Saturday April 23, 2011  07:55  AM CST   New Here? Visit our FAQ      

This site is supported by subscriptions:  For additional content, please subscribe to Peoplenomics.

Content mirrored at: http://www.independencejournal.com/,      View as Blog  (.MOBI) version

 

Reader Note: This being Saturday (or Sunday, depending on when you got here, I suppose...) our reports are available for subscribers to www.peoplenomics.com.  $40 dollars for a year's worth and more folks seem to think it's money well spent.

 

Global Rev, Ongoing

Every once in a while, I have panoramic, better than HD TV or Panavision dreams, and this morning's was disturbing.  It was about a crowd of people in a middle eastern nation near some kind of sporting event/stadium being attacked and killed.  While security forces, all the while were passing out little gold pins for the kids to wear, with a palm-tree in a circle, I viewed the scene as though a worker - a non-participant - who was simply trying to stay away from the violence.  I awoke saddened because I somehow knew that the big story for the next day our two would involve the continuation of GlobalRev and that it would be middle east headlines and quite possibly Bahrain which is next door to the country whose forces were passing out the gold, palm-in-a-circle or wreath pins.

---

Fortunately, that dream was off-based,  Likely a struggle as my subconscious mind was trying to remind me that when I got up, it would be Friday again, and that means another of 'day of rage' in the MENA. [middle east- north africa]

 

A quick scan through Al Jazeera's headlines, though, made it clear that GlobalRev  was continuing:  Right about now, protests are gearing up in Syria, rival groups are vying for attention and leadership roles in Yemen, and John McCain "lauds rebels in Libyan visit."

 

Toss in president Obama's approving of armed predator drones as part of the effort in support of the Libyan insurrection and you've got a good grip on what's underway in the region.

 

Bahrain seems to be quiet for the moment, so no doubt the dream was just my subconscious sorting out Friday in advance.  Still, I wouldn't go to any large wedding/social events near a public stadium there this weekend.

 

Not on a bet.

 

Oh, and the US is planning to supply Pakistan with 85 mini-drones.  I knew I should have devoted more time as a kid to building model planes.  I'd have been rich by now, I'm just sure of it.

---

That Libya is just another Western-backed, international banking cartel grab for resource is really undisputed.  The world has plenty of other despotic leaders who the West could turn on if moral indignation was our true and sole motivation.  People in North Korea have been starving for how long?

 

The Chinese state-run Xinhua press outfit is asking this morning "Where is Libya's way out of crisis?" and they go on to sharpen the point a bit:

"However, more and more countries, organizations and political parties are raising questions about the motives, methods and the results of Western powers' military actions. Many political analysts and experts believe that the military action, or military action alone, only worsens, rather than improve the humanitarian situation there.' "

In the end, we may in a real sense be witnessing a conflict that is both about oil and banking.  Not only does the West need oil, but further, as the Western fiat money system continues to clog up from arterial-interest disease, state-backed currencies without huge amounts of debt behind them are difficult - if not  impossible - to tolerate.  Smart money would flow to them and away from the ever-more-quickly dropping local paper version of real dough.

 

We note that attacks on Gaddafi loyalists in Tripoli and Benghazi happen to coincide with locations of Libya's central bank offices.  Just a co-inkydink, of course.

 

Moreover, the Libyan Public Debt as a percent of GDP is a mere 3.3% according to the CIA World Fact Book entry.  By contrast, the USA's public debt as a percent of GDP here in the United States was listed by the CIA as a whopping 58.9%, but that was for 2010 (estimated).  We still have a budget circus to sit through.

---

Our bottom line expectation is that the war in Libya will drag out; another war of attrition nominally fought over "human rights", but which in reality is ruining what humanitarian conditions may have had a chance in the first place, since oil is on the table.  And eventually, the countries with extreme GDP to public debt rations will abscond with Libya's resources and stomp out another low-debt currency in order to emplace conditions which will allow the globalist camp the only option they have.

 

Which is?  Installation of a global debt-backed currency which may be inflated (i.e. purchasing power watered down) as long as necessary in order to achieve "global synchronized inflation" at agreeable rates to the string-pulling banksters behind the scenes.  But, don't let that ruin the surprise of what's ahead!

 

 Oh, there are some obstacles to the "international bankers eat world" plan.  Russia's public debt to GDP ratio is less than 1/6th of the US's debt load - 9.5% for 2010 and China? Only 17.5% of GDP.  Iran's public debt is 16.2% but they got enough oil to move them up the target list.

 

This curious view eventually gets us to something I think should be tabled as "Ure's War Desirability Ratio".  Take amount of natural resource that can be easily monetized (oil's a nice one) and divide by the percent of public debt then multiply by the percent of internal banking of the subject country that's being conducted by the international banks.

 

Note as graceful and David Li's Gaussian cupola approach to pricing CDO's, but this is Good Friday and with markets closed, we get a few moments to reflect.  Especially when part way through Farrell's Babylon's Banksters.

---

Only a food would eat the tripe served up by U.S. MSM which tries to sell what I call purple-finger-madness.  But hey!  It raises money for the political types and there's elections ahead to be bought in 2012.  What can we do?

 

Data Gap Watch

Oh, oh.  Here's another one:  Amazon hosting was down for a while this week and big sites like Foursquare and Reedit were down for a while consequently.

---

Not all the news on the web is bad per se.  The University of Alaska's HAARP website is back online now, a few days later than expected, but nevertheless, as I told you it would be.

---

And of course the YouTube hits are piling up around what are called "HAARP Rings" showing up in weather radar pictures seeming to be correlated to outbreaks of thunderstorms.  I'll let you ponder those, since it's not much of a work day for many.

 

I Spy'ed

Google and Apple may be tracking where you are.  And you know, with all the gov't surveillance possible what that means, I assume...

 

Quake Impacts Continue

Much was made a week or two back of Toyota being able to turn production back on at its plants in Japan.  But now comes word that at their Thailand plants, nothing will be happening on Mondays and Fridays and the plants will operate at only half capacity the other three days.  That leads me to guess at a 70% reduction in output...  Talk now of disruptions till November or December.

 

Wanted a Prius this fall, did you?  Might have a bit of a wait...

---

Speaking of quakes, you see where the quakes in the Baja area are now showing some at a depth of zero?  Your slightly paranoid real estate investor/columnist thinking about a marina or floating restaurant in downtown Elk Centro wonders if that means the land south of town sinking and getting read to begin flooding the Imperial Valley.  I'm also thinking about a gas dock.

 

Just sayin...

 

How Good is Good Friday?

NYSE is closed for Good Friday today.  The Toronto stock exchange will also be closed.

 

Either stock markets are closed in Europe, or a lot of people are late for work today, too.

 

Just noticed that the Indian stock market closed for Good Friday, too, but this struck me as a very telling tale of who runs the world.  According to some quick research, Christians make up only about 2.3% of India's population.  So why was their market closed again?

 

Not a Good Friday in the GlobalRev countries.  Syria for example, has canceled Easter processions and festivals.  Likely other such sentiments in the rest of the yet-to-be-warring countries.

 

Here in the Land of the Fee, Home of the Rave, whether this Friday is really any good, or not, will be determined perhaps by parking meters.  Alternate side parking rules aren't being enforced out on Little Neck  and Tauranga New Zealand will not be picking up Trash today, but will pick it up tomorrow instead.  Thus, ruining a two-day weekend for trash workers.

---

Near as I can figure, the main feature of religion over the past 2000-years has been everyone on earth is being escorted , coerced, or invaded into the Church of the Almighty Dollar; clever retribution indeed by those money changers who were once kicked out.

 

Seems to be in their interest, though.

---

No major economic news releases were scheduled for today, but here's a thought:  If I were running FDIC, this might be the weekend to drop in some really bad news...we'll see if they announce anything this afternoon.  After the non-open market close, maybe.

 

(More after this)

 

 

Coping: With Human Navigation

The story in the UK Telegraph about how humans in prehistoric (pre royal takeover times we assume) may have figured out how to get around.  The article "Sat-Nav: Prehistoric man 'used crude stat nav'" is an interesting read, but seems to give ancient people more credit than may be due.  I can explain...

 

The fact of the matter is that, as any woodman or helmsman knows, going in a straight line, from here to there is really a pretty simple thing.  You get three poles ands start walking.

 

You begin with your first pole on the left.  Then you walk in the direction you want to go;  maybe using the well known 3-4-5 right triangle rule to set the angle rule or the Pythagorean theorem, already well-known, to set the middle pole.

 

 

After driving in the left pole - and the pole in the direction you want to go straight toward, you simple walk out with the third pole and stick it in the ground.  If you sight back toward the starting point, your middle pole and the first (left pole) line up at only one place...and that's right in line with going in a particular direction.

