George Ure

A number of readers have taken me to task for mentioning the reader strategy of not signing up for Obamacare and just paying the penalties later.  That’s not me, but there are a lot of people who do want the option of considering that.

The biggest problem with signing up when you think you might need care in the future is that it doesn’t work:  If you’re in a traffic accident – one that makes local headlines, for example – you won’t be in any condition to sign up.  Then there is some delay until paperwork finalizes and money is paid.  You could be on the hook for a couple of weeks of hospital bills and that would be plain dumb.

I want to make it perfectly clear that I don’t advocate this approach – I was merely sharing it so you’d be able to look at where some other people are putting down stakes – because that’s how the “playing field” gets defined.  That’s one reader’s “corner” of the field.

A more measured view of things is offered by reader Keith:

George,

Just need to weigh in on the “pay the penalty and get insurance when I need it” letter you printed.

There are numerous problems with that thinking under Obamacare.  First, the initial penalties stiffen sharply in subsequent years.  Second, you don’t get to sign up whenever you get sick.  It actually works like most employer plans–they have to take you preexisting conditions and all, but only in the open enrollment period.

The initial open enrollment is extended; subsequent years that will not be the case.  For example, let’s say you decide to pay the penalty and do without insurance in 2016.  In say, February 2016, you suddenly discover a discomfort in your groin and, lo and behold, you have colon cancer.  Now you are in the unenviable position of already having paid $2900 for a colonoscopy (going rate in my area) and you haven’t even started treatment.  The earliest you can sign up for insurance is October 1, 2016 for coverage that is effective January 1, 2017.  So until then, you’re on your own.  Unless you’re a broke old fart like me, in which case maybe I get Medicaid–but since I’m over 55, that’s a debt recoverable from my estate.  Or, your whole plan is finger-crossing and prayer until January.  Then you might discover that what was treatable in February 2016 is not so much in January 2017.  On the bright side, you have insurance to pay for the hospice and morphine.

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So this is how I spent my weekend: 

A couple of years ago, we decided there was too much glare coming into the north end of the house from the 10 X 20-foot deck that we’d built.  So, as a partial-fix I put on a roof to provide some shade.

By Thursday of last week, I’d decided to finish off the deck covering, and, as long as we’re at it, why not just cover the whole thing and turn it into additional living space?

One of the joys of living in rural East Texas is that it’s not too difficult to do such a thing – turning a deck into an additional 200 square feet of living space.  There is no “code” enforcers about to red-flag the project.  And there’s no architect wanting 10%, no project managers, no environmental impact statement.  You just pick up your tools and get to work.

After a full day of work (8-hours with one coffee break and a 10-minute lunch) worth, the wall outlines were in place and the trusses had all be sawn and assembled, and lifted into place – and in an hour, or so, they will be tilted up, attached with right-angle iron, and 2 by 4’s will be in place.  After that comes the installation of metal roofing and first thing you know, there will be a real roof over the place.

Which gets us to the windows part.

A few windows make sense.  After all, reasonable fenestration is required for good ventilation.  But, what we talked about at some length last night was the matter of building square footage that makes sense in light of current trends.

One of these trends, which we explored in some detail (with floor plans, and such) for our www.peoplenomics.com subscribers (scroll down to “Nature of the Invention”, the June 1, 2013 issue here for subsc.) and what’s described are windowless virtual housing units with extremely limited outside windows.

No, we’re in no hurry to put the Pella folks out of business.  But we do have some unique sight-line issues at the far end of this room because our house is on the gentle slope of a hill.  Admittedly, calling the modest hills around here The Concorde Mountains is absurd.

How a 623 foot “peak” can be a mountain in Texas, when the vertical rise from surrounding land is somewhere on the order of 450 feet is beyond me.  A colleague/client/friends out in California have a house in the East Bay area (near Walnut Creek) which has a vertical rise on their 80-acres of something like 1,300 feet and they modestly call that “the hill”.”  They’ve never been to Texas, apparently, or those would be the California Himalayas, for sure.

Back to this window thing, however:  Because of the slope, you have to look up a bit to see the garden, especially from the kitchen of “San Francisco” room of the house – which is dominated by a 6 X 12 mural we commissioned back in ‘09.  And Elaine doesn’t want to look from the kitchen into the lawn…when she’s become rather spoiled by watching the deer parade through the garden.

Admittedly, it’s a cool view  But to retain the view, we’d have to install a “glass wall” and the only way to do that on an economical basis would be to recycle some windows which we took out of our house two years ago, and upgraded to double-glazed, low-E, energy efficient windows.  So how this new room would work with the old (wasteful) windows is without a doubt poorly.

