Published Monday - Friday about 8 AM Central Time Except Holidays....many major typos are fixed by 8:30 daily

Saturday October 24, 2009    09:20  AM   CDT  New here?  Visit our FAQ     

 Subscribe in a reader         

This site is supported by subscriptions:  For additional content, please subscribe to Peoplenomics. .

Content mirrored at: www.independencejournal.com,                        Kindle (.MOBI) version here

 

Dead Banks Walking, Redux

Since I don't normally write a Saturday column - having promised myself more 'down time' but, like swearing off eating red meat, a promise more easily made than kept, I found myself tossing and turning most of the night after one of the late night radio newscasts announced seven more banks had been closed by the FDIC.  Whether they've found a rich uncle to fund their refi's of banks isn't the issue (you're the rich 'uncle' - as in Sam - by the way) is not the point so much as the sheer number of branches that have been reorganized and absorbed since last July's IndyMac debacle.  This weeks listing:

 

First DuPage Bank

Riverview Community Bank

Bank of Elmwood

Flagship National Bank

Hillcrest Bank Florida

American United Bank

Partners Bank

 

There are all kinds of numbers that can be used here:  The number of banks reorg'ed since January 1 this year is 106, the number in the last calendar year is 116, the number from (including) IndyMac is 128.  The number of branches impacted is 3,752.  A mere 21-branches were impacted this week.

 

Fear Monday

As we've been writing about for what?  6-9 months now?  The linguistics turn that www.halfpasthuman.com has been tracking for October 25/26 is nearly in vie as processing continues.

 

Just so you understand how this stuff works in a very general sense the October 'turn' was spotted in the last several data runs and may be as much as 85% economic in nature.  But now that we're getting close, Cliff and Igor have been watching the data coming back from the forum scouring spiders which are sending in snips of interest to the servers, where in turn they are distilled and analyzed. 

 

So, the latest from Cliff is:

"latest immediacy data shows it as occurring at

5:12 am 10-26-2009 (time zones are a bitch so let us just say east coast time) and will likely be wrong by about 6 hours as it may actually be 'effective' on the paris meridian (the old rose line).

a small visibility spike occurs at 7:02 am on the 26th

so damn early Monday morning...."

I plan to get up a little earlier than usual Monday to see how it looks 'going by'.  It's always of interest not only to watch something in the 'rickety time machine' pop into reality, but more interesting to is do some propagation mapping. 

 

What's that?  Oh, you know:  You can get a sense of who is playing 'follow the leader" and who the real leaders are when the Monday story hits (if/when it does at all - since we could be wrong).

 

Seeing as it arises out of 'globalpop', I am not really expecting it to be a USA-centered event.  Maybe something in Asia (huge mega quake or financial lockup - something like that - or heaven forbid Israel takes out the Bushir reactor complex.)

 

Not only will Cliff & Igor get to see the change of language wash through the internet, but I will be able to see how the story pops and see how it goes from usually only one or two 'first hand' media to the rest of the MSM and then into the blogosphere.  I figure if the timing's right, it ought to be on the tongues of about half the world's population by say Tuesday noon US time if we've got the timing clues right.

 

Middle East Nerves

A reader asks me to note what's going on in the Middle East this weekend:

"George,

FEMA just happened to have an “Exercise” going on in New York on the morning of 9-11. The Air Force just happened to have an “Exercise” going on up North so that a resistance could not be mounted for the “hijackers” on 9-11. Now the US and Israel are mounting an “Exercise” in Israel (Started last Thursday). Looks more than a little ominous in terms of timing.

“The exercise will conclude with a live fire drill in which U.S. and Israeli forces attempt to shoot down 10 incoming warheads.” “The U.S. has brought its full arsenal of missile-defense systems to Israel for the exercise, including 24 Patriot missile launchers and a Navy destroyer armed with the advanced Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System.”

A live drill, shooting 10 live warheads? What do you suppose that would cost? Why would “we” discharge 10 Patriot missiles for a training session?

I dunno, but I use real shells in my 12-gauge because the blanks don't break the clay pigeons...but no worries: It'll all be over in a flash, LOL.

---

Correction

In a note posted on Saturday I made reference to the curious (to me anyway)  passing of a UN worker in Vienna.

 

A note from the CTBTO's  press office arrived this morning:

"Contrary to what you reported, there is no connection between the death of the staff member and the Iran talks at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The staff member, whose death is now being investigated, was employed by the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) as a processing engineer. The CTBTO is a separate organization from that of the IAEA, and has never had any role in the Iran negotiations. Therefore, media reports and blogs linking the dead CTBTO staff member with the Iran talks are baseless and untrue. In addition, the other employee whose death is referred to in your blog, was not working at the CTBTO. "

I have sent a request for further details which will be posted as they become available.  (corrected section follows in gray)

 

I received a very touching email this morning from a colleague of the late Timothy Hampton who died this week under mysterious circumstances in Vienna.  Hampton worked for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization of the UN and his colleague reported he was NOT the kind of man to suicide - had a new baby and more.  With his colleague's kind permission:

"Since about a year I am following your urbansurvival blog on a daily basis. When I read over the note "Silenced? - British nuclear expert falls 120 ft to his death in Vienna" I had a really strange feeling, since I have a good friend matching the description in the short Telegraph article. There are not many Brits working in the relatively small CTBTO. I tried to find more info by searching through Austrian Newspapers, but apparently none of them had mentioned this 'accident'. Since it was late night I didn't call the person's wife and just wrote an email to her. In the morning the reply came, confirming, that it indeed was him, who died.

 

So now it was clear - the man who fell from the UN building was Tim Hampton. I am really sorry about this since the just got a baby. I also know handful of suicide candidates (Austria is statistics-leader with Japan in this stuff) and some of those really ended up doing it. So, what I mean, is that I have a certain gut-feeling who is considering suicide and who not. There are some signs.

 

However, I went to the mountains with Tim and we travelled together. He was a silent person and had no easy Life before; though this sounds like a cliché again: I think he was not the suicide type.

 

Apart from his work of watching whether some shaking earth is an earthquake or an illegal nuclear test (what is a legal nuclear test), he was interested in many side applications during the last years, and involved in setting up a tsunami warning system. He too was responsible for the CTBTO computer network - kind of super-admin and strategy planner. Ugh - still can't believe this!

 

As said before, he was a silent and introverted man. He initially studied bio-chemistry and had a good position in a bio-lab, before he quit his job and worked as a  construction worker for several years in the UK. Just because he was not satisfied with what he was doing before. Later on, he switched again and started at CTBTO. Few people change their Lives so radically. He was one of the few out of the box fellows. I knew him as a person with lots of integrity and little fear."

The real clincher that something more than meets the eye is going on here is this from the report in the Austrian Times: "UN staff told the Austrian Times that there had been a similar case recently in which an employee died when he fell from a comparable height."

 

Is working for the UN CTBTO suddenly the most dangerous profession in the world?  If yes (which seems a bit obvious) then the "Why?" question comes up.  Seems to me that either a) someone is going to extreme lengths to make it look like Iran is hiding something more or b) Iran really is hiding something more.

 

In either case, a damn shame about the experts dying and it will no doubt drive further speculation as to what's really going on in those hidden Iranian labs.

 

For the Truly Paranoid

A report over at Design World on Air Force bugbots.

 

Ticket?  Si...

Seems that "Dallas police ticked 39 drivers in 3-years for not speaking English" - a charge which doesn't appear in the city's traffic laws.  So how they came up with $204 fines is something of a mystery, but read the story since there's more to it...

 

Not Just In Mice

The report that cell phone use is being linked to brain tumors doesn't surprise us at all.  I renounced the things about 12-years back when I figured out what the frequencies, field densities and possible impacts of ionizing radiation on one's head could be.  Number of colleagues thought "Ure's crazy!

 

Well, not that they were totally wrong, but I was right about the potential to cause cellular level changes (yeah, poor pun, but it's the weekend and our usual writer has the weekend off - Zeus the Cat...who's resting up for Halloween).

 

And the point is?  Not only can cell phones cause tumors in mice; they can also cause them in sheep.  So you've herd?

 

Follow the Bouncing Budget

The latest out of Washington - Disneyland on the Potomac is closer - is that the Health Care bill will cost over $1-trillion for the decade.  Of course, while that pales in comparison to the cost of crime, the wars, and so forth, it seems to be what the rabid whipper-uppers are focused on.  Anything for ratings I suppose...screw putting things in context.  A trillion dollar in 10-years won't buy a nice dinner out - as anyone in Zimbabwe already knows.  Bet?

 

War on Gangs

Big gang crackdown going on in the L.A. area...but one number struck me as, oh, a little out of place:  Here's the part: "Authorities said the operation involves about 1,100 law enforcement agents. They plan to serve warrants for 75 individuals."  That works out to (check my math - it's early...) 14.66 LE's per warrant?  Swat teams for all? Or just that's how California budgets got...oh, let's not go there.  We have real work to do.

 

Job-Jacking: Franklin Virginia

Reader writes:

"George,

In case you didn't catch it, International paper mill is closing three different plants, including the one near Franklin, Va (my neck of the woods). More job loss and paper production reduction. The depressing part about this for Franklin is that it is basically halfway between Emporia and Norfolk. This paper mill WAS this town and when it goes, Franklin goes..."

To be sure, the news about IP shutting down three mills is NOT good news at all.  What interesting is the number of mills that are being shut down around the country.

 

 

Know what I think is going on?  Look at the column % of IP Capacity.  Since IP is operating plants in places like Latin America, Asia, North Africa and Russia, to me this has the odor of 'outsourcing' all over it.  (You thought it was just the sulfite processing smell, huh?).

 

Way I read it is this:  38% of IP's capacity is being outsourced from the USA.

 

I'm not an isolationist, but moves like this sure get me to leaning that way.  Anyone beside me pondering a reaction like a ban on log exports (and how about software) to countries where once American jobs land?  The Suffolk News-herald reports:

"Indeed, a hastily compiled report released by the Virginia Economic Development Partnership late Thursday predicts that 2,400 other jobs in the region would be lost as a result of the closure — in addition to those people directly employed at IP.

---

Oh, if you've got any money left and are looking for a place to retire, do some gardening and such, come late this winter or next spring, might be some real estate deals to be had around Franklin, I expect.

 

Freeh Move

The headline that says "Ex-FBI director Freeh granted Italian citizenship" has me head-scratching.  Don't know if this is one of those dual-citizenship things...but sure feels like a dot to be connected to something doesn't it?

 

Note to Readers

Sorry if this morning's column lacks my usual wit & cheer; but there's a time to be flip and a time to be just damn serious.  You probably know which one this is.  Dead scientist, nuclear jitters, edgy economy and a linguistic turn.  Pardon the serious journalist hat.  I'll try to be in better humor next week.  Promise.

 

---

Send your comments to george@ure.net

---

The UrbanSurvival Mall:

---

"Live on $10,000" Updated

With another round of layoffs due to start later this month...a round which will start to axe many of the middle managers who have managed to avoid the HR grenades...might I suggest a preemptive tactical move?  Voluntarily dropping your lifestyle back a bit, since we're all being marched down that road by either circumstances or some out-of-control-PTB types who write checks to Washington lobby and to anti-reformers in California!  A good starting point, at least if you'

ve still got $10-bucks is my 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...  Click here for the index and details.

