George Ure

In case you didn’t drop by the website during the day Thursday, there were a bunch of experimental changes going on in order to keep UrbanSurvival at the “head of class” in a numbers of areas.

There is – if no one has ever talked to your before – a huge battlefield for your mind that’s based on such subtle things as how fast a web page loads.

For example, if you want the fastest experience with UrbanSurvival, you should use the https://urbansurvival.com address.  That’s because if you put in the https://urbansurvival.com address (the www address) it is slower by a small fraction of a second.

When I got up this morning (3:30 AM) and was standing in the shower (negative ion junkie), I thought you might be interested in how some of this stuff works behind the scene.

I won’t go into the whole “battle plan” of how to move UrbanSurvival’s rankings up, but one on-page thing you may notice in the upper right-hand corner is that I now have a simple, easy-to-use link to our Facebook, Google Plus, and LinkedIn social media pages.

I’m no fan of social media, but it’s there because as things have evolved the major search engines are now penalizing sites without social media.  It’s like a bad idea has just gotten institutionalized.

So we play along with the game – reluctantly.

For a brief time yesterday, I have a fancy link to the Google+ page up, but after the head-clearing shower this morning it went away:  It was eating up too many milliseconds of page loading time.

Now to the point of my explaining all this:  In the grand Battle For Your Mind, there are some very subtle factors in your behavior that you’re likely not even conscious of.  So let’s take three of the top news websites at random and see how their page-loading time works.

For the purposes of this discussion, let’s agree to use www.gtmetrix.com which offers a dandy – first class – web analytics suite.

I ran three page load speeds and here’s the fastest page load times for each of our samples:

• CNN:  13.32 seconds
• Fox News:  5.90 seconds
• NY Times:  8.47 seconds
• UrbanSurvival:  1.30 seconds

There are a million technical details that will change your performance.  For example, all of these tests were without the www.prefix.  Why anyone would type the www. anymore is just a damn mystery to me.

Then there’s the matter of where you are located and what kind of home or work internet speeds you have.  A 50 MB connection will have a different view of the world from a dial-up user.  While the NY Times shows 8.47 in the test above, I rank it on some other speed test sites and it was down in the 5-second category.

There’s a general lesson here, if you look:

Humans are creatures of convenience – they will oftentimes take the “easy” or “fast” solutions tin life.  And that is a very big deal because most people don’t consciously think-through their decisions when it comes to media inputs.

Next time you hit the web and notice a “breaking news” story, pay attention to your “choicing” of which website to focus on.  Thjen ask yourself:  “Am I on this website because of the quality of information?”  Or “Am I using it because it loads fast?”

This human bent toward impatience is why people in sales are always trying to start clocks on you, too:  “Hurry!  Offer Ends Tomorrow!”  “Order now, supplies are limited!”

That’s why the Goolge+ poster has been replaced with simple text links: 530 milliseconds of added page load time was in the “Are you kidding me?” category.

What it all comes down to his this:  There usually is no clock on most decisions in Life although if you’re a serious Type A,  be assured that I got up early this morning to do a little “Screaming at the milliseconds” for you, on your behalf.

You aren’t just what you think, but when you think, as well…

Who Do You Work For?

Since this is Friday (for most people) I’d remind you that what you do between quitting time Friday and “getting up time” Monday is what hugely defines the quality of your life.

Peoplenomics this weekend looks at work hours…a topic of great interest.  If it isn’t today, wait until Monday…

Digging Out, Day 2

I got through bills and banks and voicemails yesterday…though a couple of voicemails were dropped, so if I owe you a call, please call again today.

Today’s project list includes processing Peoplenomics subscriptions (both, lol) and then writing Peoplenomics.  After that it’s on to monitor repairs… *(gee what fun, huh?)

Waiting for me was a note from chief www.nostracodeus.com programmer Grady:

Folks are beginning to be impressed by the bullseyes we’ve been getting with Nostra.  Reader comments are increasing. But Alexa still says we’re. # 9,942,987 (up 4,694,905)

While you were in GIG Harbour I was in Sidney on Vancouver Island – A short 102 miles away. I went down to the beach and shouted a ‘hello’ to the south but no one answered.  ;-)

Must have been that south wind.

