Time once again to attempt unraveling one of the most confusing reports ever created:  The Gross Domestic Product numbers out this morning from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.  From their press release, always  a kind of NY Times crossword sort of self-referential percent-speak:

“Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 3.6 percent in the third quarter of 2013 (that is, from the second quarter to the third quarter), according to the “second” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the second quarter, real GDP increased 2.5 percent.

The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the “advance” estimate issued last month. In the advance estimate, the increase in real GDP was 2.8 percent (see “Revisions” on page 3). With this second estimate for the third quarter, the increase in private inventory investment was larger than previously estimated.

The increase in real GDP in the third quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from private inventory investment, personal consumption expenditures (PCE), exports, nonresidential fixed investment, residential fixed investment, and state and local government spending that were partly offset by a negative contribution from federal government spending.

Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased. The acceleration in real GDP growth in the third quarter primarily reflected an acceleration in private inventory investment, a deceleration in imports, and an acceleration in state and local government spending that were partly offset by decelerations in exports, in PCE, and in nonresidential fixed investment.

Somewhere, after many minutes of looking for the number, I can to this: $16.8908 trillion, plus or minus a cheeseburger.

Sometime in the next week, or so, I expect the St. Louis Fed data dispenser will hand us a chart that shows the (further or leveling of the) collapse of the velocity of money at M2.

For some unknown reason, rather than provide taxes which would push “dead money” back into circulation, the monetary policy people in America seem to think we can print enough paper money to make things work.  It may – or it may not.

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Hi.  Mr. Bah-humbug here.  Time for our annual conversation about the realities of Christmas.

Usually, I don’t remind people of these realities until closer to the date, but this morning having been beset by more than the usual number of ads, I felt compelled to make a few points and offer some counterpoint to the building groundswell of retailing madness which overtakes otherwise reasonable people about this time of year.

Fact #1:  Christmas ain’t Jesus Birthday

At least, as near as I can tell, it’s an approximation/story which is at the core of a marketing campaign.  If you can think like a quant, at least think like a marketer.

Religions are, at one level  (and maybe several) marketing organizations.  When the Christian Church moved from the eastern Med and started working its way up into the core of Europe, what was encountered were a lot of pre-existing religions, such as the Wicca (off toward France/England), the Druids, and the Nordics.  And those Teutonic types.

In order to counter the influence of the pre-existing outfits, the market challenger (to put this is cold boardroom terms) needed a new campaign.  The campaign would need to be an “all-inclusive” affair, too.  Something that could take the existing market conditions (e.g. pre-existing religions) and usurp their power/hold on the target market.

Presto!

Wiki “Yule” off in yon Wikipedia and you’ll find Ures truly SYN (sh*ts you not):

Yule or Yuletide (“Yule time”) is a religious festival observed by the historical Germanic peoples, later being absorbed into and equated with the Christian festival of Christmas. The earliest references to Yule are by way of indigenous Germanic month names (Ærra Jéola (Before Yule) or Jiuli and Æftera Jéola (After Yule). Scholars have connected the celebration to the Wild Hunt, the god Odin and the pagan Anglo-Saxon Modranicht.

The marketing view of this time of year would hold that the “Challenger usurped the positioning of the existing player, consolidated around key repositioning elements and capitalized on what was then New Media (choirs, chants, and so forth in Big Churhces) in order to gain a higher conversion factor.”  Right, then.

I suppose it’s rude in here to point out that “conversion factor” is also equivalent to “sales conversions” in that each prospect (already owning a pre-existing belief product) ended up tithing oodles to the Challenger.

The bigger the hoopla around Christmas, the more conversions were there to be had by repositioning the existing ways as “backward,” “untrue,” and my favorite pejorative: “Pagan.”

Of course, not everyone “bought.” 

In fact, when you think about it, the task of converting a million, or so, poor people in the countryside into large revenue streams is fairly daunting stuff.  Especially when the tools are the Bible that’s been retooled countless times and (in 1582) the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar that replaced the Julian Calendar which has been adopted at the (First) Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D.  Date magic.

