Taking Down The Enbridge Sandpiper Poll -- November 1, 2014

I mentioned the other day I would probably take down the Enbridge Sandpiper poll in which we asked, "Is the Enbridge Sandpiper pipeline dead or just delayed?"

With all the news coming out of Minnesota this past week, it's a pretty safe bet that the Sandpiper won't be completed by 2020. In my mind the project is "dead" except for the lawyers, regulators, and bureaucrats "studying" the issue; time to move on.

The poll results:

• dead: 21%
• just delayed: 79%

I'll put the poll back up sometime in the future. Hope springs eternal.

On another note, it's a shame Warren Buffett bought Burlington Northern Santa Fe some years ago. The closest I can find to compare BNSF is the Union Pacific.

Check out the 10-year graph: http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=UNP+Interactive#{%22range%22%3A%225y%22%2C%22scale%22%3A%22linear%22}.

BNSF, BRK, and UNP investors need to thank Nebraska and Minnesota for the windfall.

By the way, when you get to the 10-year graph on UNP, be sure to look at the bottom of the graph and note the increase in dividends: from 13.5 cents/share in 2009, to 50 cents currently.

And, also note, that the shares split 2-1 back in June, 2014. I assume this means that one is effectively getting $1.00/share, but I could be wrong on that.

Reminder: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or what you think you may have read here. Don't change any travel plans based on what you read here. 

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Nothing below has anything remotely to do with the Bakken. For personal use only.

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NASCAR Sunday

In the Chase, starting position, tomorrow, Texas:

1. Matt Kenseth
2. Jeff Gordon
5. Kevin Harvick
7. Ryan Newman
10. Joey Logano
11. Carl Edwards
20. Denny Hamlin
26. Brad Keselowski

This is not a sports site. Do not consider making bets, or changing bets, based on anything you read here or anything you might have read here. This may or may not affect your Fantasy NASCAR team.

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Wrong

Time Magazine has an op-ed on the loss/crash of SpaceShipTwo/Virgin Galactic. When I read it for the first time, I agreed. My knee-jerk action was to agree with the writer. Now that I have had a few hours to think about it, the author is completely wrong. Completely wrong on so many levels. If I were a better writer, more articulate, I would say more, but not going to.

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A Note To The Granddaughters

What an incredibly wonderful day. First, our younger granddaughter scored the only goal in the team's win 1 - 0 today. She is such an incredibly good team player.

Our older granddaughter also had an exciting day. She has been sick with viral pneumonia for the past week and a half and has not been in the water for the past eight days: not in competitive swimming or in splashball. Today one of the region's water polo fall tournaments was held in Denton, TX, and she played. Her team took second place and she got her first-ever water polo medal. With only one reserve/substitute for the team, she pretty much played every game without being taken out. I was quite impressed. Asked after the game whether she preferred competitive swimming or water polo, she said she enjoyed both and wanted to continue in both.

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Another Note To The Granddaughters

This week I am watching Only Lovers Left Alive. I have watched it at least once every night for the past four nights; this is my fifth night watching it. From start to finish most nights.

Tonight I happened to pay a bit more attention to the wonderful scene when Eve is packing her books for her trip back to Detroit. I was curious which books she was packing and started to go through the movie/DVD in stop/start/slow motion. Then I googled; it turns out there is a whole webpage devoted to this very topic.

This is a list of the books she reads before packing or places special emphasis:

• L'Orlando Furioso, Ludovico Ariosto, 1516 
• Don Quixote, Miguel De Cervantes, 1605
• La Creazione Di Adamo E Di Eva, Lorenzo Ghibeti, in Porta Del Paradiso, XV
• Zwischen Zwei Revolutionen - Der Geist der Schinkelzeit (1789 - 1848), Ernst Heilborn, 1927
• Les Anglais Au Pole Nord, Jules Verne, 1864
• The Temple of the Golden Paviliion, Yukio Mishima, 1956
• Basquiat, edited by Sam Keller and Dieter Buchhart, 1996
• Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace, 1996
• The Bastard of Istanbul, Elik Shafak, 2006

I think I've found a new blog to follow.

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Drudge Report

I generally check in on Drudge Report three or four times every day, even though it is seldom updated more than once any given day. But I won't be checking in on Drudge until Thursday; the election news and the election results are going to be messy. I hate messy.  The only real question that bugs me is where Mr Obama will send federal troops first: Anbar Province (west of Baghdad) or Ferguson (west of East St Louis)?

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From Only Lovers Left Alive

Can't Hardly Stand It, Charlie Feathers

For what it's worth, I added this to the wiki page a few minutes ago: A brief bit of "Can't Hardly Stand It" was also featured on "Only Lovers Left Alive."

Which led me to this:

I Forgot To Remember To Forget, Chris Isaak
Sounds like Jerry Lee Lewis on the piano.

As good as Roy?

Only The Lonely, Chris Isaak   **************************************** OREGON: EBOLALAND  

CNN is reporting:

A female who traveled from West Africa to the Portland area and had been self-monitoring for symptoms was hospitalized and quarantined after developing a fever, the Oregon Health Authority said. The patient woke up Friday, took her temperature and learned it was over 102 degrees, said Julie Sullivan-Springhetti of the Multnomah County Health Department. She was taken in a specially equipped medical transport vehicle to Providence Milwaukie Hospital.

Not easy to transmit ... that's why she was "taken in a specially equipped medical transport vehicle..." 

 

The disease is not easy to transmit but Canada joins Australia by ending the processing of visa applications from foreign nationals who have visited the three most affected countries. 

 

And although the disease is not easy to transmit, the death toll keeps rising: almost 5,000 people have died from Ebola during the current outbreak, the World Health Organization said Friday. The vast majority of the deaths have been in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. 

 

Our younger daughter will be departing Multnomah County on Tuesday to visit Ebola-Ground Zero in Texas.