Biofuels: Still NOT a Good Idea!

I was always kind of vaguely suspicious of biofuels - the argument has essentially been over which politician can lavish more subsidies on their constituents in the name of "green fuels" - and finally we have some better proof that FlexFuel vehicles = bullshit.

From the journal Science:

• Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land Use Change

• Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt

New York Times summary of the reports:
Biofuels Deemed a Greenhouse Threat

So basically, when you take into account the carbon dioxide emitted when land is cleared for use in biofuel growth (and eventually, because of substitution effects, some land somewhere is going to get cleared), you put yourself in a deep carbon debt that will take a few generations of using biofuels to escape.

Not to mention the fact that the entire life-cycle carbon cost of biofuels is kind of suspicious as it is. I'm supposed to believe that all of the energy it takes to grow the crops, harvest them, transport them to refineries, and refine them into fuel is less than the amount of energy you get out of the fuel? It's not like I'm breaking new ground in this analysis, check out this article from 2005.

So how much longer do you suppose we'll be hearing from politicians about how important it is to expand federal subsidies for biofuels? I wouldn't expect it anytime soon, if it's one thing that both Republicans and Democrats can agree on, it's that we need to transfer massive amounts of wealth to farmers and agri-business ($618 billion dollars, 2008-2017).

NYTimes Sees a Number, Decides Sky Has Fallen

The magical thing about a recession is that you can't tell if one is happening or not until months later. This puts the news media in a delicate situation. There's no way to report on the thing that everyone is curious about. Reporting about recessions also seems to be a little bit like the Wizard of Oz, if you close your eyes, click your heals, and repeat "the economy may be slipping into recession," it just might happen.

Take, for example, an article today in the New York Times: Productivity Slowed in the 4th Quarter

I have several problems with this article.

1. Productivity did not slow. Productivity is not a thing that can slow, it is a measure of goods produced per unit labor input, so it can only increase or decrease. Productivity growth, on the other hand, can accelerate or slow down.
2. You look at that headline and your first reaction is to think "The US economy was less productive in the 4th quarter, the economy's really in the crapper!" Wrong. Productivity stilled increased, just at a slower rate than before.

Ok, so fine, maybe the headline is a little to pessimistic for me. Perhaps the article is objectively written in a thoughtful manner. But you're no fool, you can tell that I'm just setting you up with that statement.

In the body of the article you find nothing but doom and gloom. Productivity growth slowed to a mere 1.8% annualized growth rate in the 4th quarter, from a blazing 6% annualized rate in the 3rd quarter. Sounds disastrous, right? 1.8 is not a big number! It's certainly not as big as 6!

How about some perspective then? From Gregory Clark's "A Farewell to Alms," page 200, there's a table of long-term productivity growth rates. For the United States, from 1960-2000, the average growth rate of output per worker-hour was 1.75%.

To quote the article itself:

For the year, productivity rose by 1.6 percent, a slight rebound from a 1 percent gain in 2006 but both years were well below the average annual increases of 3.2 percent turned in from 2000 through 2004.

Because 4 years constitutes a reasonable amount of time to use to set your expectations. Seems more likely that we're just looking at productivity growth reverting to the long-term mean.

The whole tone of the article is ridiculous. It's basically written from the tone of "Batten down the hatches, it's going to get rough out here!" when all the data in the article says "We're not in a boom, but we may not be in a recession either." The article admits that productivity growth was twice what economists expected and that the cost of labor was lower than expectations, but then quotes an analysts that says everything is going to hell.

So my point is the New York Times has taken something that really means nothing or could mean anything, and decided to interpret it in the gloomiest possible fashion. What's worse, it's not even an individual reporter that we can blame. Apparently this is just a story from the Associated Press. Every news outlet is going to pick this up and people everywhere are going to clamor for an "economic stimulus" (which is synonymous with "increased deficit spending").

So I guess my point is, maybe there's a recession coming, but there's no way to really tell. Also, for most people, a recession is an entirely abstract thing that you can blame unfortunate economic events on. When you're using a home equity loan to finance your consumption, you have to know it's going to catch up with you eventually. When the entire nation is gripped by this mania, why are we surprised that the economy is slow for a bit? I guess that I just wish the news media had enough economic sense to parse the news a little better by themselves, rather than just weighting their stories to whichever camp has more analysts. Or, failing that, be a little more objective about things.

