The Girl Who Feels No Pain

It doesn't seem that way when you're in the middle of it, but pain is a good thing.

The girl who feels no pain was in the kitchen, stirring ramen noodles, when the spoon slipped from her hand and dropped into the pot of boiling water. It was a school night; the TV was on in the living room, and her mother was folding clothes on the couch. Without thinking, Ashlyn Blocker reached her right hand in to retrieve the spoon, then took her hand out of the water and stood looking at it under the oven light. She walked a few steps to the sink and ran cold water over all her faded white scars, then called to her mother, “I just put my fingers in!” Her mother, Tara Blocker, dropped the clothes and rushed to her daughter’s side. “Oh, my lord!” she said — after 13 years, that same old fear — and then she got some ice and gently pressed it against her daughter’s hand, relieved that the burn wasn’t worse.

She can feel warmth and coolness, but not the more extreme temperatures that would cause anyone else to recoil in pain.

Saudi Dakota? (Updated)

The US economy may be stagnant, but North Dakotans haven't noticed.  Recession?  What recession?

The “Economic Miracle State” continues to lead the nation with the lowest state unemployment rate at 3% in September, at almost five percentage points below the national average of 7.8%.  There were 11 North Dakota counties with jobless rates below 2.0% in September, and Williams County, which is at the epicenter of the Bakken oil boom, continues to boast the lowest county jobless rate in the country at just 0.7%.  The exponential growth in North Dakota oil production has fueled exponential growth in the state’s oil and gas jobs, which have more than tripled over the last three years.  Overall employment throughout the entire state increased 5.6% over the twelve month period through September; four times the tepid 1.4% pace of job growth nationally during that period.

It ain't no miracle.  It's a deliberate decision to allow free market forces to work and create wealth by accessing the state's natural raw materials, namely petroleum.

What’s especially impressive is the incredible exponential increase in North Dakota’s oil production over such a short period of time.  The state’s oil production has doubled in just the last 16 months, from 364,160 bpd in May of last year to 728,494 in September of this year.  Oil coming out of the state’s Bakken Formation is behind the huge increase, as that oil field in western North Dakota now supplies 91% of the state’s oil, up from only 78% of the state’s oil two years ago.  Bakken oil output has doubled in just the last 15 months, from 320,435 bpd last June to 662,428 bpd in September (see bottom chart above).  At the current pace of production increases, North Dakota’s oil production will surpass one million bpd by the end of next year.  And it’s the exponential increases in shale oil production in the Bakken region of North Dakota and the Eagle Ford Shale region of Texas that have the United States on a trajectory to become the world’s largest oil producer in the next eight years.

Considering North Dakota's economic boom due to "frackin' the Bakken", and that the US has more petroleum in the Green River Formation than all the world's known oil reserves, the federal government must be eager to allow more drilling and exploration on federal lands, right?

Not so much.

The Interior Department on Friday issued a final plan to close 1.6 million acres of federal land in the West originally slated for oil shale development.

The proposed plan would fence off a majority of the initial blueprint laid out in the final days of the George W. Bush administration. It faces a 30-day protest period and a 60-day process to ensure it is consistent with local and state policies. After that, the department would render a decision for implementation.

As I wrote before, "it's not as though, in this roaring economy, we need all that inexpensive energy or high-paying jobs".

The US is over $16,000,000,000,000 in debt and counting.  The federal government added over $120,000,000,000 to that debt in October 2012 alone and is on track to add another $1,320,000,000,000 to the debt by the end of fiscal year 2013.  Raising taxes will likely cause the economy to slow even more.  Even if the federal government were to cut spending drastically (good luck with that), we would need enormous economic growth to begin paying down our monstrous debt.

In other words, we need the kind of growth North Dakotans have enjoyed for years.

UPDATE (19NOV2012): The following charts demonstrate how hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has increased total US reserves of petroleum and natural gas by making previously unavailable reserves available.  Further technological advances will make the Green River Formation available.

