My computer makes a joke.

Please regard the following backgammon position:




(If you don't play this game, I'm sorry, this will take too long to explain.)

As you see, I am playing against the computer.
As you know, backgammon is a sufficiently-limited game such that the computer can,
from any position, work out all of the possible eventual outcomes and
compute the exact probability of winning or losing.
The dice enter an element of randomness into the game.

Now, never mind how we got into this position in the first place.
It had to be an interesting game, such that
the computer and I doubled and redoubled all the way up to 64.
What I want you to look at is the current situation.
It is the computer's turn to play.
Now if you know the game, the computer has a 100.0% chance of losing at this point
but it has a clear majority of a chance to get one man off
before I get all mine off, thus saving itself from the gammon.
I still win the match, probably a very important issue,
because the match is only to 50.

But the computer, instead of either playing it out
or offering a resignation of a single,
has offered a resignation of a double, or gammon!

Pure fatalism.
and you thought only people get depressed ....

The Markets

The markets can not and will not ever be stabilized.
It is not their nature to be stable.
The crowd, the majority, is always wrong.
The markets will always go in the direction which prove the most people to be wrong.
No system, no "risk management", no regulations, no "manipulation" will ever be able to stop this from happening.
The markets are made up of the billions of individual decisions of all the participants.

Mother Nature herself works in cycles, tiny and small and medium and large cycles, day and night, winter and summer, warm eons and ice ages, birth, growth, decline and death.
Man always dreams about stability and constancy
but life itself is not like that and can not be made to be like that.

The readers of this message base have had the privilege of living through the richest, most complex heights that civilization will ever attain. We are all now facing decline and crumbling. This process is larger than any individual, no matter how heroic, or any institution. It is inevitable, though poorly understood by most. The direction will not be constant, there will be "indian summers". The ultimate outcome will be far fewer people on earth, far less connectivity
(The Internet is going the same route as the Tower of Babylon),
far more languages, less travel, less knowledge, less trade,
simpler device and tools, more interpersonal contact and people helping their neighbors for no personal gain,

more happiness.

-chiz

Elevator Humor

I work in an office building which houses roughly 1000 cubicles.
It was built for the gubmint, which has always rented it.
Three floors below the street level and three floors above it are
dedicated to a parking garage; then the offices occupy the
15 floors above that. The builder/owner has some kind of
sub-rosa contract with the county so that the munincipality
collects parking fees and writes citations for scoflaws.
No one I have asked knows what the builder/ownber gets in return.
So there are two banks of elevators in the building, one
traversing the public floors, the other, the restricted offices;
with a security checkpoint in between. Its suitably convoluted
for the gubmint, confusing everyone who first tries to negotiate
and navigate through.
The public floors are labeled (from bottom to top)
G4, G3, G2, P, M1, M2, 1.
The office floors are labeled 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15.

I often arrive early in the day. After settling in and checking my
mail and appointments, I often have cause to go back down to
the bottom of the building. I get on an office elevator, go down
to 1, cross the security checkpoint, get on a public elevator,
and go down to G4. Sometimes others get on with me.
Always polite, and standing next to the buttons, I ask,
"Are you going to 'P'? Its not funny to the regular
inhabitants anymore but there are always salesmen, job applicants,
and newbies. If they ask what the letters stand for, there's
always "Pis for groud level, G is for parking."

Usually the elevator will stop there anyway. And nearly always,
there are people coming in to work who have not yet had their
second cup of coffee and have not taken the time to look
at the indicator over the opening door. So they will
push their way in, then realize that the elevator is going
down, and then push their way back out. Or, someone
truly somnambulant may stay on the elevator and go
"Oh!" in dismay as the doors close and it resumes its
downward course.

The other morning, I was severely waylaid on the
way down by individuals who simply were not paying attention.
On the way back up, the travel was turning out to be
equally tortuous. I passed by security and finally
found an empty elevator and pressed my floor. But just as the
doors were closing a hand found its way in, followed by
a harried young blonde.

I could not stop myself. I said, "This one is going down!".
She hurriedly got back off. I spent all day giggling to
myself, wondering how long it took her to realize that
that elevator was already at the bottom of its shaft.
Some days you get the elevator, other days people mess with you.
So it goes ...

On Thievery

On the commuter train this morning, a gentleman recently discovered his need for a spare key to his property. He allowed as how there must be a thousand places in his yard to put one. Maybe he could buy one of those fake rocks to hide it in.
I said nothing. I've long since dispensed with this "situation" in our culture. For my own self and my own property, I simply do not lose either my own keys or wallet. I have not lost either item for over thirty years. Once or twice I have misplaced them, but a bit of reflection will always reveal to me where they are, even if that means coming to the understanding that my cat has seen fit to place them more to her liking.
I also figured out, a long time ago, that virtually every homeowner in the country goes through the same experience and comes to the conclusion that he must hide a spare key somewhere on his property outside of the locked door. Its a given that he must lock his doors ... everyone does, which is why I don't need to.
Its also a given that a common thief is armed with this information: that every homeowner has placed a key somewhere outside for him to employ. All he needs to do is to find it. (The same principle applies to computers and passwords and personal information, of course, but that is meandering from my topic.)

