George Ure

As I await a boatload of research materials, that may give some additional insight into “Joe Brandt’s Dream” to show up, it’s nice to know that The World of Woo-Woo is still presenting life in very non-ordinary ways.  Such as this report from Susan…

I’ve had a couple of woo events happen this week, completely out of the norm for me, the first one didn’t strike me as anything odd until I experienced the second one that completely freaked me out. 

I take my five month old lab for a walk around the property every evening at sunset, she always carries her tennis ball with her on these walks.  I always keep an eye on where the ball is because we are walking in a hay field and it needs to be kept clear.  So we are out for our walk and she runs from behind me and as I look down at her she still has the ball in her mouth.  It’s a purple and red tennis ball and she’s a black lab, so it’s very easy to see.  She runs in front of me about 20 feet and stops, starts sniffing the ground, and looking around.  When I get up to her I can see she doesn’t have her ball, so I start looking around, It is no where to be found.  We still haven’t found that ball after four days, the area is completely flat, there is nothing but low cut dead grass, mud, and a few sprouts of green coming up, no shrubs no trees.

The second one is unnerving for me personally. I was building a new raised bed for the garden.  I’m making it out of some left over galvanized panels and some 4×4 from previous projects. I’m doing this by myself, wrestling 10 foot pieces of tin to make them stand is not the easiest thing in the world, so I basically tacked it together and then go back and square it up.  I was on the last post and the bottom of it needed to come over a little for the post to be standing straight.  I am using 3″ brass wood screws with a star head and some nuts with a metal lip around it to act as a washer since I didn’t have any left.  They fit perfectly and there is no way for the screw head to go through the hole of the nut. So I start backing out the screw and it was like my field of vision did a quick little quarter turn, the nut came flying at my feet and the screw was gone.  I only had the screw backed out about a half-inch-if that.  I just stood there, still bent over, drill still in place from where the screw USED to be, looking at the nut between my feet.  So once I snapped out of it, I tore that area apart, I couldn’t find the screw or any piece of it.  So I went ahead and put another screw in the same hole and had no problem getting it in (thinking the screw had broke off in there).  I don’t know how to explain it but it was just gone.

Love Ure page, Susan

Love Ure report, too.

The problem with it is that it’s typical of the kind of reports we get all the time.  Someone will place an object somewhere – and when they go back – POOF!  Object gone.  Then – anywhere from a few days to months, the object will appear back where it is supposed to be.

I have lots of theories about things that could make such phenomena occur.  But on the screwing part of your report, I would be very interested, both cases, actually, about the weather at the time.

A lot of these anomalous phenomena seem to be associated with darkness or very low clouds.

I’m sure you’ve come to the possible conclusion that humans are sort of “on an ant farm” for a higher intelligence?  It’s a logically consistent line of thinking because it fits a whole passel of facts into one neat little box.

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One of the nicest E.O.Q.W.D’s  (end of quarter window dressings)  I’ve seen – the Dow popped up 134 points on Monday and the techs were up over 1% as the Fed boss came out and started to hint around at what I told you would be an inevitable necessity:  The Fed is going to print for as long as it takes to get the economy back to the old “way it used to be.”

The Fed, where it seems the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model is pushing policy to some extent, seems to be beset by the lack of a good algorithm to project how people will revise their long-term lifestyles in the face of repeated screwings.

What’s amazing to me is that the Fed boss sees what Americans are feeling yet her faith in “the models” is still pretty darn high.  That’s why she can say on the one hand:

“…In some ways, the job market is tougher now than in any recession. The numbers of people who have been trying to find work for more than six months or more than a year are much higher today than they ever were since records began decades ago. We know that the long-term unemployed face big challenges. Research shows employers are less willing to hire the long-term unemployed and often prefer other job candidates with less or even no relevant experience.”

But then turn around, on the other, and promise to repeat the same policy approaches that got us there in the first place…In other words, they’re going to keep being accommodative.

Yellen spoke the answer, but maybe didn’t hear herself:

“…If unemployment were mostly structural, if workers were unable to perform the jobs available, then the Federal Reserve’s efforts to create jobs would not be very effective. Worse than that, without slack in the labor market, the economic stimulus from the Fed could put attaining our inflation goal at risk. In fact, judging how much slack there is in the labor market is one of the most important questions that my Federal Reserve colleagues and I consider when making monetary policy decisions, because our inflation goal is no less important than the goal of maximum employment.

