Author: VD

DS has reasonable doubts:

Having subscribed to Elliot in the past I find that it may be useful for investing (not trading) but only in the largest view one can take. They have been so wrong so many times on even what I would call the year view, much less month, week, day or intraday. They were wrong throughout the 90’s waiting for the top of V that to have followed them meant financial disaster if you shorted and very low returns if you sat on the sidelines. I lost alot shorting on their advice last year when they called over and over and over for the start to wave III down. My feeling is that like most of us they are way too soon in their calls but have to say something to their subscribers. They will eventually be right but in the mean time I learned the hard way not to trade in any time frame on their advice.

There’s no question that the current state of Elliott Wave understanding leaves much to be desired. I, too, was anticipating a decline last spring at the start of the war for other reasons thanks to a flawed system of my own development, so I’m hardly one to cast stones on this subject. But timeframes are clearly a major weakness in the current level of analysis, although I don’t think there’s any nefarious need to feed the subscribers that’s involved – accuracy is far more saleable than action here – instead, I suspect it’s simply the age-old problem of human impatience coloring the wavecounts.

For example, the idea that Intermediate Wave 3 was about to begin in early 2003 appears almost absurd in retrospect. Why? Because Wave 1 took about 640 trading days from March 27, 2000, to October 10, 2002. (The precise figure depends on the specific market, of course.) Now, if it’s true that we saw the peak of Wave 2 in March 2004, that’s only 319 days, pretty close to 50 percent of the time-length of Wave 1. So, far from this countertrend wave being exceptionally long, as many would have it, it’s pretty close to the minimum that one would reasonably expect even if one knew nothing of Elliott Waves. A counterwave may be longer or shorter, but it’s not reasonable to EXPECT it to be one-tenth the time of the preceding wave.

As the S&P 500 is the largest of the three indexes, it is the least easily manipulated. Assuming the Intermediate wavecounts are correct, the countertrend response of Wave 2 was a 50.83 percent retracement of the Wave 1 decline over almost precisely 50 percent of the trading days. The Nasdaq-100 featured only a 19.54 percent retracement, while the Dow did best in reclaiming 85 percent of its losses. As 50 percent is a reasonable amount of time, the Dow is unlikely to re-establish new highs and there are a plethora of other factors indicating near-term continued decline (after the expected mini-rally over the next week), I don’t expect a need to redo the Intermediate wave counts.

Time decay is fatal. I think products like RYVNX are probably much better for those with a bearish outlook, as it significantly reduces the danger of impatience. In any case, I don’t believe that Elliott Waves are definitive, I only think that they may prove to be the tip of the iceberg that is our understanding of the way in which mass forces operate over time.

I wonder if anyone will review one of VD’s novels. I’m not certain if that would qualify as brave, or foolish.

I daresay that I am probably more inclined to rip apart my novels than the average fiction reader here. Some writers are very defensive; I seem to be of the sort that loathes their past work and sees only its shortcomings. To be honest, I’m of the opinion that my fiction has, to date, fallen markedly short of what the average person here probably believes my potential to be. It certainly hasn’t lived up to my expectations thus far. I’m not being humble – perish the thought – that’s just a fact. The vision is there, but the articulation is not. Not yet, anyhow.

Still, the last book was not embarrassing and the one I just turned in may be a little better, (certainly it is stranger), but I’m starting to feel somewhat handicapped by my subject matter and my protagonists. On the one hand, I want to cut loose and reveal the depth of my vision, on the other hand, the tamest of my books has already proven to be “too intense” [their words, not mine] for at least one Christian chain.

Also, I’m not a natural writer; I don’t have that gift for beautiful words that some writers have by instinct. Fortunately, I have enough firepower to fake it, to an extent, but compared to the real thing it always falls pathetically short. In summary, I’m a Salieri who must envy the Mozarts and trod along the pedestrian paths as they effortlessly soar the heights. Bastards.

My hope, and I’m perfectly aware that I may be kidding myself, is that I have sufficient upstairs wattage to create something great by sheer force, in which case it is only a matter of discipline which has hitherto been lacking. But as I am told my books continue to improve – at least I know I’m no Johnny One-book, or perhaps I should say, Jay, I remain optimistic.

