Nobrainer’s Think Tank

As I begin to write this, it is 1AM Eastern and 10PM Pacific.

The trip began Tuesday around 6PM. Rachel and I departed Charlottesville. After a handful of stops to top off the tanks, we cruised into Wha’s house in Huntersville around 10:15. After a couple beers and some catching-up time, I took a shower and hit the sack.

Fast-forward about 5 hours to 4:30AM Wednesday – time to wake up. After a lone use of the snooze alarm, we were mostly awake. By 5 we were out of the house and on the road to Charlotte-Douglas Airport. In no time we parked in a purple-lit garage, checked in with Delta, and passed through security without incident (although in line I learned that I was supposed to have all my little bottles collected in a single, transparent zip-loc bag; after the line I learned that those single bags must not be all that important.).

At that time, it was way before 6 and we had an hour to kill. Coffee sounded like a good idea and predictably there was a Starbucks just around the corner while a 2nd was further down the concourse. Predictably, they also failed to produce a good cup of coffee, providing instead something that could best be described as ‘burned.”

We made it to Cincinnati/Northern-Kentucky airport a little early. Despite it being 8:30AM, Goldstar Chili was open and I had to have a cheese Coney (that’s a hot dog with mustard, onions, chili and shredded cheddar). Rachel and I also had to have some Chic-Fil-A chicken biscuits since the goodness of Chic-Fil-A doesn’t exist on the West Coast.

By 9:10, we were well fed and buckled into our 737 en route to Portland. Just over 4 hours later we landed it was about 10:30.

The rest of the day included a huge, late lunch at Jakes, some napping, multiple cups of coffee, some Fat Tire, and pulled pork barbecue sandwiches.

In all, it was a pretty good day. There were no crying babies on the plane, no delays, and even the Starbucks really isn’t worth complaining about (I just had to throw it out there for Evan and Bear).

So far I haven’t been able to make many observations about my new surroundings. The light rail transit all over the place is certainly different. And the vegetation is mostly new to me.

I also managed to gain internet access at one point, which was about the first time in 24 hours. That, more than anything will remind you just how much junk and crap email I get, as well as how many blog posts and comments I am actually exposed to in any given day. (I think I need to cut back a bit).

That’s about all. I’ll report more when I can.

Cracked.com has From N00B to Nerd: The 4 Stages of Life on the Internet. The article includes the 4 stages of real life, and 2 of them really stood out.

From the teenage years:

Modern media teaches the lesson that everyone is a beautiful and unique snowflake deserving of love and attention. Unfortunately, this lesson uses up the majority of the classtime previously used for “spelling,”"self respect” and “How even a beautiful unique snowflake should sit down and shut up sometimes.”

It’s not that teenagers can’t develop skills or talents; it’s just that, thanks to shows like American Idol and Survivor, most American teenagers aren’t aware there ARE such things as skill or talent. Their sole yardstick for measuring success is composed of “idiots” and “idiots who got famous.”

And old age:

Real old people always claim things were better in their day, which of course is a lie. Human society used to consist of eating dung in a cave and now contains video games and mini-beef-burger pizzas, with an unbroken chain of improvements in between. When they say “Things were better in the old days,” they really mean “Things were better for us, personally, when we weren’t so ridiculously old, and all you idiots weren’t here being young at us.”

Go on and read the whole thing.

How high would gas prices have to go before you thought about buying a scooter or a moped? You can find a low-end scooter for $800, and even one that goes up to 55mph for under a grand. But the typical median price looks to be closer to $1500. The fuel mileage for scooters is given as being from 50 to 80 miles per gallon. While mopeds are rated at 100+ mpg.

I put together a little chart that can help estimate how much money a person could save by switching to an 80mpg scooter.

After a bit of thought, it seems a natural follow up question is how do you market these to get significant market penetration? Aside from high gas prices, how do you convince someone to switch from car to scooter?

Speaking of scooters, I have to bring up Ron White:

We walk by this little place that rents scooters, and I tell my wife “why don’t we rent one of these scooters and we can just buzz around the whole island on a little scooter?”

She goes, “we are not gettin’ on one of those scooters!”

I said, “Let me rephrase that… I’m gonna rent a scooter.”

• I bought some of the new Forever stamps from a machine yesterday. As change, I got my first dollar coin that features a POTUS. I like it and still wish they’d stop printing $1 bills. I also received a 1943 “Wartime” Nickel (P-series if you care). It may be worth up to 99 cents on eBay.
• I found out today that I may be an elitist (maybe I already knew it?). It came up because of a suggestion I made.
  In a discussion about transportation, and given the conditions that someone can’t afford gas, a new car, can’t live close to work, and has no access to public transit, I suggested they buy a moped. So I now hate poor people.

From the NYT:

And some oil executives are now warning that the current shortages of fuel could become a long-term problem, leading to stubbornly higher prices at the pump.

They point to a surprising culprit: uncertainty created by the government’s push to increase the supply of biofuels like ethanol in coming years.

That’s only surprising if you know nothing about investing. Although I may not have said it here, I know I’m on record somewhere as predicting this. It doesn’t take a special skill to realize that increased uncertainty is going to lead to decreased investment.

Of course the NYT article has other amusing tidbits:
One guy is more or less saying “Duh, what did you expect to happen?” While the deputy secretary of energy says we need to two pronged approach even if the prongs fight against each other because “demand growth supports the need for investments in biofuels.” Although I have no idea why that support gross government subsidies for biofuels.

And it wouldn’t be an oil/gas article without quoting some idiot who talks about his bike:

Some consumers, meanwhile, are trying to drive less or are simply absorbing the higher cost. “I’m already driving the minimum,” said Dennis Zygnowicz, 51, of Garden City, Mich., who recently stopped at a Shell station and paid about $12 to put less than four gallons in his GMC Jimmy. “The only way I could do any less would be to ride a bike.”

There’s a whole lot of stupid in that article. I really like the “some consumers are driving less or aren’t.” It should be either “some consumers are driving less” or “of all consumers, some are driving less and most just don’t care.” Then we have Dennis, who of course is driving an SUV. Dennis is driving, as he says, “the minimum” before he admits that he could be driving less. Kudos to both the Times and Dennis.

Meanwhile, the Washington Times has coverage on the anti-gouging legislation that ends thusly:

“The bill represents an open invitation to ambitious state attorneys general to try their hand at suits against Big Oil,” says Iain Murray, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, saying the bill’s legal mechanisms would distort the market mechanisms that set gas prices in response to supply and demand.

“This is sheer populism and displays an outrageous ignorance of basic economics.”

Of course I agree, but I would say that the amount of ignorance of basic economics is unconscionably excessive.

Sources: (more…)