Fermi's paradox is in the air

I've been a Fermi Paradox fanboy since a June 2000 Scientific American article roused my ire.

It's fun.

The essence of the puzzle is that while the galaxy is big, exponential growth and galactic time scales mean that critters like us ought to have filled it up by now.

I find it helpful to consider the ubiquity of bacteria ...

Gordon's Notes: Earth: the measure of all things

Bacteria: 10**-5 m
Human: 1 meter
Earth: 10**7 m - "mid" way between the Planck length and the universe.
Sun: 10**9 m
Milky way Galaxy: 10**21 m

So it takes at most 10**12 bacteria to stretch (directly) between any two points on the earth's surface.

Conversely it takes at most 10**14 earths to connect any two points in our galaxy.

So, within a an order of magnitude or two, a bacterium is to the earth as the earth is to the galaxy.

Over a mere 1-2 billion years bacteria have saturated the earth; common species are found everywhere. So how come the galaxy doesn't crawl with exponentially expanding aliens?

There have been lots of great theories, I won't review them here (see my old web page for examples). The most widely held explanation is that there is a Creator/Designer and She Wants Us Alone. This is more or less what you'll hear from most of the world's theists and from the Matrix crowd.

I prefer some other theories, though I do take the 'by design' answer seriously. Recently Charles Stross, who's explored the paradox in many of his science fiction novels and short stories, wrote a particularly strong summary of recent discussions ...

Charlie's Diary: The Fermi Paradox revisited; random dispatches from the front line

The Fermi Paradox [is]...  ...a fascinating philosophical conundrum — and an important one: because it raises questions such as "how common are technological civilizations" and "how long do they survive", and that latter one strikes too close to home for comfort. (Hint: we live in a technological civilization, so its life expectancy is a matter that should be of pressing personal interest to us.)

Anyway, here are a couple of interesting papers on the subject, to whet your appetite for the 21st century rationalist version of those old-time mediaeval arguments about angels, pin-heads, and the fire limit for the dance hall built thereon:

First off the block is Nick Bostrom, with a paper in MIT Technology Review titled Where are they? in which he expounds Robin Hanson's idea of the Great Filter:

The evolutionary path to life-forms capable of space colonization leads through a "Great Filter," which can be thought of as a probability barrier... The Great Filter must therefore be sufficiently powerful--which is to say, passing the critical points must be sufficiently improbable--that even with many billions of rolls of the dice, one ends up with nothing: no aliens, no spacecraft, no signals...

The nature of the Great Filter is somewhat important. If it exists at all, there are two possibilities; it could lie in our past, or in our future. If it's in our past, if it's something like (for example) the evolution of multicellular life — that is, if unicellular organisms are ubiquitous but the leap to multicellularity is vanishingly rare — then we're past it, and it doesn't directly threaten us. But if the Great Filter lies between the development of language and tool using creatures and the development of interstellar communication technology, then conceivably we're charging head-first forwards a cliff: we're going to run into it, and then ... we won't be around to worry any more.

But the Great Filter argument isn't the only answer to the Fermi Paradox. More recently, Milan M. Ćirković has written a paper, Against the Empire ... an alternative "successful" model for a posthuman civilization exists in the form of the stable but non-expansive "city-state". Ćirković explores the implications of non-empire advanced civilizations for the Fermi paradox and proposes that such localized civilizations would actually be very difficult to detect with the tools at our disposal, and may be much more likely than aggressively expansionist civilizations.

Finally, for some extra fun, here's John Smart pinning a singularitarian twist on the donkey's tail with his paper Answering the Fermi Paradox: Exploring the Mechanisms of Universal Transcension:

I propose that humanity's descendants will not be colonizing outer space. As a careful look at cosmic history demonstrates, complex systems rapidly transition to inner space, and apparently soon thereafter to universal transcension...

A very nice summary, even it doesn't add anything novel.

My "SETI Fail" page independently reinvented the singularitarian Great Filter, but I soon learned my thought was far from novel. Among others the ubiquitous Mr. Smart told me he'd come up with this resolution in 1972!

Another explanation, btw, is that established powers, fearing rivals, routinely wipe out any civilization foolish enough to advertise itself. Few find this explanation persuasive, but it's pertinent to my next tangent.