Several friends in the Seattle area called or left hate-mail because on the way out of town last Thursday I told the Tacoma Narrows Bridge toll-taker that we were taking the Sun hostage and we would be holding it for ransom until next summer.

Serious rains and storms up there ever since…But I did warn on this, right?

Cat Heaven

I raised the intriguing question yesterday when I asked about whether there could be a “Cat Heaven”” because that would be a “Mouse Hell.”

Long-time reader Bill is  Johnny-on-the-Spot with the answer, although Johnny would like his clothes back:

Since you seem so genuinely perplexed about the subject here is what the Saints (real spiritual Masters who are Godmen of which there are only 1, 2 or maybe 3 at any time) say about it:
Animals do not go to heavens or hells.  They are immediately reborn in a new body the next step up the evolutionary ladder.  They are not held responsible like humans for their actions, those are pre-programmed in each life.
So now you know, take it or leave it.  I heard it first hand from the current Godman.
Glad you are back home.  The ranch needs your looking after.

I’m not sure just who the “current Godman” is, since no name was given, but I’d love to tip a few with him…got some questions..

The War Against “The People?”

Speaking of interesting reads, Atom was wondering about this development:

“My coin dealer stated he has had to hire an attorney to attempt to get back $100,000 the government took from his bank account because they did not like his deposit pattern.

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(Palestine, Texas)  Just when I was beginning to think that our return to the ranch in the East Texas Outback couldn’t possibly be stranger, along comes and email from  reader Bob ujp in the square state of Kansas:

This is in the news in Kansas. The Journal World. Lawrence Ks. On 9-24-14

Gov. Brownback to proclaim Zombie Preparedness Month.

Kansas are being encouraged to prepare for an  invasion of the  living dead, with Gov. Sam Brownback scheduled to sign

A proclamation later this week declaring October Zombie Preparedness Month.

The state Division of Emergency Management says if residents are prepared for a zombie attack, they’re prepared for anything.

Deputy director Angee Morgan says the idea is to make people aware of the need to be ready for emergency situation like natural disasters, catastrophic storms, fires even a SWARM OF ZOMLIE.

Brownback is slated to sign the proclamation at 11:00 am Friday in his ceremonial office in the Statehouse.

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(Amarillo, TX)  We dispense with the usual Focus piece this morning to zoom in on our core-value:  Making and keeping your hard-earned money. 

There are multiple reasons for concern about market today and through Friday: everything from a terrorism strike to disease making it out of Africa, to things going badly in Iraq.  But the one that is the highest probability (for the moment) is of a major market downturn.  Signs and portents are mounting, so how do we play it?

After the short look at headlines, we review what our trading model and workflow approach then explore the options before us in terms any seasoned gambler can understand.

The River Card is about to be turned.

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(Albuquerque, NM)  You may notice that we didn’t make it to Amarillo on our return trip to Texas.  The simple reason is plain tired and swamped.  And when that happens, there’s nothing like 7-8 hours of sleep and a good meal.

Therefore, we abandoned our “casino highway” plans (we’ve been to the ones from west of hear eastwards in recent years, anyway.

So today we will make Amarillo, for sure, and with any luck even score an early check-in so I can get to work on Peoplenomics.

The topic this week is sizing up how global collapse will look as all the “sand in the gears” tries to grind the machinery of humans to junk.

The question posed on Monday as to when markets would come down with Ebola is a critical one.  A grand inflection point may be nearing…of the sort that will be in history books, that is, if anyone is left with time to read and write within just five short years.

The latest communiqué from my consigliore is cause for concern because the projected numbers which we had put on Peoplenomics recently for subscribers to consider planning around as “worst case” are quickly turning into “most likely” case.