Near as most historians have found, Christmas didn’t appear until the 4th century and became the marketing centerpiece for the Christian marketing in southeast Europe.  Eventually, the stragglers, who might remember the “old ways” were singled out (and banished, killed or stake-fried) in the Inquisition.

Somewhere in here, one can observe that apparently, religions go through a zealous/marketing fervor  some XXX number of years after their founding (and mass marketing program kick-off).  Using this kind of marketing program “timing model” we can see how modern-day Islam is flexing its muscles in the same sort (and timing) way that Christianity did in Europe.  Old with the old, in with the “new & improved” more “true” to roots, and so forth.

None of which is meant to offend, it’s just that when one becomes aware of the lengthy list of Mid Winter Solstice Festivals, one can observe that “consolidation marketing” is a brilliant strategy to employ along with a voluntary 10% tax. 

This “voluntary 10% tithing/tax” is where the Western privacy with economic disclosure springs from:  People would understate their wealth in order to pay less protection money/tithing.  And they needed to keep their personal financial data quiet, lest they be accused of witchcraft or deceit.

Fact #2: Santa Has Been Hijacked; Why?

I won’t pretend to sit in judgment (“not my job”) on the “rightness” or “wrongness” of how the marketing campaign was carried out.

But I will tell you straight up that the festival theft included that shadowy fellow “Santa Claus” who seemed to behave in some bizarre habits.  But he also couldn’t seem to read the calendar well, since he was moved from December 6 to December 25 – which means even the (early Christian) Santa was displaced almost three weeks to make the church marketing program (CMP) work better.

Once again, the hard reality of a Wikipedia entry must be dealt with:

Santa Claus, also known as Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle and simply “Santa“, is a fantasy figure with legendary, mythical, historical and folkloric origins who, in many western cultures, is said to bring gifts to the homes of the good children on the night before Christmas, December 24. However in some European countries children receive their presents on St. Nicholas’ Day, December 6.^[1] The modern figure of Santa Claus was derived from the Dutch figure of Sinterklaas, which, in turn, was part of its basis in hagiographical tales concerning the historical figure of Christian bishop and gift giver Saint Nicholas. During the Christianization of Germanic Europe, this figure may have absorbed elements of the god Odin, who was associated with the Germanic pagan midwinter event of Yule and led the Wild Hunt, a ghostly procession through the sky.

I’ve heard two schools of thought on why Santa had such a strong love of children, bringing them toys, or lumps of coal.

One is pleasant enough not to mention practical:  It goes to the idea that back in preindustrial times, a single person could not “make it alone” because times were hard, there was no power company, no welfare, no phones to call for help.  All people had was one-another and it was for this reason that children were celebrated – they were a sign of future familial, wealth.

But the darker version of Santa is much, much more grim. Since the peoples of Europe, targets of the mass marketing campaign, were “uncultured,” is it possible that systemic child abuse was somehow in play?  Could it be the presents for the kids for “being good” was really a social code word for something else?  Like silence bought?  Speak up, kid, and you’re toast.  “Silent night.” 

The darker side language, when all else is removed (like all the emotional hooks programmed in societally) and it does look pretty ugly when you run it through linguistic filters, even the crude ones we use around here.

We’ve read enough about religious groups abusing children (and lately a lot of cash settlements of lawsuits against one church in particular) to at least keep an open eye toward such behavioral misdeeds and wonder if there’s not something broken in the human mind once a certain level of holding power/sway over others is achieved?  “Absolute power corrupts, absolutely…”  Merry what-mas?

Fact #3:  Then Santa was ‘Jacked

Our “data-based view of Life” goes on to suggest that since about 1850, when Santa Claus really came into his own…

“…This image became popular in the United States and Canada in the 19th century due to the significant influence of Clement Clarke Moore‘s 1823 poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas” and of caricaturist and political cartoonist Thomas Nast.”

…that yet another marketing challenger arrived.  A slow rise, almost like a start-up – this new market sector would not begin its meteoric rise to dominance until after 1900, or so.

I speak of the new sector owners: Retailers.

Just as the early Christian Church was mass marketing to Druids, we see a similar pattern of marketing usurpation and exploitation in how the Retails implemented their strategy.

