Possibility of rain today, with moderately warm temps. Yesterday was fairly nice. Sun, moderate temps, and not too humid. Not many of those days left before summer really hits.
Slept in, didn’t get a whole lot done before I had to put my chef’s hat on. Dinner was a success with the birthday girl, her friends were a lot less enthusiastic about the lamb. Which is a shame because it was pretty good. I tried something different with the bread, and it worked out. When I was in college, we’d sometimes eat at a steak restaurant attached to a wholesale butcher. It was great food and cheap, and the meal came with “Roman Bread”. I’ve been thinking of that bread for a while, and finally decided to try finding a recipe and making it. The actual recipe from the restaurant was online, and it was straightforward.
It was as good as I remember, a hit with my wife, and the kids liked it. The yeast I used wasn’t very vigorous (the packet was one year past best by date) but it’s a pretty flat bread anyway, and it rose enough. The onions make it sweet, the rosemary makes it savory, and it has a great texture. It’s not as simple as true flatbread or tortilla, and uses more energy and ingredients, but it’s about half way there between a loaf and flat… I’ll be making it again, that’s for sure. Variations might be great too, like grated cheese instead of onion, or chopped chives, or any number of other things.
The Roman Bread is a lot like fruit cobbler, in that little can go wrong, you can do variations, and prep time is minimal.
Someone mentioned it in comments, but I’ll repeat that the Texas preparedness tax holiday continues until Monday midnight. As long as you order and pay before then, you get the tax back, or don’t pay it. The list and limits are here.
The problem with my truck not starting may not have been the battery failing. There was no juice, and the battery read 12.8v while connected, but a new battery failed to solve the problem. Still no start, still not enough juice to run any accessories. I will be troubleshooting that further today, I didn’t have time to look at it before, once I knew there was still an issue I just closed the hood and walked away. Very weird though.
The rest of today will be me working the list. And it gets bigger every day.
I encourage you, in the strongest possible way, to build up your food supplies. Stack it high.
nick
That is correct. A power switch and power light was it. One of the benefits of the SWTP computer was the lack of switches. A boot ROM using software called MIKBUG had a small command set to allow loading software from other sources. SWTP used Motorola CPUs. Regarding the heat the system consumed a lot of power. Just the memory alone, if 640K were to ever be installed, would have required 240 amperes of current at 5 volts.
When I interned at E-Systems ECI in … a long time ago, the 68000 CPU card we used in our embedded application required an S-100 bus cage. IIRC, the data bus was 16 bit but the address bus was 24 bit. Lots of pins.
The 68000 was a better CPU if you could afford it. No address overlay nonsense, and 8/7 data/address registers.
In theory, just like no one should need more than 640k per BillG,, a modern structured language can be compiled targeting an architecture with three registers, but it is painful.
@Jenny – I figured if anyone rolled the dice on “The Northman”, it would be you.
Or did you see Nicholas Cage spoofing himself?
Our local Alamo theater has “Back to the Future” today as part of a special event, but all of the seats are sold out. They will have the flick on a big screen all weekend in about a month.
July 3 is the proper anniversary, but I saw a test screening outside Tampa ~ the third week of May in 1985 so it is around my anniversary first seeing the film.
The Lone Pine/Twin Pines Mall gag had not been added when I first saw the movie. The Universal execs in the back of the theater (or, at least, they looked like suits dressed down) were acting suicidal.
I heard one exec comment, “We have Reverend Jim, Klingon Commander, as one of our leads. This is going to be painful.”
DeSantis didn’t touch The Mouse’s tax breaks last week.
With a PE still at or near 70, DIS is gambling. Play with the beer money if you think “Doctor Strange 2” will pack the multiplexes despite all the problems with the production.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/disney-578-million-tax-break-170000800.html
My son saw the Nic Cage movie last night, said it was funny. I asked if it worth seeing in a theater or wait for video. He said go see it. ymmv.
“Folks here hold themselves in a bizarrely high esteem. ”
That’s worth an LOL.
Keyboard for keyboard the people posting on this board–whether with Bob or Nick at the helm–have more depth and breadth of knowledge than any other playground on the interwebz.
