- Expectations are for oil prices to trend lower in the coming weeks as the recent gains were probably a relief rally
- The dollar should continue to weigh on oil prices through year end as the US economy significantly outperforms markets abroad
- Although we have seen improvements in contango and current prices, the 3.1 billion barrel glut will weigh on the market for some time
- Fears remain that this glut is much like that of the 1980s, but the market is much tighter and OPEC doesnt have the spare capacity
- Cap ex reductions are over done and the price of oil could improve significantly in 2017
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A Note to the Granddaughters
Granddaughter #3 is watching granddaughter #2 play soccer. Granddaughter #1 is on a road trip with her dad to Corpus Christi for the weekend for a business trip / father-daughter weekend.
Sophia, not-quite-21 months old.
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The Apple Page
The SkyView app. At the App Store, for $1.99.
A couple of days ago I mentioned that I wished Tim Cook would take Apple private, limiting ownership of the company to Apple employees, current and past. Apple is known for its attention to detail and it drives some investors nuts, spending extra money on stuff they don't think is necessary.
For example:
One of the Apple Watch's quirkier features is its "Motion" watch face, which sets the time against a backdrop of fluttering butterflies, floating jellyfish, and blooming flowers.
Not everyone will like them, but Apple thought that some people really would. So, as Wired's David Pierce recounts, the Watch design team went to some pretty extreme measures.
"We shot all this stuff," human interface lead Alan Dye tells Wired. "The butterflies and the jellyfish and the flowers for the motion face, it's all in-camera." The flowers were photographed in stop-motion, which can be a painstaking process — Dye says one flower required more than 24,000 shots over 285 hours.
For the jellyfish, meanwhile, Apple built a tank inside its design studio and used a Phantom slow-motion camera to shoot 4K 300-fps footage, even though it would be displayed on a tiny 312 x 390-resolution watch.
While the Apple Watch is far from a perfect product at launch, it's clear that Apple expended a huge amount of effort in areas of its development. "No reasonable person can see that level of detail," says Dye. "And yet to us it's really important to get those details right."285 hours x $50/hour for a photographer? Nope -- I'm sure it was all done by automation once things were set up. But it probably still cost a lot more than some investors would like to see.
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Still Drying Out
I mentioned the other day that I got caught in a Texas downpour -- completely soaked by the time I got home. I've been drying out my tennis shoes in the dryer for the past three days -- I guess this is the third day -- they are almost dry, but I am beginning to think they are not salvageable.
The good news: I never liked those tennis shoes to begin with.
The tennis shoes I prefer have been worn for years. They no longer have any "leather" sole but in all other respects they are all soul and I can't get rid of them. It is amazing. When I wear them, I can feel the street against my feet. There are no holes in the bottom of the shoes, but the sole is so incredibly thin. They are no longer any good for walking or running, but wow! what perfect bicycle shoes. Funny how things work out.
What irritates me most is I bought a pair of goggles two summers ago for bike-riding (some nights the bugs are pretty bad, and when going through areas of mowing or construction, it would be nice to have goggles. And now I can't find those incredibly unique "Minion" goggles.
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Just "Use" Whatever Works
And "They" Call Trump A Buffoon
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Fathomless Ignorance
The good news: we are now less than 300 days until President Obama gives his last military salute as POTUS.
The bad news: It looks like the "JV Team" may have just moved into Division 1, among the other varsity teams.
The New York Times is reporting that the JV Team may have what it needs to put the Belgian nuclear industry in play. And if The New York Times reports it, it must be true.
As a dragnet aimed at Islamic State operatives spiraled across Brussels and into at least five European countries on Friday, the authorities were also focusing on a narrower but increasingly alarming threat: the vulnerability of Belgium’s nuclear installations.
The investigation into this week’s deadly attacks in Brussels has prompted worries that the Islamic State is seeking to attack, infiltrate or sabotage nuclear installations or obtain nuclear or radioactive material. This is especially worrying in a country with a history of security lapses at its nuclear facilities, a weak intelligence apparatus and a deeply rooted terrorist network.
The EU has no "excess" energy. The continent is on the cusp -- they've been shuttering so many nuclear plants in Europe, returning to coal and emphasizing inefficient solutions like wind and solar: if any more nuclear plants are taken off-line unexpectedly, due to terrorist concerns, look for this story to be reported again: US distillates exported to northwest Europe from US gulf coast have surged this month (March). That was a "cut and paste" from this week's to stories. It isn't even summer yet, but winter in Europe comes soon enough.On Friday, the authorities stripped security badges from several workers at one of two plants where all nonessential employees had been sent home hours after the attacks at the Brussels airport and one of the city’s busiest subway stations three days earlier. Video footage of a top official at another Belgian nuclear facility was discovered last year in the apartment of a suspected militant linked to the extremists who unleashed the horror in Paris in November.
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Maybe Not
I thought I had posted the fact that Belgium does not allow raids on terrorists during the night, but I couldn't find the post, so maybe I had not. But for those who missed it, The New York Times reports it:
The authorities in Belgium said on Wednesday that one of the Paris attackers may have been holed up in a house in Brussels two nights after 130 people were killed and hundreds more injured — but that he could have escaped because of a law banning police raids on private homes from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., according to the country’s justice minister.
Even The Times uses "arcane," "severely," "dysfunctional," and "ineffective" when describing Belgium.The revelation by the justice minister, Koen Geens, that the suspect, France’s most wanted man — Salah Abdeslam — might have gotten away because of an arcane law intended to safeguard family privacy only adds to the picture of a severely dysfunctional and ineffective government in Belgium.
POTUS? The Times gives him a pass.
Hillary and The Times? Don't even go there.
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