Waiting For Godot -- July 2, 2017

Intermittent blogging: I will be traveling all this week; flying today; on the road all week; and, then flying again next weekend. Everything suggests adequate wi-fi access but one knows how that goes.

Active rigs:

	7/2/2017	07/02/2016	07/02/2015	07/02/2014	07/02/2013
Active Rigs	58	30	75	190	192

Tesla: waiting for the big announcement "promised" for today. [Update, 3:50 p.m. Eastern Time and still no update from Tesla; at least I haven't seen it if it's been released. This is getting very, very interesting.] [Update, 7:25 p.m. Eastern Time, if this was the announcement, it was carried "nowhere" and is a real "nothing" of an announcement. This is really pretty bad.] Let's see how the poll did. Viewers felt that the news would be:

• really, really bad: 11%
• just bad: 19%
• hardly noteworthy: 63%
• fairly good: 0%
• really, really, good: 7%

And my hunch is that it won't even be mentioned by CNBC Monday.

Update, 1:51 a.m. Eastern Time, July 3, 2017 -- Investor's Business Daily says Elon Musk missed Model 3 deadline -- "Elon Musk apparently has missed a deadline to provide 'news on Sunday' regarding the upcoming Model 3."

Update, 1:04. a.m. Pacific Time, July 3, 2017, missing his own deadline by an hour or so, tweeted his "Sunday news":

There will be a "handover party" for the first 30 Model 3 sedans on July 28, adding that production will ramp up to 100 in August and above 1,500 in September. That met his Friday promise on Twitter to provide "news on Sunday" regarding Tesla's next electric car. Musk said Model 3 production "looks like" it could hit 20,000 by December, which would be a 240,000 annual run rate, not including Model S and Model X output. 

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A Note For The Granddaughters

A History of The World In Six Glasses

Tom Standage

c. 2005

Six sections:

• Beer in Mesopotamia and Egypt
• Wine in Greece and Rome
• Spirits in the Colonial World
• Coffee in the Age of Reason
• Tea and the British Empire
• Coca-Cola and the Rise of America

For my flight today, our older daughter gave me this book to read.

It is a short book, six sections, with two chapters in each section. I chose to read the first chapter in the last section first: “From Soda to Cola.” One of the early paragraphs certainly caught my eye. I spent “a lifetime” in Yorkshire, based at Menwith Hill but I spent much of my time walking and railroading much of the county. I often flew into and out of Leeds, York, and spent many additional days exploring the city. My most vivid memories are the four Starbucks coffee houses on one city block, pretty much one at each corner of that block.

From the book:

• the direct ancestor of Coca-Cola and all other artificially carbonated drinks was produced, oddly enough, in a brewery in Leeds in 1767 by Joseph Priestley, an English clergyman and scientist
• "fixed air" = carbon dioxide
• early on, until 1800, carbonated beverages were medicinal only; Schweppes was one of the first; CO2 from sodium bicarbonate, soda: thus, soda water became the generic term for such drinks
• Europe: somewhat accepted; Britain: better accepted; but the US — very, very popular
• Benjamin Rush, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson all are part of the history
• Benjamin Silliman, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 1807 — next major milestone. Decided to produce soda water on a large scale using the Schweppes method he saw in England
• Joseph Hawkins, Philadelphia; discovered how to deliver soda water through a fountain. He planned to imitate English and European spas. Patent granted in 1809, but it was not spas that took over, but apothecaries
• lemonade: almost certainly the first modern fizzy drink
• by the early 19th century, soda water was being mixed with wine on both sides of the Atlantic, now known as wine spritzer. Much less is needed for same “affect”
• but from the 1830s, soda water was principally flavored using specially made syrups

Perhaps more to follow.