Once again, the mind of George was busy delivering either the future or a frappe of leftover thought stubs last night as I had one of those odd dreams with content that has – on occasion – old me about the future before it arrives.

I won’t go through the litany of past experience – I’ve done that enough in the past – but the dream last night centered on the concept “The Sudberry (Sudbury) Incident” which would be fine.  Except, of course, I know no Sudberrys and have no idea why it should pop up in a dream. 

The word Sudberry (possibly Sundberry or Sudbury) doesn’t mean jack to me and it’s not a word that has cropped up in the previous conscious thought in the past year.  Hell, I don’t consciously remember ever thinking about it.

The problem with this kind of dream (with no apparent cause) is that it may be part of the greater subject area known as dream work.  This is where dreams are seen (almost shamanistically) as tools to help the conscious and unconscious/preconscious parts of the Whole Self have discourse.  Helps to have guidance.

The follow-up work on Sudberry/Sudbury incident, for me, is to wonder if there is a military aspect to it, since my retired SF/Ranger bro-in-law made an appearance in the dream.  Has me wondering about hostages, and unpleasantries down that road because he was a Delta nominee who was cut (glasses) because uncorrected vision was a requirement.

I’ve also sent a note to Grady up at the www.nostracodeus.com project to add the words to our web-scanning efforts.

So where is Sudbury/Sudbury?

Massachusetts:  City of 18,000 roughly

Massachusetts 2: A school in Framingham.

Ontario:  Greater Sudbury

Britain: A place in Suffolk, also historical area of London

Australia, reef in Queensland

I’m sure there are others, but whatever the hell “the Sudberry Incident” is will likely either pop into headlines in no more than 10-days, or this was just a leftover piece of brain-cheese that somehow ended up in a fight/conflict with aspects of military.  I’ll ask Panama, when he gets up and about, whether Sudberry is meaningful to him, and report back tomorrow.

And this gets us to the whole reason for this discussion in the first place:  I have had enough personal experiences – about a dozen so far – in which aspects of the future have shown up that I started a project back in 2008 called the National Dream Center.

I also believe I mentioned a while back that I wanted to divest myself of the site so that the important work of the site could continue.  Which was (and is) a kind of central repository where dreams about the future could be posted and results tracked.

My problem – is that as much as I loved the research, especially the charts over time showing how people’s dream content was drifting about, I just didn’t have time to devote to the daily postings that growing the site would entail.

And the idea was,; I think you’ll agree, just too damn good to drop.

So today, the www.nationaldreamcenter.com site is under the control of Chris McCleary who is a professional working in what?  Dream work!  Perfect!

You can read his bio and introduction first post over here.  And whether you have an oddity to post, please post it to Chris’s Dream Center DreamBase because the idea is to capture as much content as possible and try to and develop tools for working in this really odd land.

Oh, and my Consigliere called from Aspen over the weekend (life’s tough, huh?) whining about his broken foot was still not back into skiing condition, but then he warmed up to his subject.

“I don’t know if you noticed, but there is a post over on the Godlike Productions site about an earthquake warning for Wyoming for this week…which is kind of odd. You might want to take a look at it…

I did – the posts are over here.

Say, you don’t think the Sundby Reservoir southeast of Medicine Bow Peak got garbled up in my dream, do you?  We’ll just start the clock and wait, I suppose.

The only news item close is the death yesterday of a worker at a smelter in Sudbury, Canada… I don’t think that was it, but who knows?  A prequel?

Letters We Like to Get

This weekend’s Peoplenomics report deals with how to write a good “Dead Letter.”  In today’s digital age, a simple note to an executor of a will is NOT enough.  What about all those passwords and intellectual assets that will be under digital lock and key?  And would your survivors know where your online assets are even stashed?

