Revisiting the Recession

I might take a moment to point blog readers to this post from the blog back in February. In  it, I point to NY Federal Reserve computer models that indicated the recession to end in the second half of 2009.

Well, the second half is approaching, isn’t it? Shall we revisit the February predictions from NY FR?

Here’s what’s in the news today (full article here):

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. recession is set to end "soon," but continued job losses and plunging house prices point to an economic recovery that will be more moderate than those experienced in previous downturns, a survey showed.

The survey of 45 professional forecasters released by the National Association of Business Economists (NABE) on Wednesday found almost three-quarters expected the economic downturn to end by the third quarter of this year.

The remaining saw the turning point delayed until either the last quarter of this year or the first three months of 2010. None of the respondents believed the recession, now in its 17th month, would extend beyond the first quarter of 2010.

"While the overall tone remains soft, there are emerging signs that the economy is stabilizing," said NABE President Chris Varvares.

"Business economists look for the recession to end soon, but that the economic recovery is likely to be considerably more moderate than those typically experienced following steep declines."

-- Lucia Mutikani

So the NY Fed model wasn’t very far off…I haven’t done the legwork to see if I could find a follow-on report on the NY Fed’s model. I haven’t had that many sleepless nights lately; no time for this sort of research. I’ll keep you posted, though, once I get to it.

Memorial Day Weekend Update

We didn’t go anywhere. We stayed home and initiated the inevitable pack-and-move process by clearing out clutter and staging the house.

• Kids’ rooms – cleared and staged.
• Family room – toys culled, room staged.
• Living room – furniture culled, drapes simplified.
• Dining room – drapes simplified.
• Master bedroom – bonus! new paint. Furniture culled.
• Kitchen – bonus! new paint. drapes simplified.

We put a notably small number of boxes in the garage for storage; and we threw away a surprisingly smaller amount of stuff overall. We did cull out a whole bunch of children’s clothes that have outlived their useful life. That alone made a big, big difference.

The kitchen walls are now a buttery kind of orangey-yellow. It’s hard to describe. But it contrasts the white woodwork against the sunny yellow tile backsplash, updating the color palette while keeping the period feel of the kitchen. The room now ‘pops’.

Same thing with the master bedroom. Though the pinky-taupe color was neutral enough, it just didn’t ‘pop.’ Now, the color is a sort of pale thundercloud blue/gray that plays well with the still-pink ceiling and imbues a sense of 1920’s color sense to the room. Like the kitchen, the woodwork now stands out with the new color, without making the room seem small. It’s a nice, new, updated color that seems quite neutral but delivers something on first impression.

It was hard for the kids to go through the culling process. They did an altogether good job, though. I think that, by the end of the weekend, they felt happier in their rooms because they knew what they had and where it was. They also knew that what was gone was often of little consequence, really.

So. We’re ready for the next showing to be a slam-dunk as every room vibrates with space, grandeur, good taste, fresh paint, and livability. Just in time, too. We’re ready to be done and moving on back.

In the meantime we may take advantage of the upcoming Laurelhurst neighborhood garage sale weekend to sell off unwanted items.

When we land back at the Lesser Way house, we’re going to be simplified on the inside, that’s for sure.

Green GT Electric Supercar

Up-and-coming Swiss auto company GreenGT recently unveiled plans for a fully-electric vehicle that is heralded to be the most powerful and cutting-edge electric race car ever built. Designed with the famous Le Mans race in mind, their Twenty-4 vehicle is currently undergoing development and will boast two 100-kw electric engines that provide 350-400 horsepower and a top speed of 171 mph.

 

Thanks to Jorge Chapa for posting this update to the inhabitat.com website, and for slashdot for running a link to it.

C’s Work at Badasht

Found these on Youtube:

 

It takes something special to prepare 10 devotional programs for six days, then flex each program on-the-spot to fit the individual talents and abilities and aged of  each group. C certainly has that gift.

Rutgers Robotic Atlantic Crossing Attempt

A team of students at Rutgers University have a project underway in which they’re attempting a robotic crossing of the Atlantic. You can find out more here:

http://rucool.marine.rutgers.edu/atlantic/

We have customers at Rutgers who order boards from us. I really don’t know if this is a project we’ve got boards in or not… not that I really care, to be honest. There’s something else going on here that I think is particularly cool

Not only is this research project full of ‘first time in the world’ chutzpah, and loaded with real-time tracking so that their success or failure is in full, realtime public view, but – best of all – the team looks to be 50% female.

