Canola

I ran into a graph that I rather like. It is a bit small to read below, but you can see it here, or in context here. They did some calculations I once did myself for corn, but for a great many other crops. what "percent of existing U.S. crop land needed to produce enough fuel to meet half of U.S. demand." This is the question that totally kills biofuels in general. It just takes too much land we don't have.

So, that pretty much sums up why I think algae is the only viable biofuel. We can spare the 2-4% of our crop land needed to supply all our fuel needs. Still not convinced it beats using CO2 Chemistry but it has a hope. The only other shock was Canola. That is one plant that never ceases to impress me. Not only is it a healthy oil in comparison to any other cheap one, it is apparently absurdly efficient. Still not efficient enough for me to declare it a good biofuel, but its a huge step up from corn and by some measurements beating the cellulosic ethanol.

Pesticides

I was reading through Robert Weinberg's the Biology of Cancer tonight when I came across something a bit surprising:

"Do Man-made xenobiotic mutagens ever cause cancer?
The heated debate about the man-made carcinogens in the air and food chain-specifically the products of synthetic organic chemistry- has continued unabated for half a century. Much of this debate has been focused on trace contaminants in the food chain, notably pesticides, and on the possibility that they become metabolically activated into potent mutagens and thus carcinogens once they have entered our bodies. Bruce Ames, of the Ames test, has estimated that, by eating naturally occurring foodstuffs humans are exposed on a daily basis to between 5000 and 10,000 distinct natural chemical compounds and their metabolic breakdown components. Included among these are about 2000 miligrams (mg) of burnt material (the products of cooking various foodstuffs at high temperatures) and 1500 mg of naturally occuring pesticides (used by plants to protect themselves against insect predators). In contrast, the average daily exposure to all synthetic pesticide residues contaminating the food chain is about 0.1 mg. About half of the naturally occurring plant pesticides are found to be carcinogenic when tested in laboratory rodents using standard testing protocols. Since (1) synthetic pesticides are as likely to register as carcinogens in rodent tests as are randomly chosen compounds of natural (i.e., plant) origin; since (2) plant-derived compounds, such as those in the vegetables we eat, are generally presumed to be save; and since(3) concentrations of synthetic pollutants in the food chain are many orders of magnitude below the natural (and equivalently carcinogenic) plant compounds, this raises the question of whether synthetic pesticides are ever responsible for significant numbers of human cancers is Western populations. It may be that the role of synthetic chemical species in creating human cancers (with the exception of tobacco combustion products and the products of cooking food at high temperature) is limited to those chemicals that are encountered repeatedly and at very high concentrations in certain occupations, such as agriculture workers who handle large quantities of pesticides routinely"

Sounds to me like it probably isn't worth changing your behavior to prevent cancer beyond not smoking, and some preventative testing and vaccines.

Passive Funds

I ran into a couple old articles on Slate.com that are interesting. They have to do with how bad of investment choices people make. My current view is that picking stocks is a suckers game, but investing in the stock market is the easiest money you can make. I am therefore pretty convinced that the only intelligent investment is an index fund. These articles encourage my viewpoint.

"But the bigger issue is that active money management—aka stock-picking, the strategy employed by most funds—doesn't usually work. According to study after study, the vast majority of fund managers can't generate enough extra performance from active trading to offset the costs of their efforts (costs that include salaries, bonuses, and fund company profits). This problematic finding doesn't stop fund companies from selling active-management prowess, of course—or from collecting huge active-management fees even when performance stinks. Your odds of picking a market-beating fund are somewhere between one in six and one in 30 (roulette-like); the fund industry's chance of collecting big fees, meanwhile, is 100 percent.

If alternatives didn't exist, active managers could just hide behind the rhetoric about offering small investors a simple way to pool resources and diversify, etc. Alas, alternatives do exist. Passive funds buy all the stocks that meet given criteria and leave stock-picking to folks who hope that they can defy the odds (and to their customers). Because passive management costs less than active management—fewer expensive MBAs, lower trading costs, lower research costs, lower taxes—passive funds generally do better than active funds: What they lose in performance (surprisingly little), they more than make up in costs."
Source

"past performance is nearly worthless as a predictor of future results. Any firm that argues, therefore, even indirectly, that a mutual fund will do well because it has done well is taking advantage of your natural tendency to be too impressed by the past."
Source


"Over the last 20 years, the stock market has averaged a 12 percent annual return. But according to a study by Dalbar Financial, individual mutual fund investors earned only about 4 percent. A survey by Vanguard finds participants in its 401(k) plans earn only about one-half the average—6 percent a year. It is almost impossible to believe, and unpleasant to contemplate, but practically all individual investors are below average."
Source

The Post American World

Newsweek had an article today, I believe it is an excerpt from a book, called The Post-American World. Considering the title I expected it to be pretty alarmist. Surprisingly it wasn't, and actually put the world in fairly good perspective. Poor countries are getting richer, wars are becoming less common, the world is generally becoming a better place. Just one where there are more countries that are nearly as wealthy as we are, and therefore we are unlikely to maintain our influence.

Random quotes from the article:

"Americans—particularly the American government—have not really understood the rise of the rest. This is one of the most thrilling stories in history. Billions of people are escaping from abject poverty. The world will be enriched and ennobled as they become consumers, producers, inventors, thinkers, dreamers, and doers. This is all happening because of American ideas and actions. For 60 years, the United States has pushed countries to open their markets, free up their politics, and embrace trade and technology. American diplomats, businessmen, and intellectuals have urged people in distant lands to be unafraid of change, to join the advanced world, to learn the secrets of our success."

"But America's hidden secret is that most of these engineers are immigrants. Foreign students and immigrants account for almost 50 percent of all science researchers in the country. In 2006 they received 40 percent of all PhDs. By 2010, 75 percent of all science PhDs in this country will be awarded to foreign students."

Really? in 4 years it is on track to go up by 25%? I have never heard that one. I know Cornell is still about 50% foreign students. I would be surprised to see schools 80 or 90% to counter balance us.

"Twenty years ago, the United States had the lowest corporate taxes in the world. Today they are the second-highest. It's not that ours went up. Those of others went down."

Planes are difficult

I have to get to Fresno from Ithaca. I essentially have 4 choices in plane tickets

Ithaca to Fresno $600
Syracuse to Fresno $450
Ithaca to San Jose $480
Syracuse to San Jose $350

I usually do Ithaca to Fresno. After seeing the price of Syracuse to San Jose I am more confused. It looks like a really good deal at first glance. However it is a 2 week trip, so I will probably end up paying $100 parking, and a total of 3 hours of driving getting myself to and from Syracuse is probably another 40$. In San Jose it is similarly confusing. I save $120 by going there instead of Fresno. If I was simply driving too, and from San Jose I would probably spend a total of $60 in gas. If I rent a car I think I am stuck worse off than just getting ripped off on the plane tickets.

How difficult.

Fan Fiction

Sports have become significantly less popular. That is not to say that people are playing less sports, simply that they watch them on television less. The old school sports like baseball, basketball, and football have taken the biggest hits. Perhaps that means we will see more of the following, people knocking sports fans into their place:

Hillary

Can people stop pretending Hillary has a chance at winning the nomination? Short of assassination, or something ten times as huge as that whole reverend issue, she doesn't have a mathematically plausible route to the presidency.