 

So, how many times would you have to move the poles?  Depends on topography, more than anything and you might have to do a couple of sights going up and down hills to accurately get over the top.

 

On flat ground, we all know the distance to the horizon over flat land is 1.17 times the square root of your eye height in feet  which gives nautical (6,250 ft) miles to the optical horizon.

 

Of course, you need to keep two poles in sight in order to place the third, so let's say that you went one mile at a time, or however good your eyes were.  A thousand feet, maybe?  Depends on the brush and that of Loxley dude..

 

You can see how this is applied to a channel entrance by pilots of deep draft ships and sailboats by looking at this example here.  See the white/green markers on the shore?  You always drive the boat toward the lower (front) marker on the way into port.  Simple, huh?

 

I've used the range markets on the approach to the Ballard Locks in Seattle dozens of times.  Here's another nautical reference for you.

 

So to sum up my point?  Yeah, maybe ancient Englanders were able to find places walking around, but to ascribe serious celestial nav to them when the same thing can be done with a couple of assistants and some tall sticks with similar accuracy? 

 

I dunno, sounds fishy to me. 

 

In fact, celestial land nav to the 100 meter range at 100 miles may not be doable anyway, since I haven't rolled out my "England gets a lot of overcast and foggy, rainy days and waiting for sights could take weeks" and this was long before The Hydrographic Office published the H.O. 249 sight reduction tables.

 

Remind me to bid the next mound-placement contract the royals put out to bid, eh?

---

I'm prepared to believe all kinds of stories about the craft and cunning of the English, but with a royal wedding in the wings, sorry, I'd have the whole thing done with sticks in not much more than walking time.

 

To ask me to believe in celestial sight-taking mound-builders?  Why that'd be a royal stretch.

---

There is one thing I've learned about human navigation though, which seems to be true.  Elaine can't seem to find her way home from a shopping trip with a $100 bill left intact in her purse, lol...  And for that matter, I can't click (navigate) to Amazon or Harbor Freight without a mostly similar outcome.

 

My!  How the problems of modern navigation have changed. 

 

Click me Monday...if you can get a good star sight.

 

 

Send Ure comments to george@ure.net

---

Last week's report is always here.

 

---

Thursday April 21, 2011

That $5 Silver Move Nears?

A chat earlier this week with Clif of www.halfpasthuman.com, about the way things are lining up for silver here shortly, bears mentioning about here.  You may remember in some of the predictive linguistics work, there was and expectation that we would be seeing a day when silver moves $5.

 

One of the last temporal markers before that event fires off should be the discussion in national media of "bulldozing homes" and sure enough, the last linguistic tumblers have fallen in that lock with discussions, among others, of "Owners protest UDOT bulldozing homes in WVC" and some discussion of tearing down excessive housing on a segment on one of the financial talking-heads channels.

 

A couple of readers have asked me what I thought about the YouTube video "$1,000 Silver is Conservative" but honestly, I haven't put much thought into it, since we only have one or two ounces of the stuff ;-)

 

Of course, if silver were really to do a moonshot toward $1,000 an ounce, that would imply (ceteris paribus) gold should be about 10 times that, $10,000 an ounce, based on the historical relationship between the metals.  And yep, if that happens there would be a whole new crop of multi-millionaires among people I know.

 

Unfortunately, cheery as it is, having bought silver at $7, silver continuing its dramatic climb doesn't come as a surprise.  Momentary beat-downs by banksters trying to cover untenable short positions, aside.

 

Still there may be costs high higher metals and lower paper.  Examples?

 

For one, there's already talk about $6 gasoline by summer.  All of which is because the US dollar is getting weaker.

---

Don't know if you caught CoastToCoastAM with George Noory overnight, but there was a fascinating discussion about the politics of the upcoming royal wedding involving alternative historian Joseph P. Farrell, author of Babylon's Banksters: The Alchemy of Deep Physics, High Finance and Ancient Religion, along with Richard Hoagland who wrote Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA.

 

If I'm connecting the dots right on what they were talking about, president Obama's decision to take his family to the last Space Shuttle Launch on April 29th is designed in diplomatic circles to take the buzz off the royal wedding which, in case you didn't get your invite (mine somehow didn't show up either) is also scheduled on (care to guess)  guess which day?

 

All of which could be construed as a real battle between the ruling factions of the globalistas:  One the one hand, there are the denizens of the City of London and their Fleet Street feet/minions, and on the other, the US financial industry, or that part not under the [extended] royal thumb.  All of which - it could be argued - has been simmering since the British petroleum problems down in a certain Gulf a while back.  But, I digress.

 

Put all the theories aside and sometime in the next day, or three of trading, we could see silver & gold make a jump one way, or the other, since the options are just coming off the table for this cycle and the public seems to be buying which when coupled with demand might cause a spike up.  OR, if the powers of manipulation are still any good, there could be a drop.  But I'm sort of leaning to the upside case, but haven't put any of my own money behind that bet.

---

If I followed it right, sounded like Farrell is a 'hard money man" who sees how the royal game works; the PTB hang onto the real wealth (gold, silver, and land ownership, while giving the chattel (that's us) scrip to play with.

 

None of which would be particularly offensive, except the obvious manipulation of the scrip trading is starting to really piss people off, whether it's in understated inflation, or whether it's the ginned up oil prices.

 

Power Go Round

Speaking of power prices, did you see the McClatchy piece on how a "Florida utility revives plan to raise rates to pay for solar"? 

---

I know a few people in the solar power business and they're not happy about how Big Energy is going about what should be local energy.  The Big Energy companies want to raise rates and then put in big plants, which they would own.

 

John Kimball who has owned a large solar firm in Miami said in a statement I received this morning:

"If these large expansive multi-megawatt systems (solar utility plants, solar farms, various large scale commercial solar utility projects) covering massive amount of land were kept on the rooftops of our homes and commercial buildings where the solar generated electricity is to be used the following would happen:

1. It would not destroy wildlife habitat or use up good agriculturalland and other valuable real estate .

2. It would not require unattractive massive power towers, transformer stations and power lines that visually and physically affect our environment.

3. It would be more electrically efficient as it would reduce electrical loses caused by resistance from hundreds of miles of transmission lines.

4. It would provide significantly more jobs. FPL's DeSoto 25 MW Plant was enough for 3000 homes but only created 400 jobs for about 4 months. 3000 individual home systems could of created over 10,000 jobs and hundreds of small business's training, designing, warehousing, shipping and selling and installing solar systems."

When you think about it, it really makes sense.  If you can make the power right up on your own roof, why pour money into infrastructure including land, equipment, transmission lines, transformers, yada, yada, yada, when a dozen panels on the roof with a grid-tied inverter would make power on the spot.

 

Oh, and from a national survivability standpoint?  Large single location solutions become single points of failure from an engineering standpoint. 
Think EMP, earthquakes, hurricanes, and so on.

 

We're obviously NOT going to solve this one this morning, but it should underscore the design pattern humans should have noticed in the development of computer architectures.  You don't need everyone to own a mainframe, just a good network connected CPU.  Same thing holds for locally generated power.

 

Though there is a case for wind farms around state capitols and in Washington, for sure...

 

Energy Big-Shotting, II

And, if the PowersThatBe need to raise a little money, what's the quickest way to do that and eliminate less costly alternatives for consumers?  Why pass Senate Bill 398.  The happy talk pushed by the lobbyists is that this will create jobs, but no one can seem to explain how that will work.

 

If government were really serious about reducing environmental impact, they would mandate 30-year appliance guarantees with free replacements.  But, of course, that wouldn't generate profits quarter after quarter, so instead we get half-think like this crappola.  Go figure.

 

Is everyone so dumb as to not be able to figure out that planned obsolescence business models are the problem, not anything else?  FMTT

 

Rally On

The market is going nuts to the upside...and with GE profits up 77 percent, I suppose there is some reason.  Also Apple's Q2 was a monster.

 

Still, if you go back to the Euro/Dollar rate, you'll see we've gone from about .77 EU down to .6847 this morning, which in and of itself is an 11% decline since early January.  So you take the 11,500 level from last December and tack on 11 percent for the dropping dollar and you hit the 12,800 kind of range.

 

So no, I'm not impressed with the Dow; in fact it seems to be performing "big picture-wise" about like gold and silver.  Gold started the year about $1,388.50 and just on the currency change, it should be about $1,541, so that's a given to my way of thinking. 

 

Silver, on the other hand, which started the year about $30.67 is another story altogether.  It's a finite supply commodity which is just trying to play catch-up after being the bastard-child of the investment community for so long.  And doing just fine, we notice.