From the Energy Information Administration

Making Health Care More Affordable

Have you ever walked into a doctor's office and seen a list of prices for the services they offer?  No?  Have you ever asked why not?  Every establishment that sells a good or service provides an up-front list of prices, or at least an estimate.  The one exception is health care providers.  The reason is insurance.

When you buy something for yourself with your own money, you naturally look for the highest quality at the best price.  That desire, and competition between providers, drives costs down and quality up.

When you buy something for yourself with someone else's money, you naturally look for the best quality, but not necessarily the best price.

That's what happens with health insurance, and why health care prices keep increasing. 

The "solution" you'll typically hear for this problem is to make health care 100% government-run.  But that makes the problem worse, because it introduces another layer of separation between the customer and the price.  When you buy something for someone you don't know or care about with other people's money, you neither care about the price nor the quality. 

Furthermore, that solution fails to take into account the fact that government caused the problem in the first place by placing price controls on the amount companies could pay employees back in 1942.  Companies then began compensating workers with health insurance packages, and the modern health care behemoth was born.  Believing that greater government intervention will cure a problem government intervention caused is like believing that a poisoned patient should drink more poison to save himself.

So, what's the solution?  Some doctors in Oklahoma believe they've found it.

The Surgery Center demonstrates that it’s possible to offer high quality care at low prices. "It's always been interesting to me,” says Dr. Jason Sigmon, “that in any other industry, tons of attention is devoted to making systems more efficient, but in health care that's just completely lost."

The bill, which is strictly for the hospital itself and doesn't include Sigmon's or the anesthesiologist's fees, totaled $33,505. When Sigmon performs the same procedure at the Surgery Center, the all-inclusive price is $5,885.

How can the Surgery Center offer the same procedure at 1/6 the cost of the hospital?

Three years ago, Dr. Keith Smith, co-founder and managing partner of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, took an initiative that would only be considered radical in the health care industry: He posted online a list of prices for 112 common surgical procedures. The 51-year-old Smith, a self-described libertarian, and his business partner, Dr. Steve Lantier, founded the Surgery Center 15 years ago, after they became disillusioned with the way patients were treated at St. Anthony Hospital in Oklahoma City, where the two men worked as anesthesiologists.

The following is from the Surgery Center's website.

Transparent, direct, package pricing means the patient knows exactly what the cost of the service will be upfront. Fees for the surgeon, anesthesiologist and facility are all included in one low price. There are no hidden costs, charges or surprises.

None of this should come as a surprise.  Corrective eye surgery prices keep dropping because it's not covered by insurance.

"In every other field of medicine, the price is going up faster than consumer prices in general," said Dr. John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis.

"[But] the price of Lasik surgery, on average, has gone down by 30 percent." [this article is from 2006, whereas the chart to the right is from 2009 ~ OS] 

Prices dropped even though doctors pay for advertising. And while the procedure got cheaper, it also got better.

"When the lasers first came out, all they could treat was nearsightedness," Bonanni said. "[Today] the lasers are faster, more precise."

The same is true of most cosmetic surgery procedures.

So, the answer to ever-increasing health care costs is not more government intrusion, but less.  The answer, as usual, is the free market.

Taking Matters Into Their Own Hands

FEMA has largely screwed up the response to Super Storm Sandy, just as they did with Katrina.  But that shouldn't come as a surprise.  Central planning by a distant federal government agency rarely works as well as local planning.  Think about it.  Who knows your neighborhood better; you, or some DC bureaucrat?

Granted, NYC screwed things up pretty badly as well, and Mayor Bloomberg deserves far more of the blame than FEMA, but just as Katrina did in 2004, Sandy demonstrates that local people organizing themselves voluntarily can accomplish far more than top-down, impersonal government bureaucracies.

