OK, the alarm goes off and you’re laying in bed wondering “What now?  Another Monday?”

Ah…perhaps, or perhaps a very different kind of week.  At least that’s what I tell myself when I get up on days like this, full moon still lighting up the yard like Vacaville prison lights.

How to do it then?

There are only a couple of small things that need to change (inside your head) in order to have an entirely different kind of week, I’ve found.  One is having crystal clarity of purpose, which is sort of like the whole book that Gary Keller wrote:  Picking out the ONE medium-sized thing you are 100%, unstoppably committed to getting done this week, and doing it.

The other is to “own” how you feel.

A lot of this “how you feel” stuff is pretty easily nailed down because a lot of it flow from consciously optimizing how your body and brain work. 

Everyone’s got an optimized state which they can achieve if they simply makes notes on, and use, the tools which are readily at hand for most folks.

I can tell you what my routine is in the morning, but I’m not sure it will help you, but there are some basics which may advance the cause a bit.  So here’s my morning”start-up” checklist:

1.  I try to get eight hours of sleep.  Not a lot more, but seldom less than seven.  There’s a optimum sleep amount for everyone and for me, 7 1/2 to 8 1/2 hours is ideal.  Some people work a lot better on more.  Elaine’s a 9-hour person.  And I know people who get along on as little as 5-6 hours on a continuous basis.

2.  I have a morning routine for meds, vits, and a bit of food:  It’s up, pass the overnight recycling liquids, dress, pills with water, half a cup of coffee while checking markets and breaking news headlines, and then finishing off the morning’s recycling with solids. 

3.  A couple of bits of something in the stomach.  This morning it was the egg whites from a couple of hardboiled eggs.  Other mornings it can be a slice of cheese and a slice of apple, just something really light to give the stomach something to work on.

4.  After that, it’s a 16-ounce coffee cup and over to the office.  The coffee is decaf (2 tablespoons) with a heaping teaspoons of Kona hard stuff (from my friend Hank in Hawaii).  I’ve learned that if I go any heavier on the Kona, the BP will get up into the 125-127 range.  Without it, the BP will be in the 115-120 range.  And pure Kona?  Well, the scatter chart says 135 is common with what’s now about 20-oz of high octane.

If this sounds a bit obsessive, yes, I suppose it is.  But getting the most out of a body and mind is not something that just happens.  Starving until you get a McMuffin is not my cuppa joe.

5.  When I get into the office, after a bit of dry food for the cats, is check the temperature.  I think best when the ambient temperature is 65F.  Any warmer than that and I get, well, just not as sharp.  Any colder?  Well, then the number of typos seems to increase as the finger dexterity is somewhat temperature-related.

6.  A check of ionizer is done, as well:  It is on, or did I turn it off while at the electronics workbench the previous day?  Blowing ozone in your face is not a good idea, but having a modest ionizer?

This is another one of those things which most people don’t understand  or pay any attention to:  Levels of ionization may have a HUGE impact on how you feel.

There’s an easy test you can give yourself, to find out if that’s you, or not.  Simply think back on some of the more pleasurable experiences in your life.  If you come up with things like “outside after a thunderstorm”, at the ocean with crashing waves, waterfalls, really looking forward to the daily shower (best in morning, again), then you may be ion-sensitive.

The whole detail level is in Ion Effect: How Air Electricity Rules Your Health by Fred Soyka and Alan Edmonds.  It’s an older book (1979) and in it, you’ll meet up with the Meltemis, Santa Anas, and Siroccos that are the positive ion winds around the world.  These are highly correlated to people active nutty and, sadly, in some cases suicidal.

A home or office ionizer doesn’t have to be terribly expensive.  Something like the FIVE STAR FS8088 Ionic Air Purifier Pro Ionizer Cleaner with UV, new runs less than $60.

