Coping: Fukushima Vs. Hiroshima

Why, all we need to toss in to make this a blockbuster column would be Godzilla….but to preserve some semblance of respectability, we’ll eventually get to the point here:  I got to wondering about the comparison between Fukushima and the loss of life that happened in World War II.  Our consulting (real life) reactor engineer is about as good a source as you’ll find:

George,

I know that radiophobia plays well and I acknowledge the Fukushima meltdowns as catastrophes of colossal proportions, but you had what I assume was a throw-away sentence in the update that just isn’t borne out by the facts.  You stated in your blurb on the anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing that the Fukushima disaster “[s]eems destined to outdo the wartime use of nukes in terms of impacts including long-term loss of life.”

Even in the most fevered dreams of the anti-nukes (at least the ones that acknowledge science and historical data) that is a gross overstatement.  I have no doubts I’ll spend the rest of my life having to hear it, but that still won’t make it true.  The same thing was said about Chernobyl – that the death toll would be in the hundreds of thousands (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster).  The real death toll is somewhere in the range of 6000 (less than 100 for the accident and immediate response, the rest on estimated cancers) or so and much of that from the Soviets forcing gulag inmates to work in a very high radiation environment, along with some soldiers and engineers who risked their lives to get that situation under control. 

In some ways Fukushima was worse than Chernobyl – more plants at the site, a breached spent fuel pool building, no site power for many days, flooded reactor with seawater, etc.  So let’s look at that.  First off, no one died at the Fukushima complex as a result of radiation exposure during the meltdown phase.  A recent attempt at estimating deaths/reduction in life expectancy (http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2012/ee/c2ee22019a) gave a figure that ranges from hundreds to nearly 2000 that is based on theoretical reductions in life expectancy due to cancer and uses the LNT (linear damage theory – no threshold model, a very conservative way of calculating radiation health effects).  Time will have to tell, but this will be the most studied cohort of accident victims ever produced, in my opinion. 

As bad as the Japanese response has been in some ways (especially in terms of transparency of data) this population will be followed their entire lives, so one way or the other, we will get an answer to your statement, but just like in the early days post-Chernobyl, we are going to see that the real death toll will be much, much lower than feared.  Also, because more coal fired plants are being ramped up now to offset the reduction in nuclear, more fatalities and illnesses from respiratory problems will kick in, possibly swamping the theoretical deaths that might be caused by the Fukushima releases (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es3051197).

I know we are also not allowed to talk about it in polite company, but there was an absolutely massive exposure event in Taiwan where around 10,000 people were exposed to low-level radiation for around 9 years and the results were not a devastating cancer epidemic (http://dose-response.metapress.com/link.asp?id=u570v06p72857877), but the total population actually showed a reduction in cancer incidence.  This is why you don’t hear about this massive exposure incident in the mainstream press or from radiophobes. 

I’m not saying go out and buy a Co-60 source to hug on at night, and there were complications noted for some subsets of that population (kids, pregnant women), but the cancer/death figures one expects using LNT are not seen, even several decades on.  Let’s just say rad effects on people are a complicated topic and not amenable to sound bites.

Much of the problem as I see it today is that TEPCO has no credibility left.  The Japanese government has no credibility left.  Regarding the leaks into the groundwater, they should be providing constant information on test well readings all around the area.  This is very straightforward stuff.  Dig the well.  Take a sample.  Place it in a standard counter.  Report the results of the test along with all metadata (detector type, calibration date, any calibration factors necessary to compensate for geometry, etc.) on a publicly available website and then allow audits.  We would then know for sure if/when levels begin to exceed regulatory limits and if/when they begin to approach concerns to health (a much higher number).

As for the reactor facility and spent fuel pools, fuel removal is ahead of schedule.  There was never a zirc fire in the spent fuel pools.  The fuel is the potential source for a potential new disaster there.  Contaminated water is a real problem, but we know how to deal with it – collection in resin beds, prevent use of contaminated wells, monitor the coast and fisheries.  The dose levels we are talking about that have made it into the food supply are still in the single digit Becquerel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becquerel) range.  Remember that a banana averages around 15 Bq.  That is a nice value to compare to.  Again, I am not saying don’t worry.  I am saying be vigilant, but don’t panic yet.  Save the energy, there may be a need to panic later and you don’t want to be wore out by then from needless worrying.

People evolved in a much higher radiation environment than we have today on earth.  In reasonable doses, we can tolerate it – though I don’t disagree that some people are more sensitive to rad exposure than others, just like some people are more sensitive to peanuts than others.