"There's no leadership here, nobody knows what's going on," said Christopher Janusis, a Staten Island resident, whose house and neighborhood were badly hit by Sandy.

For Janusis and thousands of other Staten Islanders whose lives were so suddenly changed by Sandy, there are many reasons to complain. But rather than do that, and rather than wait for government help, the residents took matters into their own hands: They organized a volunteer-driven relief effort that could be an example for FEMA and other aid agencies might do well to study.

As ordinary people often do, they innovated in the face of crisis.

Cangiano and her fellow volunteers showed they could rip through the red tape that often stifles aid organizations, and focus on the calls for help.

"We were monitoring Facebook and other social media," she said. "As calls and messages came in for help, we responded by sending cars full of food and supplies to the areas that needed it most."

I doing so, they demonstrated what neighbors voluntarily helping each other can accomplish.

Cosentino  tells Fox News that the main thing to be learned is "that the people themselves on Staten Island saved most of the lives here and are doing most of the work, along with volunteers from other areas." He says "you have incredibly valuable resources here that need be pooled to get the job done."

...small businesses, neighbors and local leaders teamed up to ensure people had clothes, food, water, blankets and hot meals, as well as other survival basics.

Democrats accuse those who believe in small, limited government of saying to everyone, "you're on your own".  The obvious implication is that only government can organize people (by force) to accomplish anything good and decent, which is an obvious load of crap.  Left to their own devices, decent, free people naturally band together to help each other.  That is the direct opposite of selfishness, and fosters community and friendship among neighbors.

Yes, the federal government can play a role in disaster relief, but that should be the last resort, when it's clear that volunteers, local government, state government, and neighboring states are overwhelmed by the size of the disaster.

Always remember that, regardless of the competence of government's response, you are your own first line of defense, then your immediate family, then you neighbors.  See my post on disaster prep for great ideas from Popular Mechanics on how to make those lines of defence as effective as possible.

Euro Zone Back in Recession (Updated)

How's Socialism working for Europe?

The debt crisis dragged the euro zone into its second recession since 2009 in the third quarter despite  modest growth in Germany andFrance, data showed on Thursday.

The two leading economies both managed 0.2 percent growth in the July-to-September period.

Got that?  Their two leading economies grew at the roaring rate of 0.2%.

But the resilience could not save the austerity-hit 17-nation bloc from overall contraction as the likes of The Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Austria shrank.

Economic output in the euro zone fell 0.1 percent in the quarter, following a 0.2-percent drop in the second quarter.

Those two quarters of contraction put the euro zone’s 9.4 trillion euro ($12 trillion) economy in recession, although Italy and Spain have been contracting for a year already and Greece is suffering an outright depression.

Incredibly, this is the direction some Americans actually want to follow them off the cliff by spending more, borrowing more and taxing more.  It's insane.  We should be taking the opposite approach, because as Ed Morrissey states...

At some point, the Germans and French citizens will tire of having their production dedicated to rescuing less disciplined neighbors on the Continent.  When that day comes, the Atlantic will not protect us from the shock waves — which is why it’s more urgent than ever for the US to get its own fiscal house in order.

Fortunately, our president promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.  Of course, it's his second term now, and he hasn't even tried, but it's the thought that counts, right?

UPDATE (18NOV2012): Half of UK voters want to leave the EU, and I can't say that I blame them.

The survey will fuel the growing political debate about Britain’s future place in the EU, which has seen even Cabinet ministers suggesting that the UK would prosper outside the union.

The YouGov poll showed that 49 per cent of voters would vote to leave the EU in a referendum. Twenty-eight per percent said they would opt to remain a member, while 17 per cent said they did not know how they would vote.

British voters are also gloomy about the future of the EU: 65 per cent said they are pessimistic about the union’s prospects, while only 22 per cent were optimistic.

Another poll published yesterday in The Guardian claims it's more like 56%, but the link wouldn't work for me (maybe it'll work now).

