What?  Prep for Christmas, as in “prepping”?

Absolutely, but of the more subtle dimension of prepping – the emotional side.

You see Christmas and New Years are supposedly joyous times of the year, but for many people, that’s a load of hooey.

As every Christmas rolls around, there are forgotten people everywhere.  A tip of the hat to Texas law firm Cordell & Cordell, a men’s family law advocacy firm down in the San Antonio area that is actually running commercials (on WOAI) asking people to remember men who are going through the heartbreak of divorce this year; and asking families to invite and involve the newly “singled” into their holiday plans.

I’ve been was in broadcasting 20-years and a multimedia consumer of gluttonous proportions ever since and I have never heard commercials from a women’s advocacy firm.  Maybe women are more welcome than men at this time of the year.

Been there, done that, years ago when my kids were young, so I thought we ought to have us a conversation about some of the prepping options that are available.

I always found it useful on holidays when the kids weren’t coming over to work on my hobbies.

At the time, I was living on a 40-foot sailboat in Seattle, so one year I decided to become involved in the annual “Christmas Ships” parade.  With a great power system on the boat,, it was not problem to make a 50-foot string of Christmas tree lights, hoisted aloft at the center by the mainsail halyard.  Floating blinking trees are a marvel.

It was so much fun (playing follow-the-leader) that the next night, I took the boat out, put the engine in neutral (the engine heater was welcome below decks as it was cold and showery) and I just drifted around on the north side of the 520 Evergreen Point floating bridge, knowing how much in earlier years, I’d enjoyed the view of boats with Christmas lights against the black background of the lake or Puget Sound.   It was wonderful to imagine the view from the bridge.

For me, it was one way to pass the time in a productive way.  Single-handing a 40-foot boat isn’t hard.  It’s the docking with a moderate wind that gets challenging, in the rain, and all.

There are other ways to get involved, too.

A good book, or better, a good author with a series is always a safe bet.  My favorite serial author was (and still is) Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series.  Cussler’s latest is Havana Storm (A Dirk Pitt Adventure).

Dirk Pitt, not to spoil the read, is a man’s man kind of fellow.  Collector of antique cars, a scuba-diving mining and underwater operations expert, he travels the world with all kinds of adventures. 

Surprisingly, the Dirk Pitt character didn’t translate into film as well as I would have thought.  But if you have seen the movie version of the Pitt adventure “”SAHARA BY MCCONAUGHEY,MATTHEW (DVD)” it’s still one of our favorite movies.  We drag it out every so often because the characters are characters, the music is great, there’s a plot to it and it’s just….well….Cussler-like.

His latest new character (once you’ve enjoyed at least half a dozen of of the Dirk Pitt books, is Isaac Bell who is the #2 man and head of operations for a detective agency in the early 20th century.  As such, he has one adventure set in the San Francisco area, at the time of the Great Earthquake there.  It’s in the historical grounding of his novels that Cussler really shines.

Most authors just tell a story.  But others, well they just start weaving a story.  Not Cussler, though.  He sets his stories against actual historical events that you can look up for yourself.

I’ve been debating posting one of my longer writings (like the first three chapters of my novel) just in case you have an interest….

But now, back to point:

It’s been  my observation that a lot of people don’t spend much, if any time, in solitude, any more.  There’s always a beep, a text, a tweet…one damn thing, or other, that conspires to keep up from working on one of the most important parts of life:  Internal alignment.

It only took me about one lonesome Holiday to blow through that depression stuff, but that’s not to say it’s not real and must be faced down or it will haunt you forever.  The Robert Service poem, The Quitter was particularly useful.

All of us are going to die, of that I’m nearly certain.  But I don’t see any sense in trying to elbow to the front of that line until I’ve worked out a good bit more wandering around through life.

Even things like terminal disease has a point to it, multiple moments of learning and self discovery.  I assume you know Life itself is a terminal disease, a kind of waiting room for the Hereafter.

Life  has plenty of nooks and crannies to explore and winter around the holidays is a great time to do some exploring.  Hiking in the woods with snow falling, sailing in snow, or for me being anchored our with a diesel stove going, head popped out an open hatch and seeing deer come down to the beach; exploring in the last of the light, hoof prints visible in the snow on wet sand.

Being alone, I man really alone, is not something most people do.  Why?  I couldn’t tell you but I suspect it’s because so few people really like themselves.  It takes a little bit of work and often results in personal change.

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Crack head Santa rally to continue:  It’s still the Roaring Twenties.

I bet you didn’t know the Federal Reserve had its own flag, did you?

Well, whatever.

The reason for the massive rally in markets yesterday was that the Fed could see, just as we pointed out to subscribers, that we were sitting on the critical 200-day moving average.

If you hadn’t learned this already, what happens is most money funds will dump equities and run screaming with their hair on fire when the market closes below the 200-day moving average.  So that couldn’t be allowed to happen. 

Of course, it  happened anyway, but for now this is the Santa Rally that we’ve been calling/waiting for.

It is overdone?

Of course.  Reading this part of the Fed Statement you might not see the change:

Consistent with its statutory mandate, the Committee seeks to foster maximum employment and price stability. The Committee expects that, with appropriate policy accommodation, economic activity will expand at a moderate pace, with labor market indicators moving toward levels the Committee judges consistent with its dual mandate. The Committee sees the risks to the outlook for economic activity and the labor market as nearly balanced.

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Now that we’re getting into the eggnoggy time of year, we can all relax, knowing the Fed is going to print however much money it takes to fan the dying embers of inflation while deflation rages on.

