gehringer_2

KeystoneXL was to get *more* Canadian sourced fuels into the US. But we were already getting a fair amount of tar sands sourced product into the Mid-west through exiting pipelines before KeystoneXL was proposed and I assume that continues, though I'm no longer in that industry. For instance, when I was working in refining tar sands product was a good chunk of the feedstock to refineries in Toledo.

The graphite is, but the process to make it can be dirty. I would guess production moved mostly to Asia to dodge environmental regs. Which goes back to our economic system not being capable of capturing externalities costs accurately. If we had accounting systems that could capture the unrecovered cost of environmental damage done by imported product production, a lot of things would still be done in the US that are not anymore.

I think the thing that many people haven't processed yet about EVs their that their cost of operation is already lower. We sort of know intuitively that electricity cost more than fossil fuel per BTU, but IC cars are really inefficient! At $4/gallon a car that gets 25mpg has a fuel cost of $0.16/mile. To compare, Ford claims an EMustang goes 2.4 miles/kWh* and in MI a kWhr costs $0.18, so that is $0.075/mile. That's a $8500 fuel cost savings in 100K miles. If the Fed gives you $7500 back on the purchase, that puts you $16k to the good assuming the cars are roughly equal production cost. (The battery in an EV probably costs a bit more than a bare IC engine, but taking an IC power train as a whole, they are in the same ballpark). Now all that said, if the batteries don't last >>100K miles the economics go down the tubes. *Ford says you get 28 miles of range for 1 hr of charge at 240V x 48A. That's 28mile/11.5kWr = 2.4 mile/kWh

it will be interesting to see him pitch, but his numbers indicate his problem is the same as ever - way too many walks (6.3/9), i.e., bad mechanics. As usual, the stuff was OK - low hits and high Ks.

Great photo of John Foster Dulles.

Signifies that his is working on his 1st level outfielding. If he is studious, he should reach "paint the fence" soon.

Dingler and Lipcius homer in 8-3 Erie win.

Torkelson walks on 4 close pitches leading off the bottom of the 9th with the Hens down one. I like that. EDIT: Carpenter reaches on a two base error, Davis drives them both in for the walk-off.

yup. I'm really beginning to wonder if Avila and Hinch are even on the same page together at this point. Bringing Baddoo up to sit is just making no sense at all.

OK - just checking....

Are we really debating whether Willi is a good OF? 🤔

Miggy should have swung at that 3-0

yeah - I don't remember "Javy needs a great 1B" being in the scouting reports we read before he came here. Serious omission!

LOL- if the wind blew it back at him or it knuckled, it was a great catch, if he had to reach back because he just overran it, not so much!

I don't think that many young players ever want to be traded. Sure, you absolutely do see it in vets who see the end and want a shot at a championship, but I think the ideal of most young players is to be part of team that grows into winning a championship together.

The difference with graphite is that there is no natural resource or geographic limitation. It can be made anywhere, starting with cheap petroleum coke. You just have to make the capital investment.

It's not all bad for everyone. If you are a young homeowner with a low fixed interest rate mortgage, inflation is going to be a big boost to your wealth accumulation because you are going to get to pay off that mortgage with dollars that are worth a lot less in the out years. One of the reasons a lot of boomers are sitting on more wealth than the succeeding generations is exactly that. A lot of us were in our first houses before inflation hit and ended up owning our homes essentially for half price or less.

Norris with 2 no hit innings in his 1st Mudhen appearance. Remember when Norris, Boyd and Fulmer were the future starting staff for the Tiger's return to relevance? Good times.

I'm waiting to see what the fast chargers do the the battery cycle life. I've been working with Li chemistry batteries for a good number of years and in general, there is no free lunch. If you do things that heat them up or stress them it's going to have an effect. There are so many 'little' design details in terms of heat management, dimensional stability and cell management that are not likely to be fully optimized in the 1st couple of design/manufacturing generations. I'm fairly confident they are going to get it right, just not necessarily in the 1st couple of go 'rounds. And it's definitely true that for most people, after handling flashlight batteries for a lifetime, there is a little cognitive dissonance in understanding that a 100kWh Li battery is every bit as dangerous as a 15 gallon tank of gasoline. Again, no free lunch. If you store a huge amount of energy in a small volume, the potential damage from a uncontrolled release is an inevitable part of the equation.

I believe Tork was the 1st position player in his draft class to start in the Majors, so he was fast tracked. But the lost year hurt Tork's draft class a lot. He should have come into this season with 450 more AB. I hope it's just a matter of him learning that he has to try to do less. Even guys who have hit as well and as easily as Tork all their lives may have to adjust their ambitions when facing MLB pitchers.

only because Singer dropped so low (again, pointing out the marginal value of the prognosticators). He has a reasonable shot at a 3.5-4 WAR season pitching for a poor team. He's not challenging anyone for a Cy Young but he's looking like a reasonable mid-rotation guy. After a slow start the Royals have won 5 of his last 8 starts, which isn't bad for the Royals.

Not to worry Sue, I'm sure Chuck and Joe have learned their lesson and it won't happen again.

Over the many years I've bought cars the math has led me from new to used and back to new and now it sounds like maybe back to used! That's going to be a shift as EV's take significant a piece of the market. You can buy an IC car in good condition 2-4 yrs old and for all intents and purposed plan on being able to drive it as long as you could care to keep a new car. But if you are looking at at huge battery replacement cost at 7-10 yrs out, that's going mean much higher depreciation rates on E-vehicles to figure into their true ownership cost. There are a lot of ideas and proposals for recovering value from automotive battery packs that still have a lot of functional life but not enough to keep in the car (~75%) but so far not much concrete.

True enough. But that was only because Singer, who was equally consensus a few months earlier had gotten himself a little twisted around. Not to harp on Singer in particular but just to point out the ephemeral nature of prospect draft rankings. I think maybe the prospect evaluators tend to go a little overboard for young breaking ball pitchers (e.g. Mize, Kumar, Jobe(!?!?) at various point). Those balls darting all over the place making college hitters look foolish are beguiling, but most major league hitters (sadly not all, Mr Baez!) make you throw that breaking ball for a strike, and it's suddenly a whole different world.

the thing with Tork is that if he doesn't get back to mashing against AAA pitching, it's going to be a pretty strong indication that the Tigers broke him. And if that's the case, it's one more piece of evidence that Avila or Ilitch needs to take serious look at what they think they are doing at COPA, because recently guys actually seem to hitting a little better everywhere else in the system. Couch, Meadows, Perez, Lipcius, Santana, Carpenter, Kreidler - plenty of examples of guys making at least incremental progress that stand in contradiction to the regression they are getting in Detroit.