close
The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20101125044205/http://chiefio.wordpress.com:80/
Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Turkey Day Prep

November 24, 2010 by E.M.Smith

Roast Turkey

Roast Turkey

Original Image. Oddly, while not my picture, we have the same cutting board and a similar tile background (though yellow)… and I don’t depend on the pop up things, they always pop up just after the turkey is overdone and dry. Put a butter / herb mix under the skin and cook it ‘by the pound’ instead. Just wonderful…

OK, it’s the day before Thanksgiving and I’m The Chef… so I’ve started the cooking. Yes, cooking for Thanksgiving starts at least one day in advance.

What makes this even more fun is that I’ve got a collection of family and friends who show up for this event that includes a variety of “special foods needs”. For me, it’s an interesting challenge. For them, it’s “safe food” they like…

What’s “in the mix”?

A friend is gluten intolerant. Not horridly (it’s more like a wheat allergy, so things like oats work fine along with some of the other minor grains that have a tiny bit of non-wheat gluten like proteins.)

A relative is soy intolerant. All kinds of ‘odd issues’ that seem to be triggered by soy. It’s not clear what component (since “having become better” from dropping ALL soy anything, she is reluctant to do the ‘challenge’ to find out if it’s in or out of the soybean oil, for example.

I can’t eat corn. Well, I can… I just can’t hold onto it for long ;-)

OK, I started with the Gluten Intolerance adjustments. Corn bread made with rice flower instead of the wheat. Gravy thickened with non-wheat flower. Etc.

Then we discovered the Soy issue. Not too hard, swap to non-soy products. Leave out just about everything pre-packaged as they all seem to have “soy” something somewhere on the label.

And I was already used to keeping the corn dishes flagged so I knew what to avoid.

But Wait, There’s More

Since then, we’ve added a couple of things. A son who, like me, avoids all hydrogenated oils (though I was willing to accept trace amounts in things like pre-packaged stuffing mix, and he isn’t). So a lot of the premix packages are now replaced by “DIY” from scratch.

And, for me, The Biggie: I’ve now got 5 of the 8 who are vegetarian (ovo lacto) leaving just three of us as omnivores.

Ever try to make a vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner without wheat, corn, and soy?…

Yeah, it’s a ‘challenge’…

The Meal Plan

The basic idea is to just accept that not every person can eat every dish. So we make ‘variations’ where a common ground can not be reached. But there are edge cases some times that can be challenging. Will the vegetarians eat stuffing from inside a bird? Probably not…

Each year, I always over plan the choices, then as we ‘implement’ if something drops out of the mix, it’s still a well ‘over the top’ dinner. So don’t expect every single one of these dishes to ‘hit the table’. It will depend on how the choreography of the event unfolds as we go. Usually it’s one of the minor side dishes that ends up forgotten or ‘without a pot’ or sometimes ‘without oven space’ (though the addition of a ‘portable oven’ has reduced that risk). But here’s what’s in the fare so far:

Roast Turkey ( 9 pound “Diestel” brand. Figure 3 pounds per meat eater is about right ;-) with wheat stuffing in it. Non-hydrogenated oil in the croutons, and no soy, but the no-soy is also a vegetarian so may or may not accept ‘turkey touched’ stuffing… .

Side dish stuffing: One corn bread stuffing made with non-wheat corn bread. One vegetarian non-soy made from scratch with vegetable broth instead of animal. The corn bread base is made by me, from scratch, today (or will be ;-). I use blue corn meal so the things with corn meal in them are color tagged so I know what to avoid… Simply swap “rice flower” for the wheat flower in the corn bread recipe of your choice. I double the egg to make up for the low gluten too.

Vegetarian rice noodle lasagna. (Everyone can eat this, and makes a nice ‘main dish’ for the vegetarians). Prego brand spaghetti sauce is soy free, so it’s a simple quick assemble. Rice noodles, with layers of a (spinach, ricotta, parmesan, mozzerella mix), sauce, some pre-cooked mushrooms and / or olives and / or the occasional boiled egg slices) and then more noodles. Repeat to the top. Top with Olives and parmesan. I put about a teaspoon of “Italian Seasoning mix” in the bottom and top layers and usually add some garlic bits ;-)

A Fruit plate: Quick and easy. Platter of bananas, tangerines , grapes, pomegranates.

Salad bowl: Another quick and easy. Salad in the bowl, bottled dressings set out. (home made oil/vinegar/spices for me).

Peas: Simple dish of “just peas”.

Baked Beans: Bush’s Baked beans, vegetarian, re-baked. I’ve tried to improve on them, but can’t yet make anything enough better to be worth it.

Hard Boiled Eggs: The extras from any other dish (i.e. lasagna) set out. If I get time, I turn them into a deviled egg platter. Takes about 10 minutes.

Baked Squash: Acorn Squash, cut in half and baked ‘skin up’. Served with butter, brown sugar, and ‘season to taste’ of salt and pepper. Yeah, you could season them up much more interestingly… but the ‘crowd’ is also a lot of ‘supertasters’ and like to add seasonings in very small amounts. So cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, et. al. are set out for use as desired.

Candied yams: Another simple dish. Yams, in a pot, with a load of brown sugar, sometimes some maple syrup, and a lot of butter. Just slowly simmer it for about an hour. Moisture from the yams will make the sauce. Add ‘white fluff’ as desired. (Whipped cream or marshmallows… but the non-soy makes it a bit of an issue to find commercial marshmallows that are soy oil free…)

Tortellini Alfredo: I use a commercial pre-made tortellini that is good for everyone but the ‘gluten intolerant’ (who must content himself with massive amounts of lasagna instead ;-) topped with Classico Alfredo sauce. Fairly quick and easy to make, meets all the ‘hot buttons’ but one (wheat in the tortellini). Served with parmesan shakers, grated cheese mix, and side olives as ‘toppers’.

