Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future.
Monday, March 28, 2022
Like this would ever happen............
When everyone thinks central bankers, money managers, corporate managers, politicians or any other group are the smartest guys in the room, you are in a bubble.
Blowing bubbles................
Explanation: Massive stars can blow bubbles. The featured image shows perhaps the most famous of all star-bubbles, NGC 7635, also known simply as The Bubble Nebula. Although it looks delicate, the 7-light-year diameter bubble offers evidence of violent processes at work. Above and left of the Bubble's center is a hot, O-type star, several hundred thousand times more luminous and some 45-times more massive than the Sun. A fierce stellar wind and intense radiation from that star has blasted out the structure of glowing gas against denser material in a surrounding molecular cloud. The intriguing Bubble Nebula and associated cloud complex lie a mere 7,100 light-years away toward the boastful constellation Cassiopeia. This sharp, tantalizing view of the cosmic bubble is a reprocessed composite of previously acquired Hubble Space Telescope image data.
On anxiety, a useless emotion........
Your first step, if you deal with stress and anxiety? Start reading the Stoics. Then, take two Ibuprophens or Acetaminophens and read some more. Since I deal with anxiety about the future most (I hate lack of control), my favorite quote from this article:
“He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary”
– Seneca
-Rick Georges, from here
Almost like it is a historical cycle or something...
Good times plant the seeds of their destruction through complacency and leverage, and bad times plant the seeds of their turnaround through opportunity and panic-driven problem-solving.
-Morgan Housel, from here
Inversely.......................
I would say that the quality of our society will be inversely proportion to the level of political energy. One of the toxic effects of social media is to elevate the level of political energy. We would be much better off with people putting energy into their relationships and their work.
-Arnold Kling, from here
In the background......................
Saturday, March 26, 2022
An opinion on the housing market.....
Some people think it’s a bubble because prices are rising so fast but there are so many other variables at play that I’d label it unhealthy rather than euphoric. . . . "While demand is strong, supply is short and constrained, the ability to actually build and deliver homes has been slowed by the supply chain that is all but broken, by the workforce that is short in supply, and the intense competition for scarce and titled land assets." . . .
Unfortunately, even if we wanted to build more houses right now, it’s basically impossible with all of the supply chain issues and worker shortages.
The supply chain is all but broken and maybe the housing market is too.
-Ben Carlson, from here
The hopeful birth..........................
..................of a sub-division: Episode 18:
The market may be broken, but we are doing our part to mend it.
Thirty fully developed building lots sold to D. R. Horton, a production builder. They are scheduled to buy 19 more next week. Footers have been poured on about 15 lots, slabs poured on nine lots, framing of houses started on two lots. In a perfect world, which you all know we live in, there will be thirty new houses, with new homeowners, in this sub-division by early summer.
 |
| Footers poured |
 |
| slab poured |
 |
| framing started |
Unless provoked...................
In the eighteenth century, the liberal idea aborning was that every person regardless of age or gender of ethnicity or position in the hierarchy should have equal rights. Such an idea of equality was still to most people shocking. About gender, for example, it was inconceivable even to the Founding Brothers. In earlier centuries of agriculture and its accompanying hierarchy, topped by the stationary bandits in charge, a liberal equality was held in fact to be absurd and dangerous. Justice was a matter of treating a duke as a duke and a plowman as a plowman, with the differing respect owed in justice to each—but certainly not equality. You bowed low to a duke. And you did not murder a plowman, unless provoked.
-Deidre Nansen McCloskey, Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World For All
local knowledge.....................
I spent ten days on the roof as we flowed through the migration and the migration flowed around us. It was always amazing to watch Uncle John stop and film in the bush. Camera crews from the BBC, the Disney Channel, National Geographic, and other networks were fighting for the best position at various crossing points so they could capture the tumult of thousands of wildebeests massing to plunge into croc-infested waters. Uncle John was nowhere to be seen. On the advice of some Masai friends, he'd be asleep under his frayed bush hat, half a mile from where the action was about to take place. Sure enough, at the last moment, a single wildebeest would break rank, run the half-mile down to where Uncle John was parked, causing an avalanche of pounding hooves to follow suit.