Notice that they are continuously marketing “Just in time for Christmas” and “Christmas comes but once each year.”  It’s the old “scarcity builds demand” track.  Solid.

Thus, their marketing campaign is built on the success of the previous Christian positioning.  This is a very common strategy in marketing.  If a challenger wants to build on an existing base of good, well-found marketing, then simply steal top of mind dominance and all it your own.

And how did retailers steal Santa?  

Once again, observe the data which made Santa “appear” for all the “good little girls and boys” at the point-of-purchase (PoP) location!

Why, it’s frigging brilliant!  And none dare call if marketing!

To summarize:  What we can discern are intergenerational marketing programs which have evolved as a series of “check” statements and to these we can assign approximate campaign dates.

• Early Middle Ages:  Initial marketing campaign period:  5th-15th centuries.  Positioning concept:  “Check us out.”
• 15th to 17th centuries:  Confirm brand ownerships.  Positioning concept “Check your brand loyalty”  Witchcraft trials and Inquisition for those who don’t purchase.
• 18th-20th centuries: Relaunch of product with a new figurehead (Santa) for the youth market which was in some ways similar to the Classic Coke campaign.

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Yes, fame and fortune could be yours, if you learn to sew.

Human flesh that is.   Says here in this morning’s NY Times that a each stitch is now over $500-bucks. 

Of course the $10- aspirin is a pretty good racket, too.  Learn to sew and push pills is my new reincarnation plan.  Now if I can only dream up a way to do it without $150K in student loan debt…$5 per stitch for the doc, balance on loans?

Market Takes a Pause

Worrywarts are back in control on the Street this morning with the futures sagging after a little pullback yesterday.  When I looked (over here), the Dow was looking down 60 points or so.  

There’s also be a decline in the POG (price of gold for newbies)…it’s down to a five-month low.

Much of the (so-called) economic recover has been related to falling interest rates.  As the yield on bonds (and bank accounts) have plummeted, the small earnings turned in by stocks have looked (comparatively) pretty good.  Ergo, up, up, and away on the indices.

But when the Fed sends everyone into rehab (by easing their money-printing festival, also know as financial crack) that’s going to drive up rates and, as you can see in the five-year chart of the 10-year Treasury note over here, it’s starting to look like the bottom may be in for rates.

As I pointed out in yesterday’s report, Greenspansonian logic aside, Robert Shiller’s concerns about an overvalued market make even more sense today.  And a reasonable Dow (13,000 or lower) makes perfect sense.

If auto sales, which will be released later today, fall to the darker side of forecasts, the market might be down 100 or more by the close.  Or, this could be turnaround Tuesday…we’ll just wait and see.

In the Co9nstruction Spending report, we see that:

he U.S. Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce announced today that construction spending during October 2013 was estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $908.4 billion, 0.8 percent (±1.8%)* above the September estimate of $901.2 billion. The October figure is 5.3 percent (±2.1%) above the October 2012 estimate of $863.1 billion.

And while a 5.3% increase in spending sounds good, remember that there’s been a huge increase in the money supply (printing).  M2 is up 6.5% compared with a year ago, so anything less than 6.5% increases in construction bucks seems to me like no growth at all.

Hand me some of them meds, and I’ll try to look at it a little more optimistically. Or pass the pipe…

Talk is Cheap

Veep Joe Biden is heading to Asia shortly to see what can be done to hand out chill pills to the Japanese and Chinese who are slowly upping the ante over the Senkaku Islands area.

The islands are about 190 air miles from China’s coast, about 110 miles from Taiwan, and 95 miles, or so, from Okinawa which the Japanese claim.

While this may not seem like a big deal (rocks in ocean, who cares?) as always under our “Everything’s a Business Model” thinking, a quick read of Wikipedia reveals what?

After it was discovered in 1968 that oil reserves might be found under the sea near the islands,^{[9][10][11][12][13]} Japan’s sovereignty over them has been disputed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC, commonly known as Taiwan) following the transfer of administration from the United States to Japan in 1971.

