Saturday Morning Links

Updates

Later, 5:20 pm: I just had an opportunity to re-read and savor Peggy Noonan's op-ed. I have not liked her writing since the editorial before the election. Perhaps her "senior moment" lasted a bit longer than usual, is now over, and she has re-found her footing. This is a very, very good op-ed, linked at the bottom of the post. 

***********************

Active rigs: 187

WSJ Links

Section D (Off Duty): Later

Section C (Review):

• Today, O'Hare -- Tomorrow, The World: what would the business world be like if they all operated like the airlines?

What would it be like if other businesses operated on the same principles as airlines? Size 11 shoes would shrink to size 10, then to size 9, and ultimately all the way to size 4. Only first-class pedestrians would be sold shoes that fit them; everyone else would have to squeeze into fraying bootees. Intractable demands by the cobblers' union would be tabbed as the culprit.

Cardiologists would commandeer the public-address system to announce that they had overbooked open-heart procedures. They would offer a free quadruple bypass operation, valid for one year, to anyone willing to cede his place in line to the next customer. If they got no takers, they would offer two bypasses and a 50% discount on the patient's next four stents.

Dentists would announce that until further notice all wisdom-tooth extractions would be conducted without anesthesia, owing to furloughed dental assistants. Psychiatrists would begin offering frequent psychotic-episode plans that they would then refuse to honor due to mysterious restrictions concealed in the fine print of the agreement.

• Did a bacterial E.T. bring life to earth?

When the researchers extrapolate the chart backward, they find the origin of life must have happened almost 10 billion years ago, long before Earth existed. Therefore life may have spent its first five billion years on a different planet and got here as bacterial spores deep inside rocks that drifted through the vacuum after some cosmic explosion.

There are an awful lot of "ifs" in such a calculation. After all, the increase in complexity could have started fast and slowed down. Also, it isn't the first time somebody has suggested "panspermia," or microbial life hitching a ride here.

Section B (Business & Finance):

Section A:

• Op-ed: the best of George Jones (1931 - 2013); a farewell to the Greatest Country Singer Who Ever Lived.

• Op-ed: Noonan-- the presidential wheel turns; disaffection for Bush gave us Obama; that explains the new affection for Bush. Noonan says "Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 because he was not George W. Bush." The question is: why was he re-elected?