Incredibly Busy Day -- Twelve Stand-Alone Posts; A Dozen Posts Updated

Note: this was written a few days ago; I forget exactly when. But due to the peculiarities of the "blogger" application, the post is incorrectly dated April 5, 2013.

This has been an incredibly busy day and considering that I am traveling, it's quite a deal, for me.

And most of the 12 stand-alone posts have been very "newsy." The dozen posts do not include posting the IPs of the wells that came off the confidential over the long weekend.

A big "thank you" to the many readers who sent me articles to link. I still have at least two before I am caught up.

It was also a big day for the market in this sense: oil was down almost a $1.50 at one point today and it looks like it will close almost flat, maybe down a quarter. The Dow also came off its low, and I assume folks were able to take advantage of some bottom buying, or what it's called. The S & P still struggles -- only in terms of setting records, I suppose. I am not complaining.

On another note, this is a sermon worth your time. See if you can spot what I found most interesting.

The One-Minute Sermon
Actually a minute-forty-two.

So, a dozen stand-alone posts, and a few more yet to go, and it's only two-thirds of the way through the day. I will be posting until midnight. Stay tuned.

Jobs Was A Genius -- Apple Genius Musings (Sent In By A Reader)

Updates

A day or so after posting the original post (see way down below), I received a very nice note expanding on the theme of the "genius of Apple" or the "genius of Steve Jobs." At one time, the two were probably opposite sides of the same coin.

I asked the author of the piece if I could post it for archival purposes; my granddaughters will enjoy it some day. He agreed, but it will be posted anonymously.

[The piece was sent as a word document. There is some risk there will be errors as I bring it over to HTML, but hopefully will catch them.]

Enjoy. 

 

Apple Genius Musings 

April 7, 2013 

I think you might be right about the Genius tags. Saw your Jobs post from last night, like it.

Steve Jobs 

Genius.

Mickey Drexler

Flamboyant, successful merchant with magical touch at The Gap and J. Crew. Although at the end of his tenure at The Gap he had something like 20 - 30 plus consecutive months of declining same store sales. He was the right guy for Jobs to consult for retail guidance.

Andrea Jung

Accomplished, brilliant "Tiger Student" with a "Tiger Mom," though not in New York City. Glamorous, vibrant, great role model for the Avon ladies, and nice besides. Always been a fan -- love her.

Saw a snippet somewhere of a parody on Apple where Jobs and his execs were a bit in awe and in fear of her; I believe it. She asked Jobs, "Why do you have all this cash?" Response: "Cause that's what we do here in the valley."

Execs would brief the board, she would want to get into all the numbers which they wouldn't have, "well, then how about just giving us an overview" -- "ah, ah, I really don't have that put together." Guess they thought they were briefing Al Gore.

Don't pretend to know the issues she had at Avon, but still love her.

Tim Cook

Don't really know much about him other than a few articles I've read over the years. Read Jobs said Cook was the best hire he ever made, and perfect for Apple's needs. His forte is supply chain, so "master" of supply chain might be the best moniker for him.

Some people say Michael Dell is a genius for his "build-to-order" business model where he would need to invest in only 2 -3 days of inventory, which provided him an annualized 120 - 150 inventory turns, an unbelievable metric. This of course meant he was getting free use of cash for the 30 - 60 day terms that his vendors were providing Dell, as well as other benefits.

Eventually he found even this model was too expensive to operate in the US. Dell was also obtaining laptops built, I believe in Taiwan and then configuring them in the US, which resulted in double handling. Too late he moved operations off-shore and added distribution through retail channels as well.

Meanwhile Tim Cook had Foxconn manufacturing tons of Apple products in China, and even shipping some of them directly to end users in the US. He is eating Dell's lunch.

So maybe there is a case for the genius tag, but it is hard to compete with a flamboyant merchant and a creative, charismatic founder -- supply chain just doesn't have the same glitz, glitter or sizzle.

Hau Lee

Don't know whether you are familiar with Hau Lee. He came to the Stanford Business School from Hong Kong some 20 plus years ago, and is the founder and current director of the Stanford Global Supply Chain Management Forum. He is acknowledged as the foremost supply chain guru around, a true genius, and nice as can be.

Besides all the academic type papers he produces, he has studied dozens of companies from the inside out. Early on he took a year's sabbatical and worked with HP resolving some significant issues, and has done engagements for bunches of other companies. I can't follow all the math in his technical papers, but he patents a lot of it, and puts it in applications around which he has co-founded a number of startups. He knows business, and applies common sense throughout everything he develops or proposes.

His demand planning, forecasting and replenishment math and logic, together with that of his multi-echelon inventory management were the basis for a San Francisco enterprise software company he co-founded called Evant, which was subsequently acquired by supply chain firm Manhattan Associates. He co-founded another San Francisco software company, DemandTec that uses his logic to define price points and product mix based on customer buying trends. DemandTec was recently acquired by IBM.

