Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm

Who needs it? Northwest passage open.

The canal intermediating between two oceans is the perfect example of a monopoly exchange hub. Routing around it will have tremendous disruptive effects. Immediately this changes the pricing situation. The Panamanians collect 600 Million a year in revenue on tolls, a price that is presumably set in “consultation” of the US government. I have no idea what we spend a year on “their” “security” and we have, of course, invested a bit in that area over the years. Adding Canada to the pricing discussion will be complex, but probably not intractably so. The Panamanians are currently engaged in a 5 Billion dollar canal upgrade. Canada faces some significant startup costs to govern their alternate route. The world hasn’t ever managed to eliminate piracy in the south china seas.

Governments aren’t the only players.  The shipping business has a dominate player, it’s Walmart/Microsoft/Saudi-Aramco/what-have-out, i.e. Maerk Line. They are currently building a set of 10+ container ships able to hold 14 thousand standard shipping containers (TEU). When those go by on the superhighway one guy is driving the truck. These ships have a crew of 13. These are the largest cargo ships in the world, but yet they conform to the standard dimensions required by the canal. Maerk has 1.7 Million TEU of shipping capacity.

I bet some people are rerunning the numbers on a lot of projects: that one, the canal upgrade, the cost of regulating a new route.

Nations whose funding runs through a single bottleneck have a tough time dealing with disruptions to that bottleneck. Which is why one worries about Mexico’s stability as their oil run out. I guess we can add Panama to that list.

When disrupting an existing exchange hub it’s de rigor to leverage each way your alternative is maximally different from the competitor. I wonder what can be made of the near term seasonality of this new route. I bet we will see a lot of PR about how environmentally beneficial the reduced energy usage of this new route is. Should be quite interesting for ship design, since presumably you don’t have to fit through the canal anymore.

Two words you do not want to see together: Surprise Hurricane.

“A surprise Hurricane Humberto ripped into Texas near the Louisiana border this morning, bringing winds of 85 mph and torrential rains to the coast. Humberto didn’t even exist yesterday morning, and grew from a tropical depression at 11am EDT to a hurricane just 14 hours later.” — Jeff Masters

Sometimes a scientific paper makes me giggle.  The paper by Charles Courtemanche which I’m skimming this morning has a few examples of this.  For example it says that people tend to under report their weight and over report their height; but more the former than the latter.  It also includes this phrase “the food variables are left-censored at zero” - which means to say that the French fries don’t come out of your mouth, they only go in.   This formula where on term is aproximately salads and another term is meatloaf is a hoot.

I don’t know were this guy get’s off announcing that meatloaf isn’t health!  The author took two large data sets, one for prices (that’s gas price in the formula) and one for health behaviors.  The health behavior data he used is collected by the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System of the CDC.  It’s a telephone survey conducted by state health departments.  That survey is full of interesting facts, for example here is a map showing the states and metro-regions where people lack health insurance.

In anycase, he was looking to see if there was some corrolation between gas prices and obesity; and yes cheap gas makes us get fatter.  Given that the next question is “How so?”  The behavior data has lots of info about various things people are doing he can look for patterns there too.  Thus we can can learn the valuable and amusing fact that “A rise in gas prices appears to increase the frequency of hamburger consumption…” and “a small increase in salad consumption”.   From now on when ever I see that the price of gas has gone up I’m going to think “hamburger?”  Generally higher gas prices don’t lead to healthier eating.

People lost weight when gas prices rose for two reasons.  Where they ate changes; they ate more at home.  And they walked more.  I.e. higher gas prices reduced driving; displacing driving to the resturant and increasing walking as a substitute.

His conclusion:

In this paper, I provide evidence of a causal link between gasoline prices and body weight. Using data from the BRFSS, I find nd that a $1 increase in gas prices would, after three years, reduce U.S. obesity by approximately 15%, saving 16,000 lives and $17 billion per year, a  magnitude which offsets 16% of fuel consumers’ additional expenses. I also estimate that 13%  of the U.S.’s rise in obesity over the period 1979-2004 can be attributed to falling gas prices  during that time. Finally, I find that a rise in gas prices increases exercise and decreases the amount people eat out at restaurants, explaining their effect on weight.

This paper is actionable on a personal level.  Lose weight, buy a gas guzzler! But then it is probably twice as effective to buy a car you hate.

The paper is here (pdf), and a nod to the ever facinating Paul for his post about it.

Posted in humor, natural-world | Typo? | 4 Comments »