The Goat Pen

CNN must hate life nowadays

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/21/europe/sw ... index.html

It's now being said that Trump had a vision of that riot when he said "what happened in Sweden last night."

Behold the Orange Oracle.

Have we not discussed this here? Trump is a time traveller. Probably just a mistake on the date.

To bad it wasn't November 22, 1963 ,in Dallas.

on the one hand, Sweden has to downplay it like this isn't a big deal, but then that implies its a regular occurrence.

interesting read on the potential economic bubble in the auto industry.

on average, every licensed driver in the United States owes $6100 on an auto loan

In the past two years, U.S. drivers with credit scores of less than 620 borrowed $244 billion to buy cars which exceeds the amount of debt just prior to the financial crisis in 2007/8

Auto bubbles aren't horrible because auto's are a fairly recoverable asset but I was a surprised to see that much debt. I'm debt averse when it comes to cars. If at all possible I try to avoid getting a loan more than $20K and I do my best to pay it off in 2 years or less. Wasn't always like that but I don't like the idea of a big payment on a car I have to maintain for 5 years.

I used to be that way, but with interest rate deals like 0% or 0.9%, I make payments. As long as the interest rate on the car is less than I am earning, I make a payment.

I just can't pay $45K for a car - at least if I have a choice

Sure you can. Dip into that $170/per person liquor bill.

AlabamAlum wrote:Sure you can. Dip into that $170/per person liquor bill.

heh

the finance team is being flown in to meet with my boss on Friday to go over the why we can't reconcile $1.5m in the quarterly forecast.

Its not a good week for him

When it's not a good week for him, it's likely not a good week for those under him.

I think eCat is already Pence-ing his boss.

AlabamAlum wrote:When it's not a good week for him, it's likely not a good week for those under him.

I don't have access to the financials but the crew I hang out with who do have had a rough week.

I really like my boss but I wouldn't want to lay odds on him being my boss this time next year.

I've never paid more than $4K for a car in my life...

I've been thinking about climate change on this 65 degree day in February.

I think our approach as a country has been wrong.

If you look at our history, getting people to change their habits has been due to technological advances. From horse to train to car to plane, from phone to radio to TV to internet

Instead of trying to alter people's behavior, we should be doing what America does best - and that is inventing a technological solution to removing greenhouse gases from the air and pollutants from our oceans so Americans can continue to live their lives as they wish.

I don't know that coal or natural gas is the best source of energy for us, but we do have decades if not centuries of this fuel available to us. I have to believe that scrubbing the air is no more of a technical challenge to us in 2017 than putting a man on the moon was in 1963.

I was reading a story about a simple solution a man came up with to clean trash from the water around Baltimore - and its been a huge success.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017 ... sh-pickup/

here is a story about pulling CO2 from the air and turning it into fuel in a process that is scalable

http://www.sciencealert.com/a-canadian- ... to-pellets

I believe that controlling the climate is a solution would do 2 things - push for universal/global acceptance to work toward solving the climate problems we face and as a result spur job growth and the economy in resolving these problems.

This isn't an obvious benefactor to cleaning CO2 out of the air - in terms of who pays for it - but as a global solution there would be many players who would contribute - especially if it means reduced pressure on emerging economies to cut back on emissions as well as projecting longevity for fossil fuel providing countries.

In the end it wouldn't be about slowing climate change - it would be about controlling it.

I can envision a world where we have air scrubbing plants dotted across the landscape, running autonomously and continuously, as well as for the oceans - in both terms of cleaning the water of debris, chemicals and even desalinization for areas affected by drought brought on by climate change.

hedge wrote:I've never paid more than $4K for a car in my life...

the older I get the more I get closer to that.

I bought a used mini van for $9K and it might be the best car I ever owned.

but I'm all for everyone else paying $45K for autos, so I can buy them 8 years for now for 25% of their MSRP value

Climate change is the earth's way of eliminating troublesome species. From nature's perspective, climate change isn't the problem, humans are. My money is on nature...

hedge wrote:Climate change is the earth's way of eliminating troublesome species. From nature's perspective, climate change isn't the problem, humans are. My money is on nature...

I wouldn't argue, but man has broke the bonds of gravity, harnessed the power of the sun and the atom, and has exceeded the speed of sound.

We can give mother nature a fight.

I'm willing to move up to $6 or 7K for my next car (hopefully won't be for a few years, but at any rate, not until the one I'm driving now blows up), there are tons in that price range (or less) on Craigslist. When I lived in SF, I bought a couple of cars for less than $2K, they were fine...

"I wouldn't argue, but man has broke the bonds of gravity, harnessed the power of the sun and the atom, and has exceeded the speed of sound.

We can give mother nature a fight."

That's what Icarus said...