Isegoria

James K. Glassman asks, Who’s He Kidding?:

Next, the President chided the companies that actually produce the energy. “We expect there to be strong re-investment [of] cash flows” in more energy production. Just what does he think these companies have been doing? Over the past 10 years, the large integrated oil companies have made capital expenditures roughly equal to their net earnings. In fact, between 1991 and 2005, ExxonMobil’s cumulative capital and exploration expenditures (some $210 billion) actually exceeded the company’s earnings. Chevron spent $11 billion last year alone.

Those expenditures involve enormous risk and long lead times. ExxonMobil, for example, spent 17 years and $3.5 billion on a deepwater development project in Angola. In 1988, when the company began its work, oil was about $15 a barrel.

But the oil price bounces up and down. Only a few years ago, it was less than $10 a barrel. It could be again. (In 2002, as the price of oil fell, Chevron’s sales dropped by $5 billion and its earnings by nearly $3 billion — in one year!)

Or politicians could decide to tax away profits, or further favor uneconomic fuels.

Steve Jones explains the evolution of clots — after explaining why “intelligent design” is the “logic of ignorance”:

The ID crew, to use Darwin’s own phrase, “look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond [their] comprehension”. The first Hawaiians to cast eyes on Europeans were so astonished by their great vessels that they thought their builders to be gods. The ID argument is just the same. It is the logic of ignorance, idleness and incuriosity: I am very smart, even I do not understand this, so why bother to explain it except by bringing in God (if necessary under an alias)?

How did clots evolve?

The clotting machinery is an icon of just how complex life may be. Designers love it: for to staunch the flow needs a cascade of a dozen or more enzymes that work like a row of toppling dominoes. Two interacting pathways meet at a crucial junction point.

One is set off by a change in acidity after a cut, while the other acts when it picks up chemical cues from damaged cells. An injury sets off a chain reaction until the job is done and, if any step goes wrong, the whole system collapses. How could such a complicated machine evolve from simple beginnings? What use is part of a clot?

Much better, in fact, than no clot at all. Plenty of animals manage with just a few parts of the machinery and DNA shows that — like the eye — the rickety apparatus that stops us from bleeding was assembled from random bits that just happened to be hanging around.

The Franklin Expedition set off to the Arctic, to collect magnetic data, with a party of 128 men in May, 1845, in two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, with iron-reinforced bows and new-fangled steam-powered screw propellers. They never returned:

There are several things that contributed to the loss of the Franklin expedition. Franklin was of a breed of imperial officers who believed in the subjugation of nature by civilization. He and his men carried silver plates, crystal decanters, and many extraneous personal effects with them. They attempted to haul much of this heavy gear along with them even after abandoning the ships. They were unwilling or unable to learn survival techniques from the natives. Moreover, their expedition was a naval one, not equipped for hiking over land, so none of the sailors had thick boots or jackets. Their ships were locked in the ice for two winters running as a result of an unsually cold period that did not allow the icebound passages to melt in the summer of 1846. The party’s morale and cohesion was damaged by psychological effects of lead poisoning from the solder that sealed their tinned food supply. This has been confirmed by lead found in both skeletal and soft tissue remains of expedition sailors conducted by Dr. Owen Beattie of the University of Alberta. They also were weakened by internal bleeding from scurvy after the first two years when the preventive lemon juice they carried lost its potency. The Inuit witnesses had reported that crew members exhibited the blackened mouth and bruised skin typical of that disease. There is evidence of cut marks found on bones from some of the crew, that suggests conditions were so dire that some resorted to cannibalism. In the end, it was likely a combination of poor planning, bad weather, poisoned food, and ultimately starvation that killed them.

Because the expedition was so well stocked — they had 8,000 tins of food — it was assumed that they could survive comfortably amidst the ice, and the large reward for their rescue was not offered for two years.

I have to wonder whether this is true or not, but it is amusing. Illusionist Tricks Armed Robbers:

Copperfield says he turned his pockets inside out to reveal nothing in them, even though he was carrying his passport, wallet and cell phone.