Excelsior!!!

THIS IS THE DUMBEST, MOST ECONOMICALY UNSOUND POLICY I THINK I’VE EVER SEEN SINCE CARTER.

What happens when you reduce the cost of a commodity? Demand goes up. What happens when demand goes up? Prices rise. This $100 will achieve absolutely nothing for consumers and will achieve nothing other than cause a brief blip in oil company's revenues. For once can these idiots just stop meddling and let the market do it's job?

Lateness

I fucking hate lateness. More specifically, I hate the mindset that causes lateness (as opposed to lateness caused by unforeseen external forces, which I excuse). I hate it when concerts start an hour and a half later than advertised. I hate that everyone knows that concerts don’t start on time and act accordingly. I hate it when people decide not to go to a party at the time it’s supposed to begin specifically because they don’t want to be there before everyone else arrives. I hate it when people ask me to meet them somewhere, I show up at the agreed upon time and they are consistently never there, but always “about to leave” or “on their way”. I hate that honoring time commitments has often made people consider me to be obsessive, as if merely trying to keep one’s word is somehow an extreme overachievement. Arrgggh!

global warming stuff

Hey, I just finished my global warming debate. Andrew, I used some of your old arguments about bias in academia to show how a consensus among scientists doesn't neccesarily mean they're right, so thanks for the help!

My conclusion after the whole thing...human-induced global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions is probably part of the reason that temperatures are increasing, but not all or even most of it. The consequences are really hard to predict, but will probably be some degree of rise in sea levels, obviously increased temperatures, and generally increased rainfall. If people can continue to develop better technologies, we very well may be able to adapt to the worst of it. Some species of plants and animals will suffer a lot, and some will migrate to better climates, and some we might be able to help with the aforementioned technologies.

Because the system is so complex and hard to predict, though, it may be much, much worse. So, the question is, which scenario should we use for policy decisions. The worst case, the best case, or something in-between? I think it may be wiser to make policy based on the worst case scenario, especially if this involves investments in alternative energy, which would have lots of other benefits too.