Assume one were a cautious high tech entity that had survived the Great Filter in some far away galaxy. You have lots of power available, but you fear sending a signal a galactic neighbor could capture. Better, perhaps, to send a generous one-way message to another galaxy. The distances are so vast, and light is so slow, that there's no possibility of unwanted extra-galactic visitors. Communication between galaxies is a message to the far future, and thus "safe".

So I wondered, this morning, how one would send such a signal.

Slashdot | ET Will Phone Home Using Neutrinos, Not Photons"Neutrinos are better than photons for communicating across the galaxy.

... That's the conclusion of a group of US astronomers who say that the galaxy is filled with photons that make communications channels noisy whereas neutrino comms would be relatively noise free. Photons are also easily scattered and the centre of the galaxy blocks them entirely. That means any civilisation advanced enough to have started to colonise the galaxy would have to rely on neutrino communications. And the astronomers reckon that the next generation of neutrino detectors should be sensitive enough to pick up ET's chatter...

So now we need only look for extra-galactic neutrino messages ...

Whatever happened to quantum dot solar energy technology?

Sometimes, when I search for posts, I run across forgotten stories I was once excited about.

For example, I was once pretty impressed by this 2005 report of high efficiency quantum dot solar energy technology ...

Gordon's Notes: The big event of 2005: nanotech solar energy conversion?

..CTV.ca | New plastic can better convert solar energy

TORONTO — Researchers at the University of Toronto have invented an infrared-sensitive material that's five times more efficient at turning the sun's power into electrical energy than current methods...

Sargent and other researchers combined specially-designed minute particles called quantum dots, three to four nanometres across, with a polymer to make a plastic that can detect energy in the infrared....

...Sargent said the new plastic composite is, in layman's terms, a layer of film that "catches'' solar energy. He said the film can be applied to any device, much like paint is coated on a wall...
"We've done it to make a device which actually harnesses the power in the room in the infrared.''
The film can convert up to 30 per cent of the sun's power into usable, electrical energy. Today's best plastic solar cells capture only about six per cent.

...Sargent's work was published in the online edition of Nature Materials on Sunday and will appear in its February issue.

Given today's rising oil prices, I assume my excitement was premature.

So what's happened since 2005?

The Sargent group web site now says:

... This first report did not achieve a high efficiency in the infrared. We are working to realize record photovoltaic efficiencies in the infrared to bring performance to what is needed to become commercially relevant...

In other words, the initial press release was a bit ... misleading.

Sigh.

I have no problem spotting exaggeration in healthcare related articles, but unsurprisingly I don't do quite as well in other areas. I should have looked for more sophisticated secondary discussions rather than working from the CTV article.

DeLong: Bill Moyer interviews Philippe Sands

Today Bloglines tossed up 112 DeLong posts.

It does that sometimes. The Analytic Engine gets sand in the gears then suddenly lurches onward.

I knew DeLong couldn't have been that quiet.

Among the posts is an extended excerpt from an interview Bill Moyers did with Philippe Sands. Mr. Sands is a scholar of modern torture who's studied the impact of British torture on the IRA. He believes that the torture strengthened the IRA, and prolonged the conflict, by increasing support from otherwise ambivalent Irish Catholics. Whatever intelligence was gained was outweighed by the damage to Britain's reputation.

Of course this is a pragmatic argument. It is also wrong to cause harm and pain, and while some violence may be lesser of two wrongs (invasion of Afghanistan) that has not been so of cruelty. The distinction is perhaps comparable to the difference between killing in self-defense and calculated murder.

Lastly, it is important to again recall that humans do slide down slipper slopes very easily. It is in our nature. We have "commandments" and their like for a reason. Legal cruelty is so very, very, dangerous ...

Yes, it is hard to continue to read, and write, about the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice/Feith/GOP torture regime. On the other hand, as civil duties go, this one's relatively easy sledding. So be a citizen and at least scan the interview.

