Saturday
May 7, 2011 05:17 AM CST
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Happy "Flash Crash" Anniversary
This may not seem like a particularly auspicious day, I mean getting out
of bed ain't any easier than it was yesterday. But this is a special one
in market almanacs: It's the first anniversary of the May 6 "flash crash"
which presactly a year ago swung the market a shade over 1,000 points in a
single day.
Part of the reason, if you were coherent back then, would be remembered as the Greece
debt liquidity issues. Note that not much has changed here and the
globalistas world is still in a (f/u'ed) mess. The Wikipedia entry for the
event includes this
quote from the SEC/CFTC report issued in September following:
"The combined selling pressure from the Sell Algorithm, HFTs and other
traders drove the price of the E-Mini down approximately 3% in just four
minutes from the beginning of 2:41 p.m. through the end of 2:44 p.m. During
this same time cross-market arbitrageurs who did buy the E-Mini,
simultaneously sold equivalent amounts in the equities markets, driving the
price of SPY [an exchange-traded fund which represents the S&P 500 index]
also down approximately 3%.
Still lacking sufficient demand from fundamental buyers or cross-market
arbitrageurs, HFTs began to quickly buy and then resell contracts to each
other – generating a “hot-potato” volume effect as the same positions were
rapidly passed back and forth. Between 2:45:13 and 2:45:27, HFTs traded over
27,000 contracts, which accounted for about 49 percent of the total trading
volume, while buying only about 200 additional contracts net.[7]"
The markets in EuroLand are not doing too badly, so far this morning, but that
was prior to the unemployment report. We ought to see how that impacts
over the next few hours.
Silver's Decline - New Scams
Several readers have asked me for some sage advice on what to do about
silver while others are asking "Why's it going down?" The answer to the
second is obvious as pie-in-your-face: More sellers than buyers (Doh!).
But what made them sell? THAT is simple: I'd have to check
with JB over at www.fortwealth.com but
as I seem to recall, a week ago it took about $12,000 to hold a silver contract
on margin. The increase in margin means that the new margin requirement is
$24,000.
That served to stampede enough of the "weak hands" out to bring the price down a
bit more than $10-bucks. But whether that's a long term dip is anyone's
guess. Except, I haven't sold my lone gold coin, yet. ;-)
You can
read up on the back-story over here: About how the margin scam
turns weak hand and how rumors about the legendary Big Fish (Soros) can be
'played' but the real story is on how some of the metals dealers are
starting to actively hedge with physical in a most interesting way.
According to a couple of reader reports, when they called metals dealers and
tried to order small quantities (like a hundred ounce bar or two) they were told
on the phone: You give us the credit card number to local the price and we
will ship (essentially) when we can. Which gets to be kinda
interesting. Some dealers I've heard about are real soft on their delivery
comments hinting it might be 5-7 weeks before the actual silver is
shipped. And while they are trying to lock in current prices to protect
their downside, they also are saying that if the price prior to
shipment goes up, the buyer will be on the hook for any difference upward.
One fellow I know made an interesting proposition back to a West Coast dealer:
"OK, I'll pay spot plus a premium, but you ship within one week or you pay me
a penalty of 2% per day of delay - including weekends - and you pay in
additional metal. Which means if you're 50-days late, I get twice as much
silver at the same price. You willing to do that?"
(click) [Guess not...]
---
If this manipulation of the silver market is all a little incomprehensible, the
YouTube cartoon series' latest "Part
6- The Paper Silver Manipulation Game at all time Highs" is a dandy short
version, if you don't mind the trash-mouthed ursine characters, lol... But
just because they swear a bit, don't make 'em wrong...
Jobs Gorilla: Back up to 9%
Speaking of the animal kingdom, at some point we should drift into the Big Time
Economic Hoopla Story of the Minute. Jobs report is just out from the
Labor Department:
Nonfarm payroll
employment rose by 244,000 in April, and the unemployment rate edged up
to 9.0 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job
gains occurred in several service-providing industries, manufacturing, and
mining.
Household Survey Data
The number of unemployed persons, at 13.7
million, changed little in April. The unemployment rate edged up from 8.8 to
9.0 percent over the month but was 0.8 percentage point lower than in
November. The labor force also was little changed in April. (See table A-1.)
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment
rates for adult men (8.8 percent), adult women (7.9 percent), teenagers
(24.9 percent), whites (8.0 percent), blacks (16.1 percent), and Hispanics
(11.8 percent) showed little change in April. The jobless rate for Asians
was 6.4 percent, not seasonally adjusted. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)
The number of persons unemployed for less than 5
weeks increased by 242,000 in April. The number of long-term unemployed
(those jobless for 27 weeks and over) declined by 283,000 to 5.8 million;
their share of unemployment declined to 43.4 percent. (See table A-12.)
The civilian labor force participation rate was
64.2 percent for the fourth consecutive month. The employment-population
ratio, at 58.4 percent, changed little in April.
Now, hand me the ViseGrips, please?
In Table A.15, we see that the Alternate Measures of Labor Underutilization
still shows 15.9% unemployment, which is up 2-10th's of a percent for the month.
And, of the increase of 244-thousand,
a full 175-thousand was estimated into existence by the CES Birth/Death Model.
Leisure & hospitality hiring was up 67,000 for the month - no doubt to be able
to handle all those long and expensive vacations we can all so easily afford
nowadays. And Professional and Business Services are up 57,000 but I
thought those were mostly online from India....(wink, wink, they are..).
Number of people employed? 139,674,000. I don't have to remind you
that we have about the same number of people working today than we did in
August of 2004 when it was 139,573,000.
Labor Force then was 147,564,000, versus today's 153,421 which would be a lot
higher, but jobjacks to India etc are real. Ask anyone who used to work in
the industry formerly call I.T....
AIG Drop
Say, don't we own this puppy?
AIG profit down 85% in its first quarter profits says an NY Times/Dealbook
report.
That sucks. I was gonna 'hit the silk' if they made a pile: Take my
social security early and relax for the rest of my life, able to live on
publicly owned company profits to fund SS payments. N'other crack-head
dream, huh?
Bin Laden's Training
So,
was the anniversary of the 9/11 event going to be an attack on the US bvy
tipping trains off rails? Probably off the table now - one of the good
things about the raid...though skeptics about.
Middle East
Say, this could change attack plans on Iran - maybe. The
Supreme leader of the Iranian government has asked president Ahmadinejad to step
down.
Question is: Will the successor be better, or worse? Hand on the red
button?
J&K Heating
The
Jammu and Kashmir region is heating up again with ceasefire reports on the
increase this week.
One of our news tipsters haz it all figured out, fortunately: "Hindus believe
they become reincarnated. Muslims believe they will go to heaven. Both have
nuclear weapons. What can POSSIBLY go wrong?"
Has Japan Disappeared?
Lets see...got
a couple of meltdowns that are just being glossed over, and now the Japanese are
planning to halt three reactors so quake emergency equipment can be added.
Quake Watch
Readers are watching - as we are - to see if anything BIG happens on the
earthquake front. Typical reader notes:
Hi George,
Scary... I'm not in the earthquake business, but
what you say fits nicely with the long dated prediction of an italian
so-called (according to wikipedia) "pseudo-scientist", Mr. Raffaele Bendandi
(who died in 1979). He predicted that because of some sort of planetary
alignement an important (intensity-wise) earthquake is due in the area of
Rome (Lazio, Italy) around the 11th of may 2011!! needless to say,
everything has been dismissed as quackery, but... who knows ?
Actually, the 11th of may comes 11 days after
your reported magnetic anomaly and it is striking indeed that the Japan
earthquake occurred ca 11 days after a past large magnetic anomaly
registered by HAARP observatory...
And the
quake count here is up, as noted by this fellow:
"Aleutian Islands took 3 hits 5+ One in Mexico too"
So we watch, we wait, we keep the big ham radio tower down to reduce moment arm
just in case, and keep hoping we make it all the way to July without a biggie.
Seems like a long shot, though given the planetary alignment.
(more after this)
Coping: With Fat Cats:
CEO's Raking It In
Rant time!
Doggone the Associated Press, anyway. They have a new report in their
Impact series out today and it reveals that
"CEO pay exceeds pre-recession level." FMTT.
At the other end of the 'reality spectrum' I couldn't help but notice the story
this week at the Mortgage Daily News which says the "Foreclosure
Pipeline "Bloated" New Delinquencies Down." This as the Daily
News Pulse reported "Delinquent
Foreclosures Flood Housing Market."
Some number of months back I mentioned the work of
Professor G. William Dumhoff
down at UC Santa Cruz. He's been tracking the concentration of wealth in
the hands of the few which - as you have probably noticed out and about
is coming at the expense of the many.
Dumhoff updated his figures a couple of months back and I keep meaning to
mention it: In 1983 the top one percent of Americans controlled 33.8% of
the nation's Net Worth. As of 2007, they controlled 34.6%. Care to
be it's not close - or even above - 36% now?
The bottom 80% of Americans went from 18.7% of [total] net worth in in 1983 down
to just 15% as of 2007. Bet on 12% or less now? Remember: that was was before we went through the
"National Housing Bust and Move under an Over4papss Festival."
Remind me, when I get some time to send the good professor a request to see if
there's anything comparable in earlier periods of history...like, say6...the
French Revolution.
No, it ain't cheap, but Domhoff's book Who Rules America? Challenges to Corporate and Class Dominance
(6th ed.)
($40 at Amazon) is on my reading list. Maybe the answer is in there
somewhere...
The real question is "How long can the increasing concentration of wealth go
before people start waking up to the idea that phat-cat GOP'ers like the (rhymes
with joke) brothers are setting up the political agenda in America to pursue a
largely corporate owner-oriented economy?
Not to put too fine a point on this, but as my friend Howard & I are writing a
book on the economy we find ourselves coming back frequently to this theme about
how the really rich are having a field day with their modus operandi.
