Idle Rambling On A Sunday Night -- September 9, 2018

As much as I dislike the NFL, I may have just seen one of the most exciting compelling football games of all time. The game is not over, but ... there are stars ... and then there are super-stars ...

وَداعاً: I've never seen so many positive comments regarding President Trump in any mainstream newspaper article.

Director's Cut: tentatively scheduled for release Friday afternoon. Eighteen days ago Zacks noted that North Dakota oil production slipped in June "after hitting the highest level on record in the previous month."

The slight blip in production notwithstanding, the newest numbers showed that daily crude output remained above one million barrels for the 17th month, confirming the status of North Dakota (centered on the Bakken Shale formation) as one of the hottest shale plays in the United States. In another compelling evidence of the resurgence, North Dakota’s total number of producing wells tallied 14,778 at the end of June, the highest on record.

Comment: tea leaves suggest North Dakota will set another production record before the year is out.

I need to get going tonight.

The Immigrant Song, Karen O, Trent Rznor & Atticus Ross
Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on anything you read here or think you may have read here.

Apple: I assume everyone saw this story over at CNN -- Apple's iPhone -- $165 billion in sales this fiscal year. Bigger than Amazon's online retail stores -- $125 billion in sales this year. I still think the September 12, 2018, rollout could be Apple's biggest rollout since the original iPhone rollout. The rumors are amazing. Critics say Apple already has too many iPhone models. So, what does it look like Apple will do? Double down with three new iPhones. I'm still looking for Apple to introduce multiple phones with the same phone number: business women would use the large iPhone for work, but then take a small-screen iPhone out to weekend evening social events. Think of Apple iPhones as fashion accessories. Same for men: a large phone while working, but a small one when out with the kids.The technology is there; I'm surprised we haven't seen it yet. Having said that, look for a lot more colors for the new iPhone(s): blue, orange, red, grey, and white. Making a fashion statement?

WTI: there were some stories over the weekend lamenting the price of WTI. Apparently some traders concerned that global demand won't hit the 100-million-bbl/day target. WTI dropped from $70 to $66 fairly quickly and there were concerns that WTI was in free-fall. Maybe, but tonight light crude is up 0.52%, trading at $68.10. At $45, oil companies will survive; at $65, they thrive.

Spare capacity: I've talked about this often. From oilprice:

Saudi Arabia is the largest OPEC producer and the OPEC member with the largest spare capacity. There is one problem with this, however: some observers have questioned the size of this capacity. According to S&P Global Platts, the Saudis have 1.7 million bpd of spare production capacity, an estimate based on Platts’ July survey, but some analysts doubt that Saudi Arabia’s spare capacity is that high. Comment: there's a long

Never gets old:

Everything is Broken, Bob Dylan
Goodnight Moon-ves:

Goodnight Moon, Shivaree
Yum? Apparently it was oversold. In futures trading, it's trending higher. I just noticed it; I don't follow it.

Back to black? Someone is reading the blog: four days ago, Thursday, I wrote:

EV sales for August, link here. Tesla doing surprisingly well, blowing away the competition, delivering 22,000 EVs in August -- nearest competitor, maybe around 2,500 EVs. 

Now I see Motley Fool has this story: Tesla vehicle production and deliveries are soaring. That's not Elon Musk saying that. That's Motley Fool saying that. From the article:

In the company's second-quarter shareholder letter, Tesla forecast to produce 50,000 to 55,000 Model 3 units during Q3, with total deliveries of the vehicle coming in even higher. Tesla also importantly predicted it would report a profit in both its third and fourth quarters.

Back to Black, Amy Winehouse
I had not paid much attention to Amy Winehouse's Back to Black, but it certainly sounds like it could be a James Bond movie theme. Having said that, the opening reminds me of the old Perry Mason television theme song for some reason. They are not even close, but that's the first thing I thought of when listening to the opening bars of Back to Black.

For Analysts Tracking CLR And For Newbies: The Mountain Gap Wells Have Been Updated -- September 9, 2018

Link here.

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Clever

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The Archaeology Page

Stonehenge: The Story of a Sacred Landscape, Francis Pryor, c. 2017.