If I wasn’t so modest I would brag that I hang with youse guyz.
well, there was a minimum of dolphin like squealing last night… and early this morning. They watched the Harry Potter Beasts movie, talked a while and were still up when I crashed at 1am.
They’re up eating pancakes and chattering. Endless energy. Amazing.
78F and 93%RH at the moment so hot and humid is on the table for later. Forecast says, no to the possible rain.
Now I want some pancakes!
n
(and you guys are the best, of course we think highly of ourselves, to do otherwise would be false modesty. everyone here has excelled in some way.)
I like the Potter-Verse. Liked all the books and movies. And all the Twilight books and movies. But then, I’m a quiche-eating Army helicopter pilot. Sniff.
I like Potter too. Took me a while to start, but did enjoy the series despite all the problems. She really needed an editor, or 7 more related books.
Still, given the results, my input is unneeded.
n
The altair had the switches and lights? I’ve got the company and the cover picture confounded in my brain then. I wish I had those old magazines though. Maybe they were Radio Electronics?
This is cool!
https://worldradiohistory.com/Radio_Electronics%20_Master_Page.htm
n
Ah, shoot, it may have been the IMSAI 8080, but the switch style is different from what I’m remembering….
n
@Greg
rolled the dice on “The Northman”
“Unplugged” was my choice this week. I think I‘ll watch “The Northman”, I didn’t want gore this week and had a suspicion Northman will have gore aplenty.
“Unplugged” was cringey. Had a lot of potential but the director couldn’t seem to decide whether to play fir laughs or serious, and was unsuccessful in their bid to play both. I also didn’t care for the stereo typing of the yokels or the city folk.
I watch bad movies so you don’t have to -laughter-
@Nick and @Rick
Just a heads up.
I’m posting a piece with a bunch of links and will need one of you to get it out of jail.
The Biden administration has followed the green “know nothing” playbook and dismantled our national energy policy. The price of oil and natural gas have skyrocketed.
As @Lynn has pointed out, the price of oil is inelastic: small shortfall in supply leads to big price increases.
I see a lot of criticism about using corn ethanol for fuel. Dr. Pournelle used to be critical about “burning food” . I never engaged with him on that topic. but anyone that wants to should educate themselves first on a list of topics: distillers grains, MTBE, the experimental results on mixed fuel combustion suppressed by Kettering in the 1930’s will do for a start. Oh, yeah, and field corn is not people food.
And in regard to the price inelasticity of oil, I can’t seem to find any modeling as to the effect of removing ethanol from the U.S. transportation fuel equation over the last thirty years. My SWAG as to the non-fuel-price costs is our losses in the sandbox would have been 70,000 young men, not 7,000, with a lot more Sino-Russian involvement. Probably have a flat-black and glassy Iran, and much of Israel. Reduce the amount of gasoline 10% in the present economy by taking ethanol out, and you have $5 gas, maybe $6 gas, inflation is 15%, and we’re buying new shoes by cutting milk cartons to make new insoles.
But I digress.
Add to energy policy stupidity the political stupidity that has put food production in the Ukraine in jeopardy, likely for more than just one year.
There’s a natural event that’s slowly gaining ground on us here in the U.S., and you probably haven’t heard of it yet: crop failure.
Crops are dependent on a number of factors, one of which is growing season. Farmers typically worry about a wet spring, which delays planting and shortens the growing season. But the primary limitation of growing season is soil temperature.
Here’s a geographical map of U.S. corn production from the USDA:
https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/rssiws/al/crop_production_maps/US/USA_Corn.png
Draw an E-W line across the region to divide it in half and the line just about runs through the center of Iowa.
Soil temps in central Iowa are -10F to average (41 vs 51) , which is about 3 weeks late.
Spring temps to the west of Iowa have been warmer. To the north and east they have been about the same, with lots of cloudy days keeping the soil temps low.
In a wet season when planting is delayed, farmers can compensate by planting shorter maturation hybrids with some loss of yield. That response is limited by seed availability–seed inventory for this spring is in the warehouse now. Seed won’t germinate in cold ground, and the farmers aren’t planting until the ground is warm enough:
https://www.agriculture.com/crops/progress-maps/corn-planting-progress
4% going into the last week of April, with the weather forecast for much of corn country cool and cloudy for the next week.