7.  I don’t run incense, most of the time, but if you’re serious about brain optimization, the reason aromatherapy has a decent following, is there’s something there.  Incense is fairly inexpensive, and if you won’t mind people thinking you’re covering up a doobie or something, it can also add to mental clarity.  If they ask, tell them not to worry until you break out the patchouli.

Musk is something cited as a “balance and order” aid, Lotus is good for heightened intelligence, and vanilla might be good starting points to experiment with.

This may seem like it’s a bit elaborate, but these little “personal findings” continue throughout the day.

8.  Breakfast, more and more, is becoming a high protein affair.  Toast is down to a couple of days a week, and in its place, beans and meat, meat and eggs, eggs and beans or beans and cheese are becoming favored.

Here’s why:  I discovered in making personal notes about gout that one of the reasons I tend to run my body chemistry set “close to the line” is that there’s a mental place, just short of gout which is absolutely amazing.  I can work at what are (even to me) impressive rates.  If I modify the diet to get back too quickly to the  other side of a gout attack, my mental clarity fades./

No, I don’t get “stoopid” – it’s just that edge is gone.

The mind is a marvelous tool, and keeping it sharp and ready for action is (since everyone is different) a matter of experimental.

But for me, the “right” mix (since most of my work is done between 5 AM and 3 PM) follows this pattern with the carbs and veggies around noon and a high protein meal (fish and veggies is great!) for an early dinner with a glass of wine and then being up for several hours after eating so as not to go to bed on a full stomach.  That’s just asking for acid reflux, restful sleep, and putting on weight.

So there you have it.  Something you can do this week:  Optimize your brain a bit.  Watch television which focuses on thinking, even if it’s just episodes of Elementary, and see if you can’t find the time to do a Google search on “brain food” to see what things you can do to improve you’re brain function.

No, you’re not going to “Go Albert” overnight – it can take a couple of weeks to notice the difference.  A new route of research I’m into now involves seeing how I respond to a low glycemic index diet – you can find odds and ends about that around the ‘net, too.

If you’ve found any other ways to “brain optimize” (exercise and fresh air are givens, of course) please send them along.  If we get any worthwhile suggestions, look for more on this “brain optimization” stuff.  Nuts for memory and broccoli for cognition and vitamin K, for example.

The most important part, is to keep detailed notes on your experiments and give every morning’s “brain-check” (done about mid morning, which for me is right after my column is done) on a 1-100 scale (100 being high) and change variables for a week each and see if there’s any change.  It’s surprising how quickly things like excessive carbs, cals, or booze shows up in slightly lower scores over time.

You won’t have “best I’ve ever felt” every day, but you can move the numbers around and if you go through life doing that, it’s a pretty safe bet most of your coworkers won’t do it, so progressing upward becomes a lot easier.

Cream rises to the top, as they say.  Petty office politics, nepotism, and corporate bullshit aside, it goes without saying.

Progress!  In Airports?

As any long-time reader knows, I have been quite critical in the past of the crackdown in security around airports.  But when someone in TSA gets something right, I figure it deserves public mention far and wide.  Here’s a note from Arizona reader AJ who I reckon is referring to Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport…

I have just returned from Mexico into our border state here in Arizona and there were some surprises, this time. As I de-planed  on my way to escalators down to  immigration  I was astonished to see that our normally stark, vacant and officious  corridors  of totally blank walls were now decorated with colorful art works having to do with our beautiful state.

As I moved through customs to the baggage claim area , sniffer dogs who patrol the luggage carousel were not there. Upstairs at terminal B I was met with more TSA agents than I had ever remembered stationed at that location..and apparently their tiresome queues had been simplified for passenger convenience and  numerous agents exuded a totally unfamiliar aura of  warmth and friendly welcome … as I proceeded on through to the security area, no one was encouraged to pass through  their toxic scanners, and a friendly sounding agent kindly informed us that we no longer were required to remove shoes and belts, computers can now remain in their casing and liquids and gels need not be separated from our belongings.  