Another quick hit for you – the Great East Japan Earthquake killed almost 16,000 people, with over 2,600 people missing/dead.  Recall also that the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004 killed at least 230,000 people.  Where are the calls to permanently evacuate all coastal cities and towns along the Pacific Rim? 

Thanks for letting me get this off my chest.

It’s always an honor to here from the front-line pros who actually run reactors…

Speaking of radiation fears, I have three wireless routers in my office plus a lifetime of messing in high RF environments  and so far I’m not even medium-rare.  But it may have an  unstudied side effect: typos.

Scenar ala WuJo

We have a reader report this morning that relates to a “Scenar” which some people swear by and others, like this site over here, label as a complete scam.

The reason I mention this is that not one person in 1 thousand on the street have any clue what a scenar is….so in an effort to set up this WuJo Report you need to understand what they are.  So here’s the report:

I think I just had a woo experience today. 

I have a scenar (cosmodic) that I purchased  a few years ago, from following the bots.

My son was using it at a summer club basketball tournament (July 26).  Teammate had stepped on his hand in practice earlier in the week, so we brought it to the tournament for last minute control of his injury.  After the tournament, drove home, remember taking it out of the car, throwing some trash away outside and then going inside the house.  An hour after we got home, I was looking for the scenar for use on my neck.  Couldn’t find it.  Look in the outside trash can, dumped out the contents, in case I accidently
dropped it in the trash.  Looked in the car, still couldn’t find it.  Looked all over the house, no luck.  Have not seen it since July 26.  I was bit upset, since this scenar was from the Ukraine and was expensive.  Oh well… 

Today, son and I are in living room and I go upstairs to get laundry.  Coming down the stairs I look down into the living room and there it is  lying on floor about 2 feet from the couch.  I asked my son, and he said he saw it there about 30 minutes earlier, but did not notice it earlier in the day.  I asked my son if he had touched it or moved something that was covering it and he indicated that he had not touched it or moved anything that might have been covering it.

I was almost convinced that I had never taken it out of the car, and that it was stolen at the basketball tournament.  Looks like a cell phone in  a case.  But I still clung to the notion that I had taken it out of the car.

In any event, I was happy to see my scenar and I told it, I was glad it was back and hoped it had a good trip.  There is no way it was lying on my living room floor for 15 days in plain site.  I know it took a trip,

You can leave my name out of the woo report.

No problem, reader Bill Smith, of UrbanTown, Illinois…(which is better than John Doe, I figured…).

Here’s an interesting  thread of a thought revealed in this case.  Do you think it’s possible that the disappearance and reappearance of items has to do with people’s mental/emotional attachment to the objects involved?

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A Short Chart Commentary

With all the revisions to the UrbanSurvival website, I can now post comments a lot easier and so every once in a while I’ll post charts like the one below.  First, however, let me explain what this chart is and why I developed it.

The stock market goes up, the stock market comes down.  Most non-professionals don’t pay a lot of attention to which index they look at.  If you hear “The Dow is up!” most folks assume that if the Dow is up, everything must be peachy.  Well, that ain’t the case.

What a lot of people gloss over is the size of the Internet Bubble collapse and its impact on long-term investment performance.  The way I figured it, if Dow Jones & Company could pick and choose 30-stocks to make up their Industrial average, why couldn’t I take three indices and add them up and come up with something which would be an “index of indexes” and thus, get a little keener insight into the big game?

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Ah…Fan Mail!

I don’t usually mention fan mail (maybe because I seldom receive it) but an email from Peoplenomics subscriber by the name of  “Lou” about this weekend’s discussion of socioeconomic displacement shock was just too good not to share…

Dear Mr. Ure,

The Aug 10th Peoplenomics is one of the best Peoplenomics I’ve ever read.  Displacement Shock X:  NLO is a superb analysis of the current economic situation and what to expect in the future.  It’s a Brave New World out there and it’s accelerating.  One person’s optimization is another’s Black Swan and discontinuities are lurking at every corner in the future.  How many people truly understand the environment we’re in or even have an inkling?  Some of the 1% do.  Peoplenomics subscribers do too.  That is way cool.

That’s some mighty fine rightin from Teaxas I’ve just read.   I appreciate your hard work.  You da Renaissance Man!

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Displacement Shock X: NLO

Future Shock was heady stuff when Alvin Toffler wrote the book. And yet, as things have turned out, most of the futurists have, and do, continue to miss the graceful artiness of complex systems. Like Kurzweil in his Singularity: Cool conceptually, but it glosses (OK, ignores, then) the financial backplane. In other words, who pays for the future and who gets run over in the process.

