Ideas & Letters
Ideas
The Ideas section has been moved. Some of the notes and papers went to live
among the Physics Pages, some of them went
to live in the War Pages, and some have been
moved off line to DavidWoolsey.NET.
Letters: Chronological
Letters -- finished, sent, and ignored.
- 02.10.11 Hubbert's Peak Review
-
A review of Kenneth S. Deffeyes' book Hubbert's Peak, The Impending
World Oil Shortage as posted to the Viridian List (Note 00316) by
Eric Hughes.
- 02.10.10 Letter to Preident Bush
-
A letter containing a brief presentation of a few of my thoughts on a
possible war in Iraq. I sent a copy of this to KGO's Bill Wattenburg but
never heard a peep in response. Oh well, I guess its probably a dumb letter
anyway...
- 02.06.20 Letter
- A letter to Governor Davis about some implications derived from the
contents of the book titled "Hubbert's Peak" by Kenneth Deffeyes. The oil
will begin to run out in 2006 and then bad things will happen.
- 02.03.24 Letter
- A letter to Representative Ellen Tauscher discussing a compelling reason
why the United States should build at least a limited ballistic missile
defense system. We should not allow ourselves to backed into a morally
awkward position where our only defense is the threat of total annihilation
of the enemy.
- 01.11.07 Letter
- This letter was written in response to SF Gate coulmnest Mark Morford's
November 7, 2001 "notes & errata" article titled "Deadly
Tweezers On Airplanes - Of knives, airport security, and the death of many
fine civil liberties.
- 01.09.12 & 01.09.13 Letters
- On Tuesday, September 11, 2001 the World Trade Center was totaly
destroyed and the Pentagon damaged by terrorist bombings. I invited my
friend Eric Hughes to come over andwatch the news with me. We discussed the
events at some length both during and in the days that followed. Eric wrote
a couple of letters about some of the likely consequiences of this tragedy.
His first one is titled An Open Letter on Privacy and
Anonymity and the second is titled A Call for a Chorus of
Voices.
- 01.05.22 Note
- A U.S. News & World Report
article titled "Like a
Moth to a Flame" on how other states are luring companies out of
California with the promise of cheap and plentiful power. This article is absolutely
in line with the analysis stated in my letter "Power Play
Paranoia" below.
- 01.05.18 Letter
- This letter was written in response to the Friday, May 18, 2001 SF
Chronicle article by Chuck Squatriglia titled "Probe finds
'artificial' shortages Unneeded plant shutdowns drove up state electricity
prices, PUC chief says". It is a few calculations that illustrate how
much we are paying for electricity relative to gasoline.
- 01.05.01 Note
- Persons interested in a possible solution to the western "energy crises"
should also look at the Surreal Estate
Archive for additional information and inspiration for a solution. I
already thought of one -- see if you can think up a solution scheme as well.
Pay special attention to the articles dated
05/01/2001
and
04/24/2001.
- 01.04.02 Note
- Free markets only work when the consumer has a choice of whether to buy
or not. In the case of energy supplies there is only one distribution
network which leads to opportunities for manipulation of supply. In rental
markets with high numbers of people wanting to rent in already population
saturated areas the elimination of rent controls will simply raise the rents
with no additional housing stock made available. Raising the rents with no
increase in unit availability can not be of any benefit to the renters in
the area — only the landlords. The general principle here is that the
side of the supply and demand equation with the highest concentration of
money per person is more able to manipulate the equation to its favor. In an
area with a high population density (ie. not a frontier) the side with the
highest such money concentration is usually the supplier.
- 01.04.02
- More Berkeley Rents is a response to an idiot's letter. It
is truly amazing to me how some people can make the assumption that in a
market of limited supply (rental units or energy for example) that a free
market model will solve all problems (see note above). [Note to self: spell
check first then push submit button, not the other way 'round.]
- 01.03.28
- Power Play Paranoia is a response to a column by Rob Morse
which speculates (a bit) on some of the implications of the current "energy
crises".
- 01.03.20
- A letter to the editors of the S.F. Chronicle about the projected cost
of electricity for summer of 2001.
Page first created Friday, March 16, 2001