Two random links on things that interest me

1. First, I caught a lot of a good discussion on C-Span yesterday of oil and gas exploration in the Gulf. There have been a lot of exciting and uncertain developments in the industry recently that I think a lot of people aren't aware of. That doesn't mean you have to love offshore drilling or fracking but it's good to be aware of it. They talk a lot about offshore Atlantic drilling and make the important point that it's not necessarily a partisan issue, and often it's a regional issue - specifically citing a lot of prominent Virginia Democrats that want to drill offshore. Well I'm not "prominent" but I'm in that crowd. One of the nice things about looking at this as an economist is that you don't have to emotionalize it. I can say "sure, I love drilling - let's do somethings to correct the relative prices between fossil fuels and renewables, but lets go full steam ahead on the drilling too" - then some environmentalist responds "but oil is bad for the environment!" and I can just respond "right, I know - I said correct relative prices, didn't I?".

One big downside to this talk - they discuss the idea that there is a skills shortage in the oil and gas industry. Nooooooooo!!!!!!!!! If academic publishing was at all punctual I might have a chapter out now on exactly that misconception for exactly that industry.


2. I think I've linked to The Newton Project at the University of Sussex before, which has a lot of his papers and Keynes's paper on Newton online. But recently I also came across an online resource with his alchemy manuscripts at Indiana University, and some material at Cambridge as well. These aren't as important for the paper I'm almost done with, which deals more with Keynes's activities in 1942 and 1943 than with Newton himself - but it still looks interesting for anyone that wants to poke around.