Legendary bluesman Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown has died.
The Value Of Blogs
Jon Goff has some interesting speculation about the recent changes in SpaceX payloads. There are some even more interesting comments to the post, including one from the horse’s…errrr…Falcon’s mouth.
Pathetic
Since I know this is the first place you all come for your college football blogging, I just want to say how surprised I was by the Michigan game today. Oh, I expected them to lose, but I expected them to lose because the defense wouldn’t be able to keep Notre Dame from scoring the dozens of touchdowns that it would take to overcome the Wolverine offense. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to see the defense finally show some steel, and unpleasantly surprised to see the wheels come completely off the offense. An offense which, by the way, was the only reason on paper that Michigan was ranked so absurdly high during pre-season, and even after the pathetic performance of the defense against Northern Illinois last week.
But what’s really amazing to me is that despite how badly the offense played (and particularly the quarterback, who really singlehandedly lost the game today), they came so close to winning it so many times. They just didn’t seem to want to. Also frustrating was how much they teased their loyal fans throughout the game, continually barely keeping hope alive, so we wouldn’t turn the game off and go do something useful. No team that gets inside the twenty yard line three times (and gets a first and goal on the one) and can’t come up with a score deserves to win.
Well, the bloom is off the rose, and it’s clear that this is a rebuilding year for Michigan. Carr should have changed quarterbacks sometime during the second half–he might have been able to eke out a win if he had. But at least now, there will be no false sense of grandeur, since there’s no way that they’ll maintain their lofty position in the polls (they never should have been that high in the first place, in my opinion), and get more serious about coming back. If Notre Dame goes on to have a good season, it won’t be shameful to have lost to them early, and while it’s extremely unlikely that Michigan will get to the Rose Bowl now (and in fact always was, despite the nonsensical early ranking), they still have a good chance at the BCS. I’m encouraged by the defense that I saw today, once they settled down, and the old saying is that it’s defense that wins championships.
If Michigan can play up to their potential on both sides of the ball, they’ll have a good season. But if the offense can’t get it together, or do better than they did today, it will merely be a long one.
[Evening update]
Halfway through the fourth quarter of the tOSU-Texas game, it’s clear that Michigan has a lot of improving to do to win the B10 championship this year, even disregarding the slaughter in Ames today, which will have a certain blogger who delights in mocking other people crying in his pork-fortified soy milk. The Buckeyes look pretty damn good.
[One more update, in the last few minutes of the game]
I’ve seen what seems to me to be an unusually high number of bad fumble calls today, only to see them reversed today after review, in both the Michigan and Ohio State games. I’m wondering if the refs are getting more sloppy in their play calling because they know that the ruling is reversible?
[Final update]
Well, with Ohio State’s loss (though they still look like scary opponents for Michigan in November), it was a disastrous day for the Big 10. Three teams in the top ten, and all lost today.
New Orleans and the Housing Bubble
There were 116 million homes in the US during the 2000 census. Now there are a couple hundred thousand fewer homes in the world and a couple hundred thousand more houses that people have been chased out of. That should fuel the housing price outside of New Orleans in several ways. First, more people will be purchasing homes outside of New Orleans. Second, more people will be renting homes outside of New Orleans driving up the price of substitutes. Third, building materials will be in high demand for a while driving up the cost of building new. Weighing against the bubble is the depression a lot of people face about the future.
High energy prices is kind of mixed for housing prices–it raises prices on close-in houses, lowers it on suburb houses, decreases business confidence, but may increase nominal house prices due to inflation.
In New Orleans, we are likely to see some fire sale prices. It is a good time to start a vulture fund to snap up those houses. New Orleans is likely to have a renaissance the same way that San Francisco, Boston and Chicago did after their big disasters.
