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A Saturday Note

The market always answers questions about "What lies ahead?" and today over on our www.peoplenomics.com site, we go through a bit of a 'chalk talk' on what's ahead and a couple of ways we might get there.  Sunday's report will focus on what to do if a medium-to-large pile of money lands in your lap from a Lotto or inheritance...and then Monday at 8 AM Central Time, we tear about sorting through weekend happenings and get ready for4 another week ofr trading.  So: www.peoplenomics.com for the weekend, or ya'll just come on back Monday - and either way - have a good weekend...

 

CPI: The Deflation Gorilla Lurks

With word that BP has a cap on the Gulf Goo/Blue Ocean murder, bumping its share prices up early today in European trading, it would be tempting to look over the economic landscape and get downright positive about the market.  But would that be wise?  Or, is the cap temporary and what about fears that oil will start seeping out of other fissures (as anecdotal reports claim)...and where's all the missing pressure going? 

 

To stay in this state of Friday morning Urephoria:  Has the whole financial industry just sprouted angelic wings? (next story) and is Wall Street out of a crash window? (second story down).

 

The answers are a) unknown, it is after all, the cap is temporary so let's see what the next week or two brings.  The answer to b) is 'no' and c) is also 'no' which we will get to in a minute.  But let's start by staring at the Consumer Price Index report just released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

"The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) declined 0.1 percent in June on a seasonally adjusted basis, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the index increased 1.1 percent before seasonal adjustment.

Similarly to April and May, a decline in the energy index caused the seasonally adjusted all items decrease in June. The index for energy decreased 2.9 percent in June, the same decline as in May, with a decline in the gasoline index accounting for most of the decrease. This more than offset an increase in the index for all items less food and energy, while the food index was unchanged for the second month in a row.

The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.2 percent in June after increasing 0.1 percent in May. A broad array of indexes posted increases, including shelter, apparel, used cars, medical care, tobacco, and recreation. These increases more than offset declines in the indexes for household furnishings and operations and for airline fares. The 12-month change in the index for all items less food and energy remained at 0.9 percent for the third month in a row.

Food

The food index was unchanged in June for the second straight month. The index for food away from home rose 0.1 percent, the third straight such increase, while the food at home index declined 0.1 percent. Within the latter group, four of the six major grocery store food groups declined. The fruits and vegetables index fell 1.3 percent, mostly due to a 3.0 percent decline in the index for fresh vegetables. The index for cereals and bakery products fell 0.6 percent and the indexes for other food at home and for nonalcoholic beverages fell 0.3 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively. In contrast to these declines, the index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs rose 1.0 percent in June, the sixth consecutive monthly increase, and the dairy and related products index rose slightly. The food at home index has risen 0.2 percent over the last 12 months with none of the major groups rising or falling more than 2.0 percent.

Energy

The energy index declined 2.9 percent in June, the same decline as in May. The gasoline index declined 4.5 percent in June, its fifth consecutive monthly decline after nine consecutive monthly increases. The household energy index declined 1.6 percent in June, its largest decline in over a year. The fuel oil index fell 3.2 percent and the electricity index declined 2.2 percent, more than offsetting a 0.6 percent increase in the natural gas index. The energy index has increased 3.0 percent over the last 12 months. The gasoline index has risen 3.9 percent over the last 12 months, with the index for household energy up 1.6 percent.

All items less food and energy

The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.2 percent in June after rising 0.1 percent in May. The shelter index rose 0.1 percent in June, the same increase as last month. Within the shelter component, the rent index increased 0.1 percent in June. The index for owners' equivalent rent also rose 0.1 percent, its first increase since August 2009, and the index for lodging away from home rose 1.3 percent. The apparel index increased 0.8 percent, and the index for used cars continued to increase, rising 0.9 percent. The tobacco index rose 1.0 percent in June after increasing 1.3 percent in May. The index for new vehicles and recreation both rose slightly in June, increasing 0.1 percent. In contrast, the index for household furnishings and operations fell 0.4 percent in June, and the index for airline fares turned down, falling 0.6 percent after increasing in each of the previous three months.

The housing component (-0.7% for the month, about -8½% annualized) is especially interesting, since, as a couple of readers have asked in emails "If we're in such a big-deal delevering how come the amount of mortgages outstanding is not falling by a lot more than it is - something like down only 2% of mortgage debt from the tippy-top of the RE bubble?  Don't ask, and certainly don't tell except....

 

Real Answer: More downside to come. This is a Bear Market, right?   Oh - and remember my "Fed-in-a-box - they will have to drop to zero" fears?  Yep, this oughta stoke that up.  Ben and the free money...

 

Oh...minor nit, that.  Bank rates on passbook accounts could go to zero and money in the mattress might be cheaper... Yeah, well, the much heralded DC fellow's delevering of 'change'  is a bit on the elusive side when I go looking for it.

 

This whacks gold on the petchuzelwhacker (wii wii?)  pretty good since runaway inflation just took a hike for a month or longer...

 

GS Pays Up

The SEC has settled its differences with Goldman over their operating practices for, oh, a little over $550-million (half a billion and a few bonuses) worth.

 

$250 million will go to 'wronged investors' the rest goes to Uncle, but the really sleazy part IMHO by the SEC on this (IMHO) is letting GS slide "without admitting or denying wrong-doing".

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Right....  If I were on the SEC I'd have been a lot tougher:  "No, let's get this all out on the table and toss it to a grand jury and civil jury and see what civilian taxpayer/bailing folks think..."  The way I figure this, the only message this sends Wall Street is to set the current bid/ask for what buying the Street's way out of lawbreaking costs...if someone was guilty, of course.

 

WTF?

 

Oh...and the final 'without admitting or denying' order "...orders Defendant to comply with specified undertakings for three (3) years from the entry of the Final Judgment."  Three whole years?  [Expletive deleted] me to tears.

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While we're at it: Let me see if I can guess who already has drawn up New Carry Trade Marketing Plans for when the Fed drops to zero% rates at the August 10 or September 21 meetings.

 

Has Wall Street Really Reformed?

Depends who you listen to, I suppose.  But, has naked shorting gone? No, but some cities like Des Moines are trying to limit the number of payday lenders in their jurisdictions.  Are people still getting pay-day loans at horrific/usurious rates?  (Yes.) 

 

Are stock firms still going to sit on your dough for 3-days to settle common stock transactions which may close [for them] electronically much faster, giving them up to 3-days of 'float'? (Yes.) 

 

Does it prevent Wall Street firms from running so-called High Frequency Trading systems that essentially front-run the whole market by a few milliseconds and shovel dough into Wall Street's coffers by adding a fraction of a cent to your costs?  (No.  The CFTC is fixing to get ready to look at the commodity side, but I'm not holding my breath.)

 

So, what does it do?  I mean besides commission 68 'studies' to look more?  Time Magazine has a decent summary, but if you were looking for a be-all, end-all to every financial sin, try the church down the street or keep looking.

 

As Kimberly Strassel piece in the WSJ Online Op-Ed section reports:

"What started as a promise to streamline and modernize the financial system turned into 2,300 pages of new agencies and new powers for the very authorities that fomented the financial crisis. The bill is laden with uncertainty and brimming with costly regulations on small businesses."

As to the credibility of the presidential promise with this "No More...Bailouts, Period", count me among the skeptics.  I'm still waiting for the 'end the war' right away promise and a few other that come to mind.

 

Still, being a wild-eyed optimist, who just makes a little money on the short side (now and then), I keep hoping for reform that will actually encourage small business to hire and expand, and which will turn around 'wrong-way economics" that has failed to adequately stimulate broad spectrum job creation.

 

If American can't do better than a 9.5 unemployment rate - and that's shrinking the workforce numbers a ton to get there, how the hell can we afford to end any foreign entanglements which might bring half a million more people home and back into the workforce?

 

We can't - plain and simple.  But, any party in a storm, so look for the market to rally for another week or two.

 

Oh, and a Felix Salmon article on how the bill includes preapproval of Basel III banking changes at the international level - before  it even exists - is less than reassuring.  For one thing (and this is a biggy) the Basel III rules will make it even harder to get loans from your local banksters.  Wucking fonderful.

 

Landry's Outlook

Might want to raise your sites to the Dow 10,600-10,650-ish by Robin Landry's latest:

"The market has set a new low since my last update and then rallied back up to the close Thursday at 10,359.31. The count most EW analysts are using is a series of 1-2’s, with the market ready to turn down in wave 3.

 

That is certainly still a possibility but it must happen in the next couple days without going much higher. The chart I have attached shows another possible wave count which fits with the current state of my indicators. It counts the recent low at 9614 on 7/02/10 as the end of wave 1 and we are now in a wave 2 rally that will take a couple weeks, at least, to complete sometime in the first part of August and then turn down in wave 3 to my target area of 8100 or lower.

 

I have mentioned in these updates over the last 10 years that the markets have a tendency to hit a high in August before the largest decline of the year begins. Unless the market turns down very soon, the series of 1-2’s will turn out to be wrong and this count I have attached today will be my primary count. Remember we are in a time where surprises will usually be to the downside."

Foolish as it may seem, I will stay in my (slightly upside down) short positions.  One of my learning points in life is that if I over-trade my own account, I often will miss big moves.  So I'll stay short; besides guys like Arch Crawford and Bob Hitt on the astro-economic side of things, are both looking at ugly (centuries worth of ugly, btw) astro formations at the end of the month. 

 

DC Quake: Scalar Warfare?

Oh boy!  Grab the tinfoil hat on this one:  A 3.6 earthquake near Washington DC this morning or see the yellow star on the map here.

