Coping: Two Weeks of Pins and Needles

Mother Nature doesn’t seem  to be very happy with Nepal.  This morning’s earthquake – the second in two weeks in Nepal – has us contemplating the possibility that the exceptional strains around the Pacific Plate and the Indo-whatever-it-is will have to have some balancing – and that bodes poorly for either the West Coast or Hawaii.

As you know, we had recently discussed some of the work of G.A. Stewart (see his website The Age of Desolation here) and we’ve mentioned that May 10 has been a day of concern for some time, but there’s this little matter of calendar adjustments that keep the mega quake window open until the end of the month, or so.

One of these days, a longer investigation of calendar reform is in order, although Wikipedia has a fine start on it over here.  The idea of the can of worms this “accuracy of calendar” opens begins to reveal itself as we read:

The calendar was a reform in 1582 to the Julian calendar. It was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII, after whom the calendar was named, by papal bull Inter gravissimas dated 24 February 1582.[4] The motivation for the adjustment was to bring the date for the celebration of Easter to the time of year in which it was celebrated when it was introduced by the early Church. Although a recommendation of the First Council of Nicaea in AD 325 specified that all Christians should celebrate Easter on the same day, it took almost five centuries before virtually all Christians achieved that objective by adopting the rules of the Church of Alexandria (see Easter for the issues which arose).[

Without getting too deeply into it, the basic idea of the calendar not being “nailed down” with high precision fasteners, has to be considered any time you look at historical data.

What we can say with some certainty is that yesterday was yesterday and tomorrow is likely to be tomorrow, but much beyond that, religion and government have been conspiring for a good long while and the constant re-write of history books – in the era before moveable data or moveable facts (as opposed to simply moveable type) – has a fair degree of importance.

For one, we can’t say with very high precision what happened from about 1700 and earlier.

One of the champions of pointing this stuff out is a Russian mathematician by the name of Anatoly Fomenko.

He went through all the best information available on the Middle Ages and came to the conclusion that a lot of it was simply made up.  A good starting point if you’re interested in the possibility that even relatively recent history was just “made up” can be found in Fomenko’s History: Fiction or Science? Dating methods as offered by mathematical statistics. Eclipses and zodiacs. Chronology Vol.I which is but the first of several books on point. 

Then problem is that Fomenko worked history backwards through referenced historical events and came to the conclusion that Christianity may have been largely made up. 

The problem with Fomenko’s work is two-fold.  First, it doesn’t make Christians very happy because it opens the door to the possibility that a competing religion (Islam) may not be the newer religion by as much as is claimed.

The other point that’s debatable in Fomenko is whether or not the Earth’s rotation or even our position among the planets more recently is as “stable” as we’d like to think.  Science has be moving slowly toward Velikovsky’s cosmological model of colliding worlds and that really upsets everything.

The result, for Fomenko was being branded in places like Wikipedia as a “Historical Revisionist:

“Fomenko is a supporter of drastically revising historical chronology. He has created his own revision called New Chronology, based on statistical correlations, dating of zodiacs, and by examining the mathematics and astronomy involved in chronology. Fomenko claims that he has discovered that many historical events do not correspond mathematically with the dates they are supposed to have occurred on. He asserts from this that all of ancient history (including the history of Greece, Rome, and Egypt) is just a reflection of events that occurred in the Middle Ages and that all of Chinese and Arab history are fabrications of 17th and 18th century Jesuits.

He also claims that Jesus lived in the 12th century A.D.

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Talk About Weather–Not Markets

Why, you’re wondering? Well, except for Orange Juice futures (up 0.88%) there’s little of interest going on publicly today. A few bond numbers, but this week’s news will have to come with a data event like retail sales and import prices, but we’ll have to wait until Wednesday for those. Instead, how about we talk about the weather?

Coping: Tornado Prepping

“Well, I’m ready for anything now,” declared Elaine.  “I have my face on…”

We spent part of the early hours this morning under a tornado watch, and honestly, there’s not much going on at 2:45 AM other than talking about the weather.  The www.wunderground.com  display looked positively crappy.

The local weather net on the 2-meter ham band was active; seems lots of us with radios couldn’t sleep.

I would have made some breakfast (always a fine thing, 24/7) but with a vampire appointment for my 6-month old-man-blood work, that was off the table (so to speak).

“Coffee is OK, though,” I’d been told, but you can only drink so many cups. 

We’ve been in the hinterlands of East Texas for a dozen years now, and we’ve been thinking again about building a shelter.  It wouldn’t take too much to accomplish the task, a couple of loads of concrete, some block, rebar, and labor.  I’ve been thinking about  putting it under the screen porch and back-filling with dirt all over the place.