This leaves me time to get on to the all-important task of inventing technological breakthroughs which I offer you this morning, free of charge..

I’m big on properly trained pets.  Zeus the Cat has turned into a pretty fair copy editor (so much so that people notice the lack of creative typography here lately). 

Zeus behaves pretty much like a dog:  Comes when I whistle for him, drinks out of a water outlet outside, stares at what he wants and meows for it, sits for his meals and even sleeps on my feet on cold morning’s like this one.  Almost a dog, although I have thought about a Jack Russell terrier.  Main thing about cats is they bury their waste, and I’ve stepped in enough dog piles to last me a lifetime.  So dog training, applied to a cat, seems to work for us.

Circling back to the point (which I inadvertently do now and then):  When I put in the outside door to the new recording/studio room, I made the mistake of letting Zeus in when I heard him scratch on the door.

Unfortunately, this led to him enjoying clawing at the door and that began to degrade the outside weather-stripping.   Hmmm…looked like crap so what to do?

One of the nice things about being half-crazy is it’s easy to let the creative juices roll on command.  What was I really after?  What was the cat after?  What would be the most interesting and novel solution to the problem?

A Cat-Knocker!

As shown on the diagram above, this is about a 2-minute project.  All you need is a strip of thin paneling which is the backer board and through this you screw a fairly loose hole so your knocker pendulum will swing freely.

For the knocker pendulum itself, I used a piece  of scrap that was about 14-inches long and about 3/4 deep by an inch wide. 

Mount the backer with two countersinking head screws (behind the knocker pendulum so they don’t show) after first attaching the pendulum with a screw and backing it out half a turn so the pendulum can swing freely:  Presto!  A Cat-Knocker.

Why no one else has built one of these obvious-as-hell inventions brings me to the first point of this morning’s column:  Lots of people have torn up doors where their pets have ripped the door and door jam to shreds. 

But of all the folks I know with pets, nary a one has seen the problem for what it is (an opportunity to invent some little doo-dad like this one) and solve the problem in a graceful way.

What’s more, unlike other designs which are already on the market, my approach offered this morning doesn’t involve batteries.  But, if you are interested in a really high tech solution, you might consider something from literally dozens of other options.

One is this Pet Door Bell and for $50 or so you can set up to the Cat Doorbell – Wireless Indicator for your Cat.

All of which scurrying to the marketing books to work out a clever feature lists for my little cat-knocker.  Let me see…. it’s:

• Made of 100% recyclable materials
• Not covered with dangerous coatings
• Pre-sanded, paint to match your own door
• Invisible installation system
• No batteries to wear out or replace
• Safe for use around children
• Works on left or right-hand doors
• Installs on the door jam – nothing to trip over
• Requires no maintenance
• Hear up to 20-feet away

And so we (finally, thankfully) arrive at the point of this morning’s scrawl:  A good marketer can always think up at least half a dozen features for even insanely simple products (two pieces of wood, one of which has a predrilled hold in it, and three screws).

All that’s needed now is some packaging – and there will probably cost as much (if not more) than the materials for the Eco-Cat Knocker itself.

With a name like that, I was figuring to get an endorsement from Al Gore, hisself.  I have to look into whether the Sierra Club does product endorsements, but them of Greenpeace would be fine.

The next step would be to partner up with the guy who invented the new toilet paper that has no throw-away rolls on the inside of it, and get really serious about re-visioning the low level products of life; the ones we use every day and don’t spend any time thinking about…

Already I’m looking at a hunk of quarter inch rebar to update existing toilet papers holders to the new “no roll” variety.  I reckon about the only cost would be for the quarter-inch rebar, about 6-inches long…and that will get me into seeing if there’s an SAE or Metric or ANSI spec for the width of toilet paper. 

We are absolutely flush with profit potential for the new venture.

Be sure and drop my tomorrow as I unveil my new eggnog dispenser..  These breakthroughs are going to make us all rich, I tell you.  In all seriousness; or at least some of it.

March of Robots

Sugar Plum Fairies seem a lot less threatening that artificial intelligence (AI) if you’re following:

George… not a member but love your site! Here’s a great link to a TED talk about AI that ties into your article on computer/machine learning.
http://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_howard_the_wonderful_and_terrifying_implications_of_computers_that_can_learn?utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_content=button__2014-12-16
Sounds like the birth of Hal and The Terminator is at hand!

Thanks to reader Michael for the tip.  Now I just need to find 20-minutes…

Tiny Bubbles

A reader asked “How do I read the comments on your website.”

Simply look for the little bubble quoty-thing upper right above the first article in a batch.  The tiny bubble thingy.

Tex-Abuse or Truth?

Getting to the time of year when people with free time on their fingers forward Tex-Abuse stories.  Like this one:

“A young Texan grew up wanting to be a lawman. He grew up big, 6′ 2″ strong as a longhorn, and fast as a mustang. He could shoot a bottle cap tossed in the air at 40 paces.   

When he finally came of age, he applied to where he had only dreamed of working: the West Texas Sheriff’s Department.  

After a series of tests and interviews, the Chief Deputy finally called  him into his office for the young man’s last interview.

The Chief Deputy  said, “You’re a big strong kid and you can really shoot. So far your  qualifications all look good, but we have, what you might  call, an “Attitude Suitability Test” that you must take before you can be accepted. We just don’t let anyone carry our badge, son.”    