And remember this, especially if you have some time before retirement ahead:  When you get to a certain age in Life, the objective is to reduce your operating expenses to the smallest possible number.  Even with taxes and utilities, thanks to the solar panels, we figure we average about $350 per month of housing expenses (not counting communications costs) for taxes, water, and power. 

What’s the alternative to a window?

Well, how about a couple of large (70-inch class, or better) LED TV’s? 

With these, we could install a steerable (pan, zoom, tilt) camera, plus,. as a bonus, unlike a conventional window which looks black at night, the PZT cameras nowadays also include night vision capabilities.

Oh – and you can mount them anywhere, which certainly opens up a whole reality of new ways of “looking outside”

So, not only do you get superior visuals of the property, and something for night time enjoyment, but you can put in additional cameras elsewhere to effectively put the room “experience” somewhere that it couldn’t possibly be in real life. 

As an example, I could put one of these cameras up on top of the ham radio tower…and with two such cameras, although it would cost a bloody fortune it displays (at least right now) what we could easily achieve would be a view of the regional countryside that would be about what you’d expect from a 60-foot high fire tower.

What I didn’t tell Elaine is that I recently (when no one was watching) picked up a 43-foot self-supporting ham radio vertical antenna. Now, picture putting that on top of the tower which would put the eye-level about 100-feet up.  Now that gets to be pretty impressive viewing – until the lightning hits, of course.

Oh, and even if we don’t do that, we could undoubtedly find some streaming video web cameras which could be piped in…so that when we’re having Chinese stir-fry for dinner, why not pick up some San Francisco streams – or better – what about Beijing streamed live with the dim sum?

You following me here?  Windows are obsolete…its just that most people haven’t figured it out yet.

Oh…and there are a couple of “tricks” to make such a “window” (replacement) look very much more like a conventional window:  Set it back a foot or two and frame it in, and set the screen so you can’t see the edges from most angles.  That’s how you get that 3D sense of “outside”.  As any game designer worth their runtimes knows, 3d is just having the foreground run faster than the background, right?

So when doing a screen like this, a visual break in the foreground, especially with no apparent edge to the screen, is what tricks the eye.

No, we don’t have enough spare change laying around to spend $6-grand on the final product yet.  But, we will place the “conventional” windows in such a way that when we do save up enough dough for the Big Screens and Cameras, we’ll be able to run one of these “alternate reality” places.  We’ll still open them to air the place out, too.

Imagine walking into one room of your house (set the heating and cooling zone to cold) and be on top of a mountain somewhere.  Or, be in this virtual fire watch tower.  Or, be somewhere like the NYSE floor, or wherever you can get a feed from…

Don’t mean to fish for Pella or some other window company to be a client.  But the handwriting is already on the wall.  And since Google Glass has pushed out the future of optics, it shouldn’t be too long now before the real-world starts to evolve down this windowless kind of avenue.

You can also see the trend popping out from those running videos that you can play off a DVD onto a TV and pretend you’re running somewhere that isn’t inside a building…

Yeah, sure, ain’t nothin’ like the real thing, I’ll grant you that.  But for about $100,000 now, a personal can have a micro-home with some incredibly different aspects to it that “real life” homes simply can’t match because housing (as far as it has been developed so far) is location specific.

OK, sure, to keep the cost contained, you’d have to do some of the work yourself but framing and roofing ain’t exactly rocket science.  And, so far as I know, no one has done the necessary software to take the 3- 90” class screens envisioned in the plans above, and sorted out the software vector graphics to keep the scene looking liquid and all in perspective, based on room-user eye point. Although that is just a matter of code and a few sensors in the room to estimate eye location and pipe it into the software…

Are you kidding me?  Why not engage in a little bit of “possibility thinking” and virtualize the home location? I mean isn’t that what lambdas on the desktop make possible?  It’s also why all those long train ride videos on YouTube are so hugely popular:  It takes a living room and turns it into a …train!  Extra sensory deception…come and get it!

I wouldn’t want to be the owner of a window company when large numbers of people besides Ures truly begin to figure this out.  This is precisely the kind of “disruptive thinking” that makes getting up and back to work on a project so much fun around here…It should only be a matter of time until IMAX figures out they can slice up views and sell “location packs” as software for the location-independent housing modules.

Remember where you heard it first.  And you’re only five months behind the Peoplenomics readers…

Disruptive Idiocy

There is a flip side to disruptive thinking:L  You’ll notice that my little disruptive technology idea involves (mostly) off the shelf stuff. 

