Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Tesla Deliveries Come Close -- 76,000 Vs 80,000 -- January 3, 2017

Drudge Report is down. I assume denial of service "attack." [Some minutes later, it's back up.]

Mars Attacks

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Tesla 
Link here.

But getting to 500,000 in calendar year 2018 will be quite a feat.


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Toyota's Kentucky HQ To Shut Down 

This is not news, but it's for the archives. Back in 2004, or thereabouts, Toyota announced it was going to consolidate its North American operations to Plano, TX. The AP was simply updating the story. The people and the cities affected have known about this for years, and nothing has changed, I guess, except the move has now begun.
Toyota is beginning to move hundreds of jobs out of its northern Kentucky headquarters as part of a nationwide consolidation.
Workers have begun relocating from Toyota's Erlanger plant and will continue through the end of 2018.
The company, which is moving its facilities to the Dallas suburb of Plano, said the move will affect 648 workers. All employees received a job offer as part of the restructuring.
Erlanger has been home to the Japanese automaker's North American engineering and manufacturing headquarters since 1996.
Marc Fields, Erlanger's city administrator, said the city is sad to see Toyota leave, but has been preparing for this moment since Toyota announced its consolidation plans in April 2014.
Plano is just north of DFW, not far from where we live. Plano is home to a number of Fortune 500 companies, and is a very, very popular destination for folks living in the Dallas-Ft Worth area.
 
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GDP Now

Latest forecast: 2.9 percent — January 3, 2017. Dynamic ink here.
The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the fourth quarter of 2016 is 2.9 percent on January 3, up from 2.5 percent on December 22.
The forecast of the contribution of inventory investment to fourth-quarter growth increased from 0.35 percentage points to 0.73 percentage points following the U.S. Census Bureau's Advance Economic Indicators release on December 29. This was offset by a decline in the forecast of the contribution of net exports to fourth-quarter growth from -0.25 percentage points to -0.67 percentage points following the same release.
The forecasts for consumer and government spending and business fixed investment all increased after this morning's construction spending release from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Manufacturing ISM Report On Business from the Institute of Supply Management.

The NDIC Daily Activity Report Is Delayed -- Hopefully Everyone Is Doing Okay -- Incredibly Severe Winter -- January 3, 2017

DAPL weather at 6:55 p.m. Central Time, Tuesday:
  • - 9 degrees
  • feels like: -28 degrees
  • heavy snow, ice
  • winter storm Helena approaching;
Active rigs:


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Active Rigs4060171185182

Four new permits:
One well coming off confidential list Wednesday:
  • 32681, 912, Hess, HA-Link-152-95-3526H-7, Hawkeye, t12/16; cum 3K over 3 days; 
Eight permits renewed:
  • Hess (4): three EN-Weyrauch C permits in Mountrail County; a BB-Federal A permit in McKenzie County
  • Resource Energy Can-Am (2) : a Rebecca permit and a Kimberly permit, both in Divide County
  • Oasis (2): two Lewis Federal permits in McKenzie County

The Geico Rock Award: 2017

The winner announced January 3, 2018: Great Britain's Prince Harry.

Nominees
August 30, 2017: Senator Edward Markey, provides solution for gasoline shortage in light of Hurricane Harvey


August 8, 2017: Mark Egan: over at CNN Money -- "millions can't feel the stock market boom." Post here

July 29, 2017: Nicholas Casey over at The New York Times, with this headline: As Venezuela prepares to vote, some fear an end to democracy.

July 28, 2017: Nathan Crooks over at Bloomberg for asking whether Venezuela is becoming a Cuba-style dictatorship. 

July 23, 2017: US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, is not aware that gasoline is at record low prices.

June 29, 2017: former Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, on CNBC says we need more projects like Southern Company's Kemper project.

June 16, 2017: analyst who now thinks OPEC should have cut deeper.

June 11, 2017: Clifford Kraus, NY Times, did not know why gasoline prices were so low this summer; did not even hazard some opinions on why gasoline prices might be so low.

May 24, 2017: J Crew's Millard “Mickey” Drexler -- the fashion "genius" who admits he misread the speed of change and is now fighting to keep his company out of bankruptcy.

April 9, 2017: Juan Gonzalez, deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs during the Obama administration who now suggests that Putin may have had nefarious reasons for returning to Central America under the Obama administration. At the time, he admits he was skeptical of any security threats that Putin might pose in the region. 

April 6, 2017: Lonnie Golden, economics professor at Penn State University, maintains there is no association between increasing number of part-time jobs (when Americans "desperately" want full-time jobs) and ObamaCare.