So there you have it:  Another front opens in the Manufacturer’s Resource Wars which, although it’s not apparent till you think about it, is what has been driving globaltics for the past dozen years plus…

More after this…

No Luck, Yingluck

The prime minister of Thailand has dismissed calls for her resignation.  But with police allowed demonstrators to get close to the seat of government, in what’s called an “easing of tensions.”  Which, as these things go, should last only a few days before crap lights up again.

Middle East “Lets Make a Deal” Time

To some, the idea of praying at a particular wall wouldn’t be such a big deal.  But, to Jewish activists who want to pray at Jerusalem’s Temple Mountain, it’s a very big deal, especially to the Muslim world which considers it their space.

Our resident war gamer picks it up from there:

On the surface, Netanyahu seems to be upping the ante, or ‘upping yours’ to anyone who is not an Israeli.

Know what I think?  This could potentially be a part of any ‘compromise’ Netanyahu demands from Sunni led Saudi Arabia for doing what will surely be the lion’s share of the dirty work against their Shi’ite rival Iran.  Minimalizing Iran will also likely stabilize Syria and marginalize Hezbollah, as both are sponsored by the Iranians.

Yes, the Saudi’s could rather easily import nukes ‘on loan’ from Pakistan to counter Iran and the long suspected Israeli arsenal, but that runs entirely counter to the Saudi monarchy’s goal of a nuclear free Middle East.  If Iran is actually taken down by Israel with help from the Saudis, quid-pro-quo tradeoffs could be a large part of any agreement once the dust settles.  You can let your imagination run free as to what other trade-offs could be possible if some semblance of security ever truly settles over the area – never mind that any such security would have resulted from what would surely be a very costly war in terms of regional blood and treasure.

Cheers,  “Warhammer”

Oh, and in the midst of some of the major parties trying to work things out, looks more and more like our president will soon announce a trip to Tehran.  Oh, sure, the WH denies such a think is in the wings, but the more they deny, the more it seems likely.  So just when some of the parties figure out a deal along with come the peacemaker……you can probably sketch out how well this will work out.

China We Have Heard On High

Gently drifting in from the Winnipeg bureau and our snooze analyst there…

Dear Mr. Ure,

Is the Chang’e-3 mission more of an international alliance than first thought?

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Sometimes it’s a joy to be a writer – and this morning is one of those times – because stories are floating about that are just screaming for comment.  And before we get into the Grim (credit card) Reaper report, it’s important to hear just how disconnected much thinking on the economy is.  Let me explain what I mean:

We begin with a report (over here) in which former Fed Deity (Sir) Alan Greenspan sees no bubble in the stock market even though we are at never-before-seen highs.

Does the word Ludacris mean anything outside of Atlanta?  Oh!  Ludicrous then…

Take the Dow from January of 2000 (11,723 and change) and pop it into the Federal Reserve of Minneapolis inflation calculator and you will find that just to keep even, the Dow really ought to be where?  15,897.

To be sure, the retired Housing Bubblator himself can make a convincing case, especially since we’re only 190 points above what made sense based on early 2000 data.

Still, Greenspan’s remark only makes sense if you’ve kicked the gingko biloba and have a worse memory than a chicken; in other words, you forget that on the week ending 10/15/2001, the Dow closed at 9,204.11.

WHICH if we were so audacious and disrespectful as to plug into the same renegade Minneapolis Fed calculator, might give us a more reasonable present-day Dow around 12,481 as a kind of “sensible outlook” number.

Which means – if I can handle the calculator after foody binging  – that Greenspace is not admitting that we could be more than 3,500 points into Bubble Country.  I must have missed mention that M2 money supply is up 9.2% annualized on a three-month basis.  How could someone overlook that?

Ah, but Ures truly has no creds as an economist, being only a dogged journalist with a no-name school MBA.  So I won’t expect you to trust lil ‘ol me.

But would you trust Nobel winning economist (and co-developer  of the honest Case Shiller/S&P Housing Index that we cite repetitiously as the gold standard in housing data) Robert Shiller?

Robert Shiller says that he is “Most worried”: about the US market being in a bubble.” (duh!)  Man after my own bearish heart.

