Oil
A great slice of the world wishes oil would just go away. World oil consumption slumped to 91-million barrels a day in 2020. But that was due to Covid lockdowns. In 2021 — all the numbers aren’t in yet— it is expected to be 96.5-million barrels a day.
Oil prices are around $85 a barrel in North America, close to a seven year high. Oil stocks are shocking people and institutions who bailed out of them. An example: Canadian Natural Resources (I own some in my retirement account) is a big oil sands producer. Its stock (CNQ) is up 18% so far this year, all 16 days of it.
Then there is moving oil. Pipelines are also not popular with a lot of people.
They worry about spills from pipelines. How about this?
“Crude is a nasty material, very destructive when it spills into the environment, and very toxic when it contacts humans or animals. It’s not even useful for energy, or anything else, until it’s chemically processed, or refined, into suitable products like naphtha, gasoline, heating oil, kerosene, asphaltics, mineral spirits, natural gas liquids, and a host of others.” And that’s from Forbes Magazine, not exactly Greenpeace Weekly,
Pipelines are cheaper and safer than transporting crude by rail. But there is little politicking against rail and lots against pipelines.
Speaking of Rail
Railway tracks in Los Angeles littered with empty packages and goods thieves considered worthless. They use bolt cutters to open containers and take what they find useful or saleable. No wonder my Japanese air conditioner hasn’t arrived.
Worker Shortage
Yet another Covid related phenomenon. There are help wanted signs everywhere in the town in Quebec where I live part of the time. Nous embauchons, we are hiring, is plastered on the side of factories and the back of tractor trailers. The unemployment rate in the wider area of the Eastern Townships, known to statisticians as the Estrie, is 3.2%. Seems to me that comes close to the definition of Full Employment where “no workers are involuntarily unemployed.”
It is true across North America. Chief Executive Officers in the United States say a shortage of workers is the number one threat to their businesses, according to a survey released by the Conference Board this past week.
One of the reasons in both countries is that Covid has kept out new immigrants. Another is a lot of people in their fifties and sixties retired during Covid. Here is an assessment from the U.S.: “There are 3.3 million more retirees as of October 2021, than January 2020 (aka the before time), according to estimates from economists at the St. Louis Fed.”
The $3-trillion Man
Apple is, or was for a brief moment, worth $3-trillion. That is the value of all its shares outstanding mutlplid by the stock price. Market Capitalization. It was $2.87-trillion on Friday. Apple CEO Tim Cook had a big payday. And that doesn’t count how he made out on the Apple stock and options he owns. $98.7-million is a lot of money. Cook is only an employee. Just saying.
Open Up, says Jordan Peterson
Jordan Peterson, scourge of the Woke-ing class, is back in the news after keeping a low profile of late. He wrote a piece in the National Post saying Canada should open for business. The end of the article says it all:
“Set a date. Open the damn country back up, before we wreck something we can’t fix. Courage. Let’s live again,” wrote Peterson.
Peterson is vilified by the left, but he sure took shots at corporate Canada, especially banks and airlines as he and his wife took a trip to British Columbia and their hometown of Fairview, Alberta. But he saved his venom for Canadian politicians who keep closing the country down when so many people are triple vaxed (including me).
“The idea that Canadian policy is or should be governed “by the science” is not only not true, it’s also not possible, as there is no simple pathway from the facts of science to the complexities of policy. We are deciding, by opinion poll, to live in fear, and to become increasingly authoritarian in response to that fear,” says Peterson.
Eagles don’t know there’s a Border
There were two eagles spotted in the Christmas Bird count here in southern Quebec, just 10 or 20 kilometres from the border with the state of Vermont.
There are Christmas bird counts across North America. Tom Moore, who runs the local bar tally, says the Bald Eagle is making a comeback because of conservation efforts in the United States to save their national symbol. The giant birds float north, without a Covid test.
This christmas count included: Two eagles, a Cooper's hawk, two robins, 162 wild turkeys, nine golden crowned kinglets, 16 cardinals, one brown creeper, three common goldeneye ducks, three tufted titmouse, a brown thrasher, a red-bellied woodpecker and a white-throated sparrow.