Remember when Americans thought the EU would overtake the US as the world's leading economic power?  No nation, or group of nations, can spend more than they take in, lavish their population with welfare programs that give them incentives to not work, punish those who do work with excessive taxes, make it excessively difficult to start or run a business with excessive regulation,  produce too few children to replace in the future the people who are working today, and expect to survive.

And we're making all the same mistakes.

Exercise Myths

Do you think the woman in the picture below is hurting the baby in her womb by lifting her toddler overhead?

Few would answer that question, "yes".  The answers would most likely range from "no", to "probably not" to "if she was strong enough to lift the child before she got pregnant, she's mostly likely strong enough to do so while pregnant".

So then, why do so many people freak out when they see the same woman lifting a 35 lb kettlebell overhead, which weighs roughly the same as the toddler, and is far less awkward to lift?

Pregnant women have been lifting their toddlers - and even older children - ever since there have been pregnant women and toddlers.  If pregnant women really were so frail that they couldn't lift that weight safely, there would be a lot fewer of us today.  For some reason, however, Westerners in the last 50 - 60 years began to see pregnancy almost as a disability, and the resulting lack of physical activity among pregnant women, coupled with a modern Western diet full of refined grains, starches, sugars, hydrogenated fats and other processed foods, results in illnesses like gestational diabetes and obesity, which are far more harmful to the woman and child than lifting a weight no heavier than a toddler. 

So Much For Peak Oil

Back when Mel Gibson was cool

Despite all the Malthusian doom prophesies, human beings keep disproving (disappointing?) the prophets and innovating new ways to adapt to their changing circumstances.  The latest and most popular Cassandras (with apologies to Cassandra of Troy, whose prophesies were true) are "environmentalists", and among their many dooms day predictions is "Peak Oil".  The idea is that if we continue to rely on petroleum and other fossil fuels, we'll soon exhaust those raw materials and end up in a real life version of Mad Max.

Unfortunately for Gaia's worshipers, but fortunately for us, there's more ptroleum in Colorado alone, than we've ever used.

Drillers in Utah and Colorado are poking into a massive shale deposit trying to find a way to unlock oil reserves that are so vast they would swamp OPEC.

A recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated that if half of the oil bound up in the rock of the Green River Formation could be recovered it would be "equal to the entire world's proven oil reserves."

Both the GAO and private industry estimate the amount of oil recoverable to be 3 trillion barrels.
"In the past 100 years — in all of human history -- we have consumed 1 trillion barrels of oil. There are several times that much here," said Roger Day, vice president for operations for American Shale Oil (AMSO).

Why haven't we tapped into this incredible resource?  Cost.

Exploration well 40 miles northwest of Rifle, CO

This tantalizing bonanza, however, remains just out of reach, at least for now. The cost of extracting the Green River oil at the moment would be higher than what it could be sold for.

The reason for the cost is a technical problem.

The hydrocarbons in Green River shale are more intimately bound up with the rock, so that fracking cannot release them. The shale has to be heated to 5,000 degrees Farenheit before it will give up its oil.

Producers have been trying to accomplish that in one of two ways: Either they bring the shale to the surface and then cook it , or they sink a deep shaft and place an electric heater at the base, a process called in-situ. AMSO has been testing in-situ with mixed success.

And that's why Thomas Robert Malthus and his philosophycal descendants constantly prove to be wrong.  They underestimate human ingenuity and the effects of economics (which is ironic, since Malthus was an economist).  High prices provide an incentive for people to devise solutions to a problem.  That's what engineers do.  They apply scientific principles to solving practical problems.  Once the problems is solved, engineers refine the methods used to solve the problem, and the solution becomes less expensive.

What drives all this problem solving?  The profit motive.

And that explains why "environmentalists" constantly underestimate this process. 

"Environmentalists" are almost universaly Socialist.  They don't understand the profit motive, or how it makes people's lives better.  If they did, they'd be Capitalists.