Now, in all honesty, there is nothing wrong with playing a bubble.  On my www.peoplenomics.com website, our Aggregate Index trading model (which is for amusement, not financial advice, of course) is up more than 60% for the year (formal reconciliation will follow this week for subscribers) so as long as you’ve got a tool which let’s you hang on to the end (and see the end coming, which we do) then you can do just fine.  Bubbles for fun and Beechcraft in our case.

Right now, our current read of things is that we will likely see one more upthrust perhaps for another month, or two.  But then, about the time everything else is going to pot, we should be a marvelously playable decline.  (See the Coping Section for one possible – outlier – driver.)

But the point to be made as we again sally forth to place nose upon grindstone as good wage slaves of the corporate state, is that like broken watches, which are right twice a day, so too are economists. 

I’d give the ‘Spansonian view 90-days or less, and then Shiller’s view ought to rotate into the Genius circle, front and center.

But that’s no guarantee…just a sense of of things will work out as ‘Merica comes to terms with a declining standard of living under the thumb of (most recently) an insurance industry which has captured government to be its “enforcer” joining hands with Big Pharma which had previously led the way with government enforcement of vaccines and such.

‘Mericans sitting on their wallets and stories like this one about how weekend sales declined, are evidence that the New Minimalist/Prepper Mindset  has taken root. 

About the only guy to real cut a fat hog this holiday season seems to be Warren Buffett whose railroads will benefit in some measure if I read this right from more than half a billion plus your tax money subsidizing railroad work.  Falls to the bottom line, does it not?

That begins to get off track, except to sardonically  note that while you’re tinkering with H.O. scale gear, the real HO HO HO plays for  a different group of folks on different kinds of rails.

Campaign Contributors, perhaps?  They, as always, will have a very effing merry time, indeed.

Amadrone Dot Com

Madison Avenue Mike noticed that the HY Times has picked up on the CBS story about how Amazon is eyeing this new model airplane hobby  drone industry as have a potential place in the future of instant retailing.  It’s in the “gray lady” Bits section over here.

I can’t fault Bezos for trying to keep a leg up on the competition, and I figure it’s only a matter of time till my local delivery buddy has to head for joystick school.  With luck, he’ll be retired first, but that’s the kind of thing on our future-scope.

One thing that’s troubling, though, is how the FAA will regulate drone traffic which  has the potential to cause mid-air collisions with real (pilot driven and licensed) aircraft.

I can hardly wait to call in…

“Tyler Tower Musketeer 12-Lima mid field left downwind runway 13, we just nicked a  delivery drone with 16-inch deli-style and two quarter-pounders…looked like two fries, in there, too…”

“12-Lima call the tower…that was our lunch…”

Hold Your Pickle?

Speaking of which, Tyler will get lunch today, but in 100 cities, fast food strikes are going around…

The odd history of the ‘Merican labors movement continues to unfold.  Dave Beck organized laundry truck drivers (becoming Teamsters) so we expect any day for a new generation of labor boss to organize fry cooks.  I kinda like the “International Brotherhood of Eatsters” but the odds of that catching on as a moniker are slim to none though it has a nice tone to it.

Certainly better than the “International Association of Frymen and Burgermeisters” or the “International Lunch and Whenever Union” – a kind of latter-day ILWU, and here’s one to Harry’s memory…  Could AFL-CIO come mean “American Fried Lunch, Cholesterol Included Optionally”?

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No, I won’t often put in two Amazon ads, but this is Black Friday and already the whole fate of the nation seems to hang on how much money you spend over the next few days, or so news reports make it seem.  Hell, I’m just doing my part to help try to save the Republic, right?

To be sure, a lot of people did venture out after turkey looking for deals, but here in the East Texas Outback, most of the stores in town were closed.  Family values (like spending time together) are still important in this part of the world.  Even the local Lowes was closed.  Wal-Mart was open, though.  And wife Elaine spied plenty of workers stocking like crazy and putting up fresh end-caps (those displays at the ends of the aisles if you’ve never worked retail).

She didn’t run into any of the wristbands or Segways on patrol.

She had a delightful time of it, since there was virtually no one locally out shopping, too.  Seems that she wasn’t the only one to make that observation, either.

