This is an odd one.  Not so odd as to leave me shaking my head (like some dreams that come true.  But, certainly odd enough to take note of.

I’ll begin at the (more or less) beginning.

I’m a fanatic about airplane maintenance.  If our old plane is not absolutely “by-the-book” it sits on the ground until I am absolutely certain than there is nothing amiss.

Weekend before this, my lifelong friend (the retired major fellow) and I flew up to Sheppard Air Force Base where his son is learning air combat (in ever-so slightly) faster airplanes.

On the way back, we climbed up to 7,500 feet and were doing an indicated 123 MPH, but because air is thinner up there, our actual ground speed was pretty much “book:” and maybe a bit better.

The climb-out was bumpy and things didn’t settle down until over 7,000 feet – plus, being 90 on the ground at takeoff time, it was nice to be up where the outside air was showing 62-degrees.

Then I noticed it:  The tachometer was showing between 2500 and 2525 RPM.  It should have been reading 2600 RPM or even a tad higher than that (2650 would be expected).

The flight went smoothly, nice landing, and so forth.  But I called the local mechanic to meet us last week and check things out.

We met at 10 AM as planned, taxied over to a large hangar where there was air (neither of us had brought a compressor) and we set about looking for anything out of place.  But a ground run-up on the engine showed it was on the ragged edge of not making power.

We tore apart a good bit, going through a compression test (everything high 70’s (77,78,79,78) and yes, mag timing was right.

By 11:30 we had to run into town and got to the local Chinese food dispensary.

With the mechanic back at the field, (taking the prop off for more checking on things and to tighten an alternator belt a tad) we say down after the buffet line.  It’s then my buddy gets this far-away look and then says to me:

“You should really call the mechanic and make sure he has your cell phone number.  In case he needs to get hold of you.  I think he will…”

I, of course, poo-poo’ed the idea with all kinds of objections from “rational” mind:  We’re in the midst of George Tso’s chicken, fried rice, bean sprouts, and short of a nuclear exchange, there  wasn’t much reason to put down my fork.

“Besides,” I told my friend, “Dan who is normally in the airport Admin office had also gone into town on errands and there’s no one to run the message out to Jeremy (the mechanic) even if I do call.”

“Well, your decision,” explained my buddy, “But I have one of my “feelings” and you really need to talk to the mechanics.  He wants to talk to you…”

Keep in mind, we have been friends for 62-years and have led totally different lives, but we both have some respect for one-another’s “seeing” ability.  While my background went from high school electronics wunderkind to DJ to newscaster to news director to airline VP, his had gone from seminary to college to grad school to army.

Totally different takes on things, so as I sat there munching (more been sprouts and now onto the sesame seed chicken and some broccoli beef by this point, I was wondering if this would turn into one of those World of Woo-Woo near brushes with Other.

Deep down, there was this part of me that was very quietly saying “Yeah, he’s probably right…” but I was in denial and thinking about the deserts ahead.

We paid (the $4.99 Chinese buffet here would be $9.99 in a busy northern city) and headed back out to the airport to see how the doctor was doing on the plane.

Then the phone rang.

It was Elaine, who doesn’t like nit-picking on airplanes.  “Did Jeremy get hold of you?  He didn’t have your cell phone, so he called the house.  He ran into something or other, and needs to talk to you…Can you call him?”

12-minutes later, we were back at the airport.  My friend had the good taste to only shake his finger at me once and say quietly  “I told you.  This kind of thing happens all the time to me…”

And that gets us to this weekend and our wrap-up discussion on the way up to the airport at Tyler, Texas at oh-dark-thirty Sunday morning.

We agree that there is something much more to this life than people generally let on.  Not everyone gets to sense it, perhaps because you need to be in a quiet enough mental and physical state for the messages to come through.

But the larger point of agreement was that many people don’t actually make “the connection” to this strata of Reality.  He’d summed that up in a conversation with Elaine about it earlier in the week.  They’d been up late talking and he wax explaining to her about the difference between belief in something and knowing something.

Belief, as he’s figured it, is something that comes from study, reports, and so on.  The knowing part is experiential.  In other words, it’s the difference between reading about heat and stoves, and resulting injuries and such (belief) versus the actual “touching” and “pain” that immediately results in the “experience.”

