Earlier this week we were talking about the couple that was on I-5, heading north who – after staying overnight just off the 5 and getting back on it – suddenly found themselves on a different freeway and having to drive for about 40-odd minutes to get back to the freeway they were just on.
This is a fine example of what happens in “the WuJo” – a kind of mental dojo where the observed reality is matched up with ther allegations of science and we’re left to wonder if there’s not something way stranger than acknowledged down under those outlier data sets.
With this in mind, carefully read the following account, which once again hints that there’s something about space-time that is not so stable as most people would have you think:
“Dear George,
Back toward the end of January, my husband and I were returning from one of his doctor’s visits at KU Medical in Kansas City. It was late in the day and we had about a 40 mile trip on the Kansas Turnpike heading west out of Kansas City. In the last few years they have moved the termination toll booth about 5 miles further west because of the “new” NASCAR track. Then, presumably because they had a few million laying around gathering dust they decided to create an exit to serve Tonganoxie, a town of 2700 about 5 miles north of the Interstate and Eudora (2800) about 5 miles to the south. The exit is barely used and lit up bright as day and is about 1.5-2 miles away from the turnpike service center. It is very hard to miss.
And yet… on that evening, it was twilight because the doctor visit was one of the last of the day, I was suddenly passing the service center and the Tonganoxie exit was no where to be seen — really — you can actually see the giant pink lights from the service center — but no Tonganoxie exit in the rear view.
Interestingly, we also got home about 6 minutes earlier than we normally do. Now there is no reason to think that I was speeding. I don’t usually go more than 75 on the turnpike. I had the bizarre feeling that “something” had happened but couldn’t put my finger on it. I don’t know of any weirding stuff that goes on around here like superconductivity or such … well there is the Bannister Federal Complex where they make nukes and where the conditions are… um…. hot. (Lots of folk getting sick working on “either side” (nuke or non-nuke) of that place… (most recent story on it here a Fox 4 report, but there’s more info about it at the NBC 41 site) but it is was at least 40 miles away from my location.
Anyway, weird. Hasn’t happened again… yet… on the highway, anyway. I did have a lost time episode whilst staring up at chemtrails back in the Fall. About a 20 minute gap of time passed while I stood looking up in the sky (apparently) after walking my dogs. Again. Odd. The chemtrail was passing over head I looked at it, looked down at my dogs who were at my feet waiting for me to throw the ball. I looked back up at the chemtrail and it was virtually dissipated in what seemed like only seconds. I went inside and had been out of the house for over 30 minutes but only had memory of a very short 5 minute walk around the house and two ball tosses that take a total of about 3 minutes. No aliens in site, so I can only think they are seeding time particles in those chemtrails.
Stranger and stranger…
Space-time is obviously not permanently fixed and tied to some grand cosmic anchor.
In fact, just t’other day I was reading how sunspots may be matter getting so hot that time runs backwards in them, a kind of local event-horizon on the sun’s surface. Well, if that’s why light doesn’t come from sunspots, then obviously the notion of mini-black holes may not be so far-fetched as the science teachers tried to tell me as a kid.
But to their credit, of course, the whole business of science has a problem since it’s founded on reductionism which believes at its core that everything can be reduced to this or that. Instead, the more science gets done, the more complex things get, which is really not where the reductionist crowd wanted to go in the first place. They want simple and surprise!
Ain’t no simple in Universe.
Damn Vexing Computer Problem
Say, here’s a weird adventure for you – check this out:
- When I open Outlook 2010 everything looks normal. I have policies set so that nothing runs without my say-so.
- As soon as I click onto an email (to come up in the reading pane) the system asks me if I want to save a couple of .html files that come up. An example file is {17A2588D-6558-43A7-AEA8-3853664A2E79}.html
- I have uninstalled all changes made in the past week, rolled back the restore point, trashed all temp files, scrubbed all unread emails out of Outlook, run virus, malware and Maxa Cookie Manager and as of last night, it was working fine.
- But, I come in this morning and it’s happening again.
Although, in truth, since I had to tell the computer cancel twice to read an email, it has made me a lot more judicious about which emails to read.
Interestingly, down at the code level, those files will have bits of any HTML in the emails I receive. Is thinks some Outlook setting I roached? Sho’ ’nuff.