The Ebola news is NOT getting better, just getting worse by the day as the CDC finally pulls it’s head out of the sand and starts looking at the problem realistically:
CDC doubles the number of estimated current cases … which moves the case projection of infections forward by one month to about 1 million by the end of January (would indicate 500,000 by end of Dec, NOT January).
———————————-

“DC scientists conclude there may be as many as 21,000 reported and unreported cases in just those two countries as soon as the end of this month, according to a draft version of the report obtained by The Associated Press. They also predict that the two countries could have a staggering 550,000 to 1.4 million cases by late January.”

Nominally, the decline in markets Monday was blamed on the Chinese who are standing back from additional economic stimulus at this time.

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This is not a moot question to be asking.  First US forces are in Africa now.

Oh, sure, the epidemiologists have been writing up the propagation math and the RO is still too high and the response is just entering ramp-up, but to me the fascinating question which we raised a while back might be stated something like this:

“If the Black Plague were to show up today, how many deaths (distributed in what geographical manner) would be required for the disease to trigger a “kindling point” beyond which market collapse occurs as people flee for their lives and don’t want to be the “last ones out?”

I don’t believe humans have had to think in these terms, before.  About the closest example I could think of was the Italian Plague which was temporally near the blow-off Tulip[mania event in Holland in the 1630s?  From Wikipedia:

The Italian Plague of 1629–31 was a series of outbreaks of bubonic plague which occurred from 1629 through 1631 in northern Italy. This epidemic, often referred to as Great Plague of Milan, claimed the lives of approximately 280,000 people, with the cities of the Lombardy and Veneto regions experiencing particularly high death rates. This episode is considered one of the later outbreaks of the centuries-long pandemic of bubonic plague which began with the Black Death.

OK, Tulip mania doesn’t fit.  But the Kipper und Wipper of the 30-Years War most certainly does and it may hold some instruction on how counties handle their affairs when there’s a plague going on contemporaneously with major warfare.  Sound familiar?

Starting around 1621, city-states in the Holy Roman Empire (based in what plague-ridden country? –GU)  began to heavily debase currency in order to raise revenue for the Thirty Years’ War, as effective taxation did not exist.

The name refers to the use of tipping scales to identify not-yet-debased coins, which were then taken out of circulation, melted, mixed with baser metals such as lead, copper or tin, and re-issued. Often the states did not debase their own currency, but instead manufactured low-value imitations of coins from other territories and then spent them in yet other territories as far as possible from their own lands, hoping that the resulting damage would then occur to the economy of those other regions rather than their own.

Which really has a nice rhyme to it, since even now, we see how the Federal Reserve has increased the amount of money in circulation in the past year by 6.5% while the cost of living and the GDP are going up at nowhere near these rates.

And we’re in a marvelous stock bubble due in part to the cost of money being essentially zero for the big fund drivers.  So what’s not to love?

As my consigliore advised me Sunday:

The Washington Post Sunday said the CDC is now saying maybe 500,000 by end of January.  It shows up elsewhere, too.

If you roll my projections below forward from December it comes out to 495,000 at the end of January … which is 500,000+- as you round out the numbers.  Of course if that many are infected we will NOT be getting good numbers out of the HOT ZONE at all since people will be fleeing for their lives, NOT keeping statistics.

REMEMBER …. People at risk, even those already exposed WILL LIE LIE LIE  to get out of the HOT ZONE go to somewhere where they have a chance to get decent  medical care if they have been exposed, or to avoid being exposed at all …

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(Reno, NV)  Peoplenomics reports are always a joy to write – and unlike the UrbanSurvival columns, they have a serious-as-a-heart-attack angle to them because it’s where we get to nail down key aspects of the future and work out strategies for dealing with it.  This morning we put down four “corner posts”  that define our future.

This morning we offers two key insights:  One is a further discussion of Peak Oil, which as I’ve hinted in previous columns, and what’s really going on when you lift the covers of Ukraine, Syria, ISIS, Africa, and many other “hot spots” around the world.  If you remember our “thinking-framework” of the Manufacturer’s Resource Wars, there’s much to be relearned and  applied to this moment.

Beyond that, we assess the new revolution by the programmers from the 99% who are in the process of overturning the One Percent in a gloriously subtle way…and a way that will lead us in future weeks to redefine some investment criteria for stock screens and other investment vehicles.  Oh – and my buddy Rick Ackerman (of www.rickspicks.com ) lays out where gold could be going.  (If you’re not a subscriber, it’s similar to Robin Landry’s worst case, which is none too reassuring.  When smart guys with differing background begin to line up…)

So sit back, load the bean, and we’ll launch into “What It All Means...” written (somewhat appropriately) in our overnight suite upstairs from a Reno casino; where unlike markets or Washington pronouncements, we can at least see honest odds being posted.

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(Canyonville, OR)  The drive from Purdy, WA (a western outpost of Gig Harbor, an outpost of Tacoma that’s in turn an outpost of Seattle, that’s a subset of Washington State) down to our first night out on the long road back to Texas, was punctuated mostly by looking at how branded Americans are.

Take their vacation travel trailers, for example:  Elaine collected a bunch of names:

Hide Out

Polar Bear

Cougar

Koala

Toy Box

Big Foot…

And the list went on. 

As we were remarking on people’s propensity to self-brand (like we need to go Mark of the Beasting, right?)  along about Roseburg, OR. we saw a truly individualized brand.

Pulled by a classic Ford Econoline Van was a self-painted trailer which has been attacked by mad men with fluorescent paints.  It was actually done quite nicely.  But it was the message that was so cool:

Imagine Chillin

We loved it. 

Obviously (to us, anyway) the person pulling what was underlying it all, what looked like a 20-year old Shasta, had looked at some of the wildlife named rigs and come up with a far cooler message that conveyed their purpose in retreating to nature.

But it just goes to show you how deeply embedded this “urge to brand stuff” has become.

Far Beyond Trailers, too…

If it was only a matter of a compulsion to mark up trailers, that would be fine.  But it’s not.

Because Seattle has been somewhat successful in football, as of late, there are so many 12th Man flags flying on cars that it would make you think there’s been a military occupation of the region by the 12th Infantry, or some such.

Understand that it’s the little stuff that you don’t think about that embeds this branding tribalism in your head.

How many cars that passed us on the road carried advertisements for various car dealers, on them?  Virtually all of them.

Am I the only guy who (when buying a car) says “I will do my own license plate frame (plain, no wording) and don’t even think about putting some BS dealer badging on the back of my car!

If someone forks over $30-thousand (and more) to buy a car, they need to be thinking about all possible revenue streams to pay for that puppy.  And selling ad space to the dealer is one possible source of revenue.

“If you want your dealer decal on the back of my car, knock another $1,000 pretax off the price.  If you want to put one of your stickers on the factory paint job, you can buy a placement from $650 for that.

If you won’t strip off all the crap, I can buy a car anywhere and most people will take my money rather than lose a sale over free billboards…”

It’s a matter of being circumspect, I believe. 

It doesn’t stop at cars…there are alligators and taverns and heaven knows what else on clothing, too.  It just doesn’t stop.  I make an exception for Elaine’s Hooters T-shirt, so I can’t claim perfection.

Kids are jammed into the game from preschool and once they start packing a lunch, it will be in some rock and roll band’s lunch box.

Their shoes will have Abdias’ name, or a Nike checkmark on it.  But not Elaine, or me.  A Coach purse is a look for women and Johnson-Murphy loafers don’t require a stencil.  Jessica Simpson clothing is more a look than a logo, too, methinks.

But does it really mean anything what brand is on a pair of sweats, for crying out loud?

My distain doesn’t seem widespread.  But I think there are a lot of us who are 60-somethings who can see this thanks to car designer George Barris.  One of the hallmarks of his work was de-chromed, clean lines and no, the Bat Mobile didn’t have a dealer decal on it, at least last time I saw it, which was years ago. But then again, the Bat Man logo has come to life on its own – and on lunch boxes…

Next time you buy a product, look at the logo size in relation to the product.  Size of logo has mostly nothing to do with how an item performs.  What it really indicates in the level of mental and social-economic  acuity of the product owner, as much as anything else.

The one car that we admired yesterday (just outside of Portland) was a black 7-series Beamer that was devoid of advertising…and, we though, “Ah, a truly smart fellow…” which may have something to do with why he could afford a brand new 7-series.

Sign Posts Up Ahead

Elaine’s always looking at proximity of signs to one another.

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(Gig Harbor, WA)  As we head out for the return to the East Texas Outback – just 2,270 miles, or so, down the road, one of the discussion points will be “What’s ahead for the economy…and how do we model it?”

Take the Fed decision yesterday:  It was a foregone conclusion that there would be no rate hike and further, that the Fed will eventually talk itself into a problem.  There’s a very thin like between telling markets enough that they will react positively, to telling them too much and panicking people.

The EU seems to have done a reasonable job of market communication of late, by simply saying (in no uncertain terms) that “…we will do whatever it takes…” to keep their economy on an even keel.

The Fed, in trying to telegraph its (eventual someday) rate hike miles in advance so that there’s a smooth transition from holding bonds makes sense to holding equities makes sense, is in a terrible spot.

We’ll get into it more in Peoplenomics this weekend, but the short version is that computers are now spawning disruptive technologies to compete with the established business paradigm and that’s likely to blind-side traditional investment, in the same way autos and radio and mass advertising blinded the economy of the Roaring Twenties.

“So what does a flow-motion Fed Reaction mean?”

My friend Rick Ackerman (Rick’s Picks) told me once about a pattern he saw long ago with Fed announcements.    I haven’t talked to him for a few years, but the basic idea was that when an announcement is make, you get a Big Reaction move, then the commercials drive prices back, and then you get the larger move in the direction indicated immediately after announcement time.

So let’s look at what happened on Wednesday:  Come Fed announcement time, the market went into a brief but significant rally.  But toward the close things had backed off a good bit from the day’s highs.

So come the open this morning, or by the close today, we should see if the theory is still in play.  Although, in fairness, back in the day, it was usually on a much shorter time-scale.  The initial move might have been 10-minutes of manic move, then a pullback (or pull up) and then the move would resume, usually in the same session.

market patterns change over time, though.  And it’s possible that with the advent of more algorithmic trading, we may see some news-reaction scenarios like this one, stretch out more over time, as the behavior of asymmetry of expectation in the markets moves in new ways with computational trading.

I can share that my proprietary Peoplenomics Trading Model is up 311 points for the week, as of last night’s close, and it looks like this week will push us out to 21-weeks of bullishness while other indicators have been indecisive.  Not that it’s a sure-fire decision-making tool, but I’ll take any lighthouse in a storm over none at all, any day of the week.

Even Thursdays.

Dow futures were up 40 when I looked and the S&P looked to gain almost 7. So as much as I love to be short, the Trading Model has been a huge help; a kind of sanity support in truly insane global markets.  Gold is down a good bit, and we may be seeing the workout of Robin Landry’s long-term prediction of gold under $1,000 before this is all done. 

Spider gold share (GLD) was down one percent yesterday and closed at $117.54.  With the 52-week low at $114.46, a break lower than that could be ugly and set up a real gold panic.  If the big Elliott view is right (Robin’s a patient fellow, like me) then there really is a case for GLD to drop down to the $79-$82 range in the intermediate term.  Multiply times 10 and you can pencil out a gold price ballpark.  Gold was down $17 on the futures market – a buck and a half down maybe on GLD today…we’ll see.  Not investment advice, just talk about chums and a dart toss, yeah?

But, of course, I am not selling my lone gold coin, because things could reverse in a heartbeat.  And weith all the counterfeits out there?  Yucko.

And despite Max Keiser and other “true believers in crypto money’s fine sales efforts, Bitcoins have fallen back to $447 and there’s now an Elliott case for a further retreat there as well.  But, for that to happen the previous bottom in the $350 range would need to fail first.  Then the case for sub $100 Bitcoins comes along, but again, time and charts will tell.

Hard to find a winning horse at this-here race track, ain’t it?