Breads: Often a challenge. I have some of the Rice & Corn bread, and often a “Regular Corn bread”. I’ve got a source for non-soy sweet French, and we usually do some prepackages warm and serve dinner rolls (mostly because the spouses Mom always did that and it’s got nostalgia value…). Real Butter on the side.

Cranberry sauce in little serving dishes on each end of the table.

Mashed Potatoes and Gravy. Very straight forward, though usually the ‘limiting dish’ on serving time as the ‘from peeling to table’ always takes longer than I expect. Gravy is a ‘challenge’. Can’t do the ‘pan drippings’ that I really like (so I save them for the day after ;-) at home). Can’t do the “mushroom soup’ gravy their Mom always did (as it has wheat and soy in it). Last year found a non-soy non-wheat mushroom soup at Whole Foods. Have to check on that again… If we end up there, it will be Cream of Mushroom gravy and the ‘other folks’ can just do butter… or I can make a bit of pan drippings gravy for the non-wheat meat-o-vores in the group.

And my personal favorite: Buttered Parsnips. Simple. Peel and slice parsnips. Boil in an open pot (to let the ‘piney” flavor resins evaporate) butter with real butter, and put in a serving dish.

I’m tempted to toss in a side dish of rice (dump rice in rice cooker…) of either brown rice or ‘saffron’ rice. But that might be a bit much ;-)

Then, finally, from my family traditions. Something we’ve always called “Scalloped corn” but I suspect is some kind of ‘poverty food’ adjustment from some prior dish. I ate this every holiday for the first 30+ years of my life and it’s just not Thanksgiving without it. Even if I can’t eat it, the smell is essential… Take 2 cans of corn. Drain the water from one can (I’ve tried it with both drained, and neither. It doesn’t change much, but I think one drained is best). Dump into a casserole dish. Add 2 eggs, beaten. Add about 1/2 stick ( 1/8 cup or 4 TBS) of butter. Take “one stack” of saltine crackers (one of the packets that come in a large box of crackers. 4 ounces.) and crush it. Add. Now mix it all together. You can put more butter on top if you are so inclined ;-) Lightly pepper the top (salt is in the crackers) and bake it. About 40 minutes in a medium oven, but depends on the shape bowl you use to some extent.

I make a ‘rice cracker’ variation for the non-wheat folks.

Another family member provides the deserts and someone else brings the beverages.

In Conclusion

So that’s what I’m up to for the next 24 hours… Wish me luck…

I’m still trying to think of a better main course for the non-soy vegetarians that has some kind of ‘special’ character like a roast turkey. Ideas welcome. The “gluten guy” is bringing a “Lentil ‘meat’ loaf” and we’ll see how that goes…

Posted in Food | 3 Comments »

An Example of Fractal Temperatures

November 22, 2010 by E.M.Smith

Steam On A Fence at 40 F air 60 F surface

Steam On A Fence at 40 F air 60 F surface

Sometimes nature does some truly beautiful things. One of them is the sight of steam rising from a surface on a Very Cold Day.

Yesterday, the air temperature was about 40 F on the back patio in the shade. ( I have a picture of that thermometer, but don’t feel the need to upload it, as for 3 MB of limited storage, it’s just not that impressive a picture. I just took it for photodocumentation purposes. But be comforted that I do in fact have that photo complete with time stamp.)

When I went to the front porch at about 11:30 am to let the cat in ( it was cold and wet out, and Mr. Cat wanted warmth, love, and food; in roughly reverse order…) I noticed one of my favorite phenomena. The “hot steam on a cold day” as sunshine warms a surface and evaporates the wet, but just millimeters above the surface it condenses again into steam.

I ran for the camera and the thermometer…

Here was a great chance to measure and document just how much variation there can be in surfaces over a very short period of time and space. The back and the front are about 50 feet apart.

So I put my ‘photo chemical’ thermometer on the fence. It’s a fairly fast reacting and very accurate thermometer (or your pictures come out wrong…) The sun had just come out after a fairly heavy cold rain. Everything HAD been roughly the same temperature 1/2 hour before… The question was: How fast and how far can surfaces warm in the sun on a cold wet day?

The answer:

Temperature on The Fence Top

Temperature on The Fence Top

A bit under 20 F hotter.

So this is a very simple example of the highly variable nature of temperatures. To some extent, it illustrates the dependency of air temperatures over a surface on the very nature of that surface. As the surface of the planet is fractal in topology, that implies that temperatures over the surface of the planet are also fractal in nature.

When we measure “global average temperature” we are simply measuring the error band in our instruments. The size of a measurement of a fractal surface is directly controlled by the size of the ‘ruler’ used to measure it. As we are constantly changing the number and location of thermometers used to measure “global temperature” we will get constantly varying results, even if the state were constant.

What makes “1 meter over the surface” more or less ‘right’ than 2 meters? Or 1/2 meter? What makes ‘over grass’ more or less right than “near the runway”? As we keep changing those things, we simply get closer to that 40 F or that 60 F from the same small place on the very same day and time…

FWIW, note also that all that steam rising is taking one heck of a lot of heat with it into the air. The water evaporates at a constant temperature, so we have massive heat gain with no temperature change. Then that heat is given back into the air as the condensation happens. Here we see it happening in millimeters. With clouds and oceans we see it happening in miles. That picture also illustrates the stupidity of using temperature as a proxy for ‘heat flow’. The actual heat flows are much much higher than that temperature differential suggests. ( about 1/2 kW / m^2 on the fence top, about zero on the patio… yet a meter up in the air over the fence, it’s all ‘disappeared’… gone into vapor instead of temperatures…)

Posted in AGW Science and Background | 14 Comments »

Maybe Grass Can Save California

November 21, 2010 by E.M.Smith

Marijuana in flower. Buds, Buds, Glorious Buds!

Marijuana in flower. Buds, Buds, Glorious Buds!

Original image

This past week, California started the process of offering $14 Billion of bonds.

It didn’t go well.