I got it to stop, by Turning off the People Pane (Outloook>View>People Pane) but only after seven or eight hours of Richarding. Which, amongst us computational grown-ups is the long version of dicking around with it. Ever try to write coherent market and news analysis while troubleshooting? Yuck.
Another one of those “undocumented features” perhaps? FMTT.
As long as you’re fixing my computer for me…Outlook has also stopped opening links directly when I click them and yes, Exploder is my default browser…
Flying IFR isn’t this complicated. Otherwise ever plane in the world would have crashed minutes after being launched. At least there, the source of a pending crash is obvious, know what I’m sayin’?
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One regular reader signs off his emails “Waiting for the Cosmic Ex-Lax.”
Here, too. Although with email issues like I’ve been having this week, I’m investing heavily in suppolies of Charmin….
College: Worth It?
Ah! A favorite matter of preachifying of mine (No! School is not about learning to think anymore, it’s a tuition and yield per student game…) has now been taken up by SurvivorWoman over at her site..
Same conclusions as I’ve proposed previously, but different data set supporting the conclusion and definitely worth the read…’specially if you’ve got kids dragging you toward that poorhouse…
We’re learning that this works into their 40′s, BTW so yes, the light at the end of the tunnel is what you think it is…
Speculations
A reader asked a very sensible question, which I thought I’d share the answer to, because it may have crossed your mind:
Mornin’ George-
The time has come when I just can’t keep my mouth shut any longer. Having read you daily for almost three years ( both on US and Peoplenomics), I can’t understand why a fairly smart guy like yourself would stoop to play in the cesspool that is wallsreet’s “stock market”. I, personally think that Elliot wave analysis is pure BS, but that is what makes for ballgames. In defense of my position, I don’t believe that one of Landry:s predictions has come true-especially given the “wiggle room ” he usually seems to offer with them.
Rather than than chasing short term blips in the market based on perceived current events, why not develop a long term picture based on fundamentals and stick with it??? As an inveterate gambler myself, I well understand the allure of having big money “riding” (whether on the “field” or in the form of 35 long bond contracts…I’ve done both to my great chagrin. In contrast, in 1990 I came to the conclusion that the current system was hopelessly rigged against the little guy, an d that inflation would eat me up if I stayed “in paper investments”. At that time I guess I became what you would call a “gold bug”, and went all in. As you can imagine that has served me well during my subsequent 20 yrs. of retirement.
George, As you know, free advice is worth just what you pay for it, but it truly pains me to see you playing the pawn of those Wall St. assholes by putting money into their rigged game. I truly feel that by adding to your sole gold and silver coins. over time, you will end up far ahead.
My answer – a bit wordy – went like this:
“Will put up the answer in the column tomorrow, and with no name of course, but the short answer is once I got it into my head that I should play the market like it’s crooked my profits went up like crazy.
Since the start of the year I’m up a bit over 46 percent. That’s as good a reason to play as any, I think.
I’ve come to a couple of conclusions that allow me to do this: a) I am not in the market all the time – only about half. B) I know what their approximate plans are (the PTB) from reading Clif’s stuff and c) I am timid as hell. In for short pops only when easy money is at hand and then scamper out immediately.
We have differing opinions of Landry’s calls… I very much value them. But they are controversial at times, which is why I only post them now on the Peoplenomics side.
That said, however, he is not a wild-eyed gambler/testosterone crazed male trader-slinger like…er…me. He manages the outcomes for his clients with an eye toward good, but non-risky long term gains. So, for example, he would probably shudder at some of my ‘high roller’ moves, such as buying options on an already levered 3X index ETF. And, I don’t know as he would ever go “all in and then some” with client money. He’s a seasoned pro and it’s a highly regulated business managing other people’s dough. Which is why I roll my own and write about that so people can get period huge fits of laughter when Market Eats George.
Then consider this: I am a financial columnist and if I’m to be any good at keeping the reporting up, caffeine-driven trading with real dough on the table is the acid test. I seldom will say anything about which specific trades I’ve done, until after the fact and thus I avoid regulator nightmares. If I’m long – or short – the market, or if I write about what Clif’s work is hinting at for next week, well that’s the grist of a columnist and I am always and forever adding THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE.
I publicly announced my entry into gold in 2001 at $265-275 when everyone else (except you) was hiding. And into silver around $7 in July 2005. To just as much noise and jeering.
