Posts

Showing posts from July, 2009

The Ambiance of Summer

Although I haven’t written much about them since my January 8 post, I’m a huge, lifelong Atlanta Braves fan. I was a fan in 1977 when they lost 101 games . I was a fan in 1988 when they lost 106 games . I damn sure was a fan when they won 14 consecutive division championships . A record. The beauty of baseball is that it is in a sense timeless. A game could theoretically never end. There is no sudden death in a traditional game of ball. While timeless it is also seamless. The present connects very comfortably with the past. Despite various changes that are mostly meaningless to non-baseball fans, the 1919 Chicago White Sox can be compared with the Big Red Machine . The Braves of 1914 are comparable to the Braves of 1995 on many levels even though the way the game is played is very different, even the ball is very different. The instinctive, divisive love or hate of the New York Yankees was earned by that team with its success through time. Like them or not, they are by far the most

Lift-off...for now

A major, glaringly obvious Dow Theory confirmation today by both the Dow and the Transports. The Dow took out its most recent highest high (8,799 on June 12) to close at 9,069. The Transports surpassed their previous high (3,399 on June 11) to close at 3,506. This represents a strong 38.5% rise from the March lows . Richard Russell took the bear off his site today and replaced it with a bull. The growing chorus is that this market is going higher, time to leverage in. There is no more forceful kind of Dow Theory confirmation than when both averages exceed their previous highs on the same day . That's what happened today. The next target level is probably 9,600 for the Dow. Above that we're looking at over 11,000. But, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Russell still points out on his site tonight that this is probably not a new bull market. He doubts that a 27-year (1982-2007) bull market can be "corrected" by a two-year bear market. There's a good chance the

The Twelve-mile Stare

Image
Last week my family took its annual beach trip down to Destin, FL. Actually, it’s just a semi-annual trip for me. My wife and daughter go every year, but the beach isn't really my thing (I'm much more of a mountain kinda guy) so I usually work in a trip with them every other summer. When I go to the beach I settle into a general routine. I rise early, make coffee, have my first cup down near the beach at the gazebo of the condo complex, watch the tan, shiny muscular dudes get out all the umbrellas and beach chairs. I watch the waves and eye the colors of the vast ocean. By the second cup Jennifer is up and we share coffee on the beach. After that I usually change clothes at the condo, take a dip in the ocean, and walk about a mile on the beach before things get too crowded. Then I refresh myself with a in condo complex's pool. I swim 2 or 3 laps, nothing major. By now everyone else is up, the beach is becoming more crowded. I retreat to the condo to read and have lunch. I u

OOTPing

For about four years I have been a fan of a computerized baseball simulator known as Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP). Recently, version 10 of the software was released and I have spent a good deal of time tinkering with it. OOTP allows you create a fictional baseball universe that behaves just as sophisticatedly as real major league baseball. This is largely a traditional “text based” baseball simulator, not as graphically intense as, say, Baseball Mogul . OOTP generates literally hundreds of surprisingly sophisticated and varied newspaper stories on the games played, injuries that happens, contracts that are signed. All in a fictionalized baseball reality of your design. A truly “world” baseball league could be created. For example, teams in Japan, Mexico, Venezuela, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, etc. could play with the United States and Canada in a format similar to the “World Cup” in international soccer. Or you can use a third-party database to import historic players from any

Swan '09

Image
Up in the North Carolina mountains, not far from Tennessee, there’s a cabin near the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest that is isolated from the rest of the world. About 7-8 miles off the Cherohala Skyway as the crow flies, it offers about 20 acres of wild flower meadows surrounded by thick oaken forests. A nearby waterfall carries a stream past a cabin that was built 150 years ago. My dillo friends and I go there every summer. Several summers ago this 400+ year old oak tree fell. We camped up there one year when the gigantic fallen tree took up most of our camping spaces on the ground. By the next summer it was all cleaned up. Considering the span of time, it was special that we got to see the great tree fall. This year someone planted a fig tree at the base of the oak. Pretty but Jennifer says it doesn ’t have a chance at this climate/altitude. Maybe global warming will help. Two dillos perform Ashokan Farewell rather capably on the cabin’s porch.