 

MyGroPonics

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...

 

       

 

Maxa-Cookie Manager

No, when you tell your browser to 'empty your cookies' of web sites you've visited, it probably won't get them all.  Why?  Because there is a whole class of 'browser-independent' cookies that will gobble up space on your hard drive, but more important is they will sneak out information about you without you being aware of it.    Ever week I get emails like this one:

"Thanks again for the Maxa Tools recommendation, I never knew how much additional garbage gets attached every time I browse. "

Test drive it free by downloading it.  To upgrade to full functionality will be $35 bucks.  Is your privacy worth it?

www.urbansurvival.com/setupMCMstdGU.exe

Once you try it out, click the upgrade button (!) on the upper right hand side for the $35 unlock to get it to remove even those nasty and highly intrusive 'non-browser specific' cookies.  Bonus:  You computer may run faster.  I've taken 1,000  37,970 41,837 cookies off my machine now.  It's just amazing.  (I might ask their CTO to add one more digit to the "Total deleted till now" window...)

 

Attn: Mac Drivers:  MCM does support the Safari Browser, but that does not mean it is compatible with Mac OS. Maxa-Tools only support the Windows world....so far.  Given Jens and the other engineers time...

 

Feeling Thorny?

Want to be a thorn in the side of the Old World Order?  Simply click here and send a link to this site to everyone on your distro list...Nothing more dangerous than sharp, clear-thinking upstarts who ask a lot of questions, eh?  Unless you believe WTC-7 fell over on its own, of course....

 

----

 Last week's report is here.    For back issues of this site, click here.  (Goes back to 1997!)

 

---

Friday October 23, 2009

One Trading Day Till....What?

We've got - from when the market opens in NY this morning - only about 6½ trading hours to go until we get to the long-awaited October 25/26 emotional turning which is due to take place according to the work out of www.halfpasthuman.com. If you're a newbie, the general concept is that changes in language tend to precede changes in reality and for quite some time, in fact on the other of months and months, we have been looking at the period we're just coming into as when 'emotional tensions releasing' turn back into 'emotional tensions building'.

 

The modeling of events suggests that whatever is going to happen will arise out of 'globalpop' which means the center of the buzz amongst humans will not be limited to a few trading wonks; it'll be something big and something that will be on the tips of people's tongues by next Friday worldwide.  A quick check of the kind of events that could fit the linguistics...and you're welcome to throw your own darts here:

• The #1 possibility - never to be overlooked - is that we've got the processing wrong and nothing will happen.  Unfortunately, since the predictive technique has worked well in advance of previous events, it may work out again.  So we move down the list of possibilities...

• A mega-quake would certainly do it.  As our Indonesia correspondent BG reported earlier this week, the Indonesia meteorological office's geophysical group issued a warning for this time period of an 8.0 to 8.4 quake.  That could put the scale of destruction from resulting tsunamis and such up  near the Banda Ache (9.1 to 9.3) size and that would cause building tensions while damage is assessed and the world assimilates impacts.

• Israel could decide to get after Iran's nuclear facilities - something that has been in the cards for a long time.  But that might be considered 'release language' - which is what short-term striking out pencils in modelspace.  What could change it into an emotional build period?  Well, if the bunker-buster bombs set off a nuclear explosion, or it a huge cloud of radioactive debris is popped into the atmosphere and we have a period of a week or three while the fallout from the event drifts eastward toward China and then down froim Alaska via the jhet stream to guess where?  Or, what is as a consequence OPEC allied with China and Russia draws an embargo around the West for it's nominal support of such an operation, or if Iran responds with multiple NBC weapons aimed at Israel and we get an escalation sequence over a several weeks period? 

• Who needs exogenous events, however, when the market's rally is so long in the tooth already?  Yeah, the happy-talk is that 'good times are here' but there are some bothersome bearish divergences if you study the technical picture.  Just as one 'for instance' consider that the 1.33% rally in the Dow on Thursday was accompanied by a just darn near flat Dow Transports move.  Under Dow Theory, as go transports, so goes the Indoo's over time.

• Or, the problem could be a huge jam-up in the US dollar starting Monday.  Such a scenario might have a trigger event like words that the Euro is in trouble and may not be a dollar-equivalent within the EU because of bickering in Europe.  Conversely, the possibility of a unilateral - preemptive - 40% devaluation of the dollar when most people aren't expecting it could catch global markets off balance and while sending a flood of dollars home to the USA ensuring a lower lifestyle) it would nevertheless set up the possibility of announcing partial gold convertibility at the new lower price.  The ramification of this open were outlined in yesterday's column.

• There are plenty of other 'events' or 'event clusters' that could have the same impact (rising tensions for two or three weeks would likely track with a declining market by the end of the next trading week, but that's only if the dollar isn't devalued.  Pick  almost any global-sized headline you want - like the American Bankers Association meetings in Chicago that kick off Sunday and where protests - perhaps large back by angry unemployed and foreclosed homeless - might be a trigger.

• Yes, the possibility of a nuclear terrorist event (again with tensions building as the internet is dialed back and so forth) would be another one that could have a 2-3 week 'tail' of worry. We don't run too much processing in that area, though, since that's Homeland Security's playing field and we'd likely be unwelcome interlopers.  Still, I've taken the unusual step of setting up a static IP address for this page ( http://72.52.163.140/week.htm - bookmark it) along with an SSL layer so access via https://72.52.163.140/ will be possible.  Subscribers to my Peoplenomics.com newsletter will still be able to access via http://67.225.203.185/ and again, an SSL layer is provided.  All this on the incredibly thin chance that Monday might bring a massive coordinated attack on the internet's name server architecture.  If you have all your bank IP addresses cached (a poor pun, indeed) then disruption should be minimized, but as I've pointed out before better to be prepared and wrong, instead of ill-prepared and thrown under the bus.

 

My hope is that the technology finally be horribly wrong and that Thursday or next week, the market will still be where it is, green shoots talk will be building, and peace & harmony will be breaking out globally.  But realistically?  Something 85% economic in nature, 15% 'other' seems to be in the cards.

 

"George, you're a doomster..." you might be thinking.  No: A doomster would enumerate the really really grim possibilities.  The things worse than an earthquake.  But, since you asked, what could be worse than any of this?  Oh, how about a catastrophic dam failure at Three Gorges and the impact of that kind of event on China's (not to mention the whole world's) economy.  That is not in the data (at least yet) but such an occurrence would certainly get us toward the kind of depopulation events that are in the modelspace farther out.  And even that pales compared to...well, stick around a year or two; no point ruining the weekend, eh?

 

OK, one more thing - since I outlined the possibility for Peoplenomics subscribers in a weekly report two weeks ago in issue #424 "The Day the Dollar Died", it may be worth reiterating that talk about 'open internet' has been building and we've seen enough 'prequel' motion in that area such that an attack (via the 'net) on key banking and financial systems beginning next week could trigger an obvious response path by government.  From my 'hypothetical' event discussion of a possible future noted here's what might happen should such an attack be carried out:

"As the presidential news conference ended, scores of internet based services were already blinking off as NORTHCOM asserted its control of the internet. Unknown to the public, numeric IP addresses would continue to operate, but because virtually all web sites are known to their users only by their names turning down the internet became a simple mattering of turning off name servers...."

Don't mean to HAARP on things here, but with "U.S. FCC commissioners support open Internet rule" what better way to spin around the Internet and bring it to heel - much as radio was brought to heel by the Commissions Act of 1934 - than to have a LIHOP/MIHOP event that could be used by government to seize and license Internet use?  Shut them troublesome blogs up, easy enough which might improve the rapidly falling polls on president Obama's performance in office.

 

Personal Position - NOT investment advice:  A am long a little silver, short a little gold having decided that I don't have enough insight into a specific event to place a bet.  So what I've decided to do is hedge next week based on volatility....setting up a 'heads I win, tails I win' situation.  If the coin doesn't get tossed, and markets go slogging sideways, I'm not betting grocery money...more like a cheap lotto ticket bet.

 

If you don't know how to structure that kind of position, read last week's report here and scroll down to the part in Wednesday's column then scroll down to the Coping section's "Looking for the Next Big Trade."

 

Maybe it all just means the top is coming in today off the March lows...

 

To offer a bit of Robbie Burns for breakfast:

"But little Mouse, you are not alone,

In proving foresight may be vain:

The best laid schemes of mice and men Go often askew,

And leave us nothing but grief and pain, For promised joy!

 

Still you are blest, compared with me!

The present only touches you:

But oh! I backward cast my eye, On prospects dreary!

And forward, though I cannot see, I guess and fear!

Bill's Rally

Yes, I ordered the upgrade to Windows 7 yesterday.  No surprise: Microsoft earnings good, stock futures up.  The only thing that remains is the blow off top to 10,300 this afternoon and we'd be all set for the collapse into November.

 

Likely as I see it:  Top should be in today.

---

Speaking of software: If you hit the Maxa Cookie Manager link this morning (down in the shopping mall) you'll get the brand new Version 4.0. 

 

Mass Layoff Improve

The chart says more, but if you like reading, try this on:

"Employers took 2,561 mass layoff actions in September that resulted in the separation of 248,006 workers, seasonally adjusted, as measured by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits during the month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Each action involved at least 50 persons from a single employer. The number of mass layoff events in September decreased by 129 from the prior month, and the number of associated initial claims decreased by 11,301. Over the year, the number of mass layoff events increased by 271, and associated initial claims increased by 7,285. Year-to-date mass layoff events (23,745) and initial claims (2,410,208) both recorded program highs. In September, 856 mass layoff events were reported in the manufacturing sector, seasonally adjusted, resulting in 97,066 initial claims. Over the month, the number of manufacturing events decreased by 44, while associated initial claims increased by 3,174.

Picture:

 

Competitive Banking Department

Oh sure, the US Fed & Treasury may have had some bumps in the reverse repo area this week, but check this out: "Bank of England" "BOE more likely to expand bond purchases after GDP slump" reports Bloomberg.

---

Meantime the 'slosh report' looks like the US has taken out $55B or so.

 

Dollar jam up coming?

 

How To Get Rich, 101

"New Jersey Pays Goldman Sachs for Swaps on Nonexistent Bonds."  Like the meet the salesman on that deal...

 

Half a Chair Department

Latest in the adventures of French president Sarkozy's son who was trying to head up a major business council.  Yesterday went on the tube and said he was giving up his shot at the chairman's spot.  Today he gets elected to a seat on the board - but not chairman - by a 3-2 kinda margin.

 

Well duh.  Repeat after me: "Wired."

 

Silenced?

The headline "British nuclear expert falls 120 ft. to his death in Vienna" sounds just...you know...suspicious.  Officially, it's not.  But officially, 9/11 was terrorism, UFO's aren't real, and government is fair & just....so I'll take this one with an aspirin, thanks.

 

Safer Walking Department

"Pilots should have had warning of airport approach" is the headline.  Read through it, seems a Northwest jet managed to fly past its destination by 150-miles.

 

Fluage

So now that the CDC says 1 kid in 5 had flu-like symptoms this month - and they are suggesting most of those were 'likely swine' I find myself asking "What's the big deal?"

 

But only to late Feb to early March when the bad stuff gets uncorked...but when it mutates will this vaccine even help?