But sometimes, when a new technology comes along, like 3D printing for example, we really do seem to drop back into our baser instincts.  You know the kind?  Like the invention of fire of gunpowder. 

It’s almost like watching sci-fi to read how the “First metal 3D printed fun is cable of filing 50 shots” and it’s modeled on the venerable Model 1911.

Yes sir, it’s about like dropping a keyboard into a troop of monkeys the way we handle breakthrough technologies.  .Instead of printing up some previously impossible to build medical device, or elevating human consciousness we build…..more guns?  WTF is wrong with people?

Most disappointing and a serious mis-use of brainpower.  Unlike my virtual windows, this “invention” merely spends tons of dough to make a pretty much useless (limited use) device.

Monday at the Wujo

Another skeptic has been converted to our way of thinking that reality does have some Swiss cheese-like holes in it from time to time.  Consider this reader’s report…

“Okay, I’m a believer. Strange, unbelievable things DO happen under otherwise ordinary circumstances.

Fact: My son-in-law died unexpectedly three years ago at the age of 40 of a rare form of cancer. My daughter is raising her two young daughters by herself. The wife and I live about a half-hour away so I stop by occasionally to see how she’s doing.

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“OK, Ure, what is this BTR/STN crap in the headline?  It’s too early to make me figure out Ure BS acronymwiticisms…”  Fair enough:  Buy the Rumor, Sell the News.  Imminent new highs (and a chorus or two from the choir here at the East Texas Synod of the Church of the Almighty Dollar, member, FDIC, if you please):  So that TWTR gain happened, alright, but the collateral damage was a Dow drooping a hun-and-a-half and don’t get your hopes up for a huge rally until the other side of options, come this time next week.  (Damn, that was a long sentence!)

Just so, iron butterfly…so we jump next grasshopper to the job data just unleashed…

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 204,000 in October, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 7.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in leisure and hospitality, retail trade, professional and technical services, manufacturing, and health care.

Household Survey Data Both the number of unemployed persons, at 11.3 million, and the unemployment rate, at 7.3 percent, changed little in October. Among the unemployed, however, the number who reported being on temporary layoff increased by 448,000. This figure includes furloughed federal employees who were classified as unemployed on temporary layoff under the definitions used in the household survey. (Estimates of the unemployed by reason, such as temporary layoff and job leavers, do not sum to the official seasonally adjusted measure of total unemployed because they are independently seasonally adjusted.) For more information on the classification of workers affected by the federal government shutdown, see the box note. (See tables A-1 and A-11.)

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (7.0 percent), adult women (6.4 percent), teenagers (22.2 percent), whites (6.3 percent), blacks (13.1 percent), and Hispanics (9.1 percent) showed little or no change in October. The jobless rate for Asians was 5.2 percent (not seasonally adjusted), little changed from a year earlier.

The Government Shutdown impact was also explained away:

Some agencies of the federal government were shut down or were | | operating at reduced staffing levels from October 1, 2013, | | through October 16, 2013.

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This is going to be a long and winding ramble, so get that warm-up and we begin, as I explained recent to Peoplenomics subscribers, with Mr. Ure’s not-yet-patented “REAL Threat Board” which lives on my desktop.

Oh, sure, the market is going to go up some days, and it will go down some days, but – in the end – most of the stuff in the daily news will not really “reach out and touch” you.  Instead, it will evoke some discussion and so forth, but meaningfully change your life?  No-no…just tension, hype, news channel ratings and revenues.

But there is a list – which maybe I could add to, of things which – if they go wrong – could really, seriously F/U your life.  Not the least of which is earthquakes.  That’s because – if you’re not completely dead – you will be vaguely aware that there’s a continuing nuclear disaster going on in Japan and as David Suzuki, science dude with the CBC and author of many science books, said earlier this week, the West Coast may become untenable with one more major quake.

Presto!  Or, more correctly, Presto #1.  In pops the latest monthly report from reader Tony R who volunteers his time monthly to run earthquake data going back to 1963 and then he runs out the graphics (OK, a macro does, then, picky, picky) which ends up telling us what to expect.

And this month, it ain’t pretty because the Magnitude 7+ quake trend we’ve been yammering about for years is (sit calmly here) really coming to pass – at least so far.

Now, it’s not bad enough that the 7.0 quakes seem to be moving up really close to that 2-per month line, but what’s REALLY worse is that the 3.0 quakes are declining.

You shouldn’t need a four-year edjumacation in the earth sciences to connect the dots on this one, but if you really skated on the science part of school, it’s simple:  Earth’s crust is a bunch of small plates (think of the panels on a soccer ball, but oddly sized) that move about, hither and thither, and as they move they strike one another and sometime slide over or under each other in a process called subsidence (on the sinking side).  And that causes up thrusts on the rising side.  Simple enough.

So now we move on to Presto #2, which came out around 5:30 AM Central from the Solar Influences Data Analysis Center of in Belgium:

An X1.1 flare was detected peaking at 04:26 UT today in the Catania sunspot group 35 (NOAA AR 1890). The SDO/AIA data indicates that the flare was accompanied by coronal dimmings, indicating the eruption of a CME. More information about the CME will be sent around once the SOHO/LASCO data becomes available. Due to the position of the source active region close to the solar central meridian, the arrival of the CME-associated interplanetary disturbance at the Earth is possible.

If you’ve been watching the sun’s activity lately, you will remember that there have been a series of solar “pops” and that we are presently in the period of high risk for large-scale flares (the first half of the decline of the solar cycle) and over the next couple of weeks, that back side activity will rotate toward a planet Ure standing on.  Following this?

OK, now come the really worrisome parts.

First is a pet theory that says Einstein’s movement of matter into energy works (which folks in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and more recent Fukushima can testify to) but there’ nothing in the formula that says “This is a one-way street.”

My guess is it’s not.

All of which has some profound implications for how the solar system probably works.  Not the least of which is that because the Sun puts out a lot of E, and planets seem to be “condensing” around suns all over the known universe, then would it make sense that a) the Earth used to be a lot smaller (check how everything fits as far as continents go at about half present size, and while you’re at it, that would mean weaker gravity which might encourage giantism (yep, my friend Steve Quayle’s 9-footers) and then there were dinosaurs, which got to be of extraordinary size, which would have been helped by what?  Lower gravity, smaller Earth, yada, yada.

OK, now, here comes the fun part:  The data (above) and the Sun’s rotation, seem to be coming up on a period in the next month, or two, where we could have some real kick-ass earthquakes.

And  – in yesterday’s column – where I told you about how I was of the opinion (and it was just opinion at that point) that I believed the San Juan Island mess Gaye and SursvivalHubby of www.backdoorsurvival.com were enduring was likely due to land shifting about as Vancouver Island and the San Juan (tectonic) Plate are under building stress..

Well, Gaye got connectivity (off island) yesterday, called me (and sent an email which had the simple subject line “You Nailed It!” and held the following map which is  quickly becoming a Big Deal up in the Islands right now:

That’s not a quake which can be found in headlines and splashed all over the Mainstream Media, but I want you to pay close attention to it.  The eastern edge of the “Ring of Fire” is due.  We are liking to get some “energy condensing into matter” over the next couple of weeks from flares, if I’m right.

Then you can toss in the Earth’s rotation, into your thinking.  If you had to just throw a dart and wonder “Gee, where would Big Quakes” be likely to happen?   Around Equinoxes and Solstices would be my pick.  Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, the March 11, 2011 Tohoku (Fukushima) Nightmare… Oh, want me to mention the March 27 Good Friday quake that heavily damaged Anchorage, Alaska, back in 1964?

Something to consider:  Reading the news is seldom done slowly and deeply.  Back in my newsing days we made jokes about “rip & read” newscasts which could be “torn down” from the old Model 19 teletype newswires run by the Associated Press and United Press International back in the day.  Miles of copy have been writing (by writers) about how news should be rewritten, and in a sense, that’s what UrbanSurvival and (though to a lesser extent) Peoplenomics is about. Hell, that’s what Time and The Atlantic do, too:  Rewrite in a sense, but more importantly, we all provide contexting  (do-connecting) which is so missing in the #160 world.

News by itself if…well,…useless.  It’s like the difference in management science between ‘data” and “information.”  The one is great if you’re trying to spy on every American, but if you’re really after “terrorists” it’s the information distilled from that data that is key to operational success.

And so it is with what you put into your head on a daily basis.  My view, which has evolved from being on both the consumer and disseminator side, is that you should really focus on developing your own personal “threat board” and list everything that could go wrong in your life, develop a series of hedges (prepping is a key part of it) and then blow off the “bullshit filler” stories like what Kim or Kanye or Gaga or Lindsay are doing.  They don’t have much (if anything) to do with how the local quality of your life will work out.

A 9.3 earthquake in the Pacific Northwest, when a sister island to Vancouver Island is formed, running from the south end of Puget Sound down to the Kelso-Longview bend in the Columbia River?  Would that have real impact?   Hell yes, that would be a mighty extreme example of news that really matters.

