Whiting: 50-stage, 15.3-Million-Lb-Sand Frack; High-IP -- April 13, 2017

http://themilliondollarway.blogspot.com/2017/04/whiting-to-report-nice-chameleon-well.html

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Notes From The Library

Wow, wow, wow -- I've hit the mother lode: five back issues of The New Yorker, going back to March 13, 2017. One issue is missing, the April 10, 2017, issue. It's been that long since I've been to the Southlake library. I've been going to the Grapevine library for the past several weeks where I read books and not magazines.

I canceled my subscription to The New Yorker about a year ago when it was clear that the magazine had become a Hillary mouthpiece.

I won't re-subscribe, but I am really enjoying the magazine now. Almost every article is anti-Trump, mostly overtly, but often times the anti-Trump message is very, very subtle. That's what makes it fun: trying to find the anti-Trump message in every article.

Actually, that's only part of the fun. The real fun is reading what the anti-Trump folks still believe. This is my favorite, from the April 3, 2017, issue, page 45:

President Trump was not democratically elected President of the United States. 

This is April 3, 2017, four months after the election and these folks still can't get over it.

I can only imagine all the glowing articles about Hillary and her globalism and her war on carbon and open borders had she been democratically elected President of the United States. As it was, she was trounced in the Electoral College where it counts. 

I'm not going to be able to get through all the issues today, but my favorite will probably be the March 20, 2017, issue. With a bright red "title," I can't wait to read this article, "Trolling the Press Corps: The Trump Administration disrupts the daily briefing."

From my college days I remember The New Yorker as a really, really good magazine with articles about many, many subjects. The article that I first recall reading was the one on Michael Murphy and Big Sur. It was published in the January 5, 1976, issue, but no longer accessible without a subscription. Maybe I will re-subscribe someday.

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Notes From The Library

I won't get into the background but I've come across a most interesting observation. Oxygen is an incredibly toxic molecule and was a huge obstacle for the evolution of life one billion years ago, or whenever it was, plus or minus a few hundred-million years.

It is very likely that precursors to hemoglobin evolved to grab oxygen and dispose of it so it would not kill the anaerobic organisms. Likewise, it is very likely the respiratory chain found in all aerobic organisms today originally "evolved" to capture oxygen / slow / eliminate its toxicity to anaerobic organisms. This is not the only example of how proteins have changed to be used in ways not originally "intended." I apologize for not being more articulate to say it better, but you get the idea.

I find it incredibly interesting about hemoglobin and the respiratory chain -- it explains much.

I got this from Krauss' Oxygen, previously posted.

On another note, Gino Segre, in Ordinary Geniuses, explains why the it was so difficult for physicists to figure out why hydrogen and helium did not lead directly to certain heavier atoms/molecules. I get a kick out of the fact that the period table jumps from a one-nucleon atom (hydrogen) to a four-nucleon atom (helium) with no intermediaries. It was with discussions with our 13-year-old granddaughter (she was eleven at the time) that we understood why. Those discussions helped me understand/remember that U-238 is stable, U-235 is not, and that 99%+ of natural uranium is 238. Uranium-235 is the only naturally occurring fissile isotope.

Mindless meandering.