I was intrigued by this article in The Atlantic that discussed the housing bubble, and in a sort of Malcolm Gladwell-esque way, suggested that economic "bubbles" might be treated like viruses, and prevented in analogous ways to how we work to contain the spread of diseases.

I was of two minds about the premise: on the one hand, I suspect we will be able to eliminate bubbles easily once we eliminate human nature. But another part of me feels that—as Professor Sowell himself has suggested—a certain level of economic literacy is required for any citizen to function effectively in society, and that teaching our kids a bit more about the dangers of "over-exuberant" speculation might really work to take the edge off of economic highs and lows.

Thoughts? Can bubbles be avoided? Will the housing collapse have far-reaching effects over the next several years? And given how ingrained this sort of behavior is into human nature, is there something we should be teaching the youngsters that might do them any good? (Or will they, as young people are wont to do, insist on learning the hard way?)

(X-posted at Right Wing News.)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:06 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 204 words, total size 2 kb.

Charles Krauthammer just kicked Obama's ass so hard, the entire state of Illinois is bleeding.

Get some ice on that, folks.

Sheesh. My life's ambition is now to make sure that Krauthammer never finds out that I exist, or that I have an ego of any heft whatsoever.

h/t: Memeorandum.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 02:12 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 54 words, total size 1 kb.

If you start opening the debate up all over again, you won't have any time left over to do science. So stop that!

The earth is getting warmer, and it's my fault, and I need to either plant some more trees or stop breathing. Or maybe I could reduce it, you know: if I just sit here, very still-like, and don't do much of anything.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:13 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 83 words, total size 1 kb.

Keepin' those Alaskan pipelines full, while protecting the environment. That's a win-win.

Aside from the prospect of expanding domestic oil supplies, the new production would help alleviate worries about the viability of the Alaska pipeline system.

The pipeline is transporting 700,000 barrels of oil daily, down from 2.1 million when the Prudhoe Bay fields were at peak production in 1988. If the amount of oil in the pipeline falls too low in the bitter Arctic climate, it is no longer able to flow south to the tankers that take it to California for processing.

Once more, an Ed Morrissey analysis is in order:

Oil prices have tumbled the last two days since Bush lifted the executive order. The price on a barrel of oil fell more than $10, the largest such reduction in almost 20 years. Analysts in the media claim that the prices have fallen due to “demand destruction” and the fears of a long economic slowdown in the US, in which less energy will get expended. However, that doesn’t take into account the rising demand from China and India, which is expected to grow — and so a lack of American demand doesn’t make a lot of sense as the reason for the sharp drop. The markets may have begun to factor in more American production — and more moves to open resources in the US could add to the momentum.

It's almost as if good news is reassuring to the markets or something. Weird.

(Cross-posted at Right Wing News.)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:10 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 258 words, total size 2 kb.

. . . Go out and find a girl;
Come-on come-on and dance all night,
Despite the heat it'll be all right.

And babe, don't you know it's a pity
That the days can't be like the nights
In the summer, in the city.
In the summer, in the city . . .

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:54 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 67 words, total size 1 kb.

Mitch McConnell suggests in the WSJ that—notwithstanding it being an election year, and all that—Congress might consider doing its job with respect to the energy crisis:

The Gas Price Reduction Act is composed of just a few ideas. But taken together, the proposals will address the problem head on. They include deep-sea exploration more than 50 miles off the coasts of the states that want it, lifting a ban on development of the promising and plentiful oil shale deposits in western states, and increased incentives for the development of plug-in electric cars and trucks. The bill also includes provisions to strengthen U.S. futures markets and guard against excessive speculation.

The Gas Price Reduction Act is a sensible approach to gas prices that squarely faces something too many in Washington would rather ignore: the law of supply and demand. Conservation is an idea that both parties support and both parties have addressed legislatively. But if prices are going to go down, supply has to go up too. This means Democrats will have to abandon their traditional opposition to domestic exploration by lifting a congressional ban on off-shore exploration.

Don't forget the flex-fuel vehicles, guys: they're just as essential as hybrids/electrics to the transition we're entering. Probably more so. Unless you wanted to re-build the entire transportation infrastructure of this country from scratch? I didn't think so . . .

(Cross-posted at Right Wing News.)

Via Hot Air.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:38 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 248 words, total size 2 kb.

It would be a good start.

I've been noticing that gas-price duality among the liberati for years now, and of course it's always made perfect sense to me. That's why I could hear NPR do a piece about the evils of high gas prices in the morning, and that afternoon report that our gas prices are very "low" by the standards of other developed countries. There's no contradiction, really: my lefty friends want to make things hard for the working class at the same time that they want to delude themselves that they really want to make things easier. Give with one hand; take with the other.

I still think we need flex-fuel vehicles (as Robert Zubrin insists in Energy Victory), and an eventual transition to alcohol fuels such as ethanol and methanol. We certainly need to end the tariffs that keep sugar-cane ethanol out of this country, and we must obliterate the ban on the use of shale-oil products in the U.S. military. But we also need to keep the oil flowing, preferably from non-OPEC sources. Like, um, let's see . . . how about the United States? That's one of my favorite non-OPEC oil-producing countries. I like Canada, too. And Mexico's cool. Also: the less we schlep our petro products around, the smaller our carbon footprint. Let's tread lightly on the Earth.

