Some People will never accept that Karma is fair

with more than one tongue in cheek

Is Somebody Monkeying Around?

Twice in the last 2 days and increasingly observed recently … for example this morning the New Homes Report is reported something like this … New Home sales rose surprisingly 4% over last month when they were expected to drop 2 % although the figures from the previous month were adjusted lower 7% … does anyone else find this at least weird if not suspicious.  If you don’t monkey with the previous month’s data, the current month will be pretty much inline with expectations.  But with the radical adjustments to the previous month, the current month looks much better than expected and the lemmings buy the market with gusto.  If this is an intentional manipulation of the data, then it has an additional advantage.  The previous month would have looked WAY worse at the time if the Real figures had been reported.  Why bother doing that, when we can hold the bad news in our pocket, look like we are being dedicated to accuracy LATER and have a way of deflecting the bad news in the present at the same time.  Aren’t we supposed to be going for Win-Win as much as possible?  Oh, my bad, I forgot; we are in an illusions and what does it matter if some one appears to be distorting their version of it.

This is what the statement in the report itself actually looked like, but it is NOT what is reported in the financial press:

Sales of new one-family houses in February 2009 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 337,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.  This is 4.7 percent (±18.3%)* above the revised January rate of 322,000, but is 41.1 percent (±7.9%) below the February 2008 estimate of 572,000.

Note the fabulous standard deviation  4.7%^ (+/- 18.3%)

The “bottom line” is probably pretty close to correct, i.e. 250,000 less new home sales this year than last.  So, what is not a pretty picture is monkeyed around with until it looks, well, better than expected, which still does not equal anything like good.  The buying based on this begins the moment a better than expected number is seen … Mr. Market did sell it off at the expense of the idiots over the next 30 minutes.  But don’t be surprised if the evening news is still trying to find this as proof that the recession is over.

Oh, it’s actually better (or worse) than this when you read the US govt report.  It turns out they are now making adjustments which result from them having miscounted houses for years … hmmm … if you can’t count houses, better not try fingers.

Introducing Leonard Shlain … an escaped Renaissance hominoid

Listen up as this surgeon turned polymath explains the unusual patterns he sees in the web of human activities from Type to Sex.  This is the kind of gentleman who was disappearing from academia as I entered in the 60’s … the iconoclastic genius valued because they were different … somehow this one survived and found a way to express himself in books.  Three so far and one on the way.  The Alphabet Versus the Goddess came to my attention some years ago arguing that when the alphabet is received into a culture it becomes psychotic and violent for a period as it assimilates a new way of perceiving its world.  Not what most of us would imagine over breakfast.  Art and Physics argues that artists had the breakthrough ideas later discovered in science about 50 years later.  Would that be nature or nurture?  So enjoy a listen while watching such a mind peer into the upper realm to answer the questions of Conversations with History.

One thing after another … life goes on and on

This week the big inspiration was this talk by Paul Hawken about how there are a gazillion groups out there running around trying to help things change for the planet, whether it’s the environment or social conditions.  He argues that the total of these seemingly random movements amounts to a Movement that functions something like an immune system.  If you’re short on time the first 20 minutes will get you the main stuff.

Then Juan Enriquez describes how the economic collapse is going and how there is a possible reboot on the horizon from the convergence of work with bacteria, tissues and robots.  This is heady, almost disturbing stuff.

For those of you who think that the gender wars contain possibilities for personal transformation, here is an audio that will make you laugh while, perhaps, shocking your preconceptions into focus for you.  David Deida is a spiritual teacher who uses Sex as his headline and mines his subject deeply and thoroughly.  You have not heard this before.

Perspective ... who has it and how to get it?

Well in a period where the new Headline has already been coined: The Greatest Depression ... we could do worse than consult someone who understands what happened in the Soviet Union and already uses the acronym FUSA. Dmitry Orlov recently, Feb 13th, a Friday for you cognoscenti, gave a talk linked as follows:

Social Collapse: Best Practices

Thanks to Frank and Billy for the reference to Orlov. Mr. Orlov's blog has more if this works for you. Particularly significan in these parts is this piece on Local Food

On a different but related note, I watched a Lindsey Williams video last night. He predicted $50 oil in July and was laughed out of the room. The intiguing thing about him is his insistence that "The Elite" are bound by their moral code to tell everyone ahead of time what they are going to do and that he gets his material from them, not from some kind of prophecy despite him being a Baptist minister. This stuff is even almost too fringe for me, but in these times, keep all the items on the table.. Rev Williams has a book arguing for the oil game as a manipulation, entitled The Energy Non-Crisis ... he makes fun of the Bushies "God Bless America" suggesting these are code words of the New World Order ... and distinguishes them from his faith and belief. He sees US being pushed into hyperinflation and the $ destroyed within the next 12 months.

For those who think that it is time to pray, listen to George Michael suggesting we begin to pray for time ... first sung in 1996