On Track For 2,412 New Oil And Gas Permits In North Dakota For Calendar Year 2013

With 1,487 new permits to date, the state is on track to issue 2,412 new oil and gas permits this calendar year (2013).

At this time last year, August 13, 2012, 1,340 new permits had been issued and we were on track to issue 2,174 new permits for 2012. In fact, about 2,251 were issued with about 30 canceled.

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A Note To The Granddaughters

I'm starting to put together my "physics" library. Physics was one of the most difficult subjects for me in high school, and I did not take any "purely" physics courses in college, though a lot of chemistry courses incorporated a fair amount of physics.

It was by chance that I got back into physics.  As my new landlord says, "it was probably meant to be."

It started when my niece in Tucson, whose high school graduation I attended a few weeks ago, gave me a copy of The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Born,  Louisa Gilder, c.2008.

I then started re-reading a couple of other physics books I already had in the house. Some time ago, I had added two "new" books to my wish list having seen them at Harvard Bookstore. Last week I ordered them, and they arrived two days ago:

• Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside The Center, Ray Monk, c. 2012
• Alan Turing: The Enigma, Andrew Hodges, c. 1983, the centenary edition, softcover, c. 2012 

I've already started reading a little bit from both of them. It will be interesting to see which one I enjoy better. Ray Monk's book, esthetically, is more pleasing: mostly a better font, easier to read.

It is ironic how things turn out -- maybe it was simply meant to be. Before getting these new books, I mentioned that I was re-reading some books on physics that I already had in the house. This time, my interest was on mesons; I'm finally focusing on one "thing" and hope to get a better feeling of mesons this time around. How interesting, then, that in the introduction to the Oppenheimer biography, Ray Monk says that was Oppenheimer's lifelong passion, trying to understand the meson. I get the feeling that the book will be the meson as much as it will be about Oppenheimer. I can hardly wait to get into the book.

But it's slow-going; I have too many distractions. Right now, our two granddaughters and I are wading through The Lord of The Rings trilogy. We watch one-half of each movie at one sitting. We do one movie (or two sittings) each week. This week, we are on the second movie: "The Two Towers." While watching the movie (actually when we take breaks, or finish an episode) we read "companion" books to the movie. We really have a better feeling for Gollum now; the 7-y/o can provide a 30-second soundbite on Gollum which I think is pretty impressive -- hobbit, hobgloblin, goblin, orc; she understands the concept of "redemption." I am very impressed; she loves talking to her mom about how Gollow is "redeeming himself." 

I didn't understand those concepts until I was an older adult.