While it could be that the recent shooting at LAX by a seriously pissed off citizen prompted some serious re-evaluation of an agency that has greatly offended and alienated our  good citizens who are just now beginning to push back… with cell phone cameras and now guns…from  increasing reports of invasive, humiliating attempts to intimidate innocent passengers, especially people of color, pregnant women and nursing mothers,small children,  elderly and disabled. And it could also be that this new face of  TSA is only a pilot project at  Phoenix airport or only one terminal at that airport…time will tell….

But like I said, this seems to be progress and hope it goes viral.

Like the old self-abuser said when asked why he was beating himself: “It feels so good when I stop…” 

Totalitarian Lite seems to feel that way, too. But we’re not complaining.

Peak Oil, Like It Or Not…

A number of readers sent me proverbial “poison pen” emails a while back when I pushed out some of the numbers from my friend Oilman2 which suggested that while fracking and the new generation of oil fields in the Dakotas, the born-again activity out in West Texas and some promising drills up in Utah look good for the moment, the reality was likely to be that we really are at Peak Oil and that shortly, the “last train out” on cheap solar, low energy input agriculture, along with several other life-changers (ultra high mileage, very small cars) will become de rigueur.

Expect it to be a five to seven year “saw-tooth” of good news and bad as we finish off the oil that’s easy to get.

“Ure nuts!” was the general thrust – and accusations followed even more harsh, particularly as we’ve been pointing out that earthquake (not to mention pollution of ground water) are also the unhappy byproducts of fracking.

On point?  Reader Paul spied this:

“Frack This: …studies are proving fracking IS causing earthquakes in ngas states, so they have the Madrid all loosened up now and this :  $100 M in natural gas being burned off monthly in ND.

, I am not concerned with the money lost but the number of these burn off valves (estimated in the thousands or tens of thousands one can hardly be sure, with the uses of psyops operatives in local areas calming folks saying all is well….SO question is now why are they deliberately heating the atmosphere artificially and blaming it on human activity, we are a cancer on the earth I think their mantra is…there must be millions of these worldwide….why I don’t know but from what I saw in the sky about 300 ft from my eyeballs and about 300 feet up was so freaking big…I didn’t even see the whole thing, it could have been the tail end or half who knows but big enuff to scare the shit out of me…..lizards like heat so who knows anymore…

“What about abiotic oil?

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In Thursday’s column I mentioned some of the “hot” words that were trending in our www.nostracodeus.com word frequency analysis software.

One of the trends was related to “air travel” so we kept an eye out on the news sites for something to pop up out of the ordinary.  Along came a report of a Boeing 737 emergency descent involving a Southwest Airlines jet and a curious report over here about a man reportedly falling out of a.Piper PA-46 Malibu 8-miles southeast of the Kendall-Tamiami executive airport.  So that trend call seems to have been reasonably good.

Next was the word “hezbollah” which was trending and this showed up in the NY Times (and other media) as Hezbollah chief Hasan Nasrallah announced that his forces would not be withdrawing from Syria.  Not that this announcement is even close to a surprise, but the language was trending off in that direction in advance.  I’d give us a half-point on this; the headlines were there, but the Hezbollah make semi-regular headlines, so it’s interesting but in and of itself not totally convincing.  Not as good as the “air travel” call.

The same thing can be said about the Taliban, to some extent.  We see the headlines that the “New Leader of Pakistani Taliban could splinter group” alright.  And yes, it was correct to anticipate some “news” from these folks, but again, in scoring how well one can see into the future, we continue tinkering with software and words.

A word of two about the process involved.  The notion that we’re presently playing with is pretty simple:  By simply counting word frequency across a large collection of news web sites, we believe that there may be hints of the future involved when words sort of (how to put this?) start popping out of the noise floor.

The basis for this is well-established, at least if you’ve studied Dean Radin’s works, and in particular if you’ve read “Time-Reversed Human Experience.”

