Guts, Guns or Gold: Nobody Rides For Free

Looking back at my e-mail records, it was October 12, 1999. I had sent out an e-mail to my family and friends, admittedly a wild-eyed, but none-the-less valid. Contained within the long-winded reasoning behind the message, I advised everyone to get out of the stock market immediately and buy physica gold and silver coins.

If it weren't for the laughing, there would have been dead silence. Just Ol' B going off again on one of his tirades. After all, the Dow was pretty danged close to its all-time high in absilute value (factoring inflation and all), gold and silver were around $260 and $4, respectively. The precious metals hadn't been much of a concern since the 80s mania. Hedge funds and tech IPOs were the order of the day. Clinton had deregulated banks, happy days were here again, and we were all going to skip to the bank with armloads of money.

Some lone nut preaching, "The end is nigh," sure wasn't convincing a lot of folks. I did, however, put my money where my mouth was and cashed out my 401(k), sold out my options and stocks, and bought up all the gold and silver coins I could afford.

Sitting here 11 years later, I see that the Dow has only hit an all-time high once since then, in both absolute and notional value. Gold has risen better than 500%, silver has shot up almost 600%, and the markets are set to drop in the crapper yet again, taking the last of everyone's life savings with them.

So, was I right or what?

In July of 2001, some guy nemed George Ure, whose site about long-wave economics I had been reading for about a year, started twisting off on some new technology he was pimping for a guy named Clif High. It came out that Clif, while working on a way to predict future market moves, had hit on something much deeper.

Clif's theory was that future events could be predicted by people's current expectations, and that their expectations could be discerned by parsing the words that they chose when posting on internet fora and bulletin boards. He would send out small programs called 'bots' to search for a pre-determined set of 'hot' words, and when the bots found them, they would sample a bit of the text around the words and send the whole package home.

Clif could then read the hidden subtext of people's thoughts by fermenting the results with his own algorithms. The product was, what I imagine to be, a 3-dimensional scatter-graph that he calls model-space. Certain hot concepts form a cloud in this space, surronded by various adverbs and adjectives that modify them. Those descriptors are given numerical weights based on the emotional value of the words. The clouds are connected to each other through various relationships, and the whole thing overshadowed by the meta-data layer, which holds the archetypes that people use to manipulate the world within their minds.

Model-space can be rolled back and forth over time to see how and when these concepts develop and their relationships evolve. Clif takes this view and puts into narrative form and releases it as occasional reports (formerly called ALTA, and now called (SOTC)

All that was build-up to the summer of 2001, when George and Clif started releasing warnings that some major, world-changing event was in the offing. The details were a bit vague, but it involved a hugely emotional event that Clif called a 'tipping point,' before which the tension values of words were increasing, and after which they decreased rapidly. This point in time was pegged to happen in the Fall and there was some talk of buildings and changing attitudes.

Sure enough, on September 11, 2001, a lot of things changed.

By now, I can just picture you, dear reader, scratching your head and asking, "What is this nut going on about now?" Glad you asked.

Point number 1: If you're been watching the price of gold and silver lately, you have noticed that they are running up the ladder like nobady's business. My nose is twitching, telling me that there is more distance to cover before this run finishes, if my spasming nose is anything to go by. Past episodes would seem to indicate the positive. I especially am watching silver, since supplies are tighter than gold, deliveries have been very slow and Clif's work indicates that it has a big leap to make in the near future. Just today, the story is the (hahahahahaha) Federal Reserve may inflate the crisis out of existence. If you've been paying attention, that started a while back, say around 1933. The (NOT) Federal (NO) Reserve is acting like they just discovered it. HAHAHAHAHAHA! What a maroon, as Bugs Bunny might say.

The second point is this: Clif's and George's work is pointing to a time in November when there will be a tipping point that is orders of magnitude greater than 9-11, and has been showing up for several years in model-space. Now, normally I would put future predictions in the category of 'here comes the apocalypse' fantasies, which have predicted the Second Coming daily for 2,000 years. Hey, it's going to be right one of these days, que no? (snicker) However, I have watched the bots' output hit the mark repeatedly: the shuttle disaster, the NE blackout, the Banda Aceh tsunami, Katrina). Granted, on some of the smaller things, it's been a bit of a stretch to say that the bots have hit their mark, but on the Big Ticket items they seem to be batting 1,000.

So what to do?

Well, if you are still in the markets, then there's no hope for you. You are brain-dead and no amount of talking will convince you to save your own ass. However, if you've cashed out and are looking for somewhere to park it, gold and especially silver are your best bets, I think. The only thing better is farm land, since you can't eat metals, but you can sure use the land to feed yourself.

The next thing to do is strap yourself to the mast, because a storm is rising and the seas are going to be mean. I have little to no idea what to expect other than to expact the unexpected. If you are ready for that, then you should be able to ride out the storm.