The problem faced by the Fed is simple.  As the number of people losing jobs to offshoring and robotics continues to increase, and as self-driving cars and other employment “category killers” are coming down the pike, printing all the money in the world will not keep up with the voracious growing need for increased tax revenues to minimally feed and house a massively increasing underclass.

If there’s a failing to DSGE model reliance, it is likely that it fails to address society-wide tipping points that are now coming into view, as outlined in Saturday’s Peoplenomics report.

What’s coming to gobble the Western Empires within three or four years is a variant of “future shock” – a term coined by futurist Alvin Toffler.

In Peoplenomics, we labeled this FutureCrock because in addition to disruptive technologies, not the least of which will be modular manufacturing (there go more jobs!) we will have the added bonus of mass cognitive dissonance igniting SocialRevs right and left.

The Fed boss was (perhaps rightly) proud when she pointed to local Fed steps to help communities get back on their feet:

“…Leadership recruitment is also at the heart of a grassroots-oriented program called Economic Avenue that was developed by the Kansas City Fed. In Northeast Kansas City, Kansas, residents and neighborhood leaders are forming a leadership council that will have responsibility for managing the program, which aims to create and grow local businesses, create jobs, and promote homeownership. The bank’s community development staff is providing education and training to get the council off the ground, will measure and evaluate

But in a counter to that, a sane observer of mass change would have to note that humans are self-organizing and that there is another “Economic Avenue” being built spontaneously.  And that all lives under the headings of “barter and bitcoins.”

Unlike the global world order that’s struggling to market a global tax system to support global government, or the US government which is printing paper six-ways to Sunday to attempt a restart, the new internal breakaway civilization (NuCiv) is laying out its own alternative financial foundation.

I don’t think Ms. Yellen has ever worked construction (just a guess, mind you, but I think a safe one).  But a concrete worker would recognize what’s going on in a heartbeat.

“What’cha got is a crumbling foundation.  So I can either mix up a sack of topping mix and trowel it on to make it look good, so it will pass inspection for a little while.  Or, I can rebuild the foundation right, one section at a time…”

The wise observer will see both tracks in play:  The Fed is opting for the topping mix.  But off on the sidelines, barter is booming and so is BitCoin.  Regular people will find workable solutions, even if it means trading in silverware and home gardening.

Crumbling Foundations Detail

As our work on pricing has projected, BitCoin has continued to fall.  As of this morning, it’s down to $482 and likely to continue falling toward our projected possible low of $325.

The reason is – in part – the IRS guidance of last week that BitCoins would be treated as property.

However, lest you think Capitalism of the Old School sort is out of the woods, guess again.

One group of the April Fools today are likely to be the high frequency Wall St.

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This is no April Fools deal, here.  This is the real schiznit.  The Big UGLY sucker in the corner no one wants to talk about.,  And my buddy David (goat ranchering up in Arkysaw) nails it squarely:

Funny you should mention it…

And we have to give up on planned obsolescence.

If the alleged environmentalist of our generation were the least bit honest planned obsolescence would be the first place to start an environmental movement.

It always fascinated me when the were millions available to the “movement” but you could not find an honest (useful idiot) that had contributed more then $5.

Yes, Brother Dave gets the only gold star I am going to pass out all day long.  He and I both see that the reason we can’t have a happy ending to the present worldview is that no one is addressing the number one problem:  You can’t have constant growth in a fixed system forever.

Something is going to break.  It’s all just a matter of time.  Simple as that.  D’oh.

Think about this:  If everything lasted three times as long, we’d all only have to work one third of the time!

Followed logically, our present trajectory nets us a planet in 100 years where everyone has a 100” TV, a car that gets 900 miles per gallon.  Oh, and everyone is dead because with the LBGT movement succeeding, there are no kids being anymore and……

Hello?  Can we please – just this once – answer the right question instead of going of on the BS bait and switch? This year’s car, this year’s style, this year’s phone, this year’s Office/operating system and whatever…

Please, tell me you’re not so dumb to miss it?   The environmental movement is –  Yet Another Distraction (YAD) – because no one starting at the get go and that because no one wants to admit planned obsolescence is what kills us all. 

