A new monetary standard?

I saw a fascimile of a $5 bill with "good for one gallon of gas" on it. While intended to be a simple commentary on the price of fuel these days, it also left me with another thought; what if the Fed did link the dollar to fuel?

One possible beneficial side effect would be that if the Fed and Congress wanted to devalue the dollar via inflation, they'd have to open up drilling in places like ANWR, the Bakken formation, and offshore in California and Florida.

I'm working on figuring out the downside.....

Some thoughts for parents

When you take your child to the doctor, keep in mind that:

1. When they tell you that the "patient information forms" are private, they're wrong. Privacy only holds until they (mandatory reporters of crime under most state laws), a social worker, or your insurance company decides they need to release the information. In other words, the only privacy you have ends once any interested party in this list wants the data.

2. They're getting a lot of their information on firearms from suspect sources like the Brady Campaign. Here's a better source. I plan on surprising my kids' pediatrician with little facts like the actual rate at which firearms are used to defend families--source being the U.S. Department of Justice.

3. If you've been a parent for a while, you've noticed that their advice about nutrition and other things seems to change quite regularly. For example; when my first was born, we were warned "no milk until age 1," and to use whole milk until age 2. Now we're told to start milk before age 1 (along with other foods previously proscribed, and use skim milk after age 1.

In other words, outside the truly "medical" portion of the training of pediatricians, I'm seeing more and more evidence that the advice we're hearing from them is at best an educated guess. At worst, it's a repetition of propaganda.

I hope and pray that they retain basic medical expertise in their core competency. However, when they miss the boat on a fair number of things, I have to start to question their wisdom on issues like vaccination as well. You cannot be sloppy with evidence in one area, and then expect me to believe you're going to be careful with evidence in other areas.

Speaking of which, see the latest study for/against the use of coffee?

What about electric cars?

Reader & sometimes poster Brian Compton put a couple of links to prototype/production electric cars, and I figured that it might be a public service to give a little opinion on them. Now as a EE myself, I ought to love the idea. You have a flat torque curve, very few moving parts, no emissions from the vehicle, no "bomb" below the back seat (gas tank), and you can dispense with both an engine and transmission with multiple gears. There is a reason we use electric drive for things like golf carts and forklifts.

When it comes to passenger automobiles, however, I'm yet to be convinced--though as Brian's links showed (look in comments past couple of posts), there are certainly a lot of smart people working hard to prove me wrong.

Why will it be difficult? Look at a periodic table of the elements, and view the atomic weights of hydrogen, lithium, and nickel. Hydrogen is the main energy source in gasoline, ethanol, and natural gas. Lithium and nickel are the main energy sources in high tech batteries--and given that lithium is the lightest metal, it's extremely unlikely that we'll find a way of making a battery that's much lighter than lithium ion technology. Lithium is also fairly rare, and is electrolytically isolated from solutions "rich" in the element--it's really quite a difficult element to get, and cost $38/lb back in 1998, according to Wiki.

The end result is that when you use batteries instead of gasoline for energy, you need about ten times the weight for your power source. Hence, any vehicle that needs to go a serious distance is going to need hydrocarbon fuels, and it's also likely that any vehicle that needs to be inexpensive will be using ordinary, hydrogen based fuels for the foreseeable future.

Don't get me wrong; I wish those developing these vehicles all the best. I just don't know that physics and chemistry are likely to cooperate.

War on boys, war on girls,

....or war on both? It's popular in some areas to complain about how boys are hurt by eliminating playgrounds, typically feminine worship services, school formats, and so on. It's popular in others to complain about how girls don't get a fair shake in various areas.

Me? I'm pretty sure that our culture wages war on both. Boys are told that they've got to go to college whether they've got the aptitude or desire or not--and end up in debt and without the mechanic's certification they could have really used. Girls are told to get rid of their dolls and forget about cooking or sewing, and get out there on the basketball court. Boys are told to eschew their desire to defend others--the instigator and the victim of a fight get punished equally, after all. Girls are told to get their master's degree--wait until their career is started and their fertility is gone to try and meet someone and start a family. "Make sure you've got your 40 credits for Social Security!"