By way of background, here's the book blurb on Amazon

On December 2, 2002 the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed his name at the bottom of a document that listed eighteen techniques of interrogation--techniques that defied international definitions of torture. The Rumsfeld Memo authorized the controversial interrogation practices that later migrated to Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, as part of the policy of extraordinary rendition. From a behind-the-scenes vantage point, Phillipe Sands investigates how the Rumsfeld Memo set the stage for a divergence from the Geneva Convention and the Torture Convention and holds the individual gatekeepers in the Bush administration accountable for their failure to safeguard international law.

The Torture Team delves deep into the Bush administration to reveal:

• How the policy of abuse originated with Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, and was promoted by their most senior lawyers
• Personal accounts, through interview, of those most closely involved in the decisions
• How the Joint Chiefs and normal military decision-making processes were circumvented
• How Fox TV’s 24 contributed to torture planning
• How interrogation techniques were approved for use
• How the new techniques were used on Mohammed Al Qahtani, alleged to be “the 20th highjacker”
• How the senior lawyers who crafted the policy of abuse exposed themselves to the risk of war crimes charges

and from the interview (editing, links, paragraph insertions, emphasis mine)...

Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong

...BILL MOYERS: You subtitle the book Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values. Tell me briefly about that memo and why it betrayed American values.

PHILIPPE SANDS: The memo appears to be the very first time that the upper echelons of the military or the administration have abandoned President Lincoln's famous disposition of 1863: the U.S. military doesn't do cruelty.... It's called the U.S. Army Field Manual, and it's the bible for the military. And the military, of course, has fallen into error, and have been previous examples of abuse.... But apparently, what hasn't happened before is the abandonment of the rules against cruelty. And the Geneva Conventions were set aside, as Doug Feith, told me, precisely in order to clear the slate and allow aggressive interrogation... at the insistence of Doug Feith and a small group, including some lawyers. And the memo by Donald Rumsfeld then came in December, 2002, after they had identified Muhammed al-Qahtani. But it was permitted to occupy the space that had been created by clearing away the brush work of the Geneva Conventions. And by removing Geneva, that memo became possible.

Why does it abandon American values? It abandons American values because this military in this country has a very fine tradition, as we've been discussing, of not doing cruelty. It's a proud tradition, and it's a tradition born on issues of principle, but also pragmatism. No country is more exposed internationally than the United States.

I've listened, for example, to Justice Antonin Scalia saying, if the president wants to authorize torture, there's nothing in our constitution which stops it. Now, pause for a moment. That is such a foolish thing to say. If the United States president can do that, then why can't the Iranian president do that, or the British prime minister do that, or the Egyptian president do that? You open the door in that way, to all sorts of abuses, and you expose the American military to real dangers, which is why the backlash began with the U.S. Military.... It slipped into a culture of cruelty. There was a, it was put very pithily for me by a clinical psychologist, Mike Gellers, who is with the Naval Criminal Investigation Service, spending time down at Guantanamo, who described to me how once you open the door to a little bit of cruelty, people will believe that more cruelty is a good thing. And once the dogs are unleashed, it's impossible to put them back on. And that's the basis for the belief amongst a lot of people in the military that the interrogation techniques basically slipped from Guantanamo to Iraq, and to Abu Ghraib. And that's why, that's why the administration has to resist the argument and the claim that this came from the top.... It started with a few bad eggs. The administration has talked about a few bad eggs. I don't think the bad eggs are at the bottom. I think the bad eggs are at the top. And what they did was open a door which allowed the migration of abuse, of cruelty and torture to other parts of the world in ways that I think the United States will be struggling to contain for many years to come.

We have a long road of recovery ahead -- if we take it. Electing John McCain, who's abandoned his former opposition to torture, means we take the slippery road instead.

Quicken, Palm, AOL - once they were good

I can't remember when we first got an Intuit Quicken credit card. It might have been in the 80s, when Intuit emailed us a diskette every month.

I think it was a 3.5" diskette, but I know my first copy of Quicken shipped on a 5.25" floppy.

In those days, except for an unfortunate tendency to corrupt its database, Quicken was a pretty good product - on Windows and Mac alike.

It was never quite as good again. Over the past few years we've weaned ourselves off an increasingly flaky product, even as Quicken lost its transaction network. We're back on spreadsheets now, but we've kept our Quicken VISA card.

Until now.

