Saved comments from January 2016, Part 1: Entertainment, energy, and economy

[neonvincent]

This is the first of two installments about saved comments from January 2016.  I was traveling during the first two weeks of the month, so I saved my comments on my laptop, then transferred them to my desktop.  Good thing I did; apparently the video card on that has failed.  On the one hand, it confirms my feelings of urgency about posting my saved comments here, as they were driven by anxieties of hardware failure.  On the other, I was hoping the laptop would remain functional longer so that I could post the comments I saved on it.  Sigh.

I'm going to keep my comment on "Link round-up for 3 January 2016" at Infidel 753 above the cut, as it has a wider appeal for my readers here on Dreamwidth than the comments behind the cut.  That's because it's about all three trilogies of the Star Wars saga.

The New Republic is right about the Star Wars saga being a multi-generational tale of a dysfunctional family. However, I wouldn't call it bad parenting, at least in the first two trilogies. I'd call it absentee parenting combined with bad foster parenting (except in the case of Leia; I think the Organas were actually good parents). Obi-Wan screwed up with Anakin and was supplanted by Palpatine, who was even worse. Lars tried, but he wasn't suited to deal with his nephew by marriage, who had the family curse of being destined for greatness.

It wasn't until the current movie that a combination of an unruly child with parenting not up to the task became apparent. Leia, Han, and Luke all tried with Kylo Ren, and all failed. Smoke (sp.?) took over the Palpatine role and ended up being the evil foster parent. Thank you, J.J. Abrams for making crystal clear what George Lucas only implied.

The good news is that the foster parents can redeem themselves. Obi-Wan, with Yoda's help, succeed with Luke where they failed with his father. Anakin himself finally did the right thing by his son, although it took Palpatine doing his best to kill Luke to do it. I wouldn't be surprised if Luke and Leia do the same for Kylo Ren and Rey by the final film of this trilogy. There is a formula to these films, after all.

My comment on Pretend to the Bitter End.

The markets are down today, too. So was oil, despite the conflict between our frenemies the Saudis and the Iranians. That fall in oil leads to this comment from our host.

"The landscape of North Dakota is littered with unfinished garden apartment complexes that may never be completed, and the discharged construction carpenters and roofers drove back to Minnesota ahead of the re-po men coming for their Ford F-110s. Sad, I know..."

The plight of the oil workers and those dependent on them isn't getting much attention. In fact, it's going to get less attention, if only in fiction. The TV series "Blood and Oil" was supposed to be a 21st Century version of "Dallas" and "Dynasty" set in North Dakota during the shale boom. The show went ten episodes and is likely to be cancelled. People switched over from the fractured fairy tales of "Once Upon A Time" to "The Walking Dead" then back to the national security theater of "Quantico," which is "Homeland" meets "How To Get Away With Murder." Viewers who would rather watch Rick Grimes kill zombies than a soap opera about oilmen and their women.

As for other things that went bust, one can always go back to the collapse of the real estate bubble. The Big Short turned that tragedy into a comedy. In fact, it's such a good comedy that it got nominations for Best Movie Comedy at both the Golden Globes and Critics' Choice Awards. The protagonists cried all the way to the bank as millions cried their way to bankruptcy and eviction.

Speaking of award-nominated movies, our host wrote about "Spotlight" a few weeks ago. I commented then that I hoped the movie got the recognition from the critics and awards show voters that it didn't get from the moviegoers. It did. Like "The Big Short," "Spotlight" got two nominations at the SAG Awards and three nominations at the Golden Globes, although it was nominated for Best Movie Drama, not Comedy. It edged out "The Big Short" by one nod at the Critics' Choice Awards for a total of eight. It also has a 50+% chance of winning Best Picture at the Oscars, at least according to the betting markets. At 40% higher than the next movie, that makes it a prohibitive favorite.

One might take those odds with a grain of salt. The same betting market gives better odds for Rubio and Cruz to win the nomination than Trump. They don't seem to think that the interest in Trump will translate into votes. Maybe, but it certainly yields page views. Four of the five most shared stories I wrote about elections had Trump as a subject. As long as that's the case, he'll get covered by the media.