Okay, I am a thief. Always have been, since I was a very little boy. I have never lowered myself to common burglary, however. I am confident that this particular gentleman has nothing inside of his plastic home beyond a few pieces of Walmart furniture made from polyurethane chipboard that he aseembled himself, a very large flat screen tv (ugh! you can't pay me to have one!), some plastic
credit cards, and probably a set of glass (china???) and stainless steel (silver???) from his wedding.

For a long long time my stealing has remained entirely within the laws, rules and customs of our great nation; which laws, rules and customs, of course, were all designed by the thieves at the top of the heap.

Of course I have long contended that this nation was settled by rogues, thieves and bandits who could not get along with their families, friends and countrymen and so had to leave. The revolution was nothing more than a rebellion by some well-to-do landowners, most of them slave holders, who simply did not want to pay their taxes, but ended up with a new government with higher taxes than ever. "Revolution", a turning, as in, the more things change the more they stay the same. But that, too, is straying off topic.

Apparently, GS got "caught" last week with their hand in the cookie jar. According to some "insiders", they had discovered how to access and read every single electronic trade, milliseconds before it was executed, in fact, in just enough time for them to open a position themselves first, then close it right afterward, virtually guaranteeing them a fractional profit with no risk.
A tax, as it were, on everyone else. Everyone. Making them a few millions a day.

No biggie. At the moment, total trading volume is off by almost half and volatility has reached a low not seen in my memory. Must be kind of frustrating for people who live off of price swings and commissions. I'm so sorry. I hear, though, that they are licking their chops over the proposals for "cap and trade". I've mentioned before in this blog that the coming winter is going to be the coldest in everyone's memory across Europe and North America ... GS better keep their propaganda machine "hot" if they hope to continue this "global warming" Oz and keep everyone from noticing the man behind the curtain.

I still own more coal than anyone you ever met. And I'm buying more.

Tsunami (again)

"In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves."

-Alan Greenspan

yeah, there is. Oil.

-chistletoe

An Ever-Flowing Tribute

Don't it always seem to go,
that you don't know what you've got til its gone.
Pave paradise, put up a parking lot.

-joni mitchell



THE COMMUNITY OF SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND DERIVES
ITS NAME FROM THIS SPRING, DISCOVERED IN 1840 BY
FRANCIS PRESTON BLAIR AND HIS DAUGHTER, ELIZABETH,
WHILE RIDING ON HORSEBACK IN THE WOODS BEYOND
WASHINGTON. RAYS OF SUN ON MICA SAND PARTICLES IN
THE WATER CAUSED MR. BLAIR TO NAME IT “THE SILVER
SPRING.” THIS ALSO IDENTIFIED HIS ESTATE AND SUMMER
HOME BUILT IN 1842.

THIS PARK WAS ACQUIRED IN 1942 BY THE MARYLAND
NATIONAL CAPITAL PARK AND PLANNING COMMISSION. IT
WAS RESTORED AND DEDICATED ON MAY 23, 1955 BY THE
FOLLOWING ORGANIZATIONS AS AN EVER-FLOWING TRIBUTE
TO THE MEN AND WOMEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GREATNESS
OF SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND, AND ITS BRIGHT FUTURE
THROUGH CIVIC AND COMMUNITY SERVICE.


When I started work in silver spring in 1990,
this little park became one of my favorite lunch spots
and I delighted in finding a flowing spring so near the city.

In the late 1990's, the ramshackle stores and
parking next door were torn down in favor of building
a large, modern department store. The store went
bankrupt almost immediately and was resold for office space.
The process of digging the foundation disrupted the
delicate subterranean capillaries feeding the spring
and it stopped flowing, forever.

Several years later, the little park was restored again,
with new slate walkways, some nice perennial flowers and
bushes, and a few benches. Someone I guess realized the faux pas
and so an electric pump was installed near the spring and
hidden under a steel cover made to look like a big rock.
To date it has not been turned on.

I really don't need to say anything, do I?

Preaching

I was on the phone with JT the other day talking about woodworking, when God piped up with the answer to a prayer that I hadn't exactly articulated. He doesn't usually say much to me when I am with other people, and I never, ever, ever find Him in church. But, He can do anything, can't He.

My mother's father was a preacher, and his Daddy before him. He died young but my grandmother always hoped that I would take to the cloth. My Dad's Dad was a newspaper columnist (am I following in his footsteps with this blog?). His Dad was a character … he fled New Hampshire to avoid the draft for the Civil War, got land in the Illinois Territory, and did all kinds of things. He married a young woman that none of our family genealogists have been able to trace and my grandfather was born to them in 1898 (now do some arithmetic!). But his dad, and his dad, and his dad, and his dad are all buried next to the little white clapboard church in New Hampshire where they preached all their lives. The first one of those, of course, left Boston for New Hampshire to steer clear of the French and Indian war. But enough of that.

