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August 09, 2005
Crude gone wild and sugarcane futures
While Italian businesses slowly approach a two-weeks screeching halt and afternoons here draw the siesta (and bankers have cut down on phone calls), things keep rolling in the rest of the world. Crude Oil raises to an easily predictable 70$ a barrel by early October, Google gets fierce, real competition from Amazon and press attacks by Yahoo and "bad art" gets dignified status with its own museum, just slightly cheaper than MOMA.
And the forecast for the impending two weeks is not summery at all (it's raining in Rimini, showering in Turin, Milan and if you're in for skiing dig higher and it's snow). At the other end the Shuttle Discovery's flight plan is driving everybody nuts (it just safely landed at KEDW, Edwards AFB, CA).
In the meantime keep your Google shares for a few months more and cash in wisely then buy ethanol futures. The paintings can wait.
Crude Oil Rises to Record $64.27 a Barrel
Crude futures climbed past the $64-a-barrel mark Tuesday, as the market continued to monitor events in Saudi Arabia after Britain and Australia warned of an increased threat of terror attacks there, a day after the U.S. closed its embassy and two consulates in the country, the world's top oil producer. Mid-afternoon in Singapore, benchmark light, sweet crude on the New York Mercantile Exchange reached an intraday high of $64.27 a barrel in Asian electronic trading before slipping to $64.20. That's up 26 cents from Monday's close of $63.94 a barrel in New York.
Gasoline rose marginally to $1.8580 a gallon while heating oil was up a cent at $1.8000 a gallon. In London, September Brent crude futures on the International Petroleum Exchange clocked a record high of $62.96 a barrel in electronic trading, up 26 cents from Monday. The run-up in prices in the last few days has been driven more by speculation and political concerns than by market fundamentals, analaysts said.
Have an eye on A9
The full version of Amazon.com's search utility, A9, offers an attractive mix of features, and Amazon has fixed some of the flaws found in the beta version. Tied to your Amazon.com account, the updated A9 service includes related search results from Google Images, the Internet Movie Database, GuruNet.com, and books at Amazon (and more).
You still have to sign on with your Amazon account to access all the features available. A9 keeps a history of your queries on its servers, thus allowing you to retrieve it from any computer. When searching and retrieving results, you now have the option to activate panes for books, images, movies, reference, history, bookmarks, and the diary. You can set preferences for font size, color, language, and filters. The help files are extensive and include A9's privacy statement. Be sure to read it before signing on, because A9 will be storing and using your personal information, both to customize your search results and for their commercial purposes.
A9 is an attractive and easy-to-use special-search utility that might be useful to Amazon customers. Like Ujiko, another special-search utility, it provides tools to customize your history and preferences and help organize your favorite sites. Unlike Ujiko, you will have to give up a measure of your privacy to use this service.
The Museum Of Bad Art (MOBA) is a community-based, private institution dedicated to the collection, preservation, exhibition and celebration of bad art in all its forms and in all its glory.
MOBA was founded in the fall of 1993 and presented its first show in March 1994. The response was overwhelming. Since then, MOBA's collection and ambitions have grown exponentially. Until early 1995, MOBA was housed in the basement of a private home in Boston. This meager exhibition space limited the museum to being a regional cultural resource for the New England area.
As the only museum dedicated to bringing the worst of art to the widest of audiences the crew feels morally compelled to explore new, more creative ways of bringing this priceless collection of quality bad art to a global audience. MOBA now exhibit online, publishes an email newsletter called The MOBA News, has a virtual gallery available on CD-ROM, and is currently looking for a publisher for the second printing of the popular Museum of Bad Art Book.
Posted by lck at August 9, 2005 12:28 PM