April 1, 2017: ABC News seems surprised that Ivanka and Jared Trump are (really) wealthy

January 3, 2017: That didn't take long, our first nominee for the 2017 Geico Rock Award. Prince Harry: "Saving endangered animals is God's test for humanity." I guess he missed the Aleppo story, the 2016 equivalent of the 1940s Holocaust.

Note: Geico Rock Award for 2016 has been announced

Russian Hackers, Trump, And All That Jazz; End Of The Line -- January 3, 2017

January 3, 2017: that didn't take long, our first nominee for the 2017 Geico Rock Award. Prince Harry: "Saving endangered animals is God's test for humanity." I guess he missed the Aleppo story, the 2016 equivalent of the 1940s Holocaust.  

January 3, 2017: Construction spending hits 10-year high, only days after Trump elected

January 3, 2017, song #3 of 20 as we count down the days:

End of the Line, Traveling Wilburys

January 3, 2017: I tuned into CNBC this morning about 8:00 a.m. but had to turn it off at about 8:10; the discussion among Cramer and two others about the president's tweets were inane. Cramer said that these individual tweets don't amount to a "hill of beans" (my words, not his). Now we have this breaking news over at AP, via Twitter (yes, Twitter:  Ford cancels plan for new $1.6 billion plant in Mexico; to add 700 jobs in Michigan to build electric, autonomous vehicles. I think one can safely argue that Ford would have continued with its plans for the Mexican plant had Trump not tweeted. This is a huge "thank you" to the people of Michigan who voted for Trump. Trump is creating more jobs for Americans BEFORE he becomes president than Obama did with a trillion dollars in stimulus.

January 3, 2017: Washington Post  completely changes story; in-line with Trump -- Russian government hackers do not appear to have targeted Vermont utility say people close to investigation. This is the newspaper's mea culpa, buried fairly deeply in the article:
The Post initially reported incorrectly that the country’s electric grid had been penetrated through a Vermont utility. After Burlington Electric released its statement saying that the potentially compromised laptop had not been connected to the grid, The Post immediately corrected its article and later added an editor’s note explaining the change.
For all the grief PEOTUS Trump gets for "shooting from the hip," well, what can I say .... ?

January 3, 2017: speaking of fake news, Arctic ice is as thick as it was in 1940; there is no evidence that Arctic ice is thinning.

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Non-Bakken News And Comments

Some months ago I started beating the drum that Trump's tweets will knock network news shows off balance. I saw that this morning, a clear-cut example. An individual scheduled some days ago to be interviewed on CNBC this morning was cut off abruptly and the interview was much shorter than planned because the show was "off-schedule" due to Trump's tweet on the GM Cruze that's being made in Mexico and then sold here in the states. And then GM tweeted back with their side of the story. The CNBC talking ahead specifically stated they had to end the conversation early because the GM tweet conversation had taken up time earlier.

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The Market

NYSE:
  • new highs, 125: MPC (Marathon Petroleum), HAL, Statoil (STO),
  • new lows,9
Opening: up 142 points. Oil right at $55.00.  

Futures: Dow 30 futures up about 125 points. Oil up over $55. Despite what Gartman said four months ago.

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Say What?

A "bitter" Larry Summers expresses his concern for Trump policies:
“The vast majority of the companies who have large overseas cash also have substantial amounts of domestic cash,” he said.
“The reality is that cash that is brought home will be used to pay dividends, to buy back shares, to engage in mergers and acquisitions, to rearrange the financial chessboard, not to invest in large amounts of new capital. It is a chimera to suppose that there will be large increases in capital investment as a consequence of that repatriation.”
I'm trying to see the downside. Larry seems to be describing a win-win situation for long-term investors.

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The Biology Page

Endless Forms Most Beautiful: 
The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom
Sean B. Carroll
c. 2005
DDS: 571.85 CAR

This is pretty much a book on Hox genes.

Preface: Revolution # 3
Introduction: Butterflies, Zebras, and Embryos

Part I: The Making of Animals
Chapter 1: Animal Architecture: Modern Forms, Ancient Designs
Chapter 2: Monsters, Mutants, and Master Genes
Chapter 3: From E. coli to Elephants
Chapter 4: Making Babies: 25,000 Genes, Some Assembly Required
Chapter 5: The Dark Matter of the Genome: Operating Instructions for the Tool Kit

Part II:  Fossils, Genes, and the Making of Animal Diversity
Chapter 6: The Big Bang of Animal Evolution
Chapter 7: Little Bangs: Wings and Other Revolutionary Inventions
Chapter 8: How the Butterfly Got Its Spots
Chapter 9: Paint It Black
Chapter 10: A Beautiful Mind: The Making of Homo sapiens
Chapter 11: Endless Forms Most Beautiful


Revolution #1: natural selection
Revoution #2: DNA
Revolution #3: Evo Devo -- evolutionary developmental biology

Samuel Williston, paleontologist, 1914: "It is also a law in evolution that the parts in an organism tend toward reduction in number, with the fewer parts greatly specialized in function."

