5 Things on a Friday: Heading to South Carolina

There’s a lot going on this week.  South Carolina chooses its Republican candidate tomorrow while Democrats choose theirs in Nevada.  Besides that, there’s more Daredevil coming and a bunch more movies for geeks.  

Check it out!

5 Things on a Friday: Trust But Verify

I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel for news this week.  A few things have happened—Scott Walker dropped out of the presidential race, and the Pope is in town—but I’m not sure what I have to add on either front.  After all, everyone and their brother is covering the Pope, and we said just last week that Walker needed to go.  What’s new?

Well.  I’ll try to keep it short, anyway.

5 Things on a Friday: Looking for an R-Rated Punisher

Busy week, but at last it's Friday. Let's get to it, yeah?

***

1. Why It Matters That Jeb Bush Defended Mike Pence (Slate)

In the five days since he signed Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a cadre of athletes, activists, and business leaders have condemned and criticized Gov. Mike Pence for ostensibly giving state sanction to anti-gay discrimination…

Okay.  But...

5 Things on a Friday: Cruz Makes It Official!

Spoiler Alert.  This week’s 5 Things has a lot of politics and specifically a lot on the 2016 election.  If you don’t care about that, it’s fine, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve decided to cover the week’s election events in a bit of detail.

I will say this: my aim here is not to convert you to my point of view. I definitely have a point of view, however, and although I’d very much like to cover this election objectively, I doubt that’s possible.  This week in particular, I got close to asking around to see if I could find a guest writer or two to come in and espouse competing points of view in the interest of balanced coverage, but I ultimately decided not to go looking because I neither want to pay a guest writer nor ask someone else to write for free.  You are therefore stuck with me.

News & Notes: Running through my Twitter feed

I wasn't going to check in this morning, but then I saw the following and couldn't resist.

Putin has small fingers. You know what that means. pic.twitter.com/Eyb0ukXr8a
— Hayden Smith (@NewsPanic) March 14, 2015

It's all downhill from here, I'm sure.

5 Things on a Friday: the Energy & Amabassadors Edition

It’s a lot of energy and energy policy this week and a little bit of Twitter, much of which may only interest me.  If you came here looking for D&D stuff or triathlon advice, I don’t know what to tell you.  I’ve known for some time that this would be a much more successful blog if it was about exactly one topic, even if I only posted on that topic once a week.  However, I prefer doing it this way because this is who I am.

5 Things on a Friday: The SEC gets whupped and other stories

It’s a new year, and that promises new struggles and new opportunities.  As I write this, I’m sitting on an empty train on my way into the City, feeling like the only commuter in the entire Northeast.  I still haven’t written out my goals for the new year, so with less than 48 hours under our belts in 2015, I’m already behind.  On the other hand, we had an awesome day yesterday, so who’s complaining?

Happy New Year!

New Year's Notes

Sally and I still haven't sat down to hash out our goals for 2015.

It's maybe worth noting, however, that she took issue with my characterization of 2014 as a basically unsuccessful year.  Sally herself got raises at several of the places where she teaches fitness classes, she thought that Hannah's turn in the play was a really big deal that deserved more celebration, and we took a ten-day vacation to Maine that was totally awesome.  My work and support of our family made all of that stuff possible.

Sally also noted that even if the year wasn't particularly goal-tastic or glorious, it was still good.  We were happy.  In real terms, that is at least as important as anything else.

5 Things on a Friday: The New Dance is a Chicken Dance

If you came looking for the new Faith No More song, then I'm afraid you're bound to be disppointed.  But don't worry.  I've got something even better!

Let's do this.

***

1. Saudi Arabia Is Fighting an Oil War. But Who’s the Enemy? (Slate)

“Ahead of an OPEC meeting in Vienna next week, there are some contradictory theories about why Saudi Arabia is content to keep oil cheap for the time being. One is that the Saudis want to nip the U.S. oil boom in the bud. American shale oil is more expensive to produce and needs high prices to remain competitive. As one analyst put it when the kingdom cut prices for U.S. customers earlier this month, ‘the Saudis have basically declared war on the U.S. oil producers.’

But there’s a competing narrative, or ‘conspiracy theory’ if you prefer, that the Saudis are waging war in cooperation with the United States, against their mutual enemies Russia and Iran.

The problem with this analysis is that there’s no “or” here.  The Saudis have the largest production capacity, and they are using it to control the market.  That’s it.  Oil production is their niche in the global economy.  They are using market power to defend their position.  That is not news, nor should it come as a surprise.  Nor, for that matter, is it the first time they’ve done it.  Their actions may well be the final proof of the success of American production—the market leader has had to take steps to bring its new competitor under control—but that’s still not telling us anything we didn’t already know.

5 Things on a Friday: Fifty Shades of Creepy

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water...

***

1. Nukes and Shale Win The Day in U.S.-China Climate Deal (Bloomberg)
Natural gas drillers and nuclear power producers can celebrate aggressive new emissions cuts promised by the U.S. and China, even as other parts of the fossil fuels world push back.