Sarah is overcome with the vision in the mirror:

everything *is* about me!! After all, how can anybody not love me? It would be a travesty! So, you know, if I do write a review – and my review is at least half about me, well, you can’t begrudge me that! I am doing it for all of you. To behold my magnificence and splendour: it is a gift! That I would deign to do so in your presence should be deemed a privilege! It is all of course for your benefits.

How on Earth did you miss becoming a stripper?

Anyhow, as to book reviews, if people would like to start emailing me fiction reviews in the following format: http://voxday.blogspot.com/2004_07_01_voxday_archive.html#108948029239882361, I will post one of them here each week and save the others for when the web site is ready. Try to stick to the format and be sure to include what you feel to be a representative text sample.

Don’t feel any need to stick to the classics or the intellectually impressive, but feel free to review them if you like. This isn’t a contest, just something that might make for interesting discussions from time to time.

Debka reports on the Iraqi situation

A. Baathist guerrillas have instructed cell leaders to continue their insurrection but hold back from a death blow against the new government – which is why their planned mega-operation did not materialize on sovereignty day. Guerrilla leaders have come to accept that toppling the government could lead to the exit of US forces from the country and create a vacuum that would invite its oldest enemy, Iran, to step into the breach.

B. The same insurgent underground while keeping up its attacks on Iraqi and US targets is keeping a weather eye open for chances to forge local truces on the lines of the Fallujah ceasefire that ended the month-long US Marine siege by handing security over to former Baathist generals.

C. The insurgents would exploit such local truces to seize one Iraqi town after another, pushing the Americans aside and restoring Baathist dominance to most urban areas of Iraq. Government and American forces would keep control only of intercity regions and connecting routes. This carve-up would suit the insurgent movements because they do not have enough manpower to take over every inch of the country.

D. The Baath leadership is making a point of stressing to its fighting elements that the Allawi government in Baghdad is the target of a political, but certainly not a religious, war. This guideline makes it clear that the Baathists do not share the war objectives of al Qaeda and the foreign Arab fighters fighting alongside them.

E. The Baath have called off guerilla attacks in the Shiite regions of Iraq including Baghdad’s Sadr City hoping to bring back the Shiite Baath cadres who deserted after Saddam Hussein’s downfall.

What’s intriguing to me is how little this has to do with US goals or pre-war US expectations for post-war Iraq. And how is the situation significantly different than if American forces had toppled Hussein and then left? It’s clear that US troops are increasingly starting to be seen as irrelevant, as the Baathist/Jihadist coalition appears to be splitting apart preparatory to the coming four-way fight over the spoils. Five, actually, if one counts the Kurdish irredentists.

It’s interesting, too, to see how the equations have changed. Having been hurled out of power by American troops, the Baathists now fear them leaving too soon, before they can adequately prepare an alliance strong enough to fend off Iran. Oh, I’d love to see the look on the various neocons’ faces as they begin to realize the folly of their arrogance in attempting to not only control, but dictate events of this magnitude. A huge boulder thrown into a stream will make a big splash and may even redirect the stream’s course, but it will not stop the water, which in time will simply flow over, around and through the obstacle.

If we accept Tolstoy’s view for the nonce, then the USA appears to have simply been the tool required by history’s ineffable forces to smash the dam of Hussein’s power. Having done so, it is no longer needed and will be returned to its toolbox as the situation sorts itself out. I reached the somewhat the same conclusion as Debka – the most likely outcome is an alliance between Allawi and the Baathists focused against the non-Iraqi jihadists, who would then be expected to either align themselves with Iran in an attempt to take power in Iraq, or, as is more likely, focus their attentions on the richer and easier target that is Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia has no US troops, no Baathist-Allawi alliance and is extremely disliked by the jihadists for the same reason that the heretic is more despised than the pagan. Furthermore, it fits with the Law of Unintended Consequences which states that for every major government action, there is an unforseen and disastrous reaction. If the third of a third is just getting rolling, we haven’t even begun to see anything yet.

BG has a legitimate gripe:

What is it with mass media moguls needing to revamp beloved stories, thinking that they’ll sell? The makers of Troy urinated all over Homer’s epics, Bruckhiemer felt the King Arthur story needed a rehash so Lady Guenevere could throw down for a few rounds, but neither is as horrifying as what the makers of the next Superman plan to do.

