The U.S. economy may end 2011 growing at its fastest clip in 18 months as analysts increase their forecasts for the fourth quarter just a few months after a slowdown raised concern among investors.This, despite all the efforts of the Obama administration to scuttle the nascent recovery. Oh, well, give them time.
Economists at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York now see gross domestic product rising 3 percent in the final quarter, up from a previous prediction of 2.5 percent. Macroeconomic Advisers in St. Louis increased its forecast to 3.2 percent from 2.9 percent at the start of November, while New York-based Morgan Stanley & Co. boosted its outlook to 3.5 percent from 3 percent.
The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports that for the second time in three days, Fairbanks set a new low temperature record on Thursday. A temperature of 41 degrees below zero — the first 40 below temperature of the season — was recorded at Fairbanks International Airport at 6:29 a.m.Yup. Global warming. For a moment there, I was concerned that global warming was literally causing the Arctic to melt away.
The National Weather Service in Fairbanks says that broke the old record of 39 below set in 1969.
The last time Fairbanks residents saw 40-below temperatures in November was in 1994.
Foreign hackers broke into a water plant control system in Illinois last week and damaged a water pump in what appears to be the first reported case of a malicious cyber attack damaging a critical computer system in the United States, according to an industry expert.It's a relief to me that the administration is all over this.
On Nov. 8, a municipal water district employee in Illinois noticed problems with the city’s water pump control system, and a technician determined the system had been remotely hacked into from a computer located in Russia, said Joe Weiss, an industry security expert who obtained a copy of an Illinois state fusion center report describing the incident.
It’s not the first time that two-step technique — hack a security firm to gain the keys to enter other companies or entities — has been used.
Earlier this year, hackers believed to be working from China stole sensitive data from RSA, a division of EMC that provides secure remote computer access to government agencies, defense contractors and other commercial companies around the world. Armed with that data, they breached the computer networks of companies, including Lockheed Martin, whose employees used RSA “tokens” to log in to the corporate system from outside the office. Lockheed said that no sensitive data were taken.
President Obama's United States Department of Agriculture has delayed shale gas drilling in Ohio for up to six months by cancelling a mineral lease auction for Wayne National Forest (WNF). The move was taken in deference to environmentalists, on the pretext of studying the effects of hydraulic fracturing.This is truly incredible. Unprecedented.
“Conditions have changed since the 2006 Forest Plan was developed," announced WNF Supervisor Anne Carey on Tuesday. "The technology used in the Utica & Marcellus Shale formations need to be studied to see if potential effects to the surface are significantly different than those identified in the Forest Plan." The study will take up to six months to complete. The WNF study reportedly "will focus solely on how it could affect forest land," the significance of hydraulic fracturing to united proponents of the delay, "and not how it could affect groundwater."
The Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program recently estimated that drilling in the Utica shale, which is affected by the suspension of the mineral lease auctions, would produce up 204,500 jobs by 2015.Let's see what Chesapeake shares are doing: down about 1.2 percent.
"The President’s plan is to simply say ‘no’ to new energy production," House Natural Resources Committee chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash, said to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar during a hearing pertaining to hydraulic fracturing. "It’s a plan that is sending American jobs overseas, forfeiting new revenue, and denying access to American energy that would lessen our dependence on hostile Middle Eastern oil."
It's strange how life in the West has changed the connotation of many words. "Pasture," to the easterner, may mean a ten-acre enclosure. Here it means several sections (square miles) of sparse grass of deceptively high nutrition if only it's not abused. Roosevelt the rancher soon learned a fact that John Wesley Powell tried unsuccessfully to shove down the craws of disbelieving easterners: the lifeblood of the West is water, there's never enough of it, and all eastern agricultural truisms must be discarded. It takes vast acreage to sustain cows int his country, but the grass is high in protein, evolved for grazing by bovines and elk, and is sustainable if cared for.I did not know this about pronghorn:
Antelope, unlike deer, are not nocturnal. They bed down at night like cattle. Across the United States, anywhere deer are abundant (and that's nearly everywhere) automobile collisions with deer are rampant. Drive through territory densely populated with antelope, however, and the sight of any killed in collisions with vehicles is relatively rare by comparison. The difference is that at night, while deer are traveling and feeding and playing chicken with oncoming headlights or, at the last moment, sprinting across the highway in front of a speeding car, antelope are bedded down. Often selecting a slight depression to protect them from the wind, pronghorns will bed in a tight group, sheep-like.The ninety-six mile trail connecting the north unit with the south unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park:
We loaded our cantle packs with sandwiches and cameras and and prepared for a ride on the Maah Daah Hey Trail. The official National Park Service translation of the trail's Mandan name is "an area that has been or will be around for a long time." The Mandans must have been masters of linguistic economy.Perhaps more later. It's a great book and I highly recommend it. Maybe a nice Christmas gift.
Anyone know who I should contact to provide vac trucks for hauling water to the drill sites in North Dakota.If you have an answer or suggest, please feel free to submit comment:
"A drilling rig hits oil 99.6% of the time. A dry hole is extremely rare."The occasional dry hole targeting the Bakken formation I see is because of a problem with the rig or the drilling -- not because oil wasn't there. In almost every case in which I see a "dry" hole due to technical problems with the drilling, the operator has plans to go back in at a later date.
It has a menu like a simplified version of Applebee's and slightly cheaper. Prices start at about $8 for burgers and sandwiches. Pop comes in cans rather than from a soda fountain. The atmosphere is simple.The two owners, from Kalispell, Montana, and Pocatello, Idaho, have started other successful businesses in Montana, including restaurants and hotels. [One of the local jokes is that the entire population of Idaha has moved to the Bakken; if they are starting restaurants here that must be true.]
One advantage this restaurant has in oil-boom country is 216 Main has a dormitory in the basement which houses the restaurant's 20 employees.Most of the employees are from Libby, Montana; there are just not enough local residents available for all the job openings.