G E B W E B

I know it’s been a while, but the sequel to the broken Oil Price Widget is now here. The new widget not only shows the oil price, it shows a set of other futures, currencies and indices as well. I named it the Commodities Widget, even though some of the things it shows are not strictly commodities.

The new data source is INO.com. They are probably the web’s best free source for futures contracts. Clicking on any chart in the widget will bring you to the corresponding INO.com page with more details and longer-term charts.

Download: Commodities Widget.

Instructions: Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger or higher is required. If you’re using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you’re using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it.

I claim that even if you don’t “believe” in global warming, you should ditch the car. I’ve reached this conclusion by calculating the effective speed of driving, vs. the effective speed of biking. This argument was initially made by Ivan Illich in the early 70’s, but I put in numbers for 2009 and my own situation. The effective speed is the time it takes you to travel where you want to go + the time it takes you to earn the money needed to afford that mode of transportation. In the case of the bike, we also subtract some time, since it doubles as physical exercise and you really do need about 30 minutes of moderate physical activity every day to avoid serious health issues down the road.

These are numbers for Ontario, Canada based on CAA’s annual driving costs model and actual marginal tax rates for 2009.

Assuming a cheap-ass car (the Cobalt LT) and a high annual salary of $100K, you need to drive more than 15 900 km a year for a car to make sense. With my own transportation needs of ~10 000 km (a little less, actually), the cheap car will have an effective speed of a meager 23 km/h, while the bike runs at 31 km / h. Clearly I’m getting around at much higher speeds than those sluggish cars.

But if you make $40K / year and drive a Dodge Grand Caravan (the more expensive vehicle in the CAA example) the same distance, you’re humping along at an abysmal 12.3 km / h.

Feel free to copy my spreadsheet and play with your own numbers. And yeah, ditch the car and take an extra day off every week!

Oppdatering: Om du er interessert i norske forhold, kan du se disse i dette regnearket. En norsk lønnstaker med årlig inntekt på 450000 kr jobber ca. 500 timer årlig for å dekke de årlige utgiftene til en medium bensinbil med nypris 349000 kr. Om den årlige reiselengden er 10000 km, er den effektive hastigheten til bilisten 15,6 km/t. Sykkelen er ca. dobbelt så rask, med effektiv hastighet 30,4 km/t.

When the FED bought yet more Treasuries yesterday, effectively printing money, the market rejoiced. Karl Denninger documents it well in his latest post (look at the two charts near the bottom). Unfortunately, few such happiness-shots remain: The program to buy Treasuries is capped at $300 billion, and after Monday 9/21, $289 billion has been spent.

I expect two or three more of these infusions before they run out of heroin for the drug addict. This should get us to the beginning of October. Then what?

Photo by Mick Mason www.mickmasonphotography.com / ParkourGenerations

To make a long story short. My brother and I participated in a 6-day intensive training parkour camp in the French Alps from June 21 - 28. Each day started with a short run and plenty of push-ups at 5:50 am. Then breakfast, exercise, lunch, exercise and dinner (and one day we also did a night session). I was tired at the end of that camp. I mean really tired. Imagine all your muscles aching, even muscles you did not know existed…

Parkour Generations recently published a gallery showing the Morzine experience. By the way, we also did white-water rafting, the food was excellent, the instructors were extremely skilled and the spirit of the 24 participants was incredible! Highly recommended for anyone who wants to train hard and have a vacation they will not soon forget!

My friend Mr. Mamen asked me to test a new survey system he has developed. So here we go: