Unemployment in Michigan Dropping

Unemployment in home state Michigan continued to fall, and let me tell you that is welcome. Now it is hard to get a table on the weekend at the local restaurants. It used to be 14.4% and now it is 8.4%. See my previous post as the recession bottomed out. Now Michigan has improved from worst to seventh from worst.

See the graph above. It is interesting that Northern Tier states have the lowest unemployment, and Sunbelt states are worst.

Fancy Feast Addiction

Cat's like Nestle's Fancy Feast cat food  that customers say their cats are addicted to it, and won't eat anything else. They call it "Kitty Crack," although I think that catnip is a better fit since it looks like a narcotic. 

I can confirm that. At our house we switched our cats back from other foods, when one cat got sick. They had been eating exotic cat food that we bought frozen. Now they are back on Fancy Feast and they won't touch anything else. 

I have to believe that Nestle chemists are working hard "cat-testing" to get formulas that cats want to eat. I suppose that is what gourmet cat food means -- if it means anything at all.

Most people think that Fancy Feast is healthy, although people can't agree on cat diets anymore than people diets. 

Nestle's bought Purina in 2001 and merged it with their existing Friskies line. They offer SEVENTEEN different cat food brands in the United States, and that is after the government made them divest Meow Mix because of anti-trust. Fancy Feast is one of their high end brands, but probably not the most expensive those seem to be Purina One, Pro Plan, and Purina Veterinary Diets. 

There are five kids of Fancy Feast, regular, appetizers, Elegant Melodies, Gourmet Cat Food (a dry food), and Gourmet Kitten Food (a canned food.) Most Fancy Feast is canned, and the ingredients are on-line along with nutritional analysis. Like most canned food they are mostly water (78-82%) and 9-12% protein. Gravy-containing foods have 3% more water and 2% less protein. 

St Patrick's Day Corktown 5K Race

You get bling when you run this race. You can
wear it as you walk the parade with your
green mardi gras beads. 

For the first time in two years, I actually did a running event today. It was the Corktown race, which precedes the Detroit St. Patrick's Day Parade, so the whole even was bathed in Irishness, or at least Greenness. Aside from the Irish theme, this race is notable for having free beer at the end, but alas only one glass each.

The race itself was fun. As usual I ran too fast at the beginning and choked near the end. Wonder how I did? You'll need to check the link yourself. 

I ran in my Z-Coil shoes, which strange as they are, did not attract any comments. I suppose the St. Patrick's Day spectators were weirder than that. The Z-Coil shoes did great.

Are We All Going to Freeze in the Dark? Probably Not?

It the world running out of oil? It does not look like it. Increasing gas prices make it feel that way, doesn't it?

People have always thought that they were running out of petroleum. In 1873 a Pennsylvania state geologist said there was enough petroleum for another FOUR years of oil lantern use. Ever sense, people have worried about running out.

In reality, we have just changed what we meant by "oil." 

Over the decades, oil drillers have pioneered one technology after another to get to the oil. Going deeper, going offshore, going to unstable 3rd world nations, going miles down under waters, and so on. Increasingly, oil companies are including natural gas in their oil reserve numbers. And gas reserves have been sky-rocketing due to shale gas, and the technology to recover it -- fracking.

Reinforcing the abundance of buried hydrocarbons is an new enormous natural gas estimate in China. Chinese geologists are claiming 25 trillion cubic meters of shale gas. This is 50% larger than the USA has, and the US has huge shale gas resources. See the map.

I don't know why oil prices keep going up, but I am going to pretend that I do. My four reasons are below.





Four Reasons Oil Prices Go Up

1. As the world industrializes it demands more and more cars, and cars run on gasoline. The problem is increasing demand; supply is less important.

2. A second effect is that oil companies need to access petroleum in more and more difficult locations. This is more expensive. Obviously companies have drilled the easiest oil first.

3. More new petroleum is located in developing countries that have nationalized their oil companies, like Venezuela and Libya. These countries take large tariffs, and make exports much more expensive.

4. Speculators are parking their money in oil, and this has created a little bubble in prices. Reinforcing the bubble are other speculators with futures contracts. Oil futures is like Vegas gambling, but as long as prices go up the speculators take a cut of the 'action.'



In summary, I have gone from an oil pessimist to a realist. While petroleum will run out someday, that day is at least a century away -- beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this. This means that global warming will likely continue because we lack any political system to control it. Conservation and climate control measures are worthy goals, because we aren't running out of oil anytime soon.

Heart Attacks, Beer and Bis-phenol A

BPA is found in canned beer. It is extracted
from the aluminum can's lining. 

Bis-phenol A, prominently used in beer cans and other food cans, continues to suffer bad health reports.   90% of the world's population has bis phenol A in their blood. Isn't that amazing?

It is increasing likely that this common, cheap, and durable chemical will soon be banned from food contact.

Circulation, the Heart Association Journal, published a report from a University of Exeter group showing that 756 people with coronary disease had relatively high BPA in their blood. High being 1.3 nanogram/milliliter in the blood. This result was significant at 97.3%. (It continues to amaze me how sensitive these tests are.)

When they controlled for all the standard cardiac risk factors, the trend was present at only 94.2%. Still convincing to me, but hard-core statistic geeks and their lawyers will disregard this result since it is less than 95%.

On the other hand, bis-phenol A compounds are pretty stable, and until now the most important medical effect was weak estrogen mimicking. (Meaning that it acted like estrogen in very high doses, causing early puberty in girls and low sperm counts.)

Bis phenol A is used in zillions of things, but most notably in the lining of food cans. Until recently it was used in clear re-usable plastic containers made from polycarbonate, but this has stopped in the US and Canada.  Here are three previous posts, click here and here and here on the estrogen effect.

More diabetes and liver enzyme changes were shown too, but the proof was not that strong.

The mode of action of the bis phenol A may be interaction with the BK ion channel, which transports potassium and calcium in smooth muscle cells; there is speculation about effects via the liver and via the aforementioned estrogen mimic effect.

Glass bottles are best.

So what does this mean? It probably means the packaging industry will be more motivated to convert to BPA-free alternatives to avoid crippling lawsuits.

Maybe you should start buying frozen vegetables instead of canned. Buying food in pouches instead of cans is a good idea too.

I am going to buy my beer in glass bottles.

Hybrid & Electric Sales Down Again in January 2012

Perhaps American sense they don't need to conserve fuel, and that it why they are buying more conventional cars and fewer hybrids.

In the popular imagination oil is running out, and gas will increase in price forever. However they buying public is not acting that way. Hybrid sales were down 30% from last year. All electric cars were down 40%, and the GM Volt was down 60%, probably on news on battery fires on improperly discharged batteries.

I actually have two hybrid vehicles, and I think they are a better way to build a car, but they cost too much, and probably still have not paid me back -- unless you count their higher resale value. 

Toyota is the giant of hybrid manufacturing. (Source)

I believe the poor economy is making people buy cheaper cars, and that cheaper cars cost more to run over the long haul. Of coarse, $4.50/gal gas may be coming. It seems that every time the economy hints that it might be getting stronger oil speculators run the price of oil up by $5/barrel. 

Alternative Medicine

Alternative medicine are treatments the derive from folk traditions not from modern medicine. Modern medicine is the observation-based approach sometimes credited with starting in Paris about 1796 and developing further during the French Revolution, but which has a long history into Renaissance times.

Today's medicine resides in medical schools and pharma companies. The interface between medical schools and pharma companies is problematic. The interface between Alternative medicine providers and their herbs + treatments is also problematic. Medicine providers fund themselves by selling treatments, and ineffective treatments can cost as much as effective ones.

It is too simple to say that modern medicine is better than alternative medicine because modern medicine keeps trying to incorporate parts of alternative medicine. I was surprised to see there were 72 postings in the last year on Science Daily's Alternative Medicine site, which usually feature popularizations of journal research. When academic research embraces a folk medicine treatment, it become both modern medicine and alternative medicine, for example, acupuncture reduces dry mouth side effects of drugs.

My big problem with alternative medicine is that people with serious illness can take unproven and probably ineffective treatment, when an effective conventional treatment is available.

What makes this worse is growing distrust of science spread started by anti-evolution advocates, pushed ahead by tobacco companies, and now spreading to climate change deniers.  In this environment, it is too easy to cast away valuable science-based medicine and embrace the folksy.

Running Shoe Review 2.0

It has been two and half years since I reviewed shoes, and I have a few new pairs to talk about.

The first running shoe is not really a shoe at all. I confess I have run only a few minutes in it since it hurts my feet.

I think these five toes shoes are a fad.

It

They are Vibram FiveFingers Bikila shoes. They are kind of funny looking, and I think they might be OK for walking outside. When I run in them, my plantar tendon hurts.

They are also hard to put on.

I like the look of these Nike Flywires. I got them so I could use the Nike pedometer that talks to my iPod. That worked pretty well.

The shoes were great for a while, but they insole wore quickly, and I did not get a lot of wear from them.

I like the soles of these too. My favorite running shoes have heels with the rubber around the outside, and a hole in the middle. The idea is the foot holds weight better on its edges.






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Next up are my current running shoes. They are Nike Lunarglide +3 with the Lance Armstrong Livestrong colors.

I like these shoes pretty well. Even though they look just like the Nike Flywires, they are really comfortable,

.

don't show signs of wearing out yet.

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Last are my Adidas Swyft Cushions. They are quite light, and seldom hurt my feet.






They remind me of my old Adidas Electras,

Adidas has been making this basic shoe for several years, and changing it a bit cosmetically.  They are a pretty good shoe, so why change it?

I like them because of their oversized heel. Thoughout all the problems with my hip and feet, these shoes always felt pretty good. For some reason, I don't give them any respect.

Top E-Commerce Sites in 2011

Internet sales during the holidays went up 15.3% to 35 billion; Online sales for November and December 2011 were 59 billion.

Who are the big players? Obviously Amazon. I buy too much stuff there, but who can compete with them?

	Company	Headquarters	2010 Rank	Main Product
1	Amazon.com	Seattle	1	general merchandise
2	Walmart.com	Bentonville, Ark.	2	general merchandise
3	eBay.com	San Jose, Calif.	3	online marketplace
4	BestBuy.com	Richfield, Minn.	4	electronics
5	JCPenney.com	Plano, Texas	5	apparel
6	Kohls.com	Menomonee Falls, Wis.	7	apparel
7	Target.com	Minneapolis	6	general merchandise
8	Macys.com	Cincinnati	11	apparel
9	Sears.com	Hoffman Estates, Ill.	10	general merchandise
10	Google.com	Mountain View, Calif.	8	information

Logo for ecommerce consultant Sienna

According to stores.org, these are the top ten stores. Click here to see the longer version of the list. There are seven brick and mortar stores, and three electronic-only retailers. 

What is google.com selling? This refers to its sales of data to other marketers which does not sound like regular retailing at all. Google.com dropped two ranks from 2010. 

Surprisingly, nearly-dead Sears in the top ten! It looks like starving the maintenance budget is not hurting online sales. Could be helping since no one wants to go to the real stores.

On-line sales together are13% of all retail in November and December -- important but not dominating. Consultants say that 36% of retail sales have an internet component -- such as getting information, reviews, or comparing prices.

Amazon sold $44 billion all electronically. WalMart sold 208 billion; mostly in the store. I guess they would be selling
425 billion online.

Amazon's stock is selling at 103 times its earnings.  That's crazy high; Walmart's is 13, BestBuy's 9.

Z-Coil Running Shoe

Z-Coil Freedom shoe 

I got a new running shoe with an actual spring on it. Looks pretty gimmicky, but it is very well cushioned.

It is a "Freedom" model from Z-Coil, who makes elaborate footware for people with sore feet. I found them at a store in Dearborn.

The company is based in Arizona, but the shoes themselves are made in Korea. They have a whole line of shoes with different styles, but all with the big bulky spring in back. They make different strengths of springs for different people, and the springs do wear out.

I don't really have a foot problem, but I did have an Achille's tendon injury last August, and I have not really come back. Unlike my Nikes, this running shoe is rigid, and so tendons in my foot don't flex. All the cushioning is done by the big spring.

The disadvantage of this shoe is that it is heavy, at 1 pound, 8 ounces it is literally twice as heavy has my Nike Lunarglide at 12 ounces. The weight of the shoe is noticeable, but OK for training in. It occurs to me that the spring may provide some mechanical advantage like the spring steel limbs that amputees run in, but this is too heavy to race in.

The hope is that as time passes, my foot will get stronger, and I won't have to wear them all the time.