George,
Very mature, well presented Peoplenomics report today.
Takes the organized life and closes the door softly.
Since I attend the local monthly meeting with speakers who
have had near death experiences, and I know a couple of
counselors who have had their own experiences and they
worked with hundreds of people with NDE experiences,
writing an instructional letter to finish up the unfinished
business of life…as you have done…seems practical.
…and when you get to the other side, evaluating your own
checklist of what did I get right and what still needs to be
done or corrected next life will be a wonderful
experience for you. And the fact that you shared
it with all of us earns you a…
“WELL DONE GEORGE!!!”
My regards,
Roger

Another subscriber – an attorney who specialized in wills and estate planning, seconded the concept and cited from personal experience:

My beloved client fighter jockey had a 3 ring notebook he called his “Croak Book”. It contained copies of insurance, wills, powers of attorney, brokerage accounts, bank accounts, treasure maps, and so forth. Key original documents were in a safe for obvious reasons.

When he died, we opened the Croak Book and everything was easy peasy. Except the World was never quite as much fun, in some ways, after he croaked. I truly look forward to seeing him again sometime, somewhere. And I always tell my clients about the croak book concept.

BUT.

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As I await a boatload of research materials, that may give some additional insight into “Joe Brandt’s Dream” to show up, it’s nice to know that The World of Woo-Woo is still presenting life in very non-ordinary ways.  Such as this report from Susan…

I’ve had a couple of woo events happen this week, completely out of the norm for me, the first one didn’t strike me as anything odd until I experienced the second one that completely freaked me out. 

I take my five month old lab for a walk around the property every evening at sunset, she always carries her tennis ball with her on these walks.  I always keep an eye on where the ball is because we are walking in a hay field and it needs to be kept clear.  So we are out for our walk and she runs from behind me and as I look down at her she still has the ball in her mouth.  It’s a purple and red tennis ball and she’s a black lab, so it’s very easy to see.  She runs in front of me about 20 feet and stops, starts sniffing the ground, and looking around.  When I get up to her I can see she doesn’t have her ball, so I start looking around, It is no where to be found.  We still haven’t found that ball after four days, the area is completely flat, there is nothing but low cut dead grass, mud, and a few sprouts of green coming up, no shrubs no trees.

The second one is unnerving for me personally. I was building a new raised bed for the garden.  I’m making it out of some left over galvanized panels and some 4×4 from previous projects. I’m doing this by myself, wrestling 10 foot pieces of tin to make them stand is not the easiest thing in the world, so I basically tacked it together and then go back and square it up.  I was on the last post and the bottom of it needed to come over a little for the post to be standing straight.  I am using 3″ brass wood screws with a star head and some nuts with a metal lip around it to act as a washer since I didn’t have any left.  They fit perfectly and there is no way for the screw head to go through the hole of the nut. So I start backing out the screw and it was like my field of vision did a quick little quarter turn, the nut came flying at my feet and the screw was gone.  I only had the screw backed out about a half-inch-if that.  I just stood there, still bent over, drill still in place from where the screw USED to be, looking at the nut between my feet.  So once I snapped out of it, I tore that area apart, I couldn’t find the screw or any piece of it.  So I went ahead and put another screw in the same hole and had no problem getting it in (thinking the screw had broke off in there).  I don’t know how to explain it but it was just gone.

Love Ure page, Susan

Love Ure report, too.

The problem with it is that it’s typical of the kind of reports we get all the time.  Someone will place an object somewhere – and when they go back – POOF!  Object gone.  Then – anywhere from a few days to months, the object will appear back where it is supposed to be.

I have lots of theories about things that could make such phenomena occur.  But on the screwing part of your report, I would be very interested, both cases, actually, about the weather at the time.

A lot of these anomalous phenomena seem to be associated with darkness or very low clouds.

I’m sure you’ve come to the possible conclusion that humans are sort of “on an ant farm” for a higher intelligence?  It’s a logically consistent line of thinking because it fits a whole passel of facts into one neat little box.