That way, we’d have a cool room in the summer and a shelter when spring lights off like it did today.

In the meantime, the combination of more-or-less continuous lightning (and how many cups is this?) gave me time to look up my pet theory that getting in a car with seatbelts and shoulder harness on would be a good move.

Not so, says this site which says in part;  “Do not get in a car or truck. Vehicles are generally tossed into the air and reduced to a pile of battered junk.”

I would have thought otherwise (impact zones and crumple and air bags) but seems not.

Still, being in a tornado in tall timber country., well, that project of a cold-room/shelter might just get moved up from the bottom of the project list this year.

Billionaires Bugging Out

A few years back, we had a string of reports about rich people selling all their U.S. possessions and heading for parts unknown.  At the time, it was attributed to (variously) a pending global coastal event or Niburu/Wormwood showing up, and so forth.

The rumors had been turned down to nothing here lately until this come in from a reader this weekend:

“…nope, the world didn’t end….last week. but the world that elitist /multi-millionaires and billionaires live in is certainly morphing into something that bears no resemblance to the one that relative peons like you and me are familiar with. l am very very very far from wealthy, but as fate would have it am related to two billionaires (in their mid fifties) and and am acquainted with several multi-millionaires ….funny how all of them but 2 were formerly investment bankers for some Big Hitters- they all “retired” about 10 years ago.

They all live well beneath their means-3 of them had left Texas for other states, and as we speak today, ALL of them, l repeat ALL of them have been busy lately selling their family homes, vacation properties, rental properties and other holdings such as luxury cars, boats,even their airplanes- ……very odd- most of these people don’t know each other but are doing the same thing at the same time !!

The Texans say that as soon as their kids’ school is out this month, (l mean the day AFTER, literally) they will be leaving for Europe and parts unknown for an extended “vacation”. The other “wealthies” are leaving around the same time, but are vague about their destinations…

These people have the means to do anything they want …all but one couple have teenagers or younger married children and grandchildren….Their ENTIRE families are leaving together for these “wonderful overseas vacations”….strange how these folks give out very minimal information about their “vacation plans’. l don’t think l will ever see any of these people again…..someone, somewhere has given them a BIG hint, and they are rapidly dismantling their lives here in the USA…. l guess the rest of us , without the means to re-locate , oops, l mean “leave for an extended overseas vacation” will find out soon enough what the future holds….l am scared shitless.

(Crude Words Alert!)  Say:  Not to pick nits, or anything, but according to one source, the term scared shitless first appeared in 1936.

This is in terrible contrast to the phrase “scared the shit out of..” which is at quite the other end of the spectrum.

As far as we’ve been able to determine, most people have this built-in confused G.I.

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A Quick Course in Stock Screening

I’ve given Elaine an interesting project:  Find some companies that she thinks we ought to invest in.   Having received approval for our minor parts change on the airplane, I think a trip to a casino somewhere would be interesting but options are far easier to play at home and you can make a lot more money at it.

Sounds simple enough until you start looking at the task in detail.  Then it becomes…well…daunting.

This morning we consider the problem of stock screening in some detail, consider some different approaches to sniffing out under-valued companies, and offer Mrs.

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Other Than the Jobs Report

Ah, the foreplay that goes into the jobs report. 

Before I open the envelope this morning, a word or three about handicapping this morning’s number.

If you look at the ADP jobs report this week (+169,000) and the Challenger Job Cuts report (61,582) we can sort of imagine a total jobs movement of about +108,000.

Not that this number will be anywhere near what government will claim:  They can get away with all kinds of statistical shenanigans because it’s their calculator and they run it as they please.

Of course the other thing they do is “estimate jobs into existence” using the CES Birth/Death Model which will no doubt show tons and scads of single employee start-up companies.  It’s only a coincidence, I tell you, that such numbers are impossible to verify.  Why, that’s the kind of data we like most.

OK, enough wind…the envelope please?

“Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 223,000 in April, and the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 5.4 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in professional and business services, health care, and construction. Mining employment continued to decline.

Household Survey Data In April, both the unemployment rate (5.4 percent) and the number of unemployed persons (8.5 million) were essentially unchanged. Over the year, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons were down by 0.8 percentage point and 1.1 million, respectively. (See table A-1.) Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for Asians increased to 4.4 percent.

The rates for adult men (5.0 percent), adult women (4.9 percent), teenagers (17.1 percent), whites (4.7 percent), blacks (9.6 percent), and Hispanics (6.9 percent) showed little or no change in April.

Ure’s Infamous Instant Analysis

Here we go into the details: Half an hour before the numbers were released, the markets were pointing toward a model flat to slightly upward opening.  Seems most of the jobs jitters were relieved by the two private sector reports.