Drilling the OCS is only the beginning; we also must make better use of our own shale oil. And, contra Senator McCain, we must drill in ANWR. As Alaska's Governer, Sarah Palin, is fond of pointing out, the footprint of the proposed facility is the size of a metropolitan airport: in the vastness that is ANWR, you'd be hard-pressed to even find it if you didn't know where to look (or unless you had an ugly-meter on you—that is some hard-core ugly terrain).

So, yes, please: keep the pressure on. Drill that Outer Continental Shelf. But let's press on, here: just a handful of common-sense actions can bring us the energy independence we so desperately need, and bring us relief at the pump.

h/t: Ace of Spades

(Cross-posted at Right Wing News.)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:00 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 382 words, total size 3 kb.

I'm not in Austin for the Defending the Dream Conference.

I'm not in San Francisco for the BlogHer Conference. (But please—call that city "Frisco." It makes people from the Bay Area go all red in the face, and it's fun to watch. Like anthropomorphized lava lamps, all of 'em.)

On the other hand, I will be in San Diego next week for Comic-Con (no, I'm not a fangirl; I will be there, as Joan Didion once wrote about the experience of going to college and thereby exploring the realm of the abstract, "on a forged passport"). But I'll be digging it anyway: I love the SD convention center, and the nearby gas lamp district with all those bitchin' art galleries. I'll be breaking in my new videocam at the convention, though I cannot vouch in advance for the quality of the footage.

But let me know if you'll be nearby and might feel an overwhelming urge to buy me a good cup of coffee (or a martini, for that matter). It's what you'd expect: there are certain parties I must attend, and those that I can blow off. So try me.

And I'll most definitely be at Siggraph this August. (Though the Free Pass Fairy hasn't been here yet. Hm. Free Pass Fairy, are you reading? Chop, chop.) I've been trying to talk the other locals into getting a room/suite for one night downtown so I can crash in his/her/their/its room instead of having to drive back home. But none of my friends seem to understand that my need to party trumps that $200 or whatever it is that's burning a hole in their pocket. (I have no idea what rooms cost in downtown Los Angeles. I don't care. I only know that I'm being asked to engage in mature behavior by attenuating my drinking, and that the very idea is offensive to me. Someone was supposed to simply take care of that problem, and I'm suffering. Suffering.)

So if you're going to be in L.A. for that computer graphics thingamabob in August, let me know. Especially if you've got a room. I'll be by around 2:30 a.m. with a sleeping bag and a bad case of the giggles. If you try to cop a feel, I'll blow your brains out with my Glock. But in the friendly way. The good way. I happen to b a great shot when I'm in my cups.

Where I am, tonight, if you must know, is in Glendale, California: I'm playing The Slider Game. The Slider Game is that fun little romp in which one opens various windows in the condominium, figuring out which ones will let in the most noise. Or, rather, the least amount of noise, but the maximum amount of air. This involves computing the way voices bounce off of the neighborhood's closest swimming pools and various external walls. At least, it would if I were one of you engineering types—but I'm not. Instead, I'm employing the Empirical Method to see how well I can cross-ventilate this place without enduring too many screams of childish laughter from the local kids, or too many earnest discussions over strong coffee in Armenian. (Because earnest people make me cranky, no matter what language they are speaking.)

Now some idiot is going to suggest that I turn on the A/C. No. We do not turn on the A/C unless the temperature reaches 100 degrees. Did my forebears, crossing the Oregon Trail in their covered wagons, go around turning on the air when the ambient temperatures were in the double-digits? They did not. They merely had an extra glass of pinot grigio that afternoon as they watered the horses. Or, if all their friends were having fun in Austin, TX, or in SF, CA at some sort of blog-related conference, they treated themselves to an extra olive in their martinis that evening as they circled the wagons.

The next morning, they started out again, ferrying the rest of their charges out here to the West Coast for whatever reasons people came West in those days. (Gold, or agriculture, or filmmaking, or computer programming, or defense subcontracting/space exploration: it's all the same, no?)

I come from pioneer stock, and I'm tough. No air-conditioning for me. It's cooling down, anyway. I might have some mango-pineapple juice, though. The white-trash-WASP forebears were way into that stuff as well.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 05:36 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 740 words, total size 4 kb.

I'm just not smart enough to keep track of all the diets out there. Just reading about it all makes my head hurt.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 04:58 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 37 words, total size 1 kb.

Right now, though, I have to finish my waffle:

h/t: Right Wing News.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 04:51 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 29 words, total size 1 kb.

When I drop an earring at night while getting out of my car, I always lock the car door and head out for the area underneath the nearest streetlight, because if I'm going to look for an earring, I want to do it where the light is strongest.

Likewise, Democratic legislators are now very pro-drilling. They aren't in favor of drilling where there's a good chance of finding oil, but they are pro-drilling. Surely that's progress . . . !

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer wants people to know that Democrats like oil drilling. A lot. They're just very picky about where.