Here's the game: They set a goal on the conservative side, then they set
up a group way off the margins to the extreme right and then simply hold out and
sloganeer (via the rabid right radio ranters) until what was once a an
anti-worker far right crazy idea that concentrates wealth and power in their
hands even more has been spun to look like a midpoint. And so, the
country devolves more and more to the [rabid, zero-thinking allowed] right.
---
America's a great country and we can fix much of our present mess with
only one or two simple pieces of legislation.
1. A tax on all labor and services provided overseas (imported to America
in any form) equal to the average wage differential between an American worker
and a foreign worker for the same job. And this would apply both to
physical goods as well as goods which are virtualized, since probably 20-million
jobs that would otherwise be in America today (solving our economic woes) have
been outsources to the rest of world (RoW) which is great for them, but it's
wrecking the US economy. Oh had you noticed?
We either find a way to reasonably tax this daily illegal labor invasion, and
charge a labor-rate-leveling tariff to neutralize the playing field delta,
or the corporate profit optimizers (emphasis on the misers part) will
continue outsourcing everything to least cost countries.
Don't like the tariff approach? Well, how about the idea from the Network
Administrator site (an industry which is now mostly gone): Do it
with a tax break to companies that keep workers here. Then no one overseas
can bitch about tariffs:
"The
U.S. Government could change this dramatically by changing the Income Tax
code. If a company's U.S. employees make up 70% of its cost base you
exclude 70% of its income from U.S. income tax. If a company's U.S.
employees only make up 20% of its cost base it pays income tax on 80% of its
income. This change would help make it economically unattractive to send
jobs overseas. It could be quickly implemented and could be very effective
in stopping our loss of jobs overseas. "
Simple, huh?
The current track means - at best - that you will only be paid what the cheapest
person anywhere in the world will charge to do the same job as you have (at
least for the moment). The result is something we likely in the book to
the New Corporate Feudalism. Oh, and government's being outsourced,
too...ain't no safe havens in this one and long as the Least Labor Cost
OptiMizer mentality rules.
2. Ban all corporate contributions for all elective office. Period.
Ban lobbying, too.
The Constitution of this great land didn't mention corporations but the
US Supreme Corp has been busily granting corporate interest supra-human powers
and rights, including a mentally deficient decision just recently which
effectively reduces the right of humans to file class action lawsuits
against these financial behemoths.
If you think I'm kidding about the trend, go check out the year-later impact of
the Citizens United ruling from the High Corp. As the
Center for Responsive Politics is summarized as saying...
"The ruling allowed corporations and unions to use their general treasuries
to pay for political advertisements that expressly call for the election or
defeat of a candidate, also known as independent expenditures. This ruling
subsequently allowed non-profit corporations under the tax code 501c to
spend unlimited amounts of money running these political advertisements
while not revealing their donors. "
The rabid right makes a big deal that unions spent $17.3 million from
their treasuries supporting moderate to liberal candidates in the January 2010
case. What the corporate lickspittle doesn't make such a big deal about is
the $121 million spent by largely corporate-funded conservative groups
and oh, about the additional $15 million spent by 'super-PAC's.'
It's not my intent to give away where the book goes (we don't know ourselves
yet, since we're still writing). But one thing is pretty clear:
Americans are being outgunned by corporate (and to a far lesser degree - union)
spending. Unions are pushing for more for the workers and since we're workers,
what's the problem?
I know, everyone wants to belong to TheClub and have a corporate jet...a
consumerist wet dream. Ain't gonna happen. We're poor now and
getting poorer. Know why? OpenSecrets reports that
lobbyist spending in 2010
topped $3.5 billion.
Is it any wonder that lawmakers can vote bailouts for failing banks and auto
companies, and insurance companies and WETF they feel like, with no fear of
public recriminations? I keep saying this: We might as well p[ut
government policymaking decisions on eBay since it's become government by the
rich, for the rich, and that ain't The American Dream we were fed.
Similarly, I really think the cheap sweat-shop labor ought to be taxed when the
goods are imported to level the playing field. Multinationals are becoming
quite good at loading their expenses on highest tax countries and moving profits
and revenues to least-tax or no tax places. You ought to look up how many
big corporations are nominally headquartered in the Channel Islands, Cayman
Islands, Bermuda, and let's toss in the Turks and Caicos while we're at it.
Maybe Belize, too? Sure.
Yes it's a Great Country, and yes it can be saved. But not at the present
pace because so many people have been hypnotized by the half-logic and
half-truths of the rabid right. People forget that unless you listen to
both sides or issues, and don't swallow the slanted/misstated summaries of
the opposition, your thinking will be bounded by what you're told.
Worked for some German dudes in WW2, I guess...
If you don't like my website (and lots don't, lol) could be because you're
only listening to half the story. That qualifies you for right or left
wing idiot status.
If you're not seeking out the opposing view points and fairly considering
them as an alternative, you've failed Citizenship 101 and we get what
we've got through negligence and neglect of our responsibility to listen to the
view we don't like.
The US Supreme Corp is handing over American to the monied Boyz. No
demonstrations in front of the High Corp, though. No recall of congreased
persons for being on the wrong side of the home district...hardly a peep as the
frogs are ever-so-slowly brought up to boil.
That's something which doesn't get much play. The marketing of politics,
particularly where there's money on the table, is largely based on public apathy
and ignorance.
Oh well, at least that's one of the few areas where we've remained a world
leader.
Around the Ranch: Radio Adventures
Great band conditions last night...worked Qatar, Italy, and a VK3 (long path) on
20 meters around 19:00 local. Long path means shooting the long way
'round. The guy in Melbourne (Ian was his name) was actually pointing at
South Africa, so the signal kept going. The 'short path' would have been
about 9100 miles northeast from Melbourne, instead of the long path which is
about 15,800 miles with a midpoint somewhere around Angola or so. Great
signal, too....just 100 watts and
a two element quad antenna.
---
A reader wondered about the Morse code in yesterday's report:
Good Morning,
Just read your post for today and noticed that
you had Morse Code at the bottom of your post. It’s been years since I
played with it so I went to a translator site and this is what it said your
code says:
Ardeac7x Is that correct?
I tried two different translators and they both
gave the same results. Figured it might be some radio call sign perhaps.
Just curious.
Answers:
Yes AR (shorthand in Morse for end of transmission)
http://www.ac6v.com/morseaids.htm#CW
DE (shorthand for from or ‘this is’)
AC7X….Here’s
a hint:
Gotta watch the spacing, which is more apparent to the ear.
---
Some good contributions to my son's noise problems, but I'm telling him just
save up for a small beam since vertical antennas are more prone to noise on the
HF bands - noise being vertically polarized. Or, put in a loop which is
quieter. Am sending him up a handful of clamp-on ferrite beads for the
outside of the coax and a mess of 0.01 caps to bypass everything, but I figure
it was just a couple of days of bad band conditions. Last night's opening
to Europe and the Middle East & long path was great.
Send Ure comments to george@ure.net
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Crackpot Theories & Observations
You know, some of the best brains on the planet have
been trying to figure out two or three things: "When in the next major
earthquake going to be?" Thursday is one highly tentative answer.
And, "If the government is saying inflation is running around 3½ percent, how
come I don't see it - all I see is inflation?" Because you don't
run your personal balance sheet is the tentative answer here. Simple stuff for a
clear-eyed Sunday morning, indeed. As long as we're at it, let's solve the
healthcare crisis, too. Seriously: This week we explore how new
"truths" arise and then apply that thinking to personal and national economic
problems.
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Last week's report is
always here.
Thursday May 5, 2011
Good Dollar/Bad Dollar
Just a few short weeks ago, the US Dollar would buy 0.703 Euro (around
April 18, to be presact). It
then dropped in Wednesday trading to a low of 0.6703.
About here, you're thinking "So what? Would you get to the point,
already?"
One of my 'crackpot theories' that seems to at least indicate some
potential for describing Great Economic Truth goes something like this:
"There is not much effective trading left in the stock market since inflows
and outflows of pension money (401, etc) is fairly stable, the digging speed
of the US debt hole is fairly stable, as is the Treasury need to sell debt
(increasingly to the Fed) and so forth.
Therefore, if there is one indicator of the overall direction of markets, we
may find that the Dow and other indices move closely to the foreign
investor's return perspective.
Which is to say: When the dollar goes down in terms of Euro,
then the stock market might go up. But, when the dollar goes
up, then the Dow and the metals should trend down."
So let's apply this and see what it would predict, shall we?
The Dollar - through mid session yesterday had lost a further 4.65% of its value
since April 18th.
At that time gold was hovering around $1,491, just
eyeballing
a Kitco chart here. That would imply Gold around $1,565. Didn't
make it quite there, but the May high was around $1,541, so the relationship
while not perfect is nevertheless close.
How did it work with the Dow? April 18 the Dow opened at 12,339 and on
Monday the high was 12,928. My "screwball theory" would have argued for
12,940, while I'll admit (after waterboarding) was a whole 12 points off
theoretical but I defy you to come up with a better theory other than
what I've proposed here.
So we can effectively look at the long-term dollar charts. When the US
dollar definitively 'breaks down trend" there's going to be blood in the streets
among the precious metals fans - since the metals could drop a good bit.
Worse, the Dow will hiccup as well.
Just as a short-term trading thought - this may not be the End of (Dollar's)
Days, but it may be a correction in the long-term slide. And, as such over
the next week, we might see Gold and the Dow drop perhaps 5% further. So
on a pullback, $1,430 gold might be an interesting number, and a Dow pullback to
the 12,130 might be where I'd unload short of my shorts.
However, as always, this is not trading advice. Just an interesting
correlation to keep an eye on. And an important one, perhaps..but now
check this story out:
Bitcoin: Bye Bye Banksters & Corpgov?
Oh boy, oh boy, this one is great and we got tipped off to it by a reader who
spied this article on
Springtwise.com:
"Peer-to-Peer currency takes banks out of the picture." OMG I love
it.