Bond yields had to rise, a lot, to move the inventory in the first tranche, and even then it didn’t all move. But the State Employees hawking this credit card load are trying to put a smiley face on it.

From: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE59766N20091008

we find that of $4.5 Billion they set out to sell in the first batch, they only got $4.138 Billion placed. Though I do have to agree with them that getting even that much placed, and at very high prices, was quite an accomplishment…

California Treasurer Bill Lockyer’s office said on Thursday it priced a total of $4.138 billion of general obligation bonds in its sale of the debt this week, less than the $4.5 billion it had put up for sale.

Despite falling short, Lockyer said in a statement the sale’s total was a “significant accomplishment” in what he termed a “cold and inhospitable market” this week.

Gee, trouble getting the old Credit Card Limit lifted when you are bankrupt… Who knew…

Yields ranged from 3.75 percent to 7.23 percent for the taxable debt and from 2.95 percent to 5.0 percent for the tax-exempt bonds.

Why the range? Some bonds are “revenue bonds”. If the thing that is supposed to pay them off goes under, you get nothing. Others are ‘general obligation’. As long as the State has a dime (and not in bankruptcy), you get paid. And, of course, the tax exempt bonds typically have more demand as you get to dodge the 11% State Income Tax on them.

That we’ve got State bonds running at 7%+ and tax exempt up to 5%+ when Treasuries are down in the ‘near nothing’ range is, er, startling.

Perhaps Grass Can Save Us

Recently, the voters turned down a proposition to legalize and tax marijuana. The “scuttlebutt” was that as it was already “legal” for “medical use” (say, oh, “poor appetite…”) why “legalize it”? It’s just a tax bill…

That was at the State level. At the local level, plans roll on undeterred…

Oakland, California, (Currently under the ‘leadership’ of “Governor Moonbeam” – at least until he takes over the state) can’t pay its cops. So it has a plan. Grow “industrial scale Marijuana” and use that to generate revenue. To, er, pay the cops? To, um, I suppose, guard the grass?

http://globalganjareport.com/content/oakland-approves-industrial-marijuana-farm-measure

Oakland’s City Council July 20 approved regulations permitting what the San Francisco Chronicle called “industrial-scale” cannabis farms—over the protests of small growers who fear they will be squeezed out of the industry they helped build. To address such concerns, the council pledged to create regulations for small and medium-size grow operations later this year.

“It’s really important for Oakland to be a vital part of that growth and development for licensed facilities,” said council member and mayoral candidate Rebecca Kaplan.

Why? Perhaps what comes a bit lower in the article is a clue:

The regulations will award permits to four indoor cannabis farms. There will be no size limit, but there have been proposals for farms as large as 100,000 square feet—about the size of two football fields. The regulations require applicants to have a minimum of $3 million worth of insurance, hire security and pay a $211,000 annual permit fee. The city will start issuing permits in January.

Hmmm… Buckets of Money from “fees”…. Yup, that’s a California Government…

But Steve DeAngelo, owner of Oakland’s Harborside Health Center, the largest medical marijuana dispensary in the nation, bitterly opposed the measure. His dispensary buys from some 500 different growers—meaning Harborside offers some 100 varieties at any time. Permitting only industrial operations would reduce variety, he said.

“Government should not choose the winners and losers but create a level playing field,” he said. “Some people might prefer mass production, assembly-line cannabis that costs less. Others might prefer cannabis grown by a master gardener in a smaller plot. “Let the market sort it out,” he said.

Only in California would you hear Free Market Conservative arguments from a Pot Merchant…

Ah, well. At least California is entertaining. It’s not like the Government will use its power to enforce an oligopoly for its own benefit and punish folks who don’t play along with the power structure.

While regulating approved growers, Oakland also plans to crack down on illegal grows, Arturo Sanchez, an assistant to the city administrator, told the City Counil—comments that prompted hissing and booing in the crowd.

Oh, sorry, my mistake… At least now we know what the police will be for. Tax collectors in blue…

I’m so glad I don’t live in Oakland.

I’m so sad Governor Moonbeam is going to do for the State what he’s done for Oakland…

I think I need to rent a room from my Uncle in Texas…

I just can’t see why anyone would think California is going to recover from the present path prior to a high velocity impact with the gutter.

(Sidebar on Governor Moonbeam: During his first term as Governor, Jerry Brown had some very wacky ideas. Things like shutting down all freeway construction. For this, he was christened “Governor Moonbeam”. In the end, he resulted in a conservative backlash that lasted for a decade or two. One can only hope…)

Posted in Economics, Trading, and Money, Political Current Events | 27 Comments »

Review: Day After Tomorrow

November 19, 2010 by E.M.Smith

Day After Tomorrow

Day After Tomorrow

Image used under Fair Use rules for a critical review.

OK, it’s well after the movie came out and I’m sure everyone who ever wanted to watch it has seen it. But … It was on FX and the trading day was nothing much to crow about, so I turned it on. After all, I’ve already bought the ‘package’ so they will not make any more or less money if I do or don’t watch it. Out of curiosity, I decided to see what it was about.

First off, I didn’t see all of it. Things happen. Packages get delivered. Phone rings. The fact is, it just wasn’t compelling enough to make those things into issues that needed to be interrupted for the movie.

Scattered Plot

This show tries to be a combined morality play and catastrophe flick. It succeeds at being a catastrophe… By some very dodgy circumlocutions it manages to have a freezing arctic result from “Global Warming”. “What?” you say? Yeah, me too. Somehow the notion of melting Arctic ice diluting the Atlantic and slowing the Gulf Stream, thus cooling Europe, gets turned into a freezing Arctic with ice forming everywhere and the whole world freezing. But it’s our fault.

Several lead-in disasters happen around the world with cities destroyed. Tokyo goes in a manner in keeping with the quality and believability of the Mothra movies, for example.