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One of the nicest E.O.Q.W.D’s  (end of quarter window dressings)  I’ve seen – the Dow popped up 134 points on Monday and the techs were up over 1% as the Fed boss came out and started to hint around at what I told you would be an inevitable necessity:  The Fed is going to print for as long as it takes to get the economy back to the old “way it used to be.”

The Fed, where it seems the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model is pushing policy to some extent, seems to be beset by the lack of a good algorithm to project how people will revise their long-term lifestyles in the face of repeated screwings.

What’s amazing to me is that the Fed boss sees what Americans are feeling yet her faith in “the models” is still pretty darn high.  That’s why she can say on the one hand:

“…In some ways, the job market is tougher now than in any recession. The numbers of people who have been trying to find work for more than six months or more than a year are much higher today than they ever were since records began decades ago. We know that the long-term unemployed face big challenges. Research shows employers are less willing to hire the long-term unemployed and often prefer other job candidates with less or even no relevant experience.”

But then turn around, on the other, and promise to repeat the same policy approaches that got us there in the first place…In other words, they’re going to keep being accommodative.

Yellen spoke the answer, but maybe didn’t hear herself:

“…If unemployment were mostly structural, if workers were unable to perform the jobs available, then the Federal Reserve’s efforts to create jobs would not be very effective. Worse than that, without slack in the labor market, the economic stimulus from the Fed could put attaining our inflation goal at risk. In fact, judging how much slack there is in the labor market is one of the most important questions that my Federal Reserve colleagues and I consider when making monetary policy decisions, because our inflation goal is no less important than the goal of maximum employment.

The problem faced by the Fed is simple.  As the number of people losing jobs to offshoring and robotics continues to increase, and as self-driving cars and other employment “category killers” are coming down the pike, printing all the money in the world will not keep up with the voracious growing need for increased tax revenues to minimally feed and house a massively increasing underclass.

If there’s a failing to DSGE model reliance, it is likely that it fails to address society-wide tipping points that are now coming into view, as outlined in Saturday’s Peoplenomics report.

What’s coming to gobble the Western Empires within three or four years is a variant of “future shock” – a term coined by futurist Alvin Toffler.

In Peoplenomics, we labeled this FutureCrock because in addition to disruptive technologies, not the least of which will be modular manufacturing (there go more jobs!) we will have the added bonus of mass cognitive dissonance igniting SocialRevs right and left.

The Fed boss was (perhaps rightly) proud when she pointed to local Fed steps to help communities get back on their feet:

“…Leadership recruitment is also at the heart of a grassroots-oriented program called Economic Avenue that was developed by the Kansas City Fed. In Northeast Kansas City, Kansas, residents and neighborhood leaders are forming a leadership council that will have responsibility for managing the program, which aims to create and grow local businesses, create jobs, and promote homeownership. The bank’s community development staff is providing education and training to get the council off the ground, will measure and evaluate

But in a counter to that, a sane observer of mass change would have to note that humans are self-organizing and that there is another “Economic Avenue” being built spontaneously.  And that all lives under the headings of “barter and bitcoins.”

Unlike the global world order that’s struggling to market a global tax system to support global government, or the US government which is printing paper six-ways to Sunday to attempt a restart, the new internal breakaway civilization (NuCiv) is laying out its own alternative financial foundation.

I don’t think Ms. Yellen has ever worked construction (just a guess, mind you, but I think a safe one).  But a concrete worker would recognize what’s going on in a heartbeat.

“What’cha got is a crumbling foundation.  So I can either mix up a sack of topping mix and trowel it on to make it look good, so it will pass inspection for a little while.  Or, I can rebuild the foundation right, one section at a time…”

The wise observer will see both tracks in play:  The Fed is opting for the topping mix.  But off on the sidelines, barter is booming and so is BitCoin.  Regular people will find workable solutions, even if it means trading in silverware and home gardening.

Crumbling Foundations Detail

As our work on pricing has projected, BitCoin has continued to fall.  As of this morning, it’s down to $482 and likely to continue falling toward our projected possible low of $325.