1.  Whenever a government report uses the term “Essentially unchanged” it’s time for a diaper-check.

2.  How come the press release says employment gained 223,000 while the worksheet here says it was up only 192,000? Makes little sense to me but, then again,  I got my degree from MBA’s R Us.

3.  Average hourly earnings went up 3-cents last month.  Don’t spend it all in one place.  Use it for a down payment on a stick of gum.

4.  Over on the no-longer-neatly formatted CES Birth-Death Confessional Page Here we see that of (the we-don’t-understand-how-they-figured-it) 233,000 news jobs, 223,000 were estimated into existence and of this sack of digits,  86,000 were in business and professional services and 76 thou were in leisure and hospitality.

5.

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Coping: “Remote Dreaming” a Summit Meeting

I hope you don’t mind my sharing occasional vivid dreams that come along.  Granted, they are weird, but they sometimes offer hints of what’s to come so I pass them on.

I mean like my January 13 dream about the “big quake in April” or the Gulf Horizon dream, where I posted a dream very well-fitting of the Gulf oil disaster was posted fully 18-hours in advance of events.

Had another one overnight which I thought you might get a kick out of.

As this dream opened, it wasn’t clear whose perspective it was being seen from.  It obviously wasn’t mine – and there was no one I knew in the dream, except for the world leader part.  Vladimir Putin is hard to mistake.

It was as though I was either a journalist or a very high-level administrative person, and the dreamer was on a ship that was heading from Europe to the United States.

On this ship was – of all people – Russia’s leader Vlad Putin.  And since it was a leisurely sea-crossing, I was looking forward to interviewing Putin at some point in the trip, likely it would be in a day, or two.  Though the ship had already been at sea fully a day or longer in the dream’s timecode..

The dreamer was wearing odd clothing (a women, perhaps?) with what seemed like a rich – just darker than sky – blue shirt (or blouse?) and a gray jacket over it – a kind of Civil War Confederate gray, if you know the color.

The sense was that Putin was coming to the U.S. to hold talks with president Obama, and there was some sense of excitement because there was a sense that the talks MIGHT take place on the ship and there was anticipation that this could turn into a very key meeting, just as the Yalta meeting between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill was at the end of World War II.

Coming on a large yacht/cruise (naval?) ship was interesting.  After the dreamer’s actually meeting Putin briefly – and being promised the later interview – the next day at sea had a couple of interesting features.

One was walking the ship, early in the morning and stumbling into the wrong meeting room on the ship.  This one was full of naval officers who were poring over a map which was displayed on a wall behind them.  It wasn’t particularly dangerous-feeling, at least at the moment, but the dream was highly embarrassed stumbling into thre wrong room in search of breakfast and press facilities.

The sense was that crisis was not imminent but the developments on the ground somewhere were being followed closely.

The next odd feature was the dreamer ordering a pizzas to go – back to the room for work.   Ship’s company screwed it up and the wait was much longer than anticipated.

And that was about it. 

Except for the overwhelming notion running like a thread that while there might be troubles between the US and Russia now, there would likely be a Yalta-like meeting where the place that this (dreamed) Putin-Obama confab will gain some degree of historical notoriety from the meeting, as did Yalta.

Timing on this dream was terribly imprecise.  There was little to indicate a date, but it seemed like early fall, but that’s only based on the sun  position in the sky when the dreamer burst into those navy dudes’ meeting. 

The timing from dream date to event date is all over the place.  The most accurate ones have been within 24-hours, or so.  The Gulf Oil disaster dream was 20-hours from writing and 18-hours from posting.  The Arizona road closure/traffic death and detours dream was a matter of less than 3-hours.

But the January 13th dream about the big April earthquake was on  the order of 14 1/2 weeks or 102 days.  (Ignoring dateline issues).  So, all over the place.

Speaking of dreams and such, there may be a big quake in the period now through May 21, so a heads up on that one.

I’ve been thinking about what could cause these dreams to take place and frankly, nothing seems to come to mind.  There’s no common foods that I can think of, alcohol use doesn’t have any effect.  But I may be looking at the wrong variable:  It could be a subtle electronic or electric effect, or along a different line, it could be a blood-sugar level, amount of daylight/sunlight…the number of variables when doing personal dream work like this becomes absolutely stunning.

When you come down to it, there’s no way of telling what the trigger is:  It might even be a seldom-used word or new concept sets off some kind of mental process.  Elaine happened to use the word vertiginous yesterday…not an everyday word for here.  No telling.

Another possibility (if you don’t mind the really personal stuff) is the one thing the dream states all have in common is they seem to occur within 24-hours after sexual activity.  Is it possible that some hormonal change, or other, changes the human propensity perchance to dream?