Apple’s Elegant Engineering

I’m not going to take back everything I’d questioned about Apple’s decision to make a $400 watch that requires a phone, but iOS 8 has gotten an “atta-boy” from us for their elegant engineering which will keep everyone but the owners of one of their new smart phones from getting at personal data – including police.

There’s a good write up on it in the Washington Post this morning, but here’s where things get interesting:  The theoretical question goes something like this:

“If a phone is sold in America, and law enforcement/anti-terrorism wants to get at data (with a search warrant) should the make of the phone be required to put in a back door?”

Obviously, iOS 8 answers that by taking the tools out of even the company’s hands.  “We ain’t got access either, boyz…”  But the question ahead is whether the three-letter agencies will require an Apple “back door” because they might make a case that Apple security might facilitate money movement or planning by ISIS or whoever…

Damn difficult balancing act, to be sure.  A disruptive technology?  Maybe…

More after this…

              

Housing Starts: (1) Ea. Size Small

Turd:

Privately-owned housing starts in August were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 956,000. This is 14.4 percent (±7.9%) below the
revised July estimate of 1,117,000, but is 8.0 percent (±11.2%)* above the August 2013 rate of 885,000.
Single-family housing starts in August were at a rate of 643,000; this is 2.4 percent (±9.7%)* below the revised July figure of 659,000.
The August rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 304,000.

This oughta flush out a few bears.

Pick a War, Any War: I’ll Show You the Money

Do I have to do all the work around here?

OK, Ukraine then:  Russia seems pleased with the autonomy law for eastern Ukraine – so says the WSJ

Most of the Western world (outside the Washington and Brussels Cartels) think that Ukraine has been about what? Principles, right?  Freedom!  Uh-huh…you bet.

Wrong, bucko. 

It’s all about Peak Oil.  Ever hear (in the MSM) about the energy play that underlies all ths war-making posturing on both sides?  From a USGS report:

The Dnieper-Donets basin is almost entirely in Ukraine, and it is the principal producer of hydrocarbons in that country. A small southeastern part of the basin is in Russia. The basin is bounded by the Voronezh high of the Russian craton to the northeast and by the Ukrainian shield to the southwest. The basin is principally a Late Devonian rift that is overlain by a Carboniferous to Early Permian postrift sag. The Devonian rift structure extends northwestward into the Pripyat basin of Belarus; the two basins are separated by the Bragin-Loev uplift, which is a Devonian volcanic center.

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(Gig Harbor, WA)  As soon as this morning’s news portion of the column is done, we’ll be piling into the car to begin the long road back to Texas after being off the ranch for fully 5-weeks now.

Along the way, we’ve had a lot of fun…and from an economics research perspective, I’ve gained all kinds of new insights from talking to people ranging from restaurant wait-staff to  marijuana growers, to check-out clerks.

One of the key insights is into how the “App-italism” will, in coming years, be the “straw that broke the camel’s back” with regard to old-style capitalism.  That’s up this weekend in a Peoplenomics.com piece I call ‘Computational Communism.”  Or, “How modern Bolsheviks eat Apples.”

Life/paradigm-changing stuff and worth the trip in and of itself.

I’d like to thank Kelly (and Dan) for making our www.airbnb.com stay so comfortable.  When Kelly’s not building wedding cakes and such with her www.tortesntarts.com business, she’s rebuilding houses and all kinds of neat stuff.    Fine example of a high-energy PNW person who has skill, gumption, and hustle…

But enough about travels, now to the subject at hand:  How to get back to Texas:

I’ve been fascinated for as long as I can remember, with the four words Investment, Risk, Speculation, and Gambling.

Since we are “what we think” (more so than what we eat, cakes and tarts excepted), I think it’s important to have a firm grasp on the subtle differences in meaning between words.

One of the things that distinguishes a really sharp mind, from a rather dull one, is in how we use words.  The professions where this “word-use” stuff include law, engineering, and medicine.  Which have what in common?  Oh, maybe higher average incomes?  You see, precision in language is a precedent to precision in thinking.  The more precise the thinker, the more precise their language.