Our Favorite Golfer

… is, of course, Fearless Leader himself, who is heading to Martha’s Vineyard, reports USA Today, for a week or rest and relaxation. Hallelujah. As you may expect, he’s being widely criticized for taking the time off. But, around here, we take a more thoughtful view of things: It’s more time that he won’t have to spend on coming up bad ideas, like the idea of making Larry Summers the next Fed boss.

Coping: The WuJo Detective

Thursday morning, we recounted one of our Wujo tales, wherein a reader reported on the case of mysterious sandals that seem to have gone walking about on their own.  At the end of the column the WjD (wujo detective degree abbreviation) asked a number of questions which might lead directly to a simple solution to this apparent contradiction between observed reality and more or less normal events.  We have some answers:

“Logically, the dog fetched them from the stairs, brought them inside (do you have a pet door?) went up stairs looking for the kid, not finding him, notice someone in the recliner and dumped them under there…???”

LOL, nope no doggie door.  Also “Indy” is a 8 month old German Shepard Rottweiler mix.  It would be hard to miss if he had fetched them and placed them under the chair.  Though Indy could have moved the chair since he is coming in at 80lbs now.  The sandals were under the chair to the point that you could not see them unless you lifted the chair.  Weird to say the least.”

Unless someone comes up with a way to physically reduce paper, we’re going to have to add this to what’s turned in to an overstuffed filing cabinet that is labeled “Unsolved.” 

The Four Horsemen’s PR Failure

A reader asked me recently to give my personal assessment of what’s coming our way in the immediate future so as to help figure out what would be the right preps to lay in and so forth.  I thought about this, and while it’s never easy to lay out a whole future in a quick two minute read, I decided this morning to take a whack at it since reader JC and I were just talking about this one the phone this week.

Markets

Without the specifics of a Peoplenomics report like the one planned for tomorrow where we’ll dig into more detail, the current decline of the market, seems to me that over the course of this fall we could see a decline of the S&P 500 down to the 1,540 range (or lower) and that would set up a rally which would last either into next March-April, or it would continue upwards until next summer and then begin a massive decline which could go lower than the 2009 lows.  Even so, this picture may take an additional year or more to work out.

What will determine how that plays out will be how long the financial system can hold together globally in “synchronized printing mode.”

Earth-Changes

We are in a curious place where the arrival of comet C-ISON which should be quite bright in November, is being described as being the “blue Kachina” of Hopi lore.  This series of native tales has been handed down over the years into the New Age crowd and there are continuing resurrections of the story, including this version of things posted in July.

Reader GC has been thinking some of this stuff through and he points out that NASA has been running its Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy down in the Southern hemisphere again.  After doing three weeks of flying down there, another deployment is planned in 2015.

“SOFIA PREP FLIGHTS ARE VERY SIGNIFICANT FOR THE VERY FACT THAT THIS IS TAKING PLACE IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE !!!!
THIS FAR-INFRARED TELESCOPE IS KEY TO THE OBSERVATION OF A BROWN DWARF STAR ENTERING OUR SOLAR SYSTEM MASKED IN A MASSIVE DUST CLOUD !!!!
IF A KILLSHOT TAKES OUT ALL COMMUNICATIONS TO SATELLITES THIS IS SET TO KEEP AN EYE ON THE DARK STAR. “

To be sure, running through a cloud of “red dust” (which seems likely to include a lot of rusty water) seems like it might cause a lot of rain and a “red moon” we need to recall that the red moon part of predictive prophesy could come from earthbound dust, too.  And what about the Australian dust storms of a while back – in January?

Also in the end times discussion there are other parameters and the one that is really falling into place is the “third of the earth’s oceans” being “bittered” which Fukushima is doing a splendid job of.

So ONE possible future looks like massive market collapse, bounce, heap this fall.  Wars and rumors of wars when we are collapsing economically.  Blue Kachina is due right on schedule, we’ve got the bittered waters, so all we need are some left field events and that would wrap things up neatly.

Still, these left field events will be the make or break, so we just keep scanning the headlines for hoards of locusts, pandemic diseases, and lost Horsemen on variously colored mounts. 

If you see four lost-looking riders, tell ‘em there’s a natural-born cynic over at UrbanSurvial who’d like a word with them about their marketing roll-out. 

Unless we get a few mega quakes to spice things up a bit, and really damn soon,  the locust swarms in Kazakhstan, Madagascar, even here in Texas, are hardly worthy of 2,000 years of hype!