This morning, the whole nation gets into the swing, and as always we like to mention the fictitious injury called “credit card burn”  (CCB) which arises from using your plastic so fast that friction can cause painful “burns.” 

Some people will miss them initially since the severity of the burns are often slow to appear.  In fact, usually (and this is what makes CCB such an odd disease) the burn doesn’t show up until statements arrive in January.

As luck would have it, the only salve that works is a thick poultice of cash, applied quickly to the burn source.  If not treated promptly, credit card burns can fester into collectionitis and bankruptus.

—

I’m expecting holiday sales to come in a little above forecasts this year.  For one reason, the rising market gives the illusion that things aren’t all that bad.  Although, when questioned by CNN, seems people on reflection have grokked that that things maybe aren’t all that good.  You might want to read into the details over here about why almost 60% of those polled think things aren’t going so well.

And they may be going poorly, but the Obama administration is – at least in one sense – lucky because of the shutdown of government.   Here’s why:  As a result of the shutdown, government economic reports which would normally be out on “Cyber Monday” (like the employment situation for the month) have been pushed back to December 6th.  Little things like that may help peddle a few more trinkets.

Another area where the administration is lucky (so far) is that the coming January-February timeframe for a resumption of the budget talks/disaster seems momentarily missing from the public mindset.  Oh, sure, it leaks out in a few places, like this recent mention in the Op-Ed Part of US News’ site, but that was more than a week ago.  It’s almost like the mainstream media are complicit in keeping people from thinking about the hard economic realities of the day. 

Lest it screw up sales, which in turn will make retailers poor, delay ad revenue payments to media in January/February, and all the rest of that knock-on, ripple effect.  In other words, mainstream media have only money to lose from a crappy (but perhaps more reasonable) high spending period. 

Can America “Christmas its way” into financial recovery? 

No.  Not a ghost’s chance in hell, or even Christmas’ Past.

But don’t tell anyone down on Wall St.  With only “noise trading” and an historical trend to rally gong into the holidays well entrenched, the bulls are looking to put another 50-points on the Dow scoreboard and 5-more possibly on the S&P. It’ll be a shortened trading day.  Even Streeters gotta shop.

So please do your part:  Get out there are get the worst case of Credit Card Burn you can this weekend.  The fate of bankster mansion class depends on it. 

Just one word of moderation here:  You don’t want them coming after your Ho Ho Home….especially when the hangover of financial reality arrives in late January 2014. That’s just after the chickens come home to roost again in Washington.

More after this…

SuperRich: Their Own Private Idaho?”

A quick lesson in how to read this news this morning which you may learn something from.

We will start with the story writ large in the UK’s Mail Online which goes into marvelous (and dreamy) details about a proposal to build  an “…incredible mile-long floating CITY – complete with schools, a hospital, parts, and an airport for its 50,000 residents.”

I hope you see “the deal” here?

No?  (Did you swear off coffee or something?)

OK, here’s what’s up  methinks:  Scroll down to the map about half way down that page…study it for a second, then I’ll tell you what I see in this…and I think you’ll agree it’s cute!

you see the ship will be making its way in a nice leisurely way around the world every two years, right? 

And you saw the price, right?  $10-billion?  Which works out to $200K per person as a buy-in, not counting ongoing operating expenses which could be humongous.

This gets us to the first thinking point of the story: 

1.  Is this floating place/Freedom Ship idea for…

a.  Rich Folks

b.

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My late uncle Stanley was the first one to introduce me to dowsing as a boy.  I must have been 8 or 9 at the time and I was out visiting his small farm located near what is now Sea-Tac airport in Seattle.  It wasn’t a particularly big farm.  Just about 5 acres.  But that much land today would be a fortune, since a lot of property, residential and close to a major airport (off to the side where it’s quieter, however) would be a small fortune today.

Back then it was a genuine wonder:  A tractor, a stand of corn in summertime that towered over me, aunt Iris’s homemade pies (done between her American Legion volunteer work and a real working job), and a big collie which looked remarkably like Lassie.  Except, “Happy” had been taught to bark fiercely whenever the word “democrat” was mentioned in conversation.