Nice Try, But No Cigar
In the wake of the damage to Michoud by Katrina, and the threat to the Cape from Ophelia, one of Alan Boyle’s readers has an idea to avoid further impacts to the space program from tropical weather:
NASA will have to weigh the benefits of the possibility of keeping space shuttle faculties in the Gulf Coast or relocating elsewhere in the United States to avoid the specter of frequent hurricanes. In the beginning of the space shuttle program, Vandenberg Air Force Base (Lompoc, Calif.) was to be a West Coast launch site. Thanks to budget cuts, Vandenberg AFB never was expanded for shuttle launches. While NASA might have gotten off easy this time, NASA might not be so lucky after the next hurricane. NASA and its contractors might consider moving back out to the West Coast and move its displaced workers at the same time. The facilities are still here at Plant 42, Edwards Air Force Base and Phillips Laboratory as well as throughout Southern California.
“Having grown up in the Antelope Valley (in Lancaster), in the shadow of Edwards AFB (where the shuttle landed last time) and Palmdale
Junk Science In The Classroom
Jay Manifold says we should teach the controversy. Meanwhile, Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne write that we shouldn’t “teach both sides,” because one side is wrong. Well, in terms of science, that’s certainly the case. And here’s an interesting essay by John Poulos, who wonders why many Christians can believe in spontaneous order in the free market, but not in biology:
And what’s true at the personal level is true at the industrial level. Somehow there are enough ball bearings and computer chips in just the right places in factories all over the country.
The natural question… is who designed this marvel of complexity? Which commissar decreed the number of packets of dental floss for each retail outlet?
The answer, of course, is that no economic god designed this system. It emerged and grew by itself, a stunningly obvious example of spontaneously evolving order. No one argues that all the components of the candy bar distribution system must have been put into place at once, or else there would be no Snickers at the corner store…
[Both of the latter links via Geek Press]
More Katrina Commentary
James Lileks expounds on the continuing national tragedy that is Bush Derangement Syndrome:
One theory
The Myth Of Price Gouging
Iain Murray says there’s no such thing, joining me and the WSJ in continuing to expose this myth. He also says that the usual economic ignorami are sponsoring a bill for a federal anti-gouging law.
I’ve got a better idea.
Paul Dietz suggested in comments that a federal anti-rent-control law should be constitutional. I would think that a federal anti-anti-gouging law (that is, a federal law that proscribed states from passing anti-gouging laws) would be as well, since the Supreme Court has essentially decided that the Commerce Clause will justify anything, and that federalism is essentially dead. After all, state anti-gouging laws cause people to drive across state borders in order to get gasoline during shortages, or more perversely, to drive to states with the laws to get cheaper gas (until it runs out). It’s exactly the same situation as we have with Canada and prescription drugs. So this clearly affects interstate commerce at least as much as a leukemia victim growing pot in their back yard. It might also have the effect of moving modern liberals even further into the previously despised federalist camp, and make them rethink their long-sought desire for Big Brother in Washington.
While I mourn the passage of federalism, we should at least take advantage of it to do some good. I would hope that if we really had a Republican congress, that an anti-anti-gouging law would have better chance of passage than an anti-gouging law. But then, I would have hoped that a supposedly Republican congress wouldn’t have exploded the federal budget over the past four years as this one has…
Do Your Part to Prevent Shortages
When everyone was talking about avian flu, I got my doctor to write a Tamiflu prescription that I could get filled before the rush. I just sent off my order for a satellite phone ($1000 including 300 prepaid minutes good for one year). I told them not to hurry so the flood victims could get theirs first. That’s also going to be my present to my dad come December since he lives in Florida–don’t spoil it for him, it’s a surprise. By bidding up the price of goods well in advance of disaster, manufacturers will make more of them.
The best shortage prevention technique known to Man (and provably the only one that always works) is raising prices. Rand brought this up. Now WSJ has joined the act with their piece “In praise of ‘Gouging'”.
A Bumper Crop Of Named Storms
We’re already up to Tropical Storm Ophelia, which is dumping a lot of rain on my house in Boca Raton, and it’s just the beginning of September. There are only six names left to use as we move into the heaviest part of hurricane season.