Robotics and engineering disciplines NEED more women in their ranks, without doubt. I’m cheering for the Rutgers team. You should too.

Batteries That Use Air

This article posted to the UK paper, The Telegraph, and covered by slashdot, indicates some new technology for making sustainable battery technology.

The cells are charged in a traditional way but as power is used or 'discharged' an open mesh section of battery draws in oxygen from the surrounding air.

This oxygen reacts with a porous carbon component inside the battery, which creates more energy and helps to continually 'charge' the cell as it is being discharged.

The applications are in longer-lasting batteries and smaller battery payloads needed to support an electric device, whether a cell phone or a car.

[link] to the article

Oregon Unemployment Numbers for April

From the Portland Tribune

"Oregon’s unemployment rate in April hit 12 percent, only a slight increase from March’s adjusted numbers, a possible good omen for the state’s faltering economy."

The rest of the article goes on to discuss that the rate of joblessness may still go up over the summer, but that the overall pace is on the decline. In other words, we seem to be slowing month-to-month toward zero.

dfd

Curve Ball Pitches Don’t Break; They Just LOOK Like They Do….

I found this originally on BoingBoing, but wanted to capture it here.

This flash app is the first price winner of the 2009 Best Visual Illusion of the Year award. The flash app demonstrates why the Curve Ball seems to ‘break’.

Check out the page. I wonder if others come to the same conclusion that, knowing the curve ball is an optical illusion, the knowing doesn’t make the curve any easier to hit!

[link here]

Baha'i Scouting??

I sat in on a meeting tonight. Not that my presence at a meeting is special, but the agenda for this particular meeting sure was: the potential charter of the first Baha'i sponsored Boy Scout troop in North America. Here in Portland. It's a novel idea, with lots of win-win built into it.

• First, the Baha'i Junior Youth and Youth can plug into a complementary program that isn't just Baha'i, but Baha'i influenced.
• Second, the St Johns area is painfully short on troops. There is an apparent pent up demand for Scouting in the neighborhood.
• Third, St Johns is a highly diverse neighborhood, a gateway into America for a number of immigrant communities. Scouting could offer a way to develop citizenship separate from the street gangs.

And so, here I am. Helping start a Boy Scout troop.

R is assimilating well with Troop 22. He may not wish to move to the new troop. I fully intend to honor his preferences. It is, afterall, his first career in scouting. Not mine. I've already had my first career in Scouting. I may find myself embarking on my second career in scouting, though. We will see.

Emailaholics??

I’m condensing the article at www.technologyreview.com here:

A team at Yahoo Research work out how to classify individuals by their email habits --   ‘day labourers’ and ‘emailaholics’.  These terms represent “two distinct types of emailer.”  Day Labourers tend to “send emails throught the normal working day between 0900 and 1800 but not at other times.” Emailaholics send emails “throughout the waking hours from 0900 to 0100.”

Mother's Day Weekend

This Mother's Day weekend was absolutely stunningly beautiful this year. The weather was about as close to perfect as one could hope for in the Orgegon springtime.

M didn't go to ballet because of a sore throat. R is done with Saturday gymnastics for the forseeable future. M's sore throat seems to have been nothing major. So, we did some lightweight yard work and had a quiet day. R joined some of the Boy Scout troop in starting woodworking merit badge Saturday afternoon.

Sunday, we all slept in extra late. The kids each had a little gift for C. Then we prepared the house for an Open House. Once that was ready, C and the kids left to have some afternoon fun while I held the Open House.

There's a noticeable shift in the people attending open houses. The people now are not casual; they're looking. Really looking. It was a good Open House, to be sure.

Meanwhile, the rest of the family hung out at Portland's Saturday Market. Our plan was to rendezvous at the movie house after I wrapped up, so we could all watch the new Star Trek movie. And that's exactly what we did. Except that R showed up at the theater with a surprise...but first I have to digress a bit.

