In last year's round-up of the top financial stories, I mentioned that I was somewhat embarrassed that THAT list turned out to be as America-centered as it was. Seven of the stories (every one that was NOT about Ukraine) had a US locus. This year, I don't have that problem. This is a VERY international list. Ukraine is still here, but only once, and the OTHER war that has dominated headlines this year, the Israel/Hamas war, makes its debut in these lists via its ramifications for shipping. Actually, both wars are here with reference to shipping. Likewise, the US is still a locus, but only of three of the twelve big stories: April, June, and November. Less than half of last year's. Two of our US based stories this year concern artificial intelligence as a new industry: the other, one of America's periodic games of chicken with a debt ceiling. China gets and warrants more attention here than any other single country. It is the locus in four of our stories. Af...
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... we're talking about 6G already? Some of us still have our ears ringing from all the talk that accompanied the advent of 5G! Indeed, in some quarters 5G was blamed for the advent of Covid-19. That was nonsense, of course, but it reflected the shock of the new. Now we must be prepared for the shock of the newer, Sabine Hossenfelder, a prominent physicist, has spoken to this point recently, specifically speaking to the matter of frequency. SixG will give us much lower latency and capacity. No more frustrated waiting for something or other to finish buffering. (Isn't that something you do to a floor?) And it will be the higher frequencies that will allow this. The problem with that high frequency is that such signals are easily blocked. Researchers think they've found a way around this, but the results of their experiments so far are not impressive. Six G isn't supposed to be rolled out until 2030 anyway, so they have time to work out the kinks. ...
It is a question that may not have occupied much of the brain energy of those of you who follow my humble blog, EVEN those of you who are concerned about and follow with some care issues about carbon emissions and climate change. How much carbon is emitted by all those commercial vessels in the ocean. Vessels travelling across the Pacific from, say, Shanghai, China to Long Beach, California, packed with consumer goods, automobiles, and so forth. Aren't they driven forward with diesel fuel? Are efforts underway to decarbonize ocean shipping? If so: how have they fared? I have looked into this in more depth that I care to expound upon just now. All I will say is: 1) Yes, such efforts are underway, 2) They may have made a modest contributions to the supply chain problems now being blamed on the Covid epidemic, but 3) the market is readjusting, and green shipping may be an industry-defining reality a lot sooner than green commercial transport on land.
The Supreme Court had a lot to say about the various clauses of the first amendment. Sometimes the most important statements a court can make are in its decisions on what cases it will not take up. And that was the case this term, with the high court's refusal to take up the case of Berisha v. Lawson. That is important to the continuing role of the Supreme Court as a protector of freedom of the press, and the uniquely hard time that public figures have in mounting a plausible defamation lawsuit in the United States. The new configuration of Justices has been re-working the religion clauses from scratch in recent years, and that process has continued this term. And there is the much-publicized matter of the cursin' cheerleader to consider. We will contemplate those points in that order today. (The above image is of Mary Beth Tinker, the plaintiff in free-speech-for-minors litigation of more than 50 years ago -- photos taken than and now. her case came to the fore again...
What might a discerning historian of , say, twenty years from now write about Covid-19? He might have in front of him a primary source like this: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/02/vaccines-should-end-the-pandemic-despite-the-variants-say-experts/ That is an optimistic appraisal from a month ago. Perhaps despite all the deaths, all the devastated families, and all the long-haul injuries even of survivors, much of the worries about the "variants," at least, was overdone. The vaccines that have been developed can, it seems, cover a wide rage of Covid-19-ish infections and allow us as a species a chance to give ourselves herd immunity. We as a species will get through this without too much more damage. The following statement might seem more shocking than the above: All the social distancing and mask wearing and locking in seems to have come out a wash. There is no consistent correlation between the rules in place in the area and its susceptibility to t...
At this time of year I ask myself what were the biggest stories of the year ending in business/financial news. This year, the answer "Covid-19 and its Consequences" must dominate, as completely as the Wall Street centered financial crisis dominated 2008. Breaking that down by month as usual, I've given Covid-related stories to four of the twelve. That still rather understates its significance, but blame that on the ease with which I am bored. And I could have called my December entry Coronavirus (5), but chose to go with something more specific for that one. Let's start with those innocent days of January, when few people very far from Wuhan had any clue what was coming. Instead, there was a lot of talk about pipelines that month. January Pipelines. The TurkStream pipeline illustrates the continued viability of fossil fuels. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-russia-pipeline/turkey-russia-launch-turkstream-pipeline-carrying-gas-to-europe-idUSKBN1Z71WP ...
In understanding the history of this pandemic, US edition, the Biogen meeting in Boston is several months back in the rear view mirror, but looms ever larger as it is studied. In late winter 2020, Biogen -- NASDAQ listed, and indeed a NASDAQ 100 component -- hosted a conference. I'm sure sure what the specific subject of the conference was, but it involved flying specialists in from Europe, from countries that were already contending with severe outbreaks of Covid-19. If you like irony you can find it in the fact that a company known for its IP portfolio in bio-med technology acted so naively. The conference proved to be a super-spreader event. In retrospect, it has "pandemic" written on it in neon. A lot of people from all over the US and the world gathered together in confined spaces to meet. Only a small number of them had any of the virus in their system when they got together, but many seemed to have had it when they went their separate ways -- again, to place...
The year 2020. As the ball dropped, the First Quarter told its brothers, "watch me guys, I've got something special planned for this one." In January the govt of the Maldives warned that it could lose entire islands to the rise of the ocean level due to global warming, On Jan. 21 the US CDC announced the first case of coronavirus in the US, in Washington State. Over the last week of January the impeachment trial of Donald Trump played out in the Senate. On Feb. 7, the Chinese doctor who tried to issue the first warnings about the pandemic, died after contracting the virus. A week later the newspaper publisher McClatchy filed for Chapter 11 protection. On Feb. 22 a flat earth conspiracy theorist died after the crash of a homemade rocket he was using to try to test his theory. Social darwinians rejoiced at the implicit evidence for their rightness. By the end of the month the pandemic was running wild in Iran, Italy, Austria, and Spain. On March 5, the ...
There has been a lot of social media chatter about the sale of seeds in recent days.... https://twitter.com/jamie2181/status/1249516143502450691 As that tweet illustrates, a lot of people believe that either the federal government or a lot of state governments have made the sale of seeds illegal. That is not accurate, though it isn't entirely false. Agriculture is an essential business, and of course farms buy seeds. In a more urban/suburban setting, hardware stores are generally considered essential businesses, and they are allowed to sell seeds too, along with other gardening equipment. And Amazon will mail you seeds if you like. https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=seeds+gardening So: what is the controversy? Stand alone greenhouses are NOT considered essential businesses in many states. They have been closed down. If that had been your avenue for buying the seeds for your backyard (or balcony) garden, you may well be ti...