Malthus was incorrect in his logic because he forgot that, while resources are finite, they are not fixed. As the human population grows, so too does its ability to provide for itself (usually through technological advancement) in both agricultural and spacial terms. The production possibilities frontier is constantly being pushed out through technological innovation. Malthus’ argument also reveals that he was subject to pessimistic bias (related plug). People have been arguing for thousands of years that humanity is at the breaking point. They’ll likely be doing so for thousands of years into the future.

A random guess: I think the Earth could probably comfortably hold somewhere between 80 and 100 billion people, given 300-400 years or so to get there. Possibly more.

It’s not apples to apples, but I’d like to hear Kennedy’s election discussed in this context as well.

Other questions/thoughts:

- What does the Venn diagram look like for the 20% that think Obama is a Muslim? How many are racists vs. pure political partisans vs. simply ignorant.

- What would a betting market for this kind of thing look like? People tend to be less risk averse when they don’t have any skin in the game, so to speak. My bet is that the real number of people who would put money on Obama being a Muslim is much lower than 20%.

-  Related: 27% of Americans believe Obama was born outside the United States.

- Part 2.

- A good explanation of the possible P != NP proof.

Suffice it to say, I’ve since changed my mind about both the brewery and the beer. So while it’s not exactly the purest example of a pale ale, Dale’s slowly-but-surely found itself on my short list of go-to beers for all but the hoppiest of occasions. With previous experience in mind, I was excited to hear Oskar Blues would be offering an American-style Imperial IPA in their trademark cans.

I wasn’t disappointed in Oskar Blues’ offering. This beer is incredibly full bodied, aggressively hopped, and yet remains quite refreshing. Plus, you just can’t go wrong with a name like “Gubna.” The flavor really is more like an intense version of Dale’s Pale Ale. It’s less floral and aromatic than something like Avery’s Maharaja, but still gives you that delicious grapefruit flavor found in most top-notch imperial IPAs (at least in my book). All the components of your American-style imperial IPA are here: subtle mouthfeel, good carbonation (enough, but it doesn’t explode in your mouth), and a citrus finish. To be honest, it’s down to Gubna and Ten Fidy in a race to see who’s the best beer in the brewery’s lineup.

Oskar Blues sells Gubna in a four pack, which is good because at 10% abv it won’t take too much to get acquainted. A very well crafted beer.

Rating: 4.5 stars.

Deschutes barlywine style ale, Mirror Mirror is a more intense version of their normal offerings. It really does drink like a higher gravity version of their standard Mirror Pond. I have to admit, I’m a novice when it comes to the barleywine style. I’m more of an imperial IPA or imperial Stout connoisseur (well, imperial anything, for that matter). So I can’t really tell you whether or not this is a fine specimen for the “barlywine style” category (whatever that means).

What I can tell you is that it’s fairly drinkable, with an balanced flavor. There’s not much aroma but the mouthfeel is what you’d expect from a Deschutes offering – full bodied and malty. I can’t say I’ll be drinking it again any time soon, but it’s definitely worth a drink if you’re looking for something new.

I’ll likely update these beer reviews later with a more standard beer notes section (1-10, etc.)

Rating: 3 stars

The Black Keys – Brothers. I’m not a huge fan of a lot of blues rock because it’s mostly oversold and overproduced. This, however, is a frighteningly good album.

Regina Spektor – Far. I’m late to the Regina Spektor party. But at least I’m here now. I love her voice and irreverent musical style (anti-folk, I guess it’s called).

The most recent song I’m ashamed to have in my collection, but still listen to anyway: Flo Rida – Right Round.

In my search I found this post by entrepreneur Adam McFarland, who opted for Broncos season tickets last year with the intention of reselling them at a profit:

After debating it for a little while, I ran it by my partners who emphatically pushed me to buy the tickets.  I ended up deciding to buy a pair and Mike decided he’d snatch up the other pair.  So here’s the deal – all season long I’m going to track exactly what we do with these tickets.  I’ll post when we sell each pair, how much we sell them for, and how much work is involved.

As a fan on the waitlist, my initial reaction was one of annoyance; this guy took some fan’s tickets just so he could make a quick buck. But when I thought about it some more, I realized that what really don’t like is that a self-described entrepreneur is the one trying to make money through arbitrage.

At work we’ve been having a lot of discussion about the lean startup, and I’ve become a big fan of Eric Ries. One of the points that’s constantly hammered into you during many of Eric’s writings and videos is that the entrepreneurial spirit is all about creating value for people.  Figure out what people want and give it to them. And that’s why McFarland’s activities stick in my craw. Reselling season tickets for games you never planned on attending in the first place is the entrepreneurial equivalent to reselling meals to the people outside a soup kitchen.

Season tickets are there for fans who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford to go to every game. So when your sole purpose for being on a wait list is to resell those season tickets at a profit, I don’t see how you can really argue you’re “creativing value.” At best, you’re capturing consumer surplus at the expense of the fans behind you in line. And that’s pretty much exactly the opposite of what being an entrepreneur is all about.

It was a great race, and I’m OK with a Contador win, though I was rooting for Andy Schleck. I don’t think Contador is a very honorable winner. He appears to be in it for himself, with a history of controversial moves. Not any one incident is bad enough, but they add up.

I kept having nagging thoughts about doping this year, though. Not to say anyone actually was doping, per se, but that didn’t stop me from assigning probabilities. For Schleck, I’d say it’s close to 3-5% that he’s doping. For contador, I put it somewhere around  25-30%. I was influenced by the fact that he was with Astana. Probabilities for Lance are nil, but I’m not all that sad to see him go.

5. Blogging builds up good work habits; the deadline is always “now.”

So I’m going to take his advice and start blogging more often. Not about anything in particular. Just what’s interesting. Get ready for quantity over quality, world. Hopefully the second will eventually flow from the first. Miscellaneous links:

- Cowen on how to read fast.

- Scott Sumner on Growth and Economic Policy. I like his definition of “neoliberal” and would say I tend towards that myself.

If you’re reading this paper for the sheer pleasure of it (wtf?) the takeaway should be that blue laws are not a mechanism through which we should be promoting a diversity of consumption. While artificial scarcity or supply regulation can have interesting effects on a market, they are almost always detrimental to it. Colorado, my home state, has a strong brewing culture in spite of our blue laws, not because of them.

If you’re reading this paper as a part of a research project – where in some last ditch effort for data you stumbled upon this lonely corner of the web, then I should mention that I’m happy with the model, but unhappy with the availability of data. I’m very curious to see what happens when you run a regression with, say, 10 years worth of data on price, consumption, ABC info, etc. Please let me know if you or anyone you know is running with this kind of research as it’s very near and dear to my heart…and my liver.