miguel's Blog

Krugman was completely wrong

2009-01-12T04:36:54Z

In a June 27, 2008 OpEd Paul Krugman wrote an article arguing that speculation in oil markets was not driving the huge price rise. He specifically called out Michael Masters as a an "expert" that congress was listening to only because they liked what he had to say.

Tonight's 60 Minutes piece on Oil speculation presents a pretty compelling case that Michael Masters was exactly right and speculation was indeed the main driver of the ridiculous $150/barrel price we saw this past summer. It doesn't take a nobel price winning economist to realize that there's no way the price rollercoaster of the past year had anything to do with supply and demand. Is Krugman going to argue that there's 2/3 less oil demand than there was 6 months ago and that the precipitous drop started happening exactly at the same time that the Wall Street banks collapsed?

It's pretty obvious that Krugman was wrong. Krugman's opinions are currently taken as gospel by many of the left. This is a note of warning.

HUGE Greasmemonkey security hole

2006-02-05T05:37:16Z

TPMCafe Wide Columns IV

2006-02-05T05:29:55Z

I've updated my TPMCafe Greasemonkey script. You can install it by right-clicking here. Let me know your suggestions for new features, if the idea is feasible and I like it I might add it.

Features:

- Widens the center column
- Nests Comments
- Adds a link to the name of commentors that takes you to their user page. [NEW]
- Changes the 'Parent' link on comments to link to the existing comment on the current page instead of taking you to a new page [NEW]
- Fixes a TPMCafe bug were the comment ratings link takes you to the wrong page on subblogs such as yglesias.tpmcafe.com. [NEW]
- Gets rid of the tags that show up in some comments [NEW]

TPMCafe wide columns III: Nested Comments

2006-02-05T05:17:20Z

That's right, nested coments!

I spent a lot of time figuring this out (I need a girlfriend), and it's probably a waste since Josh already said that they were going to do it, but here it is anyway.

Since it's gotten pretty long, I've put it up on a web server. You should be able to right click on this link and click 'Install User Script'.

tpmcafewide.user.js

The reason it took me so long to write this is that I had to work around an apparent bug in the way comments are created by the CMS. It should work but let me know if you see any weird nesting issues.

By the way, this will definetely not work as a bookmarklet on IE or any other browser, it uses some of the latest technologies that are only available in Firefox.

Also, thanks to our helpful webmaster, ubernostrum, for the .modsub tip and for putting up with this.

TPMCafe wide columns II

2006-02-05T05:15:39Z

This script fixes the thin comments that I missed in the last script.

// tpmcafewide.user.js
// miguel vargas
// v0.2
//
// ==UserScript==
// @name          TPMCafe Wide
// @description   eliminate CSS fixed width on TPMCafe
// @include       http://*.tpmcafe.com/*
// ==/UserScript==

function addGlobalStyle(css) {
    var head, style;
    head = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0];
    if (!head) { return; }
    style = document.createElement('style');
    style.type = 'text/css';
    style.innerHTML = css;
    head.appendChild(style);
}

addGlobalStyle(
'#wrapper {width: auto!important;}' +
'#centercol {width: auto!important;}' +
'#header h1 {' +
' margin-left: auto!important;' +
' margin-right: auto!important;' +
'}' +
'#comments {' +
' width: auto!important;' +
' max-width: none!important;' +
'}' +
'#comments div {' +
' width: auto!important;' +
' max-width: none!important;' +
'}' +
'#comments p {' +
' width: auto!important;' +
' max-width: none!important;' +
'}' +
'#comments table {' +
' width: auto!important;' +
' max-width: none!important;' +
'}' +
'#comments form {' +
' width: auto!important;' +
' max-width: none!important;' +
'}' +
'#centercol form {' +
' width: auto!important;' +
'}'
);

TPMCafe wide columns

2006-02-05T05:15:05Z

If you don't like the thin columns on TPM Cafe and you know what Firefox's Greasemonkey is, then here you go. If I stick around this website I might add more stuff, I was thinking of bigger text boxes and maybe even nested comments, as long as we've got the extra width.:

// tpmcafewide.user.js
// miguel vargas
// v0.1
//
// ==UserScript==
// @name          TPMCafe Wide
// @description   eliminate CSS fixed width on TPMCafe
// @include       http://*.tpmcafe.com/*
// ==/UserScript==

function addGlobalStyle(css) {
    var head, style;
    head = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0];
    if (!head) { return; }
    style = document.createElement('style');
    style.type = 'text/css';
    style.innerHTML = css;
    head.appendChild(style);
}

addGlobalStyle(
'#wrapper {width: auto!important;}' +
'#centercol {width: auto!important;}' +
'#header h1 {' +
' margin-left: auto!important;' +
' margin-right: auto!important;' +
'}');