I’m not suggesting that it will happen any time soon, and likely  not this week, or next (knock on wood) but the geological precedents are there, and the broken fiber cable may keep the San Juans offline for another up to three weeks, so I’m of the (not particularly humble) opinion that an aware person pays attention to the really big picture stuff and doesn’t get all mixed up in the head-tripping of the War on Terror or the intimidating efforts of government to become the Guido and Luigi of the healthcare lobby. 

And mornings like this are a fine time to be looking around for the thoughtful news and commentary sites on the web which have at least a clue as to how the world operates and where we really might be going.  For example, The Atlantic’s “A Parable of Disconnectedness” is a worthwhile read.  Focuses on the San Juan Outage which is not on the MSM in a big way – yet.

But on the flip side,  the emails going around the net that claim FEMA is going to take down the net deliberately as part of next week’s big Region III Gird test next week?  No, no way in hell and rankings starved alarmist crap, seems to me.

But, there are some very smart people at FEMA who can read the same tea leaves we can around here, and which The Atlantic also groks. A little paranoia goes a long way, but in cases like this Grid test, maybe it goes too far.

Oh sure: It’s going to happen sometime.  It’s just a matter of the hour and the day.  For now, we’ll keep scanning the geophysical journals looking for someone else to grok the “matter condenses from energy inside planets, which is what keeps them hot…” and from there, a look at the calendar.  Solstice is coming, and equinox, too.  Which one?  Beats me.  But land is moving right now.

And before either of them arrives, care to bet that Gaye doesn’t have her ham radio ticket?

 Tomorrow, the Seattle Mike and Key Amateur Radio Club is holding the first day of a two Saturday class to get your ham ticket.  I’m always shocked that there’s not a line around the block for such grand public service efforts.  But then again, I’m always shocked the the ink and electronics Kim, Kanye, Gaga, and Lindsay get, too.

This morning as the sun begins to brighten the clouds down here at the ranch, it’s this kind of thinking that gets me motivated:  Build a three-seasons room this weekend, prep the plane again, this week.  And service the antennas (which involves taking down the tower for some work) next weekend.  I necessarily will miss Entertainment Tonight.  But I’ll be ready for the entertainment of tomorrow and the beam’s kept pointed out toward the Northwest and Japan until….

Our Kind of Flying, And a Driving Tip

A little hangar-talk:  As you know, I really like short-field landings.  Never been sure why, except that in my young news directing days, I was most intrigued when the late KOMO radio traffic reporter/pilot Ted Garlatz, Sr. put his plane down (safely) on a golf course due to an engine failure. 

(I was running news at KOL and if you read the story at the link, you get three guesses who got stung…in the Great KOMO traffic report “sting.”   

Anyway, Ted Sr.

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We begin this morning’s epistle with a fine (and to the point) read from Idaho Bill, to get things rolling.  It’s  a useful discussion of just what is “sin”?

Aho George,

A scholar friend of mine once told me that her knowledge of the word “sin” was not as the Bible thumpers claim some rigid matter of right and wrong, but that the Aramaic word from which that interpretation came…meant “Off the mark.” You are a pilot…it is basic navigation…a degree doesn’t mean much in 10 feet, but means a hell of a lot in 10 miles. Listening to all the ranting and raving, the divisiveness sweeping this broad landscape…and looking back to the Preamble of the United States Constitution…..I see and hear very little about that basic concept stated therein….”insure domestic tranquility”. Seems to me we are way off the the mark… and beings that office holders are sworn to uphold the Constitution…me thinks that perhaps those throwing fuel on the flames of divisiveness may be guilty of malfeasance of their duties.

As the old song goes…”Perhaps it’s time we got back to the basics again.”

Yes, I think we could have a much better country if we erected some playing-field-leveling “handling fees” to give financial incentives to corporations to build plants closer to where goods are consumed.  Why, we could even donate all of Detroit as a sandbox for them, if they would just bring back jobs from India and sweatshop lands. 

What?  You say we don’t have enough low-end workers?  Isn’t that what immigration “reform” is about?

A lot of attention gets paid to the right-left political debate, but it’s always just an UP/DOWN power struggle dressed up in red and blue to keep people distracted. 

America would be a much different (and better) place is we didn’t import software, computer chips, and refrigerators.  And I can give you sound environmental and national security reasons why this should be the case.  You ever wonder why we crash test cars but not computers?

But alas, when American started “working with its law books and regulations” instead of working with the industrial arts folks and excellence in engineering, that’s when things really started down hill in a hurry.  Here, read  6-seconds of management theory from Wikipedia:

Staff and line are names given to different types of functions in organizations. A “line function” is one that directly advances an organization in its core work. This always includes production and sales, and sometimes also marketing.^[1] A “staff function” supports the organization with specialized advisory and support functions. For example, human resources, accounting, public relations and the legal department are generally considered to be staff functions.^[2] Both terms originated in the military.

