The Bakken Can Wait -- But First Some Idle Chatter

If you came here for the Bakken, scroll down, up, or to the left. Or better yet, look at the September NDIC hearing dockets, and drool over the 600 wells that EOG is looking to drill. But for now, I'm going to spend some "me-time" which is important to help put all this in perspective when my granddaughters read this 20 years from now.

Everywhere, and at the top of the fold of The New York Times, a bigger headline than the Syria missile crisis story: Seamus Heaney, died August 30, or thereabouts, I guess. I first met Seamus through reading his translation of Beowulf. Other than that, I don't really know much about him. Here are some stories: The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and, of course, wiki.

His passing caught the eye of the gods. Jupiter was the second brightest object in the sky this morning just before dawn; the brightest object, of course, was the crescent moon. And if one had good enough eyes, and I just barely do (I forget to grab the binoculars) one could also see Mars just above Jupiter. I saw all three. If I had a telescope/camera/photographic skills/interest/time/etc I would have taken a photograph.

It was incredible. Apparently one more viewing opportunity tomorrow (Sunday) morning, when it is still very dark before dawn. We happen to live where there is minimal manmade light interfering with stargazing.

Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In, The Fifth Dimension  

" ... when the moon is in the 7th house, when Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars ..." [Shortly after this was posted, the US and Russia fond a way out of striking Syria.]

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There is a Russian proverb: there is no such thing as happiness. There are only happy moments.

About a week ago I realized I was experiencing one of those happy moments, perhaps one of the happiest moments in my life (save those I've spent with three beautiful women).

I can't recall when I've been happier. I wouldn't be surprised if having no television is not playing a significant role. I may be spending as much time in front of an LED monitor but I'm not watching television.

This evening I had a free hour and needed something to fill that time while preparing dinner. I had not watched Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, II, in some time. I had forgotten how superb the sound track was.

David Lynch always has incredible sound tracks, and he has incredible scenes, but he seems to have difficulty putting an entire story together -- at least one in which sane people can understand.

But Quentin Tarantino, when he is good, he is very, very good. Sometimes I think David Lynch puts his movie together building around some incredible scenes. Quentin, on the other hand, it seems, puts his movies together based on some incredible sound tracks. The sound track for Kill Bill Volume 2, is an incredibly good sound track. 

I only had an hour but watching the first hour of Kill Bill Volume 2 was incredible. I knew I always enjoyed the music, but I had forgotten how really good it was.

[Current DVDs being viewed this past week: The Lord of the Rings, the entire trilogy; Casablanca, for the umpteenth time (I never get tired of watching it); the first three seasons of 'curb your enthusiasm'; the first season of Miami Vice; and, the first 1 and a half seasons of Twin Peaks (there were only two seasons). None of these were selected randomly, except perhaps Kill Bill Volume 2 which I was watched last night -- just the first hour.

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I continue to read Edward Hodges' 1983 biography of Alan Turing. I think I've mentioned it before so I won't talk about it now, except to say for those interested in the history of quantum physics and the development of the modern computer, and the social milieu of England in the last half of the 20th century, the biography is a must-read. The book has been in continuous print since 1983, and the centenary edition came out in 2012.

As exciting, is an Amazon Vine copy of Sidney and Violet: Their Life With T. S. Eliot, Proust, Joyce, and the Excruciatingly Irascible Wyndham Lewis, Stephen Klaidman. I am reading an advance copy; I'm not sure when it will be released for sale. The advance copy comes with a few typesetting errors that need to be corrected and without an index. I am always surprised to see how much influence a man like Wyndham Lewis could have who seemed to do so little, produce so little, and what he produced, seemed so irrelevant. [Again, I'm talking about Wyndham, not the president.]

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Global Warming

I should do this as a stand-alone post, all the stuff coming out with regard to global warming.

First, and this is the best: there were no hurricanes in the month of August. Bloomberg is reporting:

August is about to end without an Atlantic hurricane for the first time since 2002, calling into question predictions of a more active storm season than normal.
Six tropical systems have formed in the Atlantic since the season began June 1 and none of them has grown to hurricane strength with winds of at least 74 miles (120 kilometers) per hour. Accumulated cyclone energy in the Atlantic, a measure of tropical power, is about 30 percent of where it normally would be, said Phil Klotzbach, lead author of Colorado State University’s seasonal hurricane forecasts.
“At this point, I doubt that a super-active hurricane season will happen,” Klotzbach said in an e-mail yesterday.

Environmentalists seem to be in a panic. Bloomberg is also reporting:

U.S. and European Union envoys are seeking more clarity from the United Nations on a slowdown in global warming that climate skeptics have cited as a reason not to “panic” about environmental changes, leaked documents show.

They’re requesting that more details on the so-called “hiatus” be included in a key document set to be debated at a UN conference next month that will summarize the latest scientific conclusions on climate change.

 And this:

The summary document notes that the rate of warming over the past 15 years “is smaller than the trend since 1951,” citing a rate of about 0.05 degrees Celsius per decade in the years 1998 through 2012. The rate was about 0.12 degrees per decade from 1951 through 2012.

From The Guardian: 

Cooling waters in the tropical Pacific Ocean appear to be a major factor in dampening global warming in recent years, scientists said on Wednesday.

Their work is a big step forward in helping to solve the greatest puzzle of current climate change research – why global average surface temperatures, while still on an upward trend, have risen more slowly in the past 10 to fifteen years than previously.

Waters in the eastern tropical regions of the Pacific have been notably cooler in recent years, owing to the effects of one of the world's biggest ocean circulatory systems, the Pacific decadal oscillation.

And so it goes. Finally, some discussion in the mainstream media about "the pause." Seventeen years now.

Alabama: one of the coolest summers on record in 131 years.