A little reading and it all comes into focus: If peer-to-peer file
sharing works, why not peer-to-peer money sharing, huh?
All of which gets us around to Bitcoin.org -
which has a page up here explaining what
they do.
All of which would put the central banksters in a heap-o-trouble since
they depend on controlling the money.
You remember yesterday, I was talking about that "The Data Gap" is that exists
in Clif's work? While I can't tell you presactly when, trust me
when I say there's a 'brick wall' ahead in data.
And remember when I mentioned to you how unwise speculation on 'the net' might
land people questioning the OBL death reports on some kind of government watch
or reprisal/retribution list?
Questioning OBL would be one small reason to turn down (or off) the net.
But what happens to the potential for an internet shutdown when suddenly, people
start taking their 'money' from a tax-free peer-to-peer source.
Huge UGLY questions arise: Can those Bitcoins even be taxed?
Aren't they dispersed and virtualized? Are they 'money' in the first
place? How could ones and zeros be considered counterfeiting?
Everything in digiland is ones and zeros... OMG this list of regulatory
issues is deliciously long and contorted.
Yep, that'd sure give the PTB's a second huge reason to slam down the
net, wouldn't it? Just saying once people generally awaken to the full
potential of the net to 'virtualize government' as well as money
that would make any of us doing real thinking on this topic...gulp...domestic
terrorists, wouldn't it?
There's already a full court (and full Court) press on to expand what was
initially a very narrow definition of terrorism to bulk up the definition to
include just about anything that seriously questions the ruling paradigm.
Should mean a bright future ahead for coders. I'm thinking a stealth
application that would run Netflix (which might survive as an 'approved' kind of
netivity (./e.g. net activity), shop Amazon, or would run eTrade real-time
quotes while all stealthy-like handling Bitcoin transactions hidden in its
datastream. Or, just encrypting Bitcoin transactions into .JPEG files...this
should be grea fun and endlessly amusing....
But then it's the 'end of the world' from an IT standpoint, but that's where the
Digital Revolution becomes open, isn't it? And maybe the Data Gap goes to
100 percent.
This is better than dark chocolate delicious..,.and calorie-free to boot!
Jackboots on the routers in the post-Internet world. Peer-to-peer versus
the moneychangers. Love it. Gotta be a TV series in it.... Could
humanity (which coincidentally rhymes with insanity) really click its way
to freedom? LOL...
GLWS: Good Little Wage Serfs Dept.
Fat chance. I suppose that gets us around to the morning's data: First up
is the weekly unemployment filings Offishul (sic) report:
"In
the week ending April 30, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted
initial claims was 474,000, an increase of 43,000 from the previous week's
revised figure of 431,000. The 4-week moving average was 431,250, an
increase of 22,250 from the previous week's revised average of 409,000.
The advance seasonally adjusted insured
unemployment rate was 3.0 percent for the week ending April 23, an increase
of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate of 2.9 percent.
The advance number for seasonally adjusted
insured unemployment during the week ending April 23 was 3,733,000, an
increase of 74,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 3,659,000. The
4-week moving average was 3,700,750, a decrease of 1,250 from the preceding
week's revised average of 3,702,000.
UNADJUSTED DATA
The advance number of actual initial claims
under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 412,873 in the week ending April
30, an increase of 25,006 from the previous week. There were 399,350 initial
claims in the comparable week in 2010.
The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate
was 3.0 percent during the week ending April 23, unchanged from the prior
week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in
state programs totaled 3,751,962, a decrease of 31,825 from the preceding
week. A year earlier, the rate was 3.6 percent and the volume was 4,671,227.
Then we have the Productivity Report:
"Nonfarm
business sector labor productivity increased at a 1.6 percent annual rate
during the first quarter of 2011, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
reported today. The gain in productivity reflects increases of 3.1 percent
in output and 1.4 percent in hours worked. (All quarterly percent changes in
this release are seasonally adjusted annual rates.) From the first quarter
of 2010 to the first quarter of 2011, output increased 3.2 percent while
hours rose 1.9 percent, yielding an increase in productivity of 1.3 percent.
(See tables A and 2.)
Labor productivity, or output per hour, is
calculated by dividing an index of real output by an index of hours worked
of all persons, including employees, proprietors, and unpaid family workers.
Unit labor costs in nonfarm businesses rose 1.0
percent in the first quarter of 2011, as a 2.6 percent increase in hourly
compensation outpaced the 1.6 percent gain in productivity. Unit labor costs
rose 1.2 percent from the same quarter a year ago. (See tables A and 2.) In
the first quarter of 2011, the consumer price series increased at a 5.3
percent annual rate, resulting in a decline of 2.5 percent in real hourly
compensation.
BLS defines unit labor costs as the ratio of
hourly compensation to labor productivity; increases in hourly compensation
tend to increase unit labor costs and increases in output per hour tend to
reduce them. Real hourly compensation is equal to hourly compensation
divided by the consumer price series.
Manufacturing sector productivity grew 6.3
percent in the first quarter of 2011, as output and hours worked increased
9.7 percent and 3.3 percent, respectively. Over the last four quarters,
manufacturing productivity increased 4.7 percent. Unit labor costs in
manufacturing declined 3.5 percent in the first quarter of 2011 and 1.4
percent over the last four quarters."
All of which seems to mean if we're all good little corporate wage serfs, we
might be able to muddle through, until some corporation needs the land where
your house is and grabs it under eminent domain, or until the corps wants some
kind of legislation passed, in which case your voting becomes a sham, but
besides that, we're still somewhat productive...where's my pitchfork?
Wait! You hear it?...There -- off in the distance? Why, it's the "Hallelujah
Choir" down at the Church of the Almighty Basis Point...
Why You Feel Stressed
Besides reading this column, I mean.
Simplified economics aside, the Associated Press has something dandy that most
people don't keep close tabs on:
Their "Economic Stress" Index. Which, if you read about its latest output
here, will tell you that Imperial Valley, California has a stress index up in
the 28-something range, while Ellis County, Kansas ad a stress index of just
over 4.
All of which is good for us enterprising entrepreneurial types. For
example, you'd want to own a doggy downer dispensary (pharmacy) in the high
stress area of California, since business ought to be booming. And the
area of Ellis County Kansas would be avoided like the plague.
Since you might end up with a real job there.
Where's Bin Laden's Pix?
Might want to finish the Cheerios before reading on...
As you may have heard, speaking of entrepreneurial types, a Pakistani security
officer
sold a bunch of pictures of the scene where it is reported that Osama bin Laden
was shot and killed to the Reuters news service.
Since the pictures showed the raid scene an hour after the raid, no sign of bin
Laden, but there was US helicopter wreckage, which lends creds. Gory creds
at that.
Meantime senator Scott Brown is quoted as saying the picture of [the dead][ bin
Laden he was shown was not authentic, but president Obama says it is and he's
done a 60-Minutes interview which will be on Sunday.
Floods and Cleanup
A couple of important developments on the Mississippi - one of which is the Army
Corps of Engineers (ACE) is planning a third blast about
1 PM today to open up the levees south of Cairo, IL in order to relieve flood
water pressures.
I continue watching the magnetometer chain up at the University of Alaska
nervously since that's north of a trillion additional pounds of water ,sitting
on New Madrid.
---
Meantime, our best source on what's really going on in the oil patch
(Oilman1)sent us an update on how things further down Ol' Miss were doing:
"George -
I was in Lafayette/Baton Rouge last week for
Well Control School. I used to live in Lafayette, and the wife is from Baton
Rouge - we have some sense of "norms" for the Mighty Miss and the
Atchafalaya Basin water levels.
What I noticed while driving to Lafayette was
that river looked within normal on Monday, and by Friday, had risen to
partially cover the red painted "Baton Rouge" sign on the inner wall of the
levee - which puts the river within 12-15 feet of the top of the levee.
The Atchafalaya Basin is at high level - about
4-6 feet from the top of the waterway and river banks running through it.
Yes, it's lowlands, but the water within the basin itself is already high.
Bobby Jindal (La Gov) was talking about the
possibility of opening the Morganza Spillway for the first time in over 50
years - ACE not even sure if the mechanism will stand it from rumors on the
ground in Lafayette. Maybe you got another connection there with more
current information??
Anyway -
this is a good website for seeing what is actually going on in different US
watersheds: Link to ACE River Gages site.
Interesting to look at the existing record
levels versus the normal flood stage levels.....especially on the
Mississippi and feeder rivers.
Just thought you and curious readers might like
to get a sense of what is going on within the largest watershed in America.
And kudos for even talking about this. It seems
like it is all restricted to only LOCAL reporting, and maybe a tiny sound
snip on MSM national.
I am thinking only ACE and some few souls who
understand the term "watershed" are getting the picture. Combine this
flooding in the heartland, the drought in the LGV (lower Rio Grande valley),
drought in the panhandle area of Texas and ANYTHING happening in Cali, and
we got huge food issues just like Clif has forecast. Even leaving Cali alone
we have issues, like nothing to export, which has ramifications for the rest
of the planet, where we know their weather is being uncooperative already.
Yeah - we would normally expect there to be some degradation of the US Balance
of Trade report from the mess in the Miss Valley, but maybe not as much as
otherwise expected. Reason? The Japan Earthquake likely will impact
imports, so a fall of exports in foodstuffs might not be as bad as
"normal" (whatever that is anymore) would have made it. Two two may
offset...
A Fine Lesson in Statistics
So there's this report out of New Zealand that the
"Labour market strengthening" but when you read down a bit, you find that
the job survey in the
Canterbury region (Christchurch) wasn't done. Too much quake damage, right?
So here is an interesting thought. Wonder how the US Department of Labor
here will treat employment in the areas of the country hard-hit by tornados and
floods? Juss askin'...
Grist for the
WuJo Files
Coping: With the Space-Time Warp
Say, here's an interesting basis for a plot in upcoming sci-fi adventures; "NASA
Announces Results of Epic Space-Time Experiment" which begins as like this:
"Einstein
was right again. There is a space-time vortex around Earth, and its shape
precisely matches the predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity.