Any real Four Horsemen, LLc  worth its rep ought to be embarrassed to fall back on trivial, annual, and quite natural occurrences and setting up their appearance.  Why, even Tepco’s crappy smokefest on Fukushima is such a slow-motion affair that any reasonable “End of Worlder” would get bored spitless by now and simply wander off.

Not that I don’t get people writing to me everyday, as they come up for Kleenex after sniffing the dust-bunnies over this headline, or that.  But they’re mostly getting rewrite of decades-old material. 

The Four Horsemen really need a new media strategy so as a stopgap measure, we’re going to suggest a massive event involving social media and in the next month or so.  Their that or an 8+ earthquake…you know…something with some pizzazz to get this roll-out of the End of the World back on track.

Reader’s Writes

Reader Andy, of in the hinterlands of the Northeast (as much as they are hinterlands) makes a good note about my recent discussions about fracking and in particular those waste water injection wells:

In your recent discussion of fracking (“When the Saudis Speak…”, July 30), you mentioned “shark tooth spikes,” links between water injection wells and seismic activity, and other issues.  Conspicuously absent was the issue of possible contamination of water supplies.

I know you’ve mentioned this subject in the past; I recall that you once linked to an article about fracking-induced contamination of the Susquehanna River with radionuclides.

Some shills in the MSM are claiming that the EPA has “debunked” the “myth” of fracking-related water pollution.  I disagree.  For instance, a University of Buffalo study found that fracking can release uranium from Marcellus shale. 

Some academic researchers are also questioning the EPA’s numbers about methane leakage from natural gas production.

I hope you can explore fracking in more depth in US/Peoplenomics…

Yessir, Andy as soon as the weather cools off about 20-degrees and Oilman2 and I can have a glass of interview juice on the screen porch.  He’s been busy as heck with things in the oil patch (Including just going through some kind of periodic ‘rig control school’ which I think readers would also find interesting as the Dickens).

And as long as we’re on shaky ground…

Try on this from reader Jeff:

“Hi George,

Love your site and your insight.

I was reading about the sun’s current magnetic pole flip. A couple of items got me thinking in particular –  first that it happens every 11 years at the solar maximum and second, it’s usually accompanied by CME’s, flares, and other fun space-related events.

You have probably already referenced this (because you have foresight like that and are ahead of the hip curve), but I did a quick Excel pattern auto fill with 11-year increments and some interesting dates showed up. I’m not a huge numbers person or sign seeker, but I found it interesting that 1969 (lunar landing) and 1859 being the year of the Carrington Event (specifically interesting about this is that it happened during the first part of September, which according to the news story is the same timeline as the completion of the flip) caught my attention.

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A Modest Rally, But Then What?

Ure’s truly did not win the PowerBall last night, and if you have time to read this, neither did you by the looks of it, although a number of lucky people did.  Turns out the winners included one in Minnesota and two in New Joisey. (sic) The good news, such as it is, may be that there’s another column to read although I was anticipating being able to post my farewell, audios, sayonara letter.  Maybe (hopefully) next time.

This leaves me stuck in my “get rich slow” rut, which isn’t bad, but I’m an impatient cuss.  Markets are due for a modest rally at the open today since even a bleary-eyed amateur chartist should be able to count five waves down, so we should get a wave two in hear sometime, perhaps seven points up to the S&P 1,700 level, but we shall see.

One of the charts we serve up for Peoplenomics.com readers is a Global Index I devised a number of years ago.  And looking at it, reader Yohan wonders if I have considered an unhappy ending of global finance that would look like this (with his counts added)

It might work out that way, after all Japan was down another 1.59% overnight, but Europe is up a tad this morning, we the real key will be whether we get a quick bounce to S&P 1,700 for a day or less and then head down globally next week.

The bad news is that if we have just been through a Wave 1 down, and we scramble up a bit for a Wave 2, then Wave 3 down could be interesting since economic fundamentals are less than encouraging.  Particularly the Federal Reserve’s Consumer Debt report out late yesterday which showed, importantly I think, that Americans are back to sitting on their credit cards.

In the report, credit cards and the like are called “revolving” credit (like a revolver being pointed at you, I suppose) while “non-revolving credit” includes mobile homes and education loans.  The part that matters is shown to the right.

Yes, overall consumer debt was still going up at the 5.9% rate, but revolving debt (which I think of as largely consumer discretionary, except by people who have to bend plastic to eat) was down nearly 4%.  Again we see non-revolving debt (like student loans) up 10% but a lot of what’s driving that is likely to be people driven (from desperation) to buy education thinking there might be a job out there if they could just complete that online brain surgery degree.  Either that, or the number of people who said “Screw it!”  and just bought a pair of jet skis and headed to the lake is up.

