Tuesday Links -- For Those Coming To Read About The Bakken, Please Skip This Post; All Bakken All The Time Is The Sidebar At The Right

Wells coming off confidential list have been posted; scroll down; a few other unrelated posts are also up. Just scroll down until you start seeing stuff you saw yesterday. Good luck to all.

I apologize: a fair amount of typos today. Typing in the dark. Long story.

RBN Energy: gas processing economics, part V.

Cold day in Boston, but no wind, so riding a bike was not an issue; a very nice bike, in fact; actually quite nice; bright, sunny day. The weatherperson predicted 3 -5 inches overnight. We got maybe a quarter inch. None on the streets due to the fast work of the "salters."  The weatherperson who predicted 3 - 5 inches of snow overnight was the same weatherperson who predicts a 1.7 degree increase in global temperature over the next century. If there's anything I've learned about weather and climate forecasting, weather is a lot more difficult to forecast, and one sees results a whole lot sooner. Climate forecasting is really, really, easy, as long as one has a TRS-80 or better.

But I digress. What's going on in the world? Boston Globe: the president's emphasis going forward -- climate control, gay rights, and something else. I forget the third. Something similar. I'm reading a great biography of Jeannette Howard Foster (b. 1895; leader in lesbian rights); fascinating story; used the word "gay" in her poetry, she says, but always associated it with joyful / mirthful in the early days. I'm not far enough in the book to know when/if she "modernized" the word. Her preference was lesbian. The author: Joanne Passet. I assume most folks coming here for the Bakken aren't interested in this, so I will alert them in the subject line.... and then move on to the Wall Street Journal.

WSJ Links

Section D (Personal Journal): Sports page -- prepare to be harbaughed. A new word. Nice.

If you get the print edition, consider cutting out this article and hanging it on your refrigerator door; should do wonders for your relationship with that significant other: "Put a Stop to 'Do I Look Fat?'"

Section C (Money & Investing):  
Just what is working on the railroad? One railroad not listed on the list at that link: BRK-B, a regional monopoly serving the Bakken and Warren Buffett. Surprisingly, a railroad I associate with coal is leading the list of EPS growth estimates at almost 60% -- Genesee & Wyoming.

Oh, by the way, nothing to do with the WSJ, but along with the biography mentioned above that I am reading, I am also reading Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber. I read about ten pages every night before I fall to sleep. That's a keeper. I understand better why Tim Geithner and others suggest the debt ceiling is "so yesterday." I'm starting to agree. More on that later, perhaps.

Back to the WSJ.

Section B (Marketplace):
More bad news for Boeing. No links; it's all over the news. Those lithium batteries. If this is a design defect, "B" is for Bad news. Or Burning Batteries.

Huge article: deal trips up Caterpillar in China. Maybe a speed bump, but I don't think "tripped." As in stumbling, falling to the ground. That I would reserve for HP and Autonomy.

Section A:
This was my wife's mother's favorite piece of sculpture: the Manneken Pis in Brussels. My mother-in-law was Japanese, born not too far away from ground zero; not in the area at the time, obviously. Immigrated to America. Loved America. Really amazing. Really, really bright, smart. Came over when she was eighteen years old, or so, maybe twenty. "Disowned" by her family for marrying a non-White American, though even a white American would have been beyond the pale. Never looked back. Reconciled with her family after her first child (to be my wife many years later, but, of course, that was not in the tea leaves back in 1947, or whenever it was). Visited Japan almost yearly in her adult life; she paid for her trips back to Japan from Los Angeles with "tip money" earned as a waitress in a .... Japanese restaurant. When we went for drives, I was only allowed to buy gasoline at the Chevron station that was owned by a Japanese family. The line she once used I will never forget while driving in Los Angeles: "Take a reft at the next right." [Translation: take a left at the next light. I figured that out fast enough to make a lane change, but it was close.]

So, front page, at the bottom, the WSJ has a story on the Brussels Mannekin Pis, my mother-in-law's favorite piece of sculpture. It appears the link is "blocked" but you can probably find the story elsewhere.

How interesting. Up above I mentioned HP and Autonomy. Now, on the first page, bottom right, I see this: inside H-P's missed chance to avoid a disastrous deal.

Stan Musial, I see, died Saturday, age 92. In a place far away and long ago, I had a significant other who would talk to me about "Stan the Man." Two completely different men in the headlines in the op-ed section today: Lance Armstrong and Stan Musial. There's a picture of one of them smiling. I will let you guess which one. A hint: he's holding a baseball bat.

Okay, that's it. Forward. To the Bakken.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on what you read here. The stuff about the Japanese restaurant was not an inside tip to invest in Asian Fusion.