OR could it be something as simple as the right amount of coffee?  Again, each of the dreams seems to follow a period when I’ve had coffee (decaf) but that narrows it down to every day, so toss that one…or not?

The payoff some lucid – precognitive dreams is a glimpse of aspects of the future.  Occasionally, you will run into departed loved ones, and such, but they seem mainly preoccupied with the odd things they are doing with their existence since passing.

And again, we circle back to the psychological basis of dreaming:  Are all these things stubs of long-ago incomplete thoughts that just all get tossed into the blender with only a very tiny pinch of “future” to them?  Or, is that how the whole future of humankind works: through the common denominators of some critical mass of people dreaming a dream…

I’d sure encourage you to follow Chris McCleary’s work at the www.nationaldreamcenter.com site. Since I started having the occasional glimpse of existence outside of the confines of our shared human timeline, back when I was 45, oir so, it has been a marvelous work to experiment with – and gives purpose to sleep.

What I suspect is that the process of opening up to such dreams comes from connecting with a loved one in a moment of extreme emotional stress.

Years ago, when I was sailing up in British Columbia on my old sailboat (2004 youtub e video here) so this was before then, I was overnight in Nanaimo B.C.

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Job Cuts are Back

Challenger Job Cuts report is just out and it’s not pretty.  From the company press release:

Falling oil prices contributed to a 68 percent surge in job cuts last month, as US-based employers announced workforce reductions totaling 61,582 in April, up from 36,594 in March, according to the latest report on monthly layoffs released Thursday by global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. The April total was 53 percent higher than the same month a year ago, when 40,298 planned job cuts were recorded. It represents the highest monthly total since May 2012 (61,887) and the highest April total since 2009 (132,590). Year to date, employers have announced 201,796 planned job cuts, which marks a 25 percent increase from the 161,639 layoffs tracked in the first four months of 2014. This is the largest four-month total since 2010.

Stocks look to open around flat.  The real reaction to all this week’s employment data should culminate tomorrow when the monthly jobs report comes in.

Software Time Machines:  Issues for News Junkies

Time we had us another chat about news templates.

I’ve told you often enough about our ongoing evolution of the web-scanning software called Nostracodeus (which is updated daily by Grady over at www.nostracodeus.com) and which we run overnight here, as well.

The idea is simple:  Send software out to scan the news and look for tell-tale words that are harbingers of future events.

We often do very well anticipating this and that because the world doesn’t happen in an entirely chaotic manner; there’s a kind of soft order to how we careen into the future.  It’s found in the analysis of time-indicators in news and social media. 

Take a word like “next week” and scan the web looking only for pages posted in the last day, or two, and which point to next week.  Then go through the web pages and see what next week will look like in a Big Data sense.  It’s really pretty cool.

Except, sometimes there are other forces at play and we often jump the gun by a day, a week, a month, a year, and so forth, because these are most commonly referenced timescales.

This morning, the stock market will be opening flat, but there is an increasing chance of us seeing a big scrap between bulls and bears at the S&P 2,040 level.  I told you on April 6th in our report then that this was in the cards…I apologize for being a month off on  the precise data of the battle.  But here’s how it looked a month ago:

What we were mentioning the past couple of weeks to our Peoplenomics™ subscribers could show up today, or this week, as the S&P 500 does battle royal at the 2,040 level.

My friend Robin Landry and I talked about this at some length when we flew up there to huddle weekend before this one.   Here’s part of what Robin had sent out to his managed account clients:

“Once the MACD has crossed the signal line and begins to drop sharply, in the past it has paid to get defensive and raise cash. The 2040 level is also about to be tested as well as the trend line from the low last October which I referenced above was broken earlier today and then the market rallied into the close to the underside of that trend line.

I call this the Kiss of Death, when it happens, because of the high percentage of times when this happens the decline resumes and accelerates.

There are also a number of other technical indicators, not shown, which are supporting my concern of the potential for a large decline.

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Coping: With Rogue Government(s) Within

I’ve been writing for years about “hidden hand” operations that exist within government.  No, not the Adam Smith invisible hand…something else.  The self-interested sort.

In fact, in our Peoplenomics™ reports, we will often use a fictitious Directorate 153  – which we describe as a vestige  of the Cold War – as a thinking tool.

It has proven itself a useful time and time again.  Perhaps because it helps us remove certain  “blinders” that most people run around wearing.  You may not notice them, but they are there.  They are concepts and beliefs that are not true and which limit your understand of how the real world works.

For example,  say you own a piece of property, and in order to strictly comply with laws, you need to obtain a “permission” from some branch of government.  If you want a zoning variance to build a carport close to your property line, but on your own property, you would likely need a zoning variance.