 

Global Warming by the Plate

Swedes will have more than price, ingredients, and calories to consider on menus shortly:  Carbon impact.

---

Yee haw!  Beat on that meme  (thought virus)...pimp that global government is necessary stuff....you go MSM...

 

Say, how about a carbon footprint report on political figures?  Put it in the column next to BTU's of hot air...that's your source of global warming, right there.  Politicians & bureaucrats.  Close as I can tell the correspondence between total number of government workers & politicians with increases in globull warming is 99.9999%.

 

Can I get a side order of reality please?

 

--- snip and save section ---

 

Coping: With Observer States

A huge number of personal brushes with the 'flighty' nature of time/space continue to show up in the inbox.  More than I expected by a long shot.  Let me share some of the more interesting ones since this 'holes in space/time" stuff has all kinds of implications:

"George, After reading today's column, had to write. You'll be the first I've told, as no one else would believe this.

I buy "Nexus" magazine every other month at Mother's Market. Generally, the magazine comes in about the 10th of the month but sometimes a few days later. This month when I started checking for it I noticed the market is now carrying "Vanity Fair", which is unusual since they are an organic foods market and carry mostly nature, vegetarian and Buddhist type magazines.

I stopped in every day for a week, still no "Nexus", but always "Vanity Fair". Next day I checked again. I looked hard at the first magazine rack, even checked to make sure a magazine of another type hadn't been placed in front of "Nexus", and I noticed "Vanity Fair " still there, about half way down the rack. I turned to the opposite rack and did the same thing. Nothing. I thought "what the heck, I'll by the "Vanity Fair" and give up on "Nexus". I turned back to the first rack and sure enough, YOU GUESSED IT....where "Vanity Fair" had been, was not one, but about 8 "Nexus" magazines in the rack. So, I bought a "Nexus" and went out of the store thinking how very strange, and going over in my mind how I thought it impossible that they were overlooked on my first check.

Next day I go in to Mother's Market for a juice drink, and YOU GUESSED IT, no "Nexus", but again, "Vanity Fair". I asked the checkout clerk if they'd sold all the "Nexus" magazines and he said, "we don't carry that magazine anymore". I said, "but I just bought one yesterday and there were 8 or so more in the rack." he said "where" and I pointed to the "Vanity Fairs". He said, "no, that's where the "Vanity Fairs" usually are".

So that's my story.. I suppose some store worker could have slipped the "Nexus" in the rack on top of the "Vanity Fairs" while my back was turned looking at the opposite rack. And, they could have sold all 8 in one day. This isn't a big store, and there are only the 2 magazine racks, about 5 feet apart, so I think I would have noticed someone doing that, but that is the only thing that could possibly have happened, except the Woo-Woo. My "Nexus" is still in my laptop bag-very real.

Another part of space/time that seems wonky is how dreams can convey current events.  For example, I have to call my son about his latest exploits that showed up in a dream last night...I've sort of gotten used to keeping in touch with him this way, strange as that may sound.

 

Not like I'm the only one 'tuning into global news' this way.  Typical reader case report goes like this:

"Here's a fun fact:

Several weeks ago I had a dream. It was early Monday morning. I woke up and told my wife about it. I told her that I was on an island, most likely tropical, and there were buildings in the middle. I felt a vibration in my head which I thought was a noise that kept recurring. I knew that there were tsunami's coming so I ran back and forth from one side of the island to the other. I was panicked and remembered thinking, they keep coming! The next day, Tuesday, my wife called me at work and asked if I had seen the news. That was the week of the Samoa tsunami."

There may be some seasonality to it, although I have been keeping tabs on my dreams that contain 'actual news content' about my son's exploits and nothing has become apparent just yet; no moon phases or anything obvious like that.

 

The question "What causes this kind of stuff?" has been on the mind of a lot of readers:

"My guide who takes me on Ayahuasca journeys pointed out to me when journeying last Halloween, that the space between dimensions is thinnest on Halloween. That is why people originally dressed up in scary garb that day.....to frighten the spirits coming through.

Add our current proximity to the end of OCT, coupled with the idea that the space between dimensions is getting smaller in this general time period..... makes me think you may be getting a few more emails on this......"

May be something to this.  The #1 avenue of inquiry that I'm looking at (and there seems to be some support for the notion in the linguistics work) is that as we go through this period of space-time, the 'boundary layers' between our present 'here & now' and either a 'next-door-space' or slightly offset 'time-next-door' may get thin and that in turn may allow more interaction between one side of [whatever] and this side of [whatever].  Thinner boundary layer.  More cross-over.

 

If you want some brain food on point, another reader suggests we all go check out the Twilight Zone episode titled "A Matter of Minutes" which has a very night write-up at Wikipedia.

 

Peter'ed Out

My reference in yesterday's column to weather 'petering out' elicited a note from a reader named Peter after I snarled that if you're name is Peter and you don't like the reference, change your name...:

"Peter means rock. Petering out, means running out of the metal you are mining and encountering rock. Jesus called Simon Peter because he was the rock that founded the Catholic church. Also, there was more than one Peter and well....it got confusing. Jesus said: (depending on how old your bible is) " Peter you are the rock on my church will be founded on" or " Peter you are the rock people will stumble over". I paraphrase, too lazy to look it up!"

Uh......rock on, dude....

 

Ladettes Rising

Since slang is such an interesting field, and since changes in language precede (as Cliff's fond of point out) changes in reality, I have to note in passing the increase in something called "ladette culture.

 

A ladette?  Yup.  Seems that's a young lady acting in wild-young-manish (lad) kinds of ways. The concept/classification seems to be getting fresh traction in the UK, too, as this little bit in the Daily Mail shows. 

 

Popping up with some frequency in the Google news search engine, and you can see how the term evolved in the public context from spring 2005 to MSM pick-up in late 2007 at Google's Trends Lab...and we are likely in a spike now that will show in retrospect a month or two out.

 

Fun, though, watching new words emerge like this - and watching as they bubble out from one demographic to the next.

 

---

Thursday October 22, 2009

Another Day, Another Operating System

After going through the world's largest buy-in beta test, being a fairly early adopter of Vista, I'd like to start this morning by noting that today marks the release of Microsoft's latest: Windows 7.

 

After multiple service packs and what seem like more or less continuous automatic upgrades, 7 promises to have fewer quirks, a smaller kernel and operate faster.  What I'm not so sure about is whether the full benefit of upgrading can be obtained on an existing PC without wiping out the whole hard drive and reformatting.

 

NPR's coverage of the event suggested a trip to the Upgrade Advisor Microsoft site.  Being a computer junkie, I did that and down came an 8.3 mB install file.

 

Know what I got?

"Extracting file fail.  It is most likely caused by low memory (low disk space for swapping file) or corrupted Cabinet file."

Oh...no sweat.  I just opened Task Manager, killed everything I could see that was a memory hog (outlook, side bar, and so forth) and confirmed I had a little space left on my hard drive.  I do: 87.1 GB worth.

 

"Surely it will run now..." I'm thinking.

 

Nope.  Extracting failed again.

 

"No problem...I'm cool...I'll just download it again..."

 

No soap.

 

Well, maybe I should run it from its present location?  Ah ha! Finally...

 

Well, I sure wish Microsoft good luck on this one.  For now, my 'seems-like-a-paid-beta-test" of Vista will have to do.  Maybe I'm not supposed to upgrade from Vista 32 to Windows 7 x32.  Or, maybe I need to upgrade to a 64-bit laptop....been eyeing those 18.4" widescreens...

 

Oh-oh.  The Advisor tells me I can upgrade to 32-bit Windows 7 Home Premium.

---

Hey, I've got it:  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.  I have other things on my agenda today.  Wonder if there will be a service pack for the upgrade advisor? Still a 64-bit machine, new OS...tempting.

 

Or I could just load Win 98 on a new machine - probably no one writing viruses for that code anymore....

 

Droppings

With unemployment numbers coming in a little higher than expected, the markets are expected to open to the downside.

 

Yes Master Department

"U.S. said to order deep pay cuts at Bailed-Out companies".  Special pay master can do this kind of thing.  Poetic justice or dumb move?  I guess it depends on whether you were in line to get one of the bonuses or whether you're sharpening your pitchfork and slapping "Vote 'Em All Out" stickers on your vehicles....

 

Peaceful Iran Solution

That the IAEA make a big hoopty about a deal on Iran's nuclear ambitions on Wednesday was a little overdone, since well-connected Israeli media outlet Debka.com is headlining that "El Baradei's ruse helps Iran keep on enriching uranium for a nuke..."

 

Peaceful Warrioring Notes

While we occasionally will talk about the Second American Revolution (AmRev2), with any luck it will be a revolution through peaceful means.  Not that such means will feel peaceful to some:  consciously voting every day with your wallet is bound to cause some economic dislocations, but oh well.

 

Another thing to do is keep track of who is voting for what...and toward that end, a reader sent this web page for review which features the list of "Senators who voted to allow illegal aliens to collect Social Security benefits."

 

Got George Department:  Not entirely true...

 

Now, if the voting machine results could be trusted....

 

Climate Sell-Out Looming?

Lord Christopher Monckton - international climate change expert - outlines how the US may cede its sovereignty at the Copenhagen climate confab in December.  His speech (video here) is chilling.  

 

We have more than 200-years of dying for liberty to have it come to this kind of conclusion?  I don't think so....

 

Germany has just broken an all-time Oktober low temp record.

 

Wet Stuff

I personally emptied the rain gauge about 9 AM on Wednesday knowing we were going to have a little rain overnight. But to find 4-inches in the gauge this morning should put us over 41-inches year to date.  Tropical, huh?

---

Meantime, the hurricane formerly known as Rick, now downgraded to mere tropical storm status is turning right earlier than expected, so it should miss Cabo San Lucas.  Still, Remnants could arrive in Southwest Texas by Friday or Saturday.  But it's petering out fast.

 

(If your name is Peter and you're offended, change your name.)

 

--- snip and save section ---

 

Coping: With Really Worst Cases

There may be a connection between a couple of dots this morning that - if they turn out to really be connected - could paint next week as one of the worst in the history of American finance.  I'll tell you what the dots are - then extend their implications a bit.

 

The first story is that while the L.A. Times is headlining that a "Feared flood of foreclosures in California may be averted" we've heard that some real estate lending banks have told customers that there will be no closings for two or three weeks starting next week. 

 

I was just contemplating the meaning of such a report if true (the part about banks putting home sale closings on hold) when the phone rings and it's my consigliore/tax attorney.  This kind of a joke since the only thing I itemize is my Schedules C & F - the rest I don't mess with since it avoids looking over my shoulder fearing the tax police, but that's a different matter.

 

You need to understand that he was a contributor to the old University of Colorado Long Wave econ group, too.  Like many of us, he too has a model of how he thought the economy would work out here in the Second Depression.

 

"You know, one of the things that would fit with my model," he began, "Would be the government announcing a one-time straight 40% devaluation of the dollar.  It's a little early in my model for that, but the way such things would work best is if they do it early enough to catch everyone unaware..."

 

No, I'm not saying that I expect this...but given that there's something like 1.6 quadrillion of derivative and other debt sloshing around, that would sure be a simple one-time way to  cleanse the system.

