Miscellaneous Meanderings -- Nothing About The Bakken -- October 17, 2017

Wow, what a mess: Securities regulators are investigating a scuttled nuclear reactor construction project in South Carolina.

In the notice issued to its investors, SCANA said it had been served with a subpoena and would "fully cooperate" with the probe by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and couldn't provide any details about the inquiry's timeline or outcome.

The probe comes on the heels of legislative, state and federal investigations into the failed V.C. Summer Nuclear Station project. SCANA subsidiary South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. and state-owned utility Santee Cooper spent nearly $10 billion over a decade before shuttering it earlier this year.

Thousands of people lost their jobs when the project failed. More than half a dozen lawsuits have been filed, some by ratepayers angry they've been charged $2 billion to pay interest on debt, via a series of rate hikes since 2009, without any power being generated.

Costs associated with the abandoned project currently account for 18 percent of SCE&G customers' bills, even though the project has been terminated. The Office of Regulatory Staff - the state agency that represents the public interest in utility cases - has asked state regulators to force SCE&G to stop billing customers for the failure.

If the probe affects the company adversely, something tells me this becomes an even bigger mess. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Regardless of how it plays out, it's just one more nail in the coffin in which nuclear energy resides.

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Hillary's Broken Toe

Something tells me we would be seeing Hillary on late-night talk shows laughing/joking about her broken toe if that's all it was. Something tells me this is more than just a broken toe.

Unless of course, it's one of her big toes. According to Mayo Clinic when asked whether a broken toe is life-threatening:

In most cases, a broken toe can be immobilized by taping it to a neighboring toe. But if the fracture is severe — particularly if it involves your big toe — you may need a cast or even surgery to ensure that your broken toe heals properly. Most broken toes heal well, usually within four to six weeks.

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The Market

The tea leaves suggest the Dow 30 will close above 23,000 for the first time ever tomorrow. Tesla bounced back a bit today after stories suggested that recent firings were part of a cost-cutting measure. I doubt the two were related, but if that's true, the firing of a few hundred employees speaks volumes about Tesla's financial situation at the moment. A contributor over at SeekingAlpha suggests AAPL is worth $300 based on comments made by Warren Buffett.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.

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The Literature Page

The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex: Jonathan Eig, c. 2014

Well worth the read for those interested in this topic.

The quest for The Pill began in December, 1950, when a 71-year-old woman "who loved sex and had spent forty years seeking a way to make it better" met with a 47-year-old scientist who had been fired by Harvard University who deemed him "too dangerous" when it came to his research.

The scientist, Gregory Goodwin Pincus, had many research projects going on simultaneously. In human reproductive science he was interested in helping women who were unable to become pregnant. 

Margaret Sanger was known by "almost everyone" in America by 1950. "It was Sanger who had popularized the term 'birth control' and almost single-handedly launched the movement for contraceptive rights in the United States."

"On June 10, 1957, after taking two months to review the application filed by G. D. Searle & Co., the FDA approved the sale of Enovid for infertility and menstrual irregularities." -- p. 258.

On April 7, 1960, Searle was notified that the FDA had approved Enovid for contraceptive purposes. 

The book is well researched and has an excellent index. The words "Nobel Prize" do not appear in the index. 

The first issue of Playboy magazine appeared in December, 1953. "In 1958, seventeen states still had laws banning the sale, distribution, or advertisement of contraception." In Massachusetts where most of the research was being done, it was a felony to even give out information about contraception. 

In the 1960 presidential campaign (think JFK), Massachusetts law still limited women's access to contraception. 

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This Page Needs Some Color

From Mission View Terrace, Lakeside, MT, October, 2017 --