Category: Historical

BusinessWeek’s most recent issue featured a new “smarter” look, but some of the writing is as dumb as ever. Always striking me as prone to overbroad, partially innacurate statements, this week’s commentary on energy prices contained several sweeping generalizations that are definitely misleading at best.

Take this line about the recent runnup in gas prices. Because refiners underestimated demand, they cut back on production. Then, when summer driving came in above expectations, prices shot up, allowing refiners’ profit margins to triple or more.

True, they may have cut back on production. But not all of those production cutbacks were intended. A variety of factors affected gas prices in mid-August, including the normal high summer demand leading up to Labor Day, higher crude oil prices, generally low gasoline stock and disruptions such as a broken gasoline pipeline in Arizona, refinery problems in California and the blackout-related refinery shutdowns.The recent blackout halted refining operations in the Northeast and Midwest. Nowhere is there mention of any of the more likely culprits in the BusinessWeek analysis.

They also throw out the line that pats US on the back for our conservation effort. In the U.S., output per unit of energy, adjusted for inflation, is up 77% since 1973, the year of the first Arab oil embargo. While it is true from the data that energy efficiency had increased significantly during the years after the Oil Embargo, the demand for energy has increased dramatically during the years since. And at the same time, measures to further increase efficiency have not taken root, as energy prices have remained relatively favorable since the embargo. According to a 1998 report from the US Energy Information Administration, per capita consumption of energy has not significantly changed, indicating that energy usage has increased per person each year since 1983. So depsite our increased efficiency AND population growth, each person today uses more energy than a person going about his or her day in 1983, on average.

Finally, there’s no real mention of the lack of new refining capacity in the country. Perhaps that’s because the Department of Energy faults deregulation for removing the incentive to create new capacity, something that the anti-regulation BusinessWeek finds disturbing. According to the DoE’s web site

The United States experienced a steep decline in refining capacity between 1981 and the mid-1990s. Between 1981 and 1989, for instance, the number of U.S. refineries fell from 324 to 204, representing a loss of 3 MMBD in operable capacity, while refining capacity utilization increased from 69% to 86%. Much of the decline in U.S. refining capacity resulted from the 1981 deregulation (elimination of price controls and allocations), which effectively removed the major prop from underneath many marginally profitable, often smaller, refineries.

Without the spare capacity that this provided, any disruption in refinery activity, such as a blackout coupled with a pipeline interruption and some routine maintenance is enough to lead to price spikes. But for some unknown reason, BusinessWeek didn’t find it necessary to look in to these issues.

This one last statement in the BusinessWeek article, however, I fully agree with. Global growth isn’t exactly torrid.

I was reading the news this evening, and beyond President Roh of South Korea resigning from the Millenium Democratic Party, there was an alleged sex orgy in a hotel in Zhuhai on September 17 by Japanese tourists gathering at a congratulatory meeting for their company. While still under investigation, what I found most interesting was the general subtext of the article, given this appears in a Japanese newspaper. The most overt line was found toward the end of the article, where they quote the following line from a Chinese newspaper: The People’s Daily newspaper noted that the mass orgy happened on the eve of the 72nd anniversary of the Manchurian incident marking the start of Japan’s invasion of northeastern China. While in Europe World War II may be a memory, albeit a powerful one, in Asia it is still very much alive. From Hong Kong to Singapore, the topic still very much exists and is poignant in ways that it isn’t in the West. China, Korea and Japan still have unresolved issues, flaring up periodically in their diplomatic relations, such as when the Japanese PM visited a certain war shrine in Japan. While still morally outrageous, the fact that it was Japanese tourists accused of having this event occur with Chinese prostitutes only increases the tension level.

Last night was another MND, with an even more successful turnout than in weeks past. The arrival of Mike and Pete made it an even better event, given that I have only seen them once or twice in the past two years. These were the two characters of McCormick who would perform random acts of amusement all around Busch campus during my junior and senior years. A full contingent of the regulars were also there, and this week’s location had some good pizza as well.

All in all, this is rapidly becoming one of the highlight events of the week.

It’s hard to believe sometimes, after growing up in Hunterdon County, that it’s such a rich place. In fact, it’s probably one of the richer places in the States, and it’s easy to forget that this makes it one of the richest places in the world. Funny, though. If money did buy happiness, it certainly seems that there should be a lot more happy people around.

From Slate’s Today’s PapersThe WP continues it dominance in WMD coverage—in fact, it’s been the only consistent source of probing among the big papers—and has been driving reporting of the Wilson investigation. But today’s (two-column) headline doesn’t exactly sum up the one juicy bit in today’s dispatch: “BUSH AIDES SAY THEY’LL COOPERATE WITH PROBE INTO INTELLIGENCE LEAK.” As it happens, the Bush aides also said they won’t look for the potentially felonious leaker unless investigators push them to. Citing WH aides, the Post says Bush has “no plans to ask his staff members whether they played a role in revealing the name.”

Try the new sandwich!

SI has posted its list of 100 Things You Gotta Do Before You Graduate.

At 54, have an artery-clogging sandwich at the Grease Trucks, a group of independently operated trailers on College Avenue in New Brunswick, N.J., home of Rutgers. Many of the delicacies have Fat in the name.

Truthfully, my life this week has been about as quiet as the blog has. Most of my thoughts this week have been consumed by two areas, life in the office and the ongoing frustration of the accident.

I continued playing with the Struts framework in the office as a way of enforcing the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern on our future software development. We also experienced so-so staff meeting where we discussed budgets and the IT organization’s strategy. Concerns around these two topics have led to a noticeable drop in staff morale, and despite attempts from management to communicate on these issues, I would say they’re failing. Their problem, more than anything else, is that by speaking in “buzzword jargon”, the message is lost to interpretation, which only results in further confusion. And so far as I can tell there’s plenty of confusion out there.

I stoppped by the body shop this morning to take a look at the car and get a status update. The good news is that the shop expects to be working on the car by the end of the next week. The bad news is simply how awful it looks. I’ll admit it, I’m spoiled by the many features my car has. I can’t wait to get it back.

A recent commentary in BusinessWeek (Registration Required) provided the most straightfoward summation of why not to vote for Bush in 2004.

The domino effect of removing Saddam has not occurred. Getting rid of him was supposed to clear the way for a new road map for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. It hasn’t. It was supposed to scare North Korea into freezing its program of building nuclear weapons. It hasn’t. It was supposed to curb terrorism in the region. It clearly has had the opposite effect: Before the war, Iraq was not a hotbed of terrorism. Postwar, it is. We created what we said we wanted to prevent.

The bad thing about Monday Night Drinking is Tuesday morning. As usual, I really didn’t feel like getting up. Then again, how many mornings DO I feel like heading off to work? Last night was a good break, as I was able to relax, finish off a magazine (I have a pile of them still to get through), and then head out for a beer and a night of losing at pool.

Yesterday’s less-than-positive news came on the accident report from the police. Specifically, the driver who was responsible for my involvement in the accident last week is, according to the report, uninsured. So now I’m out the $500 deductible and tomorrow I’m renting a car, so I’ll be out an additional $11/day until my car’s fixed. On the flip side, it will be repaired with quality parts since NJM is footing most of the bill and they’ll (hopefully) end up taking the bum to court.