Then, sliding a service pistol and a box of ammo across the desk,  the Chief said, “Take this pistol and go out and shoot:  six illegal aliens, six lawyers, six meth dealers, six Muslim extremists,  six Democrats, and a rabbit.”   

“Why the rabbit?” queried the applicant.    

“You pass,” said the Chief Deputy. “When can you start?”

I’ll leave it to you to discern whether this really happened, but I heard it was just east of the Pecos River.

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Off into the intestines of Nikolai Kondratiev Wave theory this morning, as we attempt to make sense out of global markets in general and what may be coming for the USA market, in particular.

This is hardly a trivial pursuit because in case you haven’t noticed, the Dow Jones Industrials (which were showing hints of a small rally earlier this morning) are in a “great heap-o-crap” because the 200-day moving average is being quickly approached and a number of technical indicators are verging on collapse.

So the exercise of reviewing the literature (and a bunch of charts) in order to map out a rational trading response is a good thing and quite justifiable, give our believe that we may be  on the cusp of ending the false boom that was initiated in the wake of the Housing Collapse.

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Oil had smashed down into the $53 and change level in trading t65his morning, so a major market decline should continue.

It would be premature of us to start ringing alarm bells, but tomorrow’s Peoplenomics report will deal with some of the “next levels down” should the most recent declines be taken out by the current market slide.

Which ought to continue this morning.

As for how our outlook was for Monday’s trading?  Well, I said…

“But I wouldn’t bet on much of anything past the first hour today:”

And sure enough, the market was up for just a few minutes at the open and then it fell on down around 10:30 Eastern.

So let’s put on our community thinking caps and see where things are now:

• Japan was down more than 2 percent overnight.
• China was down a percent and a half
• France is down 1 1/2 percent
• Germany down another 8-10ths
• But the Brits (serious kneelers and deniers) are down about 2-10ths.

I take this readings about an hour before the US market opens, but that’s the “flavor of the world” this morning so another day of downside action (say another 100 down on the Dow) seems like a reasonable thing.

On a trip into town yesterday, I saw the price of gasoline was down to $2.30 at the local Brookshire’s grocery…and the Triple A average nationally $2.526 as a national average.

Gasoline prices in Texas have never made sense to me:  $2.22 in the Dallas area, up in the $2.36 range in Houston and all the way down to $2.14 a gallon in Amarillo (Armadillo) Tx.

I say they don’t make sense because we are literally across the street from  a whole field of wells that are pumping day and night and because I can’t remember any refineries up around Amarillo.  Houston?  Well, yeah…so like I said, makes no sense to me.  But then neither do politics.

The only pertinent thing in life for most people this morning is “OK, what’s next?”

If you have been paying attention, I’ve been  mumbling about how rigs will be laid down and companies will begin running into trouble as a result.  Give company troubles a few weeks to a couple of months to feed up the food chain to the banksters and by January (March, maybe latest) we should have enough blood in the water (well, red ink is close enough in finance, right?) that there should be another shark feeding frenzy.

Will Red Fork be the company that starts the wave when present history is distilled?  Oil has been as low as $53.60 and it looks like the Saudis are going for a two-fer:  “Help” the US by containing Russia, but while they’re at it, too much help and they can take out the US energy players and come in and snap them up at bargain prices before they in turn raises prices again.  Lovely, frigging lovely.

On our 2015 outlooks we have a bunch of sticky notes: 

The reason is it hard to be specific on start date is because of the inherently noisy way that finance works.  Just like when it starts to rain:  If you put a piece of paper outside before it rains and pout a small circle in one place, how long before a raindrop hits smack-dab in the middle of your mark?

Kinda hard to forecast.  Of course, it will happen, but it’s a matter of when.  So we’re in the Roaring Twenties moment for as long as prices go down and no one BIG gets into trouble.

The thing is, when  that  happens, then stuff will start hitting the fan in rapid succession. What we need to be looking for in the headlines is not about “racial strife” or any of the other media-whipped injustices which have been there all along, but which are being skillfully set up sequentially so that something besides greed in a crooked economic system will take the PR hit when this all goes poof!

The Ugly Truth About Deflation

The was this is done is my putting out stories about (and this is real, out of the UK this morning): how Inflation has hit a 12-year low.

We need to sit back and contemplate stories like this one deeply:  This is a huge raindrop from our previous thought experiment, but it missed our circle on the paper.

Moreover, is it really inflation hitting a low, or could it possibly be that deflation is picking up?

The public has been conditioned, since about 1955, or so, to believe that prices only go one way…UP.

But in fact the evidence is piling up to the contrary, which is why the Consumer Price report will be so interesting.  When gasoline for the family car drops a buck a gallon, that is NOT low inflation, that it outright price deflation.

What we are seeing now (and it takes only a moment of thought to come into focus):  Things we can live without but which are in huge supply are in deflation.  Things we need, like food, are going up, although quite slowly.

What this means is that we are in sectorial deflation and oil’s in the middle of that.  The reason that food prices aren’t coming down (and why farmers are only going to make $5 profit per acre in 2015, is that seed companies haven’t reduced their prices.  So the food and seed companies will have pricing power.

Housing lost its pricing power 5-years ago, in case you have forgotten, but in Elliott wave terms, we should have another large downside correction ahead, and that ought to happen in the next three years.

Meantime, the Baltic Dry Index dropped another 7 points this morning to 838.

Housing Report Just Out

The problem with deflation is that few believe it, and as a result, the rate of deflation is slow.  And it shows up in odd places like the Housing Starts report just out this morning from Census:

BUILDING PERMITS
Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits in November were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,035,000.