So bring on over-production (and let’s over-medicate, too, while we’re at it) because that way, we can all “green police” ourselves into oblivion.

Save a tree, kill a planet.  Save a whale, create a government job.  Ban cow farts, more regulators.  Blame climate change…and here’s another tax, and more government jobs..

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May I present this morning’s brain-teaser to rock you into another stellar week of average performance?  Go ahead…try to guess what E.O.Q.W.D is…

OK, then, time’s up!

End of Quarter Window Dressing

I have this crackpot theory that says in addition to short run-ups before major holidays, the stock market may also have a tendency to pop a bit (like late last week) and maybe carrying over into today, as the en d of quarter bonus marks are set.  Run that Dow puppy up 80 at the open!

If this crackpot theory holds true, we may then see a run down to lower levels later this week as the “commercials” drive down the price of stocks in order to buy lower before selling higher sometime this summer. 

At least, maybe.

About the only news due out today should be the Chicago Purchasing Managers Index.

Tomorrow – which should be a National Holiday, being April Fools and all (we qualify, right?) – will see construction spending and auto sales, but the real point of getting up the next four morning will be to arrive safely at the Friday morning release of the unemployment figures.

So no, a major earthquake has not shoveled L.A. into the Pacific yet, and the Yellowstone caldera  is still cauldering (or whatever it is calderas do),

But this morning’s first coffee-induced brain-spasm is to view the week as a race between competing shaky outcomes:  Will the market go?  Or, will the earthquakes?

Japan and China were both up overnight.  German and French markets are sleeping late, but the kneeler’s deal is up a bit, too.

About the only cloud on the horizon is the prospect of another Dust Bowl, like the 1930’s.  There’s been a lot of dust blowing into Texas from out west, New Mexico, and so forth, and the possibility of climate driving food prices through the roof looks like almost a sure bet, now.

Rather than worry about this, why not worry about who said the $3-trillion in “fake bonds”: entering the Vatican Bank this morning were really fake? It’s make a hell of a TV show or movie. 

Or, how about them Swiss, naming 8 banks (the usual suspects) in a Forex manipulation probe?  Time to get out the whitewash, again,…

Climate Baiting Continues

Yes, the earth’s climate is changing.  But it has always been changing.  It’s just that we’ve never had good enough communications about it to turn it into a cult/religion.  And it’s not being widely reported how former Greenpeace insider Patrick Moore laid out conflicting data about climate to a Senate committee last week.

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I’m going to tell you how to learn ANYTHING, but we’re going to start with a discussion of ham radio to begin with.  So if haven’t picked up a ham radio license, pay attention! 

My friends Gaye (survival woman) and Sheldon (survival hubby) up at www.backdoorsurvival.com are planning to pick up their ham radio licenses.  The reason for more focus on this is that this weekend’s outburst of earthquakes (L.A., Yellowstone, and the Oklahoma shimmy) has moved it up their priority list from a “fixing to get ready” to a “time to get ‘er done” item.

They’ve both got the ubiquitous Baofeng UV5RA Ham Two Way Radio 136-174/400-480 MHz Dual-Band Transceiver (Black) radios which are great entry radios.  And programming software and, and…..

The problem is, however, that the programming booklet that comes with the radio is a football-field away from simple.  This is not an uncommon problem with ham radio equipment.

Over the years, admittedly more than 50 of them, I started off on three simple knobs on the radio receiver (volume, Morse code beat note, and tuning) and on my first crystal-controlled (single frequency) radio, there was a tuning knob, loading knob, and an on/off Morse key.  That was it.

Nowadays, the manual for my Kenwood 590S runs about 80-pages and explains how to use umpteen levels of digital signal processing, the radio’s built-in receive and transmit equalizers, shaping of the Morse waveform, which antenna port to use…and loads more.  Nearly 50 controls if you count the push-buttons.  And you should:  Most of them control more than one function on the radio, depending on if you make it a short button press, or hold a button in more than one second to call some other function.