There are many other good papers, however, on how humans perceive “time” and how events show up in time.  One, for example, describes “The failure of Weber’s law in time perception and production.”  (Bizo, Chu, Sanabria & Killeen, 2005).

If you don’t remember Weber’s Law (Weber-Fechner), Wikipedia puts it in a sentence:

Weber’s law states that the just-noticeable difference between two stimuli is proportional to the magnitude of the stimuli.

And this, you’d think would be a nice linear thing, but turns out it isn’t. 

The reasons for looking into such nooks and crannies which range from quantum mechanics to behavioral psychology, to database design, and lands on one of a half-dozen servers where experimental databases are capturing “news” from dozens of sources, is that if you read what passes for “news” long enough, after a time you begin to notice a pattern of rhythm to it.

Where things get interesting is when you start marrying up some of the “new technology” that coming down the pike in the way of learning engines with large databases.

In a typical Nostracodeus collection process (which takes a couple of hours) the system may collection “reads” of several thousand pages of web content.  This, next, is slammed into a fast database which then starts to sort out words in a number of ways.

The “direction” in the future we’re able to “look” is steered by the kinds of websites which are scanned.  For example, in the predictions yesterday about the air travel, Hezbollah, and Taliban, the run (going from memory) had “eaten” something like 750 news sites.

What will be coming next will be a series of explorations which will explore more particular kinds of web sites.  For example, we know there is a community under the heading “Science” and so Grady will be loading up a mission and running that to see what and how the language in the science community cycles.

Once we have a “cycle length” figured out, we can then anticipate when a particular topic might begin making headlines again, and then look for subtle changes in the occurrence of keywords immediately before events.

One area which may be undergoing a “just below the perception threshold” stage right now could be climate change.  A few headlines have popped up recently, like the one : “IPPC  chairman: We may “pass on a lousy, spoilt and defiled planet..””  Toss in the headline “Destruction of Brazil’s Amazon jumps 28%” and you can see how climate change is “lurking” just off stage, but ready to jump back into the headlines with the arrival of the next major disaster.

Take the recent typhoon which swept through the Philippines.  A key story which didn’t quite make it into the “viral” or “top of mind” discussion among humans involved how the “Philippines delegation speech moves UN Climate Change Conference to tears…”

The future of such “news prediction” efforts seems bright.  Web traffic to the Nostracodeus site continues to climb quickly and it’s likely due to people wanting a little more certainty or predictability about the future; beyond the odd hints which pop up in the mainstream media.

And there’s plenty of room for experimentation and development, too.  While one approach may be based solely on talk among humans, this approach is genuinely different:  It focuses on the mechanisms by which semi-ordinaria climbs the rungs of awareness – and seeks out who is helping(or retarding) along the way.

Once we get the “steering” down the way we like it (and related mathematical slicing and dicing of the database and an API built, the next step will be interfacing to “learning software” which can then take the analysis to the next step.

We are, you see, simply applying to the flow of news, what governments and major corporations are already doing in their development of Big Data handling of your individual website clicks.  When you click on a page, say, about woodworking, and two sites later a pop-up comes up urging you to visit this woodworking site, or buy that fancy new tools, none of that is coincidental.

That’s the field in marketing that resides at the intersection of Big Data and Predictive Analytics trying to get you to stop sitting on your wallet.

Like it, or not, Predictive Analytics (PA) is here to stay.Why?  Raw, naked power.

One of the PA books I’m reading at the moment (focusing on machine learning) recounts a college project where Supreme Court decisions by justice San Day O’Connor were fed into a “learning engine” which came up (without humans telling the machine how to do it) with an algorithm  which was able to predict with 75% accuracy what her decisions would be in advance.

This compared to a panel of legal experts who were only able to guess with 59% accuracy, and then only after many tedious hours trying to comprehend what the underlying data sets (past court decisions) implied.  I don’t know about you, but to me, that’s pretty damn impressive.

