices will increase. While people are attempting to throw off a brutal dictator who has oppressed his people for 40 years, the markets are cheering for a return to stability. How fucked up is this? If the goods keep coming, who gives a shit how they get there?

Crude oil is also the only stock price the public wants to drop. Of course other raw goods, such as gold, aluminum, and copper, will also drive up prices, but these are more difficult to understand. We want to have as little incentive to not destroy ourselves as possible. If oil prices stay low or even just rise slowly, we can put off developing clean fuels and say fuck it to fusion and never become a Type I Civilization.

A Success In the Middle East

       Holy shit. After six months of fighting and 20,000 deaths (fortunately, very few of them caused by NATO) Gaddafi is about to leave. Muhammad, and Saif al-Islam have surrendered. Muhammad is his first-born and Saif al Gaddafi is probably the most powerful. But Muammar Gaddafi is still defiant. But he knows his time is actually up. There was little resistance as the rebels entered the city. Around 150 people were killed in the fighting. While unfortunate, it is quite low for such an important battle. 
          Tomorrow I’ll talk about what I think this means for Obama, the US, Libya, the rest of the Middle East, as well as our long-term relationship with the area.

Marky Marc and the Dudes He Fucks

Hello Sexy

    Marcus Bachmann is probably gay. At the very least he's an extremely effeminate man. And that's okay. But the fact that he and Michelle are homophobic pieces of shit and he has associated gays with barbarians automatically opens him up for ridicule. Republicans don't seem to understand why this is different than mocking your run of the mill barbarian. This is in large part because conservatives aren't funny. The fine line between using irony to knock on bigotry and actual bigotry is lost on them (see Jeff Dunham.) Then again, many conservatives don't care and actually prefer bigoted jokes. The fact is, hypocrisy is entertaining. Even Republicans know this and thus many of them immediately claim there's a double standard. It's okay to mock gay people if you're liberal, but not if you're conservative. Actually they're right. Conservatives are far more likely to hate gay people than Liberals. I measure this  by support of the right to marry. In May 78% of liberals believed that gays should have the right to marry, while only 28% of conservatives agreed. Even moderates support was at 65%. Self-identified Republicans, Independents, and Democrats pretty much matched up with the ideological counterparts. 
      People will argue that just because they don't support gay marriage doesn't mean they don't like gay people. Fuck them; it does. People can't say they support some rights for a group of people but not all rights and not be bigoted.
     Support for registered relationships with otherwise equal rights is a big step in the right direction and I honestly think most of those people will come around. Also just because you support gay marriage doesn't necessarily mean you aren't a homophobe.  And the right to marry is not the most important issue for gays. Homelessness, suicide, and sexual abuse are all far more important than the right to marry. But, I still believe support for equal contracts is essential to equal rights.

***Comedy Is Fun***

      Comedy is probably the only arena where nothing is off limits. You can talk about fags, niggers, dikes, spics, honkies, polacks, and wops. That doesn't necessarily mean people will think you're funny and you have to be very careful when involving yourself in this type of humor, lest you fall into the Michael Richards trap. It's perfectly acceptable to point out the differences between rhetoric and action. That's why jokes about Gingrich's affairs are a lot funnier than Clinton's. Clinton jokes have alway been more popular, but still far less satisfying. Clinton never ran on a morality platform, he didn't put forth any contract with America. His affairs didn't make him a hypocrite, only a bit sleazy.

     Just making fun of someones mannerisms is pretty hack. Jokes about your ethnicity are pretty fucking boring, tend to make people uncomfortable, and are often unrelatable. Wow, you're Vietnamese grandmother was so crazy. Who gives a shit? But if you can make intelligent remarks about why people's ideas are invalid and irrational, you've got something. But these jokes can quickly become stale, and it's time to move onto the next person. With so much hypocrisy and cruelty in the GOP, it doesn't take long.