 

The problem with such an event is how it could change lifestyles in America overnight.  Some things that wou8ld 'spin on a dime:

• People with fixed interest rate loans would benefit.  If you owed, say $20,000 on a piece of property, you'd still owe the debt.  But the 'street' value of a $20,000 lot would jump to $33,000.  Then you'd pay it off with much cheaper dollars.

• That house once worth $300,000 but which had dropped 20% of its value down to $240,000 would suddenly be worth $400,000 - which might encourage people to find ways to pay them down because all of a sudden they would have a much higher equity position.

• Same thing if you owed $14,000 on a car.  The payoff would be the same but there would be a lot more dollars sloshing about. 

• Of course consumer goods would skyrocket, too;  That $5 gallon on milk would bounce up to $8.34 and the gasoline that's now $3 would click up to $5.

 

The economic dislocations would be severe, no question about it.  But, such a move would provide one mechanism to soak up all those dollars that would flood back to America as countries overseas scramble to unload dollar-denominated assets.

 

A look at the precious metals shows where the real glitter would be:  Such a devaluation would push gold from its current $1055 level up to $1,758 and silver now down around $17.50 would soar to over $29.

 

That got me to calling my commodity guy JB:  "Yeah, each of those December silver $25 call options would be worth about...uh... $8,000..." 

 

"Oh boy!" I'm thinking at this point.  But then it hits me:  The government, as part of this kind of economic decision - would likely just announce a fore majeure on futures contracts and that would be that....no payday there.

 

Worse...such an event would probably damage some commodity markets to the point where they might never recover.  Then again, so what?  We're already seeing really smart farmers and grain users form private arrangements (cost plus cooperatives, such as one I know of in the Pacific Northwest) where the bulk of the supplies are negotiated farmer to baker direct.  Everyone opens their books to one another, a reasonable profit for the farmer is included in the pricing and what disappears?

 

The greedy wild-eyed options and contract buyers in the middle.  (Like, er, me....)

 

My consigliore's words still echo in my head though, and I thought I might pass them along.  "It's a little early in my model, might fit better with next summer's decline...what's Arch Crawford's long term outlook?" 

 

I pointed him at yesterday's column for the answer to his question while I made plans to buy some more 'investment grade diesel and investment grade toilet paper. 

 

If anything really wonky happens next week, I plan to remain liquid and flush...so to speak.

---

Reports that CNBC did a piece on a return to a gold standard could be viewed in a number of ways.  Here...have a dart.  See where it lands:

• Scam to get more people to buy gold before a dollar jam-up next week.

• Pre-announcement that a devaluation is coming and after the 40% devaluation, there will be a partial tie to gold.

• None of the above - it was just economically intelligent people having a 'What if?"

 

But you know things are bad when "Latin America plans US dollar replacement" shows up in Iranian media, LOL. 

 

Visually & Audibly Interesting Markets

Chris Malcheski - the coding guru behind the crop-circle and whatever other graphic you care to try - Formation Animator - has been downloading and flipping around data from the Dow's history...

"The "composite" images are images that were flipped horizontal, overlaid on the original, then that composite was flipped vertical and overlaid over itself so basically the composite images are 4 Z axis rotations.

The representations of Dow closing numbers since 10/1/28 comprise most of the images. Rather than using the numbers directly, I used the direct value of the change in value from the day before, unmodified...."

OK, that'll get you going on the visual side. 

 

Now, let's start to marry that up with the work I did in 2004 (Click here and scroll down to "Music for Triple Witching Day") where I wrote:

Taking the Dow 30, the relative volume of the Dow, the NASDAQ 100, and the S&P 500, I constructed an audio analog of the stock market for the year-to-date. I assigned grand piano to the Dow 30, the oboe, which leads is the declining volume of the Dow YTD, while English horns represent the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ 100 is played by a tuba. There are 177 notes YTD (This is current through Wednesday) and I used the NASDAQ to trigger soft steel drums.

To hear the music the market is making, point a recent copy of Windows Media Player, or something that will play back MIDI files and click over to http://urbansurvival.com/songofdeclingingvolume.mid  and hear it yourself. Look at this chart while you are listening - different chart, but it'll give your brain something to chew on.:

If I get some time (Yeah, right...) I will try to do an update of "Song of Declining Volume" which was based on data from 1999-2004.

 

Or, if you don't have a job to interfere with your intellectual pursuits - one of the real benefits of being unemployed/foreclosed on if you don't mind a bit of hunger and creditors bugging you all day - is to recreate my markets into sound theory.  I used a program called AMUGEN ("A MUsic GENerator" - get it?) but seems like something like FlexiMusic might work, too.

 

The process map I followed went like this:

• You find a data table (or tables) such as the historical data on the Dow and whatever from Yahoo Finance here.  Use the download  file option at the bottom of the page.

• In order to normalize things into the range of human hearing, you may have to offset the data to fall between 100 Hz and 10 KHz - which is why you start by loading the data into Excel.

• After you have ranged the data (multiply, exponentiation applied (or whatever else you want to try) you export the desired data.

• Load it into AMUGEN (or Fleximusic ifs it has an import feature) and then assign it to different Midi instruments.

 

Been a long time since I did this project, but I assigned trading volume to one instrument, might have been the oboe, and something else (the Dow) to piano, and so forth,

 

Mix with the market graphics until you find common music & visual movements, focus on repetitive patterns there.  Once you've got this unique insight into the market, go trade, make a gazillion on it and have fun.

 

Oh... and send me 10% for giving you the idea and 10% to Chris for filling in the visual side, OK?

 

Space-Time Oddities

OK, so a number of people have sent in comments and shared experiences with me about how clocks tick backwards.  Best/most detailed explanation for how you see 'clocks move backwards' is this one:

"dear george i read the people's comments on the odd behaving seconds pointer of clocks. a simple visual/brain phenomenon is called chronostasis. it can be provoked when one looks on a clock after swiftly moving the eye (like by turning the head). instead of making you dizzy from the incomprehensibly fast moving picture, the brain drops that input altogether, and corrects the missing visual backward in time (please someone explains THAT), and the given second is "shown" twice as long as it normally should.

i found no complete version of this article. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v414/n6861/abs/414302a0.html  i remember reading this in nature, and looked it up. boingboing seems to have a collection of pages http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/13/how-to-stop-time.html  the first one in the list is only available in archived version over here./

So now our discussion bifurcates.  One track deals with apparently anomalous behavior by clocks and if I can dig it out, I will try to put the reference sent in by a reader about some psychology work being done in 'framing".  turns out your mid tends to look at things in 'frames' - otherwise when you turn your head, you'd see blurs...tres cool stuff but haven't found the email yet... (I'm up to 7,350 emails this month - not counting junk mail, so try to overlook what seems like inefficiency on my part.

 

The second track though, that's where we run into trouble.  Two emails in particular underscore the really odd stuff...like our 26-year old musician's account his keys falling through the floor (!) wasn't weird enough:

"George: That key story hits home with me. Just last month I pulled into the drive way and parked my car. I never take the keys out when it's in the drive way.

A short time latter I came back to find no keys. My girl friend and I looked every where. No Keys. Yesterday I am dumping out the garbage and stuck on the bottom of the can are the keys. I have no idea how they got there. We have in the past had things go missing but blow it off after a short search. Some of it has never come back.

Laura Knight calls this window falling. Where a hole opens up and stuff falls through."

And even weirder case here:

"Okay, George - here's my experience with the 'disappearing objects' thing:

It's easy to suppose when something just gol-dang vanishes that you've - err - 'misplaced' it.

Not this time:

About thirty years ago, as newlyweds, we lived in a small apartment simply furnished with newlywed's things. Our one phone, landline, was in the bedroom. The dining room table doubled as desk, workroom etc. My hubby worked nights, so I was alone that evening, door locked, tenth floor, cutting out a pattern and some fabric to do some sewing. There was nothing on the table but the fabric, pattern pieces, pins and a pair of scissors...

I kept being interrupted by trivial phone calls, stopping my work each time to go into the bedroom to answer each call. Finally, the phone rang for the umpteenth time that evening. In frustration I slammed the scissors down on the table as I retreated, briefly, into the bedroom.

When I came back into the living area [i]the scissors had vanished[/i]. Gone. Nowhere. Not in the dining area, the bedroom, bathroom, nothing. When my hubby came in, he searched again. Zip. Never found them.

We moved to our new home about six months later. One day there, I opened up my sewing box for the dozenth time: there were the missing scissors, nice as pie, sitting on top of my other tools as though nothing had happened.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming....

Not strange enough?  OK...more then:

"Hi George !

I just finished reading the story about the guitar player in Hollywood who's keys fell through the floor. I dropped everything and started this email to you.

A few years ago when I first started opening my mind to all possibilities, this happened to me (I'm 45). I was waiting for a friend to be dropped off at my house by his wife for a little Friday night get together. I was outside next to the privacy fence gate when they pulled up. I had left my garage door open so he could go inside. After I heard the car door shut and figured he'd made it inside, I came out of the gate, hid behind my pick-up truck and asked his wife through the rolled down window where her husband was. She replied that he was going inside.

In a split second (in order to not get caught trying to scare him) I raised up enough to see my door to the house in the garage, then ducked back down. I saw the backside of my friend. I knew what color his shorts were and I knew he was wearing a red tank top (which I had never seen him wearing before). The prank never worked out so I went in the house.

Here's where it gets funky. Later that night as we were discussing my attempted prank I told him what happened and how I saw him going to the door in my garage. He replied that he had gone to the front door. The sidewalk runs parallel to the left side of the garage leading to my front door. To me it looked like he was getting ready to open the door to the house from the garage, when in fact he was walking up the sidewalk. If you ran a line from me through the garage entryway to the sidewalk, it would be a perfectly straight line.

I think In that split second that I literally saw the backside of him, through the garage wall walking up the sidewalk to the front door.

Pretty kookie ! It's just a bunch of atoms anyway and there's a whole lot of space in-between. See ya.

And the best of all:

"George:

I liked the story from the fellow from Wallingford about the missing keys this morning. It is so easy to think the individual just made up the story but, based on my own experience, I'm now not so hasty to judge.

In our case, my family and I (wife and two teenage children) were visiting England. We were in a rental car on a small country road near Bath. The road was narrow, just about 2 cars wide, with high (6 - 8') hedges bounding the fields on each side. We were driving at high speed and there was a coach (i.e. single level bus) about 200-300 yards in front of us doing the same speed. We had been following him for a couple of miles. The road was narrow, so I wasn't trying to catch him up or overtake him. In front of us there was a 90 degree bend to the right, quite sharp, so you had to slow down. The bus went around the curve and about 10 seconds later we went around the curve too. In front of us was a long straight (at least half a mile), hedges each side and no exits or roads joining. But the weird thing - there was NO BUS. All four of us saw the same thing. As I was trying to make sense of it, my wife and kids are all saying "where's the bus gone?". There was nowhere he could have turned into and to reach the end of the straight before we turned the corner he would have had to drive a couple of hundred miles an hour. As we drove the straight, we looked for gates and gaps in the hedges. There was absolutely nowhere a bus could have gone.