Goals to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions are inevitably bad for companies relying on dirtier fuels like coal and crude oil, which already have been under pressure to clean up operations. The measures announced today provide more support for cleaner-burning gas, which the industry has promoted as the “bridge” to renewable energy such as solar and wind.

Five Things on a Friday: Taking a Bite out of Apple

It’s been an interesting news week.  The world is changing, hopefully for the better, though I suppose we won’t have enough perspective on it to make any meaningful judgements for a while.  

I tell people all the time that the past is past, we are where we are now, and we can either deal with it realisticaly and move forward or else stay stuck in a fantasy of our own imaginings and regrets.  One of these options is clearly better than the other, but I suppose your mileage may vary as to which is which.

***

1. Fast After 40: Master Your Recovery (Competitor.Com)

“For distance runs, we rarely need more than occasional water stops and, if the run will last longer than a couple hours, a gel or two. For harder workouts, however, we’ll need a recovery plan.”

Five Things on a Friday: The Business of Comics is Booming

Sally and the girls aren't home.  I've got a beer open, and I'm watching the WWE's "The Ladder Match 2: Crash & Burn" on Netflix.  It's gratuitous violence, but I'm enjoying it immensely.

***

1.  Comic Sales Hit $870 Million in 2013 (Major Spoilers)

Captain America Promo Poster for
Avengers 2: Age of Ultron

This is from a base of $715 million in 2011 and $805 million in 2012, which gives us something like 10% growth year-on-year.  What’s exciting about that is that the growth appears to be sustained, that if we hit a billion dollars sometime in the next year, comics may no longer be a loss-leader for films and television but may actually become a standalone industry again.  That doesn’t suck.

From the article, the breakdown was as follows:

 - Comic Stores orders of Monthly Comics - $340M

 - Comic Store orders of Graphic Novels - $170M

 ------ Direct Market Total: $510M

 - Book Stores - $245M

 - Digital Comics - $90M

Saturday Morning Reading Room: The Jobs Report

Saturday mornings are my favorite time of the week.  I get up early and have the whole house to myself.

Here's what's caught my eye:

217,000 Jobs Added, Nudging Payrolls to Levels Before the Crisis (NY Times)
"Em­ploy­ers hired 217,000 work­ers in May, the La­bor De­part­ment re­port­ed on Fri­day, enough to fi­nal­ly lift to­tal pay­rolls above where they were be­fore the fi­nan­cial col­lapse near­ly six years ago...  

For the fourth con­sec­u­tive month... em­ploy­ers added more than 200,000 po­si­tions, the first time that has hap­pened in 14 years."

Five Things on a Friday: the President Speaks and Other Stories

It was kind of a slow news week.  If it wasn't for the president's speech, I'm not sure what I'd have written about.

1.  Rebutting Critics, Obama Seeks Higher Bar for Military Action (NYT)

“Af­ter more than five years in of­fice, Mr. Oba­ma has be­come in­creas­ing­ly con­vinced that while the Unit­ed States must play a vi­tal role be­yond its bor­ders, it should avoid get­ting dragged in­to the quick­sand of in­ter­na­tion­al cri­ses that have trapped some of his pre­de­ces­sors. It is time for an end to what he called ‘a long sea­son of war.’

To his crit­ics, main­ly on the right but al­so some on the left, this is a pre­scrip­tion for pas­siv­ity, an ab­ro­ga­tion of decades of bi­par­ti­san lead­er­ship on the world stage. Stung and ir­ri­tated, Mr. Oba­ma used his com­mence­ment ad­dress to West Point cadets on Wednes­day to mount a sus­tained re­but­tal and to de­fine an ap­proach to for­eign pol­i­cy that he be­lieves is suit­ed to a new era and that he hopes will out­last his pres­i­dency.”

Five Things on a Friday: The new Eastern Alliance

Yes, that title is a very obscure reference to the original Battlestar Galactica.  If you caught the reference before I called it out, please let me know.  Sometimes I think I'm the only one who thinks about this stuff.

1.  China and Russia sign huge gas supply deal, pricing unclear

“China and Russia signed a long-awaited, $400-billion gas supply deal on Wednesday, securing the world's top energy user a major new source of cleaner fuel and opening a new market for Moscow as Europeans look elsewhere for their energy…

The deal is a political triumph for Putin, who is courting new partners in Asia as customers in Europe attempt to reduce their reliance on Russian gas to bolster their bargaining positions with Moscow after its seizure of Crimea from Ukraine.”

Five Things on a Friday: The Future is Now!

There was a bunch of stuff in the news early this week that I personally found very interesting, especially this first article on energy storage.  New York State is moving towards a new model of energy delivery, and the process is both experimental and fascinating.  I'd love to get into the engineering aspects of some of this stuff, but for better or worse, I think that's outside the scope of the blog.  Still, the issues are worth watching nationally because if the experiment works, it'll be the way of the future.

Friday Mad Science: Hydro-Fracking, Chromebooks, and Martha Stewart!

Hydro-Fracking, Chromebooks, and Martha Stewart!  

Yup.  Not a bad week of news if you ask me.

Friday Mad Science

It’s been an interesting week for Asian propaganda.