(Another response is to switch out of corn to another crop, with a more drastic impact on yield)
At some point the U.S. corn production will be impacted. The guys who will know first are the experts at Cargill, a privately-held company that is not in the data-sharing business. The US DoA will be slow to update:
https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-agriculture-usda-idUSKCN2LS24T
and the market price response will be tempered somewhat by the corn in storage:
https://www.world-grain.com/articles/15541-usda-raises-2022-corn-carryover-forecast
Here’s an example of the analysis that the farmers go through:
https://crops.extension.iastate.edu/cropnews/2012/03/best-corn-planting-dates-iowa
Corn doesn’t plant itself. Buy a million-dollar tractor and it will run without a driver and plant according to GPS location. Otherwise one farmer and a tractor are going to run for as many hours as they can into the night with lights, collapse in bed, then get up and do it again until they can’t. The economic inputs are already fixed for this year–chip shortages affected ag equipment, too.
Stay tuned.
ADDED: There’s a saying about being in the farming business: Over 5 years you lose money 2 years, break even 2 years, and make money 1 year. Know any other businesses like that?
Busch Gardens Tampa, pre Disney. I remember the steam train being part of the old park before Wally Crump’s “Dark Continent” re-theme during his Disney exile the 70s, but the train wasn’t around when this footage was shot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo0_L3IXk7k
The brewery is long gone, but most of the rest of the buildings still stand in the park.
Also, even though the station remains, repurposed as a roller coaster queue, the monorail is no more. Still, Busch Gardens Alweg system pre-dated Disney World’s and influenced The Mouse’s design, particularly about the inclusion of AC in the cars being important.
Menudo for breakfast this morning. Our oldest is here. He went into town to a little taco place that has excellent homestyle mexican tacos. I stop there fairly often to bring Paul a chicharone and bean taco, and it’s enough for two meals. The last one I bought was in Feb, for $3.
Inflation has hit: today our son paid nearly $40 for 2 pints (ie one quart) of Menudo and a pint of cow cheek barbacoa, with a dozen extra large tortillas. That’s a lot of money for offal.
But the parking lot and drive through were still as full as ever. It’s the only place in the county to get this kind of food so far as I know. They started with a food truck, and run two or three trucks to car lots and the local factories. This little drive up place is their kitchen for it, and there’s very little seating, nearly everyone gets it to go.
Mexican places have always been reliable for giving good value and big helpings for the money, but that is obviously changing.
He also said he stopped at an Alsups on the way here, and bought 3 fried burritos and 2 chimichangas and the ticket was $20. That is a LONG way from 2 for a dollar, which was not that long ago. Last time I bought one, last year, they’d gone up to $1.35 each but still had twofer sales.
All of these things are foods made with the least expensive ingredients. the simplest preparation, and there’s no waste.
It doesn’t seem to be hurting business yet, but for how long?
My wife has Rick Bayless’ cook book which includes a chapter on preparing real barbacoa. The chapter opens with a caution that the prep is best done while more sensitive members of the household are asleep since some would view the sight as grounds for divorce.
The Florida equivalent is the pig roast, the animal and coals buried in the back yard all day. Still not as grusome as a cow’s head, however.
I too am curious why NaN comes around. I don’t particularly care, other viewpoints are interesting. But NaN, on those occasions when NaN comments, appears to be to complain that we are what we are. Not understanding the point of it. We’re mostly old and set in our ways. Does NaN hope to change our minds about stuff? Or poking the bear for fun?
Or is it just entertaining to troll?
-shrug- not sure it matters much.
I agree, just does not matter much.
I’ve cooked many cow heads in my oven. Cabeza is delicious, and well worth making. However, I don’t know if processors will sell the whole head any more. When I started cooking them (learned from my mother in law), the packing plants gave them away. Then came a time when they took out the tongue before giving them, then they started charging … then after the Mad Cow scare they stopped letting anyone have them at all.
My father in law sometimes baked one overnight in the ground, but mostly they just used the oven. Once you get over the eyes, it’s not so bad. 😉 I never ate the brains, but the meat itself is out of this world delicious. Like the most tender delicious pot roast ever.
In recent years, we just buy tongue or cow cheeks, so it’s a much simpler cook. When my dad has a beef slaughtered, he saves the tongues for me. I have two in the freezer right now.