 

The big heads up here is that this is the biggest quake near DC since record keeping began, I hear, so wouldn't it be ironic if the release of the undersea oil pressure in the Gulf of Mexico allowed the whole eastern half of the US to begin sliding under the waves in Atlantis type fashion?

 

"Wild, raving speculation, George!"

 

Um...do I need to mention the CIA's purported movement of key personnel up there and there are even reports the queenie has been buying up Colorado property?  Pass the Reynolds Wrap...and whatever you do, don't go thinking that the extreme heat recently just heated up the surface too much, or the earth wobbling a bit from the lunar eclipse....Why, that wouldn't sell many videos, would it?

 

ASay, you don't think all this Mel Gibson stuff is payback for his movie Conspiracy Theory, do you?  Hmmm... you figure it out.

 

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Coping:  Let's Elect...No One!

Had a fine email from a reader who makes a modest proposal which could painlessly impact elections in a most unusual way:

"You may be interested in a novel political strategem - since the vote is the only way most can (currently) express their opinion (and there are so few worth voting for), an interesting approach is to vote for no one -- just leave the ballot blank. The original idea comes from "Seeing", written by Nobel-winning author Jose Saramago. If everyone voted, but all (or most of) the ballots were blank, nobody has a majority and the seat goes unfilled...locally, statewide, or nationally. In the book, the government went absolutely ballistic, because the people spoke and clearly said "we are good citizens but we don't want any of the choices you offer."

So, would you prefer another crook in office or no-one? No more useless laws passed, no more meddling, no more do-gooding...It would be a shot heard round the world..."

Reminds me of what a friend told me once.  Big Al, the Broadcaster's Pal ran the radio desk of AP's Seattle Bureau for a long time and said he never noted anymore (back then).  "It just encourages them."

 

Bonus Points:  Helps reporting objectivity a lot, too.

 

Liquidity Events

Interesting Peoplenomics topic this weekend:  How to handle "liquidity events" - whether it's suddenly being handed your retirement account, an inheritance, or just making oodles and gobs of dough in a buy-out of some kind.  Some ideas on how to navigate that process.

 

God's Address, Redux

Our discussions this week on "Grokking the Complement" and "Where Does God Live?" got a whole bunch of reader emails to ponder:

"When I was a teenager and living in India, I had the marvelous fortune to visit the Himalayas around Simla. I became convinced that THAT was where God lived and every place else was a summer home. Now I am trying to figure out with my midget mathematical mind how the Flatlanders and Linelanders could ever be so certain as I was (and still am, as a matter of opinion), of God's residence. Wow...thanks for the fun thinker work out."

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"...was reading the Howard Hill part of your article about God. When Howard was talking about the square living in the 2 demensional world it reminded me of a movie I had watched that refers to the same story. The movie was called "What the bleep you think you know", I think and "Down the Rabbit hole". They cover just about every thing your friend talked about. If you haven't seen it check it out, I think you would like it."

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Speaking of the omnipresent god,.have you ever read the book " Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives " by Michael Newton?

It is a very interesting read, he states that we have a conscience, sub-conscience and super conscience. And it the words of Getty Lee " All the world's indeed a stage and we are merely players" A very good read and makes allot of sense too. Maybe reading for your trip!

[Err....see The Bard's quote in 'As You Like It" --- G]

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For a long time I have had a saying: "I don't know if God exists but I do know where He lives - in a little cabin between the Random and the Accidental."

Around The Ranch:  Zeus II?

No, I'm not looking for an additional cat, but for whatever reason this morning on the walk over to the office (a whole 50-feet), I chanced to noticed that Zeus (our all-black male - once upon a time - cat) and Pusscilla (the tabby/female) had treed a small 4-6 month old second all black cat  up in one of the trees between the house and the shop/office building.

 

Didn't seem to have much interest in coming down, but I expect it's another cat that's been turned loose out here in the wilds; irresponsible pet owners tend to do that a fair bit -- drive their pet somewhere and just toss them out of the car and drive off.

 

Not sure if the little cat will stick around, but if it can make it into the good graces of Zeus and Pusscilla, there's a small (non-zero) chance that we will have another mouser around.  Plenty to eat, too.  Although the little cat isn't big enough to take on the tree rats (squirrels) cats eat an amazing number of bugs...so we shall see.  Will call around to a few neighbors and see if there's a young-un missing.

 

Movie Review: Sorcerer's Apprentice

One word review: Fun...  Trailer here. Next week while we're out & about traveling, we've got "Salt" on the list.

 

Nice break from real work...

 

More for Peoplenomics readers tomorrow and Sunday...meantime, see you back here Monday morning, same time, same internet...  http://72.52.163.140/

 

 

Send your comments to george@ure.net

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Reader Action Department:

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"Live on $10,000" A Year

Having a hard time making ends meet?  (Like who isn't, right?)  A good starting point to better match up income with outgo is our $10 e-book "How to Live on #10,000 a Year...or less!"

 

 

 

It's an automatic download.  It's written in an information dense style: The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the cheap, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you have a little hustle left.  A bonus section called "How to Build Anything" should instill confidence if you've never taken on a home improvement/home creation project before, too.....  Click here for the index and details.

 

Yet Another A Gardening Pitch

No time like summer to do the work to get ready for bountiful harvests in the future, regardless of what the economy does.  My friend Gary Seman, who's been an avid 'make do' gardener for years has put together a 70-page ebook on survival gardening using things like old tires to make raised beds and it's really worth the $15 bucks, IMHO:

 

     

 

What makes his ebook so interesting is that it is all based on a few hand tools and he has this back-friendly "no tilling" approach that saves a whole bunch of effort...to get there, he's big on kill mulches and such, too.

 

Also not to be missed is the vertical hydroponics work of my commodity broker JB Slear and I have written a simple book to get you started on high density hydroponics.  It's an example of how someone with a little creativity, access to a few 'dollar stores' and willing to try out some new farming techniques can grow an amazing amount of produce sin a very small space - like even an apartment balcony (if it gets some sunlight).  Sound interesting?  It's just $10 bucks here...

 

       

 

You may get sick of me saying "Learn to Garden!" so much, and I'm certainly no expert on the subject, but short of running out of water, which is why you want to live on a creek or river if you ever have the opportunity to make a choice, gardening and full stomach is extremely important.

 

Pass It On

A different take on things - that's what you'll find here most mornings.  If you know of anyone who might also like our content, simply click here and send a link to them.  Or, if you hated what you read, send the link to all your 'worst enemies'.  Like they say in Burbank, "Ain't no such thing as bad press..."

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Last week's report is always here.

 

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Thursday July 15, 2010

I Almost Forgot...

...to mention that "1.65 million properties receive foreclosure filings in the first half of 2010":

RealtyTrac® (http://www.realtytrac.com), the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties, today released its Midyear 2010 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which shows a total of 1,961,894 foreclosure filings — default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions — were reported on 1,654,634 U.S. properties in the first six months of 2010, a 5 percent decrease in total properties from the previous six months but an 8 percent increase in total properties from the first six months of 2009. The report also shows that 1.28 percent of all U.S. housing units (one in 78) received at least one foreclosure filing in the first half of the year.

Foreclosure filings were reported on 313,841 U.S. properties in June, a decrease of nearly 3 percent from the previous month and a decrease of nearly 7 percent from June 2009. June was the sixteenth straight month where the total number of properties with foreclosure filings exceeded 300,000.

Foreclosure filings were reported on 895,521 U.S. properties during the second quarter, a decrease of nearly 4 percent from the previous quarter and an increase of less than 1 percent from the second quarter of 2009. Default and auction notices were down on a quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year basis in the second quarter, but bank repossessions (REOs) increased 5 percent from the previous quarter and 38 percent from Q2 2009 to 269,962 — a new quarterly high for the report.

“The second quarter was a tale of two trends,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. “The pace of properties entering foreclosure slowed as lenders pre-empted or delayed foreclosure proceedings on delinquent properties with more aggressive short sale and loan modification initiatives. Meanwhile the pace of properties completing the foreclosure process through bank repossession quickened as lenders cleared out a backlog of distressed inventory delayed by foreclosure prevention efforts in 2009.

“The midyear numbers put us on pace to exceed 3 million properties with foreclosure filings by the end of the year, and more than 1 million bank repossessions,” Saccacio continued. “The roller coaster pattern of foreclosure activity over the past 12 months demonstrates that while the foreclosure problem is being managed on the surface, a massive number of distressed properties and underwater loans continues to sit just below the surface, threatening the fragile stability of the housing market.”

So, if you think the 'bottom is in' you oughta turn off the computer right now and get yourself into treatment... which gets us to....

 

Plane Talk About the Fed's Box

Although we have seen a few companies (Intel and their core business, etc) come in with better than expected earnings the real driver of long-term advances in the stock market is normally growth which is much different than whacking jobs to the bone, foregoing R&D, and other such moves designed to make a company show good earnings.

 

The release on Wednesday of the Federal Reserve's minutes from their recent meetings reflects how anxious the Fed is over the none-too-swift outlook for grow.  In particular, the Staff Economic Outlook seemed to matter:

"In the economic forecast prepared for the June FOMC meeting, the staff continued to anticipate a moderate recovery in economic activity through 2011, supported by accommodative monetary policy, an attenuation of financial stress, and strengthening consumer and business confidence. While the recent data on production and spending were broadly in line with the staff's expectations, the pace of the expansion over the next year and a half was expected to be somewhat slower than previously predicted. The intensifying concerns among investors about the implications of the fiscal difficulties faced by some European countries contributed to an increase in the foreign exchange value of the dollar and a drop in equity prices, which seemed likely to damp somewhat the expansion of domestic demand. The implications of these less-favorable factors for U.S. economic activity appeared likely to be only partly offset by lower interest rates on Treasury securities, other highly rated securities, and mortgages, as well as by a lower price for crude oil. The staff still expected that the pace of economic activity through 2011 would be sufficient to reduce the existing margins of economic slack, although the anticipated decline in the unemployment rate was somewhat slower than in the previous projection.

