US Oil Boom Scrambles Mideast Calculus

The Wall Street Journal is reporting:

Syria's civil war increasingly threatens to metastasize into a regional conflict, as Hezbollah fighters join the battle on the side of Syria's government, prompting the Syrian opposition to return fire directly into Hezbollah's home base in Lebanon. Calls for the U.S. to get involved persist.

Meanwhile, another interesting news development looms. Government projections show that in September, for the first time in almost two decades, the U.S. will produce more oil than it imports. Nor will that be a fluke; the trend is expected to continue, and domestic oil production is expected to outstrip imports by an increasingly wide margin throughout 2014.

These two developments may seem unrelated, but they are not. The worsening situation in Syria raises the question of whether the U.S. will feel compelled to do something militarily to help end the rule of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. At the same time, though, declining U.S. reliance on Middle Eastern oil raises the question of whether Americans will find it ever harder to see the point of getting involved in that messy region.

Syria itself is an exceedingly marginal oil producer, so its direct role in the energy picture isn't an issue in calculating America's interests there.

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A Note To The Granddaughters

Wow, I feel good. I'm writing this on the morning of June 4, 2013 -- a beautiful day in the Boston suburbs, my last few days here before I return to Texas. The weather is gorgeous, perfect for bike riding. Only one thing would make it better: cycling with a soul mate, but that's a different story for a different time.

But the real reason I'm in a good mood is this: I've made great strides in bringing myself up to speed regarding quantum mechanics. I don't recall if I was introduced to the phrase in chemistry in my junior year of high school, but I do know that I was introduced to it in my college freshman course of chemistry. Sadly, and ironically, I don't think my physics teacher in my senior year of high school mentioned it; he taught us almost no physics.

It is impossible for me to cite the number of books I've read since college days related in some way to quantum mechanics but it's been a fair number. Most of them, I suppose, have been biographies of Einstein, Teller, Oppenheimer. But I've never really understood how the "science" developed. Louisa gilder's The Age of Entanglement changed all that. As I've mentioned before, it's a very difficult book to read. It is difficult because of the way she chose to write it, and it is difficult because, of course, due to the subject matter.

It was difficult to read but instead of getting bogged down, I simply pressed on, knowing that I would re-read the book. And that's what I'm doing now. Re-reading the book and taking notes.

Unlike calculus or genetics where it seems one can identify who, when, and where, quantum mechanics has been impossible for me. Over the years I have had three questions regarding QM: a) the general timeline; b) who coined the phrase, "quantum mechanics"; and, c) who were most instrumental in putting it together.

Here are the answers:

• a) the time line began in 1913 when Bohr (Copenhagen) solved the problem of the "stable" atom
• b) a mathematician in Gottingen, Max Born, coined the phrase in 1925
• c) two university friends studying under Sommerfeld, Heisenberg and Pauli, were most instrumental

Back to the book.