 

Jobless Filing Improve

More grist for the bulls in this one:

"In the week ending April 16, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 403,000, a decrease of 13,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 416,000. The 4-week moving average was 399,000, an increase of 2,250 from the previous week's revised average of 396,750.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.9 percent for the week ending April 9, unchanged from the prior week's unrevised rate of 2.9 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending April 9 was 3,695,000, a decrease of 7,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 3,702,000. The 4-week moving average was 3,716,750, a decrease of 17,500 from the preceding week's revised average of 3,734,250. "

The lyrics "Future's so bright...gotta wear shades..." comes to mind, but since so many people are unemployed, I expect sunglasses sales will be off, too.

 

Where'd Japan Go?

Seems like Fukushima has fallen into a pit and been buried by the media.  Feeding frenzy over, we see that Japan has declared an exclusion zone around their nuke plant mess.  Only took six weeks to happen, but you can't go jumping into these things, I suppose.

---

See where the Morg took a $1.7 Japan trading loss, by the by?

---

Not that we can talk - how long did we diddle about on the GOM mess?

 

Shake & Quake

Oh, gotta go look at the Baja, California numbers off USGS.  Area's lit up like a Christmas tree with 11 quakes when I looked and that was just for today.

 

largest (so far) is a 4.0, but I keep saying I'll be interested in planting oyster beds around el Centro one of these days and maybe move my office to the new deep water port of Salton....

 

 

Thursday at the WuJo

Coping:  The Dry Coffee Mystery

We continue to pile up reports  of highly strange things - things that shouldn't happen, yet objectively they do.   Take this email, for example:

"I checked into a hotel for a business seminar this week, and decided to brew a cup of coffee on the afternoon I arrived. It was one of the usual hotel-room-coffee-pot setups (basically a miniature of what I have at home).

 

I put the little coffee-filter packet in the filter-section, poured water in the reservoir, and set the empty pot under the filter section. I turned on the machine and headed down to the lobby to pick up a few extra bags of regular coffee/filters for the morning. When I got back to the room about five minutes later, the water was warm and in the pot, but clear and clean.

 

No coffee.

 

I opened the filter section and found the coffee-packet was sitting in there, dry as can be, not a drop of water. I reviewed the instructions on the side of the machine, looked again at how I had put the thing together, and scratched my head. There really is no other way to put the thing together; it won’t fit under the hole that lets the water into the filter-section any other way.

 

So I turned it off, put the coffee/filter section back where I had it the first time (where it belonged), poured the water in the pot back into the reservoir, turned it back on, and carefully watched.

 

A few bubbles and gurgles as usual, and out came the coffee. I cannot figure out how the water made it through the little hole that leads into the coffee/filter section, left it bone-dry, and ended up in the little pot underneath. Still scratching my head, and would feel so much better if someone could even suggest a logical explanation. "

Kinda gets you thinking, doesn't it?  And how about this one?

"George, Keep up the excellent work!

I’m a forecast accountant. I have to pay attention to details. So I am forecasting a bucket (love those grad terms) in an excel workbook. I had to copy/paste some forecast numbers from another department into this workbook and add them together.

 

I dump the first set in the column, followed by the second set and then sum them. That’s all I needed to do so I save it.

 

I do a few more workbooks (many departments) and step away from my desk for some grapevine gossip.

 

I come back and begin reviewing some other buckets for this workbook and notice the updated numbers look wrong (too low).

 

I click the cells and its last year’s numbers which I saved over, right? I double checked a few times, looked at other workbooks and they’re fine, this one is not. Sure I could have not saved, but I did.

 

Sure I may have thought I updated the workbook but didn’t and that’s where I’m stuck because if that’s not the answer then only a time slip will suffice. High strangeness indeed!  Damn Sherlock Holmes…"

Then we've got some follow-up on an earlier posting.  Remember this one?

"Every morning I go to work and park my car on the rooftop of a multilevel carpark. I have to walk down one flight of stairs to get out of the carpark. It is actually a enclosed stairwell. Anyway I walked down and opened the door and instead of facing the exit I was looking down the reverse side of the parking lot. Thoroughly freaked out I thought well maybe I inadvertently went down an extra flight. I walked back up and opened the door and I was on the rooftop. WTF!"

I had asked whether the person was on any medications, because one of the reasons I won't take statins is a reported effect called "transitory (transient) global amnesia" which can - in rare instances - occur.  But to show up on the front floor?  Well, the reader sent this update:

Just wanted to mention that I am not on any medications and I cant explain it. I did go back and checked to see if there were any other doors in that stairwell that led out to the opposite side and there were none. All doors opened to the same side on the stairwell. It was real and I am still pondering what if I did walk through as if nothing had happened. Next time I will take a photo if it happens and what pisses me off is that I had an iPhone in my pocket. It was truly overwhelming and I did not think to document the evidence.

All curious and curiouser, but in terms of figuring out what's really going on?  Well, that's one of those little "Hmmm..." things that drives me back to Ouspensky's work around the turn of the last century.  Like spontaneous human combustion (SHC), the evidence is anecdotal and not repeatable.

 

Perhaps, like all the molecules piling up on one side of the room, ot the cases of SHC, such WuJo events will persist until quite possibly by accident, someone will fit the missing key in the lock.

 

I suspect it all has much to do with how we are "bounded" intellectually. In other words, the mere process of being brought up in this shared reality may cause us to see things in a particular way. 

 

Think of it as being as though the totality of Life is like a 3D movie.  Because of the way we're brought up, we can't see the red channel of information, only the green. 

 

Every once in a while along comes great scientific insight when someone like a Tesla, Leedskalnin, or Reich, who get's a key insight into how things work.

 

Since the rules of the red channel reality can't stand to have everyone waking up to a 3D world - since hugely disruptive technologies would erode their power base - they must over-react.  And the result?  Tesla's lab and papers are destroyed (or seized by the PTB), Reich's works are burned, and Leedskalnin lives in his rock fortress out in the middle of what used to be nowhere south of Miami.

 

It would be near if human's didn't response to breakthroughs and new ideas as they do...and would leave many of these great hypotheses on the table for future investigation.
 

Another fellow to keep an eye on, speaking of which, is Rupert Sheldrake who - as a biochemist and plant physiologist - has developed a theory of morphogenesis which could go a long way toward explaining the physics behind much of what's called paranormal.

 

Morphogenesis has come up a couple of three times in the past 24-hours, so seems like I'm supposed to do more thinking about it (multiple appearances of a concept tend to be hints like that) and one of the most interesting emails I've had in the past year or three was a friend of my daughter who wrote something really interesting in correspondence about EVP's (electronic voice phenomena) which I'm starting to read quite a bit about.

 

The discussion involved the risks of doing EVP experiments in one's own home/dwelling-space.  But here's the cool insight part from her friend/colleague in this stuff:

And even worse there is risk that ones "exterior consciousness" (I'm using that in place of "higher") can fool you too. The best example I can give is channeling. When someone begins to channel a "higher" entity I think it possible that they are really channeling their own "higher or external consciousness". At first these messages tend to be very positive and uplifting but it often occurs over time that they become dark and paranoid.

The notion of an exterior consciousness is one I hadn't put much thought into before, except occasionally when coming across concepts like Carlos Castaneda's assemblage point and a few others; which go to the idea that there's a part of humans that is outside the skin.

 

Whether you want to think of these as auras, or after Sheldrake, perhaps a self-generated morphogenetic field, or as her friend says "exterior consciousness", one of these days someone may trip over the key and at the same time have access to the internet.  And you know what happens after that, I presume?

 

Imagine that the 'data gap' which Clif has in his data comes about from a huge consciousness bootstrapping which could occur if someone - by accident of cosmic design - trips over THE KEY and put's it out on the internet.

 

What would happen to the world if suddenly:

• Acts like levitation and walking through walls became widespread?

• People got key insights about the after-death cost of karmic burdens?

• People started to spontaneously share all kinds of resources?

Pretty clearly, the world would fall apart as we know it.  Absent the defined scarcity which drives up price and builds conformance, such a radically different human - activating a bunch of that so-called "junque DNA" would instantly recognize and totally reject the PowersThatBe who use royal position, the power of arms coupled with the power of scarcity, to keep the mass of humanity from tripping over any keys to the larger reality (which they wouldn't control), beyond the common person's reach.

 

More this weekend as we get into a discussion of  the threats of disruptive technologies in our Peoplenomics report, but for now, the idea that the internet could turn into an expensive bootstrapping project is an interesting notion.

 

---

Wednesday April 20, 2011

DUCK!