The reason is – in part – the IRS guidance of last week that BitCoins would be treated as property.

However, lest you think Capitalism of the Old School sort is out of the woods, guess again.

One group of the April Fools today are likely to be the high frequency Wall St.

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This is no April Fools deal, here.  This is the real schiznit.  The Big UGLY sucker in the corner no one wants to talk about.,  And my buddy David (goat ranchering up in Arkysaw) nails it squarely:

Funny you should mention it…

And we have to give up on planned obsolescence.

If the alleged environmentalist of our generation were the least bit honest planned obsolescence would be the first place to start an environmental movement.

It always fascinated me when the were millions available to the “movement” but you could not find an honest (useful idiot) that had contributed more then $5.

Yes, Brother Dave gets the only gold star I am going to pass out all day long.  He and I both see that the reason we can’t have a happy ending to the present worldview is that no one is addressing the number one problem:  You can’t have constant growth in a fixed system forever.

Something is going to break.  It’s all just a matter of time.  Simple as that.  D’oh.

Think about this:  If everything lasted three times as long, we’d all only have to work one third of the time!

Followed logically, our present trajectory nets us a planet in 100 years where everyone has a 100” TV, a car that gets 900 miles per gallon.  Oh, and everyone is dead because with the LBGT movement succeeding, there are no kids being anymore and……

Hello?  Can we please – just this once – answer the right question instead of going of on the BS bait and switch? This year’s car, this year’s style, this year’s phone, this year’s Office/operating system and whatever…

Please, tell me you’re not so dumb to miss it?   The environmental movement is –  Yet Another Distraction (YAD) – because no one starting at the get go and that because no one wants to admit planned obsolescence is what kills us all. 

So bring on over-production (and let’s over-medicate, too, while we’re at it) because that way, we can all “green police” ourselves into oblivion.

Save a tree, kill a planet.  Save a whale, create a government job.  Ban cow farts, more regulators.  Blame climate change…and here’s another tax, and more government jobs..

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May I present this morning’s brain-teaser to rock you into another stellar week of average performance?  Go ahead…try to guess what E.O.Q.W.D is…

OK, then, time’s up!

End of Quarter Window Dressing

I have this crackpot theory that says in addition to short run-ups before major holidays, the stock market may also have a tendency to pop a bit (like late last week) and maybe carrying over into today, as the en d of quarter bonus marks are set.  Run that Dow puppy up 80 at the open!

If this crackpot theory holds true, we may then see a run down to lower levels later this week as the “commercials” drive down the price of stocks in order to buy lower before selling higher sometime this summer. 

At least, maybe.

About the only news due out today should be the Chicago Purchasing Managers Index.

Tomorrow – which should be a National Holiday, being April Fools and all (we qualify, right?) – will see construction spending and auto sales, but the real point of getting up the next four morning will be to arrive safely at the Friday morning release of the unemployment figures.

So no, a major earthquake has not shoveled L.A. into the Pacific yet, and the Yellowstone caldera  is still cauldering (or whatever it is calderas do),

But this morning’s first coffee-induced brain-spasm is to view the week as a race between competing shaky outcomes:  Will the market go?  Or, will the earthquakes?

Japan and China were both up overnight.  German and French markets are sleeping late, but the kneeler’s deal is up a bit, too.

About the only cloud on the horizon is the prospect of another Dust Bowl, like the 1930’s.  There’s been a lot of dust blowing into Texas from out west, New Mexico, and so forth, and the possibility of climate driving food prices through the roof looks like almost a sure bet, now.

Rather than worry about this, why not worry about who said the $3-trillion in “fake bonds”: entering the Vatican Bank this morning were really fake? It’s make a hell of a TV show or movie. 