You see, I play a bit of harmonica. C plays a passable amount of piano and some survival guitar. M is quickly becoming quite good at piano. Our Baha'i friends all play some sort of musical instrument. R? Well, R doesn't play an instrument. It seems that no instrument has really spoken to him. And yet, on a Friday night at our house, the place fills with two guitars, violins, a cello, a viola, drums and multiple piano players. That R has no instrument has, apparently, caused him some quiet distress. Well, that seems to have changed today.

R's surprise was a well-crafted and very serious African Thumb Piano, or Kalimba. Tuned to the key of F, and packing a 20 note scale, R's Mbira is one of the largest, most melodious Kalimbas I think I've ever heard. It came with its own tuning wrench, and a messenger-style bag for transport. He loves it, is already playing improvised melodies, and took it to bed with him tonight. We mapped out the tuning, and R has already started plucking out melodies for a Bahai prayer that we've all been learning- "God Sufficeth".

So it's been a peaceful and nice weekend overall.

YES! Omaha Steaks! Fire up the grill.

I get one of the following emails every year in early May. And, oh do I look forward to it! My Father-in-Law sends a box of Omaha Steaks for my birthday.*

Dear MR NOLAN JOHNSON,

Someone thinks so much of you they are sending you only the best! MR JOSEPH HORNER has sent you a tasteful gift from Omaha Steaks and it should be arriving at your door on approximately 05/13/09.

If you have any questions about your gift shipment, call us at 1-800-228-9872 or email us at custserv@omahasteaks.com. Your order number is C79xxxxx.

Please enjoy your gift!

I've come to look forward to this delivery with the same anticpation a kid shows for Christmas. I budget my consumption of these steaks so I can have some all year long. I just grilled up the final steaks from last year's shipment a couple days ago.

So it's with immense pleasure that I share the happy news! I'll have beef steak once again in my freezer.


* The first year steaks arrived, I called Joe to thank him profusely. During that call, I asked him what possessed him to send me beef. His reply? Well, you married my vegetarian of a daughter. I figured you'd need some relief! You see? THAT'S why we get along....

NY Magazine – My Manhattan Project

Michael Osinski describes “How I helped build the bomb that blew up Wall Street”

link here

Who Are The Two Forgotten Tribes?

The New York Times has an article from Nicholas Wade, reporting the geographic origins for our species:

Locations for the Garden of Eden have been offered many times before, but seldom in the somewhat inhospitable borderland where Angola and Namibia meet.

A new genetic survey of people in Africa, the largest of its kind, suggests, however, that the region in southwest Africa seems, on the present evidence, to be the origin of modern humans. The authors have also identified some 14 ancestral populations.

This is amazingly captivating information. As a Baha’i, I continue to find the scientific evidence on the origins of the human family to be astounding. The more we learn about the scientific story of how we came to be, the more the scientific facts line up (more-or-less) with the deep folklore of our cultures.

I’m just making the wild PERSONAL connection between the researchers’ claim of 14 separate populations that set out across the globe, and the similarity to the history of the twelve tribes of Israel. No, I don’t intend to connect the 14 populations and the 12 tribes literally, just symbolically.

But isn’t it interesting how the numbers are so similar? Why not five ancestral populaitons? Or 57 ancestral populations? This is the part that fascinates me.

Creating a Nexus

I've been blogging for a couple years, a continuation of the cancer newsletters (The Shunt) I'd periodically distribute to update friends and family on C's progress. And I still keep the blog. In fact, this is being posted to the blog.

The change, however, is that the blog is not also a feed into my Facebook page. Each blog entry gets mirrored into Facebook. My Facebook friends need not follow the blog... they have it automatically.

I've also been tweeting a bit...not a lot, but a little. My twitter circle is quite small. It may only be 140 characters, but the big draw for tweeting is to connect from my cell phone -- survival blogging.

So recently I had noticed that a Facebook friend of mine was clearly mirroring his tweets to Facebook somehow. I checked in to the FB app he was using and included it. Now, I can text messsage a tweet that will also show up on my FaceBook, for a wider circulation. I'm liking the abiltity to reach all venues when necessary, liking having a sort of information nexus.

Because, you never know when you'll have to send that infamous one-word tweet from Colombia that says "arrested"

New Press Release

PCB123 received an award about a month back. I blogged about it, I think. I just posted a link to SMT's press release on the award. You'll find the link in the blog's PROFESSIONALISM area.