Zoning is especially fun to use because under Common Law, as long as your use of your own property (King of your own Castle) doesn’t interfere with surrounding castles, then everything should be good.

But that “surrounding castles” idea is where things beget messiness.

If your neighbor happens to be up the hill from your property, they could claim that their castle use (views from a window, say) would be interfered-with by your carport.

In a perfect world, there would be an even-handed application of law and the one best and fair result issued.

But often as not, the results are not fair or precedents evenly applied.  That’s because of “factions” that exist – within government.

In zoning, you might have many – far beyond the so-called two party paradox.  Two common divisions in zoning are pro-growth and pro-environment     Since environmental activism runs hot (presently) decisions on zoning will tend to lean in this direction since. this “faction” has captured a lot of government.

Their tools have been votes, political campaign contributions, agendas, hugged trees, demonstrations, and in the most radical of examples, damage to private property.  Yet, extreme environmentalism is not lumped with terrorism because it has has been working up to operating under “color of law” for the past 100-years.

And this brings us to this pair of important paragraphs in Wikipedia:

Color of law refers to an appearance of legal power to act but which may operate in violation of law. For example, though a police officer acts with the “color of law” authority to arrest someone, if such an arrest is made without probable cause the arrest may actually be in violation of law. In other words, just because something is done with the “color of law” does not mean that the action was lawful. When police act outside their lawful authority and violate the civil rights of a citizen, the FBI is tasked with investigating.[3]

The Supreme Court has interpreted the United States Constitution to construct laws regulating the actions of the law enforcement community. Under “color of law”, it is a crime for one or more persons using power given to him or her by a governmental agency (local, state or federal), to willfully deprive or conspire to deprive another person of any right protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States. Criminal acts under color of law include acts within and beyond the bounds or limits of lawful authority. Off-duty conduct may also be covered if official status is asserted in some manner. Color of law may include public officials and non-governmental employees who are not law enforcement officers such as judges, prosecutors, and private security guards.[4] Furthermore, in many states it is unlawful to falsely impersonate a police officer, a federal officer or employee, or any other public official or to use equipment used by law enforcement officers, such as flashing lights or a fake police badge. Possession of a firearm also can enhance the penalty for false impersonation of a police officer.

And yet we see it all the time.  The whole Civil Asset Forfeiture business is a fine example of government operating under “color of law.”

Does the Navy own the world’s oceans?  No, but they operate under “color of law” in many cases.  Same thing with the FAA:  They don’t own the sky, but they regulate it – arguably under color of law.

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Prepper Deluxe: Time to Get a "Cache Property?"

Like so many kids today, mine have not been family-forming or buying property.  But there’s a set of events a few years out on the horizon that make at least some absolutely minimal fall-back position from Big Cities something to seriously consider.

Yeah, yeah…”Ain’t got money, Dad…” is the usual answer.  So this morning, in preparation for my son coming down here to visit, a preview of the stern lecture that Dad will be issuing, complete with timing of the real estate cycles and so forth, that are involved.

At some point, today’s kids are going to wake up and realize they have been “had” by the Nanny State.  And when the sociopolitical upheaval, accompanied by wholesale mass unemployment greater than even the 1930’s shows up, a Minimal Fall-back Property (MFP) will be the one serious investment most preppers will not have made.

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Trade Collapses! $51.4 Billion Dollar Hole!

Proof of Recovery seen!  (I jest, wake up.)

Want to see what happens when a country spends way more than it exports?

“The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, through the Department of Commerce, announced today that the goods and services deficit was $51.4 billion in March, up $15.5 billion from $35.9 billion in February, revised.

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Coping: Grounded Airplanes, Sheets, & Ham Radios

Ah, where to begin this morning’s ramble of an honest guy who’s just trying to thread the many needles of bureaucracy?

To begin with, our airplane is STILL in annual inspection as we await the FAA approval for trivial variance from an existing airworthiness directive (AD) via an alternate means of compliance (AMOC) which has been approved by an FAA designated engineering representative (DER). 

In the meantime, we have a 2,250 pound maximum gross takeoff  paperweight on our hands…Go ahead, make me an offer…Meanwhile, it’s time to update the medical so that’s on tap for tomorrow.

Speaking of medicals:  A good hour was spent yesterday talking to my doctor and dentist and filling out online forms because one of the FAA medical questions asks for the date of every doctor visit in the past three years and the reason.

Since I get regular 6-month check-ups, I’m trying to figure out WHY anyone would care, for example, that on 10/15/2013 I had a routine check-up?

Hand me that pressure can of whipping cream…oh wait!  There it is!   I can see a couple of FAA bureaucrats arguing the point now: “I think Ure should have had that check-up on the 12th…15th was a questionable pilot decision, I think Fred…”

“Yeah, and did you see this filling on February 20th of last year?  Wasn’t there an inter-departmental memo from Home Land on how people who have fillings on 2/20/2014 may be at elevated risk of something?”