I am not sure why I am getting into all this, other than I guess Tim Cook's supply chain expertise has led me astray. I am intrigued by the supply chain concepts in the Bakken, and beyond; at all levels, in all industries and companies. It is not just getting the resources out of the ground and deciding whether to use rail or pipeline, but which play in the US or anywhere an E & P company commits to if any; gas versus heavy versus light oil versus coal versus....; all the transportation infrastructure decisions; where and whether to build refineries and for what; identifying markets; getting all the materials and supplies needed by the E & P's to them; everything all the companies and individuals need to handle the explosive growth of Williston and the other booming cities; whether to gobble up E & P's; and a great deal of this extends globally -- both in and out (also my favorite burger place, animal style please) -- with all its implications.

At any rate you are so knowledgeable and widely read that I am taking the liberty of attaching a great 2004 Harvard Business Review paper of Hau Lee's and a bio I copied from someplace. Don't feel obligated to read any of this -- I am certain you won't, feel obligated that is.

My final thought, which I could have come to a long time ago, is that if Tim Cook sees Apple through the transition from the genius founder over the next several years, then he may be due some consideration for the genius designation himself.

**********

Note: one can see a bio of Hua Lee here. 

Note: If one googles "the triple a supply chain" pdf the first hit should be of Hau Lee paper published in Harvard Business Review in October, 2004.

Original Post

I don't know if anyone recalls the article in Newsweek or Time magazine years ago featuring Apple and Steve Jobs. It was a several-page article, and there was a photo of Steve Jobs sitting cross-legged with a clam-shell contraption on his lap, and he called it magic. It wasn't connected to anything. No power cord. No internet cable. And he was years ahead of his time and calling it magic. It was hard to believe it was his toy, not "his" toy because he bought it at the store, but it was "his" toy because he made it at his shop (which by then was a technological marvel in its own right).

So, tonight, I'm at a place where I have no television, no internet, and I am desperate to see THE GAME.

I know I won't be able to watch it but I can at least follow the score if I get up to Starbucks.

Here I am. In Starbucks. I turn on the computer, check some mail, make sure the blog is up and running, and then I click on Yahoo!Sports expecting to find a score.

And there it is: NCAA LIVE!

It's incredible. Here I am, listening to the 10-hour video of "What is Love" on YouTube in the background, typing on the blog, and watching THE GAME live.

Jobs was simply a genius. What he invented. What he saw coming.

Is The Global Warming Story Over?

A Layman's Guide to Anthropogenic (Man-Made) Global Warming

Updates

April 13, 2013: I can only see this much without a subscription to Petroleum News, but one can probably find the rest of the story by googling if interested:

As the climate warms and the Arctic sea ice cover shrinks, especially in the summer and fall, new economic opportunities are arising in Arctic waters. Russia is opening up a sea route around its northern coast and through the Bering Strait; tourist cruise ships have started appearing in previously i....

April 7, 2013: Everybody's jumping on board! Now another group of scientists agree -- global warming stopped some years ago -- and they have an explanation. Is it just me, or does it seem like a lot of D+ students (like Algore) and non-science students (like Algore) all of a sudden started reading a few books on geography, biology, weather, science -- all the subjects they skipped in high school and college -- and are now fascinated with the subject -- and surprised to see that climate change is pretty normal, has been occurring ever since the earth got an atmosphere? If they had gone to Sunday School they would know who set the universal thermostat. Smile. It wasn't man. As much as they would like to think.

Original Post

I had planned three rambling posts for the weekend. I completed the first two, subject to tweaking and editing:

• heavy oil, Gulf coast refineries, and the failure of policy
• the jobs "miss" this past week

This is the third, on global warming. All three are common themes for the MillionDollarWay and all relate to the Bakken.

First, the irrefutable facts as they apply to global warming. If you cannot get past these irrefutable facts, there is no reason to read further. I won't list these irrefutable facts here; they are at the link.

It was purely coincidental that I had planned this post for this weekend. Forbes magazine has a similar article out this week, asking whether global warming was just a beautiful dream. Dream? More like a nightmare, being singularly responsible for another lost decade for the United States.

The lede:

But I’ve grown old waiting for the promised global warming. I was 35 when predictions of a looming ice age were supplanted by warmmongering. Now I’m 68, and there’s still no sign of warmer weather. It’s enough to make one doubt the “settled science” of the government-funded doom-sayers.

Remember 1979? That was the year of “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge, of “The Dukes of Hazard” on TV, and of “ Kramer vs. Kramer” on the silver screen. It was the year the Shah was forced out of Iran. It was before the web, before the personal computer, before the cell phone, before voicemail and answering machines. But not before the global warming campaign.

In January of 1979, a New York Times article was headlined: “Experts Tell How Antarctic Ice Could Cause Widespread Floods.” The abstract in the Times archives says: “If the West Antarctic ice sheet slips into the sea, as some glaciologists believe is possible, boats could be launched from the bottom steps of the Capitol in Washington and a third of Florida would be under water, a climate specialist said today.”

