Lots of Scoble-herded chatter on the interwebs about how news of last night's Sichuan quake showed up first on Twitter. Fascinating stuff.

My point of view, which I have made a number of times in recent talks, is that Twitter represents the democratization of realtime headline news. It's all realtime and all headlines -- and important (even if a nascent and messy phenomenon).

Interesting that the day RIM announces latest and greatest 3G Blackberry that Apple says iPhones are no longer available through its online store.

Just to get things going, here are the obligatory rumors:

1. Apple is going to announce 3G iPhone early.
2. Apple is having huge stock issues because of U.K. price cuts.
3. Apple is converting rare earth in iPhone to less rare earth.
4. It's all a trick to get an iPhone story on Engadget on same day as new Blackberry is announced.

I buy none of these explanations, so I'm guessing Apple is out of stock because it is out of stock near the end of the product's run.

Granted, it's nowhere near the absurdity of Nortel, which almost a decade ago was briefly more than 30% of the Toronto Stock Exchange's market capitalization, but RIMM stock is up to fun stuff. It's newly knocking up against 4% of the TSE by capitalization.

Now that OPEC is playing nice with one another, at least temporarily, there is lots of discussion about the price OPEC wants for crude oil. Everyone says that OPEC likes higher prices, to a point, with the implicit argument being that there is some price at which OPEC members make lots of money, but it still dissuades investments in alternatives.

That's true, sort of. But it misses something important. Predictable prices, even at higher levels, are easier to invest around than unpredictable prices. If you know, in some sense, that crude oil prices are going to be over $100 for some time, you can plan accordingly as an investor, entrepreneur, integrated oilco, etc.

The trouble comes when you're worried that the bottom may fall out of the market at any time. What if prices a year from now are half of what they are today? What if they "merely" fall by 25%? What does that do to your business model? To your investments? To your production?

That's why I disagree with the common wisdom that OPEC is in the predictable goose-plucking, tax business -- that of extracting the most feathers with the minimum of hissing. Instead, OPEC is in the unpredictable "black swan" business: Its optimal time series of prices is something like $100, $100, $100, $10, $100. Big, unpredictable and intermittent crude oil price decreases will do more than anything else to keep OPEC precisely where it is in the market: A wildly profitable cartel with control of a crucial commodity.

I love this quote that Felix picks from a Brad DeLong commenter in the ongoing debate about whether Harvard's endowment gains should be taxed:

Harvard is an investment bank with a mom-and-pop non-profit enterprise attached to it for tax purposes.

There is a fairly savage Harvard takedown here by Jim Manzi.

Who is right? I'm haven't spent enough time with this one yet, but I have to confess that I sidle closer to the "tax 'em" crew when it comes to private university endowments.

Interesting piece picked up by The Oil Drum on the relationship between gas prices and real estate in Australia. It summarizes a study of the effect on commuting costs when considering various communities progressively further outside the urban/suburban/exurban horizon west of Sydney.

Here is the effect in the $2/litre scenario, with red representing the highest percentage of income going to fuel consumption, etc.:

Granted, this is based on a few assumptions, not least of which being that a commuter-centric culture will continue to prevail in a high-price oil world. That is a debatable point.

Nevertheless, interesting stuff, as is the underlying paper. Can barely imagine what this would look like here in car-dependent, freeway-riddled southern California.