It’s true when comes to money, as well.

As Elaine’s got first turn at the wheel this morning (she’ll find out when she wakes up, lol!) I’ve got a bunch of thoughts rattling around in my head on point.

Investing:  This is the art of deploying money or some other asset with the expectation of a positive return, either in money or goods.

Risk:  Exposing one’s self to danger or possibility of loss.

Speculation: Investment with the hope of gain, but risk of loss.

Gambling: Taking [more] risky action with the hope of gain.

Our road back to Texas will be over what I call “Ure’s Casino Highway.” The idea is to state-hop from casino to casino.

Granted, we could take the direct route, and stay in OK hotels in the $100/night class, but the problem with many of these is they just aren’t very exciting.  Nothing to tickle the imagination or teach new things.

You simply go in, plunk down the credit card, go to room, get lousy to-go food, and pay $20-bucks for a movie that you know will be on Amazon streaming in 2-months for $2.99.

At a casino, on the other hand, there is always a variety of ‘stuff” to do.

For example, since we’re going to the Seven Feather’s resort tonight, in about the middle or Oregon, we will (for the same price as a conventional hotel) be able to chat with RVers – a fascinating sub-culture very much like live aboard sailors.  That doesn’t cost anything, except a “Hi, howdy, how you doing?”

Some casinos have golf courses which is a nice diversion if you have time, like walking, and aren’t too embarrassed by your swing.

Then there’s the better choice of food.  LOTs of choices at most casino-hotels.

And about that $20 (or maybe $40) that would otherwise have gone into movies?  There’s a fine assortment of potential ways to break even.

Which brings us around to what gambling is.

I know the statistics are poor, especially on things like slots,. but I’ve seen many a long-shot pay for a whole vacation.  But, beyond that, there’s the honing of one’s intuition that came come.  Elaine does pretty well on things like slots or machine poker when she waits to find a machine that “calls to her.”

Given a choice, Life is a lot more fun when there’s a definable element of risk to it.  To me, the tradeoff between a movie rental in a hotel or a stroll around a casino floor is a no-brainer.  Especially when daughter Allison is becoming something of a craps shooter.,..a game I sort of understand, but plan to understand a lot better by time a week from now rolls around.

My pet theory is that by becoming a better gambler, one can become a better investor.  Since, when comes to investing, I tend to “take my bets off the table early” – which has caused me to miss a fair number of big moves over the years.

On the flip side, gambling is different in that I tend to leave my bets ride too long, and as a result, don’t walk out when I’m ahead.

So you see how this is a personality-balancing process as much as anything.  Or, at least that’s what I tell myself when tomorrow, the odds are that we’ll b e down $40, but we’ll have more – and better – memories than some passing movie on the tube..

Drop by tomorrow and I’ll give you the results of tonight’s “personality-balancing” exercise.

After that, we’re off to the Peppermill in Reno..and from there, where else?  Probably the Texas Station (a smaller casino than the biggies on the strip) in Las Vegas.

Whether we have time for a stopover at our favorite place in Payson, AZ, is up in the air, but there are several gambling emporia in the Albuquerque area that have called to us over the years.

As we age, it becomes apparent that Life is a collection of memories.  And to our way of thinking, being an active player on the stage of life doesn’t involve ordering room service and over-priced movies. 

This position is subject to change, depending on tonight’s outcome. 

Geophysical Question/Project

Say, here’s a weird one for you:  Remember we had a small earthquake up here this week?  (4.0)?  Bothered my writing when I was working on Peoplenomics yesterday morning.

I thought I noticed that there was a minor change in cold water temperatures (~5-degrees warmer) after the quake (yesterday and again this morning).  Ours apartment/condo/home up here is on well water and not too far from the center of action.

Hmmm…I got to wondering:  Is there a possible method here to assess earthquake risk?  E.G. a change in ground temperature?

Turns out I’m not the only one asking this question.  Some Iranian earthquake researchers have been looking at this, too.  In 2010 they published a paper on it…

Abstract.

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