PBS NewsHour on lower oil prices

Gas prices have continued to fall since yesterday's WOOD-TV on lower gas prices.  The neighborhood stations blew right through the $2.35 and $2.32 price levels I expected to $2.29, lower than I would have forecast for this week.  I'd be tempted to call a low for the year, but there is still another week that prices could fall before they historically begin to rise again.

PBS NewsHour has noticed the precipitous decline in oil prices and analyzed the implications of them in Is there a bad side to the recent plunge in oil prices?

Over the last few weeks, the price of oil has dropped dramatically. While this may be good news for consumers, for Wall Street the numbers tell a different story. The Wall Street Journal's Nick Timiraos joins Hari Sreenivasan from Washington, D.C. to help make sense of the downward trend.

The result looks like the beginning of the popping of shale oil bubble forecast by Kunstler in The Instability Express and Crash-O-Matic Finance and Greer in Dark Age America: The Hour of the Knife.  I summed up my take on the financial chaos that could result in a comment at Kunstler's blog.

[T]he weakness in oil is pulling the market down.  What is good news for consumers is not good for investors, and I suspect that the increased spending on consumer goods may not be enough to make up for the bursting of the shale oil bubble.  This is not good, as Wall Street has a way of inflicting its pain on Main Street.

There are other moving parts that intersect with the falling price of crude oil, as PBS NewsHour explains in Sanctions, cheap oil take toll on Russian ruble.

Russia's central bank hiked a key interest rate nearly 7 points overnight in a dramatic move to stabilize the economy. The ruble has lost 60 percent of its value since January, and Russians have been feeling the economic pinch of inflation. Jeffrey Brown reports how the falling price of oil and Western sanctions have hurt the Russian economy.

Hurting Russia and Iran might be a good thing from the perspective of both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, but it might come at a high price in terms of loss of American oil production.  Elaine Meinel Supkis thinks this will backfire with Russia coming out OK and the U.S. and Saudi Arabia harming themselves instead, but I think she's lost it and she is too wedded to a model of the world that doesn't work.

As for what I think will harm us, follow over the jump.

ISIS looks like Sith, not Jedi

With Kunstler shifting gears from Ukraine to Iraq in Heads, You Lose, it's time to share this rotten tomato I threw at Elaine Meinel Supkis in the comments to her blog this week.  I'll begin with her set-up last week, Pentagon Continues To Redo Computer-generated Uniforms That Look Increasingly Stupid.

The US patrol of Iraq was a howling failure and this photo shows one element of this failure: the ridiculous way our troops looked.
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Yes, they have lethal weapons.  But they are way overburdened with junk and look sad sack to boot.  Lucas Films has this right:

If these Jedi Knights showed up wearing camo pajamas, no one would be amazed, they would laugh at them.  I would also suggest this should have been the uniforms worn by our Afghan troops.  Then, the Taliban would at least felt they were honorable fighters and not mud walls.

She elaborated her point using her personal experience in comments.

Rulers knew eons ago you have to LOOK the role.

I used to fight medieval style in the SCA years ago. I would enter the battlefield with full pomp, ceremony and wearing classy armor, shield painted with my standard arms, gold leaf details on the edges of the armor, etc.

The sun shone on me and I was brave!

Monday, she followed through with Al Qaeda Soldiers Look Like Jedi Knights As I Explained Why Mud Wall Uniforms Are For Losers.

The other day, I wrote about the ugly computer generated mud wall uniforms worn by NATO, US troops invading Muslim nations.  Look at the al Qaeda fighters!  As I compared earlier to Star Wars, they ARE ‘Star Wars Jedi Knights’.  Only very, very brutal.  These vicious men are out to rule with an iron fist and they will succeed because Iraq was tottering off a cliff ever since Saddam disarmed and let the US invade.

At this point, I threw the rotten tomato at her.

Jedi wore brown; these guys wear black. That means that the ISIS fighters look like the Sith from the days of the Old Republic, back when there were more than two at a time. That’s what you get when you have vicious, brutal people with the power of Jedi Knights [who want to rule with an iron fist]. They may be strong in The Force, but they serve the Dark Side. All they need are the red-bladed light sabers.

That was two days ago, and so far I still have the last word.

