Friday Morning Links

Active rigs: 183

RBN Energy: impact of a late, cold spring on energy.

WSJ Links

Section M (Mansion):

Section D (Arena):

Section C (Money & Investing):

Section B (Marketplace):

• Amazon keeps firing on all cylinders; developing smartphone with 3-D screen; moving beyond Kindle Fire; will put pressure on Apple; in addition to competing technology, Apple needs to be concerned with two things re: Amazon: a) Amazon is used by way more people; and, b) it is much easier to order through Amazon -- at least that's the perception; Amazon does not seem to have a natural competitor;

• Caterpillar, union suspend talks in Milwaukee; this is where it stands now --

The steelworkers rejected a proposed contract last week that would have frozen hourly wages for six years, installed a lower wage scale for new hires, altered pension benefits and allowed the company to disregard workers' seniority when selecting employees for short-term layoffs.

• Speaking of unions: the new governor of Washington state offering incentives aimed at keeping manufacturing and design work for Boeing Co's revamped 777 jet in facilities around Seattle. Isn't the governor/state worried about all the CO2 emissions that would be generated by workers driving to work; I guess they're only worried about CO2 emissions if they come from coal shipped to China

• If Amazon is hitting on all cylinders, Microsoft is not. Future for Microsoft set-top box is uncertain; 

• Auto sales keep humming in China;

Section A: 

• Deficit debate gets a reset; shrinking faster than expected;

• White House goes back to its base: bailout student loans; now that the deficit is dropping faster than expected, a lot of extra money to bail out students (and their parents); the bailouts never quit, do they? I'll be making the last payment on the last student loan for my younger daughter sometime in the middle of 2014 -- woohoo.

• Arabs ask US to lead on Syria;

• Op-Ed: college grads interested in media, technology, or related fields, better learn a little computer programming

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A Note To The Granddaughters

With regard to that last link above about computer grads needing to learn a bit of computer programming. Our nine-year-old granddaughter (who will be ten years old this summer) just sent me the link to her webpage. Working with her dad, she did the entire webpage in html code, no cutting and pasting, all her own work. It is quite impressive. Her dad worked with her and the did a superb job. I would have done it the "wrong way" -- just using a "blogging" application, but her dad had her actually use html code from the outset. It is really quite incredible.