Kind of a Big Deal

As with any crisis, the true believers want their government to act on the soaring price of oil, and Congress has no problem with that:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Amid increasing public outcry over record-shattering oil and gas prices, senators hauled company executives in to testify Wednesday to ask what’s behind the recent runup.

The Senate Judiciary Committee called the hearing to explore the skyrocketing price of oil, which topped $130 a barrel earlier in the day. The committee is set to question executives from Exxon Mobil (XOM, Fortune 500), ConocoPhillips (COP, Fortune 500), Shell Oil Co. (RDSA), Chevron (CVX, Fortune 500) and BP (BP).

“Normal supply and demand says prices should be around $55 to $60 a barrel,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the committee. “Prices should not skyrocket like this in a properly functioning, competitive market.”

Before the hearing even began, a heckler in the crowd shouted: “Stop ripping off the American public - bring these oil prices down.”

But a top executive from BP said the high prices are being driven by global forces.

“We cannot change the world market,” said Robert Malone, chairman and president of BP America Inc. “Today’s high prices are linked to the failure both here and abroad to increase supplies, renewables and conservation.

“Malone’s remarks were echoed by John Hofmeister, president of Shell.”The fundamental laws of supply and demand are at work,” said Hofmeister. He said the market is squeezed because exporting nations manage demand for their own interest, while some nations subsidize prices to encourage economic growth, which artificially distorts demand. In addition, he said access to resources in the United States has been limited for the past 30 years. “I agree, it’s not a free market,” he said.

Oil executives go before Congress - May. 21, 2008

I suggest Sen. Leahy read this CNN article before hypothesizing where oil prices should be and hauling in oil execs who can’t do a damn thing except increase supply (i.e. drill for more oil).

Up until a few months ago, I was on the lookout for a web-development focused IDE for Mac that:

1. used live folders in projects
2. connected to remote servers over a secure link
3. supported the languages I most commonly use: HTML, Javascript and PHP and
4. previewed pages directly in the IDE

At that time, I was just using Eclipse, which can handle everything but remote connections, unless you consider CVS/SVN as a good way to deploy code.

Then I discovered Coda by Panic. Coda bills itself as “One-Window Web Development for Mac OS X”, and Panic has definitely delivered on that claim. With it you can edit files, preview pages, manage files and projects, run terminal commands, edit style sheets in WYSIWYG, and lookup various syntax and in references books, all with a few key combos or clicks. Nothing is buried. The more you can do in one window, and can see at one time, the more efficient you are.

Upstart Blogger has some great tips on how to get the most out of Coda. Here’s one of my favorite features (works really well when one of the panes is in preview mode):

4. You can split tabs vertically or horizontally. The default orientation is set in the Preferences, but you can toggle between orientations by holding down the Option key before clicking the split button. To open a new file in a split tab, Control+click on the file and select Open in Split.

30 Panic Coda Tips and Tricks

Let me know if you’re using Coda, or have any recommendations on an IDE with similar features.

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The Earth’s temperature may stay roughly the same for a decade, as natural climate cycles enter a cooling phase, scientists have predicted.A new computer model developed by German researchers, reported in the journal Nature, suggests the cooling will counter greenhouse warming.However, temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020, they say. Other climate scientists have welcomed the research, saying it may help societies plan better for the future.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Next decade ‘may see no warming’

So it hasn’t been warming for the last 9 years and it won’t warm for the next 12, so why are we freaking out about Global Warming??

Ever since I signed up for a gmail account a while back, spammers have had a tough time getting into my inbox. So much so that I don’t mind signing up for promotional newsletters from companies that I use, especially for travel deals. Most companies get that I’m not staring at my inbox waiting for an advertisement to drop in. Not Marriott. Every few days, I get a spam, it seems like. I know it’s at least once a week, but who the hell is planning trips 52 weeks out of the year?

So time to “opt-out”, as marketers call it. I click the convenient unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email. Takes me to their opt-out page… crap! Companies who appreciate their patrons’ time detect your email and insert it in the unsubscribe link, not Marriott. This is particularly  inconvenient when you’re on an iPhone or can’t remember which email you used to sign up. Then I click the tiny tiny check box to opt out of all emails (does anyone not select all?) then hit submit. Not the end of the world so far, but here’s the kicker:

Please allow up to 10 business days for processing

Not the first time that I’ve seen a message like this, but for a company that can put together an effective email campaign and blast emails to millions of people every week, don’t you think the lowliest of low-spec servers (Pentium II with 64MB of RAM) could change a database value from 1 to a 0 a little bit faster than a few days? Maybe their process is a little more complicated than that, but I’ve heard about these people called programmers who are really good at automating tasks.