Floods in Colorado, the other top post for the third year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News, plus other climate news

According to the secondary counter, Floods in Colorado from ABC News and University of Colorado, posted September 15, 2013, is the third most viewed entry from the third year of this blog and the third most popular in the entire history of the blog with 1201 page views, behind both Space news for Apophis Day in second and first place Finally, a Ringworld movie!  However, according the the primary counter, it's not only the most viewed entry of last year, but the number one entry in the history of the blog with 1135 page views, an achievement I commemorated in My stats didn't fall in October.

Floods in Colorado from ABC News and University of Colorado, finished its climb from 841 page views in September through 939 page views to finish October with 1163 page views, making it the most read entry in the history of this blog, kicking The Buzz about Detroit for the week ending May 28, 2011 from Model D Media out of the top 10 on the way.  That one went to number one on its own, although I padded its lead by linking to it at Kunstler's blog.

I'm not sure what propelled that entry unless it got linked somewhere that used "no follow," but it attracted readers for weeks, pushing the blog's page views to a monthly record.

This month was the first in which the blog passed 12,000 page views.  I had an inkling it was going to happen during the week of October 15-22, when the rolling 30-day view counter passed 12,000 page views every day.  Even that is no guarantee, as readership could have still slowed down.  It did, but not enough to keep the blog from passing 10,000 page views early Saturday the 26th, 11,000 on Monday the 28th, and 12,000 on Halloween, ending up with 12,295 page views for the month.

Yes, the entry set one record and helped set another.  Too bad for it that I changed my procedure for ordering entries this year.  Still, it does deserve recognition as the other top post.

It was not the only entry about climate and weather to make this year's top twenty.  Follow over the jump for the rest.

Fukushima radiation being monitored in U.S. kelp beds

Once again, I’m getting a signal from the universe to talk about a topic, in this case, Fukushima.  First, Elaine Meinel Supkis is ranting about Fukushima again.  Then one of my students asked if she could talk about Fukushima for her presentation this semester.  Finally, I watched this video and read the accompanying articles for Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Science of Relationships) on Daily Kos.  The third anniversary of the tsunami may be next month, but it looks like the time to write about this ongoing story is now.

KPBS: Fukushima Fallout: San Diego State Researchers Monitoring Sea Kelp For Radiation Exposure

San Diego State University researchers will be joining in a new program to monitor one of the most vulnerable areas of the marine environment — kelp beds — for radioactive isotopes.

Also read the accompanying article and SDSU Professor Helps Test California Kelp For Radiation Exposure From Fukushima Disaster.  The following comes from the first link.

Now San Diego State University researchers will be joining in a new program to monitor one of the most vulnerable areas of the marine environment —kelp beds — for radioactive isotopes.

"The root reason for this study is there's a nuclear disaster and the waters around Fukushima are heavily contaminated," said Matthew Edwards, professor of biology at SDSU, who is part of the research team, "...we know there's a major impact there (Japan)...the question becomes: Is it going to impact other ecosystems?"

From the second link, Edwards thinks that the answer for the kelp beds along the U.S. Pacific coast and the people on land near them will probably be no.

Q. My understanding is that you doubt if radiation is detected, it will pose a public health threat. Why is that?

A. It's not that I doubt it will be detected. Our levels of detection are quite good with the instruments we have. However, by the time the waters reach our coast they've traveled great distances and it's been some time. And as water travels across the ocean it dilutes greatly.

Q. There's some confusion over "detectable" amounts of radiation and "harmful" amounts. If they're not harmful, or of concern, would there still come a point where they could affect the food chain?

A. At the levels we're talking about right now, I don't believe so.

I’d post Professor Farnsworth, but I’m not that optimistic.  Just the same, this news is another good example of three things that I teach my students: Everything is connected to everything else; There is no away; and There is no free lunch.

Spygames and paranoia 1: That's not Cthulhu on the patch

I included a story in Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Die, Selfish Gene!) that has been inspiring suspicion, if not downright paranoia.  The odd part is that it's the publicity that's doing this as much as the secrecy.  First, here's the U.S. Air Force showing the Atlas V NROL-39 Launch.

The United Launch Alliance (ULA) have launched their Atlas V rocket on the NROL-39 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office. Liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California was on schedule at the opening of the launch window at 23:13 local time Thursday (07:13 UTC on Friday).