It is best served with chile (little squiggle over the e). which is simply boiled jalapenos rubbed up with just enough tomato sauce to get the right consistency. Unfortunately, I can no longer eat chile, because I’ve developed an allergy to capsicum, so I have my barbacoa plain.
The MITS Altair had the front panel but the South West Technical Products computers did not have a front panel (I think, my memory is hazy on this). As I remember, all the South West computers used the Motorola (6800 family) processors. I really wanted to get a 6809 system but couldn’t afford it at the time. I ended up with a Prolog Z80 system. I still have it, you could cook on the static memory card!
I saw my first mainframe in 1971 at the Fannin Bank Building in Houston. It was a Univac 1108 with 64K words of ram in a refrigerator sized box. Each word was 36 bits, each byte was 6 bits, all the memory was hand wired. There was about a dozen 9 track tape drives each daisy chained to the input / output box which was a refrigerator sized box. I cannot remember how many rotating drum drives there were but not many, maybe 4, also daisy chained to the input / output box. And there was a paper teletype for the operator console that I got to play Lunar Lander on. Plus there was a couple of card readers and a couple of chain printers. The whole thing was a noisy massive heat generating chaos and I loved it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_1100/2200_series#1108
This picture was pretty close to the mainframe room (refrigerator sized boxes all over the place):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_1100/2200_series#/media/File:Univac_1108_Census_Bureau.jpg
I also make very good menudo. It’s one of those things that you can’t really make a little of, and with just Paul and me, we don’t eat enough so I get lazy and don’t make it. But with these prices, I will make it up for the freezer or can it. I can make two gallons for about $10. It’s simply tripe and hominy or posole, and a few spices. Some people, including one of my sons, like pigs feet in theirs but I don’t use them. Bolner’s Fiesta Menudo Mix is really good, and I have one of the big jars in the cabinet because I use it for other things too: the blend is mostly chile powder with some oregano and a bit of garlic.
If I’m going to go to that effort, I might as well use posole and make some pashofa while I’m at it. My mother’s circle of friends when I was growing up included a lot of Choctaws and Chicasaws, so we ate pashofa and fry bread really often. It’s another one of those “peasant foods” that turns a few simple ingredients into a dish of incredible flavor.
Hagar The Horrible: All You Can Eat Restaurant
https://comicskingdom.com/hagar-the-horrible/2022-04-24
Ah, the precursor of Golden Corral.
@PecanCorner
Growing up my friends mother made outrageously good Ménudo. It is now my measure of a Mexican restaurant.
A few places have come close to her excellence. Hard to compete with forty year old memories, though.
Mine is Pibil. A place opened not far from the house in Cedar Park which does the dish well enough that Johnny Depp might just shoot the cook.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrw5FkLutWk
We can make it at home, but the leftovers are lousy, probably due to something in the banana leaves.
Robert Rodriguez lives somewhere near me so I gotta wonder if he knows the restaurant owner.
I’ll also give a restaurant points for decent Carnitas braised with Pepsi and a Pozole with some bite.
@Jenny,
Isn’t that true. It’s like trying to remember my grandmother’s cornbread dressing. I think I have mastered it finally, but it’s been a long time so I can’t be certain.
Everyone has their own knack with menudo. Each cook tweaks their seasonings and how they serve it. I prefer my tripe to still have a bit of texture to it. Some places that do huge batches tend to overcook it.
In our part of the world, menudo is served at midnight at wedding dances. My youngest son’s first marriage was a big Mexican wedding, and part of our responsibility as parents of the groom was to pay for the menudo. Several hundred people, and it only cost us $300. That was in 2005. Which is why I am agast at today’s bill for a quart! LOL!
I’ve wondered about the Bolner’s Fiesta Menudo Mix. I’ll put it on the list.
I made tacos the other night. Browned the meat with salt and pepper. I thought I had another jar of Fiesta’s taco seasoning but no. I had about half a teaspoon in the jar. Dump that in, add half a teaspoon (eating, not measuring) each of chili powder and cumin. Waved over some garlic powder and onion powder. Smelled good. Added a half cup of water and a heaping teaspoon of Fiesta’s carne guisada mix. Cover and low simmer for half an hour or so.