So that’s where Nostracodeus is heading at the moment – and maybe as early as tomorrow morning, Grady will start jotting down some of our development notes along the path.

Like most folks, I’m extremely interested in getting a better grip on the future in order to make better strategic living decisions of the sort outlined in the ebook I wrote with Gaye Levy titled 11 Steps to Living a Strategic Life.

It all comes down to this, I think:  News, without context, projections, and well-considered actionable responses to its content – is simply a waste of time.

On the other hand, when you source not only news but actionable alternatives, well now you’re into this whole new area of “predictive living.” or PL – which we’ll get into in a future edition of Peoplenomics.com.  Why there?  Peoplenomics when comes right down to it, while focused on economic angles mainly, is about this whole “life management” stuff.

And like any other management problems, if you string enough good decisions together, you can end up in a winning position…which is what we aim for around here.

Friday at the WuJo:

This is a peach of a report – if you doin’t mind a little “throne room” aspect to oddities:

WuJU- Funny one here G man I had to laugh about it yesterday am. So I was taking a crap yesterday am in my master bedroom bathroom when I realized after the fact that there was literally one sheet of paper left on the roll. So I had to Waddle to the bathroom my son uses and finish the job in there. I had to go to the linen close after to get some new rolls to bring to my bathroom when I walk in my crap is gone and flushed with no toilet noise and there is a full roll on the rack. I just had to laugh and say out loud. Ok I am glad you care about my craps now! So either I am nuts which is entirely possible or the universe has a dandy sense of humor and is enjoying messing with me..

Hmmm…well, the Universe is flush with surprises…

Cheap Web Hosting Reminder

From EWMD’s old timer at the helm:

This is a reminder that our annual birthday sale begins today and will end tomorrow at midnight. Results are already great and we hope you will be able to take advantage of it. It would also be very helpful to us if you can let your friends and family know about it via social media and other means.
We had to make a couple of corrections to our original announcement sent out earlier this week.

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OK, science isn’t ready to admit to Ure’s Minimum yet, but the idea that the Sun is really the cause of global warming surely seems to at least having a chance of surfacing now that headlines are about like “Scientists Baffled by Lack of Sunspots” and “Strange Doings On the Sun…”

This latter one is a milestone of sorts, since it appears in the Wall Street Journal.  And that is important because (a hush falls over the assembled multitude) there IS a huge economic angle here.   Not only was this an exceptionally quiet (verging on non-existent) hurricane year, but the dramatic heat gradients in the atmosphere when you go from building/rising Sun outputs to talking off the edge of a cliff…well, that powers storms.

Like the one this week in the Philippines.  And, speaking of which, it is still going on, heading into Southeast Asia now. 

Governments and agencies are pledging tens of millions in aid, but as our Jakarta Bureau reported overnight, this is a considerably larger event than Katrina/Rita, just to give you a sense of scale of things, so recovery won’t necessarily be without a lot more pain and suffering to come. 

Hiya chief.

Want to update you on regional events concerning the deadly typhoon rolling around these parts:

A lot of folks, including me, have not heard from our people in the Philippines.  My cousin lives in Luzon and I know a number of folks in Manila.  We, of course, hope that the lack of comms is due to downed or overloaded circuits.  What we do know is that the carnage is horrific, likely on a par with the tsunami in Banda Aceh in 2004.

Reports show (graphically) hundreds of bodies floating in rivers and ponds.  Entire villages have simply been erased.  Landslides are still on-going as floods of water run downhill.

As the storm continues across Asia, I have several acquaintances who have bugged out to Jakarta from Ho Chi Minh Cityj, Vietnam.  Whoever can afford it is getting out of the country ahead of landfall.  According to the folks I know, the airport was jammed and every flight out is booked solid.

On comparison, the typhoon is far worse than Katrina, so that should give Americans a sense of scale, not to mention the destruction is spread across an entire region and not limited to a single city.

It remains to be seen what will follow, but we are relatively safe here in Jakarta, since typhoons, like hurricanes, rarely cross the equator.  More as events warrant.