KPBS has more in Atlas V Rocket Launches From California Air Base On Top Secret Mission (Video) By Beth Ford Roth on Friday, December 6, 2013.

A 19-story tall rocket called the Atlas V launched from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base late Thursday night, carrying a top secret payload for the U.S. government's National Reconnaissance Office.

The mystery payload is the size of a loaf of bread, and weighs just 11 pounds, according to American Forces Press Service.

So far, it's a run of the mill reconnaisance mission, although I'm surprised that an Atlas V is launching such a small payload.  According to Wikipedia, the rocket is capable of lifting much larger objects to geosynchronous orbit.*  That's not what's freaking people out.  This is.


That prompted a user on Daily Kos to call it Cthulhu and point it the mission's motto, "Nothing is beyond our reach."  Sorry, that's just an octopus, not Cthulhu, and the motto is just another military badass boast.  That didn't stop people from thinking the worst.

The next day, there was an entire thread about the mission on Daily Kos.  I'm not going to quote any of it; you'll just have to see for yourselves the level of distrust and outright paranoia the patch alone is eliciting.

Yesterday, Elaine Meinel Supkis jumped on the bandwagon with NROL-39: The Evil Octopus Emblem Perfect For Bilderberg Gang Controlling US Citizens.  I'm taking this as yet another sign that Elaine has lost the plot.  Too bad.  Once upon a time, I really enjoyed her writing and was delighted to be in her virtual company.  No longer.

Just the same, I think everyone is going nuts over the symbolism, not the substance.  I'm sure it's another surveillance mission of other countries, not a domestic spying instrument.  If they want something to freak out about, it's the spying going on inside the World of Warcraft.  That's real.  It's also silly.  Stay tuned for more on this story.

ETA: Follow over the jump for some answers to my question about the size of the payload and the nature of the mission.

Nixon spied on Earth Day participants

I'm reading a lot about the NSA surveillance program, whether on Facebook or on blogs like Elaine Meinel Supkis's Culture of Life News, who noted that domestic surveillance has been going on a long time.  As she wrote, "I exposed CIA/FBI spying on students in the sixties."  Mind you, she's doing this while ranting about the Bilderbergers, which suggests to me that she's losing it.  That doesn't mean that she's wrong about this point.

On Earth Day this year, Becky Oskin of OurAmazingPlanet recounted How President Nixon Spied on Earth Day.

The launch of Earth Day in 1970 raised suspicions in Washington, D.C., according to former Representative Pete McCloskey, one of the organizers of the first Earth Day.

The annual event was launched as a national teach-in on April 22, 1970, by former Senator Gaylord Nelson, McCloskey and others. Earth Day galvanized a political movement that led to some of the country's most significant environmental legislation, including the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act.

At a panel discussion on the Endangered Species Act and its future, held Jan. 31 at the Western Section of The Wildlife Society's annual meeting in Sacramento, Calif., McCloskey recalled the FBI's scrutiny of the event. According to McCloskey, President Richard Nixon ordered the FBI to observe college students across the country.

The FBI found nothing.  Just the same, while Elaine may have gone over the deep end, she's right about this one.  Environmentalists are being watched and have been since the beginning of the movement.

If you're interested in this sort of thing, I recommend Green is the new Red, which specializes in stories about domestic intelligence and police activity against enviromental and animal rights activists.  It so happens that they have a story related to the NSA as I write this: How the NSA Kept Us From Knowing About a Previous, Illegal Domestic Spy Program in 2006.  I suggest you read it.

Ron Paul rides off into the sunset

Ron Paul suspended his campaign the day before yesterday. WOOD-TV used that piece of news to begin And then there were two.






This makes for the fourth GOP candidate for whom I've bothered to make a label on this blog to leave the race. In honor of this occasion, I will bid him adieu, just as I did when Gingrich, Santorum, and Cain exited the contest. Join me over the fold for Ron Paul's greatest hits on Crazy Eddie's Motie News.

This made for a fun early birthday present

Yesterday, I saw Inexpedient blog as one of my traffic sources for Crazy Eddie's Motie News and decided to see for myself who was directing traffic my way. Imagine my delight when I viewed the following.