Hard times make desperate people, and desperate people recognize that low interest rates won’t last forever and when they go up, no telling how bad things will get for the US dollar.

Oh, and on an inflation-adjusted basis since 2000, the Dow would have needed to hit 15,897 by January 1st of this year.  Since we can kick in another 3% for the year-to-date’s wild-eyed printing, that would point to an inflation-adjusted double top of the ultra long-term Dow around 16,373 but this isn’t an exact science because I haven’t been able to find any credible papers on the effects of quantitative easing on the effective long-term inflation rate.

Still, if it’s any help (and from an inflation standpoint it is) the reason we don’t see more inflation like  we should from all the printing by the Fed is that the money is going into dark pools on the sidelines and consequently, M2 Velocity continues to crater.  With it, job creation and some other inconveniences (government running out of dough and such) wander along.  But, we can’t have a delicious concentration of wealth omelet without breaking a few workers now, can we?

Which is not to call workers “eggs” – more like chickens or sheep would fit – so come this fall it’ll be “over easy” as the corps skate on ‘Bamacare and we the people will go nicely with cheese and toast again as we get “crack up” and the yoke is us.

Say, This is Exciting

Well, not really, but it is an employment indicator that some people (with no lives otherwise to speak of) follow closely:

In the week ending August 3, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 333,000, an increase of 5,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 328,000. The 4-week moving average was 335,500, a decrease of 6,250 from the previous week’s revised average of 341,750.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.3 percent for the week ending July 27, unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending July 27 was 3,018,000, an increase of 67,000 from the preceding week’s unrevised level of 2,951,000. The 4-week moving average was 3,023,750, a decrease of 2,250 from the preceding week’s unrevised average of 3,026,000.

If you have a job, this may not matter much…

New Concept: MultiWar

In most of the MSM (mainstreammedia) there’s a propensity to cast wars into a simple binary model for ease of reporting purposes.  But, in fact, due to heavy communications, massive social and religious complexity, we are beginning to appreciate that there is a new form of warfare emerging which we call the “multiwar.” 

From a design standpoint, it means a war with multiple sides and instead of a traditional mano y mano (man and man) binary, we see developing in Syria the idea that there may be three (or more) sides. 

Obviously, the MSM reports on the Assad (existing) government, which is backed by the Russians.  And, in good binary simplifications, the “rebels” are oft shown as “freedom fighters.” 

But now we see some US intelligence types as drifting toward our multiwar construct with as Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell considers that al Qaeda taking over the Assad government is becoming a real possibility.

This trilateral war might even become quadular (other Ureism)  in nature, depending on interests of  nearby Gulf states. 

From an analytical standpoint, we hark back to early Star Trek days and 3-D chess. Yet even here, the propensity to confine the game to simply two players was persistent.  In hypercomplexification, the global geopolitical game is multiplayer and multilevel.  So perhaps as a thought model, the Langley crowd should drag out the 3-D chess set, make up some basic rules, and have three players now, instead of the binary baseline?

From the War Gamer’s Desk: 

EBM Holds True, Again!

Love to see my high-powered theories work out in real-life:

Good Morning George,

Here’s a supporting piece of evidence for Ure axiom that “everything is  a business model.”

Eisenhower’s farewell address warning comes to mind:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”

~ President Dwight D.

Read More

A Modest Rally, But Then What?

Ure’s truly did not win the PowerBall last night, and if you have time to read this, neither did you by the looks of it, although a number of lucky people did.  Turns out the winners included one in Minnesota and two in New Joisey. (sic) The good news, such as it is, may be that there’s another column to read although I was anticipating being able to post my farewell, audios, sayonara letter.  Maybe (hopefully) next time.

This leaves me stuck in my “get rich slow” rut, which isn’t bad, but I’m an impatient cuss.  Markets are due for a modest rally at the open today since even a bleary-eyed amateur chartist should be able to count five waves down, so we should get a wave two in hear sometime, perhaps seven points up to the S&P 1,700 level, but we shall see.

One of the charts we serve up for Peoplenomics.com readers is a Global Index I devised a number of years ago.  And looking at it, reader Yohan wonders if I have considered an unhappy ending of global finance that would look like this (with his counts added)

It migtht work out that way, after all Japan was down another 1.59% overnight, but Europe is up a tad this morning, we the real key will be whether we get a quick bounce to S&P 1,700 for a day or less and then head down globally next week.

The bad news is that if we have just been through a Wave 1 down, and we scramble up a bit for a Wave 2, then Wave 3 down could be interesting since economic fundamentals are less than encouraging.  Particularly the Federal Reserve’s Consumer Debt report out late yesterday which showed, importantly I think, that Americans are back to sitting on their credit cards.

