Katrina links

My brother and his family live in Kenner, so we are following the disaster with deep personal interest.

Here are some links of note:
New Media Musings: Citizen journalism storm chasers
links to amateur videos of the hurricane aftermath.

Craigs List has special help for people affected.

One ambitious blogger is posting a collection of other good links.

Snapfish lets you pick up prints at Walgreens

[from MercuryNews.com] Soon you'll be able to upload your prints, then pick them up at your local Walgreens in as little as an hour, for less than the price of doing it online since there are no shipping costs.

This article notes that Snapfish is the largest online photo printer, with something like 700,000 users per month. I'm impressed that they're bigger than Kodak's Ofoto (now called Easysomething).

New Camcorders

My Panasonic PV-DV953 developed a terrible disorder last week: it no longer can see reds, and the entire image has a greenish tint. It's unclear what it will cost to fix, so I glanced quickly at the state of replacement cameras. Here's one that looks good: JVC GR-X5 Camcorder Review

More on Peak Oil

The frenzy over ever-higher oil prices is approaching a bubble, and I bet it is time to consider shorting energy prices. New substitutes will start emerging, people will conserve more, and oil will no longer be king.

Here’s a summary from Slate’s Today’s Blogs (Monday, Aug 22, 2005)

Levitt gets plenty of cheers from peak-oil skeptics. "I think I probably agree with Levitt that the big effect of peak oil will be to simply cut the fat … out of oil consumption," writes Snarkmarket's Robin Sloan. "This will probably not involve roaming bands of petro-pirates in wind-powered gun-skiffs." At Reason's in-house blog Hit & Run, Jesse Walker commends Levitt's critique and compares peak oil hysteria to apocalyptic, Left Behind eschatology.

Not everybody pooh-poohs the article's alarmism. "[A]n excellent article. Well researched. Balanced. Thoughtful," praises Cultural Economist Ronald R. Cooke. "Bravo." At blip.tv's Pokkari Blog, Mike stakes out a middle ground. "I think the market is already correcting, and that the introduction of alternative fuel vehicles will only accelerate," he writes. "The electricity sector will compensate, too, and we'll end up using oil mostly for plastics."

Read more about the Times Magazine article; and more about peak oil.

Freakonomics meets Peak Oil

The Freakonomics Blog continues to dissect the Peak Oil arguments:

John Tierney wrote a great New York Times column in response
to the Maass article on Peak Oil in the Sunday NY Times Magazine
that I criticized. Tierney and Matthew Simmons, who is the point man for the Peak Oil team, made a $10,000 bet as to whether in 2010 oil would be above or below $200 a barrel (adjusted for inflation to be in 2005 dollars). The bet was designed in the spirit of the famous bet between Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich, which the economist Simon won when the five commodities Ehrlich said would rise in price, actually fell substantially.

I made an similar bet with a guy at work, though on a smaller scale. After some studying of the Peak Oil arguments, I am convinced that this whole “we’re running out of oil” argument is just another example of an irrational panic meme that will end in tons of even cheaper energy.

 

Testing Blogjet

Here’s another test of BlogJet, which I am trying to try as a new offline blog editor.

I already tested it on my .Text Blog, so now I’m trying it on Blogger. It appears to have a few advantages over what I’ve used previously:

• It’s truly WYSIWYG, including things like support for bullets.
• Apparently can easily be configured to upload directly from an FTP server (but I don’t have that part working yet).
• It’s paid software, so presumably you get better support than from freeware.

 

 

 

 

Religious values and biotech

In America most Christians are members of denominations (Catholic, Baptist, etc.) that oppose research into stem cells, on the grounds that only God can take a life once it's been conceived. But what do other religions think?

Here's a summary of what Hindus think: How India Reconciles Hindu Values and Biotech - New York Times

(basically, Hinduism thinks life begins at conception but it's okay to experiment because it's not possible for science to manipulate what is fundamentally a spiritual existence).

I wonder what other religions think? Islam? Shinto? Buddhism?