Yes, that's a screenshot of the Delightfully Disreputable blogroll on the Inexpedient blog displaying my blog's place of honor between James Howard Kunstler's Clusterfuck Nation and Elaine Meinel Supkis's Culture of Life News.   This is exactly the company I want my blog to keep.

Nablopomo for August: Fiction

Seems like only yesterday.

By the way, next month's theme for Nablopomo is Fiction. I'm participating. Here's the badge.



More on this theme beginning tomorrow, which will be in a few minutes. See you then!

Time to share the following from my email.

August's theme for daily blogging: FICTION. Certainly, blogging is about truth-telling; recording our lives. But how often does fiction seep into our reconstruction of our day? Is it important to always be honest, or can we skew the facts to present a better story?Beyond that, how can you not enjoy delving into a work of fiction? Finding a new world, new characters, new inventions that didn't exist until the writer placed them on the page. This month, we have to spend some time sharing our favourite books, authors, and characters.

I've been waiting for a theme like this to come along for months, as I have a whole bunch of book-related posts that I've been promising to do, going all the way back to April, when I wrote three entries in which I said I'd revisit the topic.

Weekly Roundup for July 10th through 16th, 2011

This past week was the busiest so far at Crazy Eddie's Motie News, whether one measured it in terms of posts (14), page views (1577), or comments (13). This topped last week, where the comparable stats were eleven posts, 832 page views, and only five comments, itself a very good week. For comparison, this blog averaged 560 views/week during all of May and June, 486 views/week for April, May, and June, its first three full months, and 488 views/week the week before last. As I mentioned in Boosting the signal about Oak Park's "War on Veggies", I thank the readers of Oak Park Hates Veggies for making this possible, with 369 referrals last month, at least 216 of which came last week alone. This puts Julie Bass's blog in third place as the source of views for this blog throughout its history so far, behind only Kunstler's blog, where I have been promoting my blog every week since my first post here, and Google, which just happens to own Blogspot. Again, thank you, and keep reading!




This past week also saw another milestone--my first spam comments. I know a blog hasn't arrived until it gets enough traffic to make it a worthwhile target for spammers.That's the good news. The bad news is that I should be careful what I wish for.

Honestly, I'd like more comments. I could even deal with a couple of trolls, as I'm not above trolling my own comments sections.

Trolls I don't mind, as I can hold my own against them. Spammers are another matter. From July 13th:

This blog achieved a milestone today. It received its first spam comment. However, it's not such a milestone that it was worth saving. The spam was canned.

Now, July 16th:

This blog has arrived. I've gone from no spam comments to not one, but two spam comments in one week. I have advice for you. If you want to promote your blog or a relevant news story, fine. If you want to advertise for a commercial enterprise not germane to the topic of this blog (and education isn't really it), your comment will be hidden. Bye!

I don't make any money off this blog, so no one else gets to, either!

Enough of my swimming against the stream of spam--on to the week's posts in review.

Boosting the signal about Oak Park's "War on Veggies"

In addition to my posts about the travails of Julie Bass here on Crazy Eddie's Motie News, I've been blogging about it elsewhere, beginning with posts to my Dreamwidth and my LiveJournal. I've also posted it to ontd_political on Dreamwidth, unfunnybusiness on JournalFen, and peakoil_prep and ontd_political twice on LiveJournal. The results have been very satisfying.

For starters, those posts have received lots of comments. The winner so far has been the first post on ontd_political on LJ, Michigan Woman could go to jail for planting vegetable garden, which prompted 126 comments. Next is the unfunnybusiness post, Woman in Oak Park, Michigan, could go to jail up to 93 days for planting a garden, with 39 comments. The followup to ontd_political, Update: Michigan woman no longer going to jail for her garden but now in trouble for her dogs, has 21 comments and counting. The mirrored posts on my LJ currently have nine comments and their counterparts on Dreamwidth have six. In contrast, I have a grand total of eight comments on the same posts so far here on Crazy Eddie's Motie News.

This mirrors the situation with the rest of the Swim posts here on Crazy Eddie's Motie News, which have a grand total of three comments on the non-Julie Bass posts, two on the five posts about Kunstler and one on the post about Elaine Meinel Supkis, two once I respond. In contrast, the LiveJournal mirror of James Howard Kunstler swims against the stream on gender role equality, too alone received 13 comments, which I pointed out in Follow up to women in Kunstler's fiction. Honestly, I'd like more comments. I could even deal with a couple of trolls, as I'm not above trolling my own comments sections.