The staff's forecasts for headline and core inflation were also reduced slightly. The changes were a response to the lower prices of oil and other commodities, the appreciation of the dollar, and the greater amount of economic slack in the forecast. Despite these developments, inflation expectations had remained stable, likely limiting movements in inflation. On balance, core inflation was expected to continue at a subdued rate over the projection period. As in earlier forecasts, headline inflation was projected to move into line with the core rate by 2011. "

Nor was the view of Fed board memebers/participants a helluva lot brighter:

" Policymakers noted that firms' investment in equipment and software had advanced rapidly of late, and they anticipated that such spending would continue to rise, though perhaps at a somewhat slower pace. Business contacts suggested that investment spending had been supported by the replacement and upgrading of existing capital, making up for some spending that had been postponed in the downturn, and this component of investment demand was seen as unlikely to remain robust. In addition, inventory accumulation, which had been a significant contributor to recent gains in production, appeared likely to provide less impetus to growth in coming quarters. Participants also noted that several uncertainties, including those related to legislative changes and to developments in global financial markets, were generating a heightened level of caution that could lead some firms to delay hiring and planned investment outlays."

And, As I wrote last week, the Fed may have yet another move up its sleeve - perhaps even lowering rates to effecftively zero - hinted at here:

"However, members noted that in addition to continuing to develop and test instruments to exit from the period of unusually accommodative monetary policy, the Committee would need to consider whether further policy stimulus might become appropriate if the outlook were to worsen appreciably. "

One Fed member apparently remembered that the Yen-Gold carry trade resulted from near-zero rates by Japan in the 1990's, which FWIW didn't keep their Nikkei index from dropping from 40,000+ to well under 10,000 - which would be like our 2007 Dow of 14,000+ dropping to...you ain't gonna like this...around 3,000.

 

That's what this part of the Fed notes seems to imply:

"One member, however, believed that continuing to communicate an expectation in the Committee's statement that the federal funds rate would remain at an exceptionally low level for an extended period would create conditions that could lead to macroeconomic and financial imbalances."

If you want a clear picture of a country still in the grasp of a mighty deflation, you might want to pop over to a little-watched Fed report called Mortgage Debt Outstanding.  It shows that total mortgage debt decline from 14,610,459 million in Q1 2009 to 14,150,930 million in Q1 of this year.

 

That may not seem like a big deal - penciling out to a 3.145% decrease in total mortgage lending - but it is extremely meaningful on two fronts.

 

First: It demonstrated pretty clearly that the national debt on real estate mortgages along is at least equal to - and probably greater than - US Annual GDP.  No wonder the IMF is clearing its throat and saying "Excuse us, but what about deficit reduction?"  I wouldn't have to tell the IMF this, but if you look at the Fed's H.6 Money Stock Report you'll see M1 was up 7% in the past year, so when 7% more money results in a three percent decline in debt, seems to me this likely signifies that a 10.145% annual deflation is underway meaning the pressure on the Fed to increase liquidity ('easy money' to entice you to spend more) is almost a sure bet unless we get two 'miracle months' back-to-back.

 

Secondly: More important is that what causes depressions is when the general public stops buying right now because they anticipate lower prices in the future.  That kills the economy and leads to the great auguring-in as the once high-flying economy collapses on falling sales.  Yesterday's retail softness no doubt scared hell out of economic staff at the Fed.

 

Only when a civilian populace begins to either take expected future prices out of their spending decisions - which would be the result of prices staying in line with inflation expectations - OR if a small incentive to buy now in order to avoid higher prices later on reappearances, will these trends likely reverse.

 

The Fed lowering rates might formalistically be the right thing to do at a coming meeting, but from a practical standpoint, it would simultaneously reinforce the message that still lower prices are coming and that'd be the very last thing they Fed would want.

 

Very short term, I expect at a minimum, the Fed will slow on withdrawing stimulus money such that getting rid of non-Treasury debt instruments will slow. 

 

A flying analogy might be trying to pilot a terribly designed aircraft which - with just the slightest move of the stick - will fly fast enough to rip its wings off, yet the smallest move of control surfaces in another direction will result in a stall and entry into a spin. 

 

Because market forces were allowed to go so far in modifying the design of this 'economic aircraft', we may now be at the point where no matter what direction the controls are moved - even if held steady - we're destined to both rip the wings off and go into a stall/spin/non-intended off-airport 'landing'.  Fun fall ahead, huh?

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"Oh!  I see why you call it 'plane talk' about the Fed's Box now!"

 

Yup...and to my way of thinking the fact that probably more than 90% of volume on the market is HF/machine trades (although we'll never know because the exchanges play hide the sausage with real program trading data, which the exchanges hid a few years back along with the Fed hiding M3 data) we're now all gambling our life's savings and 401(k)'s on an airplane with the stall warning system disconnected, the airspeed indicator non-op, and the landing gear lights removed.  Just to make sure we're all flying blind.

 

My part gold/part T-bond/part paid-for real estate financial position with only -5 to 7% in paper assets is the closest I can get to "I'll walk, thanks."

 

Marvels of Free Money Department

Say: Am I the only one asking WTF was TARP all about when outfits like JP Morgan just earned $4.8 billion for the quarter?  Hello?  Are we being scammed?  Gee, you think?

 

This will no doubt help the market at the open today, but like yesterday, I expect the opening minutes euphoria will pass.  Can't stay punch-drunk forever...or can we?  (insert sound effect: snap of a beer tab being pulled)

 

Am I the only one to notice that homes lost to foreclosure is tracking to hit one million households this year?

 

Initial Jobs Claims

More rally fuel...

"In the week ending July 10, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 429,000, a decrease of 29,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 458,000. The 4-week moving average was 455,250, a decrease of 11,750 from the previous week's revised average of 467,000.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.7 percent for the week ending July 3, an increase of 0.2 percentage point from the prior week's revised rate of 3.5 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending July 3 was 4,681,000, an increase of 247,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 4,434,000. The 4-week moving average was 4,581,250, an increase of 22,000 from the preceding week's revised average of 4,559,250.

The fiscal year-to-date average of seasonally adjusted weekly insured unemployment, which corresponds to the appropriated AWIU trigger, was 5.056 million. "

Question is whether this will be enough rocket fuel to take out yesterday's intraday high of 10,423.03 and hit 10,450? 

 

Tomorrow, the Consumer (emphasis on con) is being released.  My guess: Down, but the 'swing vote' could be food, which seems not to be coming down as fast as...oh, you know...housing, for example. 

 

Baltic Dry Index continues to whither, too.

 

Greece: Strikes/Out

Lots of disruption to air travel on account of the general strike in Greece today.  government offices closed, yada, yada...

 

Meantime, the CNN Headline:  "Illinois: Our very own Greece?" was pretty good writing, I thought...

 

Mess in the Philippines

A reader in Manila sends this:

"July 13 (July 12 for you), the first typhoon of the season hit Metro Manila squarely, without so much as a warning  Philippine President Scolds PAGASA at Typhoon Basyang briefing and
Typhoon ‘Basyang’ leaves Luzon in the dark - INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos .

We had no electricity and when it came back, the Internet was still out and took another half day for it to come back on.  There still are other places that have no electricity as I write this.

The release language is indeed happening, and it is Planet Earth releasing in a big way in many parts of the world that include sinkholes, floods, earthquakes, strong winds, extreme temperatures and so forth.  We are indeed bracing up for the next typhoons.  We average about 20 a year.  Wish us luck."

Mess in China, Too:  Not like the Philippines is alone as China is looking at the worst flood in a dozen years...

 

Quick! Cover your Wheaties!

Hack a Loogie Dept.

"Whooping Cough kills 5 in California - State Declares Epidemic."  Call Research:  Which drug company stock to buy?

 

Crop Circle of David?

Latest (July 10) Crop Circle at Guys Cliffe near old Miverton over at the Crop Circle Connector web site is sure worth a look...

 

Gotta wonder with all the military units out whether something still pending / about to pop in the M.E....so is this a hint, or something?

 

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Coping: Where Does God Live?

My friend Howard Hill, who has forgotten more about math than I ever learned - which is expected with a Yale math degree - called me up this week to tell me I'd not run the smell-checker on my Monday at the WuJo piece "Grokking the Complement".  Howard not-so-gently reminded me that in math it's spelled complement, not compliment....which I simply added to the 1,207 stuffed filing cabinets labeled "Errors and Omissions of George" at occupy much of my office, and promptly forgot about.

 

The reason is what followed was a grand discussion of the little matter of "Where Does God Live?". 

 

Seems like a curious topic for a writing-impaired day trader and the king of derivatives & long-tail analysis to chat about, but since a lot of people have a kind of 'human-like' personalization of God, it seemed like a worthwhile topic.

 

'God' is often is characterized as 'old man on throne sitting in Judgment'  (although I liked Morgan Freeman's portrayal in 2003's "Bruce Almighty" better). but what comes through in Self Defining Hebrew is more along the lines of a "Ruler of All" who only created us bipeds in 'his/its' image on the inside, not the outside.  The retranslation of Genesis can be found at the Chronicle Project website... the application of SDH to Book 1 is here.

 

Along about the point Howard started explaining how Banach Space or Hilbert Space would make an appropriate address for God (in the "Ryuler of All/employer of the Malak" sense, I got to thinking that I'd never be able to do justice to the math behind the discussion, so I prevailed upon Howard to write up a summary such that non-derivative analyzing humans could follow it.  Not only did he graciously agree, but he said "Go ahead and cross post the whole thing on your site...although a trip to Howard's site here is always worth the trip (multiple definitions implied).