Researchers confirmed these points at a press
conference today at NASA headquarters where they announced the long-awaited
results of Gravity Probe B (GP-B).
"The space-time around Earth appears to be
distorted just as general relativity predicts," says Stanford University
physicist Francis Everitt, principal investigator of the Gravity Probe B
mission. "
It's mostly a yawner, until the story draws the analogy to a fat person sitting
on a trampoline which makes gravity then become the natural 'falling' of smaller
masses toward the direction where the local space-time anomaly is most warped.
Look at the floor, it's somewhere down that way.
The number of brain cells used on the GP-B project is pretty impressive with 86
PhD theses coming out Stanford and 14- others in different schools were related
to project work.
The effect of gravity is fairly subtle; if it was more intense (which is to say
if the space-time curvature were more acute) you would be able to get yourself
out of bed in the morning. You'd weigh too much.
Still, that's the problem I found myself addressing this morning. I could
just swear we encountered a particularly dense part of space-time this morning
at about 4:45 AM, although curiously, it didn't seem to effect the cats.
Urban Surviving
Say, here's a new way to turn your patio at your apartment or condo into a
garden on the sly:
Something called pallet gardening complete with several how-to pictures
over at Life on the Balcony...
---
Over at Backdoor Survival, Survivorwoman's latest is about water storage, but
the hot tip for IT types is what?
Read down to the part about free cloud storage from Amazon. Gets me
thinking off-site backups...
... - .- - .. -.-. (Static) From My Son
If you're an electrical engineer, might enjoy the problem-solving issues related
to my son's ham radio setup in Kirkland, Wa. I had him take the whole
house off AC power and run his ham rig on a battery and still there, and since
he doesn't have a standard AM portable radio, which is still the best radio
interference tool ever made, he's stumped enough that he's started a discussion
over at the www.eHam.net website.
You can
read up on his adventures here.
-...- -...-
I've tried to explain to him that radio bands are a bit like luck in a casino.
The good band openings - and an occasional run at the blackjack table will
happen, but it's not an every day kind of thing. Sort of like fishing is
the same kind of statistical issue, but kids - even at 30 - still have to learn
for themselves.
I'm trying to get him to understand that if you have three statistically
dependent hobbies, you can usually find one of them working on any
particular day. My recommendation is ham radio, options trading, and
fishing, but the Old Man...why, what would he know?
-...- -...-
This is the same son who declines the Old Man's advice on marriage: I
figure it over half of marriages end in divorce, they should be tried several
times when young before there are appreciable assets to be divvied up.
Again, there's statistical truth involved, but he ignores my emails of
histograms and supporting statistical calculations. Maybe divorce rates
will decline among today's young....jury's out on that one. Their risk
appetites are sure different, though.
.- .-. -.. .
.- -.-. --... -..-
Wednesday May 4, 2011
Waiting for a Terror Attack (or Quake, Or Iran Strike)
Seems the current news context is not particularly favorable to the PTB and
we should therefore, if this isn't too much of a stretch for you at this hour on
Hump Day, to anticipate that at least one more Big News Story ought to pop
before next Monday. A context changer.
That's because we find, upon this morning's examination of headlines, a world
which is mostly believing the story about Osama bin Laden's killing,
although there's some question about when it took place. For
example, this
YouTube vid lays out a case that OBL has been killed (are you counting?) nine
times so far, although this will likely be the last of it.
The Benazir Bhutto claim in 2007 that he'd been killed then -
and her own
assassination a month after that David Frost interview is disturbing.
But, what see part of the cover-up for his being in Pakistan? Was she
being played?
Coupled with last week's extreme magnetometer movements (Friday through Sunday
as we reported earlier) the odds of making it through a week from now without
something of a major consciousness switching event seems very low.
Such a projected event (massive earthquake, domestic terrorism attack, or strike
on Iran's nuke plant(s)) would complete a trifecta of media spins which first
defused the birth certificate/college transcript debate which was building, and
would next spin public attention away from the dead OBL photos.
Curiously, my brother-in-law who worked SF ops in South America advised me that
the dumping of bin Laden's body at sea made sense at a tactical level. It
denies martyrdom and that's why (with a wink) it's
still not clear whether Che Guevara's body was cremated or buried (sans
hands later sent to Cuba). The US really does have experts in these things.
---
CNN is raising an interesting question this morning: "Who
gets bin Laden's $25 million bounty?" That'll be interesting to see;
are service members doing their job eligible? One struggles to remember if
there was any fine print to this offer.
We could speculate endlessly about what impact the killing will have (freezer
burns or otherwise) on the delicate balance in the Middle East.
With a Hamas-Fatah unity deal in the works, an argument could be made that
bin Laden's death is pushing to cement extremist unity.
On the other side, we note the increasing
reports that Israel may be operating jets out of US airfields in Iraq now,
and such operations may be seen as a prelude to an attack on Iran, which has
everything to lose from such an attack. The report 'gets legs' with coverage
in Israel's J-Post that "IAF aircraft seen drilling at US base in Iraq."
Such an attack would fill linguistic expectations for "the Israeli mistake" but
there's also a question whether that might already be partially filled by
wide-spread discussion that it may have had something to do with development of
the Stuxnet Virus which the NY Times
reported in January Stuxnet was tested at Israel's Dimona nuke factory.
But the Middle East is only one leg of the trifecta of threats. The next
is that terrorism will come again to American soil. We note that local law
enforcement in many parts of the country are on elevated alerts, such as the
Wisconsin Public Radio report that "Vigilance
urged, following Bid Laden death" although in Denver, former senator Gary
Hart "...predicts
another attacvk, despite bin Laden's death." So there's that one
ticking, and perhaps to the beat of the clock in that Simpsons' episode.
Then there's our current fascination with what could be the third choice of
game-changers: A Major earthquake.
I assume you know that earthquakes are slightly more likely around the
time of the new moon to first quarter? So yesterday (3 May) was the
new moon and we may be considered to be in an ever-so-slightly elevated risk
period now.
Overnight we had a smallish
2.6 in the Los Angeles area when was only slightly felt up in the San Dimas
warehouse district and alongs the 10. Larger was a 3.7 overnight near Lone
Pine, which is interesting because it brings the possibility of a rip developing
which could separate to the northwest up toward the offshore of northern
California area which has been somewhat active on the one hand, and
the quake swarm which has been ongoing up in Nevada including a 2.7 yesterday.
---
And speaking of quakes and such, there's a paper from one Prof. Fran De Aquino
which is worth a read if you're into conspiracy theories about the Higth
Altitude Auroral Research Program (HAARP). The gist of the paper
"High-power ELF radiation generated by modulated HF heating of the ionosphere
can cause Earthquakes, Cyclones and localized heating" is a in interesting
read for sure, but pay particular attention as to how a slight gravity
alteration (top right of page 6) could [theory here] lessen the impact of
gravity which in turn, when shut off, might trigger a massive quake.
De Aquino's paper on "The
Gravitational Spacecraft" is interesting, and if you get around to
duplicating the gravity effects outlined in his paper "Gravity
Control by means of Electromagnetic Field through Gas or Plasma at Ultra-Low
Pressure" please send along your results. We'd like to convert our old
farm truck to mag-lev or better.
Even more curious - to those who follow the 'clues in plain sight' concept - is
this page. Curiouser and
curiouser...but that gets us off into woo-woo land and we have an economy to
watch.
So keep the popcorn and three weeks of food and water handy, events could pop
any which-way in here and the aware human's job is to be prepared for anything
and ready to spring into action, which means not to be drawn in to the 'shock
and awe' of anything.
OK, except the financial stuff which ought to get extremely interesting going
into the weekend, so we will keep an eye on the economy/banking sector.
Job Numbers Improving
We have a couple of headlines crossing this morning which may prove of interest
if you're trying to figure out what the unemployment number will be like when it
pops Friday. First out was the Challenger job cuts report which we
expected to be modest given the good "mass Layoffs' number for February out
recently:
CHICAGO, May 4, 2011 – The slow pace of downsizing continued in April,
as employers announced plans to cut 36,490 jobs from their payrolls during
the month, 12 percent fewer than the 41,528 job cuts announced the previous
month, according to the latest report on planned layoffs released Wednesday
by global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.
The April job-cut total was down 5.0 percent from the same month a year ago,
when 38,326 planned layoffs were announced. It was the lowest monthly total
of the year and the third lowest over the last 16 months. Year to- date,
employers announced 167,239 job cuts, 24 percent fewer than the 219,509
layoffs by the same point last year.
Then we have the ADP Employment Change report which is a good proxy for
what's going on in the real/non-adjusted-so-much world:
"Employment
in the nonfarm private business sector rose 179,000 from March to April
on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the latest ADP National
Employment Report® released today. The estimated change of employment from
February 2011 to March 2011 was revised up to 207,000 from the previously
reported increase of 201,000.
Today’s ADP National Employment Report shows that labor market conditions
continued to improve in April, but only at a moderate pace. The increase of
179,000 is close to consensus expectations both for today’s report and for
Friday’s jobs report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics."
None of which definitely tells us what Friday will bring, except of course,
change, though it does shade toward another tenth or two of improvement in the
federal numbers which might rally the market a bit.
Frank(ly) Speaking
Congressman Barney Frank has fired a warning shot over the bow of the Federal
Reserve,
telling the press that the regional fed chieftains should not be the ones
setting Fed rate policy, since they are all drawn from the regional
businesspersons pool and there should likely be a little wider interest in
public policy as opposed to business-friendly policy on such things.
With a quick review, we can see the point: It may be good for business
to deficit spend, but is it really in America's best interests to have a
national debt that's over half of GDP nowadays? I don't think so...
Frank - for whatever people may say about him - seems to be doing a very brave
thing, given the outcomes of others who have dared try and change the Fed
around.
President Kennedy's famous Executive Order 11110 comes to mind, for
instance.