My comment on Down the Ratholes of the Future

The marketing of "the PV Revolution" is indeed showing up in the boosterism of at least one economist, Paul Krugman. In his Christmas column "Things to Celebrate, Like Dreams of Flying Cars," he wrote the following about technological progress in energy:

The biggest effects so far have come from fracking, which has ended fears about peak oil and could, if properly regulated, be some help on climate change: Fracked gas is still fossil fuel, but burning it generates a lot less greenhouse emissions than burning coal. The bigger revolution looking forward, however, is in renewable energy, where costs of wind and especially solar have dropped incredibly fast.
...
[N]ow we can see the shape of a sustainable, low-emission future quite clearly - basically an electrified economy with, yes, nuclear power playing some role, but sun and wind front and center. Of course, it doesn't have to happen. But if it doesn't, the problem will be politics, not technology.

That's what the leftward edge of mainstream economic thought has to say about the subject and a lot of his readers on what passes for the left in the U.S. will buy it. Of course, the mainstream economists invented the idea of externalities, but they meant it as "someone else's problem."

As for ethanol, it may have been neither the great savior of automobile fuel in the U.S. or a great speculative investment, but ethanol production has consumed every additional bushel of corn the U.S. has produced during the past decade and then some. This is despite corn ethanol having at best a 15% EROI and is in many places a net energy loser.

As for Trump, the leading betting market gives better odds for Rubio and Cruz to win the nomination than Trump. The participants don't seem to think that the interest in Trump will translate into votes. Maybe, but it certainly yields page views. Four of the five most shared stories I wrote about elections had Trump as a subject. As long as that's the case, he'll get covered by the media.

As for last year's prediction that didn't go as well as you expected, it's probably because the consumer economy (barely) made up for the decline in the mining sector of the industrial economy caused by lower oil prices and a stalling of the increase in production. The oil patch is hurting, but the pain hasn't expanded beyond it into the economy of most parts of the U.S. In fact, 2015 set a record for car sales in the U.S. That's the good news from a buisiness as usual perspective. The bad news is that low gas prices mean more of those cars are less fuel efficient. Sigh, they'll be sorry when gas prices rise.

That written, you're right that the plight of the oil workers and those dependent on them isn't getting much attention. In fact, it's going to get less attention, if only in fiction. The TV series "Blood and Oil" was supposed to be a 21st Century version of "Dallas" and "Dynasty" set in North Dakota during the shale boom. The show went ten episodes and is likely to be cancelled. People switched over from the fractured fairy tales of "Once Upon A Time" to the zombie apocalypse of "The Walking Dead" then back to the national security theater of "Quantico," which is "Homeland" meets "How To Get Away With Murder." Viewers would rather watch Rick Grimes kill zombies than a soap opera about oilmen and their women.

So the collapse of the fracking bubble didn't turn out to be the next popping of the real estate bubble, which did damage the wider economy. The movie "The Big Short" turned that tragedy into a comedy. In fact, it's such a good comedy that it got nominations for Best Movie Comedy at both the Golden Globes and Critics' Choice Awards. The protagonists cried all the way to the bank as millions cried their way to bankruptcy, foreclosure, and eviction.

I'll add that film to the ones I recommend to my students, along with "Inside Job," about the real estate crash. Very few students are likely to watch either. Instead, my students are still looking for good news from technology, just like Krugman in my previous comment. Last summer's class was particularly enamored with self-driving cars, which they voted their favorite student presentation. The feedback was that they'd had enough of doom and gloom and wanted something hopeful. "They'll think of something" lives!


My comment on Introducing Detroit News Stock Editorial #5 at Michigan Liberal.

There were Republican candidates who spoke something approaching sense about climate change in the debates. Unfortunately, they were at the kid's table debate at the CNBC debate. Of those, two, Pataki and Graham, were the most recent to drop out, while Christie, the only one to return to the prime time debate, is only doing well in New Hampshire. In the meantime, the rest of the leading Republican candidates dismissed climate change out of hand, especially Rubio, who is the candidate the leading betting market thinks is the most likely to win the nomination, better than either Cruz or Trump. As you wrote, being realistic about climate does not win votes in GOP contests.