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This will sound like an odd-ball question, but here goes…

My buddy Vince and I have been looking at the B-wave in magnetics a good bit. 

As I mentioned on the Peoplenomics site, there was a lecture by James Clerk Maxwell wherein he discussed the B-field concept a good bit,.  I want to think it was in 1748, but you can find the lecture notes over on Robert Nelson’s marvelous Rex Research site here.

What is a B-field?   It is shown in the diagram, right.  It is a weak force which pushed the North-South magnetic lines of force out and away from the mid-section of a magnet.

My next series of experiments will be to see how the B-field distorts when multiple magnets are held in opposition.  I should be able to model it using Visimag…A video on use of VisiMag is over here on YouTube.

Other software is available, but what I’m specifically looking for it the effects of B-field excitation of multiple coils in different arrangements (such in as in a large circle, such as might be seen in the vertical cross-section of a UFO…).  And, taking it another step, what happens if the magnets are pulsed using high potential DC and various frequencies?  And (let’s toss this out, too), what happens when multiple coils are wound on a substrate of ferromagnetic materials that is topologically anomalous, such as a big Mobius core?

There is also an assertion made by Boyd Bushman in a YouTube video over here that when two magnets which have their B-fields opposing are dropped, they fall more slowly than a simple weight.  So we already know that opposed magnets fall more slowly (assuming the video is not a spoof), so how much higher power can we develop using electromagnets rather than single-state neodymium fixed magnets?

There have been some reports of ghostly apparitions appearing in the vicinity of high Tesla magnetics such as those used for magnetic imaging.  But whether that’s a hint at a link between portals and magnetics became a bit more doubtful last month when an article came out “explaining” the phenomena over here.

As I have spare time (Hahahaha.,…what’s that?) I’ve been designing complex B-wave generators based on using the concept of relatively low-power electromagnets.

What I’m presently looking for is any additional resources that may hint as to how B-waves might had been used at Coral Castle by Edward Leedskalnin.  I’ve got all the books from their gift shop. and been through the place three times now…

Anyway, send along ideas, please…

One Other Note on Anti-Grav Related Studies

A GizMag article here goes into some discussion of how mounting jet engines on the top side of aircraft wings may lead to shorter takeoff rolls.

New press maybe, but not a new idea.  In fact, one of the joys of being an old pilot from Seattle is I remember the Boeing YC-14 which was around circa 1975-76 at the Developmental Center adjacent to runway 13 Right.

The Boeing YC-14 was a twin-engine short take-off and landing (STOL) tactical transport. It was Boeing‘s entrant into the United States Air Force‘s Advanced Medium STOL Transport (AMST) competition, which aimed to replace the Lockheed C-130 Hercules as the USAF’s standard STOL tactical transport. Although both the YC-14 and the competing McDonnell Douglas YC-15 were successful, neither aircraft entered production. The AMST project was ended in 1979 and replaced by the C-X program.

Key thing if you’re thinking about making such a bird for yourself?

Two major problems were found and corrected during testing. The first was a problem with air circulating around the wing when operating at low speeds close to the ground, which had a serious effect on the spreading of the jet flow though the nozzle. This led to flow separation near the flap, and a decrease in effectiveness of the USB system. In response, Boeing added a series of vortex generators on the upper surface of the wing, which retracted when the flap was raised above 30°. Additionally, the tail surfaces were initially placed well aft in order to maximize control effectiveness. This positioning turned out to interfere with the airflow over the wings during USB operations, and a new tail with a more vertical profile was introduced to move the elevator forward.

And yes, that’s why I am such a raving believer in Vortex Generators and wouldn’t be without ‘em on our plane.  And I am somewhat disinclined to fly in any light plane without them.

But funny to odd how the Boeing YC-14 upper surface blowing engine mounting idea is making the rounds again.  A slightly aft-mount to achieve some upper surface effects at slow flight speeds was also incorporated in the A-10 Warthog….That was more an upper surface sucker than an upper surface blower, but you get the idea.

Diaspora or Sexodus; Internal Coding

T’other morning I broached the idea of “diaspora” as perhaps having to do with the number of humans who are leaving “this Life” and moving into virtual realms.

Second point:  We opened up comments on UrbanSurvival Monday and a fair number of very excellent comments followed.  Including this one on the Diaspora question:

Before I post the content of a different kind of ‘diaspora’ that came to my attention over the weekend, let me give you a little background on me, in order to avoid a breakout of comments in excess of PG-13.

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With another weekend of bar-hopping with the Dancers and Prancers over, it’s back to work on the Street.  Santa is due to appear this morning, but will he crap out and call it good after the bell?

What last week’s market action was should be abundantly clear this morning:

It was the financial industry slamming Washington up against the wall and threatening to bring down the whole kit and caboodle if folks back there didn’t quickly pass the pork-ridden feral (sic) budget which unwinds Dodd-Frank and gives all kinds of new deals to the greedsters and their henchmen.

Already in the pre-open, almost two hours before the open, we could see Dow futures were up 100 and the price of crude oil had inches up toward the $59 level.

So is this the Santa Rally people have been so anxiously seeking?

Maybe.

But I wouldn’t bet on much of anything past the first hour today:  The Japanese market was down more than 1.5% last night, China down almost a percent, but in Europe, practice for Santa was well underway.

What we might see this week would be a bit of rally going into the holiday and why not?  The world hasn’t ended this year and the absence of Peace on Earth means the economy should do well next year.