One day when we were visiting, Stanley asked if I wanted to learn how to dowse.  I had no idea what that mean, but my dad and I followed him out to the shop out back (Stanley built all his own houses and may dad helped in on most of them, hence my grounding in tools…I was a tool helper).  After going through a few items in the sawdust covered room he announced he’d found what he was looking for:  A pair of brass dowsing rods.

After a few minutes of instruction (aided by a 6-foot piece of iron pipe tossed on the ground, I was ready for my first experiments in dowsing.

The first item I found (following directions to work the front yard east to west, eyes closed) was the waterline in from the street.

A second “find” was a sewer line.  Boy, was this ever fun.

I’ve used dowsing a few times since, and in fact that’s how we found the spot on our property to put in our back-up well.  Worked just fine.

The main tricks of it seem to be finding the right shoes.  Some people swear by bare feet, others claim leather soles work best, while another camp has the well-insulated view that rubber soles, like tennis shoes, are the real McGoslin.

The second key thing is to  hold the rods just right.  They need to be able to rotate, just so.  If they are held with the tips too close to level, they will sway uselessly.  However, if the tips are too low, then there’s not enough swing to them.

Third thing to remember is that your eyes need to be closed to “feel” things.  I don’t know why, but the feel is more apparent for many people with eyes closed.  Maybe dowsing has something to do with the brain shutting off overt optical inputs; I can’t just say.

Last point – and most important – is that you give yourself permission to dowse.  A lot of people fail at dowsing because they don’t let themselves actually do it.  They “counter-believe” in the process which understandably torpedoes the whole thing.

So there you have point #1.  If you really want to be a prepper, a pair of old brass curtain rods is a useful thing.  Or, drop by a welding store and pick up some brass 36” rod and bend some up, yourself.  The water may be down a ways, but in the hands of someone who has practiced the art (it’s not witchcraft, it’s just one of those natural forces we’ve lost track of, thanks to technology) water is often easily found.

So what on Earth could this have to do with data and our www.nostracodeus.com big data project which looks at the comings and goings of words from major media?  Well, you may recall that in Monday’s column, we added the words “harriers” and “carriers” to the dictionary and ever since then, the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning has been making headlines because it’s enroute to a training mission in the South China Sea, where China has just instituted an air defense zone, which the US has “tweaked” with a B-52 overflight, and which gearing up to project Chinese sea power into the contested (with Japan) Sendaku islands area.

One note about the Chinese picture (after you click on the first one at the link above) of the aircraft appearing to take off from the Liaoning.  It’s not.  The aircraft is too high to have done a takeoff – since the aircraft even light on fuel – would be less than half of its apparent altitude.  So this was, to my eye, an aircraft that came down, made an approach, and then did a go-round.  The angle of attack looks wrong for low airspeed, too.  Staged-looking.  Just sayin’.

Also, offers reader Roger, there’s a dandy backgrounder on air defense identification zones to be found over here.

After you go back and reread the post “Winds of Noumenon” you’ll see that events since have sure focused on carriers which could be a success for the data-sniffing technique, OR (and this is something that didn’t hit me until this morning) the Nostracodeus software could act something like a massive dowsing rod amplifier.  Or a “big data dowsing amplifier” might be another way to express the idea.

Could it be that regular people have hints (in their dreams) that tell them – against a very, very noisy background of modern high energy life – what’s to come?

Clearly, in last Sunday’s dream-state, carriers and harriers sitting on the deck came through, along with a picture of a female in charge.  Turns out that yes, there is a woman in charge of a major US naval group, and among her command (if a reader who researched the point has it right) there are smaller Marine ships with Harriers aboard.  (Mark II’s, if that matters.)

So the question is whether my dream was in any way meaningful? 

That I can’t tell you.  But, what I can tell you is that both Grady and I have now put the word “disappear” into our Indicators analyses as we’re both off doing runs now.  I haven’t looked at the size of the news sources run, in number of pages to read) but as I write this note my run (of woo-woo and fringe news sites) is 215 out of 2156.  In a couple of hours we’ll see what’s in that one.