Best batch ever. Maybe I don’t need the taco seasoning. The hamburger was about a pound. Vacuumed sealed, pressed flat, and frozen September 2014. Like fresh from the store.
I need to sort out the freezer. I found an emu roast the other day. It’s vac sealed. Should be good. They eat frozen mastodons, right? 1996 isn’t that long ago.
From NaN:
Yes, I include myself in that group!
I like Potter too. Took me a while to start, but did enjoy the series despite all the problems. She really needed an editor, or 7 more related books.
Still, given the results, my input is unneeded.
n
One of the very few series that I have read where the books started off 4 out of 5 stars and jumped to 5 out of 5 stars at the ending. Plus the series went longer than three books and the enthusiasm grew tremendously. Simply amazing.
And yet they hold him in bizarrely low esteem.
It’s a puzzle.
That sounds really good. I have not tried the carne guisada mix. I’ll put that one on my list and try it. 🙂
As @Lynn has pointed out, the price of oil is inelastic: small shortfall in supply leads to big price increases.
I see a lot of criticism about using corn ethanol for fuel. Dr. Pournelle used to be critical about “burning food” . I never engaged with him on that topic. but anyone that wants to should educate themselves first on a list of topics: distillers grains, MTBE, the experimental results on mixed fuel combustion suppressed by Kettering in the 1930’s will do for a start. Oh, yeah, and field corn is not people food.
And in regard to the price inelasticity of oil, I can’t seem to find any modeling as to the effect of removing ethanol from the U.S. transportation fuel equation over the last thirty years. My SWAG as to the non-fuel-price costs is our losses in the sandbox would have been 70,000 young men, not 7,000, with a lot more Sino-Russian involvement. Probably have a flat-black and glassy Iran, and much of Israel. Reduce the amount of gasoline 10% in the present economy by taking ethanol out, and you have $5 gas, maybe $6 gas, inflation is 15%, and we’re buying new shoes by cutting milk cartons to make new insoles.
The problem is that the price of crude oil drifted down $20/bbl and the price of natural gas drifted down to $2/mmbtu. That federal distortion of the marketplace caused the employment in the oil and gas industry to drop from 15 million down to 11 million. It also caused the bankruptcy of some 300 companies, including the largest natural gas producer in the USA, Chesapeake. Many of those bankruptcies were my customers so I am in difficult circumstances also. I have had five people leave and have not replaced a single one including two PhD Chemical Engineers. I had 15 people in 2008 and am down to 8 now.
And it caused the price of natural gas to drop below coal so over half of our coal power units in the USA have been shut down and dismantled for the steel. About 7,000 MW in Texas alone.
And all that money that the feddies spent distorting the ethanol market was borrowed, not earned. That means that it contributed to the federal debt which has doubled in the last decade or so.
And yet they hold him in bizarrely low esteem.
It’s a puzzle.
Not really, he has an arrogant tone of voice. Sounds like a retired college lecturer who never got tenure and resents the crap out of the world at large for not treating him right. I have dealt with enough of those in my life, thank you very much.
ADDED: There’s a saying about being in the farming business: Over 5 years you lose money 2 years, break even 2 years, and make money 1 year. Know any other businesses like that?
Yup, the oil and gas business.
“Elon Musk Explains the Meaning Behind His Tweet – “Moving On””
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/elon-musk-explains-meaning-behind-tweet-moving/
Bill Gates had a HALF BILLION dollar short on Tesla ! Wow, so much for Mr. Climate Change.
“As Minorities Buy More Guns, Dems Fear They Will Turn Into Republicans””
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/minorities-buy-guns-dems-fear-will-turn-republicans/
“A survey from The National Shooting Sports Foundation found that a record 5.4 million Americans were first-time gun buyers in 2021. The survey found a huge uptick in those buying guns were African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans and Asian-Americans.”
Sounds good to me.
BillG has a Porsche EV. Doesn’t everyone?
Gates is long EVs with nearly half of his personal portfolio in Berkshire Hathaway. Beyond electric utility companies, The Gecko is building towards having 80% ownership of Pilot Flying J in 2023, and I have no doubt that supercharger stations are coming at those locations as soon as the original founders are out of the company.
