Idle Chatter Overheard at the Diner -- Not Much To Do With The Bakken

Something tells me this story is getting a bit more play in Israel and the Mideast in general than it is here in the United States: Iran executes accused Israeli spy.

Seaway pipeline reversal is slated to occur Thursday, May 17, 2012.

Thank goodness no one reads the site. 

Measure 2 in North Dakota looks like it may fail by a wide margin if polls are accurate. Measure 2 would eliminate North Dakota property tax. If the measure is not passed, this suggests to me North Dakota voters a) have common sense; b) don't trust bureaucrats to sort this out if it passed; c) have doubts about the Bakken boom or have not heard of it; d) don't gamble with school funding.

Politics: Boston Globe now buries the claim that the Democratic Senate nominee claimed she was Cherokee and a minority. The president says the NYT/CBS poll that shows him trailing Romney was biased. Yes, it was. Had it not been biased the results would have been even more striking.

Federal agricultural department employees can make > $240,000 per annum. Nice work if you can find it.

JPMorgan earned $18 billion last year. Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley COMBINED earned $16 billion. And we're criticizing Jamie Dimon?  I can't comprehend "billion" so, as an analogy, JPM has $867 in it's billfold; it earned $18 this past year; it lost $2 due to a bad bet. Okay. [From a graphic on CNBC; saw it in passing; the numbers are correct; some of the other data may be incorrect, but you get the idea.]

Coal company shares are getting crushed. With natural gas at $2.40 and the administration out to kill the coal industry, it necessarily follows. Natural gas. Coal, wind, solar, nuclear, biofuels, algae.

• Arch coal, six months ago: $16. Today, $8.
• Peabody, six months ago: $39. Today, $28.
• Alpha Natural Resources, six months ago: $26. Today, <$13.
• First Solar: six months ago, $45; today, $15. 

Women prefer Romney to Barack -- NYT/CBS.  I know Mrs Romney never worked a day in her life. She did raise five sons. But that's really not work. It's possible Hillary's thinking on "working mothers" is evolving.

After a 40-year public career, he is finally getting married. A beautiful love story.
"I used to listen to these songs about love and ... they didn't mean anything to me. I would almost be kind of annoyed by them, you know -- it's like I was left out. The whole thing takes on a meaning it didn't have." But now he's getting married. Barney Frank will be marrying his fiance, Jim Ready, this July.  I, too, enjoy those love songs. See my other blogs.

Am I missing something here? From the Boston Globe, a new test for colon cancer screening. The new test does not require the laxative to clean the colon and does not require a any apparatus inside any orifice. It is a virtual colonscopy using an orally administered dye and a CT (x-ray) scan. This is the part I don't get: "Of the study participants who express a preference, 62 percent said they preferred the prep-free CT procedure over the colonoscopy." Well, duh. My question: why wasn't it 94%. Yes, I would assume some percent enjoy the laxative and a rubber coil transiting the entire colon, but I wouldn't expect almost 40% would say they prefer that. I must be missing something. It's from the print edition, but I'm sure you can find the article on-line by googling "New test offers hope for easier colon screening."