RealityBucket

It seems the issue of the day is drilling for oil. Well, yeah. If you don’t pay, you can’t play. It’s absurd to have resources in the United States locked up so extensively, and I can’t imagine so much of a conspiracy extant that we’re intentionally sucking the rest of the world dry to have the last laugh with domestic sources.

I believe that, yes, costly gas will trump the ban. No matter how much drilling we do and refinery capacity we finally build, nuclear plants are also imperative. He could have done better about espousing a rational drilling policy, but at least McCain has sense about nukes. They are not your father’s one of a kind, many billions each plants, or at least they needn’t be. Of course, major equipment and infrastructure can take time. There may be elasticity associated with the entire energy market, but it’s of the discountinuous, somewhat brittle kind.

So yeah, about time the idea of heretofore off-limits drilling spread. I was pleased Bush was making sense on that topic, but some say he’s held back too much. If he could have undid executive orders and didn’t, then absolutely, but at least the noises he emits are soothingly correct.

Oil has been cheap for a long time. There are ways in which it being higher will be good, even if you’re not an eco-freak or anti-human prevert. People, meaning companies too, since just like Soylent Green, companies are people, if not always in recognizable form, respond to economic incentives, positive or negative. We’re at a point where the incentives are unambiguous, intense, and unlikely to recede to prior levels for years, if ever. Most of what government policy should be is to get out of the way. In fact, oil is arguably in this mess because of government policy. Heck, not arguably, really.

Drill. Drill soon. Drill widely. Build some freaking refineries so we can use the stuff. Use less of the stuff as gas. Cut it out with the absurd ethanol thing already! Stop starving people in the name of fell good economic inefficiency and pocket lining for limited special interests. Build nuclear plants. Get some efficient, small scale, mass production designs going so it’s even more economical. Put some windmills in Nantucket Sound already, don’t wait until Teddy is dead. And let’s get cracking on those wonderful microbes that excrete crude and make the deep hot biosphere concept sound all the more intriguing.

CEH Wiedel discusses this Arnold Kling article as it applie to her own family and concerns about education and IQ.

I have long and increasingly been of the opinion that things have to change. There are multiple problems or angles.

First, not everything suits the “box” of a traditional college education, and worse, a bachelors degree has become the new high school diploma. Which is a whole other issue - the need to, you know, teach things (and reasoning, though I think in many if not all people the ability exists and it’s the job of the education establishment to break it) in the earlier years of education. Nor does everyone fit the mold of the more purely academic.

Second, government encouragement of higher education has led to a runup in prices beyond all reason, at least as much as government encouragement of home ownership and free lending for same, and at other levels, things like zoning regulations, pushed along the housing market bubble. Something has to give.

Third, and related to the first, some things move too fast, are too specialized, are too modest in scope, or would be better of freed from keeping the educational establishment in power, and increasingly lend themselves to new methods of delivery. The trick will be in the marketing and wide recognition of the worth of alternatives, from remote learning with internet college course delivery on down to whatever else arises.

Fourth, was there a fourth? I forget. This was supposed to be a quick link without a lot of comment, as part of my cathing up project.

Seeing the news of the uncontacted Amazon tribe, and the fact that there are both more of them than I might have imagined had I even considered the possibility of it being non-zero, and that lack of contact is carefully maintained, that gave me pause.

In short: Why?

Why hide from them the current nature of the world and level of civilization, and presumed benefits thereof? Why treat them, if effect, as remote zoo animals, or subhumans not worthy of joining the rest of us?

Arguments could be made the other way, and I might even buy them. It just struck me as a conceited “we know what’s best for your little minds and your little lives” attitude. And if that’s what we’re doing, making an intentional overflight feels like taunting.

Perhaps they’re quite happy, content not knowing better. Perhaps we’d all be. Perhaps some of what bothers me is a commonality with the atavistic death cult pastoralism of the environmentalist fringe. Perhaps many of us imagine a simple life as superior, shades of the desire for the comet to hit and free us from modernity explored in Lucifer’s Hammer.

Most of all, I am fascinated that these people even exist. The pristine primatives, not the modern freaks who want us all to go backward… with them at the top of the hierarchy they would impose.

Food for thought.

I just came out with “Mitt Kerry” as a way to describe why Romney is such a bad idea that he makes mcCain look stolid and Presidential.

Then realized Kerry might possibly have been less panderiffic as President than I expect Romney to be.

The one positive about Romney is that he’s able to be a serious candidate despite being Mormon, much as it’s exciting that Clinton and Obama are serious candidates and could easily get that whole first woman or first black business out of the way so we can try to move on with people are all people and fuck history and any residual hang-ups. Heck, this even applies somewhat to McCain, with respect to age.

It just astonished me that I could conclude that Kerry, a “what were they thinking” candidate from the party if there ever was one, might have been preferable to Romney. And if I am thinking that, what does that say about Clinton and Obama? Would I really want Romney over either of them?

It’s a fascinating election, at any rate.

The funny thing about minivans (and SUVs) is that the same sorts of people who might tend to bash them are ones who would have the breeders strap their children into bulky protective seats until they are 10.

Minivans are useful even if you have only two kids, but mandatory if you have three or more at all proximate in age.

The safety and environmentally conscious, never been poor a day in their lives, how dare you ruin my planet by keeping the population from plummeting types get to unintentionally mandate and openly deride minivans all in one package.

(The above is the text of an e-mail to Glenn Reynolds in reaction to the linked post.)

I have updated my resume page. Eliminated beta and scratch stuff and added a link to the current blogging resume in Word format.

Now back to your regularly scheduled snarkage. Well, if we ever get around to posting any, or recruiting a critical mass of others to post some…