"Buddy, never follow the rules," he'd tell me. "Stick with the local knowledge and build relationships—that's how you get the shots." Then he'd offer up his trademark vampire smirk, having just canned to best high-action sequence of the day. After the first wildebeest jumped, thousands of others likewise took the plunge, and they churned through the water, swimming nose to tail, battling the current. Crocodiles began slipping off the banks in pursuit. The water boiled, foaming white as the crocodiles' powerful tails thrashed back and forth. Their jaws mashed down on wildebeests, pulling them beneath the surface. The air shrilled with wildebeests' alarm calls as they disappeared from sight. The ones who made it to the other side, heaving with exhaustion, found lions in wait. After so many hours of sitting around, I found the scene unbelievably thrilling.
-Boyd Varty, Cathedral of the Wild: An African Journey Home
Old-fashioned humor...............
Another week we were reminiscing about how we'd started in vaudeville and had gone to Al Jolson to ask for a job. Jolie mistakenly thought Gracie was a ventriloquist and I was her dummy.
"But he's not a dummy," Gracie protested, "he's a real man. He's George Burns."
Jolson couldn't believe it. "Are you trying to tell me that he has blood and muscles, and that he walks and talks and makes love like other men?"
"No," Gracie explained, "I'm trying to tell you he's George Burns."
On another show she decided to help Mickey Rooney; she wanted to adopt him because she was certain he hadn't gotten a proper education. Mickey told her that he had received a degree in geometry and a degree in Latin.
"Oh, yeah?" Gracie challenged. "Say something in geometry."
Mickey thought about that for a second, then stated, "Okay, Pi R square."
"Ah ha!" Gracie exclaimed. "There's proof you haven't had a good education. Everybody knows pie are round!"
-George Burns, Gracie: A Love Story
Can I get an Amen...................?
Normal people just want America to produce more energy. And maybe when it’s all said and done, that’s the most humanitarian thing we could do.
-Arnold Kling, from here
In the background...........................
Saturday, March 19, 2022
Back in 1918....................
But as Camus knew, evil and crises do not make all men rise above themselves. Crises only make them discover themselves. And some discover a less inspiring humanity.
As the crest of the wave that broke over Philadelphia began its sweep across the rest of the country, it was accompanied by the same terror that had silenced the streets there. Most men and women sacrificed and risked their lives only for those they loved most deeply: a child, a wife, a husband. Others, loving chiefly themselves, fled in terror even from them.
Still others fomented terror, believing that blaming the enemy—Germany—could help the war effort, or perhaps actually believing that Germany was responsible. Doane himself charged that "German agents . . . from submarines" brought influenza to the United States. "The Germans have started epidemics in Europe, and there is no reason why they should be particularly gentle to America."
Others around the country echoed him. Starkville, Mississippi, a town of three thousand in the Mississippi hill country, was built around a sawmill, cotton farms—not the rich, lush plantations of the Delta but harsh land—and Mississippi A&M College (now Mississippi State University). It served as headquarters for Dr. M. G. Persons, the U. S. Public Health Service officer for northeastern Mississippi, who proudly informed Blue that he had succeeded in getting local newspapers to run stories he made up that "aid in forming the proper frame of mind" in the public. That frame of mind was fear. Person wanted to create fear, believing it "prepared the public mind to recieve and act on our suggestions."
-John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History
"facts".....................
In the crazy early days when the Covid-19 coronavirus went global, Scientific American admonished journalists, 'facts about this epidemic that have lasted a few days are far more reliable than the latest "facts" that have just come out, which may be erroneous or unrepresentative and thus misleading . . . a question that today con be answered only [by] informed belief may perhaps be answered by a fact tomorrow.' Sound advice, and not just for journalists but for citizens too. So however much news you choose to read, make sure you spend time looking for longer-term, slower-paced information. You will notice things - good and bad - that others ignore.
-Tim Horford, How to Make the World Add Up: Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers
Heart......................
More says to his arch-enemy Cromwell, “What you have hunted me for is not my actions, but the thoughts of my heart. It is a long road you have opened. For first men will disclaim their hearts and presently they will have no hearts. God help the people whose Statesmen walk your road.”
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