In the World of Woo-Woo, those who have experienced either big things (like vivid telepathic or precognitive dreams) or a more or less constant stream of small things ( of the “mechanic needs to get hold of you” ) sort, the existence of something Other than what’s obvious is undeniable and real.

But, for those who have never had contact with The Big It, there’s tons of belief and plenty of collection plates to hear reports.

Which gets me to the point that there are (when you look for them) a few books out there on this “borderland” between the organized religiosity of it all and the knowing/experiential “been there, sensed That directly.

Sunday afternoon, after catching up on some shut-eye, I went looking for a book that might cover the topic more deeply than we get into in our morning coffee-side chats.  I’m a chapter into  Be Still And Know: Incredible Hunches From Your Creator and it may offer some pointers.

Hard stuff, this matter of spirituality in Modern (such as they are) Times.  Tons of charlatans, always a collection plate, and many times, those passing the plate are more putting toll gates up on the “stairway to heaven.”

Armed with a study of all the world’s holy books, and then a sense of inquiry that is deliberately non-judgmental, I think it is possible construct your own approach to “discovering the World of Woo-Woo” that, at least in my research to date, is something like a hybrid between video game virtual reality, the multiverse of quantum physics, the “personality focus” of the world’s great religions, and six heaping spoonful’s of “The way than can be said, in not The Way.”

You homework assignment, due Thursday, then is simply this:  Of all the great books and teachings in the world, what is the one page of said book that holds (for you) the greatest insight into how the world truly IS?

A Holly-Woo Report

Meantime, the flow of WoWW reports continues.  Sometimes they are big and sometimes they are just enough to be noticed and to leave someone scratching there head going “Hmmm…”

Hey, George, hope your weekend has been a great one!  I’m writing to report another one of these strange experiences.  This bizarre event took place two weeks ago.  I am employed as a steward at a restaurant in Hollywood, or Hollyweird if you prefer.  

One of my many responsibilities is to replace a trash bag in the bathroom when it becomes full.  In order to do this I need to use a key to remove a metal container from the wall, take out the bag, replace it with a new one, and then use the key to reattach the container.  This is exactly what I did.  I then brought the full garbage bag to a dumpster and continued with my myriad of other tasks.

20 minutes later or so, when I next checked to make sure the bathroom was in order, I saw that there was no trash bag in the metal container.  I was absolutely stunned!  The process of changing out the bag is enough of an annoyance that I clearly remembered doing it.  It would be possible for someone to have ripped the bag out, but it wouldn’t have come out clean.  Without using the key some plastic would inevitably have remained attached to the container.  I took note that I had once again encountered the world of woo-woo, again replaced the bag, and made a note to write you.

I’m still not sure what all these things mean, but they move you in a powerful way when they happen…

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People say a lot of things about Oregon…and not all of it is good.  For example, there are some local issues related to people collecting rainwater – that falls on their own land or property.  And, since people in Oregon are fiercely independent in their thinking, Oregon is pictured (variously) as a land of heathens, stoners, and revolutionaries.

But please take note, even Oregon scores big in one category around here:  They are in the process of preserving industrial arts in schools.

A long time reader will know this as a familiar harangue: As long as people have access to industrial areas, or even a few used tools off Craigslist (or cheap new ones from Harbor Freight)  you can play “bend me, shape me, any way you want me” to your heart’s content.

Reader Michael’s observation:

George, The State of Oregon has awarded grants to Oregon high schools to initiate a number of acronymious programs. See link and doc for details on where the state is going–they think and/or hope, I guess. You likely will recognize the programs, though I have not been able to, for the most part.  Collectively, it is probably an indication of where the nation is headed. 

This may be a kind of “old story” since the state school folks out there put out a press release on topic in January of this year, but check this out:

In a major expansion of career readiness investment, 140 Oregon middle schools and high schools – serving more than 90,000 students – will receive Career and Technical Education (CTE) Revitalization Grants totaling $8.87 million, Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian and Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction Rob Saxton announced today.
The CTE Revitalization Grant funds will benefit students, schools and local employers around the state in fields such as health care, advanced manufacturing, construction, engineering, agriculture, renewable energy technology and more.

