Biding Our Time, Talkers, and Another Late Night

Maybe we should just wait for the mullahs to self-destruct. That’s the thrust of this Forbes article on Iran.

Oil provides more than 70% of the revenues of the government of Iran. The rise in oil prices has been a bonanza for the regime, allowing them to subsidize all sorts of welfare programs at home and mischief abroad. And one of the chief subsidies is gasoline prices.

Gasoline costs about $.34 cents a gallon in Iran, or 9 cents a liter. You can fill up your Honda Civic for $4.49. In the U.S. it costs almost $40. In neighboring Turkey it costs almost $95. Iran is spending 38% of its national budget (almost 15% of gross domestic product) on gasoline subsidies!

And this situation is likely to get worse. Let's look at a rather remarkable peer-reviewed study done for the National Academy of Sciences by Roger Stern of Johns Hopkins University late last year. Stern's analysis is somewhat political, in that he is critical of current U.S. Iranian policy, but this is just one of several studies that show the same thing:

"A more probable scenario is that, absent some change in Irani policy ... [we will see] exports declining to zero by 2014 to 2015. Energy subsidies, hostility to foreign investment and inefficiencies of its state-planned economy underlie Iran's problem, which has no relation to 'peak oil.' "

Given the reaction to the recently imposed gas rationing one can surmise the pressure cooker will blow when the subsidies go away for good, as they most certainly will. Yet that will probably be a temporary reaction and it’s anybody’s guess if higher gasoline prices will really be enough to topple the government. It’s but one issue in an economy that has been seriously mismanaged and is almost totally lacking in foreign investment and associated technical expertise.

I’m heartened by the article. But it also brings to mind the ol’ cliché… “be careful what you wish for.” In this case, however, it’s pretty hard to conceive of any alternative to the theocracy as being worse for the Iranians or ourselves.

Myth busters?

WASHINGTON, JUL 6: A team of researchers found there is not much difference between the sexes when it comes to talking when you actually count the words.

The researchers placed microphones on 396 college students for periods ranging from two to ten days, sampled their conversations and calculated how many words they used in the course of a day.

The score: Women, 16,215. Men, 15,669. The difference: 546 words: “Not statistically significant,” say the researchers in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.

[…]

They were surprised when a magazine article asserted that women use an average of 20,000 words per day compared with 7,000 for men.

If there had been that big a difference, he thought, they should have noticed it.

They found that the 20,000-7,000 figures have been used in popular books and magazines for years. But they could not find any research supporting them.

Mmmm-kay. If you say so. Me? I’m going with my gut on this one. And my gut tells me the UT researchers are wrong.

Just sayin’. (In as few words as possible.)

So. Another late night, Gentle Reader. But this time there was a reason…I got caught up in The History Channel’s broadcast of Mel Gibson’s Braveheart and didn’t get to sleep until after the movie was over at 0200 hrs this morning. I’m not generally a movie guy, but this one grabbed me. Old news for those of you who are movie people, I’m sure. Aside from enjoying the Hell out of the movie, the upshot is I poured today’s first cup shortly after 1100 hrs. Half the day was gone before it even began…

Today’s Pic: Mucking around in the depths of the archives, again. Here’s SN3 and I, and Bob-O ain’t too very pleased about being retrieved from his puddle-stomping fun during a summer rainstorm on the Fourth of July…nine years ago.

Perinton, NY. July, 1998. (As always: click for larger.)