Chapter 1: Animal Architecture: Modern Forms, Ancient Designs
  • modular parts
  • repetitive
  • William Bateson: noted the nature of repetitive parts making up animals
  • page 26, author writes "these two groups of animals" but he appears to have failed to mention of the two groups; the only group he mentions at that point was arthropods; was something edited out? Maybe the first group was tetrapods.
  • homologs: example -- forelimbs of salamanders, sauropods, mice, and arms of humans
  • serial homologs: with respect to each other, forelimbs and hindlimbs are serial homologs
  • mouthparts, antennae, and walking legs of arthropods are serial homologs
  • changes in the number and kind of serial homologs are a principal theme in animal evolution
  • Williston's Law: page 55
  • to modular and repetitive, add:
  • symmetry
  • polarity
  • Williston / Bateson: key - modular, symmetry, and polarity
Chapter 2: Monsters, Mutants, and Master Genes
  • 5 - 7% of newborn sheep, at one time in Utah: cyclopia -- one eye
  • due to ewe ingesting a toxin / teratogen around the 14th day of gestation
  • teratogen: cyclopamine produced by the corn lily Veratrum californicum (teras, Greek, monster; tyranno); from wiki:
cyclpamine prevents the fetal brain from dividing into two lobes (holoprosencephaly) and cause the development of a single eye (cyclopia). It does so by inhibiting the hedgehog signaling pathway (Hh). Cyclopamine is useful in studying the role of Hh in normal development, and as a potential treatment for certain cancers in which Hh is overexpressed. 
Note: wiki says the farm was in Idaho; Sean Carroll said this originated in Utah
Chapter 3: From E. coli to Elephants: homeotic genes with homeoboxes are called Hox genes for short. See this article, from 2012 regarding animals, Hox genes, and sponges. Animals, by definition, contain Hox genes; sponges do not, apparently contain Hox genes, but sponges are considered animals. The author's suggest at the linked story: "At some point in the murky depths of their ancestry, sponges lost bona fide Hox and ParaHox genes!"

Chapter 6: The Big Bang of Animal Evolution: Evo Devo and Williston's Law allows us to speculate on animal history prior to the "Big Bang in Biology": the Cambrian Explosion.

Chapter 7: Little Bangs: Wings and Other Revolutionary Inventions
evolution of the paper clip: Philadelphia, Wright, Reeve, and Gem (current common paper clip)

North Dakota Shut Down -- Global Warming Continues To Take Its Toll -- January 3, 2017

 Updates

Later, 1:41 p.m. Central Time: Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth came out in 2006; he won the Nobel Peace Prize for same in 2007. It's now been ten full years that "we" have been told that the science is settled.

In these past ten years, the Department of Defense never converted any of it's on-base vehicle fleet to EVs. For example, even at the smallest Air Force installation, there were generally two or three ambulances when I was in the USAF. Saying that these ambulances averaged six miles/day would be generous. They all should have been converted over to EVs by now. Same with all the on-base law enforcement sedans, probably as many as a dozen on even the smallest installations. The command staff at each installation generally each had their own vehicle for on-base use and again, none were converted to EV over the past decade.

The USPS has not converted it's vehicles to EVs, a fleet that should have been converted long ago.

Many more examples, but this tells me all I need to know about the government's -- and the past eight years, the #1 global warming cheerleader, President Obama's -- commitment to preventing global warming.

But the US government under President Obama was targeting cow farts.

Original Post
 
Thunder Spirit wind farm to expand. Over at SeekingAlpha:
  • Allete says it will team with MDU Resources' Montana-Dakota Utilities unit to expand the Thunder Spirit wind farm in North Dakota, reaching the 150 MW permitted capacity of the facility Allete Clean Energy developed in 2014-15
  • ALE also secures a 25-year power purchase agreement with MDU to purchase energy from the expansion near Hettinger, N.D. 
  • MDU will have the option to purchase the expansion upon completion, as it did with the first phase of Thunder Spirit
Active rigs:


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Active Rigs3960171185182

RBN Energy: the top ten RBN energy prognostications for 2017.

DAPL road conditions (dynamic link):


Futures, Dow 30 mini (dynamic link here):

Were I a betting man, I would have lost a bet on this one.