Category: prediction


China Crash

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January 10, 2010

Contrarian Investor Sees Economic Crash in China

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/business/global/08chanos.html?em

Its not an outlandish idea at all.The Chinese (private money )  are busy building and investing ( sinking ) money into Real Estate that has no value other than as a value holder.

Well thats all going to end badly if they lose value .The bubble will have to burst and Chinese consumers will be badly burnt.Could Gold rise on the back of a consumer bust in China ( everyone shifts out of Real Estate and into Gold).The rush back into a safer Dollar that might get stronger and may pull the price of Gold more downwards.But a rise looks ineviatble after a bust in China.

Whole flats are being built with no occupants.This is a madness that will have a payday.I have to agree with the newspaper article.Chinese Banks have a severe roasting to come as the liabilities/savings ratio goes pear shaped.They are already under pressure from propping up State Enterprises.Look for a privately professionally  run bank in China and invest in it.A transparent and strong bank is going to do well over there.I think they exist.

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OBE mechanism ( out of body experience)

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December 27, 2009

When the Insula cortex stops communicating with the parietal lobe ,
the person will have a disconnect with his inner visceral sense of self and that will cause his/her parietal cortex to express  an sense of separation …an OBE ( out of body experience).
So , the Insula is the seat of many negative associations regarding one self…that is the reason we try to shut it down ,as in many meditative practices , where we try and cancel out the perception of the Insula cortex within the parietal which then causes the parietal to accurately project a separation of the self..an OBE.
In childhood the , the Insula will a larger proportionate input from the outer sensory environment due to the emotional content of that part of life…and it becomes unduly loaded with all the negative associations with a lack self empowerment , negative experiences and they remain seated there as other regions take off as we get older.
So anyone meditating  themselves into a state of well-being will have an fMRI that indicates an Insula that has been subdued, and further subdued if experiencing an OBE.

I hav’nt explained this properly .. so heres an addendum…

The Parietal is outward looking and the Insula is the inwardly sensing part of the body.As a baby..when you scream or have tummy pains…or fart…alot of your experience revovles around the inside of your body

As you get older…that devovles into more of an outward looking sensory system.Its like the ‘pram’ mind in the Insula and that starts to get muscled out by the growing child mind that re-centres its attention towards the outside world.

They become two different historical ‘selfs’…..The Parietal just grows and grows in awareness..the insula get locked in the past by neglect.Or just the sheer extra traffic in the mind swamps the insula.

But the OBE is like the unpeeling of that natural boundary…and I’m sure fMRI will confirm it.

( update  23th Feb 2010)

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Science finds God

Filed under: Philosophy, prediction, Religion — 1 Comment
December 21, 2009

The Achievements Of Modern Science Seem To Contradict Religion And Undermine Faith. But For A Growing Number Of Scientists, The Same Discoveries Offer Support For Spirituality And Hints Of The Very Nature Of God.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/93188

Science is about knowing what is definitely wrong ( you can only know for certain  what is disproven ..all else is Theory that can be further tested ) …whereas Religion is about all that is right ( It starts from a position of knowing everything and has no wrong in it and needs no proof..so can’t be disproven).

I can imagine every particle , every element of the randomness of the universe as an element of data.( If it was not random ..it would be a pattern..an algorithm and that holds far less data) .

An entity that can hold all the data of the universe..would have to be God.Some algorithm using quantum mechanics might run away with itself and create itself  such an entity.Man might be around long enough on this earth to initiate such a project and then we might actually birth our own God.

Self awareness is an unfolding story and is intrinsic to the narrative of the Universe…When a warm blooded hamster needed a brain clever enough to jump around trees and pick out red fruits and then decided to walk upright and letting his brain swell all the way along … I don’t think it was just a one-off.I think its intrinsic expansion of self-awareness that might lead one day to the self-awareness of the ( data) universe..=  God.

