Mr. William Roper, the son-in-law of the the saintly man whose name makes up the title of this post, writes in a style very different from that we now use.^[1] When first I set to read his work, this fact proved a stumbling block. Yet on again attempting, I find that having persisted by effort through two pages of it, the style begins to grow more comprehensible, and generate less of a challenge.

You cut back production because, even though your profits are still very high, they are no longer record breaking.^[1] Even worse, they are talking about it being a problem if oil were to drop to or below $50/barrel. If $67/barrel translates to gas prices at $2.70/gallon, then OPEC needs some serious revision in their view of reality. Though I remain unsure how much of that is OPEC and how much the gas companies when I see that Iowa has gas prices as low as $2.05/gallon.^[2] Either way, it is totally insane.

This^[1] might be of interest to the astronomy geeks out there.