Sampai jumpa,

Bernard Grover

Managing Editor, Indonesia Bureau

Pictures of bodies piled in the streets make for mighty challenging reading while wolfing down the Corn Pops.

Meantime there’s the little matter of the ongoing shaking and quaking (related to the crust of Earth expanding and contracting, perhaps?) going on in places like north of Japan off the Kamchatka where we noticed a 6.6 shaker overnight:

Location with respect to nearby cities:

172 km (106 mi) S of Ust’-Kamchatsk Staryy, Russia

300 km (186 mi) NE of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, Russia

305 km (189 mi) NE of Yelizovo, Russia

321 km (199 mi) NE of Vilyuchinsk, Russia

2733 km (1694 mi) NNE of Tokyo, Japan

With some X-class leftovers due in the coming 24-hours, don’t be surprised if we get some big headlines about quakes as the week toils onward.  Solar Data Analysis Center reports:

Since the CME-less M2.4 flare which peaked at 11:18 UT on November 11, only six C-class flares were reported. We expect M-class flares and possibly but not very probably X-class flares, in particular from the Catania sunspot group 35 (NOAA AR 1890) and NOAA AR 1897. The Catania sunspot group 35 (NOAA AR 1890) is situated in the western solar hemisphere and still has the beta-gamma-delta configuration of its photospheric magnetic field, therefore we maintain the warning condition for a proton event. From the currently available data it seems that the CME first observed in SOHO/LASCO

So we watch, and wait,…

The Daily Obamacare Problem

This is becoming so predictable, we almost feel like setting up a website to just track related issues.  But here we go again with reports that “Problems with federal health portal also stymie Medicaid enrollment.”

One of these mornings I’m going to wake up with nothing to report about Obamacare.  That will be news, I tell you…

That won’t be today, however, since the National Review has writ large on how James O’Keefe’s undercover videos are now ratting-out little gems like:

“You lie because your premiums will be higher,” one navigator advices an investigator…”

You have to read the whole thing over here.  Damning stuff….more in today’s Coping section.

More after this…

Grim Christmas?

We are still a couple of weeks out from Turkey Day, but with all the softness in the economy, not to mention the coming collapse of disposable incomes when Obamacare bills start hitting the checkbooks, we notice that a lot of major retailers are ramping up their Black Friday events.  As you might see above, this is already in Amazon’s playbook.

And, over here is a story that “Walmart to launch Black Friday sales earlier” than normal. 

As always, the problem for companies is how to post year-over-year sales growth when year over year incomes (how to say this politely?) plain old suck.

Markets Stuck on Boring

Our usual rants about markets and the economy will return to their more rabid state once something meaningful besides noise trading and waiting on data happens.

With Veteran’s Day and noise trading Monday, the markets are set to open down about 20 at the open, but that’s so insignificant as to lull us to sle…..zzzz…….zzzz….

Bitcoin’s Fame Groweth

Regardless of your take on Bitcoin, the idea is getting some serious attention in places like the Chicago Fed which has an article in the “Fed Letter” for December which has just been published online.

I’d summarize it for you, but you really need to read it…it’s pretty good.  Especially when the article reflects the central banker view and says (in tiny part) “A fiduciary currency like bitcoin is useful only insofar as others accept it broadly.”

The problem is really one of taxes…and if bitcoin transitions to the realm where cash (which is presently the backbone of the underground economy) manages to remain aloof (and not reporting to the IRS like PayPal and others now have to…) well, then, yes, bitcoin could continue to grow.  Fraud and other issues aside, of course.

Iran – Israel:  the Wait

Listening for shoes to drop is what it’s like at the moment following the (predictable) collapse of the Geneva peace talks.  A note from our resident war-gamer on point:

George,
A very public and very intense diplomatic row  between the U.S.