Regulation is not an Industry and neither is government. But that’s what happens when the line closes down and the staff people decide to run the company (country) to just make up something for management to do.  Easy to pull off if you have an NSA and an army, really.  

And in such a scenario, new markets can be created by decree:  Healthcare and the War on Terror do come to mind.

Forgive me (if I can write like Pogo fer a minit) but:  ”Here we is:  We’s throw’d out our “core work” and the staff is now set on raisin’ taxes on everyone but but those with the money.” 

Flat-ass amazingly, those employed to watch one another (and us bewildered folks on Main St.) then have the audacity to question the social stress that results.  And the economic issues to come….   Pogo had it right:  “We have met the enemy and he is us…”

But Pogo offered hope, too in that “Traces of nobility, gentleness and courage persist in all people, do what we will to stamp out the trend..”

I don’t expect to run out of topics to write about, any time soon.

Riding With Angels

Reader/rider Kevin picked up on my recent gripe about mispostrophe disease…which, as you know,  strikes its victims without warning…often in mid-sentence…

Nothing ticks me off more than an apostrophe used in the plural form of a word. 

I’ve wondered the same thing as you about the little mark, and always assumed it was a brand holder’s prerogative to use or not use it. A great example is “Hells Angels” who eschew the apostrophe in their club name.

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You know what’s interesting…to me, anyway?  The idea that here we are in either a “running (iv) or an ending rising diagonal in the markets and shooters are popping up.  First the one at LAX and now one at the shopping mall in New Jersey.

This latest (suspected “relief of emotional tensions”) event involved a shooter finding 6 or 7 shots inside a mall about 9:20 last night firing shots, but no one was injured/hit.  The purported perp’s body was found several hours later…but again it was a 20-year old male which stories like this one, mention he had a history of of drug abuse.

This will be about the umpteenth time I’ve mentioned “blow of mechanism” for social tensions…damn strange topic to pick on for an ostensibly reasonable (somewhat, anyway) economic-oriented website…

Not only is it election day in New Jersey, but markets are in an area where we would expect to see a break in one direction or the other.  So we ask (innocently, I assure you) is this all entirely coincidental?

Markets: Noise Trading?

No accounting for why the market is looking to open down 50, or so, on the Dow in the early going.  There is some softness in Europe and Japanese futures were weak over here when I looked earlier.

Factory orders were “up following two consecutive monthly decreases, increased $8.1 billion or 1.7 percent to $490.8 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. This followed a 0.1
percent August decrease. Excluding transportation, new orders decreased 0.2 percent.”

Now, if that was all sell-through, fine, but look at this:

Inventories of manufactured durable goods in
September, up five of the last six months, increased $3.1
billion or 0.8 percent to $382.3 billion, revised from the
previously published 0.9 percent increase.

So we sit back, scratch the head-top solar panel and wonder how much of the gain is real (increased unit volumes) versus how much is price hikes coming down the pike?

Leaving Colorado

While the play-by-play of the New Jersey and Virginia voting is OccupyingDistractifyingNews, we figure there’s more to be learned of the general public mood by studying the report that 11 counties in  Colorado may secede from the state and form their own, 51st state.

Since Texas has provisions (if I recall right) to break into multiple states at some point in the future,  it might be a pretty interesting trend-setter to watch.  Our part of the state here (east Texas oil country) and over in the Permian Basin, why just our oil-depletion taxes could buy everyone happiness…

Oh, Texans would have more sway in the Senate this way, too.

Der Purger in Chief?

Another top military leader is out, says a report over here, which adds to the body count of nine generals and flag officers bounced by the house-cleaning administration.

All of which could be consider more, or less, routine except we have been reading this  headline snagged by reader Madison Avenue Mike:  “‘I’m really good at killing people’: New book claims President Obama joked to aides about using drone strikes.”

All that’s missing is the jackboots, but the modern analog to these is the ubiquitous SWAT uniforms, but that may not be apparent until future generations come along.  Who needs brown shirts when black with the word “tactical” added cam garner the same price bumps?  All about business models, right?

And  related – in some of the most seriously back-asswards hype-ology to complete the public discombobulation – don’t miss kneeler/dealer David Cameron blaming Edward Snowden’s revelations for “eroding fundamental rights and freedoms” in the unemployed kingdom.

WTF, Dave?  That’s like telling a traffic cop that his radar made you drive too fast. 

Is it something in the water our leaders drink? (Can I vote, yet?)

