No Wells Coming Off The Confidential List Today -- May 4, 2018

No wells coming off the confidential list today. 

Active rigs:

	5/4/2018	05/04/2017	05/04/2016	05/04/2015	05/04/2014
Active Rigs	62	50	28	84	185

RBN Energy: E&P profits appears ready to take off this year after turning a corner in 2017. Was the Saudi Surge the best thing that could ever have happened to US shale companies? I think so. It weeded out many, many marginal companies; it make the operators meaner and leaner; it reminded investors of harsh realities.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or what you think you may have read here. If this is important to you, go to the source.

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The Fine Arts And Literary Page

My reading this weekend: The Three Mona Lisas, Rab Hatfield, c. 2014. See review here. The summary:

"The most elusive sense of 'mystery' ever captured in a portrait" and the historical contradiction concerning the identity of the represented woman as "Mona Lisa," the wife of a Florentine silk merchant, or a Florentine lady, painted on request of the Magnificent Giuliano de' Medici, incited (poor choice of a word, in my opinion) Rab Hatfield to find out the truth about La Jaconde, the famous portrait of the rich Louvre Museum in Paris.

In Three Mona Lisas Hatfield's argumentation (another poor choice of a word, in my opinion) leads to the conclusion that Leonardo da Vinci overpainted this masterpiece twice (thus the "three" Mona Lisas), changing ti from the portrait of Mona Lisa, ordered by her husband Francesco del Giocondo, to that of La Gioconda, refashioned on demand of the Medici prince, admirer of this masterpiece if not of the represented person herself.

Thus Leonardo turned the individualized portrait of a middle-class housewife into "the idealized and somewhat fantasized portrait of a fascinating and perhaps unattainable woman", or rather into a "metaperson", due to "the double reworking that ... has here produced a masterpiece that ... can never be repeated". 

We need not say that this is a nearly surrealistic theory.

I have had the opportunity to see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre not less than a dozen times (while stationed in Germany for seven years, visiting Paris countless times and the Louvre almost as many times). However, it is a small painting, maybe 8 x 11 inches, and so surrounded by museum-goers, I think I have actually only seen it twice. Maybe once.

I picked up the hardcover book at the Kimbell Museum in Ft Worth (TX) yesterday, while visiting the special Asian exhibition. My wife loved the exhibition. Her mother is/was Japanese. Most of the exhibition centered around China.

Because I am still in my China phase, I enjoyed the historical plaques with each item but I did not particularly care for the exhibit itself.

The exhibit helped reinforce what little Chinese history I can recite without note cards, to include the major dynasties, the Han, Tang, Yuan, Ming, and Qing.

The Han: four hundred years centered on either side of the birth of Christ.

The Yuan: the first time (only time), China was ruled by a foreign group.

Ming: three hundred years ending just as the time of the Black Plague occurred in Europe. The two were not related, obviously -- at least as far as I know .... although....

Qing: following the Ming. Ended with the "Chinese" revolution of 1911.

Tang introduced cobalt blue but the Mings greatly expanded the technology.

Oh, my goodness, it just dawned on me -- the etymology of the word "crock" for crock pots. Oh ... my ... goodness.