"Democrats are saying let's drill. Let's explore. Let's get energy for Americans from America and have it for Americans," Hoyer told reporters Tuesday. He was announcing that Democrats will unveil an energy production bill Thursday.
Asked a minute later if the proposed bill would allow new offshore drilling, Hoyer told IBD no.

"There is not offshore drilling" in the bill, the Maryland Democrat said. Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is similarly off-limits. Instead it focuses on drilling in already-leased areas.

Read: areas where the oil companies have already looked for oil, and found none.

Gotta go now: I'm headed to the latest Brighton outlet. Somehow, I never did find that missing earring. Mysterious, no?

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:27 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 230 words, total size 2 kb.

It is a God-given right.

At least Britain is moving in the right direction.

Via Hot Air.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:55 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 31 words, total size 1 kb.

. . . . when you're at war with the White House; that takes a lot of energy, you know.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:44 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 42 words, total size 1 kb.

The Food Police hits Los Angeles. Yipes!

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:26 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 11 words, total size 1 kb.

. . . messes with my mind.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:46 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 21 words, total size 1 kb.

The President has just lifted the ban on offshore drilling. (That is the Executive Order side of it: the congress has its own ban, which remains intact.)

Pelosi calls this move a "hoax"; she'd prefer that we simply raid our own oil reserves. (Because why would you get a job and earn money when you could simply withdraw from your own savings account? The suggestion that we drill in the U.S. and off of its coasts is simply crazy talk.)

People are getting fed up with this obstructionism.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:40 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 94 words, total size 1 kb.

I'm working on a few posts, but they aren't the "just throw 'em up" type.

There have been some family obligations today, and it's still going to be a few more hours before I'm back at the keyboard.

I promise, however, to be extra-brilliant tonight to make up for taking most of a day off.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 02:53 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 61 words, total size 1 kb.

The first several words that come to mind when people young die so young of cancer are generally considered unprintable . . . not that I wouldn't print 'em. But it seems more respectful to the dead to let them go, rather than turning a public moment into my own private vendetta against cancer.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 03:14 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 60 words, total size 1 kb.

Basically, if Iowahawk didn't exist, we'd have to make him up.

But he does exist; thank God.

You know how I'm voting, right?—
"Burge-Goldstein, 2008: Hard Men for Hard Times."

Jeff and Dave? Sticking it to the Middle East and Central Asia! (That is to say, the parts that need to be stuck!)

I'll be in my bunk until Christmas, at least . . . send lots of pizzas and . . . . um, D batteries, just in case. Maybe an absentee ballot, to be safe.

Via the entire blogosphere, essentially.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 01:32 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
Post contains 120 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Is there a way to send a confidential email to Little Miss Attila?

Posted by: Contact for Little Miss Attila? at July 12, 2008 12:54 PM (gJRLu)

2 Yes. Hit that "Paypal" button to your left. There is a spot for a personal messages on the accompanying form. $1/letter, including spaces, is the usual tribute. Double that if the tone is negative: Triple if lurid.

Posted by: Darrell at July 12, 2008 01:07 PM (wdzur)

3 write to: miss . attila @ gmail . com Without the spaces, of course! Or try: Joy McCann Copy Write Editorial 2222 Foothill Blvd., E-313 La Canada, CA 91011

Posted by: Attila Girl at July 12, 2008 03:45 PM (1q/ac)

4 La Canada, CA 91011 You dirty Canuck.

Posted by: I R A Darth Aggie at July 12, 2008 04:02 PM (1hM1d)

5 If A the Hub is in the bunk with you, you won't need the D cells.

Posted by: John at July 13, 2008 08:28 AM (WjhiJ)

6

Posted by: Attila Girl at July 13, 2008 02:45 PM (1q/ac)

7 Actually, I'm all about the Hitachi Magic Wand.

Posted by: Attila Girl at July 15, 2008 02:37 AM (1q/ac)

8 Okay... I've seen the pics of that awful torture device you call the 'magic wand'... I'm sorry, really sorry... /backs away slowly, not taking eyes off irate Hun with 2-inch-head-sized wand Now, now, let's not get hasty, we can still talk this over, why don't you put that thing away... No, no, look, I take it all back-AAAARRRGGGHHHH NOT THE TRIPOD IVE ONLY GOT ONE ORIFICE THERE-- *** Hmph. And no one thought anything of my brilliant pun?

Posted by: Gregory at July 16, 2008 12:10 AM (cjwF0)

9 货架、货架

Posted by: at March 01, 2009 06:44 AM (+Xe1F)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

". . . there's a mighty wind a-blowin', 'cross the land and cross the sea.

It's blowing peace and freedom; it's blowin' equality."

It's also blowin' increased exploration, enhanced use of shale oil, and environmentally sensitive off-shore drilling. It's blowin' development of that tiny pocket of ANWR right next to Prudhoe Bay, where happy caribou cavort around the oil operation and look up at us with their big caribou eyes, silently begging for one more little oil operation in the area, which will give them more warm pipes to nest under.

"More, please," they are saying. "And faster, please."

Listen to the wind. Listen to the caribou. Listen to the new polls. Listen to your heart.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 04:57 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 130 words, total size 1 kb.