Between her professional commitments (real work) and her web site (more real work) Gaye’s got just about zero time to sit down with a Mojito and just “spin dials” for a few hours to “get the hang” of her radio.  That’s how many people like to learn, but time just doesn’t always show up when needed…

Even if she did have the time, there may not be much “hang-getting” since the quality of manuals on many pieces of imported equipment only make sense if you understand current trends in menu design to control the microprocessors in modern radios.

Incomprehensible manuals are, sorry to say, a plague of life.

Even really great simplifications of the Baofeng manual (like this one) can be daunting.

What to do to speed up the learning process?

I realized (from our chit-chats this weekend) that there may be a lot of people who are in the same boat:  The $30-35 for the radio wasn’t a big deal, but the programming and licensing?  And how much time is this going to take because time ain’t infinite!  .

So I suggested that they (Gaye and Shel) read the outstanding first license study guide by Dan Romanchik, KB6NU, which can be found online here.  Free. 

My son (KF7OCD) has used this with a couple of Technician class license sessions he’s taught and seriously, if you just read the material, your odds of passing are about 90% the first time around.  It isn’t really fast…it just take however long it takes to read 50-pages.

Now let’s talk about learning styles:

As a former postsecondary administrator, the way to learn depends on person.  People who like music, poetry, and are good writers, are called the “right-brain” people.  Theory appeals to them.  They read novels.

The “left-brainers” are people who love math, computer programming, and the hard science of things.  Theory isn’t so interesting as formulas and procedures, to them. They read more nonfiction.

If you’re like Gaye & Shel,  what will likely work best is to sample a little this, a little that. 

To do this, read the study guide, but have the radio nearby so when you get to a concept, you can look at the radio and maybe there will be something about it in the manual. If you don’t feel compelled to pick up the radio, no worries.

Depending on which way your brain works, you may lean a little more toward formula, or a little the other way into theory.  But, the best possible learning is when both sides of the brain have something to work on.  There are tons of learning styles:  Tactile, aural, visual, mixed…pick those that suit you.

Oh, this may be why construction crews listen to country music on the job site:  Feed both sides of brain.

Elaine and I were working on house addition construction again this weekend and putting in furring strips for drywall is brain killing work.  So we fed the other side of the brain (music, light jazz) while working.

Anyone who doesn’t feed both sides ends up being unbalanced, but in some professions that works.  This is where engineers come from.

But at times of peak concentration (landing an airplane, doing brain surgery) music off, total focus of both sides of brain is best.  Banging 2-by-4’s (after you’ve framed a few houses and can eyeball a 5/8th’s inch cut) is less so, hence the music.

Where do you get the incentive?

Set a deadline for yourself.  I won’t tell you when Mr & Mrs Survival will go take their ham test, but you can hit the American Radio Relay League website.  Toss in your Zip code, and you should be able to find something.

If not, look for a local radio club and just show up at one of their meetings.  Ham radio people are warm and friendly.  Ask whatever questions you may have, but bear in mind that because of the hobby, many ham radio types will answer the simplest questions with incredibly long answers.

These will invariably be close to perfect, but they call into the “Ask him what time it is, and he built me a watch factory” category.

Deadline setting is critical.  Every person I know who is successful (annual incomes over $300,000, or so) runs their life to deadlines.  Danger:  You can become a control-freak, but if you have deadlines and meet them, life tends to pay out bigger jackpots.  Because you get stuff done.

What’s Not in the Study Guide

If you’ve completely forgotten high school physics, the part of the study guide that can be most intimidating is the beginning where Ohm’s Law and such are covered.  Here’s my 1-minute workaround for that:

Not in the ham book, but this may help understand electricity:

Think of electricity flow through wire as being like water flowing in a garden hose.

Electromotive force (Volts) is like the pressure in the hose.

Current (the amount of energy flowing)  (measured in Amps) is like the volume of water flowing in the hose.

Volts times Amps = power (in Watts).  Watts is like Work being done. Just like the  water coming out of the end of a hose can do work like turn a water wheel.  More water (current) or more pressure (volts) turns a bigger wheeel doing more work.