Medical geomancy with a side of Empire Builder, please.  If it’s too early for Eng rish Rit, geomancy is the art of  “divination from configurations seen in a handful of earth thrown on the ground, or by interpreting lines or textures on the ground.”

In a technologically advanced culture (or so we allege) we have graduated from handfuls to dirt to exabyte’s of data pretending it’s different than geomancy.  And it is.

I call it compumancy but others insist calling it  Big Data — makes it more r’spect’ble.  Uh huh…but the fact is the world runs off statistics rather than common sense for two reasons.  No one has any common sense anymore is one.  The other reason doesn’t matter, but it has something to do with selling math books, computers and statistical packages in order to keep the economy afloat.  And pretending we’re an advanced something or other.

Still, with no airplane to fly, and needing nothing (except maybe saving up for lawyer time depending on how long the paperweight sits) that leaves time for lots of tractoring, yard work, and the ham radios  even got fired up last weekend.

Quakes and Ham Band Conditions

Conditions on the ham bands always seem to be especially interesting when earthquakes have been popping off.  My pet (read: nutter) theory is that since the Earth is like a big piezoelectric crystal in some sense.

Take this morning, for instance.  We had a M7.5 – 130km SSW of Kokopo, Papua New Guinea.  Nutjob theory says the 20-meter ham band should be interesting as a result.  Next day or three.

Back to point, I talked to a guy in Jakarta, Indonesia on SSB, and then knocked off a couple of contacts in Morse code down at the bottom of the 20-meter band.  No, SSB is NOT Super Smash Brothers, it’s something else, see here. (Gamers!  Sheesh!)

The fellow in Jakarta was complaining about a very high noise level in the city.  Something on the order of S-9, which is something most people don’t think about.

High noise levels mean something:  There is lots of electronic pollution about…and that means – since all humans are sensitive to electrical interference at some level – that all city-dwellers are slightly nuts.

Every time a read a poll, or don’t like the way a particular election turns out, I flip open a few reference books on the low level impacts of electronic pollution and presto!  Everything is explained.

Try Robert Becker’s The Body Electric: Electromagnetism And The Foundation Of Life.  I trust you know there are people who make special grounding sheets because humans used to sleep literally on the ground.

They are not cheap, especially if you happen to have a king-sized bed, but Amazon sells a Earthing Fitted Sheet Kit, King for about $210-bucks.

OK…why would you spend so much money?

The main reason I can think of is the possibility that having your body in contact with the ground may improve the caliber of your sleep.  And yes, that would improve mental condition, improve dream clarity, and oh, so many other things (like possibly anti-aging) that it would be a very long discussion, indeed.

People often comment that Elaine and I don’t look our ages.  Again, let me hold up another nut-job theory:  I think it has a lot to do with stress – and one kind of low-level stress that you’re not even aware of is the radio spectrum.

There have been tons of books written about the dangers of electricity at a subtle level and again, a good starter is Paul Brodeur’s Currents of Death.

You may not realize it, but there are countries in the world where electronic noise pollution is limited to levels about half what they are in the US. 

I don’t want to tell our expat friend Bruce down in Ecuador that maybe the reason Americans are crazy has to do with too much exposure to electricity.  His competing theory has more to do with sick souls, corruption of values, and what have-you.

Prepper’s Corner:  A Note From Ray

I don’t think my buddy Ray would mind me sharing this with you:  He’s been feeling a bit…

Pissy… The starter on my Deere, which has sounded like it was full of rocks for at least 10 years, finally cranked its last. Reading has yielded the following:
1. The small/garden/utility tractor forums provide a wealth of information.
2. The engine almost MUST be pulled, to replace the starter.
3. The starter should always be rebuilt, rather than replaced. New starters are Mitsus, expensive and subpar, or of Chinese manufacture, and complete junk.
4. The starter is like the old GM Delco starters, and must be precisely shimmed, or will eat the engine’s ring gear.
5.

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A Quickie Weather & Economics Class

Let’s start with the macro picture: The latest solar weather prediction center report on the sunspot cycle is out this morning.

This is one of our all-time favorite cycles to keep an eye on for they do seem to have a fabulous impact on how the economy does.

In fact, Clement Juglar is credited with observing a 7-11 year economic cycle called (of course!) the Juglar Cycle…

The Juglar cycle is a fixed investment cycle of 7 to 11 years identified in 1862 by Clement Juglar.[1] Within the Juglar cycle one can observe oscillations of investments into fixed capital and not just changes in the level of employment of the fixed capital (and respective changes in inventories), as is observed with respect to Kitchin cycles. 2010 research employing spectral analysis confirmed the presence of Juglar cycles in world GDP dynamics.

