A recent Economist article highlights some of the questions over whether we’re experiencing peak oil now or not. There have been a number of stories recently alleging that oil prices are artificially high right now in part because there are vast quantities of crude sitting on ships offshore. Another issue is limited refinery capacity. Accordingcontinue reading
Tasteless classical music marketing, part 2,178
Given the state of the classical music market you can’t blame people for trying to be inventive. But we are still recovering from the design of one of EMI’s latest releases, a Chopin disc by the Argentinian pianist Ingrid Fliter. Donald Manildi raved about it in International Record Review this month and I picked upcontinue reading
In today’s news —
A piglet scared of wallowing in mud has overcome its fears with the help of some Wellington boots. ROME (Reuters) – An Italian couple who were caught having sex in a church confessional box while morning Mass was being said have repented and made peace with the local bishop. Some days my media scan iscontinue reading
The Price is Right
Shocking news from our friends at BMO: Canadian shoppers are still paying 18 per cent more on average than Americans for the same items, BMO Nesbitt Burns says in a study that suggests consumers aren’t reaping the benefits of a strong dollar. The rest of the article seems to indicate that, in fact, the reportcontinue reading
The longest post in the last five minutes
Business reporters are constantly under pressure to quantify whatever they’re writing about. Unfortunately, there’s so little context associated with this that the reader is left with absolutely no idea as to whether the information is significant or not. Case in point: the dreaded “in XX period of time” construct. First example, from today’s Globeinvestor.com: Pricescontinue reading
Food and oil prices
The Guardian on yesterday’s fuel protests in Europe: Long queues formed at Spanish and Portuguese supermarkets after truckers said shops could run out of fresh food in days. Even before the strike began thousands of people formed long lines outside petrol stations and supermarkets. Supermarket chains Eroski and Carre-four said they had stocked up oncontinue reading
Flying the friendly skies
Sit back, relax, and enjoy this report from a recent short flight in Africa, sent by Gmail chat: so, we’re sitting there, and the stewardess comes around to give us the spiel about the exit row. she’s wearing a jaunty yellow scarf, is very sincere, and is telling us we better be prepared to opencontinue reading
Better to buy your Prozac from Finland
McAfee looked (PDF) at which top-level Internet domains (TLDs) are most likely to contain sites that are “dangerous” in one way or another — viruses, fraud, etc. To anyone who administers email spam filters or web servers, it will come as no surprise that .hk (Hong Kong), .cn (China), .info, .ro (Romania) and .ru (Russia)continue reading
The “mindlessly cheerful” science
That’s what CAW chief economist Jim Stanford calls economics as it’s practiced by industry economists in Canada today, in a piece that takes BMO’s Doug Porter and his ilk to task for their continued cheerleading about the contracting Canadian economy: What’s as shocking to me as the actual numbers (which are very negative) was thecontinue reading
BPA BS
The whole fuss about BPA in water bottles and baby bottles is making me crazy. First, there is no good science that shows any deleterious effects in humans at normal levels of BPA consumption. Second, it’s pretty hard to make polycarbonate water bottles (or baby bottles, for that matter) leach much BPA. Hard plastics likecontinue reading