Doctoring Your Numbers

by

I have the good fortune to have an excellent doctor here in Palestine, Texas.  His problem?  He has the very bad fortune to have me as a patient. 

This week, I got the results of my latest medical exam…and a discussion of “the numbers” is of great interest since most of our readers are “grown-ups.”.  And, when figuring estate-handling, life plans, and such, having an idea “how much time is left” is a very useful thing.

First, though, some headlines, including this morning’s fresh market data, and the ChartPack.  Best viewed while playing “Fly Me to the Moon” in background…

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27 thoughts on “Doctoring Your Numbers”

  1. Hi, George,

    I am certainly in agreement with you regarding the reasonable explanation you gave for the firing of Rex Tillerson. I would add that, as Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson was lawfully responsible for assessing the damage generated by the Hillary committee of law-breakers when she was acting Secretary of State. He did not address the numerous computer security breaches, nor did he fire all of the Clinton and Obama holdovers in the State Department. He did not clean house.

  2. Thanks for the mortality calculator links. I used a simple one and came up with the same number my intuition said! But, I don’t beat Social Security. That’s ok. I was so terribly sick when a young adult, I never thought of living over 30 and am now 72!

  3. In my humble opinion take that 1928 salary and multiply it by 100, to get a realistic gauge of inflation.

  4. Trump was in California yesterday and I would like to apologize on behalf of all citizens of San Diego that had to put up with our blithering Chief Executive. I want everyone here on this web site to listen to very word he said yesterday. He knows how to manipulate and dominate conversations…I will give him that…except while he babbles, in people’s minds, they all are thinking about Wanting to choke the life out of him in a Homer Simpson/Bart cartoon like way. Yesterday, he put words in the border patrols mouths, when it was clear they did not agree with him. It was all about the wall. ‘We don’t have a nation with a wall” Trump proclaimed. What kind of ridiculous statement is that? More appropriate words would have been.

    “I couldn’t have fooled people to vote for me without that Wall Talk”

    The border patrol leader tried to say that it is increased technology that is the difference and Trump quickly interrupted and pretended like the guy didn’t exist and went on about the wall. He even tried to say we needed a see through wall, and when the border patrol leader tried to talk and contest a see through wall, Trump again interrupted and praised his own idea. He then blasted the effectiveness of immigration control right in front of the very people that were doing a pretty darn good job of controlling the border in California. Trust me folks…The border situation is not as dire as Trump says it is. That is an entirely different rant. I have lived here 20 years. I know.

    He then went on to blast Gov. Brown and said he was doing a terrible job of running the state. Yeah…right. Our economy is on fire…we have a nearly 10 billion dollar budget surplus YTD and growing. Computer/AI/storage/chip Tech is on a never ending growth spurt. We are the worlds lagest center for bio-tech and there are dozens of cranes in the South San Francisco, Mission Bay Area trying to keep pace with the growth and hiring. Irvine and SanDiego make up the rest of bio-tech’s growth. Our number one status in Agriculture remains a booming industry…we are the center of the Automobile industry related companies fueled by Tesla’s growth and self driving technology. Our Tourism is still the largest in the country. The Retail and clothing giants headquartered here have weathered the shift in that industry. Do you want to talk real estate? Our housing prices aren’t high because we have problems as Trump likes to say. . They are high because demand is out of control…crazy good! Millions of buyers with tons of money outbidding each other for a home to live in.

    I could go on. Do we have problems?…sure…what state doesn’t? We are a huge state of 40 million. But our pro’s far, far outweigh the cons.

    But don’t take my word for it. Here is reading only George can appreciate from our state economic council…happy reading folks…http://www.caeconomy.org

  5. Dang. Marketing people must just get tired of coming up with “catchy” drug names and rely on puns/sick jokes.. I about fell over when I found out that premarin was the concatenation of “Pregnant Mare Urine.” Yea, I want to take that. I even read that if you are not convinced of where it comes from, break a tablet in half and smell it–Uck! Sounds almost like medieval medicine.

    Hey, I’m 62 years old, can still almost do the splits, am healthy, and yes, I exercise regularly and eat “healthy.” Now I’m proud that I used to be teased years ago in the great Corporate sleaze bums for being a “health nut.” Be lazy, see what I care! Hoping it works.

