Rants of a Middle-aged Suburbanite

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

This Chart Implies Something Very Troubling About the Price of Gas

TheBlaze.com

Posted on December 4, 2012 at 12:50pm by Becket Adams

“Under my plan, ENERGY PRICES would NECESSARILY SKYROCKET”
- Barack H. Obama

Crude oil prices account for about 66 percent of the price of gasoline, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Granted, other factors play a role in deciding the price we pay at the pump, including taxes and the cost of distribution, but it’s clear that the price of crude directly affects the price of gas. As crude oil increases in price, the price of gasoline tends to increase. Likewise, when markets are calm and the price of crude oil decreases, the price of gasoline decreases.

With that in mind, take a look at the following chart and try to make sense of what’s going on:

The price of gas is represented by the light grey line and the price of oil

by the dark black line (courtesy Zero Hedge, UBS, WSJ)

See that? Although the price of crude has fallen in recent months, as the above chart clearly indicates, the price of gasoline remains at a record high.

“Anecdotally, it feels like when oil prices rise, gas prices at the pump rise; but when turmoil pauses in global geo-politics – or some entity decides that high oil prices just will not do for the world’s economy – gas prices at the pump seem not to drop so quickly,” writers at Zero Hedge note.

“Yes there are pipeline, inventory (and even tax) issues but the following chart suggests ‘gouging’ on a national level,” they add.

It’s also worth noting that what we’re seeing today with the price of gasoline and crude is eerily similar to what we saw right before the economic collapse of 2008.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

The Best Gag Ever!!!!!

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Philip Roth Pens Open Letter to Wikipedia to Fix Error

... and it works, after he is first rejected as a 'credible source'

Read this article from Newser. This is why academia is a "primary source" for misinformation. The media is also guilty of this. The comments for this story are also fun to peruse.

Philip Roth Pens Open Letter to Wikipedia to Fix Error

By John Johnson, Newser Staff

Posted Sep 8, 2012 11:30 AM CDT

Philip Roth glanced at the Wikipedia entry for his novel The Human Stain and learned that his book was inspired by the life of the late writer and literary critic Anatole Broyard. The problem, writes Roth in an open letter to Wikipedia published in the New Yorker, is that the assertion isn't true. It's just "the babble of literary gossip." The novel, he explains, is based on the life his late friend Melvin Tumin, who taught sociology at Princeton. (A main plot point revolves around the protagonist getting into hot water for innocently referring to two missing students as "spooks," something that actually happened to Tumin.)

The best part of Roth's open letter is that when he approached Wikipedia with the correction through an intermediary, an administrator shot him down: “I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work, but we require secondary sources," he quotes the administrator as writing. Hence, the open letter, which appears to have worked: The entry on Roth now reflects the new version.

Friday, August 24, 2012

Never Before Released IT Guru Secret!

Friday, July 6, 2012

'Obesity paradox:' High BMI linked to better heart outcomes

by Allison Floyd
Published in FierceHealthcare

Contrary to the widely accepted view that a lower BMI yields better health, research shows obesity and a larger waist size are linked to better outcomes in heart failure patients, according to a new UCLA study published online Sunday in the American Journal of Cardiology. While 50 percent to 66 percent of patients with heart failure are obese, the new study shows those patients suffering from advanced heart failure with high BMI were slightly less likely to suffer from adverse effects.

This phenomenon, known as "the obesity paradox" demonstrates that although obesity increases heart failure, it may also provide some preventative benefits to patients after it has manifested. These benefits include increased muscle mass and levels of serum lipoproteins that act as an anti-inflammatory.