Is it any surprise that, having been excluded from the ordinary passtimes of boyhood and girlhood, that boys and girls tend to put their sex on display in an inappropriate way? Is the sports fixation of young men, and the immodesty of young women, simply an attempt to tell the world "I am man" or "I am woman" when all other ways of identification have been denied them?

It's probably an over-simplification, but I don't know that we can over-emphasize Biblical masculinity and femininity.

Stuck on stupid

I arrived home last night after a softball game (we lost, but had a great time) to find a few hilarious, but highly irritating things in the mail.

The IRS is apparently sending my family a stimulus of $2700, despite the fact that I didn't pay any federal income tax last year. (lots of FICA, no income tax.....child tax credit works wonders) I'm guessing I'm going to end up paying most of it back next April. Thanks for complicating my personal finances, IRS.

Chevrolet has come out with a hybrid Malibu that gets all of 32mpg on the highway. The standard version gets 30mpg. Thousands of dollars extra for 2mpg gain? Hybrids are a scam to begin with, but this is incredible.

(might be good for a taxi driver or courier in the city, but for the rest of us?)

My local car dealer is offering insurance to those who buy a car with little or no down payment. The purpose? If you crash it and total it, it pays the difference between what you owe and the value of the car when you total it. Apparently, the concept of putting enough money down to avoid being "upside down" on your loan hasn't occurred to a large portion of car buyers.

When it comes to finances, America is sadly stuck on stupid.

ROI on a $10,000 bicycle

I've done a few reviews on the "return on investment" for hybrid cars, light rail, bus transit, and more, and I figure that I ought to continue with the ROI for really primo bicycles, say like this Trek graphite from a local bike shop. Look here, though, and you'll find that if you go European custom, you can easily pay as much for your ride as for a nice new minivan.

So what's the ROI here in Minnesota? Well, let's assume that you ordinarily can ride six months per year, and you drive the ordinary distance per year of about 12,000 miles in your car. If you're a really "gonzo" cyclist, you might be able to get a good 4000 miles per year.

At an average cost to drive of about fifty cents per mile, that would be an annual return of about $2000. Not too shabby. Of course, you might be able to achieve that with an ordinary $1000 bike with clipless pedals. What do you get, then, by going from a 30lb bike to a 15 lb super-bike?

Well, if you're the average 150 lb person, you've got a 10% reduction in rolling resistance--you can thus go about 10% farther with the same effort.

No self-respecting cyclist, though, would be content to go the same speed, of course, and you then go that extra 10% about 10% faster--realizing (being a gonzo cyclist) that you can now can go 10% further yet and still get home in time for dinner. For those who drive partway and then ride due to time constraints, this is even better--you can go about 15% further and not encur further loss of time.

There is a cost, of course; you're now about 10% stronger, and hence you can go another 10% further--35% in all, or about 1400 miles per year or $700 annually. If we assume a bike can last 10 years/50,000 miles and a P/E of 10, this justifies a $3500 bicycle.

Not quite at the $10k mark yet, but let's look at the gorilla in the corner; medical care. It's estimated that smoking, poor diet, and lack of exercise accounts for 55% of the ~$6k/person spent on medical care annually--let's assume that exercise amounts to about 1/3 of the needless cost, or about 18% or $1080 of the total.

You could argue that it's not realizable, but keep in mind that Mediscare is going to be insolvent soon, and you'll be stuck with the bill in your retirement; yes you will realize the cost or savings of your actions. So we're at about $1800/year in savings from bicycling, enough to cost justify a $9000 bicycle.

We didn't quite get to cost-justify a $10k bike, but we came a lot closer than we could with, say, transit or hybrid cars. No, I haven't bought one yet, but I did buy a pair of cycling shoes/pedals to see if I could start getting a 10% boost over what I've had.