In the report, credit cards and the like are called “revolving” credit (like a revolver being pointed at you, I suppose) while “non-revolving credit” includes mobile homes and education loans.  The part that matters is shown to the right.

Yes, overall consumer debt was still going up at the 5.9% rate, but revolving debt (which I think of as largely consumer discretionary, except by people who have to bend plastic to eat) was down nearly 4%.  Again we see non-revolving debt (like student loans) up 10% but a lot of what’s driving that is likely to be people driven (from desperation) to buy education thinking there might be a job out there if they could just complete that online brain surgery degree.  Either that, or the number of people who said “Screw it!”  and just bought a pair of jet skis and headed to the lake is up.

Hard times make desperate people, and desperate people recognize that low interest rates won’t last forever and when they go up, no telling how bad things will get for the US dollar.

Oh, and on an inflation-adjusted basis since 2000, the Dow would have needed to hit 15,897 by January 1st of this year.  Since we can kick in another 3% for the year-to-date’s wild-eyed printing, that would point to an inflation-adjusted double top of the ultra long-term Dow around 16,373 but this isn’t an exact science because I haven’t been able to find any credible papers on the effects of quantitative easing on the effective long-term inflation rate.

Still, if it’s any help (and from an inflation standpoint it is) the reason we don’t see more inflation like  we should from all the printing by the Fed is that the money is going into dark pools on the sidelines and consequently, M2 Velocity continues to crater.  With it, job creation and some other inconveniences (government running out of dough and such) wander along.  But, we can’t have a delicious concentration of wealth omelet without breaking a few workers now, can we?

Which is not to call workers “eggs” – more like chickens or sheep would fit – so come this fall it’ll be “over easy” as the corps skate on ‘Bamacare and we the people will go nicely with cheese and toast again as we get “crack up” and the yoke is us.

Say, This is Exciting

Well, not really, but it is an employment indicator that some people (with no lives otherwise to speak of) follow closely:

In the week ending August 3, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 333,000, an increase of 5,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 328,000. The 4-week moving average was 335,500, a decrease of 6,250 from the previous week’s revised average of 341,750.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.3 percent for the week ending July 27, unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending July 27 was 3,018,000, an increase of 67,000 from the preceding week’s unrevised level of 2,951,000. The 4-week moving average was 3,023,750, a decrease of 2,250 from the preceding week’s unrevised average of 3,026,000.

If you have a job, this may not matter much…

New Concept: MultiWar

In most of the MSM (mainstreammedia) there’s a propensity to cast wars into a simple binary model for ease of reporting purposes.  But, in fact, due to heavy communications, massive social and religious complexity, we are beginning to appreciate that there is a new form of warfare emerging which we call the “multiwar.” 

From a design standpoint, it means a war with multiple sides and instead of a traditional mano y mano (man and man) binary, we see developing in Syria the idea that there may be three (or more) sides. 

Obviously, the MSM reports on the Assad (existing) government, which is backed by the Russians.  And, in good binary simplifications, the “rebels” are oft shown as “freedom fighters.” 

But now we see some US intelligence types as drifting toward our multiwar construct with as Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell considers that al Qaeda taking over the Assad government is becoming a real possibility.

This trilateral war might even become quadular (other Ureism)  in nature, depending on interests of  nearby Gulf states. 

From an analytical standpoint, we hark back to early Star Trek days and 3-D chess. Yet even here, the propensity to confine the game to simply two players was persistent.  In hypercomplexification, the global geopolitical game is multiplayer and multilevel.  So perhaps as a thought model, the Langley crowd should drag out the 3-D chess set, make up some basic rules, and have three players now, instead of the binary baseline?

From the War Gamer’s Desk: 

EBM Holds True, Again!

Love to see my high-powered theories work out in real-life:

Good Morning George,

Here’s a supporting piece of evidence for Ure axiom that “everything is  a business model.”

Eisenhower’s farewell address warning comes to mind:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”

~ President Dwight D.

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Coping: Thursday at the WuJo

I love it when wujo stories start to pile up in the inbox.  Assuming you know that “wujo” stories are more reliable than regular woo-woo stories, since they are gathered here from first-hand reports, rather than thrice-told-tales, I should explain that our fascination is with their existence related to how they may indicate yet-to-be-found new areas for Science to investigate.

I don’t know if you caught George Noory’s  Tuesday Coast-to-Coast AM show, but his guest included Vernon Neppe and Edward R. Close who talked about new work coming out of psychiatry and quantum physics that seem to point to a universal substrate of consciousness that permeates reality.  Close had a book out a while back called Transcendental Physics which will get you started.