The other shorter term cycle that gets some press is called the Kitchin cycle, and while officially it’s  40-months, or so, in length…

This cycle is believed to be accounted for by time lags in information movements affecting the decision making of commercial firms. Firms react to the improvement of commercial situation through the increase in output through the full employment of the extent fixed capital assets. As a result, within a certain period of time (ranging between a few months and two years) the market gets ‘flooded’ with commodities whose quantity becomes gradually excessive.

But most of us who have spent a ton of time and dough on learning economics realize at some level that this Kitchin cycle sure seems to highly inter-related to the US four-year presidential cycle.

It is axiomatic that people today are not terribly different than people of 5,000 years ago.  And we’ve still got the same old “money changers out of the temple” problems – it’s just the money-changers now own everything.  Or, wait, is that really a change?

At any rate, there is your sunspot data and we see that things should be cooling down over the next several years and this doesn’t leave much hope for the Global Warming Alarmists who would be worked up over something else, if climate islanding hadn’t come along and had the original data sets not been tampered with, and if governments world-wide were not so desperate for growth that they would monetize social movements and the weather just to hold onto power…

But, like it or not, that’s where George’s view of things sits this morning:  Market should rally at least until Friday when we eventually get this part month’s Employment data. 

Despite what we’re guessing to be about 120,000 layoffs in the oil business, as long as the price of oil remains over $50-bucks, it will cause the implosion in the energy business to happen in slow-enough motion such that the Hillacrats will have a shot at the Kitchin cycle driver next year.

The solar cycle bottom should come around inauguration time for whoever the high bidder to buy the White House is…and then when interest rates begin to rise shortly thereafter, collapse will come a calling when it does.

But not this week.  ADP Jobs Wednesday, Challenger Cuts Thursday, Federal report Friday and it’s all the more reason to hit the snooze alarm and call it good.  Sleep through the small pop at the open this morning, unless it’s going to make you rich, of course…

In the meantime, a blow off peak is likely still in our future and it should be a spectacular one, at that.

Islam Vs. the West Comes to Texas

Two gunmen were killed in Garland, Texas (Dallas area for outsiders) when they drove up to an anti-Muslim cartoon contest and opened fire on a security guard.  They were immediately shot and killed.

The security guard suffered an ankle wound, leading us to wonder if the perps were from Texas, at all.

For details as released twit @garlandtxgov.

Our Nostracodeus Big Data projects suggests the possibility of a second attack, only this one might be in Europe figures chief data slicer & dicer Grady…

On or about May 24th, we’ll be watching for something to do with the attack on the French cartoon magazine. (Attack in Texas May 5) There is still potential for another.

Among other things, we use word frequency analysis and something called the Fine Structure Constant (FSC) in the work.  Among other things, we see an outline of a cycle length of 130-145 days between mass murders/rampage killings.

Yeah, I know… “Stick with watching TV, or something, George…”

No thanks.  The future matters and so, therefore, should macro data leading into it, which gets us to…

Global Coastal Event This May?

I know we didn’t get one as predicted a few years back, but as Ure’s theorem of Big Data and the Future holds, if an event is SUPER BIG, we would not be surprised to hear or see it in data years in advance.

So with that in mind, click over and read this post on GLP which is mighty interesting under the heading “Global Coastal Event on May 28, 2015 Cientific study + Nostradamus.” (Their spelling, not mine – for a change.)

I’ve asked G.A. Stewart, author of “Nostradamus and the Age of Desolation” to have a look at the claims and give us a read on them… more when I hear back.

Hasn’t shown up in our www.nostracodeus.com work, or for that matter, in the www.nationaldreamcenter.com data either, so far as I know.  But if things start to pop, I will of course pass on links.

But the recent increase in quakes has me drawing lines of global earthquake views with the idea of anticipating where the next large magnitude temblors will be… Crude arrows show possible plate directionals…

Timing of this?  Well, G.A.

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Coping: With Pests as Summer Approaching

Down to the joys of summer, at least when the sweat dries off, around here.

The humming birds were humming like the little guy to the right, the occasional piercing pain of sinuses acting up from a ton of mowing and such.

And for those wondering, the June bugs were starting to decline in number down at the hangar where our old airplane is still being held hostage by paperwork with the FAA.

Several people wanted to know, however, if putting down $30+ worth of peppermint oil would actually repel the June bugs.

I don’t know about other varieties of June bugs, but the ones in our area don’t seem to care about a) peppermint oil, rosemary oil, garlic, or that $25 “ultrasonic pest repeller.”

