ONCE AGAIN, IT'S ON

Please go to http://thedisbrimstone-dailypitchfork.blogspot.com/ for details of this, but Kelso has engaged the HELLIONS in a wager. See the DAWN PATROL 97 1 LEVIATHAN 2 AS post, comments and DAWN PATROL 95 1 LEVIATHAN 2 AS post, comments for details.

In a nutshell, Kelso believes there will be fewer than 16 terrorist attacks in the USA, fewer than 208 terrorist attacks involving the death of at least one US citizen abroad between 3rd Friday October 2007 and 31st December 2058. Morever, Kelso believes world fossil fuel supply to last longer than 31st December 2034. He has played each proposition singly at -$1.05/$1 and in round-robin of 3-two proposition parlays and 1-three proposition parlay.

At first Kelso was surprised that a given crew so well-versed in things geopolitical, things quatitative, things financial and things speculative that such soft numbers would be available. There is no shortage of traditional "thinkers" who believe "9/11 changed everything." These are the people you wait for. These are the people that pay for your root-beer floats and toys for your children. We could be ultra precise here and work out the expected number of terrorist attacks in the USA going back in history and taking a POISSON parameter but even giving a generous interpretation of what constitutes a "terrorist attack" it's very hard to put the 51-year forward at anyting greater than 3. Using same math, it's very hard to put the global number at anything greater than 50. Moreover, simple inspection shows the world's proven crude reserves lasting far beyond 2034 even assuming China and India blow it like a bar-mitzvah boy with a pint of vodka in him.

So, what gives? At first Kelso figured that the urban legend he had heard about HELL being full of traditional, non-quantitative players was TRUE, else, why would the HELLIONS have such a crazily soft set of numbers to play into? But remembering how the estimable Diane Tomlinson had correctly called the round in which Taylor fell, it became clear that the HELLIONS knew exactly what they were doing and while they couldn't say so in so many words, they had been INVITING Kelso's action because they were holding large long positions on terror attacks and a large short position in years to depletion, probably on the part of the major think tanks, geniuses such as Friedman, Remnick and Yergin and everyone else whose intensity in these things was not to get the right number but to advance careers or other agenda. The HELLIONS were clearly in the mood to play it a bit safe and go for the free middle rather than just fade the tanks. Diane Tomlinson, no doubt, had a double-vote on that decision, though had Kelso been in the HELLIONS' position, he would have sat.

A very interesting formal market has opened off-shore in the winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Kelso doesn't know the short list, but the proposition on offer is THE FIELD (all those other than Al Gore, Jr)-$3.51/AL GORE, JR+$3.21. To Kelso, laying the wood against Gore seems like a gift. Gore, to be sure, has radically changed his environmental stance since he wrote his weak, half-measures tome on the environment EARTH IN THE BALANCE and hired Leon Feurth, a stone-cold neo-con, never mind hijoputa Lieberman as his Middle East advisor for the 2000 Presidential campaign. Nobel Prize voters have never been in a huge hurry to give this to an American (Kissinger notwithstanding) and have rarely been in a hurry to do anything that would appear to help one side or other in an upcoming election of any importance. Gore's long-standing anti-Peace record and retrograde stands on such things as NAFTA do not just GO AWAY. Gore is hardly the peacenik in his own party, let alone the world's peacenik, even if you blotted out everything he ever said or did before 2002. Not that he's a bad guy. Not that he wouldn't have been a fine President even in pre-2002 bellicose, let-them-eat-religion mode. He just doesn't fit the Nobel profile. If the committee were looking for an American, Scott Ritter or William Fallon fit the bill more snugly than Gore does anyway, not we know if they are even under consideration. Pope Ratzinger certainly fits it better. And there are doubtless, many fine candidates thrown off by genocide in Darfur. And there are the many world anti-poverty and 3rd world anti-totalitarian crusaders.

Much as we dig him, we'll take our chances against Gore on this one even laying 351/100.

Kelso's Nuts love you