Some “long time” is spent in pointless hand wringing and evacuation of Some Folks from the USA to Mexico. (Why not Texas or Arizona, you ask? Why because we MUST have a morality play where the Norte Americanos are in need of open borders to Mexico in our Time Of Need…) Exactly HOW one mounts an effective evacuation of even a few hundred folks in a day or so is not addressed, how you deal with a few hundred million is simply ignored… But the Global Giant Storms only give a couple of days… Yet FEMA is shown On The Job in Mexico handing out care packages…

Strangely, the Giant Storms are neatly centered over the developed western centers. North America, Europe, Asia in the China / Japan / Korea belt. Neatly leaving alone the ‘unguilty’ People Of Color in Mexico, South America, Africa… Not their fault, after all… That the storms are completely unphysical and unsupportable by any known physics is, er, not their problem…

Then they start throwing in all the FX they can. Giant “Storm Surge” of a hundred feet or so swamps NY City. Then it somehow all freezes. Then snow piles up dozens (hundreds?) of feet thick overnight. Someone has an infected leg (that they didn’t notice for several days) that causes a medical crisis so folks run off to The Ship. What ship? Oh, well between the Tidal Wave Storm Surge and the Sudden Ice Age, a ship floats into downtown New York City… neatly upright and unbroken. Then just stops to be frozen in place. Complete with a store of the antibiotics needed to save the girls leg…

Of course, on the way to The Ship to get the suddenly needed Antibiotics, a pack of wolves appear in downtown New York City. Wolves? Yes, wolves… One presumes they rode in with the snow from Canada and didn’t have to walk all that way in a blizzard so cold it kills anyone out in it… But they are hungry, and familiar with ships ladders, so they board the ship and arrange for a tense ‘man vs wolf’ battle…. Why? Don’t ask why… down that path lies insanity and ruin…

The whole flick is made of that kind of non-sequitur of out of place characters, out of place events, and out of place storyline. No two thoughts can be logically connected with each other as the story turns from one Bad Dream Sound Bite to another.

Oh, and there is a gratuitous Library Scene where they are burning books to stay alive along with moralizing about the destruction of the foundation of civilization. Never mind all the wooden furniture that would make a far better fire than books with ‘clay sizing’ in the paper that doesn’t burn worth a damn. Not even the pulp news print that will burn OK if you try hard enough. No, straight to the classics….

The movie is one long dismal doom saying after another with periodic nagging about the evils of being Modern Technological Man.

In the end, there is a brief attempt at a positive spin. The clouds clear (suddenly in a couple of hours continent scale storms just evaporate…) and the folks trapped in the Library are rescued (modulo a sub plot about 2 guys trudging a few hundred miles in killer cold to reach them… Dad finds Kid and all. Trite, and mindless. But everyone gets to emote some more.) Then in the end, the storms clear and The President of the USA (In Mexico) makes a media address to The USA (despite no one able to hear it) in which he is a supplicant to the hospitality of The Third World without whom we’d all be dead (that is, us Evil First Worlders who wrought all this Kaos…)

Cue scene of military helicopters rescuing folks from rooftops all over New York City skyscrapers. Never mind that everything between there and Mexico is one large snow field and with no fuel / landing areas the helicopters wouldn’t make it… It’s a brand new day, you see, and we’ve all learned our lesson… This after having had several scenes that basically said “Their all dead, Jim”…

Over Emotive

This turkey is just dripping with folks emoting heavily at every turn. Deep Dirge music accompanies most of the movie as ill befalls us all. Stern looks. Sad looks. Fearful looks. DEEP Shameful looks. EMOTE DAMN IT! I can hear the director screaming at the actors.

Not exactly what you want in a good performance….

Great movies have just the right mix of alternating happy and sad moments. Emotions in sync with the reality of the moment. Pushing ever further in a fugue like manner as the emotions alternate voice and deepen in timbre… Not here. It’s full on loud Rock And ROLL baby! All Metal ALL the TIME! Yeah, for a few seconds now and then something nice will happen, but it’s gone before you can savor it. Then it’s right back to Disaster 101… and Guilt Trip 202A.

I’d get bored, and go check the stock channel to see if anything was happening. One time made the bed. Decided to make some tea. Yeah, it was that compelling… Like watching a group of folks all in therapy together. Or a bunch of whiny kids at camp trying to figure out how to put up a tent in the cold and dark without reading the directions (but less fun).

Poor Technicals

No, not the FX. Special Effects were relatively well executed. Not stunning, but pretty good. I’m talking about the quality of the technical consulting and / or the ability of the director to listen to the technical consultant…

Probably my biggest gripe. (What, you thought the above stuff was a big gripe? ;-)

I’m sorry, but for a movie to “work” for me, I’ve got be able to make that leap to ‘willing suspension of disbelief” and that means nothing so glaring as to make me say “What Crap!”.

So we have a scene where the continental sized storm is covering North America and suddenly the 50 mile wide ‘eye’ passes over NYC. What happens then? A giant descending mass of Liquid Nitrogen Temperatures. Why? Because it gives good FX, of course, and the folks can practice their looks of panic and fear… A ‘line of frozen’ descends building and causes windows to break and flags to freeze in mid flutter. But with no turbulence and no need to worry about specific heat. A gram of air can freeze a ton of steel and glass, don’t you now… People freeze to death in mere moments, unless they make a dramatic run for cover. One Small Problem. They show the wind stopping so this can happen… Exactly HOW does a heavy super cold wind move with no wind? And how does super cold air cause hundreds of pounds of ice to form on buildings from super dry source air? And how does it freeze flesh instantly if you are caught in it when it’s just air? All that without even getting in to esoterica like how does air descend from 50,000 feet and not have adiabatic heating…

Then there is the Space Station, that is shown tumbling through space when it doesn’t tumble, and abruptly stopping the tumble in a manner that would tear it apart, but with no thruster exhaust. Oh, and one time it’s at 100 miles up, another at what looks like 400 miles or so perspective. Then at the end, we get a view out the window from about Geosync. Sigh. Clearly no technical consultant was used…