The basic equations assume you know:

Volts is abbreviated “E”

Current is abbreviated “I”

Power is abbreviated “P”

And Resistance (in Ohms) is abbreviated “R”

—

The first rule is the rule of P=I*E   (pie)

Power [ P ] equals current [ I ] times voltage [ E ]

You hair dryer  is 120 volts.  We know (from the label)  it is 1,500 watts.  So P/E=I.

By substitution then, 1500/120 =  12.5 amps.  Which is why a 15 amp circuit breaker doesn’t pop when you dry your hair!

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Grady and I don’t usually burden you with mentions of earthquakes, except when I dream about them in advance, and such, as was the case last Thursday preceding the L.A. quake,

But things have become a lot more interesting since in just a few moments ago there was a 4.8 magnitude quake that went off up in the area east-northeast of West Yellowstone, Montana.

1. 37km (23mi) ENE of West Yellowstone, Montana
2. 105km (65mi) SSE of Bozeman, Montana
3. 138km (86mi) NE of Rexburg, Idaho
4. 178km (111mi) NE of Ammon, Idaho
5. 228km (142mi) SSE of Helena, Montana

And just a few minutes earlier, our war-gaming friend “warhammer” had noted the www.spaceweather.com report of an X-class flare that may be earth-impacting:

With all the LA ‘moving and shaking’ going on, it will be interesting to see how this rare electro-magnetic solar event manifests itself on the plate of tectonic spaghetti lying beneath the City of Angels.

I sadly agree.  According to the Solar Influences Data analysis center, the fun began with this series early Saturday…

NOAA AR 2017 produced two M class flares (M2.0 peak 19:18 UT and M2.6 peak 23:51 UT on March 28). The flares were associated with two halo CMEs, the first one with speeds of 412km/s (first seen by LASCO-C2 at 20:00 UT) and the second one 557 km/s (at 23:58 UT).

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This morning’s big headline, other than debris search roulette, may be the Personal Consumption and Expenditures report that was just released.

Personal income increased $47.7 billion, or 0.3 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) increased $42.3 billion, or 0.3 percent, in February, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $30.8 billion, or 0.3 percent. In January, personal income increased $41.3 billion, or 0.3 percent, DPI increased $40.3 billion, or 0.3 percent, and PCE increased $20.0 billion, or 0.2 percent, based on revised estimates.

OK, you may be wondering if personal income was up, how come you didn’t have any more spare coin jingling around.  Damn fine question that…be sure and submit it in advance of our next news conference to see if it gets approved.  Continuing with this bouquet of delights:

Personal current taxes increased $5.3 billion in February, compared with an increase of $1.2 billion in January. Disposable personal income (DPI) — personal income less personal current taxes — increased $42.3 billion, or 0.3 percent, in February, compared with an increase of $40.3 billion, or 0.3 percent, in January.

Personal saving — DPI less personal outlays — was $544.5 billion in February, compared with $535.9 billion in January. The personal saving rate — personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income — was 4.3 percent in February, compared with 4.2 percent in January.

Somewhere about here, we should stop so you can wipe the coffee – which ought to be spewing out your nose – off your face; joining those tears of laughter as you roll helplessly on the floor. 

The Dow is set to open up 35 points and about the only way to improve on this morning’s jovial economic data would be a tooth extraction without anesthetic, as I see it.

Still Searching

Like I said yesterday:  Me? I’m skeptical on this whole search thing going on out in the oceans off pretty much anywhere, now.

Reports that “objects” have been sighted need to be taken with either an aspirin, Adderall, or oxy, depending on what gets you through. I still hold to sobriety, but the headline machine is making that harder every day.  Speaking of which…

Drugs and Death

There’s a report out this morning that “Anti-Anxiety Drugs are tied to higher Mortality.”

Just between you and me, I’ve always been suspicious of “mortality” studied, since everyone is going to die anyway, know what I mean?  Oxy before skydiving doesn’t make sense, but maybe Adderall before brain surgery….well, dead is dead, is all I’m saying.

What helps me most is pretending I’m an extraterrestrial and just showed up with no opinions about nothing and pretending I’m watching an ant farm. Still trying to build the anti-gravity machine to get home…

There, all better now.

More after this……

Zeus on Awakening from “Pet Madness”?