All these years, my explanation has been that the "program glitched". It forgot to re-draw the bus on the landscape. If I had been on my own, I would have doubted my sanity. But all of us in the car saw the same thing and had the same instantaneous reaction. There was simply nowhere that bus could have gone in the time available! Now you make me think that it could have been a space/time ripple.

When you or your colleagues have a reasonable explanation for such occurrences, please let me know :)"

And I guess that's the point: space-time is not uniform:  What appears to be solid - ain't (it's mostly nothingness" and that may go for time, too.  There may be holes in the Swiss cheese of time-space and if HAARP isn't looking for them, I'd sure be disappointed with paying that 21-megawatt power bill.

---

Elaine and I had one of these 'put it somewhere and 'poof!' - gone episodes this week, too.  Elaine had brought home a couple of DVD's and I remember idly opening one and placing it on the dinner table.  Next morning?  Gone! 

 

We have searched the whole house multiple times.  Went through the garbage - did all that stuff but the DVD's have just plain disappeared into thin air.

 

Or is it?  The same morning when the DVD's disappeared, a swear one of the cats was in the house, had jumped up on the bed, brushed again my head...but I went back to snoozing.  Elaine assured me there was no cat in the house.  (call this event 2a)

 

But check this out: She reported that after I had gotten up to go get coffee, she felt something crawl under her right shoulder, work its way under her neck, and crawl out from under her left shoulder - all the while being paralyzed by the event.  (event 2b)

 

Tying event #1 to event #2a & 2b  may seem like a stretch, but I wonder IF there's some kind of interdimensional doorway stuff not documented in the literature and things like keys disappearing, busses disappearing, and what-have-you (DVD's at our house) might be a coincidental effect to dimensional doorways - from which unseen critters come wandering through.

 

Oh, This is Comforting

Headline over at Jeff Rense's site that "Tibetan Monks see ET's Saving Earth from Humans in 2012".  Have 'em bring some shrimp pizza with extra red sauce and a pitcher of Bud Lite, too...it's been one of those lifetimes.

 

Where are our damn DVD's?

 

---

Wednesday October 21, 2009

Peoplenomics Advisory:  Peoplenomics server back up 11:57

 

Nukes & Money Hump Day: Iran Deal?

Here's one which could send the price of gold down...a possible breakthrough at the Iran talks under which Russia would do the refining for Iran's new reactor.  The draft agreement is now out for discussion says the head of the IAEA...

 

No word on how this is going to play in Israel, so we'll be watching there to see how things go over the course of the trading day.  But, gold was down early and a major easing of tensions is usually price negative for gold.

 

Citi Cards

The AP reports that "Citi closes gas-linked MasterCards without warning" leaving a lot of consumers in a lurch. 

---

Low and middle income card users are in hock to nearly $10-grand says an op-ed piece about the credit card "Compounding nightmare" in the Philly Inquirer...

 

If At First You Don't Succeed...

...cook the books!  Remember the hue & cry that healthcare reform would cost more than a trillion dollars over a 10-year period?  Princess Pelosi now advising that it's really under $900-billion which ought to set the peasants cheering and holding victory parties.

 

My foot. 

 

Reality check:  If I project enough deflation (or more correctly disinflation) over 10-years I can show you almost any projected number you want.  Simple regression....  So when the 'new & improved healthcare" report comes out two things:  Look at inflation assumptions and then ask "If regular people go to jail for cheating IRS with a little 'off balance sheet" accounting, how is it that government and corporations get away with such horse puke?  Who's (fictionally) in charge  here?

 

Help for Google

Word that Google is trying to help find ways to 'save forests' seems like it has a pretty simple answer:  Don't index sites that are personality-promoting print pubs (a useless pastime) and drive some more newspapers out of business...how much more simple could it be?

 

Smell a Rat?

When I read that "Rival says he is ready for Runoff with Karzai" I sniff carefully; whiff of rat, was it?

---

My news nose and fear:  The rival doesn't make it to run-off election in Aghanistan, and since there are so many bombings going on that schools next door in Pakistan are closed, a bombing which reduces the presidential choice list in Afghanistan to ONE might be conveniently blamed on...   Not saying that will happen, and certainly hope like hell it doesn't.  Just saying that's one bet I wouldn't touch right now in the various newsroom pools....

 

Spy Charges

A scientist has been arrested by the FBI on charges of spying for Israel reports the J-Post this morning.  Curiously, India is defending the scientist as no threat....hmmm...

 

Fluage

More first hand reports like this one coming in:

"I work in health care. I am a coding specialist. I see ER charts on a daily basis. LOTS of type A influenza in young children. Some adults. My hospital just banned anyone under the age of 18 from visitation until further notice. Rumblings about mandatory flu shots. May become unemployed if so. I will keep you posted. This is getting silly."

Getting?

 

Then there's the tempest in Germany where the debate is over which version of the flu 'vaccine' is being given to the political types versus what's going to be needled into the German population...  What's the old saying "Do as we say, not as we do..."  Hold my torch...Pitchfork please.

 

The Truth Is Out There...

From a reader:

"George, Have you had a chance to see this video regarding the banking system and its corrupt relationship with our government? Bill Moyers from PBS on 10-17-09 interviews a congresswoman (Marcy Kaptur) from Ohio and an economist from MIT (Simon Johnson) who provided terrific insight and information about the corruption of big banks, who are failing and making the taxpayer pay for their mistakes, with the help of the U.S. government. J.P. Morgan was mentioned in a big way .Please watch and pass on. The more people see this, the better! We will be writing to our congressman after this!

Yeah, around here we call this a 'truth leak."  Although I keep polishing me resume hoping to score a big bonus gig at Goldman...My application for TARP money for the National Bank of Dad seems to have been lost in the cogs of bureaucracy.

 

Fizzy Tax

NY'ers may get bent over at the pop machine next...the pop tax is being promoted again.

---

OK, if you are not into buying your own green coffee beans and roasting them like my commodity guy (JB), or if you are not close enough to the Pike Place Market to get Market Spice Tea, then might I suggest that you get online and start sampling pop alternatives like Lapsang Souchong which has a nice smoky flavor?  Pop'll kill you over time anyway, although I've used a certain cola with phosphoric acid in it to remove rust...the rest got mixed with a couple of shots of The Cap'n for safe...er...pipe cleaning?

 

----- snip and save section ---

 

Coping:  With the Bad Part of 2010

Had a most interesting conversation with Arch Crawford last night about what's ahead, not only for the ugly part of this year's market (wait a week or two and you won't be saying "huh?") but also about the really ugly part of 2010; which is you want to mark it down should show up sometime between late July and Early August of next year by his work.

 

Crawford ( www.crawfordperspectives.com  about $250/yr ) has been writing a financial newsletter for about 32 years and was "ranked #1 market timer for the 2008 calendar year" by Hulbert's Financial Digest.  What's interesting about Crawford's work is that it's an astrologically based report - although other cycles are considered, too - which makes it interesting when a person (like me) is trying to line up periods where multiple predictive systems are all pretty much saying the same thing.

 

Just as the predictive linguistics work is pointing to big market moves starting as early as late Sunday (Monday in Asian trading time) Crawford's work shows there's a rough patch there.

 

But more worrisome is his take on the mid-2010 period.  "It's about the worst we've ever seen," he told me.

 

How bad is bad? 

 

"Well, when something is worse than the Revolutionary War, World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II, that's bad - it's the worst I've seen the charts in over 200-years.

 

As he explains it, there's Mars conjunction Saturn which will be in opposition to Jupiter conjucting Uranus all squaring Pluto. 

 

Not that it means a hill of beans to me - I'll take a GPS reading, thanks -  but because of the Pluto is where it is mid summer of next year the biggie stuff out there is likely to be planetary in nature.

 

Interestingly, this also corresponds to the predictive linguistics work what has the big showdown basically between good guys and bad guys there; a time when the global mass of humans will be seeking revenge/change/retribution from the PTB.

 

If you were sketching out a kind of mid-range path between Crawford's work, Cliff's linguistics work, Robin Landry's Elliott (and then some) and trying to sketch out a trading path, it might go something like this:

• From late October till early/mid December, a good-sized market decline, perhaps testing the March '09 market lows around Dow 6,627.

• Right after the first of the year, I'd be expecting a whole new chorus of "Good times are just ahead" and the 'gloves to come off' in terms of government control, imposition of group-think, and once the mutated swine flu comes out of the Winter Games, then lots of clamping down of people's freedom of movement.

• During this period, I'd be looking for energy to 'shoot the moon' along with the precious metals - oh boy!

• And then as the social order collides with the globalist agenda over July-August, I'd look for the markets to be as bad as at any time in 200-years.

 

Hard telling how it will all play out, but the predictive linguistics would seem to fit this pretty well (they tend to state the most dire of language) but when other systems of getting a bead on the future start to line up, as I explained to Peoplenomics subscribers last week, that's when I start figuring out how to be as we say here in Texas 'all in'.

 

For Peoplenomics subscribers: I'm still in the trade I told you I'd entered last week and I wouldn't be in it if I didn't think I was going to make a buck or two at it.

 

Cartoonish

Although we haven't had the pleasure of a Rebecca Price cartoon for a while (she has paying clients), there's a cartoon worth of a lick over at American Progress under the head "The difference between Bankers and Pirates..." you might enjoy.

 

Inquiries into the Nature of Time

My remarks about the non-quite-certain nature of time & space yesterday brought several remarks and a good story.  For example:

"Your remarks about seeing clocks tick back struck me.. as I saw many times a clock or a watch go back a few ticks/seconds, but always though it was something in the mechanism, some fault. But this put things in a new light for me, as I had many small insights in the immediate future too. like "knowing" I would drop an egg, bump my head etc. And now this morning I read on the Dutch MSN news site an article that two scientists, the Danish Dr. Holger Bech Nielsen and the Japanese Dr. Masao Ninomiya think Nature is sabotaging the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva by rimpling time back to prevent us from finding the Higgs Boson , the so-called God particle. They mentioned a comment on this in the New York Times too by a Dannis Overbye. Have a good time.. "

It's an interesting theory but I expect just that.  I've been hearing from friends in the physics labs that there is a far more serious problem that the quantum quants are head-scratching on.

 

The problem goes something like this:  we know that when you squirt photons at a pair of slits you can observe that the photons can behave as either waves, or they can act like particles and show the corresponding interference pattern.  (Go look up how holograms and Moiré patterns work in case you missed that 1966 adventure Dave Baldock and I played with in the basement of the EE building at the University of Washington...which may have something to do with why I had cataracts out at a very young age, but that's a two beer story in itself and it's too early for the beer...so we press on...)

 

THE big problem now is that when a single photo is sent out, it's performing both as a wave and as a particle.   In other words, it's getting a split personality.  And this is driving the wonks out of their minds because that's not supposed to happen in their once orderly world which quantum physics is dissembling step-by-step.

 

Eventually, they will figure out that the whole notion of the kapalas  (where everything in Universe is an energy and it's the interference patterns between the energies that gives rise to matter, time, and the phenomenological world has been documented by previous high civilizations on this here rock (go read up on annica /impermanence) because when you do, you'll see how the

intersection between quantum physics and religion is coming just as Gary Zukav was explaining when you were paying attention in his book Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics back in 1976 or so.

