Idle Ramblings -- Not Necessarily the Bakken -- Rants and Raves -- Recommend Folks Ignore This Post -- For My Archives

I posted a wheelbarrow full of new wells reporting yesterday. Many of them were spectacular, even by Bakken standards. Eye-popping for me. 

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The president has read Putin's playbook.

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Chaos is self-organizing.

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Winter weather is hitting Boston. Actually it's not quite winter weather, but it's looking a bit more like one might expect this time of year. The rain is coming down horizontally; umbrellas are being inverted; folks are headed for coffee shops. The Starbucks at Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, is what a coffee shop should be like. It has all the "wonderfulness" of an English coffee house (not tea house) with a couple of extras: more space to spread out; free wi-fi (albeit a bit slow with so many users); and super-friendly staff. The wood steps leading up to the second floor look as old and worn as if this building had been here since the revolution. I doubt Paul stopped here for coffee before riding out to warn the Concordians that the Redcoats were coming.  -- Later: it looks like the rain is gradually changing to white stuff; perhaps sleet first.

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So much for those "better" job(less) reports earlier this year. We're not out of the woods yet, and there is a story (which I won't link) that suggest Germany is already in a recession -- or headed there. I forget the exact words.

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My 8 y/o granddaughter and I figured out why the Boston "T" has the color lines that it does: the Red Line, is of course, for the Boston Red Sox. I argued that the Green Line is for the Boston Common (a large expanse of green) but Arianna said that you can get to Fenway Park on all of the Green Line fingers (there are five or six) except for one -- and Fenway Park is the home of the Green Monster, which even our five y/o granddaughter knows about. And they've never been to a Boston Red Sox game. That's how big the Red Sox are in Boston. The Blue Line goes out to the waterfront and the Aquarium. We could not figure out why the Orange Line was orange.

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The best book ever on the real identity of William Shakespeare is Brenda James' The Truth Will Out, published in 2005. I'm reading it for the second time. Her argument is so persuasive and so well researched, one has no reason to read the views of those who disagree with her. It's ironic that we finally learn the identity of "William Shakespeare" when he is no longer being read by most college students. Folks, after 300 years, have moved on. Harold Bloom got me interested in Shakespeare, and I was only able to understand about ten percent of what he wrote. One of the best books ever on the Shakespearian plays was by W.H. Auden. I did not know that Shakespeare coined "alligator," at least in print. At the time of his plays, "el lagarto" was Spanish for the reptile.

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I may have misread this article -- folks point out that I often misread articles that I link/post -- and that is absolutely true. I even post that in my multiple disclaimers. If something doesn't look right on the blog, it probably isn't. Check it out for yourself. But if I have read this article correctly, it's the first "positive" piece I've read in a long time from the Dickinson Press.  The writer actually quotes someone that says it is nice to see that there are more places for folks to live. And I don't see anyone saying they don't like to a bunch of men living together, e.g. in an abbey/monastery or a college dorm.

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The Canadians could not be more blunt: approve Keystone XL 2.0 route or "we'll" ship Canadian oil to China. Keystone XL 2.0 will not be approved until after the 2013 election. This is not rocket science.

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Love's coming to Williston is a bigger story than most folks realize. I think it's a much bigger story than whether or not Menard's comes to Williston. And Love's will do a lot more for trucking chaos in the Bakken than a Menard's would. And I think Love's will require fewer employees, but perhaps better trained, higher paid (on the diesel mechanic side of the ledger).