Or maybe not:  Oil was down in the $57 range this morning and the Baltic Dry Index this morning dropped another 18-points to 845 which means 2008 kind of levels, so disaster in Q-1 ain’t off the table.

Hug a jolly old fat dude if you see him and beg for him to winter over. 2015 looks like disaster waiting to happen.

Another Survey to Ponder

The Empire State Manufacturing Survey is out, but I’m not sure what-all is still made in ‘Merica anymore..

The December 2014 Empire State Manufacturing Survey indicates that business activity declined for New York manufacturers. The headline general business conditions index dropped fourteen points to -3.6, its first negative reading in nearly two years.

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My buddy JB Slear, who’s my commodity guy, made an interesting observation here last week.  He was asking if I had noticed a general decline in the amount of mail people are sending – and that includes junk mail.

Frankly, I hadn’t given it much thought, but when a commodity broker (who has a 10-foot high banana tree in his living room, by the way) takes time out from trading and writing his traders column – well, that set me to thinking, even if it was the weekend.

After going through some exercising of the brain cells and such, a startling fact arose:  JB  was Right!

There has been a decline – a long, slow one, perhaps starting in 2012 – of the amount of junk email that’s come in.  And, unless I have signed up for alerts from like a Google News or a Trulia, the number of people sending unsolicited emails is really starting to drop…your mileage may vary,  however.

This is something that I’d anticipated would arrive, sooner or later, and I wrote as much in my book “Broken Web:  The Coming Collapse of the Internet.”

It’s possible that some of the decline is due to increasing government regulation of the net:  The New Yorker had a good article on point about how it’s becoming popular for “authorities” to restrict internet use and comment.

Another factor is the proliferation of new digital time-wasters.  I pay scant attention to my Facebook page, or my Google Plus page, but that’s because I’m time constrained and don’t feel like making a free contribution to the website owners getting rich instead of me.  I am, after all, the one getting up at 4 AM to figure things out, so why should I steer you to some one else’s website where they will monetize you six-ways to Sunday….

It’s quite the switcheroo of a business model, when you kick back and look at it, as we did on the Peoplenomics side of things a number of months ago:  It is a business model that depends on people’s time and habit-forming in order to make money.

Here’s how it works:  Suppose this morning you and I do a little bit of coding and start up FaceGeorge.

We make the service initially free.  And we make it fill some kind of social hole in the soul.  A need, for example, of nearly everyone in America to sound off, be heard, and become famous.

After a few years, we have more users than you can shake a stick at.  The whole world is now going to FaceGeorge as the hottest social platform out there.  ( thought about GeorgeBook, too)

So now I take the big companies (who are using FaceGeorge) and I send them out ransom demand notes:  You either pay me, or only 7 of your 3-million customers will get emails about that brand new zillion-dollar product introduction you have planned and posted on FG….

Money-grubbing Kapitalists are anxious to pay…whatever it takes.

It works for a while (holding third party customers hostage from the companies that brought them to FaceGeorge in the first place.  But over time, companies wake up and decide to do some other kind of social.

Websites that don’t use social have been historically penalized by Google in rankings…and perhaps is because we eschew using social media that UrbanSurvival traffic has been declining (slowly, thankfully_) sine the Internet Social Bubble peaked in about 2011/2012.

But peak is what it seems to be doing.

One driver is companies are trying to do a better job of keeping all customer needs met on their own web properties.  I finally decided to relent last week and open up UrbanSurvival for comments.  You can make comments on anything you want, but the main reason is to fine tune our content, direction, and improve customer service.

Another driver for the decline in “old line” social is that there are literally no barriers to entry.  I can assure you that with start-up capital of $10,000 you and I could start up a social platform of some kind and that would bring us some money.  Just maybe not enough to do an IPO…

And this gets us to a very interesting “Gotcha” for people who predict the future.  You may remember a few years back there was a lot of talk about 2012 of a coming catastrophe and how there would be lots of people moving north and diaspora was going to impact us all hugely.

The good news is that it hasn’t been a physical diaspora, but it has been a virtual one.  People who used to be fully present and conscious are now plugged into their cell/mobiles tor ridiculous hours each day.

The net human migration from local face-time with people to the virtual sort has been incredible.

Not that it has made us any better…just different.

Yet you look at fads and you’ll find a national (US) ramp up takes about 6-years (Hoola Hoops, 19i57-1963 ramp-up) and if there is not existing infrastructure, perhaps 7-8 years internationally.

Alth0ough Part 15 of the FCC allowed for CB Radio (a much longer fad) from 1947 until it collapsed with the arrival of cell phones in the 1980’s) it was still almost a 30-year fad.

But we look at when fads peak:  When they are on television is a good indicator.  And when a replacement technology comes along, is another.  With social media, I would think that the flurry of IPOs is a good sign as to when a fad is peaking.

I last told you to keep an eye out for the decline of social media on March 27th of this year.

On March 27th, Yahoo reported the closing price of the Social Media ETF SOCL as $19.35.

On Friday of last week it closed at $18.01.

To be sure, it has been higher…the 52 week high was $23 and the low $16.12.  Even in a sideways market, there will always be people who can spot a bargain and sense a top.

But the decline JB noted on the amount of junk email coming in may mean something much larger.  We could be starting down the slippery slope of a passing fad.

There’s a reason Santa’s credit card is not bulging with Hoola Hoops and CB radios this year.

We pride ourselves as smart people, generally.  But when barriers to entry fall, as I wrote in the fall of 1999 in an article Death by Dot Coms, things quickly turn down.