 

An Amazon quote which may help - especially if you're tinkering with quantum physics out in the garage trying to build a holodeck - goes like this:

"The Wu Li Master dances with his student. The Wu Li Master does not teach, but the student learns. The Wu Li Master always begins at the center, the heart of the matter.... This book deals not with knowledge, which is always past tense anyway, but with imagination, which is physics come alive, which is Wu Li.... Most people believe that physicists are explaining the world. Some physicists even believe that, but the Wu Li Masters know that they are only dancing with it. "

But, since we all know 'geeks can't dance" for crap, they instead spend gazillions on things like New Hadron Colliders, when all they really might want to do is recall a couple of stories - both of which are true.  One is reported by good friend in Mexico who reminds me of this case that I had read earlier but forgotten about:

"George -

There is a very intriguing case, documented in Mexican history of the 17th century.

One morning, in the National Square called the "Zocalo" in the center of Mexico City, there appeared a man in unusual military dress. He was asked who he was and what he was doing there. He replied that he was a guard in Manila, Philippines; that he was on guard duty there and suddenly found himself in a new place. How he came to be in Mexico, he could not explain.

What astronomer said, "The universe is stranger than we imagine; in fact, it is stranger than we can imagine."?

 

This would be the "Mysterious Case of Gil Pérez" - contested by some hysterians, (sic) - but they have a very good reason to do so:  They have a paradigm to defend.  When someone comes along as says something like "You know, Atlantis is probably the continent under the Antarctic (which is why the global Big Three are drilling like crazy around Lake Vostok) and crustal shifts have happened at least 10-11 previous times and high civilizations have existed here before..."

 

At this point, most people of 'the masses" roll their eyes, pass anyone with such thoughts off as a 'nutter for sure..."  But, to a student willing to read all the historical data (including the Bible and other documents) then it's obvious that when the major earth shifts occur, the oceans mainrain their movement eastward even when the earth's core stops, so they come scrubbing off the continents as they proceed west to east...which in the case of West Virginian is how all those trees got there and became buried which is where coal comes from and....

 

Oh-oh...let's not go down that road.  Although I will assume you've already read the homework for today's report about Ooparts?  That's Out Of Place Artifacts...so when things like chains, shoes, and even spark plugs are found in coal seams and passed off as 'hoaxes" - those doing the dissing are paradigm defending for the slow learners.  But you knew all this, right?

 

Want another time/space disconnect to ponder?

"Hi, George. Thanks for doing what you do. I've been a fan of the site for over a year now. I want to tell you about the single strangest thing I've ever witnessed. I'm a guitar player living in Hollywood (I know that makes me a little crazy, but I'm 26 and not ready to retire to a farm. My plan is to put out the best vibrations I can, and face the madness head on). This experience occurred a little over two years ago when I was living with my folks in Wallingford, CT.

I got up to go to work one morning, and as I was getting myself together in my bedroom, something completely bizarre happened. I had just put my pants and shoes on and had grabbed my wallet and phone. I picked up my keys, but dropped them. I distinctly recall that they landed right next to my crumpled work shirt on the floor, but slid underneath it. The way they slid struck me as unnatural right then and there; it was as though they landed and were still for a split second and then were pulled under by a strong magnet. Of course, I didn't think too much about it, and simply picked the shirt up. They weren't there. I shook the shirt and they didn't fall out. It seems strange to me now, but being in a hurry to make breakfast and get out the door, I simply went downstairs, had breakfast, used the bathroom, located my spare keys, and went to work. I mentioned to my mom on my way out that my keys were missing, and even that they had seemingly disappeared under my shirt. She didn't say much, and it strikes me as funny now that people have such an easy time shrugging off things that just don't seem to make sense.

So here's the kicker: I get home from work and my mom says, "I found your keys." I say, "Oh, yeah, where?", thinking to myself, "where could they possibly have been?" She tells me that she had been doing some cleaning up and spotted them in an open guitar case in the living room. Guess where the living room is/was? Underneath my bedroom. And, to the best I could determine, the guitar case was directly under the spot on the floor in my room where the keys mysteriously slipped under the shirt and went through the floor.

I'm not sure where this fits in with anything, but being a fan of your site, and coast to coast, and having read McKenna's key works, I think there are definitely some weird phenomena that are gaining frequency or at least attention. I'm doing what I can to help expand the 15%er group with some notion of how the game is rigged and how a mass understanding of our consciousness can potentially free us. If you find yourself in LA you can email me and we'll get a coffee or two and talk about the big picture etc. Until then, I'll be reading your site and playing guitar. LOL.

[Send me your first CD for review when you get it burned... our preferred guitar input range is Wes Montgomery to Hendrix..."]

 

And we end with this observation:

"I thought some clocks just do the two clicks back thing. I've seen my bathroom clock (which is a cheap $6.00 clock) do that. I have see the large atomic clock in the living area do the same thing.

Damn, George! I didn't think it was a "time glitch". I thought it was a "clock glitch"!"

Yah see, the problem down in the quant lab is that every has taken Einstein as Gospel when he said "God doesn't play dice with the Universe."

 

I expect the facts of the matter are we simple haven't yet have the table stakes high enough to get into the game.  But there's all these little bits of what amounts to 'craps on the side".  You go back and read the literature out of Jainism and other ancients and if it wasn't for the "not invented here" [NIH] syndrome, we could be saving a whole bunch of work...

 

---

Tuesday October 20, 2009

PPI - Profit Positive

Worried about The Inflation Monster ripping you out of your home?  Well, it may be that way when you try to spend your money, but the latest producer price index figures out today show actual deflation at the finished goods level.  The press release, please?

"The Producer Price Index for Finished Goods declined 0.6 percent in September, seasonally adjusted, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. This decrease followed a 1.7-percent rise in August and a 0.9-percent decline in July. In September, at the earlier stages of processing, prices received by manufacturers of intermediate goods moved up 0.2 percent and the crude goods index fell 2.1 percent. On an unadjusted basis, from September 2008 to September 2009, prices for finished goods fell 4.8 percent, the tenth consecutive month of year-over-year declines.

---

Finished goods

In September, over ninety percent of the finished goods decrease was the result of lower energy prices, which moved down 2.4 percent. The indexes for finished goods less foods and energy and for finished consumer foods also contributed to the decline in finished goods prices, both edging down 0.1 percent.

Finished energy: The index for finished energy goods fell 2.4 percent in September compared with an 8.0-percent surge a month earlier. Almost eighty percent of the decrease can be attributed to gasoline prices, which moved down 5.4 percent. Falling prices for home heating oil and residential natural gas also contributed to the decline in the finished energy goods index.

Finished core: Prices for finished goods less foods and energy edged down 0.1 percent in September following a 0.2-percent increase in August. Leading the decline, the index for light motor trucks moved down 1.4 percent. Lower prices for pet food also impacted the finished core index.

Finished foods: Prices for finished consumer foods inched down 0.1 percent in September after rising 0.4 percent in August. The index for eggs for fresh use, which declined 9.8 percent, led the decrease in finished consumer food prices.

Intermediate goods

The Producer Price Index for Intermediate Materials, Supplies, and Components moved up 0.2 percent in September, its second consecutive monthly increase. This advance can be attributed to prices for intermediate materials less foods and energy, which rose 0.9 percent. By contrast, the index for intermediate energy goods fell 2.1 percent, and prices for intermediate foods and feeds declined 0.5 percent. On a 12-month basis, the intermediate goods index fell 11.7 percent in September. This was the second consecutive month of slowing year-over-year declines after a record 15.1-percent drop for the 12-months ended July 2009.

Yeah, with crude goods down 4.8% compared with 12-month-ago numbers, kinda hard to see wild inflation coming - oh, did I mention how this distinct lack of inflation at the PPI level, when coupled with even a modest increase in the CPI smells a lot like what?  Profits!

 

Back of envelope:  CPI minus PPI = good times or bad for corporate P&L's.  Expect the dollar to rally and the end of the world to be delayed.

 

Quake Alarm Pulled

After a brief appearance on a government website in Indonesia, our reporter there says people are breathing a sigh of relief about rumors of a mega-quake this weekend:

"The latest on earthquake prediction below. Apparently, the rumor was based on a post at he BMG site, which is sent to you yesterday. The post has since been removed. As I read it, I got the impression they were making a specific prediction. The story went viral and all of Jakarta was abuzz. As you can imagine, everyone here is little jumpy about these things just now. I have portable satellite modem, so if the city is flattened, I should be able to get one good message out before my battery dies. I'm on alert for any developments related to the bots."

Story has been picked up other places, too, as this example shows.  Just one more interesting thing to watch for this weekend.

 

That Was So Much Fun...

...that we ought to do it again.  What?  Oh, you know: The elections in Smackghanistan.

 

Climate of Confusion

In Washington, fence sitters are popping up on global warming.  Which figures when you think about it:  The fence sitters will be able to hold up the special interest groups for more dough and they will need it to keep challengers from kicking their sorry butts out in the next election cycle, so yeah, that's why fence-sitting is such a fine art...capiche?  (Why the national news media don't explain this stuff is beyond me...no, wait....it's not:  They are run on the advertising money!  Why of course, all fits together just dandy, doesn't it? 

 

And yes, boys and girls, this is why newspaper bailouts are a done deal too - gotta have controlled/bought media in order to keep the charade going. 

 

Pelosi Poll

"Only 34 percent of California's approve of Pelosi's performance" says a new poll.  That many?

 

Yes, But Can They Read?

So the Baucus healthcare will is out - all 1,502 pages of it.  Think anyone who votes on it will have read the entire 1,500 pages?  Simple answer: Hell no!

 

But, that's the point isn't it?  Make legislation (Patriot, healthcare, yada, yada, so complex, so convoluted, so F/U'd that no one would ever be able to fault the hapless anointed who voted on it.  But don't forget to send them money...

 

Paper Loses

NY Times is planning to roll the grenades in the newsroom  - 100 jobs to be axed.

 

News To Us

A report by the Columbia School of Journalism urges "action to preserve journalism."  How about breaking up some of the media combos and limiting certain national bloviators to one signal in a market?

---

Radical view?  Hardly:  WND headlines "White House Boasts: "We 'control' media".  Quick - look surprised.

---

Then I heard one blover referred to as a 'news anchor'. I about fell out of my chair laughing.  Yeah, right....I mean like far, far, right, right?

 

Eloquent Correction

I mis-typed Monday when I pointed out gold dumper Gordo Browns fire sale price selling the Queen's gold...a point brought to my attention by this eloquent UK reader:

"I really feel compelled to write regarding you comments on my dear leader Gordon. It was monstrous of you to suggest that ol' Gordy sold our gold at $500 per ounce.

The 17 auctions actually achieved an average price of $275 per ounce.

I fear that you are giving your readers a better impression of my leader than he deserves As a true Brit, I simply won't have you giving credit where non is due.

I hope that you will publish a apology, and return my leader to the standing in the world that he has worked so hard to achieve.

Regards and, as ever, your reports are outstanding.

I sit corrected.

 

--- snip and save section ---

 

Coping: Computing The Future

For some reason - don't know whether it's the stars, or what - I seem to be coming to a 'software festival' period starting today.

 

First up is the release of the crop circle spinning software (Formation Animator) which can be found here.  This is really interesting stuff to work with because it allows you to spin just about any kind of picture you want (doesn't have to be crop circles) and this has been weighing on my mind for some time.  New research project is bubbling around...