Check out Clif's site and if you can part with $10, buy the latest report. Also, give his blog a read, as he spells out a little information there with regars to what's coming.

As with all dire future predictions, no guarantee or warranty. You're on your own. But, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and anything you do to prepare will still have value, even if the sun keeps shining.

If Buddha is right, which he sure seems to be about a lot of things, then we make our own future. After you prepare for the worst, then envisioning some good things for Life As We Know It sure can't hurt matters.

Every little bit counts.

Universe Has The Last Laugh

Well we know where we're going
But we don't know where we've been
And we know what we're knowing
But we can't say what we've seen
And we're not little children
And we know what we want
And the future is certain
Give us time to work it out

-Road To Nowhere, Talking Heads

One of the best arguments against Evolution I can think of is that we have been given eyes in front of our heads and 20/20 hindsight.

If evolution were a real phenomenon, then we would have two pairs of eyes, front and back, and be able to view future events at least one hour ahead. Think of all the hazards to survival we could avoid if we could see just a few minutes into the future. We could see the immediate consequences of an action or decision. We could have forewarning of impending doom. We would know if that puddle was a massive pothole that would swallow us. We would know if the girl we are chasing is really the best mate for us, or just another battle-axe waiting to chop off our crown jewels.

It is a Supreme Joke that we go through life with a fogged windshield and crystal clear rear-view mirrors. Yet, we are given eyes to see what's ahead and are blind from the back. It's as if Loki has been given free reign to play with the Universe, to make us blind where we have eyes and eyes where we are blind.

We go through life never really knowing what's ahead, yet when we look back at where we've been, it all makes perfect sense, or at the least we can perceive the chain of evidence. If some random Nature had really wanted us to survive, we wouldn't know regret and we would mostly die from old age and the world would generally be a pleasant place where people lived in relative harmony and sang "Kumbaya" a lot.

In Sumatra, if you go into the jungle, you must wear a mask on the back of your head. Apparently, tigers will not attack from the front, and if confronted by a tiger, you can stare it down. By wearing the mask, they think it's your face, and so will not attack you either way. Doesn't it make sense that a random Nature would endow us with a metaphysical face on both sides of our head so that we are not attacked by vicious future events? If you looked at a spot and envisioned the house you wanted to build there, sure would be handy if you could see it being destroyed by Nature ahead of time. Agreed?

Steven Hawking recently announced that God is no longer needed as Creator of the Universe, while Albert Einstein predicated that God does not play dice with the Universe. They are both wrong. There is an infinitely amused God and He most certainly loves a little chaos. How else can you explain seven billion creatures wandering through life with eyes wide shut?

This makes sense because if you read the Bible, you will repeatedly encounter the phrase, "Let he who has eyes to see..." You can almost picture Zeus upon the Throne of Heaven thumbing His Nose at us with a Supreme Smirk on His Lips. It's almost like the mean kid down the street who likes to tape cats' paws or give dogs peanut butter, and then laugh his fool head off at the ensuring antics.

Throughout history, there have been diviners, seers, prognosticators, and profits. People have turned to the stars, the cards and tea leaves to try and augur future events. Some have had better than random results, but most are useless at foretelling more than, "I see a meal in your future," which works as long as the listener lives until dinner time. When it does work, I generally picture God sitting there, like Mickey Rourke in "Barfly," scratching a cheap bottle of Old Future with His Ring saying, "This far and no further." The He kicks back with a couple of the angels and watches another hilarious episode of the Seven Billion Stooges.

There is a God and He does indeed play dice with the Universe. He uses loaded dice, to boot. We know this because Evolution would have given us the ability to see bad things coming. We would all be endowed with Spidy-Sense and there would be no victims of disasters and no bad marriages (often the same thing). There would be no rendom occurances and everyone would be filthy rich because they all would have bought into the Apple IPO and picked up some Microsoft shares on the cheap. In fact, there wouldn't be a need for stock markets and banksters, since we'd all know which ideas are the best and which will pay us the biggest return. There wouldn't be a need for government, because we'd all be able to see, without the benefit of hindsight, that governments are always the most egregious enemies of peace and rights.

Yes, history itself is the best argument against evolution and in favor of the Supreme Jester. History is replete with examples of people walking head-first into their future and dying from the resulting injuries. We have enshrined the fact with axioms such as, "20/20 hindsight," and "Hold my beer and watch this..."

In the end, as my brilliant students have rightly pointed out, this is the day after yesterday, and really that's all we can be absolutely sure of, and even that is in question. After all, doesn't a magician make money by showing you that you don't even know what's in front of you at this very minute? Ultimately, history is written by the victor, the present can be altered before your eyes, and the future, well...ain't nobody knowin' that. Thus, it's all an illusion not to be taken too seriously, since Loki is in charge and all is wrong with the world. Pandora should be so lucky.

As the Joker said in The Dark Knight, "They all have a plan, but I don't have a plan. I just do."

Kinda Buddhist, I think.