    • And where do you think ANUSOL came from, “Anus Oil!” Marketers must laugh themselves crazy with such names. Their oil just makes you want to kiss your hemorrhoids goodbye!

  6. Mark
    If all you say is true why does California
    have last place in livability and also show
    more people moving out of the state than moving in? So many homeless and literally feces on the street of San Francisco.

    • I visited Oakland last year for a conference and was shocked at what a experienced. I felt that I’d entered the third world. Entire streets were filled with homeless and their tents such that they could not be driven through. The underside of the freeway was littered with more of them and their stuff, and quite honestly, I’ve seen far better looking city dumps. I was warned against walking anywhere but I did anyway. Even Chinatown was depressed and unfriendly. Finding a grocery store was difficult because of rules on the size of signs. It wasn’t just Oakland – the entire Central Valley looked depressed, and San Bernardino looked like the South Bronx. I planned to stop at national parks on the way back, but after a few days I just wanted out of the state.

      • First of all, Oakland is pretty nice, especially around Lake Merritt and into the hills and North towards Berkeley. My wife and I travel over there to take our urban walks…which are usually in San Francisco, but we mix it up and walk around Lake Merrit and the Piedmont area every once in a while to mix it up. Every city has its bad areas. Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, New York, Boston, Baltimore, Philly, Detroit and St. Louis (ughh..the worst of the bunch) You obviously were in Oakland’s bad part. Do your research the next time you are there. As far as the other comment about feces in the streets of San Francisco…This is the part of social media that angers me. Someone saw poop on the sidewalk, took a picture and blasted it on social media and all of a sudden, the entire City of San Francisco is covered in poop. Isolated incidents get blown out of proportion more often than we would like to think.

        For example…It happens with weather all the time. I have relatives in the Northeast and my midwestern mom is all worried that they will be killed by a bomb Cyclone. If it gets headlines and sells ads….George would agree with me on this topic.

    • I laugh when I see those so called polls. I have traveled all over the world and I have yet to find a place more livable, more beautiful and more exciting than the Bay Area. It is not last place in livability by mine or anyone else standards that live here.

  7. Regarding the Meltdown and Spectre hack/flaws, Meltdown is by far the worst. That one precluded on AMD processors.

    Apparently there’s an ARM processor embedded in all these chips, for reasons that have NOTHING to do with the well being of the chip owner. It’s entirely unnecessary for the normal operation of these chips. It’s like shipping every machine with a built in hardware virus. We can speculate about who pressured for this thing and who benefited, but the bottom line is that no networked computer is completely safe. It’s fair to say that the AMD processors are likely safer than anything from Intel. Building your own chip is prohibitive in time and cost, and if you outsource it, there’s no telling what you’ll get back. It’s a known risk in running any machine. A hardware firewall using a lesser known OS might mitigate the risk, but that’s about it. We really do need additional chip vendors that can compete on the basis of open source masks and no undocumented processing. All firmware should be open source for user confidence.

    Lastly, Windows should be used only where necessary. There are many good linux versions available for common tasks.

    On medicine – I’m my own primary physician. I have the most to gain and the most to lose from my decisions. I won’t delegate that authority to anyone. I’ve yet to meet an MD that will write the prescriptions I want, and there are only a couple of them. They are all rightly afraid of losing their licenses, and in so doing, they’re of no use to me.

  8. Looks to me that we are in a back & fill bull market with the next goal URE INDEX 24333.33. The DOW looks to be the weakest link in the URE INDEX which includes THE DOW, S&P 500, & NASDAQ.

  9. I mentioned years ago that my car broker nephew vacas on Maui from Turkey Day ’till March. He does this because nobody buys cars during this period, and he loses less money, treating himself, than he would, working and paying the overhead. A more honest and useful graph from CDC would be one which compared the numbers YtoY…

  10. Interestingly, Rex mouthed-off to Da Prez in regards to Trump’s proposed meeting with the YoungUn. I have to ask myself: “Why would Tillerson not want the North Korean war drums to go silent?”

    • I propse you don’t get to run Global Oil without a deal of some kind with the powerthatbe..simple enough for me…you?

  11. Lamb is not a “moderate,” he’s a hard-left Liberal (check his record) who was carefully rebranded and marketed by a consortium of DNC wonks and Soros minions.

    • This is a critical point.

      Lamb’s success, if it survives the recount, is because Soros’ group is figuring out how to push the buttons of the American electorate…

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