On the other hand, I have been getting readers from the signal boosting posts, with 108 views from JournalFen and 69 from ontd_political on LJ during the past week, handily beating out what I'm getting from Facebook, just 16 referrals. Even the hits coming from my own LJ, nine so far this week, are beating out what came in from Twitter, which is not even in the top ten sources. Facebook and Twitter may be the big boys on the blog, but they aren't the traffic drivers people think they are. Google, on the other hand, is my friend, with 176 hits. The big winner turns out to be Julie's own blog, which referred 296 readers in one week. Thank you, all of you coming here from Oak Park Hates Veggies!

Just the same, I've had nine days in a row and 11 days out of the last 12 with more than 100 hits, so I have no room to complain. On that note, welcome new readers, and keep the page views coming!

Weekly Roundup for July 3rd through 9th, 2011

It was another busy week on Crazy Eddie's Motie News, as I posted eleven entries to this blog during a seven-day period again. In fact, it was so busy that I didn't get around to posting the weekly roundup until now, Sunday evening. Going on a field trip with my Geology classes all day Saturday and then going to a colleague's pool party Saturday night didn't help. As I've written before, I can't be all doom all the time. Good thing I was able to program my Saturday posts in advance.

As usual, I started off the week with part one of a four-part sustainability news linkspam, Sustainability news from Michigan's research universities for the week ending July 2, 2011. That series continued with part two, Sustainability news from midwestern research universities for the week ending July 2, 2011. As with last week's part three, I posted this week's part three, Sustainability news from national commercial sources for the week ending July 2, 2011, last. In fact, I didn't get around to doing it until Friday. Don't worry, that won't happen this week, for no other reason that I won't have that kind of part three this week. Like last week, there was a themed part four posted before part three, An update on The CoDominion planning for sustainability. I don't think there will be one of those, either. If there is, it will be news from local sources, as I was having way too much fun last week doing other things on this blog to actually post about them.





Speaking of "having way too much fun last week doing other things on this blog," I got into the "swim" of this month's NaBloPoMo theme by posting about sustainability bloggers swimming against the flow. That series started last week with Woman in Oak Park swims against the stream, plus Nablopomo for July, but I didn't return to Julie Bass until the end of the week. Instead, I decided to have some fun with James Howard Kunstler first.

Kunstler inspired the four posts in the series, beginning with James Howard Kunstler swims against the stream on marriage equality. Kunstler may consider himself a liberal, but he's very much the classic conservative on a range of issues. I pointed that out in Happy 4th of July from James Howard Kunstler's Tea Party!--I did tell you that I observe three patriotic holidays as part of my blogging, Canada Day, Independence Day, and Bastille Day; two down, one to go! In that post, I not only highlighted Kunstler's positions that conflict with most liberals, but also told him and his readers that the ones that don't fit right in with those of the Coffee Party. The next two posts followed up on the first one, beginning with James Howard Kunstler swims against the stream on gender role equality, too, which I mirrored to my LiveJournal. The mirror post spawned a lively discussion that I commented about in Follow up to women in Kunstler's fiction. Sex roles and sustainability? Hey, I specialize in sustainability in unexpected places--Slutwalk in Grand Rapids and Sustainability in archeology, anyone?

I then moved on from Kunstler, for this past week at least, to his estranged neighbor in Elaine Meinel Supkis uses anime and draws fan art to make sustainability points, which updated a three year old review of her on I posted to my LiveJournal. I plan on posting more about Elaine, as she really marches to her own drummer--generally in a good way.

Not all who swim against the flow are bloggers. Some of them might be nations, as I explained in The end of an era: last space shuttle mission. I think the United States is in danger of acting out one of the great tragic tropes of science fiction in real life if it abandons manned space flight. After all, this blog is "sustainability with a science fiction slant"--a phrase never before used on the internet, if Google is to be believed--so of course I'd look at the event that way.