The 10,000 "pre-history" years that immediately followed the final Ice Age: four main periods and one shorter transitional period:

• The Mesolithic (meso = middle; lithic = stone): 10,000 to 4200 BC
• The Neolithic: 4200 to 2500 BC
• The British Copper Age, or Chalcolithic: 2500 to 2200 BC
• The Bronze (Copper + Tin) Age: 2200 - 800 BC
• The Iron Age: 800 BC - 43 AD -- the year the Romans arrived

Mesolithic: final period in British prehistory when people survived by hunting and foraging; developed the ubiquitous flint blades that define the Mesolithic period; these flint blades are different than those found in the neolithic and help archaeologist separate the former from the latter
Neolithic: introduction of farming along the southern shores of Britain

Final three stages: marked by major technological changes

Domesticated dogs from wolves, by 9000 BC

Farming spread quickly because hunting was so inefficient; spread to northern Scotland by 3800 BC

Concepts: religion; time;

• today: time, linear; numbers, important
• prehistory: time, cyclic; numbers, less important; what was important: the passage of the seasons

Over time, the complexity of religion during pre-history was found to be more complex than originally thought

Ancient "shrines" like Stonehenge were not like churches -- their modern equivalents; their pattern of use entirely different

Ancient "shrines" were constantly being "re-built": not finished like modern structures before being used; completion was never the intention

Chapter I: 8000 - 4000 BC

Humans abandoned the areas of northwestern Europe that were later to become the British Isles during the coldest spells of the Ice Ages. By about 10,000 BC conditions had become somewhat warmer; glaciers, for example, had all retreated, but not enough to tempt people to return.

But all that was to change around 9600 BC, when the climate suddenly warmed by some ten degrees Celsius. This remarkable event took place over a very short time -- maybe the lifetimes of just two or three generations. In fact, there is scientific evidence to suggest that by 8000 BC the climate may have been slightly warmer than it is today.

When I read that opening paragraph of the first chapter, the first thought that came to mind: the current "panic" over global warming has all the markings of superstition. It's surprising that great minds like Stephen Hawking don't recognize that.

What was the singular event that provided so much new information regarding the peopling and the geology of the British Isles?

In December, 1969, oil was discovered beneath the seabed off the Norwegian coast at Ekofisk; later in the same month another oilfield was revealed in the North Sea, some 135 miles east of Aberdeen (Scotland).

These discoveries caused a new oil boom. This boom involved intensive geological prospection (sic) which was carried out by the different oil companies, using three-dimensional seismic survey.

Initially this information was very commercially confidential, but early in the 21st century it was make available to archaeologists who, unlike the geologists, were interested in the layers immediately below the seabed.

Fascinating, huh?

As the sea levels rose from the melting glaciers, the Brits had to move farther north to higher, dryer land. An example: to the area around the fringes of the now-drained glacial lake Flixton, in northeast Yorkshire, south of Scarborough, some 4 miles from the coast.

I spent much time in Yorkshire while in the US Air Force. I can safely say that the only place I would rather be than any place else in the world would be Yorkshire. Period. Dot. I hiked that area every weekend for several years. I completed one memorable hike with a wonderful hiking partner along the coast from Scarborough (Robin Hood's Bay) to Whitby (Dracula).

The Star Carr settlement in east Yorkshire.

One last bit of transcription.

In 1966 it was decided to enlarge the car park to cope with increasing numbers of visitors (to Stonehenge). Today this is the area where the shuttle buses turn round and collect passengers for the return journey, but in those days the route that the shuttle bus now takes from the Visitor Centre to Stonehenge was a public highway, the old Amesbury to Shrewton road, or A344.

This road was closed as part of the building of the new Visitor Centre, which opened to the public in December, 2013. 

Aurochs: wild cattle. The largest collection of wild cattle bones yet found on a British Mesolithic site -- at Blick Mead, near Stonehenge.

The "stones": some of the specific rock-types that comprise the Stonehenge bluestones come from at least two known quarries on the north side of the Preseli Mountains (the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire, West Wales).

An a-ha! moment, p. 100:

In Madagascar, he explained, people built in stone for the ancestors because stone, like ancestors, is eternal. Buildings for the living are made of wood because wood, like human lives, is transient. Stonehenge was clearly a place for the ancestors.