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Preachers have been predicting “The Tribulation” for well over a thousand years, near as I can figure it, and they’ve been wrong…but only so far.  Here lately, even a skeptic, reading the “play list” for such times over in Wikipedia would have to sit up and take notice of some of our headlines.  I mean notice beyond the “third of the oceans bittered” stuff which the GOM Oil Spill and Fukushima are doing a nice job of, thank you very much.

But the End of the World is likely to work out a lot slower than most people reckon and it is evident when you consider the “wars and rumors of wars” angle.  We need more helpings of that…and oh, goodie, just looks what the headlines provide:

What has changed this weekend is that the Iranians have backed out of a proposed  nuclear deal and SecState John Kerry is a worried man it seems based on accounts like this one.

Proving that tribulating times can have their wryrony, though, Universe did rather thoughtfully arrange for one of the stumbling blocks to progress in Iran negotiations to be the Iranian heavy water facility at Arak, which is pronounced very nearly the same as that other oil principality to their immediate west.  Last time I checked, heavy water was not needed to run a peaceful reactor program, but I’d have to check with our consulting reactor engineer on what the “peaceful” uses are, exactly…

The French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius isn’t any too pleased with the heavy water project, either.

The New Moon isn’t here until the second of December, but one of these days – and we don’t know as Israel will have the patience to wait before striking at the nuclear facilities in Iran – patience with diplomacy and the Obama administration’s born-again “give peace a chance” crowd is going to run out or give up.

Already, the shift at the top of US foreign policy is apparent:  By trying to cozy up to Iran, it looked (momentarily) like the US might have figured out that it’s the Sunni division of Islam which is setting up new mosques and madrassas worldwide in prodigious numbers…so perhaps warming to the Shi’ites was an attempt at balance.  So much for that…

Not that it matters either:  Israel may not say much of anything (other than a modest kind of diplomatically-word m”Told you so…”.  So in coming weeks, we should get squarely into the “wars and rumors of wars” libretto after the mess in the Philippines begins to get cleaned up a bit.  But for now, its all eyeballs on…

10,000 Dead, Disasters Roll On…

That’s a lot of people, but the body counts after definitely off in that direction as life in the Philippines is nowhere near normal following the weekend lashing with 200-mile per hour winds from Typhoon Haiyan, which just missed the (paradoxically name) Chinese Hainan Island area.

Today, the storm is off to strike Vietnam, but the winds are diminishing and should continue to weaken as it rolls up into southern China as time marches on.

A curious bit of timing here, as the Chinese are planning to have “boots on the ground” in Hawaii tomorrow in joint planning for disaster relief operations. I wouldn’t be surprise to see this called off, since Ma Nature has just delivered a real-life training opportunity. 

Regardless of your views on Tribulation times, the current headlines and prospects for improvement seem a bit grim and dim at the moment.  It may not be an actual “tribulation Monday” but it’s close enough for home use.

And this is just curious as hell: The word “messianic” has popped up out of the blue in this morning’s www.nostracodeus.com report.  Former Prez GWB to raise money for messianic Jews?  Hmmm…

More after this…

Market Going Up – And Such a Deal…

The Dow is poised to pack on a few points at the open this morning, but whether any gains will still be around by Friday is an interesting point to consider.  We have a number of economic items on tap including the balance of trade on Thursday and the Empire Manufacturing report Friday morning.

Overnight, we saw a major rally breakout in Asia, and that is likely to carry over into US trading this morning.  After all, with yields low (thanks to the ECB rate cut) stocks can mathematically support higher prices.  But, when yields begin to rise, stocks are set to quick reverse direction.  But for now, our Aggregate Index Model over on Peoplenomics has been amazingly accurate in remaining bullish since December with only one week’s hesitation in there.

Two stories in this news this morning, related to markets are worth mentioning.  One is the headline that “Obama stocks among best after re-election as Rally Tested: points out how well the market is doing under this administration.  The Washington Times notes that this weekend, Obama got in his 150th (!!!) round of golf.