Ginkgo Time for Obama?

Not to beat up on a fellow in mid-purge, mid-insurance roll-out, mid-Middle East mess, mid-climate change dealy, but has el Jefe flipped  because (according to this report) “Obama denies ‘you can keep it’ video taped promises…”

I mean if it was just once, but OMG 29-times? 

Dude…I take Huperzine and Gingko Biloba to cut back on this kinda thing happ’nin..know what I’m saying?

More after this…

Climate Police/Land Grabs?

I assume you heard about last weekend’s “crash course” to combat climate change?  Yep, training programs to move ahead with the “climate change” cum land grab and Agenda 21, if I am reading this right.

Especially now that the White House has rolled out it’s climate task force.  And along the way, be sure to read the underlying Executive Order on point.

All of which would be fine, except for the one small tiny, itsy-bitsy problem.  Global warming is over, at least for another 15-20 years and the reason is simple:  The Sun which has been through a period of very high sunspot activity is now in chill-down…

The implications of this are pretty simple:

Government seems in a big hurry to “get ‘em while they’re hot” and as part of that will be implementing another socialist-style land grab to try and force people off of privately—owned land.

By doing this, government makes people (humans, free unregistered free-thinkers, in particular) ever more dependent on what? 

You got it!  Corporations which are claiming patent rights to life and are renting the very life God put on earth (by accident or design, we can argue that nit) by claiming that they have a proprietary mix of jellyfish and wheat which does this or that. 

Of course this who area is wildly profitable – and following the health-insurance industry’s using the “Government for Corporate Enforcement of Forced Consumption” model, we should be seriously suspect when we read about genetic pollution.  So file this under GMO rants, but trust me when I tell you, there’s an agenda in play.

While the Washington Post warns about the “:Congress turns a blind eye to global warming” we note that a new study says we may be in “chill mode” for 20 years.

But look at the bright side: Al Gore, (who invented the internet, right?)  will continue to be able to command incredible speaking fees and the Agenda 21 backers have to be licking their chops at the prospect of kicking America’s small farmers off the King’s land.

As it reads in the Book of Carlin:  “It’s all bullshit and it’s all bad for you.” 

If government was serious about pollution, cars would weigh 1/2 what they do, mileage would be 60 MPH +.   We’ll all have 100 HP engines, tops.  And we’d learn that dying in auto accidents is when happens when people don’t pay attention.  Instead, whole industries have been built on safety gear.    Where’s the damn ViceGrips?  More pinches than I can count in this area…

Oh, you didn’t notice?  Corporate agendas are in play here.  And with all the hoopla, since solar cooling is obvious in the data now, government will do the usual grab and grandstand and claim success.

For the Sun’s behavior.

Carbon credits? Pollution credits?   It’s the same thing as wife-beating credits when you think about it:  It’s only a vehicle for the genuinely  corrupt to cash in on society’s ill-thought bad behaviors.  Ain’t that special?

Hell, I’ve been around damn near 65 years and people are working longer and harder today than ever…and jobs are drying up, to boot.  So what exactly is all this “progress” that we’ve built?  Sure and shit ain’t time off, now, is it?

Hand me my blood pressure monitor, would you? 

On my reading list is Rupert Darwall’s The Age of Global Warming: A History (Kindle) which is $10 bucks or the hardcover which is $32 and change. Gee, that shouldn’t be a tough decision, should it?

North Korea’s EMP Plans

From our resident war-gamer who eyes such developments with some suspicion…

Another ‘genie’ slipping out of the bottle.   

http://ph.news.yahoo.com/n-korea-developing-electromagnetic-pulse-weapons-135357782.html

Per U.S. nuclear policy, a high altitude EMP attack is treated the same as a nuclear first strike attack.  Things would “go ugly early.”

Jim Woolsey, CIA director for Bill Clinton, had some interesting observations here:

http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2013/07/30/jim-woolsey-electromagnetic-pulse-emp-is-existential-threat-to-america/

Among some of the information Woolsey divulged, this snippet is an attention grabber:

“On December 2012, Cooper said, North Korea used its so-called Space Launch Vehicle like a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System – a secret weapon invented by the Russians during the Cold War to deliver a stealthy nuclear attack on the United States by orbiting a nuclear weapon over the south polar region, bypassing U.S. Ballistic Missile Early Warning radars (BMEWs) and missile defenses.  Cooper noted that the U.S. has no BMEWs radars or missile interceptors facing south.  North Korea apparently orbited a satellite over the south polar region on a trajectory and altitude consistent with making a surprise nuclear EMP attack against the United States”.

As far as possible individual actions aside from standard disaster prepping, two words of advice . .