Between them, Noory got them into a familiar topic around here:  Wondering whether we’re coming along to the end of the Reductionist path…which is where simple “if-then” science needs to start looking at larger frameworks of reality.

So with that as background/foreplay, we (eventually) get to this morning’s “case report” from reader Jane:

Hi George,

Had to share this, I wrote you late last year about a Wujo loss of time and place in central Indiana.  Well, I had another experience today, and have to share.  Last time, I had been at a statewide meeting in Indpls, and lost 2 hours of time during the last day of meetings.  Going home, the landmarks and scenery were WRONG, and when I questioned this, I turned my car around and found that the scenery was back to normal.  AND I know this part of the state (IN), have been here my whole life, and went to school at BSU in Muncie.  I now live about an hour and a half north of there, but continue to travel frequently to this part of the state for business.

Today, I had a meeting in Muncie, which went well, and when I left, the road I had traveled to get to the meeting, less than 3 hours earlier, was CLOSED.  Barricaded, with lots of heavy equipment onsite.  Weird.  The detour took me west, and I knew where I was, and there were a couple of other cars following the same path.  They all turned off into residential driveways, and then I was alone.  Suddenly, really, suddenly, I felt like I didn’t know where I was.  I have known this area for over 25 years!  Somehow, I drove into a small town named Cammack, and then almost made it to Yorktown, which was in the opposite direction that I was traveling!!! I called my office manager and said “help, I am LOST”  and she eventually found me on google maps, as I was giving her county road numbers and landmarks.  I ended up over 15 miles from where I should have been.  Absolutely no explanation for this.  None. Except for Wujo.  Totally unnerving!

Thanks for all you do, and for allowing me a chance to share. 

About the only thing missing from Jane’s report is whether she’d  taken statins or any of the other medications which can result in temporary global amnesia (TGA).  But this is not the only report like this one. 

Remember a year or two back the case of the fellow who parked his car in a parking garage, walked down several flights of stairs, opened the fire door from the stairwell, and emerged on the roof?

This kind of report reminds us that there may be some ‘wormhole-like’ occasions that (thanks to better communications) we can actual spot nowadays, and share/discuss, rather than simply denying that they happened and going on about Life, leaving important clues about what Neppe and Close call the C-substrate carefully buried.

CERN is nice for pushing the Reductionist limits a last bit, but it seems to me Neppe and Close are much more likely to kick in the doors of some really fundamental breakthroughs in science than just writing infinitely large checks…

WuJo 2:  The Case of the Self-Walking Shoes

Longtime reader D.O. has another wujo encounter to report…one that tweaks reality even more…

So here is one for the Wujo….

Monday night the wife’s brother surprised us and stopped in from an interview, he lives 5 hours away and it was nice to see him so we were a little distracted. In the meantime my 5 year old son was in the backyard playing in the rain flooded sandbox.  Beforehand he took off his sandals and left them on the ground.

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Serious Prepping: Service that Radiation Monitor

Kidnapping prevention, jail break plans, and coping with loose nukes is on the menu this morning.  With the increase in public concern about potential terrorist threats, I wanted to see how we stack up against new terrorist (terrs) tactics. This morning we’ll look in on the thinking of al Qaeda and what we Americans can do in response.  But we won’t do this until after a cup of coffee and some cogitation on the meaning of a new Army manual explaining new doctrine (principles) called  “monetary shaping operations….”  Say what?

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Also this morning:  Freebie Alert!  Gaye over at www.backdoorsurvival.com is giving away a Rocket Stove…so go sign up…odds are better the chance of you winning the big PowerBall!

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Fears For Terrs

We begin this morning with a note about the bombing (via drones) of militant installations in Yemen.  This marks part of an aggressive US effort to stamp out what is seen as a threat which has resulted in the extended shutdown of 19-embassies in the Middle East as tensions are running high.  Word is that the terrorism escalation was commenced when a leading terrorist leader sent word to the Yemeni factions that it was time to roll with an attack on America.

We hit first and more is likely to follow..  Since the intercepted telephone call from Ayman al-Zawahiri originated in Pakistan, we will likely see additional drone strikes there, as well.

Yemen is a very dangerous place:  It sports, last time I checked, the highest birth rate in the world and a lot of very poor people who are easily converted to militants by marketers of terrorism which are not in short supply there. 

As a result of today’s drone (or bomb) attacks, the US and British have told citizens to leave.