$500 million is Gates beer money. Why not gamble? At 200 PE, a long position in TSLA isn’t investing either. Buying and holding the stock now means the purchaser believes, among other things, that the Jesus truck will work when even Ford hasn’t proven it to be possible.
Trader Joes run today, only our second since the pandemic started.
All of the good Germans have realized that the armbands -er- masks are no longer required to shop in the building so the line for the registers stretched almost completely around the perimeter of the store. We were still conspicuous by our lack of tattoos and yoga wear, however.
Waiting in line, my wife picked up a package of dried hibiscus flowers being sold as snacks.
“What’s this?”
“They’re out of lotus blossoms.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
And how could I forget – The Gecko made sure all of the pipeline construction stopped and owns not only a railroad serving the oil patch but the only manufacturer of the tanker cars in North America.
>> My son saw the Nic Cage movie last night, said it was funny. I asked if it worth seeing in a theater or wait for video. He said go see it. ymmv.
We haven’t been to a movie theater since 2020 and don’t really miss it. We watch mostly series shows these days. Just finished Giri/Haji (HBO), currently watching Brotherhood (SHO) and have Tokyo Vice (HBO) on deck.
Catching up on “Death in Paradise” just now, I’m wondering if Orla Brady is done on “Picard” and something tragic will befall Talinn/Lanis.
Brady appeared in the season finale of “Paradise” playing the ex-wife of the island’s Police Commissioner. The end of the episode left the question open about her character returning next year.
priceless:
Kevin Downey, Jr. on
OBamas belly-flop on Spotify
CNN+
Netflix and Disney stocks tank
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2022/04/24/libs-spending-the-weekend-licking-their-wounds-while-the-good-guys-rejoice-n1592335
Derek Hunter on
LibsOfTikTok doubles fans
Disney gets people to read the bill
https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2022/04/24/liberals-cant-be-this-stupid-can-they-n2606276
And who says that the Scots aren’t hilarious?
https://hotair.com/headlines/2022/04/24/cancel-culture-harms-us-all-n464506
David Livingstone (1813 to 1873).
That tickled a memory and it didn’t take long to find it:
https://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/article/section/history-of-slavery/scotland-and-slavery/
With Glasgow built on the backs of slavery, it’s not a stretch to suspect a likelihood that some of these over-woke idiots have a family history and perhaps family money, too, with origins in slavery. If there’s a David Livingstone descendant in Scotland, here’s hoping they have a little public genealogy done. Know the type, it’s probably already done, but just sanitized a bit.
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2022/04/24/in-a-nightmare-scenario-easter-bunny-listed-as-prosecutor-in-hundreds-of-cases-in-iowa-1229348
Not sure they have even one order of thinking.
Have you ever read “The Cold Equations” ? It is about a stowaway on a emergency space ship that does not have enough fuel for a stowaway. The solution is very drastic. These problems are common to the third world countries. I hope that the oncoming mess that Joe Biden is building onto will not turn the USA into a third world country.
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-cold-equations/
Home from my errands, then off to a dance with D1. She’s been getting civilized as part of a school club. Tonight was the finish, with the kids demonstrating their good manners for the parents, and then dancing. I put on my funeral suit. Couldn’t find my shoes and belt, so they must have gotten lost since the last time. I made due.
Home at last and doing the bedtime routine.
WR T DrWilliams comment above, I got gas at a 7-11 today and the E85 was actually priced HIGHER than regular unleaded. What that says about the price of corn I’m not sure, but it doesn’t look good. Spot checking other gas stations, and they had E85 for only a few pennies cheaper than regular E15. That is just wrong considering the big difference in energy content, and the normally big difference in price.
n
As predicted, and as appropriate, as I understand the events that took place, and the conditions under which they occurred, Alec Baldwin was determined to be not responsible, as actor or producer, for the death of the film’s cinematographer.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10748501/Alec-Baldwin-gets-parking-ticket-East-Hampton-claimed-cleared-Hutchins-death.html
n
@Nick
He may have dodged the criminal bullet, but he’s going to get OJ Simpson’ed
@Lynn
Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations” was one of the most anthologized sf short stories for years.
It was probably part of the inspiration for the Star Trek Original Series episode “Galileo 7”.