All through the movie very unphysical things are done or need doing. They break into the infirmary of the ship through an outside window after finding the door locked. Never mind that the lock on the door would yield to a good body slam or front thrust kick. TONS of water freeze in place in hours or minutes, not the weeks it would take. North Atlantic storm surge surges in, but never drains back out. 100 foot waves crash through the coastline, but a ship just drifts in afterward unharmed, but with the crew all gone (somehow… but it’s a Russian ship and you can’t trust them to stay on their ship in movies. They always disappear… )

Oh, and a wall of water flows past the Statue of Liberty at about armpit hight, but doesn’t knock it down… I guess they didn’t know it’s thin brass plate and kind of creaky to the point where you couldn’t go up in to the arm any more prior to repairs… But that does set up a nice Planet Of The Apes moment at the end where you get to see it surrounded by ice and snow waste deep, and with 500 foot long ships with their noses on the bottom and butts in the air next to it. Waves can semi-sink ships, you see, while not touching the Statue Of Liberty. It’s needed for a plot gimmick after all…

The whole movie is like that. Folks desperately needing food, but not bothering to mention that a city with most of the people dead or gone has loads of food stashed all over it. The “catastrophe” hits so fast they can’t have eaten it all… Freezing to death and burning books to stay warm in a giant fireplace, but not bothering to crumple paper and put it in their clothes for insulation. Snow drifts filling the insides of buildings to 20 feet deep, even though they are often closed rooms.

Just one long non-sequitur after another and one long non-physical event after another and one long confusion about how reality works. Painful if you ‘have clue’ about such things. One presumes the folks who wrote it are sans clue in that regard…

In the end, I’m sort of glad I sort of watched it. At least now I know what it’s about. And know I’ll never need to buy the DVD or rent it just to satisfy curiosity. I also know that anyone who points to it as a scenario of doom in our time from AGW induced freezing is severely mentally disarmed and deserves help and pity.

No, it was no worse than any other B Grade Disaster Film (or maybe C grade). But at least in films like “Plan 9 From Outer Space” and “Blood Rust”, you know it’s complete crap and fantasy and can just get a bit drunk, eat chips, and have a laugh at it… This movie is a Message Movie, and some folks will think it has some meaning in it… My suggestion is that it’s probably best seen stoned on a good grade of weed, like the authors and makers must have been when they made it…

Posted in AGW and Weather News Events, Human Interest | Tagged , , | 19 Comments »

Reading Chart Tea Leaves

November 19, 2010 by E.M.Smith

OK, we’re going into a holiday. That usually means a volume slow down, but this is just a bit early for it. Just keep it in mind…

At the same time, we’ve had some run up this year to date in a couple of major vehicles. Gold (metals in general) and stocks (S&P 500 is the benchmark).

We also had a big down day (or three…) a couple of ‘go nowhere’ days and a big up day. So what the heck is going on? And what to do next?

To The Indicators, Batman!

First up, Gold. It’s still getting a fair amount of hype, and it may still have room to run (it isn’t at historical highs yet, but then again, we’re not at 18% interest rates and rampant inflation yet either…). With the US Dollar having become a bit of a ‘rubber ruler’ we first need to check our calibration against gold. I’ll use the GLD gold ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) for that.

GLD Gold 1 Year daily interterval with RSI, MACD, and DMI

GLD Gold 1 Year daily interterval with RSI, MACD, and DMI

OK, we’ve had a long run up, then a spike higher. That right there is a worry. Now the Simple Moving Average (SMA) stack is still “fastest on top, slowest on bottom” and that’s good, but the SMA(24) gold line, the 24 day Simple Moving Average has gone flat. Not made any money in 24 days, net. Could be a dip, as in “Buy the Dips, Sell the Rips” or could be the start of something worse… Need more input… (to quote Number 5 ;-)

Those two red lines on each side of the price bars are Bollinger Bands. They tell you how far, in statistical terms, the price is from it’s trend. Notice that when prices are ripping upward, it tends to track the Bollinger Band top line. When it gets a long ways from the SMA lines, prices tend to revert to the trend. When it’s a ‘dip’ it drops back to the SMA stack (typically to the Gold SMA(24) line) then takes off again. When price drops all the way to the blue SMA(48) line and through it, things are typically headed for a flat roll for a while or turning down. Right now, we’ve penetrated the SMA(24) and are playing with the SMA(48) line. Not good.

Sidebar on SMA

Sidebar on SMA sizes: The traditional numbers to use are SMA(50) and SMA(200) for trader and investor respectively. I use a stack of 3 lines so it’s made quite clear how the process is running. If Bigcharts gave me a choice of which three, I’d use one at 50, one at 200 and one at, most likely 150. But they don’t. You get to set ONE value, then it makes the 2 x and 3 x of that value. So 25 will give you 25, 50, 75 lines. I set my selection to 24 so that I’m seeing a ‘move’ just a bit sooner than the folks that slavishly follow the 50 day and trade the day after. Does it matter? Probably not. Most often, it’s best to ‘tune’ the number a few days either side until the prices touch one of the lines regularly. You are finding what indicators the Big Money is using and then keying off of them that way… Sometimes I’ll have two panels open. One with SMA3 (24) and one with SMA3 (70) – that gives the 70, 140, and 210 day moving averages. Close to the 150 and 200 that many folks use. Not ideal, but OK. Sometimes I’ll swap to a weekly chart and use an SMA3 (20) on that. That gives 20, 40, and 60 ‘weeks’ of trading days (at a 5 day trading week) or 100, 200, and 300 day moving averages. Better in many cases, but only really of use on the weekend reviews as the ‘week’ only ticks once on Friday… What about the EMA choice? That is the Exponential Moving Average. It exponentially weights newer data more. Responds faster, but then you need to ‘tune’ to different numbers. I’ve played with it. It works too. I’m just a bit too lazy to re-tune everything (including my brain) to the more twitchy nature of it. Is there a “magic” SMA or EMA setting to use? Not really. But since a large number of traders use the 50 day, and a large number of investors use the 200 day, they have more “clout”, but only because that is what the herd is doing…

Back at GLD and the RSI / MACD / DMI

OK, this could be a ‘one month pause’ that we’re already 1/2 a month into… or it could be the start of something a bit bigger. Not clear yet. So what do the other indicators say?