I figure there's enough thunderstorm crap firing off that we might as well grab the computer off the desk and huddle under it to read this morning's report.  A kind of warm & cozy read, for a change.  The details of this morning's alerts are here, and obviously, if you're in California and took our "DUCK!" advice seriously, people ought to be pointing at you by now.

---

Besides the tragic deaths from all the storms in the past week, several readers have pointed out that in the predictive lingusitics work, we were supposed to see all kinds of unseasonable fires this year, particularly from Texas out to the West.  And sure enough, there are lots of Texas fires underway and damn little chance of rain in most of the state.  Red flag fire danger warnings are up all over and no sign of relief.  More than a million acres burned so far.

 

FEMA has issued disaster assistance advice for the North Carlina storm victims, too.

 

Housing: Back To the Future

Bloomberg/BusinessWeek has a pretty good article about how "Home Ownership Declining Despite Cheapest Prices in 40-Years" that brings some of the current housing mess into focus.

 

At the uber alles macroeconomic level, the reason is pretty simple:  Most well-educated American kids (like ours) have looked at the world with uncountable wars, burgeoning pollution issues, running out of resources and a paucity of jobs and have (reasonably) concluded that "We ain't doing kids, so WTH do we need a house for?"

 

What I've tried to explain (to no avail, so far) is that just because they are being responsible, that just means the future ratio of well-educated to third/fourth world uneducated (who continue to breed like crazy) is going to push the whole world in the direction of the demographic ditch. 

 

The idea that poor are out-breeding the literate just seems like a long term formula for disaster (or GlobalRev).

 

OK, on to this morning's Mortgage Bankers' weekly application data:

"Mortgage applications increased 5.3 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending April 15, 2011.

The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, increased 5.3 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index increased 5.9 percent compared with the previous week. The Refinance Index increased 2.7 percent from the previous week. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 10.0 percent to its highest level since December 3, 2010, driven largely by a 17.6 percent increase in Government purchase applications. The unadjusted Purchase Index increased 10.9 percent compared with the previous week and was 11.4 percent lower than the same week one year ago.

“Purchase application volume jumped last week largely due to another sharp increase in applications for government loans. Borrowers were likely motivated to apply for loans before the scheduled increase in FHA insurance premiums,” said Michael Fratantoni, MBA’s Vice President of Research and Economics. “Refinance activity increased somewhat, as rates dropped to their lowest level in a month towards the end of the week.”

The four week moving average for the seasonally adjusted Market Index is down 2.9 percent. The four week moving average is up 2.5 percent for the seasonally adjusted Purchase Index, while this average is down 5.7 percent for the Refinance Index.

Once the Fed figures out it will have to raise rates, I look for a couple of things to follow:  A short spurt in home-buying, since higher rates are already lurking.  And that, in turn would push gold and silver on toward $1,700 and $50 respectively.

 

Related: A recent Fed paper which wonder "Are Adjustable -Rate Mortgage Borrowers Borrowing Constrained?"  Once past the "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck..." title, it's an interesting view of fixed rate mortgage holder behavior versus the ARM'ed (and some thought) dangerous kind of borrowers.

 

Our Ugly Offshoring Problem

How often do I have to get up on the soapbox to tell you that the Mexico border is not as big a source of illegal workers as third-worlders coming to America to work every day on the internet at dime-an-hour rates and no one is bothered?

 

Fine, but it's worth a subscription to the Wall Street Journal Online because they've got some facts that back up this contention, saying that multinationals cut their US workforces by 2.9 million in the 2000's while growing overseas workers by 2.4 million.  About a third of America's jobs have gone - poof! -overseas.

 

Aghast

With all this dough flowing out of the country, naturally, our balance of trade sucks and this, in turn, means the dollar continues to tank; due also to runaway-spending in Washington.  With $5 buck gas there, we wonder how soon anything will change, or is the path to $8/gallon still clear?

 

Lammert's Latest

Say, this is interesting and pretty easy to follow:

Goggle: the Albino Black Canary in the Coal Mine 15 April 2011

The global macroeconomy is ordered. It is limited. The macroeconomy functions as a patterned science - well described by the fractal unit time evolution of its asset valuation curves. Time ordered asset valuation quantum fractals are what are they are. They are observable, quantifiable, and representative of the macroeconomy's perfect self balancing and debt system - limited, mechanistic, necessary, and deterministic growth and decay of asset valuations in the system. The benefactor of the decay of equities and commodities is paradoxically the US debt market, which the Elite's owned Standard and Poor so maligned a day or so ago. The US debt market will be a transient money flow growth benefactor of the coming equity and commodity collapse. Unlike gold and silver, the US debt market and dollar in reality is backed by a storehouse of nuclear weapons and a superpower military very able to use them.

Growth and decay in a large system are balancing reciprocals of each other much like entropy and order in the energy-space universe. TYX in Big Charts is denominated in higher interest rates for the US 30 year bonds but using the TFC 30 year bond futures charts, the reciprocal is represented which reflects competitive money influx and lower interest rates. The TFC future patterns for the US ten year note and long bond in the long term 28 year range and shorter term 3-5 year range are completely elegant and self evident.

Money flow has began its flow from GOOGLE and equities into US debt instruments. Observe the evolution of paradoxical and historical low interest rates for the US long bond. during the next 12-20 weeks. As news is selectively published to leave small speculators in exactly the wrong position.Wall Street is going to walk away with America's wealth. (The Federal Reserve's ZIRP policy with 0 percent easy money borrowed by the first use wealthy and its driven resulting speculative inflation is forcing all traditional conservative savers -the traditional basis of a sound banking system - into Wall Street's speculative Killing Fields market. In the end the elite will take nearly everything from everybody.

What's next for the market? - the growth of decay of US equity valuations. Observe SDS:. a 4/10 of 10/6-10 day fractal is observed which will complete a 9/22/18-22 day fractal. Expect deterministic growth of valuation decay for SPX's reciprocal SDS, Expect historically nonlinear growth of decay.

Knowing that the central banks must continue to print money provides the time ordered quantum pathway map for the future of commodities, equities, and bond valuations. Of course arbitrary rule changes by the financial elite are possible. Perhaps central banks will collectively determine and mandate that their politicians legislate that ownership of gold and silver be subject to a property tax much like the ownership of houses and automobiles. These are historical times occurring only every 250-300 years. He or she is rich who knows he or she has enough."

Could be...remember yesterday's rally still leaves us well down for the week, and a mid-session rollover today would be interesting...

 

Michigan: Police-State Poster-State?

Picture this:  You get pulled over in Michigan and the local state lawman surreptitiously can scan everything on your cell phone - pictures, passwords, the whole thing...and then not even respond to freedom of information requests.

 

The Michigan ACLU letter crying foul is here.

 

And you wonder why we pack ham radio gear instead of a cell phone?  Got to assume all law enforcement types are getting these....

 

Toxic Tides Dept.

Now those SoCal fish die-offs are painted as being part of seasonal algae blooms.  But wait!  We didn't see, smell, or hear about such things when we were sailing California waters 10-years ago....so I'll keep my Tilley Hat adjusted to the rakish/cynical angle, thanks.

 

OpEd

The Don and Governor Gidget

A long-time reader spied our headline about Donald Trump being suddenly the hot name in republicorp circles.  I checked with Elaine and her response was "I'd vote for him a damn second...he's a good businessman..."  I didn't get into a discussion of how hard it must be to lose money in the casino business, since my record at the casino on Wall Street is not exactly stellar.

 

But I was fascinated enough with the "Don and Governor Gidget" subject line to read further...

"Man! You just never tire of scaring us, do you? All I can say about that pairing is that it would prompt me to vote for Obama, Hillary, almost anyone in response to such an absurd ticket. If the GOP puts together that kind of insane ticket, it will deserve to lose. I don't think that's who they're going to run, but who knows. It's the GOP's election to lose. But, of course, they've done it before. Any ticket with Sarah Palin on it is a loser because that is the kind of thing that gets cynical fence sitters like me to shell out money to the other side and start walking the precincts.

It makes me sad to see how little these people care about our country, its people, our history, our values, and what we should mean to the world. We should at least try to nominate someone who cares and actually wants to do something good. It would be a refreshing change. America is still a great place. Even when it's down, it still deserves better. I love America and I hate what these scum are doing to it.

Good night, George. Keep up the fight."

On the other side, or course, is the story circulating on the net that the TV "Survivor" series is going to do a special Texas version. 

 

The idea's this:  Eight contestants will drive pink Volvos around the state emblazoned tons of liberal bumper stickers like  "I voted Obama." "I'm a Democrat," "Amnesty for Illegals," "I love the Dixie Chicks," "Boycott Beef," "I'm here to confiscate your guns." and "George Strait sucks."

 

If anyone can drive through all the big towns in the  the whole state and survives to make it back to the starting line, they'd be declared the winner. 

 

Texans are a partially open-minded lot, but what pushes the concept over the edge is the George Strait sticker.  Why, that kind of blasphemy just can't be tolerated.

 

Someone like Charlie Sheen, who's reportedly talking that direction might be interesting.  I didn't say good...just interesting. 

 

No Man is an Island Dept.

New research shows there are 657 more islands in the world than previously thought.

 

Remember the stuff in the linguistics back when about "new lands rising"?

 

Coping:  With Mighty Fishermen

Although we have guests, you wouldn't have known it around here on Tuesday.  Panama decided to get up a fishin' expedition to the local lake.  Since this was going to be a stand on the banks and cast affair, I didn't have much hope so I stayed in my office working.  Elaine is about the same portion fisherman as she is astronaut, so she didn't go either.

 

We had a pleasant afternoon, a glass of Italian vitamins, and along about six-ish we got up some dinner and about quitting time on that, in came the three mighty fishermen.

 

Skunked isn't quite how it works around here.  The visiting son caught a couple of worthless catfish in the 10-inch range.  He also landed a might bluegill.  All of a whopping 3½-4 inches with their tales, so I figure it was 2-2½ at best.

---

Pappy had a pretty good attitude toward fishing (and most other things in life, too):  If you're going to go after something, set the goal high and go for it.  Both he and his brother decided one year that they would each "catch the weight of the boat and motor in salmon" up in the Pacific Northwest.  This was 20-yers before the Boldt fishing decision back in 'ought-seventy four'.

 

That was an interesting case, being a reporter at the time.  Near as I can recall the State of Washington had been sued by the US government over the turn of the phrase "in common with".

The reason this came up was that the U.S. had signed Indian treaties which specified that tribal descendants would forever be able to fish "in common with" the non-Indian population of the state.

 

Where the state and the feds didn't see eye-to-eye was in the definition of "in common with."  The state thought that meant we all go fishing together and whoever gets fish, well, that's how it goes.  The feds, on the other hand, held up Black's Law Dictionary and a bunch of legal cites and convinced the judge (Boldt) that the phrase really meant half the catch.

 

It was then - about four years into being a reporter - that *I grew suspicious of the law (just a tad) since under law everything gets reduced to black and white and somehow, things just seem to degenerate from there.  Also taught me to keep a copy of Black's Law Dictionary around whenever legal matters arose.

---

Anyway, getting back to the adventure:  Pappy and his brother took different approaches.  His brother had a Pacific salmon trolling license, so he spent a lot of time down off Westport, Washington.  I think it was a red & white Pacific Mariner with an 80-horse Merc on it.  So they caught a lot of fish.

 

Our effort was more modest.  A year or two earlier, we'd built an 8½ foot pram (painted a bright fire-engine red, being a firefighter and all) and we bought a new 3½ HP Montgomery Ward SeaKing motor for it.  Figure the boat was only 75-80 pounds. One man could (carefully) put it on a roof rack and take the boat home.  The motor was maybe 40-pounds. 

 

So even if we tossed in the over-sized oars and the seat cushions, this put our goal around 135-140 pounds.  And sure enough, by getting up 3:30 AM, launching the boat down by the old Nettleton's creosoting plant on Elliot Bay, we caught more than the boat & motor's worth of delicious King Salmon.  The cost was a $2 (maybe it was $3) dollar fishing license, not required for kids.

 

Eventually I'm getting to the economics point of this little ramble.  I figure IF they'd taken the time to clean the catfish, our mighty trio could have gotten maybe 3-ounces of edible fish.  That would be 0.1875 pounds of fish.

 

Panama, being resident, we don't count.  Let's only count the $32 for the out-of-state licenses.

 

The way I see it that pencils out to $170.66 per pound and I ask you:  Wouldn't it have made more sense to go online to somewhere like  Pike Place Fish and fly in some halibut steaks ($17.99 a pound this morning).  Six pounds for five people, oughta be about right.  That leaves a fair bit of money leftover, even after shipping, for adult beverages and corn-on-the-cob.

---

Easter comes late this year...last year it was on April 4th.   Some heathen states, like Rhode Island, open on the Second Saturday in April.  Most of Pennsylvania is already open as I mentioned a week, or two, back.  Up north, Washington State is opening the last Saturday of the month, which means churches up that way might have a good turnout this weekend.

 

Down here in the Bible Belt, I've made a note to do some research on Sunday.  Figure I'd count the number of cars in various church parking lots and then count the number of rigs parked at the local launching ramps.

 

This is one of those statistics -  like the the Fed's missing M3 money supply data - that we're maybe better off not reporting, however.  And I better keep my notes about being able to walk across a lake without getting my feet wet on Opening Day, by simply walking from boat to boat, to myself, too; don't want to get involved in a trade-dress lawsuit since that walking on water deak is already being widely used in a marketing campaign.

 

Email of the Day

Not sure how the hell come this came in, but here goes:

Dear Sirs

 

My client is looking for suppliers of 135mw power plant generators for a gas turbine power plant in the Middle East.

 

For more information please email us with details about your company and the correct contact to speak to so we may forward to our client.

Hmmm...in the spirit of things, I sent this back:

Dear Sirs:

 

Unfortunately, while we are the world's third-largest online provider of heavily discounted gas turbine generating stations, we don't have anything so trifling as 135 megawatts.  Our minimum size is 150 megawatts.

 

These begin at $29.95 plus shipping and handling and may be ordered by calling our 800-number.  Operators are standing by, this is a free call, please have your credit card handy.

 

Have a nice day.

Of course.

---

This morning's post at Backdoor Survival deals with how to keep yourself entertained.  As long as there's email around, I figure that won't be too much of an issue.  When that goes away, maybe I'll take up fishing again. 

 

As for entertainment?  The Washington State summary of fishing regulations is 135 pages worth.  The Texas summary is only 76 pages, but that's before the waterfowl digest which will be along when it gets here.

 

Oh, and that doesn't count the Texas Alligator Hide Tag report form, either.

---

You know the Rubicon is in sight when there's more pages of regulations read by fishermen than actual fish taken.  By the time I get all them reg's read, and spend some time with our staff counsel figuring out what they mean, season's gonna be over anyway, so why bother?

 

Still, catching a law library's weight in fish would be a fine and lofty goal.  Oh, how times have changed.

 

---

Tuesday April 19, 2011

Tuesday's Coming Rally

I told you yesterday (in a special update) about the Standard and Poors outlook change that sent markets to the ropes for a while.  In the aftermath, Asian markets were down, but European markets are trying to bounce, so the key feature of this part of the Long Depression - which is making a damn-fine effort to match 1873-1895 - is that fools are still looking for Greater Fools - and are still finding them.

 

In Washington, there's still all kinds of budget debate going on...and seems like no one likes the Goldilocks budget porridge. Please, let me be one of the Three Bears.

 

I'm planning to bail out of my short positions in the preopen, since the jittery central banks will be pouring money on the markets like crazy, or at least so says our resident computer whiz who sent me a note reading "The Dow's gonna close higher 275 to 325 today ... git yer bets in!"  My down 159 call for Monday was within 2 points right up till five minutes before the close, but that last-minute spurt cause me to be off 19 points.  Sorry.

 

Metals pulled back a few cents, but gold is still in spitting distance of $1,500 and that $7 ounce of silver we bought in July 2005 (which was met with laughter and derision from lots of reader, btw) is still `ov er $43 and the way markets move, $44 could go any old time.

 

Our friends in Canada meantime report their inflation rate is 3.3%...similar to here, except the ratio of natural resources to  body count is still a little different.

 

All the market really needs is a good dose of Happy Talk and that should run things up again.

 

Housing: Is there a Pulse?

It could be argued  - based on this morning's Census Housing report:

BUILDING PERMITS

Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits in March were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 594,000. This is 11.2 percent (±2.6%) above the revised February rate of 534,000, but is 13.3 percent (±1.3%) below the March 2010 estimate of 685,000. Single-family authorizations in March were at a rate of 405,000; this is 5.7 percent (±1.1%) above the revised February figure of 383,000. Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 173,000 in March.

 

HOUSING STARTS

Privately-owned housing starts in March were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 549,000. This is 7.2 percent (±18.0%)* above the U.S. Census Bureau News Joint Release U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development U.S. Department of Commerce Washington, D.C. 20233 18.0%) revised February estimate of 512,000, but is 13.4 percent (±9.1%) below the March 2010 rate of 634,000. Single-family housing starts in March were at a rate of 422,000; this is 7.7 percent (±15.0%)*

Tomorrow, we ought to see the Mortgage Bankers report...