Intuit has decided to switch banks, and the process is a bleedin' mess. Our VISA number will change (thank heavens I use AMEX for all my net transactions -- they're a class act), and when I went to pay my online bill I came across this message:

If your account was recently converted to a Citi card, you will need to access citicards.com to continue paying bills and viewing statements...

If you were recently converted to another Citi card, access www.citicards.com to register your new account. You will need to re-enroll in Paperless Statements and re-register to make Online Payments.

This website will not be available after June 26th, 2008.

Important Notice: As of May 18th , Paperless Statements will no longer be available. Instead, your statement will be sent to you via first-class mail...

Sounds like a messy divorce.

Palm, Quicken, AOL, Lotus, WordPerfect, Borland, Symantec, Norton, Ashton-Tate. They were all good in their day (pre-internet Mac-only AOL wasn't all bad!)

Those days are gone. Good-bye Quicken.

PS. We're looking for a non-Quicken VISA card. We don't pay interest so we don't care about interest rates. We want service, reliabity, security, a high quality web site, and minimal to no yearly fee.

Recommendations anyone?

Update 8/14/08: We ended up getting an REI VISA card through US Bank. The "signature" card has a seemingly good cash-back program, the usual warrantee protection (though we much prefer AMEX for that), and very good electronic information transfer and Quicken support. So it's in every way better than our old Quicken Visa. We also like REI and the card gives a larger discount there. They do, however, follow the evil practice of many banks -- the due date moves 2 days forward every month. So it's easy to miss the payment. Scum. AMEX sticks to the same day each month. I love my AMEX Blue Cash Back card.

Scary thought - I actually understand this Udell post

I've been doing this stuff too long. This Udell dialog on sparse database representation of social data actually makes sense to me ...

Semi-structured database records for social tagging « Jon Udell

... But when we stepped back and looked at the semi-structured data problem in a larger context, beyond the WinFS requirements, we saw the need to extend the top-level SQL type system in that way. Not just UDTs, but to have arbitrary extensibility...

JU: This is what the semantic web folks are interested in, right? Having attributes scattered through a sparse matrix?

QC: That’s right. And that leads to another thing which we call column groups, which allow you to clump a few of them together and say, that’s a thing, I’m going to put a moniker on that and treat it as an equivalence class in some dimension...

It's not a new discussion, this problem is as old as dirt. Think Lotus Agenda/Notes, etc. I'm sure there are variations on this theme from the pre-relational 1970s as well, and probably the 1960s.

Even today variations of ancient hierarchical databases (Mumps, Cache, Epic Healthcare, etc) are valued in part because of their approaches to the sparse data/flexible attribute problem. So are attribute-value data stores in relational tables.

It's interesting to see how it all connects though ...

Ada Lovelace's paralysis, quirks of In Our Time, and the odd beliefs of UK historians

The UK historians often featured on In Our Time are quite entertaining, but they have two common weaknesses.

One is a quite shaky knowledge of science and medicine. I suspect it's the fashion for certain UK academics to know nothing of the past 100 years of science, but it can be a bit annoying.

The other is a fondness for startling off-the-cuff remarks. For example, during a discussion of the peculiar persistence of the Galenic humoral theory [1] one scholar mentioned that medieval scholars couldn't do arithmetic -- so they weren't able to measure the futility of Humoral therapies. The introduction of Indian Maths enabled calculation, and finally ended one set of quackeries. (Though many others thrive today -- despite numeracy!)

I'm doing some expansion here. The original comment was about four words.

This weakness for cryptic but startling statements is somewhat endearing. Yes, the premise may be debatable, but it's interesting.

Today, I swear, I heard a guest proclaim that Ada Lovelace [1] was completely paralyzed for three years due to measles, but then recovered. This turns out be an example of both of the IOT historian weaknesses.

Measles can have some extremely nasty neurologic complications, but I don't recall reversible paralysis being among them (nor do my online references [2]). I also think it unlikely that she could have survived very long in early 19th century with complete paralysis.

The Ada Lovelace paralysis story turns out to be a bit of a mystery to the net. Quick searches found varying mentions of the degree of her paralysis, from legs alone to total paralysis. Wikipedia had the most suggestive explanation ...