The only way to get rid of June Bugs seems to be a) blowing them out with the leaf blower.  And b) making sure next year to get the outside security light at the hangar turned off the first of March so they won’t be attracted to the light source.

More than anything, light is what drives the JB’s so a string of white LEDs will be installed in the grass next year, as well.  But, in the meantime, care to guess which summertime bit of furniture I’ve got my eyes on?

Meantime, I’m trying to figure out what the bird was I heard Saturday while burning a pile of leaves and pine needles in the front yard.  It sounded so much like water in a brook that I actually turned around to look at the deer watering pond to see what it was.

Nothing there (of course) but I’ve spent a lot of time on the property and this was the first one that I heard which was a got-cha.

Here We Are – Come Save Us

Despite the yard work this weekend, I can hardly wait for the next round of “Californicated” to go viral. 

We’ve been covering their drought mess for a long time – and I was just reading how California is throwing money at the drought by (among other things) paying businesses $3 bucks a square foot to put in drought tolerant plants.

Let me help you run some numbers:  Let’s pretend (IRS insists we do) that all of Ure’s little enterprises constitute a business.  And let’s also remember 43,560 square feet per acre and we sit out here in the woods on 28.8 of them.

If I could get someone to pay be $3 a square foot, even after backing out the house and shop/off buildings, we’d still be able to sop up $3.6 million dollars.

Hell, with that kind of ROI we would move somewhere else.

Please, California, talk to Texas about this genius-level idea!  Come Save Us!

(The fact that even a third-grader knows that as soon as you strip off all the green, you lose vertical air movement, and you’ve built yourself a dandy new heat island –  and that’s how the Sahara works.  But don’t think common sense…this is California’s version of burning down the rain forest, except they’re doing it with taxpayer money, as well… And then to be able to cry poor on top of that, OMG these people are what?)

Dumb, Dumber, and Jerry Brown followers.

Our forecast of drought migration is still on the table.  California is the New Dust Bowl – something that should become apparent in the 2016-2017 timeframe.  Just like the last Depression Dust Bowl.

The real first arrival of displacement didn’t become obvious until summer of 1930, but after that it was all down hill for three waves of depressing dust.

If California gets a respite, don’t go bidding up prices, too far:  These things come in macro waves and doubling down after the first wave would be a fool’s errand.

Still, the Golden Brown state is full enough of fools, so ya’ll have fun.

WoWW:  The “Dead Cat Dream”

World of Woo-Woo time:  I’ve told you before about little snips of the future that get wrapped up into my dreams.  Sometimes, the snips of dreams have Big Messages in them – like the January dream about the big earthquake in April (check Nepal). 

Other times, they hold contest that’s of a warning nature.  Like the dream about road closure due to a fatal accident, traffic being re-routed, and orange cones for lane closures – hours before it actually happened.

Fast forward to Friday night/Saturday morning.  Awoke at 2:18 AM with a terrible dream about our cat Zeus.  Had a strong mental picture of a piece of “equipment” falling on him and killing him.

Got up at the usual time, fed the cat (who was just fine) and thought “Stupid George:  See the cat was fine…”

Then, just a few hours later, about 9 AM, I headed to the hangar and as I was approaching the turn onto the Farm to Market road we live off,, here was a freshly dead young cat.

Siamese, and quite remarkably, this was the same cat Elaine and I had considered (however briefly) pulling over the car to rescue a week earlier when we had gone into town for lunch.  We discussed at the time how it had the look of a feral cat (there were now homes around and it looked like another “dumper” – which is what city folks do when they are irresponsible pet owners.

Felt kinda bummed out about it..and it didn’t take but a few minutes to recall the conversation with Elaine and wonder about the dream less than 8-hours earlier.  Dead cat – and now this – a real genuine dead cat.

Ever since then, I have been asking myself how to score this one.  The number of dreams in which a cat had died (and this is over 66+ years, mind you) is exactly zero.

And to discover a cat we didn’t rescue, dead, immediately thereafter; well is that coincidence or something else?

WoWW II

By the way, I don’t remember if I share this update with you about the lady who had the disappearing gun night-vision scope problem…from a gun safe?

….hahahahaha..(manic laughter)-my husband , who found his mysterious, long lost night- vision scope last week, just came out on the back porch (l am sitting here , storm spotting) to show me the latest “gift-from-the-gun-safe”……a HUGE military-type knife/machete – serrated carbon steel, and a nice heavy sheath !!?? …..never saw it before, and it’s kind of hard to miss!! So what is the effing message here? : “DANGER, Will Robinson” ? or….” you may need this defensive stuff soon”? or… “come on thru, guys-we showed you the damn portal already”?… or “pay attention because TSIATHTF” ?? (… ….

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