 

You may remember the last time we talked about 'spinning graphics of crop circles' that one of the graphics effects (depending on spin speed, direction of rotation, etc) is that you can get some interesting 'flicker effects' that range from very relaxing to 'grit your teeth' - plus there's been no shortage of speculation that there could be a whole layer of information embedded in crop circles intended to communicate with us earth ants.  But, only if we're smart enough to have evolved a three-dimensional language or a three-D symbological communication structure which would be more compact than English. 

 

I mean Hebrew, just to pick on language, is very rich in how it is structured - as is Persian.  What some Western minds take as 'flowery' or can't 'get' in Hebrew comes from a failure to grasp that some languages use different contextualizing than English...But that's only the jumping off point for adventures in strange.

 

It occurred to me that one might be able to get some interesting insights into how the human mind stores data by spinning pictures about.  If the mind indeed stores things in semi-holographic ways (matrices of neural connections) then are there certain frequencies or neural patterns that could be 'burned in visually' in a planned way?  Instead of going to a year of classroom lectures on mathematics, for example, wouldn't it be much more efficient to spin up images which would predispose people to absorb math by 'pre-burning' a few neural structures?

 

As much as humans have designed computers to imitate ourselves, isn't it curious that no one seems to talk about ways to 'preload software into our heads' or for that matter, work on defragmenting our thinking?

 

To be sure, the creative process comes from wide variations in patterns, but wouldn't it be possible for kids to learn better if education was defragmented?

 

Picture an education system where basic research says something like:  Kids learn languages best between ages 3.5 and 6.5 years of age.  So, in those years, schooling could be turned into total immersion is only one topic: language.  Or maybe there's a development window where math sticks better.  I was one of the original test batch of SMSG math wunderkind back in the early 1960's, and they started us in that in 7th and 8th grade...which got me thinking in set theory ever since.

 

My point here is that education seems more structured to teaching a little this, a little that and a little art and some handicrafts without stepping back, testing, and teaching to optimized development states at a deep immersion level.  Instead, we get a mish-mash; kids either 'make it' (go on to Yale, Skull & Bones etc) or they don't make it (drop out, sell crack) and that's that....

 

Even wilder is this idea I have that certain particularly pleasing pictures - when spun just so, but on a repeatable basis - might yield patterns which could hold meaning down at the archetype level.

 

Suppose, for example, that you find pictures of a particular kind of sunrise over mountains appealing.  Now imagine you collect half a dozen of these things and then use the swirly-spinner to spin them up at a wide range of speeds, different zoom levels (cropped, got it?) and with different visual centers.

 

What would not surprise me in the least would be to discover that a group pictures which have a similar archetype feel to them MIGHT contain a common graphical relationship.

 

What would really be a breakthrough into how the subconscious mind/archetypes work would be to find a repeatable or previously documented graphic/hieroglyph/rune symbol that turns out to reoccur through multiple images.  Sound like a fun project?  Sure does to me...all I need is a clone of myself to organize it and a couple of million to fund it at the proper academic level so the project would have credibility and so on.

 

Speculation?  I bet that if you spun pleasing and repulsive images, you would find something like the runic alphabet (or other archetype-linked language) at some set of common frequencies, or off certain harmonics.  OMG, wouldn't that give the people who think HDTV's are designed to burn in concepts and beliefs below the perception threshold some ammunition?

 

Next step into this one is yours: http://www.formationresearch.com/index.htm to download the demo (free) or the full-up version $20.  There's an online database being developed...and oh is this cool.  Reports of findings are welcome - need to figure out if there's a way to turn this into an electronic Rorschach test which gives frequency susceptibility mappings which we then capitalize and turn into a huge new 'defense' industry.  I don't have time for it, but 5% of founder's stock please - for the concept - if you run with it.  Figure government will buy anything here lately.

 

Like the man on TV says, "But wait, there's more..."

---

The second big software project I'm tinkering with (when not bothered with little items like eating, earning a living, etc.)  is the forthcoming release of Maxa's next generation of the Maxa Cookie Manager program.  Version 4.0 will be out shortly and the new feature it offers is something called the "web bug" monitor.  This actually nails down those programs which are sending information about your browser habits to people who are just plain snoopy and it's none of their business...

 

Even on my computer which is extremely overworked  (Maxa Cookie Manager has removed 48,745 cookies from it so far, LOL) there were 3- web bugs discovered.  Seems that out of the nearly 49-thousand only 27 (including the three new ones) were actually actively connecting and reporting on my movements, but Maxa's product is a dandy if your computer is sluggish.

 

I've suggested that they publish a monthly list of companies that are using 'bugs' to spy on people's consumer habits because frankly, I would just as soon boycott any outfit that is spying on me because I bought this here high-end computer set-up for MY use, not some a--hole marketing outfit to steal clock ticks from, know what I mean?

 

Anyway, more on MCM 4.0 - if you're an early adopter of MCM, I think the upgrade will be $15, but if you bought it in the last 60-days it's planned to be free.  Decent enough policy.  I just wish early adopters of a certain service-pack prone operating system were shown equal consideration...and that in turn gets me to...

---

The other software project around here is coming up with my Windows 7 test plan.  It seems to be getting very good reviews (no announced plans for a service pack yet that I've heard of, LOL).  Nevertheless, being into low-risk computing on the one hand, yet trying to stay close to the bleeding edge of things, I will probably load 7 on Elaine's computer (quad core laptop, 6 GB, 320 g HD , on our n network) and see how it flies.

 

If she can't break it...then I may get a new LT for myself (since I am on an older but highly reliable dual core) and go to a quad core with an 18.4" screen, realizing that for travel a 14.1" screen is best since you can open those in the can-opener seats back in coach.  But old man eyes like 18.4" displays.  What to do?

 

I don't travel much any more - and  although my plans to buy an airplane have been pushed back to when I can buy one for one or two ounces of gold (late next year I figure - I don't mind driving around the country when necessary.  Can't find anything in IRS rules that says "business travel must be done at the most hyper and hyper-tensive levels possible" yet, that's how damn near everyone operates.  Which may have something to do with why people have heart attacks maybe...but I digress.

 

The decision to move to a new computer - if it comes - will mean most of December could be occupied with software issues.  Wouldn't be the first time, though.  I buy a new computer every couple of years - along with  the best rolling backup system I can find - since my life depends on computational reliability, and yours does too...at least to some extent like grocery stores being able to order inventory and so forth.

 

Long Delayed Echoes, Redux

Like I don't have enough distractions in life, along comes the November issue of the American Radio Relay League's top-notch ham radio magazine, QST, with an article by OZ4UN "Observation of Long Delayed Echoes on 80 Meters".

 

The very short version of the phenomena goes something like this:  A transmitter broadcasts something.  Upon switching the transmitter off and going back into receive mode, the radio operator hears his own signal (!).  In this latest report (well documented, I might add) the delay time is 237 milliseconds (0.237 second) which means that when we multiply thing out, using 185,000 miles per second as the speed of light, we find the signal traveled about 44,082 miles.

 

This doesn't bode well for 'ducted propagation theory (we'll get there in a sec.) since it's not long enough to be round the world twice.  Which leaves us to ponder whether ducted propagation might be some convoluted transequatorial path, or what...but sure doesn't seem likely from my early tropo-scatter days when I was George the microwave tech rep working for a defense contractor years and years ago...

 

OK, drop back to basics:  There are five explanations offered in Wikipedia that might explain the phenomena.  Here they are:

• Ducting in the Earth's magnetosphere and ionosphere at low HF frequencies (1-4MHz); delays up to 0.5 seconds.[10]

The most popular current theory is that the radio signals are trapped between two ionized layers in the atmosphere and then are guided around the world many times over until they fall out of a gap in the bottom layer. (Ducting propagation between air layers in the lower atmosphere is a well-understood phenomenon. See Radio propagation.)

• Travel many times around the world. Signals can travel around the Earth seven times in one second. Such signals are also not uncommon.

"Goodacre [11][12] reports that he pointed his antenna towards the horizon and received his own 28 MHz signal delayed by up to about 9 seconds.... His measurement implies travel up to 65 rounds around the earth." Probably the upper frequency limit for such effects.

• Mode conversion: Signals couple to plasma waves in the upper ionosphere.

Investigated experimentally by Crawford et. al.; they recorded echoes with delays up to 40 seconds at 5-12 MHz.[13][8].

• Reflection from distant plasma clouds coming originally from the sun.

Freyman [14] did experiments at 9.9 MHz and detected several thousand echoes of delay up to 16 seconds at times when solar plasma probably entered the magnetosphere.

• Non-linearity in addition to mode conversion. Two transmitted signals combine to generate a difference frequency, which travels with a plasma wave, then is converted back.

Could explain amateur VHF/UHF echoes. Hans Rasmussen found echoes delayed by 4.6 seconds at 1296 MHz, [15]Yurek recorded a 5.75 second delay at 432 MHz.[16]

Fine - as far as they go,  but what about path loss on a 9-times around the world duct?  Let me see, inverse square law says....no chance!  Care to convince me that the effect is firing  off the HF radio equivalent of a maser to sidestep path loss?  Pass...drops down my odds list.

 

Based on reading I have been doing lately out on the fringes of science there are two more possibilities which although not highly probable,  have to be at least considered.

 

The first possibility is that time is not as cohesive as we might all be led to believe.  I don't know if you've ever had the experience, but I have personally seen a clock actually tick backwards one or two seconds and then resume forward motion.  Stare as such a clock for as long as I cared to thereafter, the clock never did a backward tick (or ticks).

 

My pet theory on this goes something like this:  The whole Universe operates as a multiple dimensional event which goes off into many dimensions - constantly evolving and morphing.  Every once in a while, when a morphed reality gets too far off the beaten path, we see a 'jump' of some kind.  The most common 'jumps' are likely those cases where people just 'disappear' into thin air, a flight of Navy planes disappears, or - as many accident victims attest - "I looked and there was no one there yet when I pulled out - suddenly out of nowhere there was this truck (train/bus/car/motorcycle...)

 

This also accounts for lots of other things odd/out of the ordinary, too.  Like George seeing a clock go two ticks backwards.  And it probably has something to do with what Dean Radin has been nibbling around the edges of with his 2000 landmark paper "Time-reversed human experience: Experimental evidence and implications" which if you haven't read it, turn off the TV and put some useful stuff into your head, please.

 

Now, I don't remember if it was on the UrbanSurvival site, or on the Peoplenomics side, but I recently told the story about the fellow in the Southwest who was traveling across country and stopped in a medium-large city and went into a paintball shop that was in a former grocery stroke.  It had those 'step-on' door openers.

 

The person involved in this case had parked his car in a virtually 'dead' parking lot, was going in to the paint ball store.  On the way, he happened to glance at an attractive woman coming out of the store through the other door and when he looked back in front of himself, there was a man there who wasn't there a fraction of a second earlier.

 

"Where did you come from?" the time-dazed guy asked of this fellow ahead of him?

 

"What do you mean...I just parked my truck over there and walked in like I always do...hey, where'd that lady out there come from...did she just come out of here?  She wasn't there a second ago...???"