 

Meantime, the Country Financial index is out and not 'specially pretty:

"In spite of recent economic growth, Americans remain pessimistic about their finances. The COUNTRY Financial Security Index® dipped just 0.2 points to 64.7 in April. Improvements in the ability to save and pay debts, and confidence in college funding offset a decrease in Americans' optimism about their overall financial security and ability to retire.

Americans' long-term uncertainty might be driving short-term savings. Forty-eight percent were able to save this month, up one point from February. That's the highest since December 2009. Middle income earners exhibited the largest gains. Fifty-two percent of Americans earning $40,000 to $60,000 set aside money, a five point increase. For Americans earning $60,000 to $75,000, 68 percent saved this month, up 8 percent. Also up one point each were those confident in their ability to pay down debts and send children to college, at 77 percent and 56 percent, respectively.

These gains didn't translate to an increase in overall financial security, however. Just 38 percent rate their overall level of financial security positively, down three points from February. Confidence in the ability to retire comfortably fell to 52 percent, a two point decrease.

"As our economy tries to stabilize, Americans' anxiety about their money matters can be attributed to a variety of factors," said Keith Brannan, vice president of Financial Security Planning at COUNTRY Financial. "The silver lining is people are saving and paying off debts. Addressing short-term obligations, like saving and debt, is an important step toward achieving long-term financial security."

Sounds like an honest assessment of the public mood...no telling what the leading indicator dart will land on Friday, though.

 

Port Data

Every month, around this time, I tromp through some of the West Coast Port data, which - as expected - hasn't shown much drop in March cargo since most of the month was already on ships headed here from Japan when the quake struck.

 

Inbound at Long Beach was down 7.5% for the month, but over the viaduct,

the Port of Los Angeles was up 10.16%.  Up the coast a way, Oakland hasn't posted data yet, but loaded inbound to Seattle was up 7.3%.

 

I repeat my standing offer to send calculator batteries to Oakland and Portland where the stats are slow...

---

Word out of Japan today is that Toyota has resumed production at all of its plants hit by the quake.  No telling how things are going for all of their supply chain, but this ought to be seen as good news for US Toyota workers.

 

Don and Sarah?

If I were going to place bets right now, I'd say we're going to have a hugely entertaining boy-girl match-up on the ballot in 2012.  Word is that republicorp insiders think The Don would make a fine prez, and this would line Sarah Palin into the #2 spot, which some figure could work.

 

Especially against president Obama if he gets sucked into putting Hillary on as #2.

 

Of course, supporters of international law might not be too thrilled with The Don even bringing up seizing the oil fields of Libya and Iraq, but then on the other hand, we might as well turn the whole of the Middle East into US state, since that's where it could be heading.

 

Seriously (or nearly so), think about this:  What would happen if the US State Department hired a couple of admen to put together an "American Statehood" campaign?  Just 'cause it hasn't worked with Puerto Rico especially well, maybe it would play in Venezuela or Algeria...you think? 

 

Why, the construction of new bureaucrat and legislative offices in Washington alone would pull us out of recession/depression in a heartbeat, right?  And if the 500-odd members of Congress can't get much done now, just think what they wouldn't get done if we doubled the size of Congress to include new country/states?  My, what a deeelightful plan.....

 

Birthers Lose

Arizona governor ( though I always thought govornette would be a better word) Jan Brewer has turned back a bill which would have required presidential candidates to prove their citizenship before their names could be placed on the ballot.  Not over yet, though, and there's talk the legislature might go for a super-majority override attempt.

 

New Alzheimer's Data

Turns out there may be some preliminary conditions that can show up 10-years ahead of the obvious onset of the disease.  I assume you are also aware of the genetic links to the disease which have turned up in genome studies?

 

Great Stuxnet Article

Long as we're into the study of epidemiology, if you get some time - Vanity Fair has a very detailed look at the Stuxnet virus under the title "A Declaration of Cyber-War."  Long, but worthwhile.

 

A Fine Tale of Justice

Near as I can figure, this was sent to me by Trader Bart (who may be the same Trader Bart of www.nowandfutures.com which reconstructs the M3 which Greenspend swept under the Fed rug a few years back when the brick wall at the end of globalism came into view.  M3 reconstructed is presently about flat which hints a deflationary break or hyperinflation break is possible and could go either way.  But back on point....

 

The story  "Next Time You Get a Ticket..." is definitely worth a read.

 

Tuesday at the WuJo

Coping: With Getting Ready to Die & EVP's

A grim topic to ponder early in the day?  Yeah, I suppose so, and probably better timed would be after a crappy day at work, but my eldest daughter is heavy into study of Electronic Voice Phenomena - EVP's - and has asked me to help her design a 'better way' to hear EVP's.

 

Not that I really expect to be able to design a box of electronic (whatever) in order to enable communication with the "other side" but when a child asks a parent to help out on a personal quest / project it seems like the thing to do, so I've sketched out a research path to see what's out there.

 

The first thing that struck me is I need to get a lot more current in my "What happens after death?" studies.  The write-up on Handbook to the Afterlife (See all Spiritualism Books) seemed reasonable, although there are several others which have taken what seem like multiple tracks to get to (roughly) the same place. 

 

One approach, for example, is the "hard science" route and a book like The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death might be good if going down that path, or how about Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences.  Off on the cultural anthropology sidebar we could read After Death: How People Around the World Map the Journey after We Die.

 

I think I mentioned that back in my news-chasing days, I'd interviewed Dr. Raymond Moody in 1976, or so, when he came out with the first edition of Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon--Survival of Bodily Death.

 

I'd heard a few rumbles on the police & fire beat as a reporter.  Nothing firm, mind you, just some rumbles around the alarm office from early paramedics in Seattle (which pioneered heart attack response with the (then new) Medic One program) that a few people who were coming back after dying briefly from massive heart attacks, were reporting similar experiences on the 'other side' of death. 

 

Of course, right about here, a serious researcher has to pause and ask "Is the experience on the 'other side' real, or is it a culturally culturally-nominalized experience induced by the brain's last-gasp efforts to save itself by producing larger than normal amounts of a chemical called DMT?  This naturally occurring chemical has been studied a lot and a good starting point to understand it is DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences.  Already got that book in our library.

 

This first fork-in-the-road is one I've come to in past researches...so I'd read most of the survey work up to here.  Still, some updating would be in order.

 

Starting with "Handbook to the Afterlife" I figured would be a good survey since it seems (if I got the write-ups properly digested) like it should give a decent summary of the various sources of information about the Hereafter.  Those being the emergency room 'floating' experiences where people come back able to recall numbers of top of ER cabinets that they would not otherwise have been able to see (beyond Moody), then the anecdotal reports, maybe some of the cultural-anthro stuff, and then digesting the religious tradition hand-me-downs.

 

This last is a particularly interesting  area, since whatever is after life in the here and now seems to have been a favorite place for the "PowersThatBe" to erect toll booths to fund their various here/now operations.  Buying a Stairway to what?  Fortunately, dying is still actually free so we don't have to worry about handing over 10-percent of life savings to do it.  No admission price and no taxes...can't be that bad a place, unless it's uncomfortably warm and smells of sulfur, of course, lol.

 

Once I get done with that book, I figure I'd move on to find out what can be had about the physics of the Hereafter.  The lead brain for this part of the adventure will be Dean Radin's book The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena since it may give me some additional insights into how the physics of afterlifing is put together; and if not specifics, at least some reasonable bounds which may be useful when we get around to the actual engineering task.

 

To read up on some of the claims being made about the specific of Electronic Voice Phenomena, I'll then wolf down Electronic Voices: Contact with Another Dimension?  and then maybe end up on Speak with the Dead: Seven Methods for Spirit Communication.

 

My notion?  Well, since you asked...the thing that seems to stick in my mind in all this is that a lot of current reports of EVP's seem to be dependant on use of either digital recorders or cassette/reel-to-reel tape recorders.

 

The only reason I'm even thinking about this stuff is that the EVP processes used have something in common:  A sample rate.

 

You see, in the case of the portable digital recorders, they are using various sample rates in the22 to  44 KHz and up range.  In our semi-serious home studio, 96 KHz is the norm.  Still, all sampling rate.

 

But here's the common element with digital recorders:  I know from being a broadcast engineer that tape recorders have a high frequency tape bias applied.  And what do you suppose the frequency range is?  The Ampex tand was 100 KHz but you can find various gear using from 30 KHz on up.

 

No, this is not a short-term problem.  There's a good month (or two) of spare time (what???) reading.  But is there an existence one octave higher in vibration?  Sure seems there may be.  One question is whether discarnate people go there, and if a phone could be installed to talk to 'em.