Or, how about them Swiss, naming 8 banks (the usual suspects) in a Forex manipulation probe?  Time to get out the whitewash, again,…

Climate Baiting Continues

Yes, the earth’s climate is changing.  But it has always been changing.  It’s just that we’ve never had good enough communications about it to turn it into a cult/religion.  And it’s not being widely reported how former Greenpeace insider Patrick Moore laid out conflicting data about climate to a Senate committee last week.

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I’m going to tell you how to learn ANYTHING, but we’re going to start with a discussion of ham radio to begin with.  So if haven’t picked up a ham radio license, pay attention! 

My friends Gaye (survival woman) and Sheldon (survival hubby) up at www.backdoorsurvival.com are planning to pick up their ham radio licenses.  The reason for more focus on this is that this weekend’s outburst of earthquakes (L.A., Yellowstone, and the Oklahoma shimmy) has moved it up their priority list from a “fixing to get ready” to a “time to get ‘er done” item.

They’ve both got the ubiquitous Baofeng UV5RA Ham Two Way Radio 136-174/400-480 MHz Dual-Band Transceiver (Black) radios which are great entry radios.  And programming software and, and…..

The problem is, however, that the programming booklet that comes with the radio is a football-field away from simple.  This is not an uncommon problem with ham radio equipment.

Over the years, admittedly more than 50 of them, I started off on three simple knobs on the radio receiver (volume, Morse code beat note, and tuning) and on my first crystal-controlled (single frequency) radio, there was a tuning knob, loading knob, and an on/off Morse key.  That was it.

Nowadays, the manual for my Kenwood 590S runs about 80-pages and explains how to use umpteen levels of digital signal processing, the radio’s built-in receive and transmit equalizers, shaping of the Morse waveform, which antenna port to use…and loads more.  Nearly 50 controls if you count the push-buttons.  And you should:  Most of them control more than one function on the radio, depending on if you make it a short button press, or hold a button in more than one second to call some other function.

Between her professional commitments (real work) and her web site (more real work) Gaye’s got just about zero time to sit down with a Mojito and just “spin dials” for a few hours to “get the hang” of her radio.  That’s how many people like to learn, but time just doesn’t always show up when needed…

Even if she did have the time, there may not be much “hang-getting” since the quality of manuals on many pieces of imported equipment only make sense if you understand current trends in menu design to control the microprocessors in modern radios.

Incomprehensible manuals are, sorry to say, a plague of life.

Even really great simplifications of the Baofeng manual (like this one) can be daunting.

What to do to speed up the learning process?

I realized (from our chit-chats this weekend) that there may be a lot of people who are in the same boat:  The $30-35 for the radio wasn’t a big deal, but the programming and licensing?  And how much time is this going to take because time ain’t infinite!  .

So I suggested that they (Gaye and Shel) read the outstanding first license study guide by Dan Romanchik, KB6NU, which can be found online here.  Free. 

My son (KF7OCD) has used this with a couple of Technician class license sessions he’s taught and seriously, if you just read the material, your odds of passing are about 90% the first time around.  It isn’t really fast…it just take however long it takes to read 50-pages.

Now let’s talk about learning styles:

As a former postsecondary administrator, the way to learn depends on person.  People who like music, poetry, and are good writers, are called the “right-brain” people.  Theory appeals to them.  They read novels.

The “left-brainers” are people who love math, computer programming, and the hard science of things.  Theory isn’t so interesting as formulas and procedures, to them. They read more nonfiction.

If you’re like Gaye & Shel,  what will likely work best is to sample a little this, a little that. 

To do this, read the study guide, but have the radio nearby so when you get to a concept, you can look at the radio and maybe there will be something about it in the manual. If you don’t feel compelled to pick up the radio, no worries.

Depending on which way your brain works, you may lean a little more toward formula, or a little the other way into theory.  But, the best possible learning is when both sides of the brain have something to work on.  There are tons of learning styles:  Tactile, aural, visual, mixed…pick those that suit you.

Oh, this may be why construction crews listen to country music on the job site:  Feed both sides of brain.