• In 1832 a panic hit the US and was caused by the emergence of automation in the linen business. As textile prices dropped like a free-falling safe (through the early 1840’s) the supply-demand equilibrium was set to the breaking point and a panic ensued.
• In 1873, the rightful freedom for 7 million Blacks, liberated by the Civil War, coupled with the front end of a huge immigration from Europe, that caused excessive labor in northern cities and pricing power collapsed as working wages fell. Naturally, financial panic ensued. The over-supply of labor echoed in the 1897 panic, too.
• In 1929, the crash occurred when farmers, who had produced 7 million horses a year in 1920, planted excess grains as horse demand died in the 1920’s thanks to Henry’s Fords. This drove down commodity prices, and although low commodity prices fueled the Roaring Twenties, the back end of the deal was that the worst depression ever followed.

Each time we have seen barriers fail, there has been a major and rapid decline in general public well-being unless a series of sequential bubbles occurs, or war works, too.

Thus the 1987 mini-crash led (indirectly) to Desert Storm, and the Internet Bubble led to 9/11, the I-Wrong war, and the Housing Bubble.

It’s just how history works out…so when we look at Social Hoops, and CB Media, pardon me if we all take comfort knowing “This, too, shall pass…”

Ain’t no point to Social Media if it doesn’t change anything…and judging by the slam-dunk of the feral (sic) budget this weekend, I’d venture social media has been a great “steam let’er-off’er that simply keeps the old line Ruling Class in place.

Comments

You will see we have finally started to provide for comments.  They will be reviewed a couple of times a day (as time permits, but likely not until this afternoon because of a busy schedule).

The idea is to collect topic, site, direction, and anything else that may come to mind.  Good manners and PG-13 language is appreciated.  OK, R-17 then…

The Pechewzelwhacker’s Diary

Yet more trivia relating to the origins of this particular term:  Reader Jim (who was laid up with the creeping death) sent in this linguini note:  (*when you read this site long enough you’ll instantly figure out the correct word is linguistic but we’re just word play’in…)

So the reason of my note was the statement from another reader saying that “Google doesn’t think pechewzelwhacker is a word.”.  When I read that I was immediately taken back to my childhood when the accepted term for that part of the male anatomy in our house was “Tallywhacker“. Use of the other unsavory names would result in a ass whuppin and time in the corner or anywhere I could not access any of my toys, tools, hunting & fishing gear and such. 

This term followed me to my family, 2 girls & 2 knuckleheads. One day when knucklehead #1 was about 6 or 7 we were out back playing some catch getting ready for a baseball game later in the day. A couple of neighbor boys joined us over the fence but being older they were a little overwhelming in their tosses.

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I made the mistake of putting a market prediction out on this site a long while back – saying that I expected we would begin our next collapse around November 10.  I was wrong – early on that call, but as subscribers know, we’re always fine-tuning models.

Still, just because we’re early isn’t a bad thing.  The S&P closed yesterday below where it was on November 10, after all.  But the downside potential (although a Santa Rally is possible) is starting to look like a higher probability event.

The trend-leading Baltic Dry Index is down to 887 – so around those 2007-2008 levels.  This means seat belts should be fastened.

Right now, the only story in the markets is the collapse in the price of oil.  It was trading in the $59 range this morning.  Back when I expected the collapse to begin it was around $78.  Then, by November 15th, it was down to $75.  By the end of November, we had touched $65 and this morning we took out $60.

Two words for the critics of my call: Piss off.  Yes, Nov. 10 was a bit early.  Better a bit early than a second late.

Longwave economics is based on overall – general – moves of the economy.  .Individual stocks will always go to the moon, and there were stocks that rallied even in the Housing Bubble Collapse.

The Oil Collapse upon  us now will be interesting to see:  What $59 oil means (if you followed the links previously offered) was that drilling outfits would begin to “lay down” rigs in here.  And from there things will take a bit of time, but sure as a snowball on a mountain, there’s an oil price avalanche building.

No small portion of it can be laid at the dirty feet of the Republican Party:  The House passes a $1.1-trillion dollar spending bills which basically gives five major banks the opportunity to hold up the public again with another made-up crisis.

My friend and author Howard Hill (one of the world’s first financial engineers) explains that you have only to look at Greece to see how the public fleecing has gone global.

There, bonds were in trouble, so those who piled on to short positions made money.  And then, the bondholders were eventually made whole by the EU…which is what all that German Constitutional Court stuff was about:  Was it really a crisis when the bondholders didn’t lose, the short players made oodles, and the only loser was all citizens of the EU who had to pay for the wild-eyed gambling?

You tell me.

Consider the budget charade in Washington and this is particular:

Statement from FDIC Vice Chairman Hoenig on Congressional moves to repeal swaps push-out requirements

In 2008 we learned the economic consequences of conducting derivatives trading in taxpayer-insured banks. Section 716 of Dodd-Frank is an important step in pushing the trading activity out to where it should be conducted: in the open market, outside of taxpayer-backed commercial banks. It is illogical to repeal the 716 push out requirement. In fact, under 716, most derivatives — almost 95% — would not be pushed out of the bank. That is because interest rate swaps, foreign exchange and cleared credit derivatives can remain within the bank. In addition, derivatives that are used for hedging can remain in the bank. The main items that must be pushed out under 716 are uncleared credit default swaps (CDS), equity derivatives and commodities derivatives. These are, in relative terms, much smaller and where the greater risks and capital subsidy is most useful to these banking firms.

Derivatives that are pushed out by 716 are only removed from the taxpayer support and the accompanying subsidy of insured deposit funding — they will continue to exist and to serve end users.