All of which supports the notion that the president should play as much golf as possible, so the country can get about its business, unimpeded.

Such a deal: Robin Handler, who publishes the Options Signal Service is offering an exclusive 50% deal to UrbanSurvival readers, if you’re interested in their weekly letter…

Thank You For Serving…

This is Veterans Day and we’d like to thank everyone in uniform (past and present) for defending our country and the Founder’s ideals.  Now, if we could just get Congress off it’s butt and so the same thing…

A whole host of activities is planned in Washington DC environs and this should make for plenty of eye treats come the early news shows.

If you’re wondering, no, banks are closed today, Stock market and liquor stores are open.  Federal offices are closed and the Post Offices are closed as well.

All of which leaves us wondering why – with all the critical services Veterans need, why VA offices are closed on Veterans Day – somehow just doesn’t seem quite right.

Speaking of the Mail

I should mention that special delivery mail will still be distributed today…but the REAL news is that the USPS has struck a deal and will be delivering Amazon packages on Sundays shortly.

Security State:  “You are a Rogue Device”

I don’t suppose you get around to reading some of the really good journalism that shows up in alternative press reports (of the ink and web sort, like the savory Seattle Stranger, but their report “You Are a Rogue Device” is thought-provoking.

No, don’t ask me why big cities spend bazillions on high-end mesh networks like the one going in up in Seattle.  Seems to me the old-fashioned UHF coms were doing just fine, and besides, until The Big One hits, every cop I know also carries a cell phone….duh!

Oh, wait:  I forgot – this is the Security State and we need to have mess networks so we can…er….uh….spy better…yeah, dats it!

Grappling With GridEx

We’ve been scanning through emails for reasonable/balanced thinking on this week’s GridEx exercise, which on Wednesday and Thursday will try to figure out what could take the power down up in the Northeast.  Reader Andy’s view is as good as any:

Although I haven’t seen the fear-mongering emails that you mentioned in Urban Survival recently, I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of something nefarious happening during the timeframe of the exercise (Nov. 13-14), or even a day or two before.  History has shown that false-flag events can sometimes occur temporally coincident with planned gov’t exercises.  It’s also worth noting that some current and former government officials, as well as some scientists such as Michio Kaku, have been warning about the power grid going down, due to various causes (solar flare, man-made EMP, or cyber attack by a rogue nation, etc.).  See, for example, these threads on the MoA forum:

http://www.themistsofavalon.net/t6734-100-chance-of-a-severe-geo-magnetic-event-capable-of-crippling-our-electric-grid

http://www.themistsofavalon.net/t6828-power-grid-down-drill-to-be-conducted-by-us-government-on-nov-13th-14th

To be sure, the white hats will try to prevent adverse scenarios from developing, but it is advisable, in my view, to be vigilant and prepared, nonetheless.  Just my 2 cents.

I’ll see that and raise a dime… A reasonable outlook – expect nothing but be prepared for anything. 

One thing that may figure into the “exercise” timeframe will be the arrival of energy from a recent solar event, as outlined in this from the Solar Influences Data Center:

The X1.1 flare of November 10 was accompanied by a full halo CME first appearing in the SOHO/LASCO C2 field of view at 05:36 UT. The CME speed was around 800 km/s, and the bulk of the material was propagating southward of the ecliptic plane. We expect a non-central encounter of the Earth with the resulting interplanetary disturbance, probably only with the ICME-driven shock wave, late on November 13. Active to minor geomagnetic storm conditions may occur.

Got to admit the timing is curious.  Meanwhile, there’s a lot of talk percolating around on the net about how Europe could have big outages this winter, too.  Just a heck of a lot of power talk.

I should mention that the local power company up in the San Juan Islands got the Internet back up for the 15-20-thousand people who lost CenturyLink internet connectivity on the 5th (due to a quake/undersea land movement?). Kudos to the Orcas Power and Light Co-op for ‘getting ‘er done’.

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