As a former vocational college director, I can assume you that one of the reasons people “fail” in school is that the content in a lot of programs just plain sucks.  In order for a school to really be a remarkable life-changing place, the number one focus of the entire staff has to be delivery of truly superior course content.

Oh,; sure, kids will drop out (8-12 and postsec) for all kinds of reasons, including home financial issues, drugs, peer pressure, and all the rest.  But a first-rate product that really grips kids and makes education relevant?  Kids (and adults) will line up for that kind of education.

‘If schools across America were more in the business of empowering the young – and showing them the tools to “make their own futures” I have absolutely no doubt that dropout rates could be cut in half – or more.

Can you imagine a teacher sending you home with a shoebox and telling a student “I want ya’ll to bring us something from home that will fit inside this shoebox – with the lid closed – and we’re going to teach you how to scan it with a laser modeling platform.  They we’re going to modify it in some way using surface modeling software (like SolidWorks) and then we’re going to print whatever this new thing is.

It might be something as simple as a customized (hand fitting) remote for the television, or something as arcane as an all-plastic clock.  But who wouldn’t find that kind of content engaging?

It’s onlyh one example, but the Joseph Carter School (in awards announced in April) is scheduled to receive $72,329 in award money and perhaps $10,150 in matching fees for a program called “Greenhouse: GHrowing Minds, Skills, and Community;””

Three CTE programs will benefit from the new learning laboratory: the CTE Agricultural Sciences students will have year-round experiences working with a greater diversity of plant-life and will be expanded with new course offerings, the CTE Family and Consumer Sciences (FACS) students will use campus-grown herbs and vegetables for food preservation education, and the CTE Business/IT students will gain experiences in marketing, 3-D design, and sales.  Partners will provide grassroots support for greenhouse development, CTE expansion, and meaningful work-based educational experiences.

So while the number of Americans wallowing in constant political whining about this and that continues to grow,  there are some people in public schools around the country who are handing out the kind of skills which will eventually empower people and given then the hands-on experience that is so necessary for the tactile learners and the mixed input learner.

I think in time we’ll look back on the experiment over emphasis on “head schooling” instead of a mixed approach with hands-on, will be seen as a serious mistake in education overall.

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But only if you’re willing to look with fresh eyes.

Last week I was busy pointing out to you how there were (mysteriously) 73,000 fewer people employed in the USA in the latest Labor Department jobs report, but somehow 288,000 new jobs had been created.  In the process, 806-thousand just raptured out of the stats and so forth.

By now, I’m sure you’re sick of me telling you there’s something rotten in Denmark, and being half of Danish background…hold it.  Let’s not go there.

Instead, let’s go to the Federal Reserve Consumer Debt report* released yesterday which shows what?  The economy hasn’t moved an inch this year, statistically speaking. Especially when you look at “not seasonally adjusted” numbers:

Give me a calculator and let me seasonally adjust numbers and I can turn mashed potatoes into a Fortune 500 rocket ship in no time at all.

So we look at the total consumer debt (credit cards and nonrevolving like mobile homes and student loans) and we surely should see something going on.  But….well…non-seasonally flipped, mind you…

Ures truly looks at the March data just out and says it’s down a tad from January, so why are the financial press sugar coating reality for us?  Can anyone stay “We’re at the financial stop light, it’s stuck on red for a while, so we’re just going to sit here until it changes?”

No can do, chum.  Instead we see reports with mind-numbing headlines like “U.S.

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As you may (or should) know, the Federal Reserve has been printing up cash (M1) at the rate of 10.8% over the last year, and during the last three months that rate is just a shade under 16% annualized (15.9%).

What this means, if you’re a foreign buyer of American assets, like China, the cost of buying America is coming down, but to a domestic US investor,; the effect is driving up of prices which is why – in large part – why the prices of stocks seem to be setting new highs, except you can’t buy as much with the money.

Is this is a great economic program, or what?

Say something was worth $86.28 last year. A monetary argument might be made that because US dollars are so cheap presently, that a foreigner holding US dollars might pay as much as $100 for it this year and still buy the same asset.

The price seems to have gone up.  But, in reality, the utility value of the asset hasn’t gone anywhere.  But the money has been cheapened.

How much?

(At last, we arrive at this morning’s first economic thought!)  Well, enough so that the headlines are screaming that the dollar is down to a 6 1/2 month low.

