We need to learn quickly to keep up with the massive change around us so we don't get run over. We need to outrun change.
190 – Bakken – from the current active drilling rig list at the N.D. Department of Mineral Resources website on 8-31-12.
274 – Eagle Ford – from EagleFordShale blog.
That is down 2 in Bakken and up 4 in Eagle Ford.
National rig count is 1,859 for 9-21-12.
Writing at Harvard Business Review, Morten Hansen offers Ten Ways to Get People to Change. As I’ve heard for many years, it is less a matter of forcing change and more a matter of creating the environment to encourage change.
Some of his ideas I found particularly appealing:
Embrace the power of one
Since I’ve started to pay attention to forecasts for the Bakken field, I’ll make note of one that is not so optimistic.
The Oil Drum has a post, Is Shale Oil Production from Bakken Headed for a Run with “The Red Queen?” that doesn’t see substantial increases in future output.
The forecast in that post is for production to stay at roughly the current level, which for July 2012 was 674K bopd state-wide and 609K bopd for Bakken only. Here are two key comments, the first from the findings and the second from immediately after the findings: Continue reading “Another forecast for Bakken production – we have probably already hit the peak”
The technology is in its infancy, yet bioengineers are creating human tissue through computerized adaptive manufacturing, or 3-D printing right now. Today.
A Wall Street Journal article, Printing Evolves, An Inkjet for Living Tissue, has details.
Scientists can build tissue, such as a blood vessel, one dot of tissue at a time, just like other 3-D printing applications. Around the tissue a separate nozzle places a water-soluble gel, called hydrogel, that works like a mold to hold the tissue in place until the dots of tissue knit together. After the printing is done, the tissue is stored in a solution that provides nutrients. Then after a few weeks to stabilize, the hydrogel is washed away.
The executive search committee had narrowed down the candidates for the company’s next president to four people. The final four: a high school algebra teacher, an attorney, an engineer, and a CPA.
The subcommittee had one final question to distinguish between the four. With everyone gathered together, they asked “What is 2 and 2?”
The ‘Peak Idiocy’ comment is at least three years old. Let’s visited a couple of dusty articles.
Mike Munger brings the concept into play in his December 5, 2009 post Peak Idiocy where he says:
Of all the idiotic things that people believe, the whole “peak oil” thing has to be right up there. It is literally impossible for us to run out of oil. We have never run out of anything, and we never will.
Continue reading ““Peak Oil” = “Peak Idiocy” – #10 in a series”
There is a lot of change education. Huge online classes. Electronic textbooks incorporating ‘net technology.
Here is a survey of 10 developments and an initial assessment of which won’t go anywhere and which are huge hits. The article is Many-to-One vs. One-to-Many: An Opinionated Guide to Education Technology, by Arnold Kling.
The key distinction Mr. Kling perceives will produce the most change is adjusting away from the one-to-many model where one teacher or professor lectures to a group. The new concept he suggests is many-to-one, which he describes as: Continue reading “Survey of changes in education technology and preliminary assessments”
There’s a great interview with Daniel Yergin in today’s Wall Street Journal: Making Sense of the U.S. Oil Boom.
He puts the current boom into good perspective. During the last presidential election, we were talking about running out of oil. This time around, we are discussing how close the U.S. can get to energy independence.
He mentions the jobs impact:
The wizards of the oil industry can drill 4 or 6 or more wells on one pad. They’ve also developed self-propelled rigs.
So what, you ask?
That means less time to drill, far less surface disruption, less truck traffic, and more economical infrastructure.
It’s call pad drilling. Here is an illustration:
Photo: Chesapeake / Statoil. Used with permission.
There are 24 wells in that illustration, but the drilling was done from only 4 sites.
The Energy Information Administration discusses this in their article Pad drilling and rig mobility lead to more efficient drilling:
Continue reading “Multiple wells drilled on one site and walking rigs. Isn’t human ingenuity grand?”
Way cool. DARPA is working on some amazing things. A robotic cheetah that currently can run 28 miles an hour. Also, a robotic pack mule that can walk over rough terrain, obey simple instructions, and follow its leader (master?) without instructions. It can right itself if it tips over. A dog that can walk across a rocky surface, up a 45% snow-covered hill, or carry 400 pounds:
Check out the National Geographic article, Animals Inspire New Breed of War Robots.
Check out the pack mule:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xY42w1w0TWk#t=21s]
Check out the cheetah: Continue reading “Robotic cheetah, pack mule, and dog”
In the ‘70s it was inflation that crushed retirees. Today it is near zero interest rates.
Inflation rates in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s were terrible. The 1974 rate of 11.0% was just a hint of things to come.
Continue reading “How to crush retirees –1970s vs 2010s, or, QE3 kicks off”
We Take Your Class is a web service that offers to have a tutor take your online test or complete an online project. They can even take your entire online course.
Wow. Cheating for hire.
You can find them here on your own.
Their pitch:
Average daily production in North Dakota is 674,066 barrels of oil per day (bopd) in July.
The June data was adjusted up for late reporting. Now the June production is 664,618 bopd compared to the previously reported 660,322 bopd.
Continue reading “N.D. oil production hits 674K bopd in July 2012”
We need to work really hard to stay ahead of the massive change taking place. That’s the concept of this blog. Mark Schaefer points out that the rising use of mobile phones is reducing some of the effective parts of blogging.
Wow! Yet more change. This time affects bloggers, who otherwise are fairly well advanced on the coping-with-change curve.
In Five ways the mobile revolution impacts your blog, he explains an increasing number of people use the smart phone as primary access to the ‘net. That small screen drops out a lot of information that appears on a full-screen.
Continue reading “Now massive change is starting to undercut the effectiveness of blogging”
“The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.”
–Antony Jay, British writer, broadcaster, director and actor
I’m planning to use that quote in several posts I want to write soon, so I will put it here to have it on the table.