"I was talking today to my buddy George Ure about a strange way of looking at the world as a natural/spiritual duality. It was the key concept in a dream he had Sunday night/Monday morning.

On Monday in his “wujo” section, he related how his dream addressed the nature of our reality and God as being two complementary parts of the same larger “thing.”

I’m not sure if I ever told him about it (probably did), but I wrote a paper in college on exactly that topic for a seminar called, appropriately enough, “Physics for Poets.” That’s not to be confused with the “gut” overview course offered by the [Yale- g] Physics department that jocks used to take, even though it was known by the same name among the students.

George was adamant that I had to write it up in my words today, so he could include it in the cosmic cartoon (my words, not his) stream-of-consciousness section of his wide-ranging blog.

The first order of business in our conversation was to let George know that Banach, Hilbert and other inner-product functional spaces have a word they use instead of “complement,” which I think fails to emphasize the fact that the two pieces together equal everything.

In math world, we call the part you’re not looking at the “dual space,” and that ever-so-nicely fits with the philosophers’ use of the word “duality.”

So let’s crawl (the thing we do before walking) through a very simple example.

Picture a 3-dimensional universe. We represent any point in that universe by expanding into three dimensions. For sighted people, good old Descartes gave us the most used version — Point A is defined as (x,y,z) — the measurements of distances along three mutually perpendicular axes from an origin point defined as (0,0,0). Distances between points are measured using Euclid’s geometry and Pythagoras’ Theorem.

I specified sighted because I had a friend and fellow math major who was blind when I was an undergrad. One day we were walking through an archway that had a soda machine. He asked me to guide him to a spot in front of the machine.

When I told him he was standing in front of it, he reached out and felt the space in front of him until he located the coin slot. Then he put his change in the slot and (from memory) moved to the button for a regular Coke. I noticed that he was not, as I would, moving along the row of buttons to pick the one he wanted (Cartesian coordinates), but rather, he was positioning himself and then reaching out at the spherical angle and length (declination, right ascension, length) that took his finger to the correct button.

The figurative light went on in my mind. Of course, if I lived in a dark world, it would feel like that to me — that everything in it had a latitude angle, a longitude angle and a distance from my location, rather than picturing myself moving about inside a grid the way we Euclidean types see the world, especially in cities and buildings.

Anyway, back to the problem of finding God, or something to that effect.

Picture a consciousness that can only perceive two dimensions of that universe like the cute story “Flatland.” In that story, the narrator, a square, could only see other two-dimensional geometric figures in its two-dimensional world.

The social commentary of the piece would have doomed it to limited interest in its own Victorian world, in my opinion, if Square hadn’t been allowed to see the one-dimensional world (Lineland) and even see the three-dimensional world inhabited by the super-cognizant Sphere who opened Square’s eyes, so to speak.

That led to the little novella having lasting power, such that even Isaac Asimov recommended it as a way to learn about dimensions.

In the book, Square gets to know the omniscient Sphere that floats above the plane of his world. Being of three dimensions, Sphere would appear as point (when he first touched down), and then a circle of increasing radius as he intersected the plane. Amusingly, circles are thought to be perfect beings in the Flatland hierarchy of social castes.

Why do I care?

Because I was reading very cool book by the “Father of Modern Computing” (John von Neumann) for entertainment at the time I took that college seminar called Physics for Poets. That book was the 1932 classic, Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, which solved a problem that bedeviled everyone following Neils Bohr into the strange world of subatomic particle/waves.

That problem was that Werner Heisenberg had come up with a set of matrices to describe the experimental results he was seeing. Think of it as the (x,y,z, …) of Euclid’s geometry, taken to higher dimensions. Except to capture and compute all the results, Heisenberg had to allow the matrices to be infinitely large “squares” sometimes. In other words, his solution was infinite dimensional.

Another set of predictive solutions to the very same observations was made by Schrödinger, of cat-killing fame. His solution involved waves that corresponded to Newton’s classical degrees of freedom, where an n-particle system could be described by three dimensions to define locations and three dimensions of rotational momentum for each particle. A two-body system could be described using 12 dimensions of Schrödinger's waves. (With the one small problem that occasionally the waves got infinitely “dense” — think of it as being multiplied by a bell curve that has the normal weight of one, but an infinitely small base to the curve.)

Von Neumann’s elegant solution was to note that we weren’t really looking at the objects in the system that represented the experiments (Heisenberg’s potentially infinite-dimensional matrices, or Schrödinger’s not-quite sinusoidal waves). What we were looking at was how the functions in those representation spaces interacted with each other — their functional spaces and the operators on those spaces. That infinite-dimensional inner product space that unified these two wildly different formulations for quantum mechanics is called Hilbert Space.

Hilbert Space was named after the brilliant 19th and 20th century mathematician who finished Euclid’s work nearly 2,000 years after the old guy laid down his first postulates and axioms. (Hilbert presented and proved the minimal set of axioms required to create Euclid’s geometry in 1899).

To me, a college sophomore drawn as much to mysticism as mathematics, this was cosmic.

Since the universe was obviously infinite dimensional (you had to use infinite dimensions to model even simple bits of it), yet I could only experience four dimensions (three normal plus time), I thought God might just be hanging out in those other [infinity minus four] dimensions.

Every time I interacted with God, of course the result would be zero, just the way a Flatland inhabitant who can only see (x,y,0) would be frustrated trying to interact with the orthogonal Lineland inhabitant that can only see (0,0,z). In that arrangement, Flatland and Lineland happen to add up to a three-dimensional space, but each of the two worlds is the dual space of the other.

Bingo! God could be real, just in the dual space to my observed reality. Everywhere and nowhere. Unseen but omnipresent.

Fill in the the rest with your favorite cosmology and/or religion and/or science fiction.

Granted, it may seem a long way from 'old man in Judgment on throne' and much closer to God as "Universe: Underlying organizing Principal/Principle".  But, it's mighty comforting (yet discomforting at times), too.

 

That there is a mathematical framework to our relation with Organizing Principle/Principal of Universe in wider Hilbert spaces that seems to come into focus through a combination of the Self Defining Hebrew/reinterpretation of ancient texts (with roots in the Sumer-Aryan most likely) and relatively well-define math, erases much of the uncertainty of modern day life.  It's not a faith problem, it's only a bonded math problem with a paradigm problem.

 

However, just as the Linelanders and Flatlanders need one another for completion (e.g. as complements in the dual), so too, my dream Monday morning was telling me that us living in Fourlander are the complement of additional realms.  Simple enough...sort of.

 

As a marketing guy, this presents a huge challenge, though:  How do we human sorts do a better job of turning that awareness into useful 'product' in the here & now to rid our current world of the silly propensity to divide our Fourworld into disparate and warring subsets or sects in the false belief that only one  'chosen' subset of Fourlanders can see the whole complement beyond 3D space and time which make up Fourland?

 

The absurdity of divisions among people - all of whom are in their better moments seeking realms beyond Fourland - is as crazy as a sect of Linelanders claiming only they can see Flatland, or visa versa. 

 

Likewise, the overarching (Hilbert/dual) reality seems to be that all members of this Fourland can see higher realms with a little work; it's a kind of inalienable right that springs from just being a Fourlander,.

 

The dangerous knowledge is that this is all independent of certain specious claims that tribute must be paid for access to the 'true dimensions' beyond x,y,z and t.  Seems a certain class of Fourlanders are scam artists; such as the PTB and their minions - who are the enforcers of their tribute paradigm.

 

Hardly a day goes by that I'm not amazed how Fourlanders pay other Fourlanders tribute for a privilege that's there free for the taking already; hidden carefully in plain sight.

 

Sense of Wonder

All of which fits neatly with this reader note:

"I don’t know what it will take to change the current paradigm of “for profit” to a system of “for humanity/people”. I wait. Throughout my life I have known that there was something wrong…Humanity may be at the precipice of what the truth is….

This (The world we live in) is Plato’s Cave. Maybe you venture out of the cave. If you tell your friends, who reside happily inside the cave, what you’ve observed, they think you’re insane..

Living inside the cave is what is truly insane…"

True, but the PTB agenda item is that it keeps the rent prices up for them cave owners...this ain't about progress, it's about rents.

 

Rainbow Anomaly

Coast to Coast put Chris Malcheski's photo take in South Dakota last week up as it's "Photo of the Day".  Wonder what that thingy behind the rainbow was?

 

Reader's Writes

Over on the far side of the pond, a British subject (they don't have citizens, just royalist chattel, LOL) wonders:

Dear Happy George

Greetings

Has anyone done a money trail on President Obama, in terms of where the money for his campaign came from ?

best

(name withheld)

Why am I asking ? Well, to me in the UK it feels like your President has his own quite agenda of disempowering America....

Yep.  You can click through records over at www.opensecrets.org and in particular the Barack Obama summary here.  

 

As you'll see, he ended up with $15.466 million left over in his campaign chest.  In case you want to make a bid, the cost to elect a president is around $750-million.  Me?  I'll take a new Cadillac and whatever's behind curtain #3.

 

Shopping with Lola...er...Elaine

Another reader sent along this really http://www.flixxy.com/future-shopping.htm....part of Cisco's 'de-perimeterization' initiative.
 

Elmwood, TX Fund Raiser

Say, if you live in the DFW or Houston area and want to put something a little different on your calendar for September 18th for a little outing, check out what our local volunteer fire department is doing for a fundraiser...

