A picture is worth.....

Hooray for the self-shoveling sidewalk!

Found a list I like!

Seven things that are hard to do:
1)  Not to post really rude comment on the blogs of all these idiots who have an 'imaginary friend' in Jesus - or whoever! 
2) Not to point out that some idiot blogger is being ripped-off/taken-advantage-of/made-a-fool-of.
3) Remember the basic rules of English - it's not easy to write correctly - much less well(!) and I'm sure I make many mistakes.
4) I'm trying hard not to go nutso about all the assholes, media 'artists' and companies who think Spanish is a second language here.  I wish I was multi-lingual, honestly, but it's not about that.
5) The 2nd Amendment is important to me and I support it totally but it really isn't about full-automatic 50 cal. weapons.
6) The people writing the constitution were all mostly Christian but they intended this country to be open to all religions or to people of no religion at all.  So shut the F&*K up about "under God"!
7) The news media is so full of idiots!  I'd love to dump them all in the ocean except that the oceans would probably overflow the land masses to about the 2000 foot level!  Could I at least throw Rupert Murdock in?  Pretty please!

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose"  (As recorded by Janis Joplin)
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON & FRED FOSTER

An amazing place

A week ago or so I finished reading Bill Bryson's book 'In a Sunburned Country' about his love for and travels in Australia.  Bill is a cross between a travel writer and a humorist and if you haven't tried his books I can recommend them.   Here's his Random House site.  He spent a lot of time and money visiting down under and seems to have really enjoyed his stay.  Only in one city did he find people he didn't like!  (Refreshing  because the only person I know who's been there thought the people were awful but then again I think the guy who told me that is an idiot.)  Bryson is an interesting guy:  born in the US, spent most of his adult life in England.  I found him originally when he wrote a sort of travel-log of the US from his peculiarly US-English background.  The thing that he keeps repeating about Australia is what I keep noticing about Nevada - there's a lot of not much out here.  Only in Australia, there is more of less - if you know what I mean. 

People are getting ready for Christmas, Kwanzaa, Chanukah, and probably other holidays all over the world.  Leaves me a bit cold as an atheist but I do like a party.  We send Christmas cards to the older relatives and we have a special dinner and even a tree.  The tree, of course, predates Christianity and we skip all the angels but it certainly does have Christian connotations these days.  We exchange gifts; after one's childhood I expect most of us prefer to give than to receive.  Certainly I do.  Every year I give either money or food to the food bank; this year I think I'll have to find a few toys as well.  There are plenty of poor people in our valley.  So following on the Thanksgiving holiday, let's all be as generous as we can for this special time of year.

Come, yea thankful people, come
Raise the song of Harvest-home;
All is safely gathered in,
Ere the winter storms begin.  

Henry Alford

Help for the confused.

Here's a roadmap just in case you don't know what church you should be attending.

It almost makes me believe.....

It's a glorious morning in the desert!  Woke about 06:30 and took the dog out.  The sun was not yet up; hidden by the mountains to the east.  In the west, above the rocky mountain, there was a layer of deep blue with a layer of pink above it.  Most unusual.  In the eastern sky light, whispy clouds formed a shape kind of like a human hand in an even lighter shade of pink.  Gradually, as the sun rose, the clouds became white.  The very top peaks of the rocky western mountains became pink; then, slowly, the color seeped down their slopes until they were totally pink.  Finally, the sun rose in the eastern sky turning the pink mountains into yellow ones.  In an hour, they will return to their brown, rocky state but in the morning they are magical.

"The sunshine is a glorious birth"  William Wordsworth

My Ignorance

A couple days ago someone sent me a link to some photographs of an amazing place:  the caves of Ajanta in India.    Here is a link.  They aren't really caves as much as buildings carved out of rock.  The amount of work done to create these building and statues is just mind boggling.  Religion has been responsible for much pain and suffering but it has also been the catalyst for some magnificent art.

The whole web site, http://www.shunya.net/ is amazing.  I know so little of this part of the world.  The internet can be instructive as well as magical.  Have a good one!

"Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world."  Arthur Schopenhauer

Thanksgiving

The American holiday of Thanksgiving is Thursday.  It's always been my wife's favorite holiday so we are preparing; perhaps it is my favorite as well.  Agnostics don't really have a lot of holidays!  Religion seems to bring with it excuses for parties, we just don't have that.  I love my country but the 4th of July just brings memories of idiots with fireworks.  The 1st of the year is ok, I like the 'summing up' aspect of that day;  the year is gone, what can we do with the new year. 

Anyway, I'm in the mood for being thankful.  And I have a lot to be thankful about.  What's the old saying about being "healthy, wealthy and wise"?  I'm 61 and need take no medications to keep me going; we have enough money to live comfortably, and, though I babble at times, I can actually carry on a conversation with people.  So I guess I'm making it.  My wife takes a couple of pills a day but not for anything really life threatening.  Our relationship is great; hopefully better than ever.  Our son & daughter are both employed; making their ways in life.  They have trials and tribulations but isn't that what life is about?  So life is not simply good, it's GREAT!

There is a primal part of me that is almost afraid to say how wonderful life is.  I'm simply afraid that it will end if I mention it.  I know it's BS but... it's there.  I think a lot of people feel it but don't want to admit it; certainly I don't like admitting it!  I think about years gone by; when I was laid off from work or one of us was acting badly or we were worried about something one of the kids was doing.  There were still many things to be thankful about; and I knew it.  Actually, getting laid off was one of the best things that ever happened to me; it got me started in a whole new field.  Hell, I might still be working at Sears if things had gone differently.

The photo is of a sunset last May; the wonders of nature never fail to amaze.

So, I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving even if you don't celebrate it.  Take a moment to find a few things to be thankful about and I assure you, your time will be well spent.  Take care!

"Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks"  William Shakespeare

ETFs - maybe

Back to ETFs, that is Exchange-Traded Funds in English.  Yahoo Finance has a nice write up about them here.

I won't repeat the points made in the Yahoo article but I would like to point out that traditional mutual funds and individual stocks also have some advantages.  Good management in either a mutual fund or in a single company can cause their fund or company to do better than an ETF.  I've heard that some ETFs may be coming out that are managed ETFs (rather than the index type that we mostly see now).  Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing must depend on the expertise of the manager. 

One of the things that I personally like about ETFs is that there are many with a very narrow focus.  I don't care for something like Standard & Poor's 500 Index Depository Receipts (SPY:AMEX) which tracks the S&P 500; going along with the crowd just isn't much fun.  I much prefer somthing like SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) which attempts to track the price of gold or iShares MSCI Japan Index (EWJ) that tracks the MSCI Japan stock market index.  That sort of focus is very difficult to find outside the ETF market.

One type of ETF that especially don't like (for me!) is the type that trys to double or even triple what the market does.  One such ETF is UltraShort S&P500 ProShares (SDS).  "The investment seeks daily investment results, before fees and expenses, which correspond to twice the inverse of the daily performance of the S&P 500 index." is a quote from the writeup for SDS in Yahoo.  That means that if the market goes down 10%; SDS trys to go up 20%.  Unfortunately it also means that if the market goes up 10%; SDS will try to go down 20%.  This sort of investment may work for investing professionals but for those of us who don't watch the markets minute-by-minute I think it is downright dangerous. 

Do I own ETFs?  Yes.  I've got a couple that focus on certain parts of the market.  Will I ever go 100% ETF; of course not but I may get up to 25%.  I always follow what I wanted to attribute to Ben Franklin but apparently I was wrong.

"Moderation in all things."  Terence c190-159BC in Andria(The Lady of Andros)