Famine in the Wings
Despite some arguably good news in the past couple of days on bin Laden, jobs,
and Frank reforming the Fed, there's still the little matter of huge food
inflation to come since the nation's breadbasket is largely underwater.
A typical reader report goes like this:
G, I live in north central Ohio. Just got another 3/4 inch of rain. The
problem is we are soaked. This part of Ohio plants nothing but corn. The
farmers are normally planted by now. It will take a couple of weeks to dry
enough to plant. See where this is going. The harvest is going to be late
and smaller this year. We usually get corn to eat around forth of July. My
guess it will be late July this year.
That Army Corp levee explosion has worked...at least sort of. On
the one hand, it has
lowered the level of the Mississippi 1½ feet
up around Cairo, Illinois, BUT it has also triggered a new lawsuit on behalf
of 90 homeowners impacted. Seems some days the ACE's just can win for
losing. But Wednesdays are like that.
---
All the crappy weather is really hitting hard according to the USDA Crop report
which shows corn planted in 18 states is only 13% for the year, whereas the
2006-2010 average was 40% by this time. But more significant are states
like Ohio where only 1% was in the ground compared to 33%.
So home gardening might be a good cost hedge come after-harvest. Investing
in Mason jars and lids is an interesting thought. Done any home canning
before?
Life on the Far Side
Our Indonesia Bureau Chief has sent us another dispatch on what life is like
outside of the US media umbrella:
"Dear George,
It’s about time to send along some econ news from the Far Side. Global
shipping is still depressed. As as January’s report, and my own eye-witness
account, there are more than 500 ships stacked off of Singapore. I don’t
have a break-down by type, but I didn’t count any oil tankers. Most of it
looked to be container or dry bulk vessels. There’s a significant
overcapacity and quite a few ships are sailing at half-full.
The latest year for which I have any solid numbers is 2008. Even then,
things weren’t pretty. At that time, oil tankers had a 45% excess supply,
bulk carriers71%, and containerized 45%. In ’08 and ’09, a number of new
vessels came online, causing the overcapacity to jump. Roughly 80% of global
shipping is tanker traffic, which has only 27% of the global fleet. The rest
of the fleet is broken down as 31% general cargo, 15% dry bulk, 13%
passenger, 9% container, and the rest of various purpose.
As far as Indonesia goes, they have recently passed a new cabotage law that
mandates only domestically-flagged vessels working in territorial waters.
The exception is O&G vessels and special-purpose vessels, for which no
Indonesian-flagged vessel exists. In the general economy, Asia is going
nuts, and Indonesia especially so. RI is expected to show 6% growth over the
next 4 years, and inflation is the biggest worry right now, even though
interest rates remain relatively high (especially compared to the US). In Q1
this year, RI ran a USD 6.7 billion surplus YoY for non-O&G trade. The
hottest export trade is in apparel and athletic shoes.
Most of the trading partners are EU, China and India. There is very little
direct trade with the US. Most of that goes through China. Everything from
corporate profits to ad spending is up 20% to 40% in the latest quarter.
There is a fast-growing middle class that is stretching its legs and
demanding more goods, services and diversions. Of course, RI wanted to raise
taxes on imported movies, so Hollowood cut us off. The cinemas have been
filled for the past couple of months with Chinese and Thai movies, and the
usual selection of Indo horror flix *YAWN*. I can still get all the latest
movies a week before they hit theaters, though. The black market is as
strong as ever.
As for other items…the WillynKate show was a non-starter here. Not one
single person has brought it up in conversation. The OBL show is slightly
higher, with two people mentioning it, but only in the context of ‘BS
factor.’
Nevertheless, the Emperor’s warship, USS Guardian docked in Bali yesterday
in a show of force, I mean goodwill tour of SE Asia.
Next they’re heading to northeast Java, as they make the rounds keeping the
colonies in line, I mean spreading peace and goodwill.
I haven’t seen or heard of any demonstrations, nor have I seen any evidence
of heightened alert here-abouts. Pretty much business as usual. More as
things develop.
Sampai jumpa,
Bernard D. Grover, Indonesia Bureau
So, curiously, Adam
Smith's "invisible hand" has been hard at work. Thanks to the US continued
outsourcing, there seems to be something of an ongoing boom in places like this.
Only downside is the loss or jobs and homes experienced by Americans. But,
I'm sure the PTB/PTW aren't too worried about breaking a few eggs to make
their global omelet.
Making Book
Good story on ZDNet about
the coming of a rumored Kindlebread OS for a new version of the Kindle reader.
I've actually gotten pretty much used to reading on my Kindle and while it
doesn't sport the color display of my CruzReader (with Android) it still has the
ergonomics right since the Cruz requires a stylus to do much useful, whereas
Kindles have more of a menu/nav approach.
The upside of all this development & marketing in readers may not be obvious,
but think about this: Maybe people will lrn 2 du mr thn txt n srf nws n
sht.
Coping: My $50/Hour PT Job
There's something about ideal spring work weather that brings out the
"construction worker" in me. Every year, as the days grow longer, I find
myself compulsively picking up whatever is laying around and trying to make
something out of it. One year it was the north deck. A few years
later, a largish 20' x 20' deck on the front of the house. And now - an
early look here - at my latest Spring Madness project:
Ah, these fine pillars are nothing more, or less, than the beginnings of the new
carport, which will also serve as a truckport and mowerport, terms which should
be perfectly understood yet for some reason linguistically don't seem too
popular yet for reasons that escape me.
After slaving away at the computer yesterday, while Panama Bates did the
hole-punching, we tossed sack after sack of concrete into the ground around
these beasties.
At some point this weekend, we will get the 2X12's up on top, which will be
followed by a good number of 2X8's running perpendicular, and then stringers of
2X4's to which a standing seam metal roof will be applied.
All of which would not be particularly interesting, except for several points.
The first of which is cost. A friend of mine, who I'm sure questions my
sanity rather often I 'spect) asked me why I didn't just write a $3,400 check
and have a nice aluminum carport put up.
Problem with such things is that they don't often work well for odd-ball
applications. Most structures are designed to be placed on level ground.
This one, to the contrary, is being installed quite deliberately on a modest
slope. Since it's a sloping roof, the pitch of the roof will approximate
the slope of the ground and that's fine both from a run-off standpoint and
because it will look (or at least should look) like it was something
built to the ground contour.
We debated where to put the carport/truckport for a couple of months. If
we put it one place, it would block the view out into the woods. In
another, it would involve parking vehicles over a water line - and any time you
drive over water lines, just seems like that's asking for ground movement and
eventual repairs.
Besides, any damn fool can build a structure on level ground. This
is something different. Yeah, we got dead-bubble level on the big
deck, which is on a sloping hill. But that's easy compared to
terrain-following which sounded like something new to do.
The finished size of this will be 23' x 23' and our cost will come in at about
$1,300. Maybe if I load beer and sandwich costs in, I could get this up to
$2.50 per square foot. The smaller 20x20 at $3,400 pushes out to $8.50 per
square foot. Hardly a bargain.
The time to build will (by the time we add it all up) will be maybe 20
man hours. The hardest part is the design (can't count that time because
it's just plain fun) and then the hole digging and concrete. The 'cap'
ought to go on in 10-12 hours worth.
One check of the post positions will confirm neither me or the BIL are Masons,
such is the layout which future geologists may refer to it as "Georgehenge."
The reason to use non-stretchy twine instead of nylon is that over 20 feet, you
can get an inch (or more) of error just on stretch.
But the concrete is done now, so like in golf, we will 'play it where is lays.'
This morning my back is a bit sore - from tossing around concrete into late
afternoon. Panama will likely get a few pains out of this, although fewer
since he gets up and does road work before breakfast, and I don't mean the kind
involving turning a key.
Anyway, the point I was fixing to make was that IF we get it done in even
40-manhours of effort, that still means $2,100 in savings, or we are, in effect,
paying ourselves somewhere between $105 per hour on the high side to $52.50 per
hour on the low side.
I can't think of too many jobs that a person can hold which have a much higher
return (and untaxable, at that) as being a serious Home HandyBastard and
improving your own property. Plus there's the bragging rights that go with
such projects, ideally suited to Spring. Did I mention the benefit of
getting exactly what you want and not having to btich and go
'round with workmen over where this, or that, ought to go?
I'm constantly amazed by people who sit on the couch and then complain that they
don't have some of the nicer things in Life.
It's actually hard to do some home improvements and not come out ahead.
Kitchens and bathrooms in particular.
A bathroom remodel takes a lot of different skills (carpentry, plumping, and
maybe electrical plus finishing, flooring, and such) but if you can manage it, a
shower or tub will be around $900 for a dandy one with fixtures at the local
hardware emporia. You have to work at it to get more than $250 into a
crapper, and a complete sink/base unit will be another $500 tops - and that's
something fancy-like.
On this one, we're up to $1,650 plus another $350 in miscellaneous (tools, pipe,
paint, tape joint mud, a couple of sheets of greenboard, yada, yada...
But when you're done, instead of paying $12,000 for a new bathroom, if you can
get it for that cheap, you're saving $10,000! Shoot, even if you put
200-hours into it (which would be damned hard to do) you'd still be making $50
an hour.
Bottom line to all this: Get yourself some real skills and get together
with some friends and develop some real serious remodeling and construction
skills. You can still have a dream house on the cheap.
You just can't be lazy and have it like used to be the case. Way we see
it, sweat is still going for $50 an hour which is more than most people make at
'real' work. And a damn sight more than watching TV pays for pumping my
head full of bullshit commercials that just pimp more consumption, right?
Once again I have come down with Spring Construction Disease.
Tuesday May 3, 2011
Bin Laden and the 'Net
A serious question of "press freedom/free speech" looms and it could be a messy
one to resolve.
Yes, it's a good thing we 'got' bin Laden, except that I've now got a gnawing
concern that a lot of bloggers and internet sources of day-to-day commentary may
not be taking the government seriously enough.