 

 

Sign- up form can be downloaded here... I assume you know the difference between 10-station (or 5-station) shooting, compared with 'regular' skeet or a field course?   Neat fundraiser, huh?

 

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Wednesday July 14, 2010

Retail: Faltering Recovery

Dandy way to end the rally (see next story), isn't it?  etail sales figures out from the government today:

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for June, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $360.2 billion, a decrease of 0.5 percent (±0.5%)* from the previous month, but 4.8 percent (±0.7%) above June 2009. Total sales for the April through June 2010 period were up 6.8 percent (±0.3%) from the same period a year ago. The April to May 2010 percent change was revised from -1.2 percent (±0.5%) to -1.1 percent (±0.2%). Retail trade sales were down 0.6 percent (±0.5%) from May 2010, but 5.0 percent (±0.7%) above last year. Nonstore retailers sales were up 12.1 percent (±2.1%) from June 2009 and gasoline stations sales were up 8.8 percent (±1.8%) from last year.

All of which would make your head spin...so distilled down to a single picture?

To be sure most categories are up from last year, but remember my usual warning:  Don't show me dollars, show me unit sales volumes.

 

The real problem in America's economy remains unresolved:  That little matter of jobs.

 

Housing Aps Drop

Latest figures from the Mortgage Bankers Association shows...

The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 2.9 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. This week’s results include an adjustment to account for the Independence Day holiday. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 12.6 percent compared with the previous week. The Refinance Index decreased 2.9 percent from the previous week and the seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 3.1 percent from one week earlier. This was the lowest Purchase Index observed in the survey since December 1996. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 12.7 percent compared with the previous week and was 43.0 percent lower than Independence Day week one year ago.

The four week moving average for the seasonally adjusted Market Index is up 1.5 percent. The four week moving average is down 2.4 percent for the seasonally adjusted Purchase Index, while this average is up 2.6 percent for the Refinance Index.

The refinance share of mortgage activity remained constant at 78.7 percent of total applications from the previous week. The adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) share of activity increased to 5.5 percent from 5.4 percent of total applications from the previous week.

So...housing's still weak....which is one more reason to expect (past options expiration tomorrow (indices) and Friday (commons), the.....

 

End of the Rally?

Although Intel posted a hugely successful quarter - in fact its best ever, their news release prompted me to come up with one of those delightful Louis Rukeyser-like puns to brighten the halfway mark for the week.  First the set-up:

"Intel Corporation today reported second-quarter revenue of $10.8 billion, up 34 percent year-over-year. The company reported operating income of $4.0 billion, net income of $2.9 billion and EPS of 51 cents.

"Strong demand from corporate customers for our most advanced microprocessors helped Intel achieve the best quarter in the company's 42-year history," said Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO. "Our process technology lead plus compelling architectural designs increasingly differentiate Intel-based products in the marketplace. The PC and server segments are healthy and the demand for leading-edge technology will continue to increase for the foreseeable future."

The reason for Intel's success has been the propagation of faster, multi-core computing.  The i-series chipsets are going gangbusters and here in my little home office I've got 14 to 18 of their cores happily humming, most of the time. (We're a 22 core household - which has to be a whole other way of defining social status.) They get out of harmony only now and then.

 

That bad pun?  Oh yeah:  Shows you how well a company can do when they stick to their core business.    (Groans and a rim shot, if you please...)

 

Port Poop

Port of Long Beach was among the first out with June container volumes on the West Coast.  Inbound containers were up 9% compared with year-ago levels. Loaded outbound was up 12.7%.   Over the viaduct, the Port of Los Angeles was up 32.26% on  the inbound side while loaded outbound was up 12.6%, so definitely more work being done.  The other ports ought to have updated numbers by the end of the week - if I can remember to post 'em.

 

While the US struggles to put on a credible recovery, the place to have some dough might be Singapore which is forecasting a 15% growth rate for their economy this year.

 

For now, the futures look like they will hit to the upside, but with options tomorrow (indexes) and Friday (common shares) I wouldn't be surprised at all by some late session weakness while traders figure out where we go from here.

 

Silver's Shining Future?

An article on the Silver Seek site caught my eye "Silver's historical correlation with gold suggests a parabolic top as high as $714 per ounce."

 

Does the old saying "Your lips to God's ears" mean anything?

 

Slapstick Government

Word that the federal budget gap is up to $1-trillion through June may be something the political right will bang on but on more serious inspection, that's actually an improvement of 7.6% from year-ago levels.  Still, not enough for the republicorps who want to cut spending further, not owning up to their fiscal largess getting us where we are.

 

As Obama falls in the public opinion polls, (especially a CBS News poll this week) we note the overseas press is talking about his "growing credibility gap."

 

Republicorps are doing everything they can to whip up Obama-embarassing issues - like a White House staffer who used to work for Google using his Google, not White House email for chit-chat which is being characterized in some quarters as a violation of a no lobbyist pledge.

 

And while this effort goes on, predictably, the right has hauled out Sarah Palin to call the NAACP generalizations about 'racism' in the Tea Partiers divisive. 

 

Taking me to task for citing the NAACP as not being specific, a friend of mine sent me a link to tea party sign Google search and said "half of them sure as hell are racist..."

 

I'm sure some are, but my point was - and remains - that bringing up the issue of race re-polarizes the right/left division in the country and takes the focus off the have/have-not reality...and that's just was the PTB are after:  Substitution of right/left emotionally-charged rhetoric so that those at the top of the heap who dole out the dough to both sides can keep having their cake and eating it, too.

---

Still, the slapstick nature of some humans declaring themselves 'rulers' and then declaring themselves in charge after winning at their own dollar-rigged game, does come through now and then.

 

Take for example (please!) Michelle Obama's trip to Panama City Beach this week to spread the word that beaches there are oil-free and "Everyone should come here."

 

"Do as we say, not as we do" comes to mind as I read how "Obama and family will spend the weekend in Maine."

 

Nuke the Gulf Reports

Speaking of the Gulf:  Although the oil has been running freely under the Gulf for a couple of days now while the latest cap was put in plance and is now being tested, the stories that are getting a lot of folks worried are those involving the use of a nuclear device to either a) close the well - or b) end life on earth.

 

One way to get out of tax filing next year, huh?

 

That Sinking Feeling

While we wait for a lot more sinkholes to develop, you saw the car going into one that opened in St. Louis?

 

Or, the sinkhole in Florida?  Swallowing a condo would fill the linguistics expectations, I'm thinking..

 

You Give Me Fever

Peggy Lee wasn't it? Or was it Bette Midler's cover?   

 

No?

 

You mean it's really CDC's tracking of Dengue Fever in the Key West area? Damn...
 

Goodbye Census...

While we're just finishing up with the Census here in the US, other places in the world are wondering whether the census has run its course.  In England, for example, it may be on the chopping block.  And, in Canada, the long-form version may be about to be tossed.  Census of Afghanistan is already toast due to security concerns.

 

Canada seems to be looking for a voluntary system:

"The government will retain the mandatory short form that will collect basic demographic information. To meet the need for additional information, and to respect the privacy wishes of Canadians, the government has introduced the voluntary National Household Survey (NHS). "

As one super-alert reader notes:

"I have been reading about the cancelling of the census by different governments. Do you think that this has anything to do with the future deaths coming from the GOM? If there are a lot of deaths, it would be tough to prove if there were no numbers to back it up."

Hmmm...could be...but Occam's Razor suggests something much simpler:  Since government now rules people, rather than the other way around, there's an embedded message which should be obvious to all:

 

Obvious inference: People generally no longer count.

 

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Coping: Too Much Luck?

The old saying goes "Some people have all the luck!" and when expressed, it's usually because some people have experienced something that's well, statistically improbable, shall we say?

 

Take the case of the 63-year old retired math teacher from Texas who has won the Texas Lotto now an amazing four times hitting for $21-million.

 

Odd - statistically speaking - is what happens when you put the word "luck" into a Google news item search.  There's the case of a $25-million Power Ball winner up in the Connecticut area who had a one week old Audio R8 go up in flames.

---

I've studied the subject of luck to still be stymied by it.  A friend who worked as an electronics designer at Los Alamos for a while (yep, intricate timing thingies) maintained that your odds of winning a lotto seem to be about the same whether you buy one ticket or a hundred.  The odds are so small, as to not matter, at those levels, he explained.  But, he'd still buy a Lotto ticket in Washington now and then since "If you don't buy a ticket, then your odds of winning are zero...  Made sense, the way he explained in.

 

Luck gets mentioned in the sports context a lot.  And example of the close tie between sports and gambling can be seen in the placement of a new casino in central Pennsylvania at the Penn National Race Course.

 

Luck in sports comes up in stories about things like the Netherlands outcome in the World Cup: "When the luck finally ran out" and in Tinsel Town, too where headlines like "Disney Channel's newest hit "Good Luck Charlie" is picked up for a second season..."

 

A fair number of saying revolve about 'luck' - like the one "If it wasn't for bad luck, I would have any luck at all..."  Some folks attribute this to cartoon character George Jetson circa 1962.

 

When things like the "Richest Men in the World" come out, I frequently ask myself "How much of these people's accomplishments is blind luck, the right sketchy move in a key acquisition along the way...just what set them on the path to super-wealth?" 

 

In case you're wondering, Bill Gates of Microsoft is ranked #2 this year behind Mexico's Carlos Slim Helu.

 

Bad luck, huh?

 

Shopping With Elaine

I don't get off the ranch very often...once or twice a month seems to be it lately, perhaps because I've become something of a recluse, or I'm winding up a number of projects that are just eating into my time a lot lately.  But Tuesday I wandered up to Tyler with Elaine to do some shopping for our trip next week to the Pacific Northwest - part pleasure, part business.

