podpolia

China is mysteriously using less oil. This article is quite interesting on a number of fronts. It calls into question the veracity of some of the government-based reports of Chinese economic growth, as well as the stability and sustainability of China’s recent boom. A fluctuation of one percent of demand might not seem like much, but let’s look at the numbers:
The daily demand for oil in China (as of 2004) was about 5.8 million barrels per day. A fluctuation of 1% amounts to 58,000 barrels of crude per day. In the grand scheme of things, this might not seem like much, but multiplied by the amount of gasoline obtainable from one barrel of crude oil, that comes to 1,131,000 gallons of gasoline. Maybe not enough to make a sizeable dent in the world supply, but we can take this to a more personal level: my 1997 Ford Escort station wagon gets about 30 miles to the gallon. If I were to convert into gasoline and put in my car the same amount of oil that China has decreased its consumption by, I would be able to drive 33,930,000 miles per day. That comes to
56 1/2 round trips to the moon, or about 1,400 times around the equator. In order to use that much fuel in a day, I would have to drive nonstop at an average speed of 1.4 million miles per hour — just over two one-thousandths of the speed of light. However, here things start to get confusing . At that speed, 24 hours by my watch would equal 24 hours and .2 seconds by your watch, thanks to time dilation. That may not seem like much to you, but in that amount of time at that speed, I would have traveled around 75 miles — the width of New Hampshire, or twice across Rhode Island. The long way.
I think I’m off topic.
The most interesting thing about this article, in my mind, is that it confirms what I have suspected for quite a while: the current spike in gasoline prices is artificial, and is really not related to the supply available. Hopefully the market will see sense soon.

Somehow I doubt that this study will suprise anyone who pays much critical attention to the news media. Study after study like this comes out, and yet Democrats complain when efforts are made to make PBS (arguably one of the more biased networks, despite being government funded) more balanced. PBS doesn’t seem to be directly addressed in this study, which is a pity.
The study also confirms something that I’ve long thought about the media: they need to be more cheerful and report the good sides of things sometimes. I know it doesn’t draw ratings as well in the short term, but over the long term I think it would give you credibility and build a solid viewership. I don’t watch Fox News, so I don’t know if that’s what they’ve been doing and the mainstream criticism of them comes from their lack of negativity, but their ratings seem to be doing a lot better than other networks, so obviously they’re doing SOMETHING right.

Despite the reaction that is undoubtedly going to appear against the information contained in this article, I think it’s about time that newspapers had second thoughts about printing sensitive information, particularly if that sensitive information was obtained illegally. Reporting the truth about things is important, yes, but when documents are sealed or classified, it’s for a reason. If the government isn’t willing to release stuff under FOIA, it should remain classified. The typical liberal journalist response is that ‘government shouldn’t have secrets.’ In an ideal world, this would be true. However, our world is far from ideal, and must be accepted as such. Releasing classified information to the public makes the government’s job more difficult, and can also get soldiers killed if the information is about military matters.
Hopefully this indicates a new age of journalistic responsibility for upholding the laws, even when they ‘interfere’ with the journalist’s ‘job.’ With journalists being more wary about being sent to jail, perhaps their sources will be less likely to break laws in their attempts to use the journalists to win their own intradepartmental battles — something that often comes at the price of hurting the government and the country as a whole.

Naturally, the blame game over who is at fault for the terrorist bombings in London has already begun. Of course, it would be too simple to blame the terrorists for it, so far too many people have decided that it MUST be the freely elected government of the country that was attacked. That, and Bush. Because everything bad is ALWAYS Bush’s fault.
Luckily, Christopher Hitchens is already attacking that sort of fuzzy idealist thinking. He has also written another article (this one about the Madrid bombings) that is also dated today, but which I suspect was written a year ago. Either way, both are relevent and valuable to read.

This morning there was a series of bombings in London. Despite the high number of injuries, there seem to have been remarkably few fatalities, at least up to this point. Powerline has bits here and here on public reactions to the bombings. Chrenkoff is updating regularly as well.
The major long-range question on this is: how with the British react? Will they knuckle under like the Spanish did after the Madrid bombing and withdraw from the broader war on terror, or will they react with the righteous anger of the United States after September 11th, and commit themselves to defying terror regardless of the cost? The British under the leadership of Tony Blair have been valiant allies. How will they respond when terror is staring them in the face?

UPDATE 7/7/05 10.00 AM: Death toll is reported variously between 40 and 45 at this point.

UPDATE 7/7/05 10.10 AM: LGF suggests the UKBlogs Aggregator. The overall tone sounds very much like America on 9/11 and 9/12.

UPDATE 7/7/05 11.06 AM: I think that this prettymuch illustrates the attitude of the braver Londoners to the whole thing. They’re perfectly ready to maintain business as usual and not let the terrorists bother them excessively. Perhaps the question about their response will be more along the line of ‘how can we practically respond to these things’ instead of a simple choice between ‘run and hide’ and ‘stand and fight.’

Via Power Line we have an amusing story about Scottish riot police clashing with anarchists in Edinburgh. Despite my affinity for anarchy in the passive sense (along the lines of libertarianism), active (and therefore destructive) anarchism raises my hackles. I must say that I wish I had been there to witness this. I have always thought it would be fun to work as a riot policeman, and this shows what the job looks like when it is truly done well.