Ada Lovelace - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

...In June 1829, she was paralyzed after a bout of the "measles". Lady Byron subjected the girl to continuous bed rest for nearly a year, which may have extended her period of disability. By 1831 she was able to walk with crutches...

So she was sick with something (measles, polio?), but her disability may have been the product of her eccentric/mentally ill mother's induced bed rest.

Now here's the interesting bit. You don't have to be a genius to figure out that the original story doesn't make sense. So how does it manage to survive in the minds of preeminent UK historians? Don't they ever get comments from their physician friends after public lectures?

[1] Link is to archive site. Google sends us to the iPlayer beat site which doesn't keep these episodes.

[2] Years ago MD Consult was a great source of medical references, but publisher fights tore it apart. Progress is not linear.

An end to foolish pleas for more US engineers and scientists?

Ok, this should finally do it.

This should stop the nonsensical blubbering about how more Americans need to go into science, and more women should do computer science.

We already know that more Americans study science and engineering than makes economic sense -- probably because of immigration effects.

Now we learn that Japanese students are abandoning science and engineering. Why? More money for less work in other jobs.

Science and engineering are the comparative advantage of the "up and coming" nations like China, India, Korea, Thailand, Russia, etc. The only reason the US and Canada have maintained a strong presence in the sciences for so long is because our universities used to attract a large number of international students -- but Bush et al have crushed much of that appeal.

If we want even more US scientists and engineers, we're going to have to start taxing CEO salaries and use the money to buy engineering graduates new homes. Alternatively, we could elect Barack Obama and restore the attractiveness of American universities to the best international students.

Best coverage of platypus genome

Pharyngula: The platypus genome is excellent; much better coverage than anywhere else. I stopped reading PZ Myers because I was bored by his atheism wars, but maybe I need to pick him up again.

Mildred Loving and American history

The obituary section is, most of the time, the most thoughtful and best written part of The Economist.

Today, in kind but unsentimental language, we learn of how two almost invisible people became transiently famous, then a part of history, and then vanished away again...

Mildred Loving | Economist.com

... Mrs Loving wanted to return for good. When the Civil Rights Act was being debated in 1963, she wrote to Robert Kennedy, the attorney-general, to ask whether the prospective law would make it easier for her to go home. He told her it wouldn't ...

It's a remarkable story about American history, and how the mechanics of American law create history from the ahistoric.

It would play differently in the age of Oprah.

Evolving Skynet by Gwap (Nick Carr)

Google search is clearly an AI (I presume still non-sentient) in which processing cycles run partly on human wetware.

Insert your favorite Matrix/science fiction reference here.

Nick Carr comments on the next phase in Skynet's evolution ...

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Von Ahn's Gwap

... As The Register notes, a new site was launched this week, by Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science, that aims to entice humans into playing simple games that will help computers get smarter. The site, called Gwap (an acronym for "games with a purpose"), is the brainchild of computer scientist Luis von Ahn (who also cofathered the Captcha). "We have games that can help improve Internet image and audio searches, enhance artificial intelligence and teach computers to see," he explains. "But that shouldn't matter to the players because it turns out these games are super fun."...

... In other words, we become part of the processor, part of the machine. In Gwap and similar web-based tools, we see, in admittedly rudimentary form, the next stage in cybernetics, in which it becomes ever more difficult to discern who's in charge in complex man-machine systems - who's the controller and who's the controllee.

Dyer: Peak Oil means Peak Sweet Crude only

I'm impressed by Dyer's reasoning.

Peak Oil, he tells us, is only the end of the good stuff. There's lots of CO2 producing bad stuff, even if we bake and tear the planet to get to it.

Dyer, prections ...

... the recession is likely to drive the demand for oil down far enough to bring the price back down to $100 before long, or even to $85-90. Then in 2009-2010, as the "old rich" economies recover, it will go back up, probably to the $130-$150 range....

...the price of oil will probably stay well about $100 for most of the time in 2010-2015. But it won't hit $200, because there will be a steep rise in the supply of non-conventional oil from tar sands, oil shales, and other sources of "heavy oil."...

...In the still longer run -- the 2030s and beyond -- the demand for oil will probably fall even further, and with it the price. How do we know that? Because if it hasn't fallen due to a deliberate switch away from fossil fuels, then global warming will gain such momentum that entire countries are falling into chaos instead. There is more than one way to cut demand...