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I sort of knew this was going to happen – but whether pro sports is a good thing, or bad, particularly when it is underwritten by public funds and/or public bonding authority absolutely is  a matter of public policy.

This all got started with our Peoplenomics.com report Wednesday.  While inconclusive on the good or evil question, we did serve up a large helping of facts that range beyond just the public funding of the rich man’s clubs and preferential tax treatment to the other stuff no one talks about:  Sports injuries that last a lifetime.

It’s seldom we get such articulate spokespersons come along, but two parents, different parts of the country and real leaders in their fields (real estate and law) have offered some dandy point-counterpoint.

Let’s start with the case FOR team (migrating to spectator) sports:

George,

While there are exceptions, I disagree on RJ’s comment on sports this morning. We were one of those families that encouraged sports participation. My kids sports were baseball and women’s softball. Both my son and daughter did the travel ball circuit from age 12 through high school. Some of those travels were the best times of their lives…mine too. Lifelong friends…camaraderie…etc. Those trips to tournaments from West coast to East coast and many trips in between were our family vacations and we wouldn’t  trade it for the world.

RJ mentions that when his kids quit soccer, they had a chance to actually play outdoors…

?Well….so did my kids?…playing outdoors isn’t exclusive to non sports participants…enjoying free time isn’t exclusive either…our family enjoyed a lot of free time. When we traveled to tournaments, we had a chance to see parts of the country we normally wouldn’t experience…going to local ?landmarks?,?

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The market going into the open looked like it would open down just a tad.  But is this the beginning of collapse?  No.  A “dead cat bounce” is likely out there in the short-term.

Collapses of the Black Monday sort have (almost) never happened more recently than 37-days from a stock market high.  More often, it’s in the 55-days or longer range.

December 5th, the intraday high of the S& P was 2079.47, so if you add at least 37-days to that you come up with January 11th.

The real time to be wetting your Depends will be January 29th, or thereabouts.  So for now, more likely is a dead cat bounce and remember the Santa rally is still due and options expire next week.  Odds of global disaster are slim until then.

Not that it couldn’t happen; it just wouldn’t be the smart money bet.

Retail Sales

Take an auto salesman to lunch today.  Thank him (or her) for doing more to save the economy that the whole collection of slick-talkers in DC.  Why?  Well…

From the Census folks this morning:

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for November, adjusted for seasonal variation
and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $449.3 billion, an increase of 0.7 percent (±0.5%) from the previous month, and 5.1 percent (±0.9%) above November 2013.

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Reader Note:  UrbanSurvival will be opening up comments early next week for a test period.  It’ll give you a chance to post feedback and to pass along thoughts on articles easier…now where were we?  Ah…..

Home Handy-Bastard’s Notebook time…

I don’t often mention that UrbanSurvival and Peoplenomics are “solar-powered.”  But they are:  Outside, just down from the garden and before you run into the ham radio tower, there are two racks of solar panels.  Each holds 10-solar panels; one rack is of 170-watt panels while the other is 180-watt panels.

All 3,500 watts worth of power is shoved underground down to my office/shop area where there are two Outback Power Systems Outback FM60 Charge Controllers , and a pair of OutBack FX2524T Sine Wave Inverter 2500W 24VDC 120VAC 60Hz sealed w/turbo and two racks of six-volt golf cart batteries (a total of 16-batteries, Interstates, and they work fine.

When we put in the system (which is grid-interactive, designed by Ures truly) the price of solar gear was considerably higher.  With the falling price of solar, you can now pick up panels for about half what we paid for the raw watts just 8-years ago.  (There are two in depth reports on designing and putting in your own solar panels and various design considerations over in the Peoplenomics archives for members and one can be found in the Master Index by searching the word “robust” – as in robust home power.0)

Which has what, exactly, to do with air tools?

Hold onto your horse, I’m getting to that:

Since we’ve built our little compound in the woods to be fairly robust, in terms of whatever the future can throw at us, I made a decision a number of years ago that we would want to have all kinds of power tools in an uncertain future and that’s what the solar panels are about (besides lowering the month power bills, which goes without saying, or does it?)

What was an eye-opener was when I went looking at the variety of tasks that could be done with air tools versus the number of jobs that could be done with electric tools, there was almost no contest.

This was proven to me yesterday when I went looking for a powered (electric, solar, air, natural gas…I don’t care what) caulking gun.

We’re using this winter to refurbish one of the few areas of the house that has not received its “designer treatment” from Elaine.  It’s the “screen porch” which is a common room in the South:  It’s where people can go outside when the temps are 90 (or lower) and not be carried off by wildlife and bugs to be eaten alive.

The problem with our old “screen porch” is that it was put together using 2-by-6 joists and 2-by-6 decking.  I can improve the floor stability easy enough with some house jacks and additional joists (I actually enjoy that sort of engineering) but when done, we will still have the problem of the decking.

What covers it now is old indoor-outdoor carpet which sucks.  Over the years, the cats have turned it into a killing room floor from a slaughter house:  Eating birds, squirrels, mice, rats, snakes, and even large bugs on it. Elaine’s a meticulous homemaker and she’s tired of cleaning indoor-outdoor carpet so we’ve decided to put on a couple of coats of this new super deck paint that’s become vogue in the last 10-minutes of home remodeling.

And that is where we get to the air tools.

Turns out, you can buy an air-powered caulking gun for under $40-bucks, which is what I did yesterday.  Campbell Hausfeld PL1558 Air-Powered Caulk Gun $35.

