Fracking has captured the imagination because it is controversial, sounds sinister and like an expletive, makes for good headlines .
But that has obscured the far more important role played by horizontal drilling in enabling oil and gas to be produced from previously inaccessible rock formations, revolutionising energy output and even international relations.
Are you telling me a Manhattan restaurant figures out that its table turns are cut in half, but the first clue they have of it is when they start getting roasted on Yelp for slow service?
And they can’t diagnose the problem without looking a 10 year old videos? Videos that just happened to be left in the machines?
We eat out at restaurants. A lot. If you told me that an average visit increased by five or ten minutes, well, maybe so. But double? No way.
http://www.wwltv.com/video/featured-videos/Nagin-sentence-handed-down-266311411.html
Prosecutors asked the court to send Nagin to prison for a long time. They argued that he was found guilty of 20 of 21 counts in the indictment and that he participated in and orchestrated a years-long conspiracy to enrich himself and his family.
The government also argued that Nagin spent years covering up his crimes and that his testimony during the two-week trial showed an “astounding unwillingness to accept any responsibility for his actions.”
[Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew] Coman compared Nagin’s crimes with those of other public officials who drew stiff sentences, including former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (28 years), former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (14 years) and former Birmingham, Alabama, Mayor Larry Langford (15 years).
[OK, boys and girls, it’s time to play … Name! That! Party! — Ed.]
“Nagin’s widespread and corrosive breach of the public trust – lasting through much of his tenure in office – equals even the worst of these state and local corruption cases,” Coman wrote.
At Vox.com, Matthew Yglesias takes two minutes or less to demonstrate that interpreting graphics is not his strong suit.*
Note that six of the unlucky 25 are in Michigan …
Note that the map shows 8, not 6, of the 25 cities are in Michigan.
Note that Matt is numerically challenged.
*Speaking of Matt’s “strong suit”, a suit doesn’t get much stronger than this:
Thanks to 100+ years of Progressivism, our Government (you know, the one designed to be of the people, by the people and for the people) has morphed into one that is upon the people, between the people and in contempt of the people.
From the shores of Tripoli ("First to fight for right and freedom!") it’s an incredibly short haul to the rooftops of Benghazi — "What difference does it make?"
This is the answer a free people deserves from its political class?
Our Veterans Administration allows extraneous goals like green energy to detract from its central mission of caring for those who have served and sacrificed. Oh, but the bonuses kept on coming.
But the IRS email scandal takes the prize for chutzpah. No artistry or subterfuge went into the "crashed hard drive" excuse. Somewhere, somebody said, "Let’s just go with the lie." That the lie is so obviously and patently untrue is the measure for the contempt this crowd has for the people, for justice and for the truth.
The same administration that holds the truth in contempt cannot tolerate diversity of opinion when it comes to climate change.
The American Dream has not died, but it is on life support.
Paul Cella has an excellent essay on the same topic:
We are fast becoming, not a nation ruled by law, not even a nation ruled by men, but a nation ruled by whim. Whim of social media fashion, whim of bureaucratic caprice, whim of officious grandstanding, whim of judicial hauteur, whim of meddlesome gossip, whim of puritanical licentiousness. At last we might find that the whim of a despot ain’t so bad compared to this. After all, a single despot must sleep.
WILLISTON, North Dakota (AP) — North Dakota has joined the ranks of the few places in the world that produce more than a million barrels of oil per day, due in large part to the rich Bakken shale formation in the western part of the state.
The April figures released Tuesday by the state’s Department of Mineral Resources showed the record tally. North Dakota had flirted with the million-barrel-per-day mark for months, but the harsh winter slowed the pace. In March, production had hit 977,000 barrels per day.
North Dakota’s oil fields now represent more than 12 percent of all U.S. oil production, and more than 1 percent of global production — a situation unfathomable just a decade ago, when technology hadn’t yet caught up to the challenge of extracting oil from the shale. Since then, the oil boom and the jobs it brings have transformed North Dakota, now home to the nation’s fastest-growing cities and its lowest unemployment rate.
Despite clear evidence of the dire need for American leadership around the world, the desperation of our allies and the glee of our enemies, President Obama seems determined to leave office ensuring he has taken America down a notch. Indeed, the speed of the terrorists’ takeover of territory in Iraq has been matched only by the speed of American decline on his watch.
The president explained his view in his Sept. 23, 2009, speech before the United Nations General Assembly. "Any world order," he said, "that elevates one nation above others cannot long survive." Tragically, he is quickly proving the opposite—through one dangerous policy after another—that without American pre-eminence, there can be no world order.
It is time the president and his allies faced some hard truths: America remains at war, and withdrawing troops from the field of battle while our enemies stay in the fight does not "end" wars. Weakness and retreat are provocative. U.S. withdrawal from the world is disastrous and puts our own security at risk.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/dick-cheney-and-liz-cheney-the-collapsing-obama-doctrine-1403046522
Greenpeace International said that one of its employees lost 3.8 million euros ($5,156,000) on rogue forex trades.
The non-governmental environmental organization said the losses were "a result of a serious error of judgment" by one of its employees in the International Finance Unit in Amsterdam.
"Greenpeace International entered into contracts to buy foreign currency at a fixed exchange rate while the euro was gaining in strength," the press release said. "This resulted in a loss of 3.8 million euros against a range of other currencies."
The employee, who has not been identified, has been fired. He wasn’t a trader, though.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/greenpeace-loses-millions-on-forex-trade-2014-6#ixzz34pw9XOG6
MARK SHENK
NEW YORK (Bloomberg) — West Texas Intermediate rose to an eight-month high and Brent surged as violence escalated across northern and central Iraq, increasing the prospect of a return to civil war in OPEC’s second-biggest oil producer.
WTI advanced as much as 2% while Brent gained 2.2%. Militants linked to al-Qaeda extended control over Iraq’s second-biggest city and moved south toward Baghdad. U.S. planes may bomb northern Iraq, Oil Minister Abdul Kareem al-Luaibi said today, June 12, in Vienna. Iraqi crude production rose 50,000 bpd to 3.3 million last month, Bloomberg data show.
…
WTI for July delivery climbed $1.63, or 1.6%, to $106.03 a barrel at 10:33 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures touched $106.53, the highest intraday level since Sept. 19. The volume of all futures traded was more than double the 100-day average. Prices are up 7.7% this year.
Brent for July settlement rose $2.05, or 1.9%, to $112 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The contract reached $112.34, the highest since March 3. Volumes were almost triple the 100-day average. Brent traded at a $5.97 premium to WTI, up from $5.55 at yesterday’s close.
Pretty much the same things in these days of Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Female-named storms have historically killed more because people neither consider them as risky nor take the same precautions, the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes. Researchers at the University of Illinois and Arizona State University examined six decades of hurricane death rates according to gender, spanning 1950 and 2012. Of the 47 most damaging hurricanes, the female-named hurricanes produced an average of 45 deaths compared to 23 deaths in male-named storms, or almost double the number of fatalities. (The study excluded Katrina and Audrey, outlier storms that would skew the model).
I pondered the authors’ analysis for about 15 seconds. “Bullsh*t,” I thoughtfully concluded. And after about 15 minutes on The Google™, I found the following facts to reinforce my skepticism. Continue reading
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