Monday, April 8, 2019 -- T+96, Part 2

Fracking: Westwood Energy suggests that a small amount of "frack horsepower" has recently been removed from active status, but the trend should reverse by 2Q19. It looks like the Permian and the Eagle Ford will show the largest increase; the Bakken remains unchanged.

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.

Market, pre-market: well, this is interesting. One doesn't often see this -- pre-market trading in either JAG or NOG, but today when not much is yet active, but JAG and NOG show nice price movement upward. Majors are now just starting to show some life. WTI still shows $63.37 and Brent crude is $70.73. The word on the street is that Brent will hit $71 today.

Early morning trading: absolutely flat, having clawed its way back from a pre-market of a -70 on the Dow.

WTI: wow -- it looks like WTI is driving some of the market today. WTI is up nicely and is close to $64. Brent has not yet hit $71. JAG is up nicely; NOG down a penny suggesting some profit-taking -- LOL.

Dreaming: FWIW, from Investopedia, nine companies that meet Warren Buffett's criteria for outright purchase:

• Amphenol, $31 billion 
• Anthem, $75 billion 
• BlackRock, $71 billion 
• Bristol-Myers Squibb, $76 billion 
• General Dynamics, $49 billion 
• Northrop Grumman, $47 billion 
• Sherwin-Williams, $41 billion 
• Target, $42 billion 
• TJX, $66 billion

Mid-afternoon trading: the overall market is doing better than that suggested by the Dow being down 120 points. My hunch is that Boeing accounts for much of the "drag." The two plane crashes are "old news" but the fact that Boeing is down almost 5% today (down about $20/share) suggest real concern. Boeing has cut back on production of the 737 Max 8.

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The Language Page

Ned and Norange 
A Two-Fer

This is so cool. Two questions were answered by one entry.

Sophia is learning Spanish as a second language at Montessori, and of course, naranja shows up on her word list. It's obvious naranja and orange have to be related, but how.

But even more "remote," how did we ever get Ned from Edward?

From The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language, Steven Pinker, c. 1994.

Page 244:

Because of the language instinct, there is something much more fascinating about linguistic innovation: each link in the chain of language transmission is a human brain. That brain is equipped with a universal grammar and is always on the lookout for examples in ambient speech of various kinds of rules. Because speech can be sloppy and words and sentences ambiguous, people are occasionally apt to reanalyze the speech they hear -- they interpret it as having come from a different dictionary entry or rule than the ones that the speaker actually used.
A simple example is the word orange. Originally is was norange, borrowed from the Spanish naranja. But at some point some unknown creative speaker must have reanalyzed a norange  as an orange.

Though the speaker's and hearer's analyses specify identical sounds for that particular phrase, anorange, once the hearer uses the rest of grammar creatively, the change becomes audible, as in those oranges rather than those noranges.

(This particular change has been common in English. Shakespeare used nuncleas an affectionate name, a recutting of mine Uncle to my nuncle, and Ned came from Edward by a similar route. Nowadays many people talk about a whole nother thing, and I know of a child who eats ectarines and an adult called Nalice who refers to people she doesn't care for as nidiots.)

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For The Archives

Saturday afternoon last, Sophia and I spent most of the day together. About 7:00 p.m. I took her home, where she ran to see her dad. I went out the back door down to the pool to skim the leaves that had accumulated that day.

About ten minutes later I walked past the house to go home. I purposely did not go back into the house. I heard Sophia crying quite loudly. I assumed it was over some disagreement between her dad and watching a "movie" on Roku.

Later that evening, by text, I asked Sophia's mom who Sophia was doing. She said that Sophia and her dad were in a "power struggle" over something. We could all guess. LOL.

Later, her mother wrote to say that everything was back to normal.

Today, on the way to TutorTime/Montessori, Sophia and I talked about a number of things. Then I casually mentioned the "discussion" she had with her dad when I dropped her off the other evening.

Sophia said it was not a discussion. She said she was crying because her dad "put on" a movie different than the one she wanted. I can understand that. The movie she wanted was "the Octonauts" -- a movie she has seen a gazillion times. Her dad suggested that a different movie and that's when the "discussion" began. LOL.

She said she "was standing there crying" because all she wanted was a "a hug."

Apparently she got her hug (I don't know which movie they watched) but she was fine after the hug.

And that was her story. It occupied a major part of our drive. I asked her how that situation might be handled better in the future. She said she did not know.

I mentioned that was part of "family dynamics." I asked her to repeat "dynamics" and said that family dynamics were like family relationships. She has one relationship with her mom, and one with her dad, and one with me, and one with her sisters, and so on , and those were all examples of dynamics.

Then we arrived at school. It will be interesting to see if she remembers that word. I'm sure it will be awhile before she understands the concept but it sure is fun having those little conversations.