This would mean that, contrary to my post of May 12, oil and gasoline prices aren't necessarily going to keep rising at 10-15% per year. There's a natural ceiling of $200 out around 2015. Beyond that we probably melt Greenland, and the ensuing global chaos drops the price of oil.

Hmm. I'm glad I'm waiting for August before I make my "official" prediction!

Dyer - new articles (now via Page2RSS)

I've been subscribing to Gwynne Dyer's stubbornly archaic article distribution system via ChangeDetection.com and Page2RSS.

Today both of them notified me of a change -- the incorporation of seven new articles:

• April 23 Americans Helping Israel
• April 28 Oil Prices: Another Prediction
• May 02 Two Takes on Terrorism
• May 04 Why Did the (Z) Chicken Cross the Road?
• May 07 President Obama
• May 09 Why is Burma Like That?
• May 14 Pakistan: Politicians, Judges and a General

The beauty of Page2RSS is I get the notification and a summary of the changes. In this case I received all seven links in the generated RSS post. It was trivial to reformat them as above. If it keeps working I'll turn off ChangeDetection and stick with Page2RSS.

Now to read the articles ...

Update 5/18/2008: A comment suggested Feedity as another RSS source for a static page. They generate a complete feed as per this example for Dyer: http://feedity.com/rss.aspx/gwynnedyer-com/UVBbVFU. So now I'll compare Feedity to Page2RSS.

We've come a long way -- fraud 2008

Today's news makes me nostalgic for the modest worldwide fraud of JK Publications et al ...

IdentityBlog - Digital Identity, Privacy, and the Internet's Missing Identity Layer

Francois Paget ... "Last Friday morning in France, my investigations lead me to visit a site proposing top-quality data for a higher price than usual. But when we look at this data we understand that as everywhere, you have to pay for quality. The first offer concerned bank logons. As you can see in the following screenshot, pricing depends on available balance, bank organization and country. Additional information such as PIN and Transfer Passphrase are also given when necessary..."

Fraud has come a long way since those simple schemes of ten years ago, but VISA and MasterCard security has barely budged. We had to cancel a lost credit card recently; VISA told us they couldn't stop transactions on the old card. We would have to monitor all future transactions for old-card fraudulent transactions. They sent us the replacement card 4-5 days after our call.

As Schneier has reminded us many times, VISA and MasterCard won't clean up their act until the banks are made liable for the full costs of fraud and identity theft - preferably including punitive damages.

On the other hand, American Express, my choice ten years ago, continues to excel. Each person in our family account has their own card number -- so if one card is lost only one number is changed. They can track charges against the closed number. They got us the replacement in about a day.

Obviously we run almost all our expenses through our AMEX BLUE Cash back card. I never use the VISA online -- AMEX only. Fantastic service, excellent security, buyers assurance, etc, etc. What's not to like?

We keep the VISA for small transactions with businesses that can't do AMEX. I should probably get VISA to substantially decrease our credit limit...

Peak Oil now? Does Krugman really think so?

In March of this year I wondered if the rise in oil prices were rational speculation or speculative bubble. I decided that six months would be reasonable time to watch for bubble signs ...

Gordon's Notes: Oil price speculation: is it rational investment or a bubble?

... here's my proposal for deciding if Peak Oil is on the way.

If the price of oil craters ($65) in the next 6 months then we're living in an energy bubble today and Peak Oil is more than 10-15 years away.

If the price of oil is above $105 a barrel in August of 2008 then Peak Oil is on the sooner rather than later, and the world I grew up in is shuffling away -- sooner than I'd expected....

I've been thinking that the first onset of true "peak oil" would be due around 2013 to 2018. Since markets think about 5-10 years ahead, peak oil before 2018 would lead to rational speculation. On the other hand, irrational speculation can happen at any time.

What do I mean by rational speculation? I mean not investing in refining capability, since demand constraints might limit return on investment. I mean leaving oil in the ground, since its value will appreciate faster than other forms of investment. I mean looking for new oil, but not drilling new wells. Why drill now, when oil may appreciate in value by 10-14% a year? Oil in the ground, by this reasoning, is worth far more than money in the bank.