 

A number of observations about whatr's growing and what's not:

• The number of people eating 'down home' and 'comfort food' seems to be increasing.  The roadside BBQ joints looked busier than they have in the past.

• I noticed that Northern Tool now has a Tyler outlet...this being one of the most dangerous store in the world to send a man into without a wife holding the wallet.  Almost as dangerous as West Marine, Cabela's or Cheaper than Dirt.  The way I've got it figured, Northern Tool coming to town will mean Harbor Freight may be nearby - for now, their closest store is Longview, which explains why we're not completely broke yet.

 

The merchandise consumers buy these days is surprising.  E hit the shoe department at Dillard's and held up two pairs of new sneakers.  "The one on the left looks like a dirty tennis shoe!" I informed here.  Seriously, it was in earth tones and grays and looked like it needed a good scrubbing. 

 

The least expensive shoes looked the most like the kind worn around hospitals...plain white.  The more tread, logos and odd cushions, springs, and what-have-you's, the higher the price.  never understood why people pay for space to advertise brands...go figure.

 

Still on point:  Why anyone would buy acid-washed, stone beaten jeans escapes me, too.  "Hell, half the wear is gone from 'em and people are paying like-new prices...how stupid can people be?"

 

And the "Western" shirts in other stores we visited were about three or four times what Western shirts go for agt the local Tractor Supply store, where you can find both jeans with full prikce wear left in 'em, and the real McGoslin shirts.

 

In the end, I was convinced that I should buy a ragged collar (black & design) tee-shirt with a fancy white shirt (dual pockets and epaulettes) over it.  Elaine seems to think it looks 'hip'.  I figure it looks like what people were wearing in Burbank 5-years ago.

 

In the end, I also opted for a military-looking olive drab Polo shirt and matching Polo pants.  I don't play Polo, mind you. Again, epaulettes seem to be an 'in' thing.  The rest of my 'wardrobe update' will be handled by TSC and Cavenders. 

 

Say what you will about Western wear, at least I won't be looking like a refugee from a skate park and the clothes won't look like recycled military gear, or be half worn-out looking when I buy 'em.

 

You do starch & press creases into your Wranglers and polish your boots, right?

 

That You, Gunny?

For the well-armed:  "Legal heat: 50 State Guide to Firearm Lawns and Regulations".  As an iPhone ap, too.

 

Well F*ck Me Department

The FCC has been stung by a 2nd Circuit Court decision that the commission's rules on indecency are too vague.  No shit?

 

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Tuesday July 13, 2010

Feel Better Tuesday: Rally On

Slowly, but surely, you can sense that 'release' - as differentiated from building tensions - is beginning to take hold, and it's not an entirely bad this...so far.  On the plus side, there's word that BP has put a new cap over the oil spew/blue ocean murder scene in the Gulf and pressure testing of that oughta get underway shortly.  Related: The Coast Guard has redefined media access rules to allow better access to covering the goo.

 

On the financial side, Alcoa is out with pretty good earnings to at least start things off on a positive note, even if Portugal has been kicked down two notches in underwriter rankings from Moody's. 

 

Never you mind that a Chinese credit rating outfit has downgraded the US debt paper to AA with a negative outlook. Long term, that July 11th move could ripple is frightening ways...hardly inb keeping with Tuesday morning's earnings euphoria.

 

Oh sure, the Euro may have slipped a bit on the Portugal item, but the PIIGS aren't playing dead (yet), especially with word the Greek 1-year T-bill sale was oversubscribed.  Just don't tare too long at reports that Spain's inflation is kicking up in advance of a VAT hike, otherwise the bliss of Tuesday might wear out quickly.

 

All of which has me wondering if it's not time to blow out of my short positions in light of a conversation I had with the Sage of Oklahoma, Robin Landry yesterday.  He's got a wave count that allows for the market to clib as high as 10,600-10,700 before turning down.

 

The problem is, as he's so fond of saying, "Surprises are usually, but not always, to the downside in a bear market."  This may be 'feel better Tuesday' on the surface, but I wonder if a 3 3/4'ths percent further up move would justify the commissions out, the commissions to get back in, and the risk of being out when the next Big Move to the downside gets underway.

 

This is not financial advice, mind you.  Just musings about my own account and nothing would surprise me less than a fake-out-the-bears move to the upside through tomorrow, and then a hard-move down on Thursday as index options lock at the close and then Friday sees option expiration.

 

Whenever I wonder about options expiration, I try to remember to look back at the historical levels of the previous month.  In this case, Index options on June 17th closed at 10,434.17 and stocks closed on June 18th with the Dow at 10,450.64...so to see a rally to those kind of levels to avoid writing big checks to the bears seems entirely doable.

 

At least through today, more upside seems to remain.  In cases like this it's tempting to churn my own account a big, but instead, I think I'll take Elaine out to lunch.  That promises to be a much more fitting way to spend Feel Good Tuesday.

 

Big is Beautiful

An old axiom in finance is that the only time banks will really cut loose with 'easy money' is when the customer doesn't need it.  Case in point from today's headlines is an AP report that "Small companies denided credit as big firms thrive."

 

Luminous Rain and Rain Pain

Here's a rather odd report out of China:  "Rain of Luminous beams appears in the sky of Xiamen Huanado Road".  Or, reign of Photoshop? 

---

But on a much more serious note, a Canadian correspondent sent this dandy picture of the skies about to open up over Saskatchewan...again...

 

Another source tells me up to 12-million acres have gone unplanted in the Canadian prairie region - which pencils out to something north of 18-thousand square miles running behind schedule.  No confirmation from official sources, but with a calculator, and a little digging, we're seeing that Canada's wheat crop is expected to be down about 25% this year.

 

And the precip is continuing...with oddities like golf-ball sized hail in Alberta Monday.

 

Divide & Conquer Dept.

The headline that "Michelle Obama rouses NAACP before vote condemning 'racist' elements of Tea Party" gets me to thinking someone's wife is grabbing headlines in an effort to switch attention away from a couple of wars, a gulf disaster, and the imminent arrival of new & higher taxes. 

 

Since claims of 'racism' is an emotionally 'hot' topic, it may work, too, but the cynical observer could be tempted to pass this off as 'issue creation' - another way to keep America divided and conquered. 

 

"Racist elements" doesn't name names, or give examples, does it?  Nope...just whips people up and stampedes them into a new divide (replete with new labels) where there may not have been one before.  Seriously: I spent about a half hour looking for a specific example of the claimed 'racist elements' and damned if I could find one.

 

Don't know why the MSM doesn't ask for concrete examples, either, especially when such emotionally hot language is used, but that'd ruin a dandy  issue switcher, wouldn't it?  And that wouldn't fit the MSM/PTB agenda of keeping America divided and conquered.  So ,bring on them sweeping generalizations and don't question assumed "facts", OK?

----

In the larger context, this is a splendid example of how the "Me, Me, Me" paradigm is playing a couple of 'Me" groups against one another in an attempt to keep the new "Us, Us, Us" paradigm from arising any faster.  Such are socioeconomic transitions, the Hegelian Dialectic, orchestrated ever-so-sweetly by our centralized & controlled of mass media.

 

Real issues - like the American aristocracy?  They get overlooked.

 

Rearview Economics

Quick!  Everyone cheer the new balance of trade report which went $2.5 billion the wrong way in May.

The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, through the Department of Commerce, announced today that total May exports of $152.3 billion and imports of $194.5 billion resulted in a goods and services deficit of $42.3 billion, up from $40.3 billion in April, revised. May exports were $3.5 billion more than April exports of $148.7 billion. April imports were $5.5 billion more than April imports of $189.0 billion.

 

In May, the goods deficit increased $1.9 billion from April to $54.5 billion, and the services surplus was virtually unchanged at $12.2 billion. Exports of goods increased $3.0 billion to $107.2 billion, and imports of goods increased $4.9 billion to $161.7 billion. Exports of services increased $0.6 billion to $45.0 billion, and imports of services increased $0.6 billion to $32.9 billion.

 

The goods and services deficit increased $17.4 billion from May 2009 to May 2010. Exports were up $26.4 billion, or 21.0 percent, and imports were up $43.8 billion, or 29.1 percent.

Gee...a bigger trade gap.  Look surprised, dammit.

 

Business Law

Really interesting case to keep an eye on involving something called "First Sale".  The idea is that you have the right to sell a copyrighted work to someone else, if you legitimately bought it in the first place.  But, not so fast says the court...  It's complicated, but worth a read, especially if you buy products and then resell them...especially if the products happen to have a copyright logo on them.  By extension, I'm thinking this may spill over into software since there's no telling what's buried in EULA's.

 

Tisk, Tisk, Tut, Tut

There's a report in the European Union Times that makes an eye popping claim: That Egypt's King Tut was actually 99.6% Western European Y chromosomes.

 

Implicates of this are huge - and far-reaching.  What was a Euro-dude doing being buried with all that loot?

 

I can almost hears the crypto-archeology presses firing up on this one.  My theory?  Tut and other 'great leaders' from antiquity were really either time travelers who hit Mr. Sherman and Peabody's 'Wayback Machine" too hard, too far, and broke it.  OR they were dropped off by aliens which just happen to be big on Western/European chromosomes for their gene-splicing of abductees. 

 

Weird?  Hell, what is weird anymore?  Hmmm...maybe this will work...

 

Armed Pool Guards

Yup..."out there" as it may seem, armed guards are now on duty (or will be later on today ;-)) at Buffalo, NY public pools since a lifeguard was dunked by rowdies. 

 

An ever-alert reader who submitted this to our news tip line, pictures it this way:

"...it had me shaking my head in disappointment on so many levels. I was able to cure that momentarily when the image came to mind of an officer asking someone to get out of the pool.