But we are a precarious species and we have only just survived in the past.Our fossilised bones are hard to find because we were so few in numbers and nearly died out 60k years ago with the Toba eruptions ( that probably concentrated the humans race into a few pools of isolated communities that probably got us  racial differences that we see today ).

Our march onwards is not a sure thing.Our self-awareness is a large scale organisational one ..not an individually based self-awareness.Our individually based self awareness is no better than say a Roman may have had 2000 years back.We need our large scale society and its resources and common body of knowledge ( science ) to continue for a long time before we can birth a God.

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Posted elsewhere on ‘Living Longer ‘ and its possible consequences

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September 15, 2009

Posted by me in a thread about the implications of longer life ….

Older folks have accrued more things..( more assets that need stability/security to persist)…feel more fragile physically ( compared to young-uns and will be inherently a more risk averse society..) have left the parental power complex for longer ( less need to rebel against everything or something ).
Society dials itself further into the Right of the political spectrum.
Relatively fewer younger people to burn in wars ..less inclination to start them…a second flowering for civilisation
IMHO

AND

Maybe regenerative medicine further mires the health care costs and longer life means we also have longer retirements ( I’m sure our less functional phase will be longer as well) …So we save more …spend less .
Everyone would live long enough to see multiple turning points in technology+societal relationship ( technology/Science races ahead as experts in field live longer & accrue ever more experience)…Could technology become a threat to such a risk averse society.How you would feel if your retirement portfolio was about to be decimated by a new technology and you still have 70 years of retirement to fund

 

AND

Or do we get Logans Run if all the new medicines prolong the retirement phase for too long…creating an ‘unfunded’ and unproductive section of society .Yikes…

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The Past …Now

Filed under: Advertising, prediction — 1 Comment
September 6, 2009

http://www.wired.com/dualperspectives/article/news/2009/09/dp_displays_ars0901

“2009 is the first year that we’re really seeing all of the display types mentioned here—LED LCD, OLED, E-Ink, and legacy CFL LCD, plasma and others—all coexist in the market and establish themselves in their respective niches”

Nice overview of the visual screen tech out there right now .I’ve always daydreamed or been captivated by real dreams I have had at night-time where I travel back in time and see how things were 20 years back.Things around us change so quickly and the colours , shapes and feasibility of advertising is quickly adjusted by any prevailing technology.For example, 20 years ago, people  still painted signs with brushes…skillfully..but now it’s done exclusively with vinyl cutters.

Look around yourself now and look closely..because we are about to have a generational shift again.Its going all ‘Blade Runner’ and the retail /advertising enviroment is going to be unrecognisable in 10 years because of the new flat screen tech coming.

The T.V took so much place up in house , before the plasma screen , now a window that doubles as TV?…thats going to change small  housing units.

Retail from another era.....caught in Malta 2009

Retail from another era.....caught in Malta 2009

So look around you now..its all going to disappear .Take a good long look at the Past …now.

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Crowd sizes through media spectacles

Filed under: Journalism, Political, prediction — Leave a comment
September 6, 2009

The Media is the key instument and arena for the main battles of the Political forces , whether legitimate  ( parties , corporations , NGO’s )     or otherwise ( terrorists).

The estimation of crowd sizes becomes a subtle battleground for this fight.The nuances of the coverage become  slanted.

So CNN , calls the demonstrations against Chavez , recently organised throughout the Americas and + , as having  fallen flat.While the WSJ says that 10′s of thousands demonstrated and only a handful in a counter-demonstration.Each report , could be accurate, the CNN negative , the WSJ positive for demonstrators.(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125220655269889075.html).

Usually the problem is the under or over estimating the crowd sizes according to your political slant on the demonstrators.

I wonder if satellite technology , or mobile mapping sites could create algorithms that could accurately estimate large group sizes .i.e for mobiles…fixed pictures from multiple angles could be used against a Google Street View style copy and people density and size could be guesstimated.