I guess that I have been asking God this question, in different ways, on and off, for a very long time. There are all these fabulous gifts that He has given me. I have wonderful health, have never broken a bone, had surgery, or any major illness. Though small, I bicycled everywhere I wanted to go during my late teen years and developed incredible stamina, once covering 220 miles with 50 pounds of luggage in 24 hours. IQ tests administered to me in those years consistently came back with the score of 153, or above 99.95% of the population. My memory is still sharp; short term I remember 12 passwords, my and my wife's SS#'s, driver's license #'s, bank account #'s, car license #'s, and I keep my appointment calendar in my head. Long term, I still retain several memories from my pre-kindergarten days.

Besides all those generous gifts there are two more. One is actually many; the verifiable incidents of prescience that occur to me, somewhat at random, at a rate of about 1 or 2 a week. From time to time I “know” something is going to happen when I have no way of knowing. The other, is God's rather verbose communications with me. Sometimes, I chalk that one up to the fact that He is just lonely. Sure, a whole lot of people are sending up requests and demands of what they want and how they think His world should be, all the time. But very, very few people ever seem to pay attention to Him, very few ever seem to listen, or respect and enjoy the wonderful crazy diverse world that He has made. Besides some of His jokes can be a little crude, though still uproariously funny!

I was “reborn”, while lying drunk and half-dead in the cellar of an old church. I was lying in a pool of stale water and old spilled heating oil, in the dark. From the low wooden ceiling were hanging dozens of old spider's lines, with something dessicated wrapped up in gauze hanging from the end of each one like a scene from “The Hobbit”. I seldom speak about it with any person because the term “reborn” is so cruelly misused by so many people these days. For me, rebirth in God was only the first step (actually I had to crawl for awhile before I could walk!). It was like clearing out my ear canal. I realized that He had been talking to me all along, but I had just not been listening. I began a process of throwing out everything that my parents and society had taught me, starting over, and learning about life, and people, directly from God. He showed me that the world is entirely inside-out from the way most people see it, in so many ways. For example, it really is true that every dollar I give away, comes back to me and makes me richer. It also is true that the more money I accumulate, the more burden and work it becomes for me, mainly because of all the other people who try to get it from me by one means or another. He presented miracle after miracle, for my eyes only, to help me in my growth. He taught me that most people are wrong about most things, most of the time. Then, gradually, as I grew older I became more absorbed and involved in the world of other people, more mature and able to stand and act without His direct participation, an adult as it were, and I hear a lot less from Him these days.

Among other things, God taught me a great deal about hypocrisy and preaching. I hope that I do much less of that than I used to. What He showed me, over and over, is that whenever anyone preaches or moralizes or counsels on any subject, he does it because its he himself who needs to learn the lesson that he is spouting. Almost all the time, as we well know, the people preaching or moralizing fail to listen to themselves. That is why preachers go on preaching, politicians go on politicizing, and psychiatrists go on psycho-anal-izing. Because they seldom listen to themselves. I learned, now and then, to listen to my own preaching, and to take heed. Its not easy for me to change my own behavior. But its so much easier than changing anyone else's!

For the last several years, as you may know, I have been reaping extraordinary returns on the stock market. My numbers make Bernie Madoff look like a piker … and mine are real. Yet, I am not rich, or even wealthy in many peoples' eyes. I have given away a formidable share of my winnings. Most of the money has gone to people who were not born into privilege, some people who, due to circumstances out of their control, cannot even buy a break for themselves. A good chunk of what I have made, in fact, has found its way back to Africa. Looking at the Bernie Madoff exposure and the AIG bonuses, I realize that God has protected me from becoming rich and especially from being ostentatious about my lifestyle, because the rich are getting into more and more hot water these days (deservedly so, I might add …). Basically, I am in love with the market. She's my main squeeze, I never tire or get bored with her. The game is everything, the money is just a side effect.

So I have this very general question before Him: what am I supposed to do with all these gifts? What is Your purpose for me? Its very typical for someone of my background to act as benefactor for people less fortunate. Its also very typical to think that, having prescience means that God wants me to prophesy and preach. People, of course, take to my preaching and prophesying about as well as they did to Jeremiah. I have just about the same kind of news to tell as he did and its no more popular today than it was then. Or, am I supposed to just keep quiet and keep stealing money from the market and giving it to people who don't have my opportunities? Perhaps one or more of them is the one that I, like an earlier John, was sent to herald and baptize?

What He said was, “You do not have to do anything. This is not a trade. I don't ask for anything from you. I just give them to you because I love you. Go out and do what you want, and take care of yourself. Have a good time.”