"Sir, I'm going to need you to step out of the pool and put your hands where I can see them."

Had your fill of "strange" yet?  If not, keep reading...

 

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Coping:  The Perfect Gift

I sometimes wonder "What's the perfect gift for someone who has everything?"

 

I can relax.  There's an eBay listing today for  (take a nitro pill, this is gonna get ever weirder than the armed pool guards story...)

World Famous HUTCHISON ANTI-GRAVITY LAB

Not only that, but pop for another $10K and John Hutchinson himself will come out to wherever you are and show you how this stuff works.

 

If I had a spare $50-grand laying around, I'd probably buy this spiffy IFR Mooney M20A, or just let the money gather dust in the walk-in vault where I go to play Scrooge McDuck every so often with my sole gold coin.

 

Still, it would be a lot of fun for the home electronics hobbyist...which gives me a great idea.  I think I'll propose this to the leadership of the local ham radio club.  My pitch would be simple:  "Just think how much prestige we'd have as a club if we could hoist antennas to any elevation desired by simply applying the right electronics!!!"

 

Naw...they're too sensible, I suppose.  But I just know there's gotta be someone who wants to make things go float-about...

---

Since we're heading out for a 10-day road trip next week (columns should continue uninterrupted if all goes according to plan) I've got to make a 'supply run' today.  Time to buy some new clothes, according to 'she-who-must-be-obeyed'.  Something about tattered cuffs on pants - which doesn't bother me any, since the rest of them isn't worn out and besides, neither Zeus nor the goats seems to care.  'Specially around feeding time.

 

This may seem like a Bohemian kind of attitude, but near as I can figure, clothes long ago passed their useful role in life.  Originally intended to warm or protect humans from the elements and wild beasties, clothes are today one of the biggest planned obsolescence waste of resources I can think of.  People are forever throwing out perfectly good clothes in the name of 'fashion' and even in third world countries, people will pay more for a designer logo shirt than something plain and every bit as functional in every other way.

 

Last year, I figure my spending on clothing was about $150-bucks.  New shorts, socks, a pair of shoes, and a couple of work shirts.  I'll likely send three times that today alone - trying to get 'cleaned up' for public appearances...set a good example for the kids and such.

 

Which has to be the longest excuse ever for not making a bid on Hutchison's lab equipment.  But, at least I'll look like I could afford it.

 

ISP Exodus

I noticed a first in my emails this morning: An outfit in India trying to sell me hosting services.  Not a bad price - after currency conversion about $178 per year for 10 GB of storage and unlimited bandwidth, 50 domains, Cpanel, unlimited subdomains , FTP accounts, MySQL databases and email accounts. 

 

Just when I thought there was nothing left to outsource...

 

Tuesday at the WuJo: 

Nessie's Cousin's Appetizers?

A reader report you'll find interesting to dissect on the mat where reality meets woo-woo - that place we call the WuJo:

Hello George

As stories about friendly and quite fearful critter living in scottish lake might be well known and treated as a good hoax by many people, than it ain't that easy to answer for question like:

What happened with 19 people who died in the neighborship of one Russian lake in a short time and are the witnesses really nuts or maybe...?

See, we can joke about mythical creatures,  but only till the moment they begin eating us, right? We could think that few guys really could have drowned there, but 19?

I'd offer to help in the investigation, but I seem to have misplaced my fishing license, sorry...besides, I'm just plumb tuckered out.

 

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Monday July 12, 2010

Into Release Language

So, what did happen on July 11th that moves us into a summer of saw-tooth release language until we get to the tipping point bigger (by an order of magnitude) bigger than 9/11 about the first week-10 days of November?

 

Personally, I don't think it was the World Cup,. but a few readers wonder..

Yesterday is re-read Clif's summary about release language. The World Cup - building up global tensions for ages, watched by the biggest ever TV audience (not me - I have better things to do), culminated last night on the 11th July! Of course the wittering on about it will fizzle on in bars and newspapers for weeks. Hopefully this was the 'big event'.... hopefully.....

More likely, it will revolve around much bigger release events as, just to pull out an example, "Hizballah advances 20,000 troops to Israeli border" was being reported by Dekba.com, or their coverage of the coming Ahmadinejad visit to Lebanon:

"DEBkafile's Iranian sources define the trip's purpose as a confrontational exercise to warn the US and Israel that full implementation of the tough new UN, US and European sanctions will provoke an Iranian war on Israel - waged from Lebanon."

While it's axiomatic that "Wall Street Climbs a Wall of Worry", we have to wonder with trillions in short-term borrowing coming due over the next couple of years, if a lack of anyone with money left to lend might not tip the world into global economic collapse.

 

Even president Obama's debt & deficit commission has become outright gloomy about America's financial future. 

 

Then there's the little matter of the Gulf Spill.  Latest is Coast Guard admiral Thad "Allen says key test could begin soon on whether a new cap can withstand pressure from Gulf oil" and if that goes well, maybe some good news out of the Gulf today or tomorrow, which would release a lot of tensions about on schedule.

 

Whatever future events bring, they ought to get underway shortly, so about concurrent with the thousands greeting the total eclipse on Easter Island, take a good look about this morning since this is the top of the emotional roller-coaster and from here, there's a long ways down to go before year-end. 

 

These will no doubt be looked at as 'the good old days."  Seat belts on?  Release to release tensions for a while?  Might start with decaf, huh?

 

Number Week

Not much in the way of numbers today, but tomorrow bring the Treasury budget and the Trade Balance.  Wednesday rolls out retail sales and export prices along with FOMC meeting minutes.  Along about Thursday there's PPI and the weekly employment update.  And come Friday, the 800-pound soccer player: the Consumer Price Index.

 

Hiding the Fed

Don't know if you read last week's Ron Paul remarks about how the Fed (thanks to democorps) is getting another pass on transparency.  According to the Congressman's Texas Straight Talk site:

"The Federal Reserve Transparency Act would eliminate restrictions on GAO audits of the Federal Reserve and open Fed operations to Congressional oversight. Additionally, audits could include discount window operations, open market operations, and agreements with foreign central banks, such as the ongoing dollar swap operations with European central banks. "

The outcome:  "...House and Senate negotiators failed to include the full language of my legislation in the conference report for the financial reform bill, and the full Congress missed yet another opportunity to demand accountability from the Federal Reserve by defeating the Republicans’ motion to recommit. "

 

So, the guys who have been watering down your Dollar's purchasing power by (on average) about 2.3% per year since they hijacked Congress' mandate to control America's money supply get to keep operating in secret.  Must be nice, huh?

 

Political Correctness Debate

Message to the WH from a lot of democorps is clear:  The Obama folks are on the wrong side by fighting the Arizona tougher border laws.

 

Weekend Bombers/Bummers

Two bombings in Uganda killed at least 70 people.  Try not to look surprised here: Islamic militants are suspected.

 

Ditto the case of the Pakistan bombing which killed 102 people.

 

Emptying Prisons?

"Inmate population drops for the first time in 40 years" says the Christian Science Monitor.

 

Depending on where you look, things are getting worse - like in Philly where the homicide rate is up - or better as in LA where a slight improvement in crime stats is being noticed.

 

Several possible answers come to mind:  One might be 'better lawyering for defending the perps'. Another might be 'nothing left to steal'.  My third choice: Gangs are intimidating people in some places to not report crime or they'll pop a cap in yah...

 

Dumb Question of the Day

"Why is Roman Polanski not being extradited to the US?"

 

Key thing seems to be insufficient US paperwork and Polanski's ability to post 4.5 million francs of bail money.  Pencils out to about $4.52 million US dollars.

 

Something about pipers and tunes rattles in the back of my mind...

 

Peel & Stick Dosimeters?

Cool new product note from Shane Connor at www.ki4u.com:

George, This should be of interest to your readers, would appreciate mention of it, if you share my enthusiasm for it.

After 8 months of R&D with military contractor, we are today releasing our new, and exclusive to ki4u, product; The RADSticker™.

The RADSticker™ is an inexpensive, as little as $2, peel & stick, postage stamped sized, instantly color changing radiation dosimeter.

More details at www.ki4u.com/products1.php  and for a Special Limited-Time Introduction, we are giving one away FREE with any order of our other products there.

Note back to Shane:

Hell yeah!  Neat technology, bro.

Call Iran's Post Office and propose it for their stamps.

Propose to Israel....sell to both sides.

Send my consulting subsidiary 3% of profit.

G

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Monday at the WuJo

Coping: Grokking the Complement

I should probably post this morning's wild-ass dreams over at the National Dream Center - they were as good (and real-feeling) as any I have ever had and they explained a lot about the world and duality...marvelous adventure to dream and remember.

 

The first dream began with being in another person's body and experience.  I was outside of Washington D.C. and being met at an airport by a man with an atrophied right arm who was very high up in some kind of intelligence organization.  I remember distinctly being invited to some kind of scientific briefing on UFO's and 'other-worldly research' which had come up with a breakthrough explaining how earth was increasingly experiencing seemingly incongruous phenomena.

 

I accompanied this man to what was - at least on the surface - a three or four story medical facility, but upon entering the building, we walked down a flight or two of stairs in a concrete and welded pipe/metal railings stairwell - typical of fireproof escape routes - and from there we went through a set of wood-grained doors, and into what seemed like a lower level of the hospital.

 

But ahead, and just to the right was another wood-grain covered metal door with a small wire-glass window and a touchpad key entrance, and passing through this, we went into something that can only be described as a 'press box' affair overlooking what seemed to be a student operating theatre kind of affair.

 

I was handed one of 6 - 8 manila bound books - each about one inch thick - which contained, I was told, a summary of the government's decades-long research into UFO, cattle mutilations and other-worldly encounters - which 'solved' the whole field.