A report this morning that cats can infect humans with tuberculosis could have far-reaching impacts, reports our Senior Editor, Zeus the Cat.

ZtC, who is already on half rations for failing to keep a rat from moving into the air conditioning system of Elaine’s old Lexus, says to keep an eye on the whole pet industry.  “That’s cat food, dog food, veterinarian supplies, the whole lot of it,” he purred.

“People don’t really need pets, when you think about it,” he continued.  “The cats don’t mouse like they did in the good old days when our relationship with humans made more sense.  We domesticated them because most humans are barely house-broken and they attract vermin like nothing else.  Toss in the dangerous disease that pregnant moms can get from the kitty litter and you’ve got an air-tight case.”

“Yes, but if people give up on cats, what about dogs?” Ures truly asked.

“Why would you have other disease risks and the biting issues with dogs, I mean voluntarily,” he meowed.  “And what is the Anchorage Daily News doing reporting on a sharp increase in dog bites in Arizona?  Can’t the locals handle the truth down in the Valley of the Grays?”

“Your job around here is safe, kitty.

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This morning I would like to do something out of the ordinary – at least for me:  Something of a “core dump” listing the various things that occupy our plans around here…

Visually, this is different from the usual headlines, but it’s much closer to how our brains work – a collection of sticky notes in no particular order, but all needing to be dealt with…

Two More Ads Will Appear

I am working at putting a few Google Ads up on my website.  Yes, I know the one at the top of today’s article is too big, and yes, I will get it fixed this weekend.  Reason:  Cost of websites is not going down, looks like.  I’m ridiculously happy with www.emwd.com, but the cost of a virtual private server, extra memory, and so forth, is less than free.  Hence probably two more ads will be getting set this weekend.  I try to keep it down, however.

Speaking of Websites

Is the guy who wanted to buy the www.nationaldreamcenter.come project still interested?  A couple of new dreams have been posted – I need to approve them so check there later today…

Travel Plans

Elaine and I are planning to attend this year’s conference of the American Academy for Anti-Aging Medicine in Orlando May 15-17.  I will be doing a couple of Peoplenomics reports on what goes on there…and yes, now that I’m north of 65 does have something to do with it.  I want to make sure to be a winner, not loser, in Social Security Roulette.

The conference is where the real docs with real expertise go meet to figure out how to live better and longer.

Quake Spotting

With this week’s earthquake dreams, a number of readers, especially Michael down in the Portland area, have been eyeing Mt. Hood with some suspicion:

George, First I read about the earthquakes on Mt Hood, 60 miles from my home, then I read about your dream of an earthquake.  You didn’t happen to see a mountain also by any chance, did you?

Recall, too, the 6.8 on March 10 off the California coast near the Oregon border (50 or so miles from Eureka, CA).  At that time the webicorders for Mt. Hood and others for the Cascade mountains in OR and WA showed some of the largest events I have ever seen on them.

Not much in the way of action on this – remind people to have three or four weeks of water, two weeks of food…yet no one will listen…

Expanding Planet Theory

“Or, is the decline due to the reduced solar output (..) which slows the planetary expansion, which in turn closes down quake activity when the Sun goes out to lunch.”

A contracting object can get cracks in its surface just as an expanding one can.

Unless you mean there can only ever be expansion, and at this stage there is very little expansion going on?

That, from reader Gary is a good point:  I think that global cooling will cause quakes, too.  But we would be in a “change-over period” where we get a lunch break between too hot (expansion) quakes and too cold (contraction) quakes.  Just thinking out loud.  My degrees in geology seems to be stuck in my printer…

Deep Thinking From Ecuador

It’s always fun to get notes from Bruce down in Ecuador.  He’s got a fine way of looking at the world, including this gem of a synopsis of US foreign policy:

I am always amazed at how Americans so casually believe their deservability to literally spend millions to keep themselves entertained, or should I say distracted while the rest of the world struggles to get a part of the other 40% of the world’s resources not consumed in the USA.

Boomers love to say “well I worked for it and earned it.” That is total bullshit. We created a system in which we became the privileged so we could rip off everybody else in the world.

Tell me one job you had where there was not someone else in the world doing the same thing, working harder than you were, but probably making a tenth of what you were.

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