RSI:

We’ve touched 80. The classic ‘trade out soon’. Then the next ‘peak’ of RSI was only about 70. The classic ‘stay out a while’. RSI is saying it’s time for a modestly long pause, at least. Look back at May to August, the last time it did that. Not much to be made with “buy and hold” but some fast weekly trades would have worked.

MACD:

Here you can see why trading gold with MAC is a pain in the butt. Gold spikes, up or down, based on a “fix” done in London when the USA is closed. So it spikes someway or other, and a trend follower gets in AFTER the move. PITA at times.

But MACD is presently saying “red on top” be out, and it’s headed for a zero crossing “stay out for a while”. At best you could try to trade this thing with a 10 day hourly chart (or faster) but to do it properly needs a European account.

At any rate, right now it’s saying “no joy in Mudville”…

DMI:

The ADX line is below 25 (way below at about 20 barely) so it is saying ‘fast trade with the Slow Stochastic or swap to a faster chart like the 10 day hourly’. Again, not a time for the ‘safety investor’.

We have “red on top”. DMI- is saying “be out now”. Though I note that both DMI- and DMI+ are flat / sideways. Neither bullish nor bearish is giving a trend to work. Day trade or swing trade BOTH directions, but don’t have a directional attitude about it.

Newsflow:

One of my favorite indicators on the gold trade is when you see ads on TV telling you to Buy Gold Now! That has been a darned good indicator of a short term top. The major trading houses are having trouble filling the “other side of the trade” so they advertise for folks to take that side. Means a lot of money is selling gold, but not enough buying, typically.

Yeah, it’s a bit tricky to read as the time scale is variable. But right now we have plenty of adds for “buy gold now”…

One other minor point: China is raising reserve requirements on it’s banks. Loans will be harder to get in China and folks will be scrambling a bit more for cash. That will likely take a bit of the demand out of the consumer gold market there. But internationally, gold is typically driven by central bank demand. With EU central banks looking to hand buckets of Euros to Ireland, Greece, Portugal, et. al. they are not going to be buying gold, and may sell some. With China putting the squeeze on it’s banks, they will be raising cash more than gold (IMHO). The Swiss are trying to run their currency down some, so will mostly be doing Franc for USD and Franc for Euro swaps (though Franc for Gold would work too… but less targeted). I don’t see a lot of central bank demand for gold, but do see some reasons for them to sell a bit for funding bailouts. That just leaves the Oil Kingdoms. Oil isn’t terribly expensive right now, so they don’t have a bucket of spare cash to squirrel away (just the usual boat load ;-) so I expect them to be at about the normal demand level.

Ok, with that said, lets take a look at the volume in GLD, knowing that it’s not a major part of total gold sales.

GLD with Volume, Volatility, and Williams %R

GLD Gold with Volume, Volatility, Williams %R as 6 month chart

GLD Gold with Volume, Volatility, Williams %R as 6 month chart

Williams %R:

The quick and easy one first. It’s below zero. Time to be out. BUT, that is also the state for “be ready to buy”. IFF it crosses the zero line to the positive, it’s a buy. I prefer to use a ‘buy if touched’ order since Gold moves so fast, but with the general context, I think I’d rather be slow about throwing money at GLD right now.

Volatility:

Here we see that GLD tends to be the opposite of a stock. Stocks tend to go to low volatility at tops, high volatility at bottoms. Because folks run out of other stuff when panicked and into gold, we get the volatility acting backwards. Notice that back in August at that bottom volatility was NOT making big spikes, but was just kind of creeping sideways? Notice now it’s making lots of big spikes? Thats’ a worry.

This also indicates part of why trading gold is tricky. It has ‘backward volatility’ so a lot of folks instincts will be wrong if they watch that indicator…. Further, folks tend to run into gold at a top, right when volatility is highest, and get whipsawed something fierce as prices rock back and forth daily. Again a reason to be out right now.

Volume:

And here we also see a ‘backward indication’. Volume was very low at the bottom, now it’s being very high. We do know that a couple of hedge funds announced that they had sold some gold (and in particular some GLD). And we see a lot of volume lately. The RED down day volume is much greater than the BLACK up day volume. Folks are getting shaken out of positions or are just dumping. I’d rate that a ‘stay away’ a while…

Realize that this is exactly backwards from how stock volume is to be read. For stocks, the volume peaks happen at bottoms, the volume drys up at tops. Remember that is because a lot of folks use gold a a ‘safe haven’ to run TO when running away from the stock market.

PSAR:

Those red dots near the price bars. We’re below them. That means ‘be out now but buy in if you cross the dots’. It’s something of a trade oscillator that keeps you in a while after a reversal, then gets progressively more paranoid as a trend gets older.

Conclusion on GLD:

Looks to me like a local top, probably a sideways roll through Christmas / New Year. Fast trade only, but be ready to hop back in if The Fed does something stupid or the various world Central Banks suddenly decide to buy gold…

Longer term it will likely resume the rise. But only as inflation and central banks ratify it.

S&P 500

Since we’ve just covered volume on GLD, I’m going to lead with the VVW% chart for SPY for an easier compare.

SPY S&P 500 6 month daily interval; Volume Volatitily Williams %R

SPY S&P 500 6 month daily interval; Volume Volatitily Williams %R

Volume:

First, compare the volume behaviour with that of the GLD. Here we see that volume was quite a bit higher 6 months ago in mid May. It’s been a slow down hill slide since. Notice how at the end of June and the end of August we got a volume jump as prices dropped? Then 4 days ago a bit of a jump on that drop day? Now volume is low in general (compared to 6 months ago). But we’re not yet printing volumes of below 150 on a regular basis. Not a hard top indication, but a slowdown to sideways. (But if we start getting a series of 100 to 150 days – other than the days just before the holiday closures – that’s a ‘topping’ issue…)

Volatility:

Also going low. There is an odd anomaly in September where volatility went low just before a rise. Usually it goes high at a drop, then fades near a top. That low volume low volatility just at the start of the September rally is odd and unusual. Probably an artifact of election uncertainty. But that’s behind us now.