Now that I’m looking at gold with some suspicion wondering how high is up, since it looks momentarily “peaky” along with silver, there’s another boo-hiss from the wings; but that doesn’t bother me at all, since I’m running my own life and I’m a big boy who doesn’t cry when I lose and I’ve had some classics there, too. How many columnists in finance announced their purchases publicly and occasionally point out the 500 percent returns (silver) or their 565% returns (gold)?
That said, the only way to report on the goings on at the ‘gang’s hideout’ is to get to know the criminals and delve into the gang’s mindset a bit, but staying somewhere in the gray area between making enough to eat between consulting projects, but not so far as to make an obvious killing, since the rich don’t like small smart-Alec guys to take ‘their money’ too often.
Still, this is the land of the free, home of the day trader, and if I hang around the gang’s hideout and report on that now and again remember this: It’s my duty to take as much from them rich guys as I can. This has been a one-man garage project since day one – Clif’s work too, no fancy IPO’s or venture groups would come near him when the work was new – still probably won’t since being a time monk even the slightest turns a person into a pretty crass/in-your-face-no time for BS kind of person. Not the kind of thing investor relations can deal with. Not the right pedigree or whatever. So screw it. I’m taking all the money I can which is no where near enough.
The wife drives a 6-year old car and my pickup just turned 10. We both work 12-hours a day trying to make the world a better place using our brains and talents and a good part of that is “giving a lot away.” And we liver in a double-wide modular we’ve rebuilt pretty much from the ground up ourselves, although I will probably sub out putting a new roof on it here, shortly.
Last year between taxes and gifting (everything from kids to the food bank to….yada yada) we gave away almost half our AGI. Ever wonder what kind of country this would be if everyone did that?
I tick off a lot of people because I am not a big fan or long-term capital gains at super-low rates. Income is income, the way I see it. And if I were to win the PowerBall or TexasLotto this week (please God!) , I’d cheerfully send in the 40% (or whatever it is at the full-bore rate) since this is America and someone has to pay for it, and I’m not gonna ‘chitz out’ and then hide behind some specious argument. We try to ‘walk the talk.’ So we step up and in return, we lead a relatively stress-free life.
While we may agree that much of wall street is as corrupt as a broken septic system, there are time, like now, that I picture myself more like the latter times day-trading version of Robin Hood: I think of it as taking from the rich and redistributing it without the intervention of a congress which could be outsourced to the lobbyists via eBay at a huge savings.
Even more subversive? I’m spreading that kind of thinking far and wide; we’re only captives to the system if we fail to see how to use it to our own better ends.
People who one time made a killing and then offshored their money into tax havens are welcome to do so, but not if they live in my country where we do take care of the needy, support public education, and them’s that can pay more should and in fact some of us actually do.
It’s easier to make the adjustment to a lower standard of living voluntarily since the Second Depression is going to do that anyway. Again, we try to stay ahead of the curve a bit.
Hope this helps…
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The Ugly – Extensible – Depression
Contrary to what you might think, we’re not really in the guts of the Second Depression yet. We are still in the “fixing to get ready” part, where people have not locked up their wallets and where new cars are still occasionally sold and politicians can still get away with says “Good times are just ahead…” and have enough fools around to believe ‘em and vote ‘em back in again. That changes later this year if we apply a little “extensible thinking” to navigating the Second Depression. Times are about to get much tougher…and some of the developments I’m forecasting based on solid data series may astound you.
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If your computer runs slowly, you may have a problem with cookies. These little code snippets are how some websites (and spyware) recognize you, track your movement on the web and so forth. Here lately, as new class of super cookies has been evolved by the admen (and worse) that are resistant to normal cookie deletions through your browser’s interface. Flash cookies, persistent cookies, and super cookies…all easily managed with the Maxa Research Cookie Manager.
Take it for a test drive by clicking here – and it you like it, activation is easily done. If you’re a heavy web user (who ain’t?) you may find like I do that you’ve accumulating a hundred or more cookies per day. Only a handful need to be white-listed, like your brokerage account or your bank. The rest? Software designed to spy on you that robs you of computer performance. Been using it for several years and pleased as the Dickens with it.
The “Do Drop Inn”
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“Live on $10,000″ A Year
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