Or simpler still…computing the mobile phone densities in an area.Will it become de riguer for protestors to make themselves ‘heard’ ..by  not only attending  a rally..but to turn on their mobile and allow Mobile companies to estimate densities.It will come….because this is a war of hierachies  and every weapon that can be conceived…will be made.

Probably Google first….Google Crowds

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Australia is finished

Filed under: Comment, prediction — 3 Comments
September 3, 2009

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8235111.stm

Australia has experienced its warmest August on record amid soaring winter temperatures.

Australia is becoming one large dust bowl.They can join Bangladesh as some of the countries that will need rescuing in the future.Where will everyone go?

China’s population could crash in the next 50 years or recover…Russia and Ukaraine is quite empty ….Who is going to engineer /oversee and settle the moral issues involved .The whole of human society /civilisation is based around ownership of property.What are going to be the parameters that guide the decision making ( racial ?…religion ? culture….Australia to Europe ( but only European descent ?)..Bengalis to India (?)…its a minefield.Will everyone pay for the move?

I see the UN ..instead of this middle of the road elephant that it is…becoming either very much more important or  just destroyed by greater selfish forces when the time comes.

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Algerian model for Iran

Filed under: Comment, Political, prediction, Religion, War — Leave a comment
June 21, 2009

I hate to be pessimistic but I can forsee a lack of a powerful ‘centre-of-gravity’ in the political aftermath of this breakdown of the Islamic theocratic-democrcay.

Forces of religious conservatism will became reactionary if they are disposed from power.The moderates will probably have a  ’Shah’ like conundrum …dealing  harshly / liberally to the challenge of blowback from the religious loonies….but never dealing decisively against them.

So maybe another lost decade ..lost to an Algerian style meltdown.I don’t think it will be as harsh as that..Iranians have a 4500 year old sense of self that militates against wholesale destruction of each other…..but without a solid power centre….this country is going to drift.

Implications….an attack from Isreal might be useful to get them back together again.Nothing like an outside threat to put aside differences.

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WSJ reply in comment

Filed under: Political, prediction, Religion, Terrorism — Leave a comment
April 30, 2009
a good summary by me way way back
The Taleban are really a Pathan tribal based movement under the guise of religious movement ( not very surprising considering they have a conservative lifestyle that is more conservative than even Islamic scriptures require ).
They have a large area in which to hide if they want to cause trouble but crucially they do no have the numbers or the power base to march across Pakistan out of the desert and assert control over anything outside of the provinces from where they come.Pakistan has too many competing centres of powers that would’nt allow such a scenario to occur.The Pathans control nothing outside of the NWP and not all of the inside.
The only realistic scenario is a small group of officers or workers plotting to steal a nuke but that is not possible either.Control measures taken with the help of the US have installed a water tight system for the security of the nukes.
So loss or takeover of the nukes is not possible.Also quite fancible is a Western based nuclear umbrella for Pakistan.The West would never nuke , in a retalitory strike , India after an attack.So such guarentees are worthless to Pakistan .The West deferred to India over the UN directives over kashmir ( which are at the root of all the problems ..remember Afghanistan is just an extention of the chess board for India/Pakistan) and will do so in the future as well.
The collapse of Pakistan would not be of any concern to the West had it not been for the nukes that Pakistan has in its possesion and unfortuantely Pakistan is using this as a powerful leverage for help.
Articles like this one are very helpful on that score.You and Pakistanis say the sky is falling down enough times, I’m sure Pakistan will get some payback for having some nukes sitting around.
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5GW frailties

Filed under: prediction, War — Leave a comment
March 28, 2009

5GW ( fifth generation warfare) is the coming net-centric warfare.

Would so called rogue states ( any state that  has’nt opened its markets to Western capital and private ownership ?) be able to asymmetrically combat this kind of techonological leviathan by blinding / attacking it with space garbage?

Would it be that difficult to place into orbit such ‘dirty’ bombs in space?

I don’t think so.I wonder what kind of counter measures could be taken?

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