You see, there's one quote in particular in the bin Laden coverage that was
attributed to Obama counterterrorism advisor John Brennan
(example story) where he says - in part: "We are going to do everything we
can to make sure that nobody has any basis to try to deny that we got Osama bin
Laden..."
That quote shows up other places, too. Like
in coverage here, or
here, or
here.
and the list goes on if you know how to user a search engine.
True, there are going to be a lot of stories about folks like Cindy Sheehan who
is apparently questioning the government account. But there's something
else afoot here as Slate headlines it in a blog this morning in the
Weigel blog "Osama
bin Laden Trutherism is Born."
---
I was a news exec long enough to read carefully when government or
officialdom lays out its intent in very precise language. And
yes, there is a bit of context missing from what has turned into a
standalone quote. BUT, while we like to be wide-ranging and free-thinking
when it comes to news coverage, we tend to be extremely conservative
when it comes to editorial policy.
When a leading government official and subject matter expert (SME) says the
government will do everything we can to make sure nobody has any basis I
read that to propagate a point of view which raises any question about
OBL's death could get an organization on the wrong side of government's
extensive "anything we can" capabilities which, if you're not a complete
idiot, is pretty extensive.
So while it may be tempting to delve into Photoshop stories and what-have-you's,
we can perhaps best serve the interests of you - the reader - by reminding you
of a column I wrote and posted in late December of last year (you
can read it here) where we discussed the likelihood of a terrorist attack on the
US in this:
“WHATEVER
happened to the disturbing homer simpson
video and the nuke??? Red herring? Maybe it
was pointing to a different date……….. turn
it upside down (metaphorically). Clif might
give us a bit on all the “patterns” he saw
in there and another look might reveal more
than initially thought.”
Simple
answer:
May or June of 2011 is when the ‘terrorist’
attack might take place, because by then,
there will be widespread concern about a Second
Depression, after the spring market tumble, so
someone has to take the fall to give government
a reason to ‘get hard’ on dissent of any kind."
Not a bad call for Dec. 2010...
So, this morning, we find ourselves curiously where "The Answer Man"
(...er...me...) told you we might be - back in December of 2010: The
government with a very good reason to "get hard on dissent" and the the
haunting mystery of that
Simpsons Episode where the town hall clock of Springfield lands next to
the sleeping Homer with the time shown as 5:55, but it gets even more
bizarre: If you pause the video (or
just watch here at 0:46)
you'll see that when viewed upside down it reads 9-11.
--
So in coming weeks, if we focus on the 'ex
post facto" side of news, disasters, and finance, it won't be
because we're not aware of the major news items and allegations and such.
It will simply mean that we are continuing to report not create
the news.
Still, curious indeed to hear that
the White House
is now changing its tune a bit on whether Osama had a gun or whether he used one
of his wives as a human shield. Still other accounts are that bin
Laden may have been
living in the same place for the past six years.
The NLE and the Levee
As we told you would likely occur last night,
the US Army Corps of Engineers opened the levee (e.g. blew it up) up at the
north end of Missouri which will now allow about one trillion pounds of
water to flow over 130,000 acres of farmland in the area just north of the New
Madrid seismic zone's 'ground zero.'
A number of readers seem to well understand our concerns about the period just
ahead as a possible replay of historical events. Like this guy who wrote:
Hey Old Guy !!!
I got your April / May rhyme right here ya
cheery bastard - LOL !!! I meant that in a good way !! Keep up the great
work. We apprecaite everything you and Cliff do - within reason !!
Take a quick glance and see if you can use this.
A little frightening to say the least what you can actually find out about
floods / quakes being related. Especially considering what technology was
back then, and or the lack there of !!
1927 Flood "As
the flood approached New Orleans, LA, about 30 tons of dynamite were set off
on the levee at Caernav, LA. "
"Another
earthquake in the Mississippi Valley region caused damage in Tennessee and
Arkansas on May 7, 1927. It was strongest at Jonesboro, Arkansas, where
some chimneys fell (VII). However, the felt area indicated that the
epicenter was farther to the east, in Tennessee. Damage there was limited to
the shattering of window panes and breaking of dishes in the Memphis area.
Many people were awakened by the early morning (2:28 AM) rapid rocking
motion; in addition, surface and subterranean sounds were heard. The shock
was also felt in parts of Alabama, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, and
Missouri, an area of about 337,000 square kilometers. "
1811 -
Floods in June - Quake in December - Flooding preceded the 1811 New
Madrid Quake."
Welcome to my mat. The first case referenced (1927) is especially
interesting since it raided a lot first ("On April 15, 1927 15 inches (380
mm) of rain fell in 18 hours.") and then it shook (May 7, 1927).
Although we're now in a period right after three major magnetometer excursions
(around 11:00 UTC on 4/30, 13:00 UTC on 5/1, and10:00 UTC on 5/2) it's not
necessarily meaningful, unless of course, a quake occurs.
---
All of which brings us to a rather interesting coincidence, since FEMA is now in
the early goings of their National Level Exercise in the [rain soaked, at risk
anyway] region.
"NLE
2011 will simulate the catastrophic nature of a major earthquake in the
central United States region of the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ). The
year 2011 is the bicentennial anniversary of the 1811 New Madrid earthquake,
for which the NMSZ is named. NLE 2011 will be the first NLE to simulate a
natural hazard.
NLE 2011 activities will take place at command
posts, emergency operation centers and other locations to include federal
facilities in the Washington D.C. area and federal, regional, state, tribal,
local and private sector facilities in the eight member states of the
Central United States Earthquake Consortium (CUSEC). The eight member states
of CUSEC encompass four different FEMA regions: Alabama, Kentucky,
Mississippi, and Tennessee (FEMA Region IV); Illinois and Indiana (FEMA
Region V); Arkansas (FEMA Region VI); and Missouri (FEMA Region VII). "
The training exercise itself if very good - I mean here we have a fine example
of government proactively getting ready for a "just-in-case".
But there may be a lot more too it!
Some important observations about these first two stories and the possible
link between them and some implications follows in this morning's Coping section.
Curious Quakes
Not that common for there to be
a small quake (3.9) out in West Texas, 71 miles ESE of our friends up in Lubbock.
Biggest quake yesterday was a
5.5 off Nicaragua, which is only interesting if you remember there was a
6-something (
6.0 on 4/30 then since you asked ) a few days back off Panama just south.
One might view the quakes in Alaska and down in Argentina about East of where
the Chile quakes were and wonder if the whole Pacific Plate isn't under some
hugely increasing pressure....several California quakes and maybe those recent
ones in Nevada are all part of a North-South two continent 'press' that's
building.
Bummer Bucks Dept.
Not that you need to be told this, for the declining US dollar to Euro exchange
rate chart should speak for itself but here's a story about a rating
agency that says the US debt rating should be up in the A range.
Nope, it should be down in the "C"
kind of range.
This morning, stocks
were down in Europe, though that shouldn't come as a big surprise after the
recent runs. Whether the US market fades will depend on a number of things
including the morning's economic numbers which will include factory orders later
on this morning and the auto/truck sales figures this afternoon.
Second Sony Hack
...is
being report, this one involving a further 24.6 million customer records.
IP Lawyering
See where
TiVo is getting a $500-million patent infringement settlement from Dish
and EchoStar? This was over DVR technology.
---
I must not be as young as I once was. Heck, I don't find most programs
worth watching the first time, let alone putting money into tools for watching
them on a delayed basis. Perhaps I don't lead an Idol enough lifestyle to
have time for such use of my time. Life's short enough already and if I
don't get something of value in exchange, well.....
Rahm'ed?
Cities have rankings - just like TV shows do. In this case, it's the
PriceWaterhouseCooper 26 city list of top financial places.
Chicago is down 3-spots in the latest ranker.
Not sure what Hizzoner's gonna be able to do about it. As US city-states
become more and more hard-pressed for cash, they need tax revenue and that's
like asking the Sahara for water in financial circles.
But, as a friendly suggestion, I'd consider a name change or at least minimally
a slogan change.
Chicago presently sports itself as the "City of Big Shoulders" which to me makes
no sense whatsoever. When I think of "big shoulders' it comes back
from the preconscious as either a sports reference or something to cry on.
No, if Chicago wants to get back into the financial Big Leagues, they're going
to have to do better.
A name change to "Cash Flow, Illinois" might be good. Or the "City of
Appreciation" would work since it has both a human-human touch, honors
multiculturalism (a variant of political correctness disease) as well as a well
understood financial term.
I'm still trying to gin up some interest by the city fathers & mothers of
Palestine, Texas in my plan to rename the city "Tomorrow, Texas" which is really
powerful, but if they don't show signs of life soon, maybe Chicago should try
"Tomorrow, Illinois."
As long as I was at it, I cooked up another pretty good "New City Name".
I really like Inertia, D.C.
Of course D.C. needs to be simplified, too. What does Columbia have to do
positioning-wise with today's world? I mean besides the other spelling
which is narco-money defined, maybe and that in turn....let's not go there.
I say change D.C. to something worthy and memorable. America
would be great. But I've been saying this for a while without enough
people joining in.
Inertia, America surely obeys positioning's First Commandment: Call
the product what it is and own that headspace.
Yah think?
(More after this)
Coping: A Reason to Close Down the Net?
Something is bothering me about an undercurrent to the day's first two
stories. We have on the one hand, a possible danger caused by the
'net to the security interests of the US if too much is said about the death
of OBL in a questioning kind of way.
This obviously could give radical Muslim factions a reason to perpetrate
terror in the US. But more important, the mere existence of the
internet would be a direct cause of this future event, since it was
on the net where the concept of Osama-not-dead arose.
Thus, in a curious (but mathematically perhaps provable way) the internet not
only may have a hand in creating the future, but in creating a bad
future specifically.
In the morning's second lead story, we see how there has been a lot of
swirling around on the net (admittedly, some of which I contributed to myself by
covering the magnetometers going off in pre-Japan quake fashion this week) about
the NLE 2011 which focuses on a Big Quake.