Say What?

SayAnythingBlog has been doing a few posts on how Sioux Manufacturing of North Dakota systematically cheapened Kevlar fabric intended for use in body armor for our soldiers. Now a few things catch my eye about this, starting with the fact that it wasn't just Sioux that ignored the problem for a long time; it was also "Unicor Federal Prison Industries" and the Army itself.

For starters, this suggests that some heads way up need to roll for cheapening body armor. When every QC organization misses a problem, that at least suggests somebody up high was working to insure that things "slide by."

Worse, what on earth are we doing trusting prisoners to make body armor? We start with a group of people who are in that factory because of their disregard for life and property, pay them a pittance for their work, and then we're going to assume they're going to do their jobs as well as free men paid a real wage? I can understand license plates and picking up road trash--the penalty for failure isn't high. But body armor?

Leave it to government to make sure that we have plenty of potentially lethal lapses in product quality.

Why the China earthquakes were so lethal

Look at this. Very closely. What do you see?

You see foot thick concrete, and no rebar to brace it. Thankfully, not everything there was built like this road apparently was, but the fact that anyone would consider laying down concrete without a bit of steel (in one of China's chief steelmaking regions) speaks volumes about how things were (sadly) done there.

And yes, rebar alone would not have prevented all of this tragedy--earthquake zone architecture is more sophisticated than that--but the lack of it in certain places speaks volumes about a commitment (or lack thereof) to basic building codes.

Book review

I just finished reading Frederick Bastiat's Harmonies of Political Economy, available from the Mises Institute (gratuitously!), and I'm close to convinced that this ought to be a, if not the, starting text for any student starting in economics.

What makes Bastiat unique? First of all, the man knew how to write, and it shows even in translation. The prose is gorgeous. More importantly, though, he derives his ideas not only from the typical historical/economic analysis ("let's imagine you are Robinson Crusoe"), but also from a profoundly moral and religious sense. Bastiat does not rest with a mechanical analysis of supply and demand, as so many would today, but begins with the concepts of liberty and God's grace to man--building a great portion of his work on the notion that one of the mainsprings of modern prosperity was the "gratuitous" nature of many of the forces that work for our prosperity.

In some ways, it's not even predominantly a treatise on economics per se, but rather a response to the socialism that was rampant in the late 1840s; Bastiat clearly demonstrates how the assumptions of socialism--the ones we all learned from such sources as Rousseau and his contemporaries--are at odds with liberty and morality.

The writing against socialism dates his work fairly clearly; the February revolution to which he refers was in 1848, and he died in 1850. As such, the last few chapters were written as he knew that he was going to die, and accordingly he emphasises even more the moral and religious nature of liberty; there are true and false religions, and religions whose laws are in accord with, and conflict with, natural law. Bastiat for the most part finds that natural law and Biblical law speak with one voice.

There are certain things about which I have reservations, but on the whole, this book is well worth the time needed to read it. It is at once a better primer on economics than Adam Smith or Say, and also a much needed connection between economics, morality, and the Scriptures.

Completely missing the point

Evidently, Paul McCartney had a luxury hybrid car FLOWN to him halfway around the world to avoid waiting for its delivery via ship, using something like 6000 gallons of jet fuel to do so. I don't think I can think of a better picture of a limousine liberal, with the possible exception of Al Gore and his private jets and 10000 s.f. mansion using 10x the energy of an ordinary home.

For reference, 6000 gallons of jet fuel (very similar to diesel) will power a 3/4 ton (diesel) Ford or Chevy pickup for about 120,000 miles. Also for reference, an unloaded 3/4 ton pickup also gets about the same mileage as McCartney's new "environmentally sound" hybrid.

You want an environmentally sound luxury car? Try this. Or a Super Duty Ford or 3/4 ton Chevy, or a Suburban or Tahoe. You can skip the gas guzzling hybrid Lexus, though.