The script calls for: A gay Jimmy Olsen(cause everybody’s got to be gay these days, right?);”Player” Superman deciding not to save some people so he can hook up with Lois; Superman’s powers come from his suit (ala The Greatest American Hero television show) and many other less serious abominations. Why can’t Hollywood mentally defecate on the masses with some miserable offering of its own conception and leave our classic stories alone?

Why not? Because Hollywood has no genuinely creative minds. Even its most original products, such as Star Wars – totally revolutionary for its time – was primarily a synthesis of Flash Gordon space opera and the Kurasawa movie Hidden Fortress. There’s nothing wrong with creativity via synthesis, as it is the best that all but the most truly creative can do, but Hollywood can’t even manage X*Y=Z most of the time, settling instead for 1/2(X) + (cliches galore) = pure drek.

The two archetypical directors can be considered Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings) and Paul Verhoeven (Starship Troopers). The former was scrupulously accurate in his attempts to hold to Tolkein’s book as much as reasonably possible, whereas the latter famously claimed never to have even read Heinlein’s classic. Jackson’s success might lead one to hope that directors will learn that the author’s vision must always trump their egotistic urge to stamp their own identity on the story; the massive ego required to become a director in Hollywood does not bode well for the wide acceptance of this lesson.

I find it telling, too, how Hollywood repeatedly returns to the old standbys – do we really need yet another Superman movie? – instead of drawing on the wealth of storytelling that has been created over the last 50 years. If I could select five books that I’d like to see on the big screen, they would be:

1. The Dark is Rising, Susan Cooper

2. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny

3. Dragonsong, Ann McCaffrey

4. The Fencing Master, Arturo Perez-Reverte

5. Goblin Moon, Theresa Edgerton

I’ve never understood why Dick is so popular among the movie-making set, while Heinlein goes almost ignored. He has so many short, juvenile books that would be so easily translated into movies that it amazes me they aren’t a filmic franchise of sorts. I suspect it’s because Dick, like other sloppy novelists for whom I have even less regard, such as Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Robbins and Philip Roth, is considered very clever by the intellectually dense.

SK has a request:

Our eldest daughter is the mother of our beloved X who is four-years-old. Her mother is certain that she cannot do an adequate job teaching her daughter, her husband has resented that she has stayed home with her so far by working as both a housekeeper and a home day care mother. She is a capable business manager and able to earn a substantial salary, but does NOT want to raise her daughter in childcare. It is clear that her husband is insistent on public school ASAP. My daughter did not attend public school past the fifth grade, and was unable to read when we took her out.

I recently talked to my daughter about K-12 sex ed, which indoctrinates children into the belief that homosexuality is acceptable. She was absolutely certain that it couldn’t be so. I need the “low-down” on California Public Schools… I need information that will be persuasive with her parents, especially when her dad did not finish the eighth grade, and believes that public school is just great, that private school is elitist and that the idea of home school is outrageous….

Please feel free to pass my request on: creative52x@earthlink.net

As I have no more information on the particulars of the California public school system than I have on ritual human sacrifice – actually less, come to think of it – I thought I’d pass this on to you all. If anyone has specific information, (no generalities or theoretical arguments), please email it to the above address.

As an aside, it’s always interesting to me how people can be certain of this or that when they freely admit that they have no information on the matter. And speaking of human sacrifice, I suspect that many parents couldn’t care less what is or isn’t going on with their children’s “education” and won’t give up their cherished free K-12 day care until the so-called teachers of the NEA actually start sacrificing children to whatever dark god is is they worship.

Rod Dreher writes:

…a personal essay from today’s NYT Magazine about a Manhattan woman living with her boyfriend, who got pregnant with triplets. Stricken by the possibility that having three children at once would force her to move to Staten Island and start shopping at Costco, she decides to have a doctor pierce the beating hearts — she and her lover saw the hearts throbbing on the ultrasound — of two of the babies in her womb, and kill them. All so she could maintain her Manhattan lifestyle. The mind reels…

Tell me that equine excrement again about how the USA is uniquely blessed. As Flavor Flav would say: “You’re blind from the facts on who ya are cos ya watching that garbage.”