Now we’ve got low volatility AND modest volumes. Not a good combination. In the context of the holiday slowdown, I’d expect this means some funds and traders are taking early holiday time… Probably not going to be a big sell off, but not much juice to the upside either.

Williams %R:

It is below the center line and saying ‘be out now’. Though if it crosses to the upside, thats a ‘buy now’ signal (check the context with other indicators though, it can give a rapid day trade kind of buy / sell whipsaw on it’s own.)

PSAR:

Just like for gold… Those red dots near the price bars. We’re below them. That means ‘be out now but buy in if you cross the dots’.

All in all, everything is saying ‘not much reason to buy’ the biggest 500 companies in America..

RSI, MACD, DMI

SPY S&P 500 1 Year Daily interval; RSI MACD DMI

SPY S&P 500 1 Year Daily interval; RSI MACD DMI

SMA Stack:

Riding the Gold Line SMA(24) with fastest on top and slowest on bottom. That says right now it’s just a “dip” not a dropping trend. But look back at May. All “trend reversals” start with a ‘dip’… So caution and consult widely on indicators before ‘buying the dip’…

RSI:

Touched 80, now dropping. We still don’t have a ‘lower top’ but we could make one ‘soon’. Not yet a ‘get out’ lower top, but clearly a ‘touch 80 be worried’ call.

MACD:

We’ve got “red on top” be out with significant downward tilt. (It goes into a sideways weave on steady rises or falls as in Sept / Oct and is hard to read then, and certainly not a time to just blindly trust red or blue on top. Now it’s got enough strength to the ’tilt’ to be more trustworthy…) But MACD is also still above zero. So we’ve got a modest positive gain bias, but the timing looks off…

DMI:

We’ve got ADX at ‘below 25′ but note that due to the SPY being such a large basket, it is less volatile than most individual stocks. So that ADX ‘strength’ indication was around 20 during all that long run up the last couple of months. We do have DMI- on top, but just barely. It’s almost weaving with DMI+ for a ‘go nowhere’ market.

OK, with the recent flutter up and down, I’d figure it’s a ‘faster trade market’ into the end of the year, not a ‘buy and hold’ or trend trade market. Most likely you need to pick your sectors and look for sector rotations.

That price has stalled about where it was at the peak in April is a worry, but not a surprise. There is often ‘resistance’ to push past a prior peak. Expect prices to ‘work’ back and forth before resolving to a direction.

Conclusion on SPY:

Probably flat into the end of the year. Some drops possible as the Lame Duck Congress does stupid things. Trade on a faster time scale and look for individual sectors more than the broad market. Significant risk of a ‘correction’ as folks get spooked and the advance we’ve had is recognized as stalled. Not much reason to ‘buy and hold’ at this point. Plenty of reason to take a holiday break (with the pros…)

In Conclusion

Hope this helps demonstrate how to work out a reasonable risk containment strategy when a market has stopped doing what it was doing and the future is unclear.

Does it guarantee a right answer? Nope. It’s just looking at the aggregate votes of the market participants, and they can change with the latest News Flow.

But it is a systematic way to steer past your own hopes, needs, wants and desires.

So what am I going to do?

Homework.

It’s a time to look in finer grain at what is likely to come in the markets. What is likely to be sectors that show recovery from here. Where is there a narrower field to work, or a faster trade to make. The ‘broad market’ doesn’t look all that great, but a part of it is always moving somewhere.

Not my most happy task, homework. But a necessary one. So I’m likely to be ‘in cash’ for the next few days or doing very fast swing trades in ETF baskets. Not the kind of thing that makes for a great posting or that is useful for folks who just want to put money away for retirement; but it’s what I do to make the rent… (And having just spent a few hundred on a trip, I’ve got a hole in the credit card to fill… so if ‘fast trades’ are the only vehicle right now, that’s where I’ll go…)

My “usual suspects” for fast trades are the leveraged ETFs in the Nasdaq and the Russel 2000. I’ve also been known to use the EWZ or the EEM / EEV pair:

EWZ Brazil, BRF Small Cap Brazil, BZF Brazil cash, EEM /EEV emerging ETF

EWZ Brazil, BRF Small Cap Brazil, BZF Brazil cash, EEM /EEV emerging ETF

With the Brazilian currency (the Real – BZF) gone mostly flat with a bit of down trend, money is NOT flowing into Brazil. Given that they have had a Ministry Of Stupidity Speaks moment with taxing investment inflows, that’s not a surprise… but that makes the EWZ look like a ‘go nowhere’ vehicle for a while. The chart says rolling sideways at best and with some downward bias. BRF the Small Cap Brazil fund has been beating the EWZ, so one strategy would be a ‘long BRF / short EWZ’ with wobbles on relative sizes as indicators move to extremes. Another is the EEM / EEV Emerging Market Long / Short pair. Swapping between them on a 10 day hourly chart indication. Both have gotten a bit more ‘roll’ lately so there is some range to ‘swing trade’ as the trend has gone out of them.

OK, I’m off to do some homework, find out what IS trending (or what is so low priced it’s a decent investment anyway… perhaps UNG Natural Gas that looks a bit bottomed and with a big cold winter ahead… or the natural gas tankers TNK is flat but with a 10% dividend while TK is rising…) But the bottom line is that the ‘broad market’ is not very interesting right now. It’s time to become more narrow…

UNG Natural Gas, TK and TNK Teekay Shipping and CNG tankers

UNG Natural Gas, TK and TNK Teekay Shipping and CNG tankers

Posted in Economics, Trading, and Money | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

Shuttle Redux

November 19, 2010 by E.M.Smith

NASA Prepares To Launch ... Again

NASA Prepares To Launch ... Again

(Sent to me in email so I don’t know the provenance, but looks like a US Gov. picture)

NASA Slides Again!

