Ummagumma

After a couple of dismal seasons, the Atlanta Braves enjoyed a great first half to the 2018 baseball season.  At 48-34 they have the best record in the National League , but only the fifth best record in baseball overall.  The four teams above them are all in the American League.  Overall, however, this has been a really good first half .  The Braves have been fairly consistent this year.  They have not lost more than three games in a row and have not won more than four games in a row.  Basically, with some painful exceptions (most recently against Baltimore and Cincinnati ), they win series by series, often taking 2 out of 3 games.  That starts to add up very positively over a 162-game schedule. How are they winning?   Mostly with their bats.   The Braves all of baseball early in the season in terms of team batting average.   Currently they are 4th best in baseball with a .261 team average - a very good stat.   The ave...

After dropping off a cliff the Dow has moved sideways for the past five months. Today it closed below the 200-day Moving Average for the first time in 501 days.  A phenomenal run  to be sure.  But what now? The stock market always does what it is supposed to do but rarely when it is supposed to do it.   So it goes with the current correction in the Dow Jones Industrial Average .  Although the S&P 500 tested its 200-day moving average  over two months ago, only today has the Dow closed below the average for the first time since June 27, 2016  - the third longest bullish streak above the average ever.  The strength of this market has been breaking down since early February and I blogged about it at the time . Since then I have been watching the Dow on a daily basis.  Among the many things that could be noted about the recent market activity is the fact that the Dow formed a symmetrical triangle throughout February and most ...

Note:  This is the fourth part of a series of brief essays giving an overview of the Atlanta Campaign of 1864.  See previous essays here , here , and here .  Last names are only used for previously mentioned commanding generals. The situation on June 22, 1864 as depicted in the VASSAL module of my Atlanta Is Ours! game.  Johnston has dug in around Kennesaw Mountain and Hood is about to strike Hooker at Kolb's Farm.  North is left, South is right, East is up and West is down in this perspective. By July 3, Sherman had sent Schofield and associated cavalry around the Confederate left flank approaching the Chattahoochee River.  You can see the defensive line of Shoupades along the river with the prize city of Atlanta just beyond.  Sherman would ultimately send Schofield back around to the east to cross the Rebel right flank.   After skirmishing and maneuvering Johnston's Army of Tennessee out of northwest Georgia, covering over 50 mile...

Just when we seem of have needed it most Steven Pinker has written a wonderful book that reminds us that, overall, big picture, things are not anywhere near as bad as they sometimes seem.  Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress dives deep into the available data of civilization to prove that, thanks to the idea of “progress” hatched during the Age of Enlightenment , “…there is no limit to the betterments we can attain if we continue to apply knowledge to enhance human flourishing.” Bill Gates calls Enlightenment Now “My new favorite book of all time” and it is easy to see why.  Pinker makes the case for the continued application of human reason to every aspect of our culture, society and individual lives.  He does so without denying the challenges facing humanity such as climate change, nuclear weapons, terrorism, etc.  But Pinker sees every issue facing humanity as an intelligible problem, not a crisis.  Reason solves prob...

January, December , and November .  Large abstracts by Gerhard Richter.  1989. The ultimate reason for my recent trip to St. Louis was to see three large abstract paintings by Gerhard Richter .   Long-time readers know I have a great appreciation for Richter's diverse oeuvre.   The St. Louis Art Museum features a trilogy from 1989 entitled January , December , and November .   These enormous paintings were created as the Berlin Wall opened .   Richter was born in East Germany and escaped the communist bloc in the early 1960's, making these paintings representative of a particularly poignant moment for him. These are my favorite abstract paintings by my favorite living artist.  Me admiring the paintings; affords a sense of their massive scale. I spent a long time in the room with the paintings.  Other viewers came and went but sometimes I had the whole room to myself.  The accent pieces to my right are not works by Richter....