Alexis de Tocqueville once famously wrote that: “America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good she will no longer be great.” America is no longer great nor is it good, it is, as I wrote last week, entirely dead. What is left is a corpse, and one that reeks of blood and evil at that.

We’re not only on the cusp a third of a third down, as a nation we deserve to plunge into the Abyss. I don’t know about you, but I suspect I’ll be watching the next 9/11 with dry eyes. “All so she could maintain her Manhattan lifestyle.” Reading that makes me wish they’d sunk the whole damned island.

Sarah ruminates:

I like the idea of writing reviews. I changed my mind about it, though. How can I possibly write a decent review in the face of everyone else who goes to Vox Popoli. I can’t compete with that. I won’t even try. It’ll probably suck. And what if I give a positive review on something, somebody reads it, and then they say that the book sucked! What if it’s not just one person but a whole bunch of people. I can’t deal with that sense of failure.

First, it will be a little while before Digital Cowboy and I get the CGI forms going and work out the HTML design for people to contribute book reviews to voxday.net. But what Sarah needs to understand is that one cannot improve without doing. Sure, her first reviews might well be unintentionally amusing – if they weren’t at least half about her instead of the book, I’d be shocked – but she will learn from both the rightful and the unreasonable scorn.

Sarah, consider how your ability to articulate an argument has been refined since you first started posting here. Now, it’s not important for you to write book reviews – it’s certainly not a way to make a living – but it’s important for you to learn how to face down your fear. Fear of failure is not only unreasonable, it’s pernicious since it guarantees failure without learning. It’s much better to try and fail 100 times than to never try and always fail, because each failure provides information that may increase the odds of success the next time around.

So, write a review or two on your blog. If you use the model I used in reviewing The Atrocity Archive, you’ll at least have a structure and ensure that you address all the significant points, which will put you ahead of 85 percent of all book reviews ever written right there.

Frank Herbert was right. Fear is a mind-killer. So, instead of seeing fear as something to be avoided, look at it as a test. Do it precisely because you’re afraid of it.

Inbound Links: 786

Inbound Unique: 709

Current Rank: #38

Current Status: Playful Primate

This is interesting. A reasonably major syndicated columnist, who shall remain nameless, is often on TV. Everyone in Blogworld knows who they are, and so when he/she/it began a blog, everyone jumped on the bandwagon in a hurry to link to it. Presumably because they just love reading it, right? Just to put everything in perspective, Vox Popoli’s rank is as follows:

Inbound Links: 238

Inbound Unique: 189

Current Rank: #322

Current Status: Large Mammal

I think that’s respectable in an Blogosphere of some 3800 blogs. I’m happy with it, anyhow. Now, as this nameless columnist also appears on WND, I happen to know that my WND readership is, on average over a three-month period, about 25 percent larger. However, this is perhaps not a fair comparison as the other individual’s column is much more widely syndicated than mine, so it’s quite po many WND readers skip it on WND since they’ve already read it elsewhere.

This discrepancy, however, is a little more difficult to explain:

Average Daily Visits: 182

(data from SiteMeter)

Average Daily Visits: 1,669

(data from SiteMeter)

In other words, 709 bloggers are linking to what they think is a big name blog, but it’s obvious that most of them aren’t even bothering to check it out on a regular basis. Now, perhaps this will change over time or perhaps the SiteMeter data is bad, but if it is correct then it would appear to reveal both: a) the embarrassing limits of human reason, and b) the unattractive human tendency to kiss tush.

jr considers the fate of Miss Spears:

The whole thing resembles nothing so much as the pagan virgin sacrifices of old, where the admittedly (at least on the surface) willing victim is showered and adorned with the riches of the village on her way to being consumed in the belly of Moloch. And the crowd cheers.

Magumba hey

Magumba ho… ungowa

Magumba hey

Magumba ho… ungowa

Magumba hey

Magumba ho… UNGOWA!

Still the young man sits there on the beach.

He’s staring misty-eyed out into space.

He’s thinking about his girlfriend, (the late deceased).

At least her death had purpose,

His life is a waste!

Let’s face it, songs about tribal virgin sacrifice rule. Leilani don’t go to the volcano….