Thursday, June 12, 2014

Corner station goes into suspended animation in No Man's Land


At the end of Everyone retreats in the gas price war, I made the following prediction.
The neighborhood prices are exactly where they are supposed to be given the local price environment, so they should hold relatively steady except for the corner station making its weekly charge into No Man's Land.
That's exactly what happened, except with a twist.  The three stations down the block have remained at $3.85 for the past 11 days since I posted that on the first.  Also, the corner station charged into No Man's Land last Thursday, raising its price to $3.99.  By Saturday, it had dropped down to $3.95.  Normally, it would have matched the rest of the stations by now, but it hasn't.  The reason is simple; the station is closed for construction, so it's not changing its price.  It went into suspended animation on the battlefield.  I think this series might go into hibernation with it.

Instead of making a prediction or checking GasBuddy, I'm going to to off on a TANJit by showing the following video from Discovery News that asks Are We Ready For Suspended Animation?

Suspended animation, or cryogenics, is a procedure where the body is drastically cooled down so that human life can be temporarily stopped. How does it work, are we ready for it, and what are the benefits of this procedure? Trace and Tara discusses how a new, approved study will allow for the testing of suspended animation on humans.
Short-term suspended animation for medicine.  So the technology for interplanetary travel isn't ready yet.  At least it's a start.

4 comments:

  1. This snippet has a link to a PDF you might enjoy.

    'HAS MOTORIZATION IN THE U.S. PEAKED?

    Fewer cars, Less driving

    I suspect you already know of Michael Sivak. But writing on blogs is a public conversation, others may like it.

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    1. Hi, K-Dog! I missed you around here.

      I'm quite familiar with Sivak, since he is a researcher at the University of Michigan. I quote him quite a bit. I've been citing him since the very first month of this blog, when I included his finding that unemployment rate and gas price predict the fuel economy of purchased vehicles in Late Night Motie News Linkspam, the fourth entry in the history of the blog. The entry of mine that featured the finding of his that you pointed out is Happy Motoring in the U.S. has peaked. The most recent entry I mention him is Prices shoot up for summer driving season.

      Just the same, thank you for posting that link. The first two predictions are coming true, at least in terms of lobbying goals, if not regulations. The third is laughable. Production costs of tight oil are too high to make $2.50/gallon gas profitable. $2.99 in the dead of winter, maybe, but not $2.50 as a common occurrence.

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  2. Replies
    1. Thank you, although I'm hope I never have to take advantage of suspended animation. My two experiences under general anesthesia weren't bad, but they both stopped my bowel movements for three days and the second one gave me memory problems that lasted at least six months. I'd rather not repeat that.

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