 

Once I've consumed all the books, then making improvements on EVP technology ought to resolve into a simple task since I'm schooled on TRIZ - which I know - you know - is the Russian 'science of invention'.  And if you're an engineer and have read at least 40 Principles: TRIZ Keys to Technical Innovation (Triztools, V. 1), you ought to.

 

As for dying?  No, I don't expect to be going any time soon, at least not before 2013 now, it turns out, but more on that next month.  Main thing is, there is a whole body of work being done around dying and getting dead.  Any study of the subject done ahead of when it's actually needed seems like a decent side benefit to helping my daughter sort out whether EVP's are real (she thinks they are, but I'm a show-me kinda guy) and, if real, are there engineering-optimized methods to access what's over there - or should I say who is over there?

 

Who knows - might even chat up the group of late economists, who even though we assume they'd be too busy arguing about what's ahead, still might slip us a good stock tip, now and then.  If - that is - we can get the phone working.

 

Around the Ranch:  Guest Activities

Remember the story by Mark Twain?  I've read so much Twain, I've forgotten which particular title it was under, but it was when Tom Sawyer had the miserable job of white-washing a fence when along came Huck Finn.  Might have been Huckleberry Finn or Life on the Mississippi, but it's to damn early to research much of anything beyond where the coffee is...

 

Tom was white-washing away and Huck asks "Is that hard?"  Tom then goes into a long dissertation about what skill white-washing is and how only the most skilled of people can be entrusted with such things. 

 

After a spell - and after more 'sales talk' about what a high art it is, Tom Sawyer has convinced Huck that Huck is literally begging to get a chance at handling the brush.

 

One thing leads to another and pretty quick, Tom has Huckleberry painting - under the closest of supervision and hours go by, during which Huck ends up doing all the work.

 

I mention this for two reasons.  First, in certain kinds of sales - particularly education sales - this is precisely the sales technique used by six-figures and up higher education sales persons.  Worse, people like me actually teach the technique and how to wrap up an institution in the robes of academia and reverse the term "sell" into the question "Why should we admit you to this [insert name of school here] hallowed institution?"

 

Why, people line up all day long to throw money at a school employing such techniques, spelt out so precisely by Tom Sawyer's use of the "reverse sale" (sometimes call the 'take-away' sale) to get what he wanted.  The more hallowed the halls the more pricey the ticket.  The standing (but not often bespoke) joke in higher ed is that virtually all schools use the same books and "chairs are cheap."  Why the local community college can teach the first couple of years just as well as the hallowed ivy places is deserving of introspection.

 

So, come to think of it, is how high ends cars (Lexi, beamers, 9-somethings, and so forth) are sold using the same tool.  A sure giveaway?  The salesperson is usually dressed better than the prospective purchaser, what being hallowed and all.

---

The second reason for mentioning this technique?  It works very well on visiting relatives who have not read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn lately, or if they have, they've forgotten the part about white-washing the fence.

 

Such literary forgetfulness can be put to good use, as the picture below of the visiting daughter-in-law carefully bush-hogging the west pasture demonstrates.

 

 

Of course, bush-hogging is a fine art that takes a lot of practice, you understand.

---

One of these days, I'm thinking about getting 40-acres of scrub land and some used heavy equipment and teaching Big City people the 'fine arts'.  I expect there are thousands of city-dwellers who'd love to get their hands on a backhoe, grader, and maybe a D-6.  Toss in some arc-welding, how to use a cutting torch, and how to drive a concrete mixer, and I might even be able to get  a hallowed hall built.  Provided I can get accreditation so as to be able to offer Pell grants, Stafford, and PLUS loans, of course.

 

---

Monday April 18, 2011

Special Update

Rating Drops

With the Dow down more than 200 (for now) seems like my long-suffering put options are scratching their way back toward breakeven.  One of the drivers has been the drop in the US debt rating by S&P this morning  The next kick came when the National Association of Homebuilders reported their Housing Index (done with Wells Fargo) dropped back a point.

 

I was only half-kidding about ending down 159 today...we'll let that bet ride for now...

 

Tax Day!

Mondays are always taxing, but this one is especially so.  Got to hand it to the daily UrbanDictionary for our word of the day around here: Intaxication which they define as getting all happy about getting a refund, until you realize it was your money in the first place.

---

A Bloomberg piece out Sunday reminds us that 45% of U.S. households don't any income tax and that makes tax reform all that much harder.

 

I've gone round & round on what the fairest tax would be an national sales tax but with no tax on food, cars which get 60 MPG or more, rent, or building materials..  The rest could be a flat-rate 10% consumption tax for everyone.

 

Pretty clear why I'll likely never be elected to any office other than dog catcher.  Still, here at Uretopia, we suffer from the notion that tax breaks ought to encourage the public to act more sensibly; crazy thought, huh?

 

Still, headlines like "Super rich see federal taxes drop dramatically" make the blood boil.  If the number of poor paying no tax is up, and the number of rich paying less is also up, then I guess that leaves commoners like you and me to BOHICA.

 

Gold Bug Note

Not every day you read about the second largest college endowment (after Hahvahd) taking delivery of a billion dollars in gold bullion, which is being held for them in New York.

---

I can't think of anyone in NY I'd trust with a $100 bill, let alone any gold, but that's my suspicious nature.  NY is at the other end of the think fast, speak slowly scale, last time I was there.

 

Markets: Tanks a Lot!

I'm sitting here this morning wondering if the worm has turned down on Wall Street, since after last week's minor decline, the market seems to be set for further downside this week.  World markets were down somewhat overnight for a couple of reasons:

• For one, China has raised its bank reserve ratio.  This is seen as inflation-fighting.

• Talk of Greece defaulting on its debt would of course be disastrous, but let's think this over seriously and soberly:  How long can how many countries spend more than they bring in before the whole global system blows over?

• Talk of PORTUGAL defaulting on its debt would of course be disastrous, but let's think this over seriously and soberly: How long can how many countries spend more than they bring in before the whole global system blows over?

• Talk of SPAIN defaulting on its debt would of course be disastrous, but let's think this over seriously and soberly: How long can how many countries spend more than they bring in before the whole global system blows over?

For such a [purportedly/allegedly] smart bunch of folks it's like some of these people trading just woke up to the  Global Debt Spree.  Seriously...WTF... are you and I geniuses for connecting these dots months ago?

 

The Treasury Secretary says congress will have to raise the debt limit, like that's a shocking revelation.

 

GlobalRev Continues...

The silly 'death dance' between the West and "terrorism" continues (along with most of the West living far above its means at the expense of indigenous peoples) unabated and working itself out as GlobalRev.  And no, the West isn't really interested in solving anything because War has been monetized to the degree that without it we'd have another 3-points higher unemployment and we're assuming that cruise missiles have a "Use by:" date on them.

 

So, not surprise that the global rebellion (which mostly about bad government and food/standard of living) continues.

• Jordan Islamists are warning government not to mess with peaceful demonstrations.

• At least 10 people have been wounded in Yemen's demonstration today.

• Then we have those Croatian protests, but don't tell anyone in the State Department, because it was hard enough for them to come up with MENA (middle east, north Africa) as an acronym; no telling with how they'll fit Greece, Spain, Portugal, Croatia (and add your state here when budgets come up) into their next effort.

• Then there's Afghanistan's woes which rattle along with another suicide bomber.

• In Libya, Gaddafi is still there, and that continues to be our poster-country for the arms industry.  We will end no war before its time...

See previous headline about US debt going up...we're all in the global debt meltdown and unless the rules of physics get repealed this week, odds of the global crash are 100%, it's just a matter of how soon it arrives and whether it works out peacefully, or otherwise, in your neighborhood.

 

The World Bank president says the world is just one more shock away from a full-blown crisis.  Like we need a teleprompter to figure that one out.

 

Banking Note

Besides the nearly 88 branches of six banks that were re'orged by the FDIC on Friday, we were also reminded that easy money's hangover can hit credit unions, too. A credit union in Texas (Texas Credit Union of Richardson) has gone into conservatorship, along with one in Mesa, AZ (Vensure).

 

The Weak Ahead

Not much on the economic comedian's plate this morning.  A simple dart throw says the Dow will close down about 59 points, but not until clawing its way back from down over a hundred early...I mean if I was gonna throw a dart, that'd be it.  Don't like?  Then 159 down.  Why?

 

The Saudis have slashed oil output figuring they can get more dough if there's less supply.  Frigging gas is over $4 many places and here come supply cuts?  With friends like these....no doubt the additional money will be used to spread some money around the kingdom to quiet down GlobalRev'ing there.