It’s a neat dance to watch, too. 

If you’re wondering why the price of gold has not broken to new lows (especially because there are less people working in the most recent reporting month by the Labor Department’s own number) the answer is simple:  With the US dollar sliding, it takes more dollars to buy a real asset.

Hence, gold which is an economic truth detector , has remained in the $1,300 area.  Had the Fed not stepped up printing, it would likely be close to $1,122 right now…but such is the magic of printing money.

The currency machinations don’t just impact gold, silver, or commodities like oil, either.  Globally there is a lot of deflation about making it hard for foreign companies to find enough good ways to spend their money.

And this gets us to the second key economic thought of the morning:  the Consumer side osf Merck (New Jersey, USA) is being purchased by Bayer, AG of Germany.  Why? 

Again, look at what cheaper dollars means.  Because Bayer is buying cash flow and earnings.  A year ago, even using the smaller 12-month M1 currency factor, the cost of buying the cash flow from Merck consumer goods just dropped about 11 percent in one year.

Companies (like Bayer, but basically all of them) are constantly trying to answer the simple question “Where can I get the biggest bang for our bucks – and marks?”

The Answer this morning is Buy American.  And another US taxable income stream….but I’ll let you work out the details of the impact on the corporate tax base.

I’ve told you many times over the past 17-years of this column that one of the major distinctions between the Second Depression and the Great Depression will be the role of global competitive currency revaluations.

Just yesterday, Dave Hodges Common Sense Show explained in some detail (here) how “World War III has already been lost and the Chinese are in the process of Occupying Amerika.”

Concurrent with this, the US government has been trying (stupidly) to play both sides against the middle.  We were off selling financial assets to China, but China took the US bonds, mixed in some drug cartel money, and put together massive funds which have been buying up huge assets in North America.

And, in case you didn’t follow developments in foreign markets this week, please note that the Chinese Hang Send was down another 1.28% in trading overnight and is well under the 22,000 level.

Not that China has to worry:  We keep hearing reports about how Chinese interests are buying up lands in or around many of the US national forests in places like Arkansas.  But, says the Arkie rumor mill, they’re not even coming to the US to look at what they purchased.  They just send money and buy.

China is in a different game than Germany.  The Deutschers are looking to add cash flow to existing companies.  China, on the other hand, is looking to invest in future resource (like timber) other goods their 1.3 billion or whatever it is, people will need in the future.

But that’s the game right now:  Foreign companies are fighting over the scraps of America, and because of the sins of both political parties in the past, the raptors are now starting to pick over the bones of America.  And the attacks on private gun ownership, the ever-increasing and all-pervasive electronic surveillance of even those  citizens who are “pure as driven snow” is all designed to ensure the raptors get their fill. Undisturbed.

Aided and abetted by a packed Supreme Court which has put America’s electoral process on the block so the corporate stranglehold on the future can’t be broken.

And that’s why tomorrow’s Peoplenomics report will update you on the Growing War on Cash.  the reason for this?  People will eventually be reduced to voting with their wallets.  But if you control the banks (check) and you can see what people are buying in near-realtime (check) then you can have a massive police state (check) where the Internet can be controlled (bye bye net neutrality…another campaign lie) and the raptors are just starting to get on pace.

The most money we print, the lower the buck will fall, the cheaper we become and the fatter the raptors.

What would once have gone by another name – treason – has gotten respectable using a different alias. 

Business.

Balance of Trade

The new Balance of Trade figures were just released in the past few minutes.

Not at all surprising, despite the efforts of congress and the White House, the country is still down another….well, you read it:

The U.S.

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Nothing like new adventures in the World of Woo-Woo to set things on course for the day:

Hi George,

I had a strange bit of woo-woo yesterday.  I was folding clothes in my bedroom and dividing mine to stay in the house or go out to my workout room.  A little later I took the clothes out to the workout room, dumped them on the floor, and then proceeded to put them into drawers.  As I picked up the last sweat shirt, I noticed something blue on the floor.  I picked it up and it was underwear that my youngest son would have outgrown about two years ago.  No one has any idea how it got there.  I know it wasn’t there when I started folding clothes.