A Well-Kept Secret

So the other day I felt like going to a play. No particular reason, just realized that I haven't seen any live theater in long time. So I fooled a perfectly nice girl into agreeing to see a play with me.

Now, obviously you have to have a date to a play. As a young, urban, male professional there are some fairly hard and fast rules about who you call when you want to go somewhere. For example, it can make sense to go out to dinner with a platonic female friend, but if I sat down in a restaurant with one of my male friends I would probably just feel like we should have ordered take-out and watched a sporting event instead. You may disagree, but this is my soapbox, so I get to interpret socially acceptable behavior.

So anyway, once you've decided to go to a play and acquired a date (or vice versa), you need a play to go to. I turned to the City Paper, because I assume that they'll know about all sorts of arty, not-profitable things. And that is how I found The Audrey Herman Spotlighter's Theater.

I was dubious at first, I've driven down St. Paul Street a couple thousand times and never noticed said theater. I've been to Mt. Vernon a lot, never heard of a theater besides Center Stage. Sure, I'm not really involved in the arts in Baltimore, but I've never heard of this place. It's not easy to find either, you have to walk around the side of an apartment build, to the sort of entrance that is affectionately referred to as "garden level" by landlords.

Once inside, though, you start to suspect this might actually be a well-kept secret. They sell wine, coffee, and candy in the lobby. $1 candy bars! The theater itself it awesome. It's so intimate, I've been in bigger conference rooms. Seats on all four sides of the stage, no more than 80 seats in the whole place. It's a small stage and you're right there, it's great. The actors were pretty fantastic. What more can you ask for in a theater?

It's absolutely a great experience, I can't believe that something this fun has been right here under my nose for so many years. So get out there and support your local theater! I would even be so bold as to suggest that you don't wait until you've got a date, get a friend or two and go check it out!

Excuse me, would you like something disgusting to drink?

Excuse me, I can see you've just finished a vigorous workout. Do you realize that it's really important to replace your carbohydrates and protein as quickly as possible? Here, let me offer you this totally disgusting beverage.



We call it Clif Shot Recovery drink. We claim that this pale orange concoction is "mango-orange" flavored. We certainly did not come up with that after making the interns taste it and then try to name the flavor, we totally intended to create a "mango-orange" flavored drink. Notice the pleasant agave-rubber scent and the chemical aftertaste, I bet you didn't know that your body could get nutrition from something that tastes like this!

Go ahead, finish the drink! Just hold back that gag reflex for a few more gulps and your body will be in the fast-lane headed towards Recoveryville!

An Ode to a Taco Shell

Every so often you're walking along, just living your life, when WOAH! Holy crap! That's a revolutionary product!


What's so amazing about that box of taco shells? At first, I didn't notice it either. But look closer, those hard taco shells are shaped like a "U" instead of the standard "V!" Revolutionary! A hard taco shell that will stand up on it's own while you fill it with delicious taco things!

Clearly, when you're walking through the taco aisle you're not expecting an entire paradigm shift, but that's exactly what I encountered. So I bought those taco shells (I can't tell you anything about the relative pricing of the various taco shell shapes, but can you put a price on this sort of innovation?) and tonight was taco night.

Let me tell you, those shells work exactly as advertised (in that picture). They sit there calmly on your plate while you make your taco, then remain standing while you make a second taco, then remain standing while you walk to the living room, then remain standing while you eat them! Want to have a drink of apple cider midway through your taco? No problem, just set your taco down on the plate, it will remain standing.

These are the best hard taco shells I have ever have ever experienced. My taco enjoyment was at least 50% above average for a hard-shelled taco!

My only question is, why have I had to live my entire life (to this point) with on V-shaped taco shells? How could we, the human race, miss such an obvious invention for so long? I fully expect these tacos shells will add about a tenth of a percent to US productivity over the next few years. I mean, seriously, think of all the man-hours of taco-spillage clean-up that will be eliminated by U-shaped shells!

Thank you Old El Paso, your Stand 'N Stuff taco shells have rekindled my belief in gigantic food processing companies like General Mills.