david wogan

I’m a huge fan of Penn & Teller. Their magic shows are one of the unique instances where I don’t want to know how things are working behind the scenes - I just want to be wowed. I saw them in Vegas a few summers ago and had a blast (they also signed my book - huzzah!). The interview is full of great tidbits (“This is going to sound horrible, but I don’t even know how much I make in a year”) including what moving their show from New York City to Vegas has allowed them to do:

“But then you come out here and it turns out, as insane as this is, that you have more artistic freedom in Las Vegas than you have in New York. Much more. And the reason is this…” He leans forward conspiratorially and says, in a stage whisper. “In Vegas, our investors don’t give a f—- about us. The people who are our bosses see our show maybe once a year. One of them will bring their kids and come by. And they are pleasant and they love us and they sincerely enjoy the show. Then they leave and they don’t think about us.

“And because nobody’s paying attention we do exactly the show we want. As long as people come to see it nobody cares what we do. And it means that we have done wilder things and more new stuff here than we ever did in New York. The contract is 100 per cent between us and the audience. And that’s crazy.” He laughs until his eyes close into two half moons behind his spectacles; it looks as though he has three smiles on his face.

Love these guys.

Wyoming comes in as having the highest GHG emissions per capita, but no one really lives in Wyoming so it doesn’t really count. Texas is ranked 16th for GHGs and 13th for CO₂ emissions, but that’s also misleading because while we have a large population, the total amount of emissions is very large. In Texas’ defense, we’re home to a lot of the nation’s refining and industrial capacity. There’s always room to improve, though!

I’m totally digging the open data!

Developed by the World Resources Institute.

Speaking of spending money.

Our government throws away billions on the hopelessly inefficient bureaucracy that runs the Pentagon,” McGill continued. “But has it thrown away even one red cent of that same inflated defense budget on, say, a huge fucking laser cannon that we can take turns shooting?

Hahahahaha.

This week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report detailing the costs of our biofuels subsidies programs:

In fiscal year 2009, the biofuel tax credits reduced federal excise tax collections by about $6 billion below what they would have been if the credits had not been in effect.

The costs to taxpayers of using a biofuel to reduce gasoline consumption by one gallon are $1.78 for ethanol made from corn and $3.00 for cellulosic ethanol.

Similarly, the costs to taxpayers of reducing greenhouse gas emissions through the biofuel tax credits vary by fuel: about $750 per metric ton of CO2e (that is, per metric ton of greenhouse gases measured in terms of an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide) for ethanol, about $275 per metric ton of CO2e for cellulosic ethanol, and about $300 per metric ton of CO2e for biodiesel.

Holy crap, we spend a lot of money subsidizing biofuels that are not necessarily better than gasoline or diesel (economically or environmentally).

The subsidies are up for renewal at the end of the year, but after this report, it’s not a sure thing. What would happen if we put an economy-wide price on carbon, and let the market sort itself out? Would biofuels be more cost-competitive with gasoline and diesel then?

The web of secret treaties in the 1940s which laid the foundation of intelligence co-operation between America and Britain—and by extension with Canada, Australia and New Zealand—had at its heart the pooling of sigint on the Soviet Union. Early in the second world war, Britain took its time to let America into the secrets of Ultra, the decryption of German secret communications by code-breakers at Bletchley Park. By the end of the war, however, sigint—particularly Venona, the system for breaking Soviet codes—had become an American-led effort. Venona revealed the vast extent of Soviet espionage in the West. Indeed, America and Britain were so deeply penetrated that the Russians soon found out about Venona, changing their codes and cipher machines on October 29th 1948—“Black Friday” for code-breakers.

Yet another book that’s been added to my queue. Also, I must visit the International Spy Museum before I leave D.C.

Takeaway: The moment you jump online, you are consuming natural gas — and lots of it.