I perceive another level to all this stuff that's maybe not being thought through
and though this may sound a bit 'wonky' at first go with me on this:
Suppose, just for a second, that the way our collective future resolves into
reality is by a process of what psychologists call "mass consciousness."
Suppose further, that the advent of the Internet may have brought with it
something no one has yet fully comprehended, which is to say that there has been
all kind of 'chatter' on the 'net since the NLE was announced that questions
and presents a dark side to the coming exercise.
In fact, this goes way over the top on some sites, which ascribe all kinds of
'satanist' and other power/future-changing concepts and ascribes a lot to a
hidden group of factions within not only our government but also as some
part of a huge international conspiracy.
But what if the net itself is to blame? In other words, the hard
science says there really is something called psi out there; the
recognition of this 'above chance' stuff working is statistically provable beyond a
doubt. Dean Radin's book The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena
($10.16 @ Amazon)
is a good survey on how hard science has quietly been coming to this conclusion
over the past8-10 years, but it hasn't made it into the lead story position on
the Evening News simply because there's not a 'single peg' on which to hang the
story.
Yet.
So here's a weird thought that crosses my mind - and it might even be in
keeping with some of the longer-range values in Clif's work having to do with
the Data Gap: What would happen to the Internet if some morning a global
press conference were held simultaneously in the world's top-10 countries
announcing that the Internet was placing the future of humans at risk?
The storyline would go something like this:
Because so many people are communicating so much, a kind of over-soul/group
consciousness was emergent and that this new "group persona" has a really,
really dark and paranoid side and that because humans tend to become what
we think about the decision was being made simultaneously all over the
world to shut down the internet to everything but ebooks and conventional
click-to-buy product.
The science report would go through dozens of large stories and develop a
statistical correlation to the actual arriving future and the delta between
pre-web discussion ramp-up and post-discussion ramp up, might indicate some
statistically valid argument that "the net is dangerous."
Take something like 2012, for example. There has been a tremendous amount
of hype and discussion on the net about the pendency of "major earth change"
along with "comet Elenin" and the "Mayan calendar end" and all the rest of it.
Suppose that the net is self-reinforcing our future - and thus under quantum
physics rules - making the 'net's version of the future more probable than a
well-thought-out happily-ever-after version where free energy arrives,
corporations evolve into public ownership on a mass scale, we solve all the
problems and all live peaceably.
There are some massively difficult problems involved in this kind of a future;
not the least of which would be compiling the incontrovertible examples of how
the 'net consciousness made an otherwise statistically improbable event
occur.
Suppose that today - or later this week - we actual do get a mega quake
in the New Madrid region. How would one sort out the cause, since it would
involve unprovable factor-weighting inferences. In other words, some of
the odds might come from the massive rainfall this year in the region.
Some might have something to do with that trillion pounds of water moving into
the New Madrid seismic zone this morning thanks to the levee breach.
But what IF some of it could be ascribed to all the human visualization power
that has swirled around the FEMA NLE? Remember that FEMA did (as part of
the exercise, I take it) a request for information about getting 14-million (or
whatever it was) MRE's and water for displaced people.
Most of the internet ignored the fact that the RFI was pulled in about 7-days
and hasn't been heard from since, and more importantly, FEMA went looking for
ways to do those RFI/inquiry type things without going through 'normal' public
announcements.
So here's the bottom line of this morning's musing: If there is a
New Madrid quake and if there are major earth changes in 2012, especially
late in the year, will the Global Mass Consciousness of the Net have played some
role in Schrödinger'ing
this into existence? And might such a study - conducted now and supported
by wide-ranging polling now and reported in early 2013, account for the net's
wide-ranging free-for-all discussions disappearing later on?
Observer expectation states are tricky things, if they can predict the
future of Schrödinger's cat. But they are also key to how prayer and
intent work.
Question is: Are they also key to how the 'net works?
---
Crypto archeology makes a convincing case that there have been other
civilizations before us here on this Earth. Yeah, they've been written out
of the history books, but it's really too bad.
Maybe - and just something to ponder when you get time - is the idea that the
story of the Tower of
Babel has really been poorly spun over time. Maybe the essence of the
tale is that when a global society gets big enough it can think its way into a
very bad or even dead-end future.
Kinda like now, just for example.
Recommended Radio Readings
This one from Trader Bart: "Radio
Monitoring: The How-to Guide" - 348 page .PDF but a ton of useful info.
Also a great book making the rounds in already-licensed ham circles is "Crystal
Sets to Sideband" Try the "whole book" .pdf to make life easy.
My son (KF7OCD) calle3d last night and wanted me to explain why convention is
for lower sideband to be used on 40 and 80 meters while the upper sideband is
used elsewhere.
Didn't have time to give him the whole lecture, but a little study of Lew
McCoy's history, the use of old ARC 5 surplus and 9 MHZ crystal filters is the
short answer. The 5 MHZ VFO on the ARC 5 could be added to the 9 MHZ IF to
give 14 M HZ out, while going the other way, 5 Mhz from the 9 MHz filter was
down near 80-meters.
Funny - it's kind of like radio's version of why railroad rails are as far apart
as they are, which can be traced back to side-by-side Roman soldiers.
What strange things our heritage does to us.
Monday May 2, 2011
OBL Death:
Quake and Switch?
I'll start by saying that the odds of me being wrong are very high.
Yet still, my sense is that a major earthquake is pending based on magnetometer
deflections which are way out of the average/normal range. And it strikes
me as highly coincidental - or not.
We begin, therefore by reporting that
Osama bin Laden is dead - or so goes the tale.
But it's not our focus of
attention this morning. What is? We ought to have a huge earthquake
today, maybe tomorrow. Reason? I watch magnetometers - a
lot - and the kind of excursions we have been seeing over the weekend
have only occurred (in recent memory) around large-scale seismological events.
In fact, the last time we saw such data was preceding the Japan quake.
So - if I were a betting man - my first bet of the week is that as questions
arise wonder if that's really Osama bin Laden who was killed, or just a
photoshopped picture - will quickly be brushed aside by headlines shortly of
something else...like the possibility of a major earthquake.
The University of Alaska HAARP Project magnetometer chain this morning looks
like this:
No, this doesn't mean HAARP will be or is in any way causative. What HAARP
does have is a publicly
accessible database which records a known magnetometer chain in the surrounding
hinterlands of Alaska and what's going on now
is significantly larger than what was happening before the Japan quake.
As you can see plain as day, the overnight Friday into Saturday deflection was
greater than -700 nT. The same system recorded a fluctuation in the
Earth's magnetic field of only -440 (approximately) prior to the Japan quake.
Why, with the association of Osama bin Laden's number of hijackers (19) and the
significant digits of tomorrow adding up to (5/3/11) 19 such an event would not
at all surprise us.
One little oddity: The BBC says bin Laden's body "has already been
disposed of at sea'" which, given the public's interest sounds curious. I
would have thought a full-on public match up with any dental records or
identification marks and yada, yada. But no....
Again: This is NOT to claim a "quake and switch" is in the works. I'm only
noting that a large news item has been floated just ahead of a period when in
the past under similar conditions of magnetometer deflections, we saw a major
earthquake. Coincidence in the making - or not...still, there's this, too:
Levee Breach Going Ahead
Meantime, there's the little "trillion pound problem" which is going ahead up in
Illinois.
The US Army Corps of Engineers is getting ready to blow a hole in a levee along
the Mississippi in order to intentionally flood 130,000 acres with - near as
our back of the envelope calcs have it - somewhere north of 1-trillion pounds of
additional water weight exactly on the north side of the New Madrid seismic
zone.
---
Since "history is written by the winners" we're confident that any
"coincidental" earthquake up that way would be handed off as "lucky coincidence"
for FEMA which has been planning the New Madrid National Level Exercise (NLE)
for months...
---
So while I sit here writing this morning (with a seat belt on, lol) I couldn't
help but pass on this
paper out of Purdue University about the goings on under New Madrid just so
you have the background in advance...or West Coast...odds are still floating
around 50-50 on which one it might be.
Bin Laden Death Skeptics
From a reader/reporter:
"Hi George,
I don't know if you noticed, but since the
President announced that Osama Bin Laden is dead, there is a peculiar
photograph making its way through the channels on the internet. The first
thing that I noticed right off the bat was that everything below the nose
and eyes (including the ears) had a different resolution than everything
above it. It immediately appears to me that an image of OBL was cropped and
placed onto an image of some dead guy. Well, it turns out that I was right.
Here is a picture that is a perfect match for the one seen in the "Dead
Osama" pic (here).
Basically, they cropped the image, reversed it
(left is now right), did some resizing and rotation, and slapped it onto a
picture of a dead guy using photoshop. It's an exact match. "
Yeah, yeah. When I noticed the large magnetometer readings, I was busy
this weekend stocking up on canned goods - last minute shopping and that kind of
thing. Still, it's only a possibility, although I admit to wondering if I
should put a big gob of Quakehold! 88111 Museum Putty
under my coffee cup this morning. Maybe not till tomorrow morning.
Predictive Linguistics Report Issued
Latest outlook from Clif came out late Sunday:
www.halfpasthuman.com and $10 will
get your own copy. Our usual rejoinder about when his stuff comes out
there are forces that change things in it and post it around as free, so don't
go down that rabbit hole. $10 bucks is probably what you spend on lotto
tickets...
bL Death Good for Markets
Still, the word of bin Laden's death seems to be having a positive effect on
markets. In Europe this morning, things are generally firming and
a higher open for the US market is expected. Ding-dong, the witch is
dead kinda thinking, I suppose.
This being the first of the month period, we will be getting a few economic
numbers this week. Today's construction spending may be a yawner, and I'm
not expecting too much out of the car and truck sales figures. It's the
projecting ahead data that will get interesting starting with tomorrow's factory
orders report, but the highlight of the week from a number/crunching standpoint
will be Friday when both the Unemployment figures come out and then the Fed';s
Consumer Debt figures. Of everything, the rate of consumer debt spending
will be key to keeping the pseudo-recovery myth alive.