OK, the news today is a change from Nov 30th to Dec 3 with a limit of Dec 6 (or else it slips to February). Better for me, as Nov 30 was just a bit close to Thanksgiving and air fare was expensive for last minute flights. Time to check the ‘ol booking engine… again….

Schedule updates here:

http://www.nasa.gov/missions/highlights/schedule.html

As it stands now, I’ve got the viewing place all picked out, the car prepositioned in Orlando, a place to stay waiting, a light ‘travel camera’ with ‘superzoom’ and 12 Mega pixels in hand, and the AMEX in the wallet. Just need a ticket back and a real launch. It’s that ‘real launch’ part that’s the killer…

Posted in Human Interest | Tagged , , | 4 Comments »

What Trend?

November 18, 2010 by E.M.Smith

Sometimes, you go through your email and find things you’d overlooked in haste. Sometimes things with “punch”. One such was a letter pointing at a posting at Diggingintheclay on ‘trends’.

http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/10/06/google-earth-kml-files-spot-the-global-warming/

The article has a lot of Google Earth KLM files in it that let you look at trends in different parts of the world, but these two images of North America kind of tell the story nicely.

First up is how we usually see the temperature trend data displayed (though with the USA jiggered to be warmer than here, which shows it cooling in the ‘raw’ data) and with a Hot Hot Hot Canada.

North America Temperature Stations All Ages - Trend color coded

North America Temperature Stations All Ages - Trend color coded

These are color coded for stations with at least 10 years of data, so even a very new recent station can show up. Less than 10 years data gets a white dot.

But what happens if you take stations with histories shorter than a PDO cycle, those without enough data to really make a valid trend, and simply color them white? A very different story:

North America Temperature Stations Trend - 50 years of data

North America Temperature Stations Trend - 50 years of data

Stations with 50 years or more of data have a color, those with less than 50 years of data are white.

So now we see that all those “hot hot hot” stations in Canada are relative youngsters. Like making a trend line through one data point. Stations where we have no real history of climate from them, just a few years of PDO weather cycle or of El Nino years…

This emphasizes something I’ve said before. The making of “Grid / Box” anomalies to make a ‘trend’ by comparing one set of stations in one period of time to a different set of stations in another period of time is just a bad way to put lipstick over a splice.

The only anomaly that makes sense for thermometers is an anomaly made by comparing one thermometer to itself, and not to some other thermometer in some other place or with some other processing history of the data. You simply can not compare apples today with oranges in the past and say anything about the trend of fruit…

Look at the American Midwest to East Coast. Blue. Cooling. The individual thermometers are cooling, yet GIStemp finds a warming “trend” by jiggering the “grid box anomaly” and comparing different baskets of thermometers to each other. Just wrong.

So take another look at those pictures. The Canada “trend” is all from stations that may have no history during the prior 1930-40 warm phase of the PDO, nor during the cold phase. Just a nice little ‘rise’ out of a known cyclical pattern with the offsetting cold 1/2 cycle neatly ‘pruned’ by the “grid / box” spice they call an anomaly (that isn’t…)

Can you really look at that second map of long lived stations and say the trend is warming?

Posted in AGW Science and Background | Tagged , | 3 Comments »

Is New Zealand Officially Without Temperature?

November 18, 2010 by E.M.Smith

New Zealand Not Quite Official Temperatures

New Zealand Not Quite Official Temperatures

Original on NIWA page at:

http://www.niwa.co.nz/education-and-training/schools/resources/climate/overview

An email pointed me to this posting that claims the New Zealand Official Temperature Record has been abandoned by the folks we thought were responsible for it. Golly…

http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/2010/10/observations-on-niwas-statement-of-defence/

You really ought to read the article. If it is even 1/2 validated, it’s a shocker…

Some quotes (all taken blissfully out of context ;-) :

Most of this will upset NIWA’s supporters. If you’re a NIWA supporter, go find a buddy to hug before reading on. This will rock your world.

Because NIWA formally denies all responsibility for the national temperature record (NZTR).

Now that is surprising – shocking, really. Forget their defensive posturing since our paper criticising it last November – now they’ve given that up and say the NZTR isn’t their problem, they’re not responsible for maintaining it and apparently there’s no such thing as an “official” New Zealand Temperature Record anyway.

Got that? In a fit of “duck and cover” the agency that HAD been telling us how good and official their temperature record was now says there is no such thing and it’s not their fault… Hmmm…..

They’re not defending the temperature record or the mistakes in it, they’re virtually saying: “You’re right, the dataset could be shonky, so we’re washing our hands of it.” Which gives us no confidence in the “science” they might have applied to it. What the hell’s going on? I actually hope their lawyers know a cunning trick to get them out of this, and it’s not what it seems. Because it’s my NIWA too!

OK, how about Australia next? Maybe then we can get Canada and the USA to admit they’ve got more holes than bucket…

But it gets worse.

NIWA has formally stated that, in their opinion, they are not required to use the best available information nor to apply the best scientific practices and techniques available at any given time. They don’t think that forms any part of their statutory obligation to pursue “excellence”.

Who knew you could peddle backwards so fast…

NIWA denies there is any such thing as an “official” NZ Temperature Record, although they’re happy to create an acronym for it (NZTR). The famous “Seven-station series” (7SS) is completely unofficial and strictly for internal research purposes. Nobody else should rely on it.
It certainly looks like the NZ temperature record

So it doesn’t exist except as an acronym – and in the laboratory – and they aren’t obliged to look after it.

There is more in the article…

What can I say? One down and a hundred to go?

And what does this imply for GHCN?

Posted in AGW Science and Background | Tagged , | 1 Comment »

Older Posts »