I am sure I read some of his other shorts, but do not recall. If I ever get around to Eric Flint’s compilation I may have my memory jogged.
@Nick
I could have written a lot more:
About 25% of the corn crop goes to ethanol production. Less crop means less ethanol unless proportionally more of the crop is used. But the world corn market is severely impacted by lower production in Ukraine, so that is unlikely.
If you read the pump stickers, E10, E15, and E85 all say “up to x%”. Expect x to get lower, even if you don’t know what it is. Price of E85 is a good indicator.
As “x” goes down “y”, the proportion of oil feedstock, goes up, putting more pressure on oil prices.
Corn is already knocking at record highs, just under $8/bu. Smart folks seeing $10 corn not too far in the future. The livestock farmer’s reaction is going to be to reduce beef and pork on feed. Look for opportunities to buy for the freezer when that happens–you are going to be paying a lot more a year from now.
So, what are the net effects before the election this fall?
Good: Some flattening of beef and pork prices. Chicken and eggs going up.
Bad: Corn prices to record highs and making the news each time they go up.
Bad: Gas prices continue to increase, hit record levels, and set new records. The pent-up travel demand fizzles, and so does that part of the economy.
Bad: Natural gas prices continue to increase and hit record highs as production lags in the U.S. due to government policy missteps, at the same time that we are ramping up LNG exports to try to assist our feckless friends in the EU that made stupid choices about their gas supplier and shuttered their alternative fuel generation capability. A lot of old folks who dodged Kungflu are going to freeze this winter when they can’t afford the heating bills.
Bad: Fuel oil prices have already hit record highs. Prices will keep going up, and people will start to buy winter fuel early, pushing fuel oil prices into the nightly news by the end of Sept.
All of this is going to stoke inflation. Fasten seat belts? Nah. Buy a shock frame.
Add to that, almost all packaged food has corn or corn byproducts in it. They will get more expensive, and less available.
my wife says one of the major manufacturers she works with has cut about half their SKUs, concentrating on their main product lines that have high margins and cutting commodity stuff. Also building units that combine two functions as a dual unit, and dropping the SKUs for the single function units. Cost is higher but customers don’t care, they just want to be able to get a product, any product that does the job. Her contractors are going to have a hard to impossible time ‘holding spec’ for her products, because of back orders and unavailable product. They’ll put in anything they can get at this point and customers are glad to get whatever they can get to move the projects forward.
Everyone is looking for warehouse space and is stacking whatever product they can get. There is new construction, especially tilt up warehousing all around Houston. Companies are taking a “buy all the things, order all the things” approach, believing that they can sell whatever they don’t end up needing, or cancel their orders without penalty as there will be buyers out the door waiting to take their assignment.
She’s hoping they can continue to find products to feed to their contractors, or she won’t get paid.
It’s starting to get really shaky out there.
n
>> The altair had the switches and lights? I’ve got the company and the cover picture confounded in my brain then. I wish I had those old magazines though. Maybe they were Radio Electronics?
I saw it on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics.
Bad: Natural gas prices continue to increase and hit record highs as production lags in the U.S. due to government policy missteps, at the same time that we are ramping up LNG exports to try to assist our feckless friends in the EU that made stupid choices about their gas supplier and shuttered their alternative fuel generation capability. A lot of old folks who dodged Kungflu are going to freeze this winter when they can’t afford the heating bills.
There is an incredible amount of natural gas out there. Proven reserves of over a 100 years in the USA. Unproven reserves of a thousand years. The usage rate of natural gas in the USA is increasing at 3 to 5% per year. Only 15% of the natural gas in the USA is being converted to LNG right now, about 10+ bcf/day, we will be at 20% in a year or two.
The problem is that the natural gas pipeline capacity in Texas is maxed out. And some of the old pipelines have been converted to crude oil so the natural gas capacity is even less. There are new natural gas pipelines being built in Texas that should come online soon, maybe already, I don’t track them. People have been buying compressors so they could produce the oil and not flare the natural gas, reinject the natural gas back into the well.
And I don’t understand why the dummkopfs in Germany cannot restart the four nuclear power plants they shutdown last Dec 31.
@alan, that is the one, and it may even be the cover I’m remembering. Thanks.
n