By 1981 (think “Chariots of Fire“), the drum beat had taken effect. Quoting from the American Institute of Physics website: “A 1981 survey found that more than a third of American adults claimed they had heard or read about the greenhouse effect.”

The writer says he is 68. I'm almost 62 so we are contemporaries, and it turns out, we have some of the same experiences and most likely a similar world view.

It's impossible to identify a specific point in time when an all-pervading myth came to an end, even in hindsight, but predicting that specific point in the future is even more problematic.

But it looks like 2013 may be the turning point, the cusp, the tipping point, the beginning of the end of the myth.

[Random note: the population of the Maldives is 320,000. That is half the population of North Dakota. It may be an important data point sometime in the future. The Maldives consists of 1,192 islands grouped in a double chain of 26 atolls. Maldives is the lowest country in the world, with a maximum natural ground level of only slightly less than eight fee, that according to wiki. At worse, the ocean levels might rise 23 inches by 2100, well below 8 feet. The Maldives have decided this is so serious they are eliminating or offsetting all of its greenhouse gases by 2020. Something suggests this is not the emergency Maldives suggests. They are waiting until 2020, although probably starting earlier. One can imagine the amount of greenhouse gases Maldives is responsible for.]

Some data points that make me think 2013 will be the year of the beginning of the end for the global warming myth.

First, the environmentalist himself: Bjorn Lomborg, a leading expert on global warming, recently noted that Germany spent $110 billion to delay global warming by 37 hours.

Then, there's the science: the British Met office and the lead NASA scientist both agree that global warming has ceased. The debate now centers around a) why; b) when did the earth stop warming; c) will it start warming again; d) is cooling a greater threat than warming; and, e) if so, do we need to start pumping out more CO2. I made up (e).

Another automobile manufacturer using battery technology as a spin-off of the global warming scare appears to be weeks, if not days, from declaring for bankruptcy protection. The delay is probably only to give time to the company to get its "ducks in order" before making the announcement.

If Fisker does declare bankruptcy it will only be the most recent in a list of almost 40 companies riding the global warming wave that have gone bankrupt, or nearly so. Ironically, that list began with another automotive manufacturer: Bright Automotive.

This winter, 2012 - 2013, was one of the longest and coldest. In the United States the winter is lasting well into spring. I just learned that Colorado, Wyoming, and South Dakota are bracing for another winter storm (it's April, spring time; Easter was last week) and southwestern North Dakota might see as much as eight (8) inches of snow. That's a lot of snow for North Dakota, but a heck of a  lot of snow for North Dakota in April. I won't bother looking for the link to the story that said the is was the second coldest March on record in Northern Ireland, stretching back to 1919. Great Britain, Europe, and Russia all had a tough winter this year.

Everything points to 2013 as being the year the global warming myth begins to end. It will be interesting to see how many more policy decisions will be made, based on a myth.

As for me, it will be interesting to look back in 2033 to see if 2013 was indeed the year.

P.S.

Just as I was finishing this post, a reader (thank you very much) sent me a link to a story in which Russian scientists are predicting that the earth is entering another cooling period. This was posted in Germany's #1 media outlet yesterday. For those who feel more comfortable reading English, here is the link to an English media outlet:

Yesterday Germany’s No. 1 daily, Bild online, carried the shock headline story: “Russian scientist sees next ice age approaching. Starting in 2014 it will start getting colder and colder +++ migration of people cannot be excluded."

Like me, the Russians and the Germans are starting to see stories on global warming from a historical context:

Other media outlets are reporting as well, see here, here, and here.

Stories in Germany about global cooling, hard winters, and ice ages have been popping up faster than dandelions in May lately. Global warming is beginning to look historical.

Bild starts by reporting that finally the snow and ice gripping Russia since October are beginning to thaw. “That’s why most Russians shake their heads skeptically when the topic of global warming pops up," Bild writes.

American politicians are always a day late and a dollar short, as we used to say. 

The important piece to this article is not whether the Russian scientists are correct or not. This is what is important. If Russian public policy is now based on this assertion, it changes completely how that country approaches fossil fuel. The playing field is not a level playing field.

Vern Whitting Photography in the Bakken; Red River Valley Flooding

Vern Whitten Photography is sharing two new portfolios:

• Waiting for spring in the Bakken
• Red River Valley flooding, selected photos, 1997 to present

Enjoy.

For folks unfamiliar with the geography of North Dakota, the Bakken is located nowhere the Red River Valley. The Bakken is about two hundred miles west of the Red River. There may be some flooding and sloppiness in the Bakken this spring, but it won't be due to the Red River overflowing its banks.

Three Rambling Posts Posted

Goal accomplished; three rambling posts posted:

• heavy oil, Gulf Coast refineries, and the failure of public policy (or lack thereof)
• the jobs miss
• global warming

I'll be off the net for awhile. Long walk to Whataburger.