T-24 Hours And Counting ... But Now, Just Like A NASA Launch -- The Hearing May Be On Hold

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The Rise of the Oligarchy

Link here. Wealth of top 1% surpasses $100 trillion -- more than global GDP and all central bank balance sheets.

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Weekly Petroleum Report

And here are the numbers:

• US crude oil inventories: increased by 1.9 million bbls (pretty much in line with yesterday's API numbers; surprise, surprise
• US crude oil inventories: 396 million bbls; below the 400-million-bbl threshold; remains bullish
• refineries operating way below capacity, at 90.4%
• gasoline production drops below 10 million bbls/day
• distillate production also decline slightly, but held at 5 million bbls/day
• jet fuel was again up; up 4% compared with same four-week period last year

WTI after the report? slight increase, back over $72

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The Lobster Page

Lessons From The Lobster: Eve Marder's Work in Neuroscience, Charlotte Nassim, c. 2018.

From page xvii:

Eve Marder's lab is now recognized as a leader in computational neuroscience and is currently using both theoretical and experimental research to analyze the closely linked concepts of neuronal homeostasis, animal-to-animal variability, multiple solutions, and compensatory mechanisms. Marder has formulated coherent theories of these phenomena. The findings apply equally to the neuronal circuits of vertebrate animals, although for many years this was disputed.

This is pretty cool. A thought experiment.

When Eve Marder was three years old she stuck her head through a pair of vertical railings at a playground on 86th Street in New York City.

And, of course, she couldn't get her head back out.

Solution?

This is incredibly clever, and it was her mother who calmly figured out the solution.

Eve started crying, of course, and all the mothers started panicking, except hers. Dorothy Marder told them not to worry and, turning Eve's body sideways, pushed it the rest of the way out through the bars. Afterward she (I assume, Eve) told everyone that obviously the head is the biggest part, and as far as she was concerned it was the only precious part. So it didn't matter if the body got scraped; it would heal.

When did Eve Marder realize she was clever? Nine years of age; Sputnik.

From page 4:

Her parents had strikingly different approaches to solving problems. Her dad had a degree in electrical engineering. Throughout Eve's childhood, she remembers incidents, sometimes leading to quarrels. "He could easily end up with an entirely wrong assessment of a situation by a totally reasonable process. So my mother was almost invariably right, and he was almost invariably wrong. He would get there by consistent logical thought, and she would get there by this very bizarre way, and that used to drive me crazy." Over the years, I suspect, Eve melded these two styles of thought and, although probably a naturally rational thinker, also heeds her intuitions with the result that she is not hobbled by logic.

Welcome to my world. I invariably come to the wrong assessment using a total reasonable process and my wife gets to the right assessment using some bizarre method unknown but to Hera.

The first chapter of Charlotte Nissam's book is worth the price of the book. In another time and place, I would read it aloud to the love of my life. I digress.

In another time and place I did just that. It must have been back in the spring of 1974. I was going to school in Los Angeles. My friend, two years ahead of me and going to school in Boston, had come out to visit me. It was her first visit to the west coast, and maybe in the end, her only visit. We took a drive up to San Francisco, a good six hours, I suppose. To help pass the time, though the scenery was beautiful, she drove and I read aloud John Steinbeck's East of Eden. From wiki:

The story is primarily set in the Salinas Valley, California, between the beginning of the twentieth century and the end of World War I, though some chapters are set in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and the story goes as far back as the American Civil War.  

I had forgotten about the connection to Massachusetts.

Going Back To Massachusetts, Bee Gees