Best,  Dennis

No telling how this kind of thing happens.  But like the other stuff that goes missing, hides out in some alternate dimension for a while, and then shows up back in this one – but at an unusual place (or one we have looked at previously) – the article involved is definitely more “personal” in nature.

I don’t know why this might be the case, except that maybe (as a wild guess) it has something to do with the way humans manifest things from their “field”. 

Stand by while we collect data on what colors of underwear seem to disappear most often…

WoWW 2

This report from reader Jeff is pretty good – and notice again how it is a “personal” item?

Back in younger days I had a set of Keys go missing. Set in same place on dining room table every day. Son was over (1st grader) and when we needed to leave keys were gone.

He swore he didn’t touch them. Several years later was moving and wanted to take the table apart to move. Leaned table on its side and the keys fell out from under the table.

Whether he put the there or they “moved” never know but after remaking about a dozen keys and then getting locks changed it was an expensive WoWW.

One other research note if you’re following along:  A lot of the WoWW stories seem to happen in the proximity of young children – right on up through about mid-teen years.

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Oh boy!  Here we go, again.  Another one of those “hide under the bed” or cuddle with your squeeze in silent fear stories – the stuff of horror tales – is coming true right before our eyes.

Not following?

Let me begin at the beginning then.  With Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein, then. 

You remember the plot, I’m sure:  “Mad scientist” type gets a body of a recently dead fellow, except he really gets the body of a just-deposed murder, and shocks it back to life using electricity.

If you’re over 40, or so, you will remember this as a fine and scary black and white movie.  But since, oh, about 1960 or so, this was the first of our “Horror Stories” that came true.

You’ll recall my great^{^6}grandfather, Andrew N. Ure (1778-1857) was doing research in his Glasgow (Scotland) University digs in the period immediately following 1801 when he’d picked up his MD ticket (such as they were at the time).

In his researches, he had become fascinated with the work of  Galvani and others who had begun to study how electricity could be used to cause muscle contractions.  The family “PR problem” was that he was experimenting on a convicted murder/thief’s body; that of one Matthew Clydesdale.

Fire up the source cells and apply the juice and what happened?  From Andrew’s notes:

“Every muscle of the body was immediately agitated with convulsive movements resembling a violent shuddering from cold. … On moving the second rod from hip to heel, the knee being previously bent, the leg was thrown out with such violence as nearly to overturn one of the assistants, who in vain tried to prevent its extension. The body was also made to perform the movements of breathing by stimulating the phrenic nerve and the diaphragm. When the supraorbital nerve was excited ‘every muscle in his countenance was simultaneously thrown into fearful action; rage, horror, despair, anguish, and ghastly smiles, united their hideous expressions in the murderer’s face, surpassing far the wildest representations of Fuseli or a Kean. At this period several of the spectators were forced to leave the apartment from terror or sickness, and one gentleman fainted.’”

We all know what happened next:  PR trouble showed up in the form of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein published anonymously in 1818 in London as a poke at care-to-guess-who?

Curiously, the name (Frankenstein) was the name of the scientist, not the monster; in the book the large Lurch was known as Adam:

The creature has often been mistakenly called “Frankenstein”. In 1908 one author said “It is strange to note how well-nigh universally the term “Frankenstein” is misused, even by intelligent people, as describing some hideous monster”.^[30] Edith Wharton‘s The Reef (1916) describes an unruly child as an “infant Frankenstein.”^[31] David Lindsay’s “The Bridal Ornament”, published in The Rover, 12 June 1844, mentioned “the maker of poor Frankenstein.” After the release of James Whale‘s popular 1931 film Frankenstein, the public at large began speaking of the monster itself as “Frankenstein”. A reference to this occurs in Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and in several subsequent films in the series, as well as in film titles such as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

All of which gets us to how this first Horror Story became real.  Fast forward to the mid-1950’s and going into the 60’s under Wikipedia’s entry about “defibrillators…”

You see, the horror story evolved and began to “come true” over about a 40-year period of time when medicine, if you’ll forgive me, made some “shocking advances.”

-chest method[edit]

Until the early 1950s, defibrillation of the heart was possible only when the chest cavity was open during surgery. The technique used an alternating voltage from a 300 or greater volt source delivered to the sides of the exposed heart by ‘paddle’ electrodes where each electrode was a flat or slightly concave metal plate of about 40 mm diameter.

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