 

Paper clipped to the cover of each was about a half page warning that began with an old-time newspaper headline masthead font: "Official Secrets Act" with a few paragraphs of warning not to every disclose any of what would be revealed.

 

From there I went into a short briefing about the major finding of the report which boiled down was that the government's best current guess what that what we talk to be 'other-worldly' and UFO-related had been discovered to be what was called the 'Complementary World'.

 

Best I can simplify it, in the world we live in everyday on 'this side', we are on a 'side' of reality where duality's main feature is 'hard - or particle-based".  On the OTHER side is what was called the 'world complement' which was the soft or wave or complement in mathematical terms.

 

Helps to remember light can either be a particle or a wave depending on expectations of the observer, right?

 

It has been a while since I'd looked at complements in terms of mathematics, so I guessed that this 'other world' would be something like a complement in set theory which I've had up to my eyeballs dealing with Clif's world:

"In set theory, a complement of a set A refers to things not in (that is, things outside of), A. The relative complement of A with respect to a set B, is the set of elements in B but not in A. When all sets under consideration are considered to be subsets of a given set U, the absolute complement of A is the set of all elements in U but not in A.

It was explained in this manila covered book (with the punch-hole metal binding) that while in general that might seem correct from a whole world perspective, it was a little more grown-up than that and more closely related to Banach Space.  In other words, the 'best guess' was that most phenomena in the woo-woo department related to an orthogonal complement of our here-and-now world - a concept I was already familiar with having read

P.D. Ouspensky's Tertium Organum: Or, The Third Canon of Thought and a Key to the Enigmas of the World.

 

Close, but not quite a cigar, I was told, in this dream.  The discussion was cut short by time and I was instructed to leave the binder on the desk in the room.  They would be collected and selected parts would be delivered to me for further study along with further research material.  Only special people got to touch the reports and they didn't leave the room.

 

Say, this was getting to be quite a dream!

 

The next scene found me back in my office.  Apparently, in this complementary world I was employed as some kind of policeman or detective; no uniform, just an office with plenty of coffee.  I had started to read a few pages of the extracted material promised at the earlier meeting when a deliveryman showed up with several hand trucks full of banker-boxes of reports.  The pile was about 5-6 feet high and maybe half a dozen stacks when he was done delivering them.

 

"You have to read all these and see what fits in your area..." he advised me.

 

I inquired whether just dumping them off in a detective's office was really such a smart thing to do with what must surely be highly classified material, but he assured me that it was not.  "The individual cases is not what's important... it's what ties it all together that's important," he explained and then left.

 

Wow.  Some dream.

 

I awoke and looked at the clock: 1:55 AM.  Hmmm...plenty of time to go back and continue on in this one.  Fine dream it was...

---

Not sure how I got there, but this realization about complementary worlds was suddenly putting a lot of things into perspective for me:

• It explained how "UFO abductee" reports came about, since people in the 'complementary world" seemed to be able to open portals between one world and the other.

• Moreover, it explained how the other world would be incredibly worried about nuclear weapons testing and why events like Roswell took place in close proximity to Alamogordo.  It was almost like the 'other side' got the key insight into bridging worlds shortly after we got the key insight into smashing atoms.  Complements in a sense, even there.

• The laser-like precision of things -- like animal mutilations -- came into focus as well, since the 'other side' seemed to have made as much progress with 'light' tooling, as we'd made with atom-smashing.

• It even explained why - when folks like Ed Grimsley report seeing multiple spacecraft overhead with extended optical range night vision involved in some kind of battle - they could very well be seeing the orthogonal world.  Stars?  Not presactly...more like portals to the complementary world.

• Even that car-morphing story from a while back made sense now, a complementary event at some higher level.

 

This part of the dream seemed to be taking place on our side of the veil, but it explained time jumps, apparitions, and so much more, it was really a marvelous dream.

 

I even got a 'message' of sorts, that whenever I needed to, there was a way to 'reach across' to the orthogonal world and contact the 'complement of George' that lived there.

 

No, it's not exactly like "The Strange Case Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", but the distinct learning point I work up with three hours later at 4:55 AM today, was that it's the light particle/wave paradox is what causes our complementary world to exist (or, ours to be the 'complement' for them).  It even explained what some think of as 'odd jumps' in religious works:

"In John 8:12 Jesus proclaims-seemingly out of the blue-"I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

A reference to the light paradox?  Hmmm...

 

Not sure what to do with this dream-download, but since 'my complement' seems to be doing good work 'over there' I ought to have more contact and see what else pops out in the way of answers. 

 

Gets me to wondering if that's why humans don't reach states of perfection more often; but maybe one side of a larger reality 'gets it right' but but it's to no avail if the other side, the one in the 'complementary world', is lagging behind. 
 

Hmmm... many hours of pondering to go here.  Could it be - as in set theory - that there must be congruence between the worlds in order to facilitate spiritual advancement?  And if that's the case, is prayer or meditation how we maybe connect with that 'other self' and work toward reunification between the parts of personality?  More ponders.

 

The rest of the dream was spent sailing (at night) with a fleet of other vessels and visiting a strange port - a kind of complement of many I've visited when sailing from B.C. down to Southern California.  Similar, but each different.  It's almost as though even the map or the complementary world is different, but with a vague familiarity. 

 

The complement of Elaine did a fine job at the helm, and for what it's worth, seeming to enjoy steering the boat which would be a complement of her real feelings about boats in this world.  Not terribly keen on then --- here.

 

The depth-sounder didn't work right, perhaps because electronics act strangely in the complementary world, since orthogonal magnetism would be.....but that will wait.

 

All this in better-than-iMax pictures, with sounds, winds, tastes, and visuals - it's truly an amazing dream world to visit.  I really want to nap now.

 

OCD II

Ah, just the things for a Monday.  "Obsessive Computer Disorder" is the Urban Dictionary word of the day.

 

Surrounded by seven monitors, and four terabytes, and 14 cores, you don't suppose I'm presenting early symptoms, do you?

 

Q' oqi-oqi To Go

My friend Clif's new boat, a more or less traditional Umiak (such as Haidas built out of Hypalon impregnated skins?) is nearly complete for our planned video taping of the rickety time machine video next week when Elaine & I go off adventuring in the frozen, at least comparatively so, Northwest.

 

I spent a good deal of Sunday warming up the video editing gear, which doesn't get used very often, updating the licensed music library, buying some new effect-generator transitions and the usual 'fixin to get ready' work.  Do I lay down the local tracks with an MXL large diaphragm condenser mics, or with one of the Sennheisers?  Am I going for an Orson Wells sound, or more like a Stacy Keach track?  And how come the VST plugins for Samplitude have gone wonky?  If it ain't one thing, it's another...

 

Clif's boat name (in Coastal Salish) means something like "slow poke", or in Hawaiian, something like 'smooth as butter' or 'last to arrive, while in Maori it seems to come in about as 'last /finest flower of the season'.

 

An email from the Philippines adds even more linguistic depth to the name:

"In the Philippines we have a word: UMIYAK, which means "tearfully crying". We have many dialects and this word appears in the (Central Luzon dialects) such asTagalog, Kapangpangan, Bulakenyo and other dialects.

Note however, UMIYAK has a diacritical mark over the A, (when written by purists) which might give it a different pronunciation than UMIAK, which may have the accent on the U.

My preferred mode of dream sailing (because I have never actually been on one) is on the Pacific Proa, which my ancestors probably used to get themselves all over the Pacific from somewhere Polynesian and beyond.

Keep on doing what you do and keep writing about it. You are both doing splendid informing others of your work and thoughts. I don't know anyone out here who thinks like both of you and Jeff or David. So my family just hears it from me. They humor me, of course. My eye-opening started recently and is continuing like lightning. How I found you and the others just mentioned was a stroke of vision. We are far from the oil spill, so it is not in the consciousness of many folk here. And indeed there are other things like floods and earthquakes that keep us on our toes. The rainy season has started and the heat is off, not like during our recent summer of 39 to 40 degrees. Dodge bags ready in car and beside the bed too. Also pieing up for whatever comes.

We will have more to say in the coming months.

Linguistics seem curious critters, alright.  They are almost never precise as monkey-mind insists they be if indeed they are a 'hard' expression of science; which they are not.  Capturing archetypes and major change-popints, like the one in November, or looking out from the top of a building tension period, like we're at today...they do fine at such tasks.

 

But from an intelligence perspective, perhaps one reason they have not taken off is that we living (and evidenced by BP at an archetype level) in a "drill-down" world.

 

Mass consciousness isn't so neat -- in fact, it's outright messy.  The Poindexter-types with drill-downs might be able to spot the meaningful phone call and such, but to toss a dart at a future date and say "Big something-or-other happens here" is a lot more difficult.  Perhaps, as I've suggested before, over time an integration of technologies will happen, perhaps integrating language shift analysis of selected monitored phone calls for linguistic clues as to what enemies of America have up their robes would be a first step.

--

Naming of boats has always been an important matter, since the name of the boat not only says a lot about the nature of the boat, but about the owner and the footprint he or she wished to leave behind with people who see the name and the boat.  "Finest flower" is good. Especially when it's one boatwright's between PERL scripts rendition of nautical design.

 

If you can zoom out far enough, there's a code to be seen in either case; the code among sailors, and the code amongst coders.  A shared aversion to leaks, a desire for speed without effort, and sense of balance.

 

Robert Heinlein may have said it best:

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.”

So another workweek begins, and as the third cup is poured, it's time once again to make that most difficult of choices: "Are we being humans, or are we humans being?"  There're savory adventures in both.

 

Now, about that nap...

 

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