The reason is the latest dream-state concept I woke with was “disappearing and some number of people were involved.  If, over the next week (two at the outside) we get a glob of missing/disappeared people, then will have even more research to do.

Something roll around in the back of your mind – which is where the reality we share seems to spring from…  Is future-directed software sort of like a digital data dowsing rod?

Readers Writes on China

In our Peoplenomics.com subscriber report this week, we highlighted the differences in strategic thinking about China.  Among other points:  The US is very technology-dependent in it military approach to things, while China continues to hold a strong “rural fall-back” capability which has failed in the US due to the attacks on the American farmer and small farm life overall.

As a result, I noted the large number of Chinese who in a sense are “massing” near the US border in places like Vancouver and Toronto – a point echoed by subscriber Joel who sent this:

My son the geographical analysis expert tells me that Canada encourages the immigration of mainland Chinese.

Gov expected lots of new jobs to follow.

However, the rich mainlanders established bolt-holes but leave their businesses to operate in China.  Lower costs, fewer regulations.

Maybe, if the violent rev in China really gets going, the entrepreneurs might relocate their stuff.

Meanwhile, Vancouverites and Torontonians suffer with ridiculously high housing prices.

Toronto has the second highest number of hi-rises in NA, after NYC.

Toronto has the most construction projects of any city in NA.

This is the uptown area of Toronto: mostly Chinese, Korean, Iranian. (Yes. Iranian).

Quite a contrast in another way:  The US is arguing for open immigration for poor people who will compete for the few remaining jobs in America, while the Canucks are going for high dollar people. 

Seems there’s no “right path” in this:  The Canadian approach is screwing people out of affordable housing, but because of the lower wages which higher immigration from penniless people will incur, the US will get to “unaffordable” via a different path:  Lifestyle decline.

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As Grady noted in the report earlier today, “Oh-Oh- CARRIERS!” this sent a small chill up my spine toward the base of brain because of a dream that I had earlier this week.

It wasn’t just any dream.  If was one of those rock ‘em – sock ‘em blow your eyes out in dreamland IMAX which comes as close to “being there” as you can imagine.

When I saw that Grady’s run had come up with “carriers” off I went on a Google search to see what was triggering it.

To be sure, going back through the data of my own run, I found a few [expected] references to things like “common carriers” and “air carriers” and things that are usually in the background.

But (remember the Monday write up of my Carrier dream over in the “Winds of Noumenon” post on the UrbanSurvival site, this quick elevation in “carriers” of the aircraft take off and landing type is more than slightly disconcerting, so I thought I would put a note up on the UrbanSurvival site, the Nostracodeus.com site and even Peoplenomics, since this arrival of ‘carriers” is troubling.

As the story is “getting legs” with reports like NBC’s “China deploys only aircraft carrier after US sends B-52s over disputed islands.” beginning to get some traction now.

The carrier involved is what the US would like to characterize as a museum piece.  The Liaoning is described by Wikipedia as:

“…the first aircraft carrier commissioned into the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).^[3] Originally laid down as the Admiral Kuznetsov class multirole aircraft carrier Riga for the Soviet Navy, she was launched on December 4, 1988 and renamed Varyag in 1990. The stripped hulk was purchased in 1998 by the People’s Republic of China and towed to Dalian Shipyard in north eastern China. After being completely rebuilt and undergoing sea trials, the ship was commissioned into the PLAN as Liaoning on September 25, 2012.

Of a more pressing nature is the fact that while officially the US pictures this as a “lone ship” it has two destroyers in escort, say some reports. 

Oh, and while the “sting” of its aircraft may not be what the Big E might pack for the US Fleet, we nevertheless note that the ship is hardly a museum piece and is, according to this note, staging up towards more efficient operations:

In June 2013, a second round of flight tests began on board the Liaoning, with personnel from the fleet air arm of the Brazilian Navy providing carrier training support to the Chinese Navy.^[49] Five Chinese pilots were certified the next month for carrier operations.^[50]

In September 2013, SMN reported that the Liaoning was still unable to operate J-15s with a heavy weapons/fuel load because of the ship’s limited size and lack of catapults.^[51] The U.S.

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