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I had a really weird experience Monday mid-morning…and it certain has raised some interesting questions for Ures truly.  Here’s what happened:

About 10 AM, or thereabouts, I decided to call someone I know up in the Pacific Northwest.  I absent-mindedly dialed and got….the wrong number.  But not just any wrong number…wrong number of some else I know.  Prehensile brain apparently has an auto-dialer in it.

So I quickly apologized – “Wrong number, sorry…” and that was that.

Until, that is, I  went back to idly looking at the weather radar at the arriving rain band thanks to the WeatherUnderground website.

There!  Do you see it?  One of those (damn strange) radar glitches…

Stand by for the weird part.  The radar snips on WUnderground go off like clockwork.  Every five minutes. 

Except that after this “ray” appeared, and our place is right above the white cross-hairs indicating Palestine, TX, the updates suddenly stopped for the next 40-minutes.  Hmmm…

Well, now, we had something on our hands that needs to be placed somewhere along the mind’s [coincidence/ponder/mystery] continuum for later processing.  And Ures truly, man of science and all, doesn’t like uncategorized data showing up.  Especially when temporally coincident to me making a “mindless dial” which I rarely do, but had just done.  Which was very strange, indeed.

Things got even murkier when I visited http://radaranomalies.com/ and found that two leading researchers in the field died a few years back, in 2006 and 2008.  Hmmm…coincidence?

Remember our recent discussions about how the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics works?

I’d love to simply believe the explanations found over on the MetaBunk.org website, but the explanation of the spike lining up with another radar doesn’t feel useful given the high number of occurrences of these things.

What IF there are certain kinds of “join error” symptoms which are just blithely passed off as “systems bugs?”  Is there some chance that we could find a telltale to how Universe really works?  And speaking of which CERN has sure been quiet lately…but they’re trying to scare up money (so welcome to the club!).

Oh, and the updating stopping for 40 minutes, either.  Yeah, I know – pure coincidence, right?

Since the NEXTRAD radar for the area is located at (airport identifier) KFWS (Fort Worth/Spinks) and since we have all kinds of mapping capability, I did a little extension and it didn’t seem to line up on anything in particular down to the southeast of the airport.

Are there reasonable possibilities?  Oh, sure, you bet.  For example, it could have been (rare) ducted propagation at the radar’s frequency, perhaps a slight “bank shot” to borrow a pool playing term, off the front which was moving through the area.

Still, with the president due to be in the Dallas area on Wednesday afternoon, it just struck me as a bit odd and thought I’d mention it.

Getting the Lead Out

Several comments on the mention in Monday’s column about the lead smelter closures., 

First came a phone call from my last liberal friend who pointed out that although the closure of said smelter was done during president Obama’s term, the actual EPA orders were cut under what he referred to as “those famous gun-grabbers Bush & Cheney…”

Then reader Bill up in Big Sky country sent this:

Here in East Helena Montana there used to be a lead smelter. closed it, sold it to a Mexican outfit and then they went banko. Left a bit of a mess and no more lead and other minerals being smelted. Now someone is looking into processing the left overs to reclaim lead…..maybe going to Peru?

I’m not sure, but maybe this is all part of some ingenious plan to save a little bit of resources for America which we might find useful when the rest of the world consumes itself back into a dark age…

In the meantime, however, reader David connects the dots this way:

Hi; This lead thing. Won’t it effect the price of car/truck, wheel chair, scooter, etc. batteries ?  Didn’t I hear your old truck crank a little slower this morning ?

And since he did ask, the truck runs fine, except for the transmission and that’ll be a topic for future discussions.  I’m being mindful of my blood pressure for now.  Let’s just say that I’m not particularly keen on Dodge transmissions from the early 2000’s era….

National Dream Center

Yes, our www.nationaldreamcenter.com website is still up – however, not too many people go there to post dreams lately…interest in “dream work” seems to have fallen off a bit.  Which is interesting, figured reader Marc, since there’s been a major fundraising success noted by SHADOW: Community of Dreamers over at KickStarter.com here, to build a dream logging app…

Tuesday at the WuJo

Yes, we are still getting plenty of reader reports of “time going wrong” from readers…like this one:

Hi George,

Here’s a “time-ly” event that crossed my path one week ago:

Friday Oct 25 was the birthday of my dear departed mom. Decided to celebrate/honor “mom’s day” by traveling to the hometown to visit her sister, who recently moved to assisted living.

My aunt’s recently-vacated house is where I, and her son, take turns staying on our respective trips to the hometown.

I arrived there about 3:30 pm after an uncharacteristically long drive.

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