Now to their defense, I just opted out of a Citi credit card spam with a window of several weeks:

Please note: Our email lists are prepared several weeks in advance of the email delivery date, so there will be a slight delay in your email preferences taking effect…

So the Marriott story is not out of the ordinary, but at least Citi provided an explanation.

As millions of Americans go to feed the bureaucratic beast today, many of us are unhappy with the federal government and what little we get in return for all that hard earned cash. This video from the Cato Institute highlights why the current system needs to be abolished and ultimately replaced with more efficient and fairer consumption tax.

I’m glad to see our tax dollars funding demagogic agreement:

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D., Mass.) and his counterpart in the Senate, Chris Dodd of Connecticut, might not agree on all economic issues, but they did agree Thursday on exactly where the U.S. economy is: into a recession.

“We are in a recession now that has an unusual cause. It is not your usual cyclical problem… This is a structurally caused recession,” Mr. Frank told reporters at a press conference. Mr. Dodd, also appearing at the press conference, had an even gloomier take.

“This is the worst housing crisis in our lifetime. We are in a recession. People want to talk about ‘Are we?’ — we’re in one. The question is: how deep is this going to go? How long lasting will it be? The underlying economic conditions in our country are not good for resolving this. Almost every other recession we can talk about lasted eight months. When you’ve got deficits running as high as they are — The value of the dollar… inflation going up, unemployment going up, these are not great underlying economic circumstances to respond to the situation.” –Damian Paletta

Economics Blog : Dodd, Frank Agree on Recession

Thank you, WSJ Econ Blog, for giving these economic hacks what they crave so much: attention.

Surely they must know something about the economy, or they wouldn’t get any attention, right? Let’s take a look at the economic backgrounds of these Democrats. Chris Dodd graduated  with a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Providence College and was a lawyer for 8 years before becoming a senator in 1980. Barney “Rubble” Frank graduated Harvard Law in 1977. So they know a lot about LAW. Yet these men claim we’re in a recession and they have the solution. So the public must decide if these two claims have any merit. The first might be true (time will tell), but let’s leave it up to the experts to solve it.

UCLA predicts that GDP will dip by 0.4% in the second quarter of this year, but then rebound. Anderson expects GDP to be growing at 2.5% by the end of this year.In staking out the contrarian position, Leamer noted that UCLA bucked other forecasters in 2001 by correctly predicting that year’s recession.

UCLA experts don’t buy recession - Los Angeles Times

Contrast that to the WSJ blog headline: Merrill Lynch: Recession to Be Worst Since 1970s Do you bet on the track record or the person who has more to lose based on their reputation?

The thought police are out to get you:

“Hate speech has such negative consequences. The words really mean something.” Parsons said. “She’s a legislative leader and people pick up on her words and they take them to be the truth.”

Lawmaker’s anti-gay comments attract attention

Translation: “We can’t have freedom of speech, because some speech is dangerous.”

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Staying to Help in Iraq

Here’s one Hollywood liberal with her head screwed on right. Jolie might be antiwar, but she gets it: we need to finish the job in Iraq or millions will suffer.

A bunch of scumbag earth-first eco-terrorists burned down a few empty houses in Seattle this morning. Shockingly, all major news outlets categorized the act as terrorism. But a Times blogger decided to take a pro-house burning position:

For people who are anti-sprawl activists — or have baser motives — a new-built house sitting empty in a previously rural area evidently makes a ripe target for an attack by fire.

House Fires With a Message in the Northwest - The Lede - Breaking News - New York Times Blog

Last time I checked, destroying houses qualified as an act of terrorism. Here’s the definition:

ter·ror·ism (tĕr’ə-rĭz’əm) pronunciation
n.The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

The ELF will always claim they only target property, and therefore aren’t worthy of the term. But how many public safety resources are tied up when something like this happens? What if it started a much larger fire? What about the fear imposed on these construction companies and their workers? These people should be locked up for life.

In addition to the “ant-sprawl activist” label, there wasn’t a single mention of the word terrorism. Refusing to use the most obvious word is nothing short of Orwellian.

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