 

This applies to long-delayed echoes how?  Well, If the MWI (if you don't know what that is, you need to read here) is valid, then it is possible that long delayed echoes are boundary events that occur when errant patches of the central tendency of reality catch back up to it.  In other words, LDE's may be where offshoots of reality merge back into the main flow of things, as at a freeway onramp.   Almost like there's a zero-crossing of reality tracks.  And yes, this could very easily be where 'accidents' come from.  Time jumps around MWI merge points.  All the data would fit, wouldn't it?

 

It may be that intention is what keeps the world (more or less) on a future path, a kind of ongoing reality voting.

 

This may sound pretty 'far out there' but the pieces are there in physics and what if (this is a big IF) what if HAARP is actually a reality mapping tool to figure out more how the MWI works and one way to get there is to map ionospheric phenomena, while us poor ham radio types who may experience an LDE (my was about 2-seconds worth on 20-meters) pull together disparate parts of other phenomena (ducted transmission) in order to explain away an objective observed phenomena?

 

I keep waiting for the ARRL to do a comprehensive analysis of HAARP (why what waveforms are used, why those power levels, and so on...) and outline what it's really all about and why it's classified...but that's another story for another day.  Still, makes sense that LDE's could be direct evidence of the MWI coming and going of nearby realities.

 

Next possibility (I know, don't get long-winded...):  Could just be someone either 'out there' or in a next-door reality is messaging us back in parrot like fashion trying to establish communications and we don't understand it...

 

Reality as we know it is a location in space, defined as height, width, and breadth at a particular moment in time.  What would you call a 'next door moment' and could it be separately  'occupied'?

 

OK, time to kick everyone out of the Wu-Jo - the dojo of science versus observed oddities...until tomorrow morning, that is...same time, same mat.

 

---

Monday October 19, 2009

Urgent Update

Major Quake Warning Issued

With global tensions ready to build for 2-weeks from about October 25th on, one of the possibilities we've been watching - thanks to the heads-up predictive linguistics reports from www.halfpasthuman.com has been for something that will arise out of the global population portion of modelspace and which will be mainly economic in its impacts.  Lots of things come to mind, but the recent increase in Pacific Plate earthquakes has been a particular worry, since a 8-or higher earthquake could do serious damage around the Pacific Rim depending on tsunami activities and such.  So it's with this in mind that I just got a 'jaw dropper" from our Indonesia correspondent:

"George,

The BMG (Indonesian analogue to USGS) [http://www.bmg.go.id/depan.bmkg]  has issued a rather specific warning for this coming Saturday, of a quake in the 8-8.5 range. Don't know how much stock I personally put in such a warning, but I will load up on supplies and stay at ground level for the weekend.

I guess we will all know the results come Monday...if the rest of the world doesn't fall apart by then.

Sampai jumpa,

Obviously we hope the warning is a false alarm, but when government seismographers issue a report like this, I tend to pay attention.  Time to short insurance stocks?

 

Port for Breakfast

Here all these years you thought stale beer and pizza bones were the 'breakfast of champions," did you?  We around here we start Mondays like this off with a stiff shot of port. 

• Port of Long Beach inbound container traffic was down 19.4% for the month of September which is down 21.7% year to date.

• Over the viaduct and up the road a bit, the Port of Los Angeles shows September inbound going down 15.82% and for the year down 17.49%.

• Interestingly, the Port of Oakland is reporting total traffic up a bit compared with last month up a whopping 45.5% on inbound, up overall 2.38% for the month and Year to date, they're only down 11.6%.

• The Port of Seattle inbound was down only 4.9% month on month, but up about 4.8% compared with year ago figures. 

• The Port of Portland is still working on their September figures...someone hand 'em a calculator?  (Check here later on this week)

 

All of which has me back to pondering the fate of all those ships that are anchored off China and other Asia export hubs waiting for something to do.  There's a difference between tawny ports and tawdry supply systems?  Oaky;  enough already.  Serious up.

 

One Week Out: Marking Time

The predictive linguistics (no, not predictive linguini) out of www.halfpasthuman.com are expecting the major global 'mood shift' in about a week's time.  Should be events unfolding about the end of October 25 - which would make it early in the morning of the 26th which would mean as markets in Asia open.

---

Bank reserves seem to be exploding to the upside...which should be good for banks and dollars if I understand things right...which I must not since the market mania upward in markets and down on dollars continues.  Perfect setup for my insane contrarian option trade, however.

---

A couple of things that bear watching:  one is Iran which is warning the US and UK of what the aftermath of an Israeli strike on their nuke facilities would bring.  And yeah, October 25 is when the IAEA is supposed to show up for a look-see at Iran's reported nuclear facilities.

 

Naturlich eine fragge:  (Naturally, one question):  How many more do they have they're not revealing yet?  If talks going on this week fail, they plan to continue enriching themselves, so to speak.

---

Say, you don't think that attack on Iran's Revolutionary Guards was a...oh...you know...false flag deal?  Thought seems to have occurred to the Iranians...  Golly, think the West would be capable of doing such a thing?  (Duh...)

 

Greased

Notice that the price of gas has been edging upward?  So has the price of oil which pushed up briefly toward $79 this morning.  More important, notices my commodities broker JB - someone is buying $500 oil calls a few years out.  Hmmm...and here I thought I was the ballsy-wild-eyed-loonie in the option patch.

 

Why Didn't I think of That Department

"Cash is the new benchmark of value" begins an issue of "The J.P. Morgan View" from last week.  Who'd of thought?  Aw, so what is the buck is down a bit early.  Still seems like the perfect set-up for a running of the dollar shorts within a week or two, just guessing.

 

If Brown's FOR It....

...then I'd sure be suspicious.  Latest episode:  Gordo Brown is urging progress on climate deal.  Based on Brown's track record, I'd be sitting on my wallet, hiding pens, and stalling for time.

---

Say, he didn't really sell the UK's gold when it was around $500, did he?  LOL.  Who would still take his advice, let alone vote for him...but some of the people, some of the time, leastwise in the UK, huh?

 

Quick!  Run!  Go hide!  "50 Days to save the world!"  Don't tell him that the climate catastrophe is a result of a stratifying exploitive global economic system which is broken, too.  There it's not 50-days but more likely three weeks, but don't let our foresight and occasional shot of reality get in the way.

 

Weedys

The headline that "Feds to issue new medical marijuana policy" has me wondering if any of the folks wasting away at the iron bar Hotel will be freed?  Not that there's much in the way of jobs on the outside, mind you.

 

Tell Me Again

....why we all get up and bust a hump on Mondays?  Did you happen to catch the NY Post piece this weekend about how business "Conditions point to another lost decade" for the American workers who are trying to save up enough money to get a short taste of the good life before keeling over?

 

Pour me another  port, would you?  Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.  Tuesday will be here soon enough.

 

--- snip and save section ---

 

Coping: With How Dumb People Are

You've heard, I'm sure, "You can fool some of the people, some of the time..."  Well, turns out that having a computer doesn't make people any less dumb or any less gullible:  That based on the BBC report today about how "Millions tricked by 'scareware' that disethical web sites pimp.

---

More than once I have written to a webmaster address of any site that runs such crap and told them that no, my PC is NOT infected and NO I don't was a free system scan because I run my computer in the Fort Knox Lite mode, and the combination of firewalls, anti-viruses, registry locks, and other countermeasures is really pretty decent.  It only costs me a bit of surfing speed and gives me a whole bushel of peace-of-mind.

---

But the dumbness of people doesn't stop with pop-ups on the web.  Why, just this morning, the Wall Street Journal's radio program had a piece on another one of my favorite IQ indicators: Extended Warranties. 

 

Here lately, when I buy something I look the person who's selling something to me square in the eye as ask:  "You mean this (product) won't last (time covered by extended warranty offered)?  Maybe I shouldn't buy it then if it's such a piece of crap.... 

 

This is sometimes followed by a confession that "I just have to offer the warranty, sir..."  The WSJ Radio piece said in these lean times in retailing, some outfits make as much money on financing and extended warranties (or more) than they do on the underlying product itself.  The Neal Templin WSJ article last week is a good read.

---

All of which gets me around - in the most roundabout of ways - to wondering why the Wall Street Journal ever stopped publication of "The National Observer" - which was part financial paper - and part lifestyle rag...which had a run from 1962 to 1977.  Among the great writers contributing?  Hunter S. Thompson.

 

In a sense, it set the tone for this website (www.urbansurvival.com).  The idea was that there could be intelligent discussion of news, seriously leaning to its financial underpinnings, along with lifestyle.  Throw in the writing style here and there of Playboy After Dark (the column, not the TV show and yes, I really did read the articles, LOL) and I figured it would be a sure-fire hit. 

 

To be sure, the growth of Urban has been a slow, tedious affair.  But last week, just for example, the average number of page views per day was running north of 75,000 and last month alone we served up 1.7-million pages and we're at almost 13-million year to date.

 

Apparently, not all people are dumb; you're among them.  (*don't take it that way!)

 

Dogging It

I see Dog Poet Les Visible today rants on "The Rise of the Stupids and the Fall of Rome".  Kinda odd that we'd both have it out for dumb people today.  Some astrological thingajiggy I 'spose.  But it does get us around to this one:

 

15 Minutes of Fame

The case of the purported "Balloon Hoax" seems to be slowly coming together.  A few readers wondered at the time why I hadn't given any coverage to the story.  Call it 'an old newsman's hunch' but it didn't feel right from the get-go.  And now we see why starting to come out. 

 

Perhaps we'll get an answer to "How much is 15-minutes of fame" worth in terms of jail time.

 

En-Lightening

My ham radio buddy Jeff noticed that the price of 900-lumen flashlights is coming down over at Deal Extreme's web site.  I'm getting the one which takes two batteries since that oughta give more light.  I've been a real fan of high-powered LED flashlights since I picked up a 3-watt LED unit at Lowe's for around $30 about 6-months back.  But these new 900-lumen lights are up at the 11-watt level...just the ticket for nights here in the East Texas outback.

 

Life Stylin'

The report that three runners died at this year's Detroit marathon is disappointing.  I'm all in favor of exercise and all, but unlike my younger days which included 50-mile bike rides, these days if I'm going more than a mile or two, a vehicle of some kind if usually involved. 

---

Now that snakes are thinking about retiring for the season, we'll get back into the 'martini mile' around the property lines of the ranch.  However, it won't last long.  Deer hunting gun season is coming up shortly - November 7th I think.  I tried to read through the Texas hunting season list but I only got as far as discovering Texas has a Sandhill Crane season before I was stopped in my tracks.

 

Turns out we live in the part of Texas that's closed to Sandhill Crane hunting.  I had no idea that they were referred to (as one site puts it) as the 'rib-eyes of the skies.'  I'll be dipped & rolled in it...learn something new every day.

---

Eight deer just wandered by my office, not 30-feet away.  Nibbling along the edge of the lawn in no particular hurry.  Probably upset that I mowed this weekend.

 

More Port?

-----

Speaking of Dipped and Rolled In It

Did I ever mention to you that making French Toast batter with a shot of Baileys in it is just a marvelous improvement?  A tiny bit of Baileys, dash more vanilla extract and a good dusting with nutmeg.  Yessir, time to go eat.  I've waited the mandatory 3-hours after weighing myself.  Damn digital scale popped up that message again today -  "Will one of you please get off?"

 

I promise not to go near Detroit.

 

---