Heck, anyone with oil in the ground can just take out low interest loans against the oil, and make money on leveraged investing. No need to drill the messy stuff.

So I figured if Peak Oil is really 5-10 years away we'd see price signals now -- due to rational speculation. If prices stayed up from March to August 2008, that would be a sign that we were seeing rational speculation, thus $300/gallon oil would be on the 5-10 year horizon, and I should make sure my next car gets 50 miles to the gallon.

Incidentally, I assume this is obvious, but I'll mention it anyway. If Peak Oil is really 5-10 years away, then rational speculation and today's price rises are extremely positive developments. We will be far better off with a gradual and prolonged rise, accompanied by relatively gradual behavioral and lifestyle changes, than with a sudden crash.

Rational speculation is the IQ of the market place. Now if rational speculation would only price the externalities of coal appropriately ...

So that's where I stood in March of 2008. I didn't speculate that we might be already seeing a true demand/supply constraint -- the first Peak of the Peak Oil Range.

Paul Krugman, however, seems to be saying exactly that today:

The Oil Nonbubble - Paul Krugman - New York Times

...all through the period of the alleged bubble, inventories have remained at more or less normal levels. This tells us that the rise in oil prices isn’t the result of runaway speculation; it’s the result of fundamental factors, mainly the growing difficulty of finding oil and the rapid growth of emerging economies like China. The rise in oil prices these past few years had to happen to keep demand growth from exceeding supply growth....

...I wouldn’t be shocked if oil prices dip in the near future — although I also take seriously Goldman’s recent warning that the price could go to $200. But let’s drop all the talk about an oil bubble...

I think Krugman has gone too far -- he seems not to consider the possibility that holders of oil and refining capacity might be rationally constraining supply in appropriate anticipation of prolonged 10-20% annual returns on oil reserves.

Even so, it's unsettling to consider that we might be already seeing true demand/supply peaks -- even if they are likely to be wax and wane as we head for Oil-Everest.

I'll stick with my original plan for now. I'll make my own Peak Oil call in August. I will, however, add a third possibility to my original two - rational speculation, speculative bubble, and Peak Oil Now.

Update 5/13/2008: Paul K features a Sydney Herald graphic suggesting other adaptations to consider. I recall hearing (NPR) of one real estate speculator who felt the final straw in his collapse came from rising gas prices reducing interest in a his distant suburban development. Seven years ago I thought terrorism would drive home owners to the suburbs, but that hasn't happened (yet). I guess there's hope for the (now depressed) value of our ideally located St Paul home.

Fake Steve Jobs: Why Dell will not bounce back

FSJ has some of the best IT industry commentary around -- hidden within the amusing facade of a caricature of Apple's Steve Jobs.

Today he's written an unusually detailed analysis of why Dell is not going to recover. He was pretty close to my opinion of Dell's misfortune, but I thought he missed a few nuances. Here's a revised version of the comment I wrote:

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Why Dell will not bounce back

Very well done -- especially since you have to stay in character!

Dell was a parasite on IBM and Compaq's technical innovation. They focused on process innovation.

Nothing wrong with that! It's an excellent strategy -- as long as you understand what you're doing. They didn't. The Dell parasite killed its hosts.

It's bad form for a parasite to kill its hosts. Most biological parasites are much "smarter" than that.

Dell would parasitize Apple if it could, but Apple's hardware value is very closely tied to Apple's OS. Apple does software/hardware unification, and they ain't sharing the hardware. (Apple, incidentally, parasitizes hardware innovation funded by Microsoft's XP/Vista platform. That's what the Intel transition was all about. Happily, Apple knows how to be a responsible parasite. They won't kill the host.)

Dell's other mistake, in addition to failing to understand the duties of a good parasite, was that they flushed their innovators. They ought to have come up with a way to keep fifty or so very smart people happy tinkering in labs, so that when they needed to transition to invention and design innovation they had a core group of loyal innovators to build on.

Instead Dell adopted an aggressive downsizing strategy that maximized returns to process managers, and ignored innovators. Good in the short term, but risky. They could have afforded an insurance policy.

Two big mistakes. I'm not so convinced they can't recover, but it is an uphill battle now.