Reason?:  At age 60-something, you start to run the numbers of everything.

So for example this screen porch is 13-by24 feet and it’s decked with 2-by-6’s as I mentioned.   Everyone knows that a 2-by-6 is only about 5 1/2” wide,  so with the deck being 288” long, that leaves us with 52 boards too be caulked and since each one is 13 feet, that’s 680-lineal feet of caulking.  Not counting edge seams.

But wait! (As the late Billy Mays might have said…There’s more!).

Since we are going to put deck paint on the top side, Elaine figured that we would be smart to caulk both the top and bottom layers. 

Holy smokes!  Now we’re north of 1,300 lineal feet of caulking and if neither one of us had carpal tunnel before the project, I figure one, or both, of us would by the time we’re done.

No thank you.

Hence my decision to postpone the start of this mega project until the proper tool shows up, and as long as I was thinking about it, I remembered that as part of your prepping, you might want to have a good assortment of air tools for after whatever calamity comes along.

We’ve got several power sources:  The solar and the old diesel genset, so power shouldn’t be an option.  And with the welder (gas) I could cobble the 10 KW power head off the genset to a tractor-run genset and that, in turn, could power the big compressor in the shop, which could if need be, used to fill the pancake compressor for small stuff.

I know that doesn’t explain everything:  Why not just buy an electric caulking gun?

It’s true that Amazon carries several battery powered caulking guns.  Example:  Makita LXGC01Z 18-Volt LXT Lithium-Ion 10 oz. Caulk and Adhesive Gun (Tool Only, No Battery) but check the price.  With electric tools, you’re buying a motor and either a battery charger or long extension cord problem with every too.  But check the price; yee gads.

This may sound odd, but there are several safety issues that come to mind when dealing with power tools:  Air tools aren’t going to shock you if you drop one on a wet worksite.  You can use them with relative impunity, even barefooted (yes, steel toes are required, but let’s pretend for a moment that it’s 97F and dripping hot and you’ve got flip-flops on).

Air tools are cheap, in comparison.  I can do die-grinding with my die grinder air tool, or I can dig out the Dremel, but for many jobs the air grinder is better.  Ever try to find a big framing nailer or electric-powered finishing nail gun for those fun shop projects? t

That cabinet at the top of this morning’s report was a 3-hour project (excluding paint drying time) because using a chop saw with stops, a dado set, and a belt sander, everything can be make quick-=as-you-please and then out come the air tools and some clamps (to keep everything square) and Presto!@!  Done project!  Elaine gets her cabinet (lower part is where the vacuums for the house live), with this and that’s on shelves above) and I get to build another piece of whatever we call it look furniture.

With Christmas just around the corner, if anyone in your circle doesn’t live in a coop (e.g. rent instead of own a home) then there’s only two things you really need:  Air tools and a book on how to build real-life dioramas.

“What’s a Diorama?”

Well, it’s the secret to taking a kind of average-looking mobile home on the outside and turning it into a kind of museum like experience on the inside.  The general idea is that there’s a kind of interior decorating that is a cross between television and film “set design” and museum-level dioramas that flips just being in a “house” to being “transported” is Elaine’s word for it.

The Wikipedia entry will get you started:

The word diorama /?da???r??m?/ can either refer to a 19th-century mobile theatre device, or, in modern usage, a three-dimensional full-size or miniature model, sometimes enclosed in a glass showcase for a museum. Dioramas are often built by hobbyists as part of related hobbies such as military vehicle modeling, miniature figure modeling, or aircraft modeling

To be sure, there is a certain amount of trial and error to it, but do some looking around for hotels with “period rooms” and go check out museums which have large dioramas and next thing you know, air tools and dangerous thoughts will be wandering through your head – all but displacing the visions of sugar plum fairies at this time of year with dreams of a Wild West Man Cave, a Trader Vics-looking dining room…and oh, yeah…the air tools that Santa needs to bring you so you can actually build some cool places.

“You mean if I wanted to build my house so it looks like Superman’s Fortress or the inside of a Mayan temple like in an Indiana Jones flick, I could do THAT?”

Shoot yes, Bubba.

I’ve got designs for an tropical ocean beach diorama that may turn the washer and dryer off the dining room into a shipwreck bar in the South Pacific.  I’ll do before and after pictures.

It’s all according to the limits of your imagination and problem-solving ability.

Oh, and how much you’ve let yourself get sucked into social conventions that burn out your life with nothing in return which gets us to Wednesday’s Peoplenomics report…

Sports As a Waste Of Time

“Where am I going to get the time to do thing kind of radical home treatment?”

As I explained in a discussion of sports economics over on the Peoplenomics side of things Wednesday, people let their lives dribble out into television sets without getting anything of substantive value in return.  At huge public costs, too.

Let me share a dandy letter from a reader who whole-heartedly agrees with our unconventional view around here that while do-it-yourself sports are great (exercise and so on) the spectator sports, especially those that depend on taxpayer bonding authority are a rip.  We then got into the nubbins of the problem:  Pro spectator sports are now a major output of the USA.

Subscriber RJ gets it:

LOVE your commentary on sports today.

I’ve been lamenting about the parental hysteria around youth sports for some time, and after receiving grant money will be embarking upon a documentary film on the matter: working title is currently “What is Winning?” Many double-entendres within.

There was a great article in The Atlantic back in 2013 on the youth sports topic: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/the-case-against-high-school-sports/309447/

But what truly stands out is a comment my mentor, Dr.

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