Yesterday my daughter and I (along with a friend and his daughter) made a day out of the San Francisco Renaissance Faire hosted in Speedway Meadow in Golden Gate Park. The faire is still running today, so if you’re local and inclined, you can still have the benefit of the local medieval arts and crafts sale, try your hand at archery, enjoy madrigal singers, laugh at the bawdy shows, and watch the full-contact jousting. No, I do not jest, it is full contact and it’s quite the show. Not to mention the chance to see characters like Sir Bat of Man (right) who obliged when I snapped this image of him with the trusty iPhone…

It’s not quite like the faire that used to be hosted in the Black Forest in Napa, but it was still fun to be able to roam about with a turkey leg (the girls enjoyed dragon dogs, kettle corn, and a strawberry and cream crepe.) People were having a great time and the look on my daughter’s face when she successfully launched an arrow toward the target was priceless. But without a doubt, the stars of the show were the war horses.

These horses were amazing, the Clydesdale was the smallest of the horses present – each had to be six feet tall at the shoulder. Even more amazing, they were all rescue horses. Watching a ton of horse with a knight in full armor tilting toward the quintain at full speed was quite a spectacle. The knights also demonstrated their skills by spearing targets in bales of straw while galloping by. Finally, they participated in full contact jousting, making several passes. Neither knight was unhorsed nor were lances broken, but that wasn’t for lack of trying! A very entertaining day to be sure…

Zeus the Battle Horse

Attribution: Mike Harding

Sir Loin of Beef Jousting

Attribution: Mike Harding

Sample Video of Full Contact Jousting from 2007

The video above is only 2 minutes long and it makes a good point: belief in god is an addiction and one way to defeat it is to “just say no!” Rather clever and it struck a chord with me. The missing piece is the “god of love” with priests as the poster boys. This is a “Just Say No” that makes sense! Where’s Nancy when you need her?

The announcement has gone out this morning that October 15, 2008 will be the Blog Action Day for this year. The subject is poverty. If you have a blog and you’re interested in participating, please visit the home for Blog Action Day.

Here’s my post from last year’s action day.

Now that crude oil is easing on global tensions (war in Georgia – not that Georgia, the other one near Russia) and sabre rattling increases around Iran. (Yes, I know this is usually the reason crude oil prices go up) Is the gas crisis over? While past performance is no guarantee of future performance, a look back in time is often helpful.

Six Year US Average Gas Prices

Attribution: Gas Buddy

Over the past six years, one can see that prices have steadily increased over time, check out the chart below…

Six Year US Average Gas Prices with Trend Line

Attribution: Gas Buddy

The trend line makes it even more obvious, the price of gasoline is increasing on a pretty steep slope and something fundamental must change in order for the slope of price increases to weaken. Gas goes up, gas goes down, but the price, inexorably marches up as an overall trend. It’s convenient timing that the price is moderating before an election in the US, the largest consumer of oil even though the world supply is arguably at more risk this month than it was last month (we do have a new shooting war that has shut down a pipeline after all.)

Ah, but the market will sort this out, right? Well, it’s become increasingly clear to anyone paying attention that the market is being manipulated by outside forces, starting with the OPEC cartel. Take a look at the same gas price chart with the price of crude oil per barrel added below.

Six Year History of Gas and Crude Oil Prices

Attribution: Gas Buddy

When we add the trend line here, it’s even steeper. And the fiction of market dynamics is even more exposed.

Six Year History of Gas and Crude Oil Prices

Attribution: Gas Buddy

The question we should all be asking is not why gas is so expensive, but why is gas so cheap? And why is the price coming down when macro events should dictate further price increases? US demand may be down (I’m dubious about this since I see no appreciable difference on the roads) – but global demand remains strong. There are no large discoveries of “cheap to extract” oil that have been made, there is no appreciable increase in net output of crude oil or refined products, why the change? And why is there such a large divergence between the price of the raw material and the finished product?

I tend to be a fan of market economies and certainly have benefited from them over the course of my life. But I’m not a fan of manipulated markets and that’s what we’re seeing in this instance. I think the answer for why the markets are being manipulated is to lull the largest dependent market into a sense of false security so the fleecing can go on longer term – that means providing benefit to politicians who have been friendly to oil and they cannot succeed in times of bad economics (see Bush I.) Let’s look at the opposite situation, a competent Energy Policy aimed toward energy independence backed by a populace in pain is bad for the oil business. That’s why gasoline and crude oil prices drop while Georgia burns…

Remember this when you go to the polls sports fans….

Last College Football Season one of the more popular features I ran was the Conference Strength Report. Well, I’ll do it again this year and it’s improved. Last year I tracked only the 6 BCS Conferences and Notre Dame, this year I’ll track all 119 DI football programs and conferences. Here’s the pre-season ranking:

For those of you who didn’t read the CSR last season, here’s a little primer on what to understand. For this ranking, since none of the games have been played yet, we’re using the College Football News rankings for each team (aggregated and averaged into conferences) to determine the initial pecking order. Why the CFN ratings? It’s pretty simple really, these folks seem to have the least bias of all the ranking services and they follow all 119 teams. The rating was determined by giving each team a number 1-119 depending upon their rank, the higher the rank, the higher the point total i.e., team #1 gets 119 points and team 119 gets 1 point. This ranking will be used each week as a sanity check relative to the other data tracked.

Speaking of that data, the main things tracked are: out of conference record, out of conference record excluding patsies (DIAA schools,) and out of conference record against BCS Conference competition (games against any of the Big 6 conferences and Notre Dame.) The win-loss record is important, and win rate is the ranking criteria. Preference is given to conferences who play the fewest patsies and the most BCS competition tempered by overall win rate. For example, if you’re going to play a IAA team (ahem, Michigan,) you need to beat them.

Can’t wait for the season to start – the first of these reports will be posted the Wednesday/Thursday after the first week’s games.