While you undoubtedly have enough common sense not to visit Yemen without coaching, the
State Department this morning issued this travel warning:

The U.S. Department of State warns U.S. citizens of the high security threat level in Yemen due to terrorist activities and civil unrest. The Department urges U.S. citizens to defer travel to Yemen and those U.S. citizens currently living in Yemen to depart immediately. 

On August 6, 2013, the Department of State ordered the departure of non-emergency U.S. government personnel from Yemen due to the continued potential for terrorist attacks.  

U.S. citizens currently in Yemen should depart. As staff levels at the Embassy are restricted, our ability to assist U.S. citizens in an emergency and provide routine consular services remains limited and may be further constrained by the fluid security situation.

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Coping: My Long Delayed Echo /ET? Experience

Sometime in the past week, or three (time blurs when laboring hours on the new website), I promised to tell you about my personal encounter with an LDE or long delayed echo.  The reason is that this is very special territory for the inquiring minds who want to know and it is very well-established by real science as being a replicable phenomena.

So what, exactly, is a “long delayed echo?”  A clip from Wikipedia in the interest of being concise because I could go on for hours about it:

“Long delayed echoes (LDEs) are radio echoes which return to the sender several seconds after a radio transmission has occurred. Delays of longer than 2.7 seconds are considered LDEs.[1][2] LDEs have a number of proposed scientific origins.

These echoes were first observed in 1927 by civil engineer Jørgen Hals from his home near Oslo, Norway. Hals had repeatedly observed an unexpected second radio echo with a significant time delay after the primary radio echo ended. Unable to account for this strange phenomenon, he wrote a letter to Norwegian physicist Carl Størmer, explaining the event:

At the end of the summer of 1927 I repeatedly heard signals from the Dutch short-wave transmitting station PCJJ at Eindhoven. At the same time as I heard these I also heard echoes. I heard the usual echo which goes round the Earth with an interval of about 1/7 of a second as well as a weaker echo about three seconds after the principal echo had gone. When the principal signal was especially strong, I suppose the amplitude for the last echo three seconds later, lay between 1/10 and 1/20 of the principal signal in strength. From where this echo comes I cannot say for the present, I can only confirm that I really heard it.[3]

Physicist Balthasar van der Pol[4] helped Hals and Stormer investigate the echoes, but due to the sporadic nature of the echo events and variations in time-delay, did not find a suitable explanation.[5]

Long delayed echoes have been heard sporadically from the first observations in 1927 and up to our time.”

My own LDE experience occurred in 1966, or thereabouts.  It was a weekend morning,and I was on the 20-meter band using my old Johnson Pacemaker SSB transmitter at 90-watts and my somewhat improved-upon NC-300 receiver.  I was on upper sideband, I was not running the amplifier, the antenna was multi-band inverted-vee at 40-feet (strung off the top of a piece of 4” irrigation pipe that another ham and I had carried on our shoulders 13-miles to get it to my house).  The season was fall or spring, since the band was just opening up, and it was sunny as I recall since sun was coming into my basement ham shack which would have placed the time about 10:00 to 11:30 AM because that was when the sun came in….our house was on a hill so the basement window only got about 2-hours of sun at best.

I was calling “CQ 20, CQ 20” which is radio-ese for “Looking for someone to talk to…

As I un-keyed the mic to listen for a returning station, you can imagine my shock when I heard….ME!  Except it was me delayed by 3.4 seconds, calculated from saying my then call sign and measuring the portion I’d heard on a digital sound rig much later in life. 

Significantly, the signal was dead-to-nuts on frequency and it was S-9 to 20 dB over S-9 so it was stronger than heck against a very low noise level (S-2 to S-3).

I didn’t learn about LDE’s until after I had aced my First Class Commercial ticket around that time frame, so thinking back on the issue date of that (December ‘66) I reckon this took place in the fall when I was a high school senior and a nerd’s nerd in things electronic. 

For the period right after the event, I was convinced it was someone simply recording my signal and playing it back with a tape recorder.  But when I heard a good chunk of myself asking “…are you playing with me?” come back, I realized that there was almost no chance that someone could record and retransmit my signal that quickly for technical timing reasons that would bore you to tears.

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Ease of Use Hints and Bandwidth Errors

So far, our changeover to a ‘pure’ WordPress editing backplane is going OK except for two issues. A few readers have expressed a severe dislike of our new layout because there are now two links to click during the day’s reading, instead of one. I apologize. But there are very good reasons why we have gone down this track, not the least of which is that pages will load faster and the new format is praised by mobile device users. While I’ve been getting old, the market has been moving and phone/mobile devices now represent somewhere north of 25% of the market.