As an aside, wild turkeys have made a huge comeback. They can actually fly into low branches to escape predators, such as coyotes and foxes. You’ll notice they don’t look much like domestic turkeys. The turkeys we buy in the store have been bred to have huge breasts to satisfy people, like me, who like white meat. Because of that, domestic tom turkeys can’t mount and breed females, who have to be artificially inseminated. I learned this in a night course in agriculture I took decades ago. Wild turkeys have no such problems and can be seen in large flocks marching across snowy fields.
But Novak Djokovic Does
As you can see from the chart below, the Australian Open is Novak’s strong suit. With Novak gone, can Nadal beat him to 21 Grand Slam wins? Probably not.
Cruise Ships and the Titanic
I was looking for a chart on costs of transporting oil when I stumbled across this.
Essay of the Week
Peter Laywine is the reason I write with a fountain pen. I have several fountain pens, but the one I use every day is a Lamy, German-made, a simple design that uses either a pre-filled cartridge or a refillable one. I have two Lamy pens, but I can't seem to find the other one. I bought both of them at Laywines, a shop in midtown Toronto.
If, in theory, a bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, the same could be said for a small store that sells fountain pens (its number one seller), notebooks, pencils, ink and other ephemera, including Filofaxes.
Filofax?
"We're sold out of Filofax calendar refills," says Peter. "Filofax was a smartphone before there was a smartphone."
He's right. Many of the things I do on a smartphone now, I used to do on a Filofax. Jotting down meetings and calls I had to make, having a special Filofax calculator clipped into the six-ring binder; like my iPhone now, I never went anywhere without it. There were maps of cities I travelled to that were as good then as Google Maps is to me now. I used to have two Filofaxes, a large thick one and a smaller one that fits in an inside jacket pocket.
The Filofax was the start of Laywines.
"I was sitting on a beach in Thailand in 1986 when someone started going on about their Filofax," says Peter. "I used to buy little notebooks for myself, but when I saw what I could do with a Filofax, I was hooked."
Peter went back to Toronto and opened his small shop on Bellair, where he still is today, and specialized in selling Filofax binders and refills. He opened his store in September of 1987. A short while later, I discovered the store, probably looking for new things to add to a Filofax, and I wrote a story on Laywines, I think for Toronto Life.
Filofaxes were replaced by digital organizers; my first was a Palm Pilot. But like the turntable and the vinyl record, Filofaxes seem to be making a comeback, a kind of retro snob appeal. But Peter Laywine learned early on that he could not live on Filofax alone.
Laywines quietly expanded into other things. One of the most unusual is a highlighter you fill up from a special ink bottle. I got one for Christmas, and this one came with a bottle of red ink that the pen sucks up in about a minute. Very cool.
Notebooks. As a writer, I despise cheap pens and crummy notebooks. At first, there were the ubiquitous Moleskin notebooks, but then Peter started bringing in a German brand, Leuchtturm, which became my notebook of choice. They come in seven different sizes, and both the medium and pocket-size are a bit bigger than the Moleskins and there seem to be more different coloured covers. Whenever I start a new book or other project, I go to Laywines and buy a different coloured Leuchtturm.
Peter Laywine got his first fountain pen in the eighth grade. Today the display cases in his shop feature dozens of different fountain pens, from the best-selling Lamy, around $35, to the Swiss-made Caran D'Ache, which go for $10,000, the most expensive pen in Laywines. Like watches, there are fountain pen aficionados; Japanese and Swiss pens are tops and can sell for more than a quarter of a million dollars. Not Laywines line.
"Fountain pens are my biggest category," says Peter. He prefers using real ink rather than the cartridges that Lamy and other makers provide. "Bottled ink is better for the pen." No explanation given.
There are also disposable fountain pens, even places like Staples sell them, but Peter Laywine doesn't like them.
"We used to sell them, but then a friend of mine told me there are a billion ballpoint pens that are thrown into landfills around the world every year," says Peter.
Using old-fashioned ink and shunning disposable pens, even if they have nibs, who knew writing with a fountain pen made me so green.