---

National Association of Home Builders report comes out this morning - don't think I need to point at the floor on that one.  Government figures will be out on housing starts tomorrow,

 

According to last week's Federal Reserve Board H.6 Money Stocks report, the rate of M1 money creation is still zipping along at 13 percent for both the 3 month annualized rate as well as the 6-month annualized.

 

And, if last Friday's CPI report is swallowed whole, the two combine to give a picture of  continuing  9 point something percent deflation.

 

That knowledge, pluys a hundred dollar bill will get you into most poker games, but at least there's some skill involved there and you're playing against visible players, not ones slipping aces to the other players under the table.

 

Blue Flu Two

Reports are showing up around the net of a "Mystery Illness" which is plaguing oil spill workers.  Hard getting a sense of how widespread it is, but the role of dispersants is suspect for obvious reasons.

 

Ill Winds

243 tornados over just the past three days is what the Weather Service has counted, so far.  Body count is up to 45 and many more injured.

 

Up to 3-inches of snow is expected in Chicagoland.

 

Quake Watch

While we wait for the next biggie earthquake (later this month) interesting to notice the flurry of quakes up near Hawthorne, Nevada.  Long Valley Caldera?

 

Video Waning

Google, which had been kinda-sorta making a run in the direction of streaming video is closing down and suggesting users move their content to YouTube.

 

Should mention that YT is turning into a new small budget production outlet.

 

If you go into work today and the boss really gets on your nerves, you can always quite and go become a YT shorts star, though you might want to have a year's food and rent saved up - and who's got that?

 

Coping:  No Plane

You may remember last week I was tossing around whether Elaine & I should buy an air machine and take to the wild blue yonder for a next "Big Adventure" in life.  But, it was proving a difficult decision since there were so many factors involved:  financially, it's doable, I could find space at the local airport, the medical's fine, and the hundred other details (biennial flight review) but as much as  I wanted it, sometimes practicality sets in.

 

The margin - as of this morning) was 167 Against, while 157 voted for.

 

51.54% again - a close margin and it shows that other people are just as confused about it as I / we was/were/am.  (one of those oughta work right...)

---

The advice on the for side was pretty good:

Of course, yes, do it. Consider a Beech Bonanza, though.

---

Heck yeah! I have a rule my dad taught me to go by when I want something.....If you have the money to get something you want, just go ahead and get it. Then you won't need to spend time worrying about getting it, cuz now you have it! Problem solved!

---

Hell yes, sounds like you can afford it, so why not?

---

You'll have a better chance at running from the apocalypse, or "Armageddon outa here".

---

Am in the same quandary as you about the little planes, so I say go for it so I can see how it works out before I jump in..

---

Yes, but get a Cessna! A C-172,C-182 or C-180. I had a C-180 with an O470U Continental engine, 13 GPH, 140 KTS. Absolutely loved it and you pretty much can land anywhere including beaches. Had larger than factory tires but not huge. Yes get a plane!!!

---

You've been mulling this for long enough now...waiting for the right alignment to occur. I understand the cost/benefit analysis of it but there is also another way to look at this.

It's where the rising wedge meets the declining wedge i.e. Net worth/income meets age/mortality...actually the declining wedge is more of a ceiling.

How many flying years do you have left ???? I took a couple of lessons back in the 90's with full intentions of getting a license. Well here I am a lot older and no license. I let the monetary aspect overrule what I really wanted.

Are we at the point of throwing caution to the wind ?? I am beginning to think so . Bucket list etc.

I think you should do it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All some darned good reasons to buy it and just go for it. 

 

However, there were several standout reasons NOT to buy the plane among all the "no's" that wrote in.  Some of the most impacting:

George, please THINK for a few minutes. Almost all downside to purchase of a private plane.

1. Marks you to people in your area as wealthy and worthy of burglary or other criminal activity.

2. You ain’t getting younger dude (I’m 65) so how many good years with the mental acuity and physical prowess to safely operate do you imagine you have?

3. If you have it, you will want to use it a lot which will rack up recreational use, not deductible business use.

4. Cost of fuel is rocketing upward.

5. If things are so bad, you and Elaine think you have to flee in it, do you really want to survive that level of calamity and deal with the consequences?

6. However, potential upside would be charter, if you can pass the physical

---

For what it is worth from personal experience (military and civilian and a life time love for aviation..I've survived for some 67 years now LOL) you really do not want to mix the two; it's not worth it fiscally($$) nor mentally, and worse case could shorten, rather than broaden, your great career.

 

Keep flying to a safe sport/hobby and really enjoy it. Be a master at your business while leaving the driving to professional pilots. The insurance guidance of 20 hr/mo flying a powered aircraft (7 hrs/mo for sail planes) is a very real bench mark. Flying less than that I've personally experienced and survived the increased risks.

 

The real down side to flying ones own plane on business is "weather and whether". For example to get to an important meeting in Chicago on-time requires time consuming mental and physical activities which detract from your business and most importantly your safety. To compensate for weather you must factor in additional time on each side of the trip for contingencies. What is stressful is trying to decide "whether" or not to "take a chance" on good-to-go when prudence suggests an extra days delay...that process itself has killed too many people to be worth it.

 

With all the details of safely flying consuming your metal band width you will not be a top performer at the consulting site. I know just from being a road warrior for 30 years in my own business..driving all those extra risky hours instead of taking an extra night out, it is more critical when flying.

 

With all the fascination of the high tech aviation experience, I found that soaring, flying sail planes, satisfy's that yearning to fly with great emotional rewards (at much lower risk). I imagine it much like being on the ocean sailing a boat.

---

Hey George, I recognize your thirst for the left seat. Won't go into details but I have 6000 or so hours in left seat in light aircraft, plus an ATR, plus, plus.

 

Most folk who thirst for the left seat, couch it in the notion it will be invaluable to their this-or-that. Ya right, take 5 or 6 days and do a VFR flight plan each day from your home base to a 600 mile away destination. Each day review the aviation forecast for your route. At the end of the experiment check the number of times weather was good-to-go "gtg", vs. maybe vs. oh-shit.

 

Without lots of instrument time, vfr trips are at best "maybe" in terms of completion as planed The down side of having a modicum of instrument time is a false sense of security. When weather deteriorates en route on a vfr flight plan and you need an ifr clearance, doing so usually presents a very significant challenge to a newbie ifr pilot. Things can go bad in a blink of an eye. Finding yourself in the clouds with your eyes glazing down on the instruments in no way gives the comfort of back when you had the hood on and you could take if off at any moment. In the clouds the hood does not come off!!!

 

Always remember "never let the airplane get in front of you, especially on instruments" or your cooked.

 

BTW, most of my time is "single pilot auto pilot" in the NE corridor of the US. So I've been there, done that and have experienced many really tight situations. Years ago I should have written a book, oh well.

---

As the former owner of a Part 135 operation ( 9 Navajo Chieftains in passenger charter and freight) and owner of the Piper Aircraft Dealership in PHX many years ago, I view owning any aircraft today as a lose lose proposition. Not only the cost factor, but new FAR's and more restricted airspace make personal flying very challenging. Our last aircraft for personal use was a C172 (2008) We flew it all of 4 hours that year and the annual cost us over $2000.00-always more AD notes.

One of the old sayings in management is "Don't ask for input unless you're going to take it and follow it..."  That's kept me from making a lot of mistakes so even though it's possible, when I counted up the reasons, the cost of an airplane in today's world just don't stack up high enough to make sense.

 

The only reason sailing ever made sense was that I lived on the boat for 10-years, and I wouldn't trade a minute of that experience...even the scary ones when the Pacific is tossing 18-foot rollers around in the fog off central California.  Otherwise boats are just fiberglass lined holes in the water into which you pour money.

 

So for now, I'm going to stick with the practical.  But as long as there's still gasoline, a little bit of simple irresponsibility seems in order to desperately cling to youth...so we've got the parts on the way to put the go-kart back in order....

 

Around the Ranch:  Radio Notes, Guests

A reader asked me a while back for more details on the new Kenwood TS-590S HF radio I bought a few weeks back, but it turns out there's no need to.  Just pick up the new issue of QST (the monthly ham radio mag from www.arrl.org ) and you'll find a whole lab report on it. 

---

Visiting kids seem to be having a good time, but this staying up to 10 PM when trying to wake up at 4:30 isn't as much fun as it was when I was young, say  50'ish.  The jury's still out on whether there's really a lack of vitality as we age, or whether it's just the long delayed arrival of common sense.  More likely, since I'm an ugly cuss, is it's a deep down desire to get more beauty sleep so I don't have to run past mirrors.

---

So far, I've held common sense at bay, although the no plane decision almost smacks of it but I won't be too worried until I make several sensible decisions back-to-back.  Then we all should worry.