The Bigger Picture
Something most people are not aware of: The Chinese have been quietly
making huge investments in much of the Middle East & North Africa (MENA). And
Chinese radio is reporting that due to the US/NATO attack on Libya,
China may be on
the verge of effectively losing everything it has piled into Libya.
Like the three-dimensional chess sets that showed up on old Star Trek episodes,
wasn't it?
Air France Black Box
A reader in Canada has been following this:
Dear Mr. Ure,
Airbus and Air France must be heaving sighs of
relief that
the AF447 black box flight recorder has been located on the floor of the
Atlantic Ocean as I understand it triggers government funding of further
expenses. This chronologically presented news page has clear pictures of the
debris field and an interesting statement: "The forward and aft parts of the
airplane are broken apart and mixed up,....". Does this cast doubt on the
notion the aircraft fuselage entered the water as one primary piece?
Patience required, I suppose.
Yeah, we're sitting around wondering about it, too. You remember there
were almost immediate denials of any 'terrorists' being aboard, but what really
stuck in my craw at the time was that one of those aboard who was [presumably]
killed was
an heir to the long defunct Brazilian monarchy. Given we've
taken to watching the subplots involving the royals a bit and the term
Machiavellian is everything in that world, this is indeed a curiousity.
To be well-informed you might want to read a bit about
the [late] Pedro Luiz de Orleans e Braganca here. 27 year old eligible
royal flying to Europe..but a
lifestyle among the people, well, it all makes for a fine novel or
movie plot.
Buying the Presidency, Redux
Sometimes I spot a turn of a phrase that I kick myself for not being creative
enough to come up with myself. Take for example, please, the Joan Lappin
column over at Forbes
"Business Illusionist Donald Trump Perfect for President"
Love the phrase... The Gothamist did OK, too, with
"Jokes aside, Donald Trump wants to get back to the Real Fake Issues".
---
Sarah Palin was out stumping Central California this weekend.
Slap Shot Silver
There was a brief $6 move down in silver prices overnight on the OBL thing.
A reader sent this:
Hello from the Azores. Here's a $5.00 move in Solver...
Then this:
LOL! I meant Silver not Sliver or Solver. I pulled a George :)
And my reply?
No you didn't - you proofread something!
Not selling anything yet, however.
Might buy a whole bunch of puts for a day or two, though on the market in
general on the thin odds of a quake, however....
Coping: Bin Laden's Passing
Usually on a Monday morning, I try to come up with something pithy to report on
but this morning my task was relieved by a reader who notes that even though bin
Laden "is dead" that probably won't change a lot about what's ahead in America's
near-term future - or the world's either...
"Yippie, yahoo, horray! We finally got bin
Laden! Now, all the soldiers can come home, right?
Maybe not...
Are they f'ing serious? We've just committed an
act of war against another sovereign nation -- that's three in-a-row (I'm
assuming a degree of justification for Afghanistan), two within the last six
weeks, and this particular nation, allegedly an ally and certainly a nuclear
power, has warned us repeatedly against running any military ops within its
borders.
The Prez will make a campaign speech shortly,
penned with Osama's blood; the MSM will talk up (and yuk up) Mr. bin Laden's
demise for weeks, all the neocons will piss themselves, thrilled that bin
Laden's dead but angered that none of them got to pull the trigger. In the
meantime, we just committed an overt act of war against an allied nation by
running a military attack on a fortified home just outside that nation's
capital, which was under guard by authority of the President of that nation.
Yeah, we got bin Laden all right (and good
riddance!)
That said, we also just PO'd 500,000,000 people,
NOT because we killed Osama bin Laden, but because we did it neither
quietly, nor on contested soil, and because we arrogantly thumbed our nose
at the Pakistani leadership in the doing. There'll be talk in the mainstream
for weeks about whether this was a joint op. Irrespective of Administration
or media comments, it wasn't. Had it been, the Pakistani military would have
handed OBL over alive, since they were providing his security detail. The
American sheeple will eat up whatever crap the Administration and the MSM
feed them. Those 500M angry Muslims know better, and they won't.
CIA/SEAL/SF op? Really? The spooks got close
enough to shoot him, but not close enough to prick him with an umbrella or
clip his brake lines? We've been sitting on Mr. bin Laden ever since he
arrived back in Pakistan from Iran -- nine frickin' months! If the SOB had
died in his sleep or gone off a cliff, al Qaeda would probably have faded to
a couple hundred fanatics within a few years. Now that we've given them a
martyr, and more-importantly, given the entire world a couple object
lessons, the organization will live on for decades.
The result of those "object lessons?"
1. Expect Mr. Kim (doesn't matter which
generation -- self-preservation tends to be learnt at an early age) to NEVER
curtail North Korea's nuclear weapons program, and work like hell to make
their Taepo Dong missiles viable.
2. Expect Iran to go nuclear. Expect to not know
it until they have a very large nuclear arsenal and a truly advanced weapons
delivery system.
3. Expect Pakistan to radicalize.
4. Expect retaliation...
5. Expect to hear little (or none) of any of the
above from the American press.
Oh, and the first thing I heard from my friends
amongst the sheeple was: "Now Obama can bring our military home..."
Apparently, none of them have considered the
economic implications of such a move. Lessee,
John Williams still has real unemployment at around 22%. I wonder what a
couple million young, strong, aggressive, and highly-intelligent men and
women would do for the workforce and (un)employment numbers, were they to be
suddenly injected into them?
There are times I honestly believe I'm the sole
possessor within my acquaintance circle, of either a lick of common sense or
the smallest fraction of a clue.
It's 0645GMT. I just took a break before sending
this. As I walked by I noticed the idiot-box, showing partiers in Times
Square and on Penna. Ave. dancing around and singing the refrain from Na Na
Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye. As if I didn't have sufficient reason already, to
never live near a major metropolitan area...
F'n idiots...
Ahhh, I just had a stroke of insight: I've been
racking my brains, trying to figure out what the puppet-masters were up to,
and how they hoped to gain from the demise of Mr. bin Laden (there ARE no
coincidences!) I reread this post again, then took another break. Walking by
the tube, I saw a mob of 'tweens and 20-somethings, shaking their fists and
chanting "USA, USA..."
We're going to get nuked. {Nothing spells
(nation) lovin' like isotopes in the oven...}
It'll probably be one of those old Soviet bombs
that's gone missing since the breakup, and it'll probably be untraceable to
any nation. Now, the mechanicals of those bombs have degraded to the point
they are nonfunctional, but the plutonium still has plenty of juice. It
shouldn't be difficult, were one to have two or three of them tucked away in
a basement in Islamabad (not to pick on the Pakistanis, but N.Korean planes
& trains full of nuclear war materiel have an annoying habit of
spontaneously deflagrating, upon leaving that country ;-) to build at least
one working unit from the parts pile. In the state those dumbass kids are
in, were someone to take out a few thousand people and a chunk of our
infrastructure, like Wall Street or CBT, they'd be fighting each other for a
place in the enlistment line within a day.
War is good! It takes people off the stats
roles, and gives the multinationals an excuse to crank up their war machines
-- AND it does a dandy job of misdirection, when a President or FED chief
doesn't want the masses paying attention to mundane matters of economic
flow. Also IIRC, it would give Mr. Obama the authority to cancel retirements
and enlistment sunsets. Shoot, iffn we gets ourse'ves inta a big enuf fight,
da Adminustrashun could completely elimunate all dat there inemployment
while their industriousical buds makes a boatload of cash (sorry, I just
suffered a spontaneous Walt Kelly moment. It happens occasionally...) 'Point
is, whether justified or retaliatory, such an occurrence would spawn a huge
wave of nationalism and "fix" a nearly irreparable economy...
Especially if we have a 'rally 'round the quake' kind of event. Where's my
museum putty?
Nice to have smart readers. Quake ought to be along before tomorrow is out
(as a dart, right) and I won't be able to take Elaine on our planned
Monday at the
WuJo?
A Curious Coinky Dink
Say, remember last week's column about the I-Ching Inbox? Well, here's
another note about...gtulp...depleted plutonium!
Been reading your daily updates for years-never emailed you before Had lunch
with with a retired UK metallurgist who worked his whole pro. life with UK
Atomic Energy Commission Told me about old weapons grade Plutonium spheres
They age and turn into "green cheese" surface colouring with reduced yield
and possible non critical mass As a result its taken out of the weapons-god
knows what happens with it Produces alpha and beta rads that can be stopped
by your socks and used as temporary foot warmer in the lab-(wild eh?)
Anyway-thought this may be on interest to your better informed readers
Hmmm...interesting stuff to know, I guess...We expect that anything weapons
grade would be closely monitored but the leftovers? Hmmm...anyway thanks
for sharing but we'll stick with the electric heater and the cat, thanks.
Around the Ranch: Planning Ahead
This being spring, such as it is, we're in a kind of kindred-spirit way building
a new carport for Panama's car and the old farm truck. I might put
a little sidecar on it to keep the go-kart and the land tractor out of the rain.
The go-kart is lot's of fun, with the added benefit of hammering apart kidney
stones, I'm sure of it.
---
In addition to all the ham radio projects around, I've putting together a laser
intercom which uses lasers instead of radio to communicate. Fun project
and will also be used in some
EVP
experiments. That will give me an 18 KHz channel plus channels at 41.4
and 44 KHz to dink around with, not to mention others in the works.
---
Elaine & I are making plans for a pre-summer vacation/medical trip up toward the
Northeast to see a super good eye doc up there. Thinking about RK surgery
to clean up some astigmatism in one eye and Nashville, Memphis and Branson, MO
are in the drive path (which is different than a flight path, but only by a few
knots).
More tomorrow - provided there's an internet left. Going to watch the
levee situation in in Missouri which we assume loves company. Gotta get
back into the ad game.
