Monthly Archives: December 2009
Unemployment Drops a Bit
Latest figures this morning: “In the week ending Dec. 26, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 432,000, a decrease of 22,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 454,000. The 4-week moving average was 460,250, a decrease … Continue reading
Coping: With Welding Stress
It started off well-intentioned – as most such adventures do. I had hauled out the electric welder to throw together an outside welding table that I’d cut the pieces for about 2-months ago in order to get them out of … Continue reading
Iran Watching: Fly, Bye?
Much is being made on the ‘net today about the headline from Radio Nederland that “Ayatollah Khamenei’s jet put on standby…“ Typical is the interpretation that this means Khamenei’s jet might be used for the Iranian leader to flee the … Continue reading
Coping: With Media Trends
A reader – prompted I suppose by talk of a fall-off in internet use in the predictive linguistics post 2012 OR just wondering in general asks: “…did it ever occur to you that the internet is a luxury item and … Continue reading
Housing Prices Still Sliding – but slower…
This should come as no shock – the latest from the S&P/Case-Shiller Housing Price index: “Data through October 2009, released today by Standard & Poor’s for its S&P/Case-Shiller1 Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, show that … Continue reading
Coping: With Harsh Reality
Every so often, a group of major real estate developers get together for a conference where folks try to look ahead. In order to protect my source, I won’t tell you which real estate/developer conference it was, but I’ve been … Continue reading
The Mideast Chessboard
Since the botched terrorist event onboard the Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit this weekend, there’s now concerned being expressed about the possible impact of additional security measures on business air travel. What conspiracy theorists will find especially … Continue reading
Coping: With Excessive Optimism
A kind reader sent me a link to a fine article in the Fairfield Weekly headlined “We’re Screwed!” which then gets into an interview with ShadowStats.com founder John Williams explains the rick of hyperinflation. Worst case scenario? Rioting in the … Continue reading
A Papal Knock-down
Word that the pope was knocked down by a woman as a Christmas Eve mass is interesting since it comes only shortly after the attack on Italian prime minister Berlusconi 10-days ago. The pope got up – apparently unhurt but … Continue reading
Coping: This did not Compute
Assuming you know that a DDoS attack is a distributed denial of service attack on big computer systems, then you might get a grin out of how bad the DDoS attack on Wal-Mart, Amazon and other sites went this week: … Continue reading