I ended the week by returning to Julie Bass and Oak Park's "War on Veggies" with Brief update on Oak Park's war on veggies for week ending July 9th. Unlike Kunstler and Meinel Supkis, Julie's story is up close and personal and has real world stakes for her. It's also gone viral, as the first post in the series dealing with her, Oak Park Woman plants vegetable garden; city objects was number one for the week for the second week in the row, winning the "back catalog" category. Not only was it the most popular for the week, it's been number one for the day for three days in a row, and number one for the month. Over the past weekend, I've watched it climb the top ten all time list until it's now the third most viewed post in the history of this blog. As I wrote in the first post of this week, Oak Park's "War on Veggies" goes viral, "Behold the power of Drudge."

That concludes last week on Crazy Eddie's Motie News. Stay tuned for more "swim" posts as well as the sustainability news linkspams.

Elaine Meinel Supkis uses anime and draws fan art to make sustainability points

In James Howard Kunstler swims against the stream on gender role equality, too, I mentioned another blogger in passing.

By the way, was one of the people who objected to your protrayal of women your neighbor up on the hill, Elaine Meinel Supkis?* I know she thinks you got it wrong about dogs in the "World Made by Hand" and I agree with her.
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* Elaine Meinel Supkis blogs on Culture of Life News. I reviewed her old blog on my LiveJournal. She is another great example of a blogger swimming against the tide who deserves her own post, and I'll have to review her new blog later this month. Yes, my plate continues to fill up.

I may as well repost that brief review.

I present to you Elaine Meinel Supkis, the weirdest financial blogger I've read who still makes any sense.

Yeah, she wears a tinfoil beanie, but in my years of following weirdos online, I've learned how to spot the ones who actually know what they're talking about and should be taken seriously. She's one of them.

One of her most endearing traits is that she uses anime characters to make her points, something that goes over most of her readers' heads, but not mine. Here she is using Risky and Safety.

Killing Corrections Can Be Fatal To Economies

Here she is using Fullmetal Alchemist.

Terrorist Threats to Goldman Sachs And Financial Threats From Within
THE END OF TIME...

And here she is using Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo.

Treasuries Fall To Japanese Levels: 0.02%

FWIW, she's probably the person holding up the "Fail" sign in this photo.





As you can see, she manages to be simultaneously amusing and terrifying while she informs her readers. What a great find!

It turned out that she wasn't the one holding up that sign, but one of the Ron Paul followers sitting near her. Darn.

However, she did draw her own Risky and Safety for that first post I linked to. Yes, a 50-something woman was drawing anime fan art to make a political and economic point. Here's the image.





And here's the actual Risky and Safety from the anime for comparison.  Oddly enough, it's from a poster my youngest daughter and I used to possess.





She got close enough so that anime fans like me could recognize the source material, yet be using her own character designs. I thought that was really cute. I still do, and I'll have to see if she continues to draw fan art and posts it at her new site.

The Livejournal entry I posted above wasn't the only time I mentioned Elaine outside of her blog. I did so in this Usenet post. The heart of that post came from the comments to the post I cited as an example of her using Gankutsuou. I mentioned to her that she should also watch Fullmetal Alchemist, as the show was "very much about what happens when people raid the Cave of Wealth and Death." I found her response both illuminating and revealing.

Full Metal Achemist starts out as a 'child's story' and ends up being this terrifying and amazing tale about time travel and the Cave of Wealth and Death, Naziism, hyper-scientist exploitation of natural forces and magic.

It is one of the most comprehensive reviews of modern magic. Far, far, far more potent and powerful than the stupid Harry Potter series.

And the anime ends literally with Eric seeking out the real-life fathers of the GERMAN rocket program with the hint that Eric will return to his alternate universe via the US space program after meeting my dad in Germany in April, 1945!!!!!

I nearly fainted at that part since the story was aimed at the idea, Eric would find someone who could time travel in the Outer Darkness....and so on. HAHAHA. He had to do this at China Lake and it involved nuclear bombs outside of Las Vegas......my childhood....

Actually, I am not invisible in Japan.

My reponse was incredulous.

*Blink*

These two are your parents?

It turns out they were.  Truth is stranger than fiction, as reality has no editors.

As for her telling Kunstler that he was wrong about dogs in his post-peak-oil future, she did so in her review of "A World Made by Hand." It's a long post, and she has even more to say about dogs on both her old site and her new one, so look for my commentary on those posts later.