Elaine and I were working on house addition construction again this weekend and putting in furring strips for drywall is brain killing work.  So we fed the other side of the brain (music, light jazz) while working.

Anyone who doesn’t feed both sides ends up being unbalanced, but in some professions that works.  This is where engineers come from.

But at times of peak concentration (landing an airplane, doing brain surgery) music off, total focus of both sides of brain is best.  Banging 2-by-4’s (after you’ve framed a few houses and can eyeball a 5/8th’s inch cut) is less so, hence the music.

Where do you get the incentive?

Set a deadline for yourself.  I won’t tell you when Mr & Mrs Survival will go take their ham test, but you can hit the American Radio Relay League website.  Toss in your Zip code, and you should be able to find something.

If not, look for a local radio club and just show up at one of their meetings.  Ham radio people are warm and friendly.  Ask whatever questions you may have, but bear in mind that because of the hobby, many ham radio types will answer the simplest questions with incredibly long answers.

These will invariably be close to perfect, but they call into the “Ask him what time it is, and he built me a watch factory” category.

Deadline setting is critical.  Every person I know who is successful (annual incomes over $300,000, or so) runs their life to deadlines.  Danger:  You can become a control-freak, but if you have deadlines and meet them, life tends to pay out bigger jackpots.  Because you get stuff done.

What’s Not in the Study Guide

If you’ve completely forgotten high school physics, the part of the study guide that can be most intimidating is the beginning where Ohm’s Law and such are covered.  Here’s my 1-minute workaround for that:

Not in the ham book, but this may help understand electricity:

Think of electricity flow through wire as being like water flowing in a garden hose.

Electromotive force (Volts) is like the pressure in the hose.

Current (the amount of energy flowing)  (measured in Amps) is like the volume of water flowing in the hose.

Volts times Amps = power (in Watts).  Watts is like Work being done. Just like the  water coming out of the end of a hose can do work like turn a water wheel.  More water (current) or more pressure (volts) turns a bigger wheeel doing more work.

The basic equations assume you know:

Volts is abbreviated “E”

Current is abbreviated “I”

Power is abbreviated “P”

And Resistance (in Ohms) is abbreviated “R”

—

The first rule is the rule of P=I*E   (pie)

Power [ P ] equals current [ I ] times voltage [ E ]

You hair dryer  is 120 volts.  We know (from the label)  it is 1,500 watts.  So P/E=I.

By substitution then, 1500/120 =  12.5 amps.  Which is why a 15 amp circuit breaker doesn’t pop when you dry your hair!

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Grady and I don’t usually burden you with mentions of earthquakes, except when I dream about them in advance, and such, as was the case last Thursday preceding the L.A. quake,

But things have become a lot more interesting since in just a few moments ago there was a 4.8 magnitude quake that went off up in the area east-northeast of West Yellowstone, Montana.

1. 37km (23mi) ENE of West Yellowstone, Montana
2. 105km (65mi) SSE of Bozeman, Montana
3. 138km (86mi) NE of Rexburg, Idaho
4. 178km (111mi) NE of Ammon, Idaho
5. 228km (142mi) SSE of Helena, Montana

And just a few minutes earlier, our war-gaming friend “warhammer” had noted the www.spaceweather.com report of an X-class flare that may be earth-impacting:

With all the LA ‘moving and shaking’ going on, it will be interesting to see how this rare electro-magnetic solar event manifests itself on the plate of tectonic spaghetti lying beneath the City of Angels.

I sadly agree.  According to the Solar Influences Data analysis center, the fun began with this series early Saturday…

NOAA AR 2017 produced two M class flares (M2.0 peak 19:18 UT and M2.6 peak 23:51 UT on March 28). The flares were associated with two halo CMEs, the first one with speeds of 412km/s (first seen by LASCO-C2 at 20:00 UT) and the second one 557 km/s (at 23:58 UT).

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