(The Derrick Barge D/B Cappy Bisso. Photo Bisso Marine.) The Japanese government has revealed that its Japan Oil, Gas, and Metals National Corp. has dispatched a mining ship that will begin the world’s first offshore test to extract methane hydrate from the seabed…The oil, gas, and metal company’s deep-sea drilling ship Chikyu set sail last […]

I started the day writing an obit. This one happened to be for a man who was a senior officer in the business, and in whose orbit a lot of us operated on the gathering place of the Hawaiian Islands- lovely O’ahu. I posted the obit to the professional web site and filed a copy […]

(Zaire and the Major at Willow. Photo Socotra.) I was playing the great game last night at Willow. Well, not the Great Game- that is the one of men and women and eternity. This was the sub-set of it, the one right out of Stalky and Company and Rudyard Kipling. I was in the process […]

The Force got adjusted last night and it was a good thing, long overdue, as the President of the Willow Bar and Restaurant Alumni Association made a triumphant return to the scene of the crime last night. Waiting at the bar was John-with-an-H, sipping the happy Hour red and I slid into Old Jim’s traditional […]

(New Orleans Superdome after Katrina, 2005. Photo FEMA). I fully intended to step right up and write something high-minded and well-considered this morning about another really interesting expansion of Executive Branch authority this morning. It is really interesting, and highly classified, and profound about the digital medium in  which we shop, and bank and flirt […]

It is cold at Refuge Farm, or at least cold for the depth of what passes for winter in the Old Dominion. There is an inch or so of fine dry snow out on the deck, and across the fields. I do not expect it is going to last long, and I have an errand […]

I don’t know how your Friday was, but mine was weird. The US Embassy in Ankara was bombed, and I happened to be in an email exchange with a correspondent on the scene, an associate I met in my BBC days. There was no internet access there at the scene of the bombing, and I […]

Who said you can’t teach the old dog new tricks? The day started with piping-hot Dazbog Russian-roast coffee sipped through a straw. It was tipping toward the end of organized activity as I sipped Willow happy Hour White through a similar ingestion device at the Amen Corner. The place was jammed: two private parties were […]

(Vic enjoys a piping hot cup of java with a very stiff neck. I look my best in the morning. Life is getting better. Photo http://filmmakeriq.com) That pretty much sums up the morning. The neck is slightly better- I applaud my decision last summer to save some of the more potent painkillers in the event […]

(Ouch. This sucks. Photo courtesy Johns Hopkins Medical Center.) It was a quiet day on most fronts. There was an unseasonal burst of warm air and fair skies, and driving in to the office I saw my first shorts and first bare arms of 2013 interspersed with spasms of pain. I don’t know what I […]