Where's Vlad?

Who cares? Not me.

There's been a political assassination in a country that is being pressured with 'sanctions' (whatever the hell that is supposed to mean), every Western media outlet is claiming to know that Putin and/or his government is in some way behind the murder, and suddenly the same Western media is pissed off he isn't more around so that they can continue to place the 'searing lights' of Western media wisdom onto him.

Me, I care that Kylie Minogue is in Moscow.

Kyles is looking better and better the older she gets.

Thank god no one reads this blog. It wouldn't do to have old John Brennan worry too hard about where all this stuff is coming from, especially since it isn't the CIA that is getting pissed all over right now.

I understand they do a lot of cycling in Switzerland.

Perhaps our Kyles is heading in that direction next. Who's to say?

Betting 'Over Round'

Unlike Wall Street, horse racing concentrates extremely wealthy people in a crucible atmosphere, alongside everyone else.

And this is not to say they do not or cannot have an exaggerated effect on the running of any race - because the sheer overbalance of their money power effects all aspects of any given event.

Sheikh Mohammed

A young race horse, Brazen Beau, was purchased by Sheikh Mohammed of Darley Thoroughbreds just prior to last Saturday's 1 million dollar Australian Newmarket Handicap. Darley Stud paid 10 million dollars for the three year old colt and he will go to stud at the end of next year.

This crucible atmosphere of a horse race, is a mini money market with a highly compressed time frame.

In normal circumstances, bookmakers give odds on all the horses in a race in such a way as to ensure they must end up winning a percentage - 5%, 8%, or 10%, something like that - no matter which horse wins. The terminology for this is 'betting over round.'

And, the more betting interest in a race - the more genuine chances there are - the better odds can be quoted in order to attract a higher volume of money and therefore enabling the bookmaker to achieve a better final result for himself or herself (my sister was a licensed boomaker!)

Saturday's Newmarket on paper held many chances and theoretically, the odds quoted for every horse should have been larger than they actually were on the day. And this is because the winner, Brazen Beau, had a massive weight of well-informed money on it, even to the extent of having probably the current world's best rider, Joao Moreira, flown in from Hong Kong to Australia just for the ride. 

Joao Moreira on Brazen Beau

This kind of heavy-duty money means the bookmakers cannot afford to indicate to the general market that it is basically a one-horse race by 'blowing out' the prices of all the other horses, and thereby underscoring which specific horse held the enormous 'insider' money - because, the whole world of gamblers would simply follow the favourite leaving the bookmakers with a huge bill!

In consequence, the betting becomes 'cramped' leaving no room for anyone to bet, really. Except of course for the big money people on the inside, against whom even the best bookmaker must end up under pressure.

Being the younger horse in the field, Brazen Beau held a weight carrying advantage but that alone need not have been reason to think the horse was guaranteed to win. On the other hand, being an 'entire' means that there are questions over whether the other horses that were not heading for a stud career could not have been bought off for guaranteed cash up front - and I'm not saying this happened or that it does happen, but I think the completely swaying factor is in the stable having the wherewithal to fly in the world's best rider (given that Damien Oliver did not have a threat in the race; Oliver is arguably equal-best in the world).

10 million dollars before the race buys many things the other stables cannot afford.

All in all, Brazen Beau was a certainty on the day.

The race prize was 1 million dollars. The horse was bought for 10 million that week. It's career at stud will be worth perhaps a hundred million.

A share in the horse when it first went into racing as a two year old could have been had for as little as two thousand dollars.

This is a great winning story. It has its nuances and complexities, but horse racing exists as a genuine business for the breeding industry. At that side of things it is in no way a 'gamble.'

Brazen Beau is a great horse, whether the race it just won was entirely 'fair' or slightly conducted in its favour. 

Big money exaggerates things at their natural extremes - but it does not belie them as such.

I personally do not believe that either money markets in currencies, nor equities markets are exaggerated towards natural extremes right now. And you can draw your own conclusion as to what that implies.

But I am suggesting there is no real big money around in these markets and that their 'controlled performance' is a sign of bureaucratic and administrative and official manipulation, rather than the clear advantage that genuine big money buys itself to get a result on the display board.

And that is a problem for said markets.

Right now, Wall Street is not betting 'over round.' It is not betting 'under the odds' either. It is just not betting at all, and yet still putting up numbers that people are being expected to believe are really reflective of investors' buying and selling actually going on. But I doubt that it is going on.

People who have seen a lot...! : )

I don't think there is a way back from QE. The market moves when the market is infused from one source only. And this has 'cramped' the odds for everyone and everything else.

Now I am going to tell you something about what happened when this kind of thing happened on race horse tracks at least once before that I can remember personally.

An important jockey fell off a horse and nearly died, the biggest owner and gambler did die, a famous horse that had just won a huge race died the next day - in short, a lot of funny things happened. And the whole industry went into a decline for many long years. No one foresaw it. No one much expected it, and you wouldn't have necessarily predicted it going on the surface of things - which looked good on the outside.

Evidence And Mystery

If you hide something, it is often the best policy to hide it completely in plain sight. That way the typical and reliable characteristic that most people have of denying the obvious can be exploited. Whether they are only denying to others but secretly admitting to themselves I don't know...

The 'War Fairy.' -
it's a just a sci-fi thing...

Carl Jung though, said something along the lines of enlightenment not being reached by envisioning ever more luminous things and beings but by discovering 'the consciousness in the dark.'

Socrates much earlier voiced some criticism of the professional sophists, as he called them, applying the term specifically to a character called Protagoras, who went around charging money to 'make people wise,' but who in reality had a linguistic tactic of making 'the weaker argument appear the stronger.'

And so in many of these matters of ideas, we are often left to contemplate the ephemeral.

There are few, if any, immediate lightning bolt strikes of logic and persuasion, whose impact may be palpably felt like a kung fu blow!

Rather, the effects of sound ideas, especially those rare and precious and innovative and inspired ones - are often only understood a long long time after they had already worked their mysterious magic.

And thus the idea of 'evidence' is regularly a futile and a misconceived approach, when taking on the errors of world opinion.

News Synchronicity

Have you noticed that almost beyond the monolithic 'news item priority' evident in virtually every single media outlet across every medium, there is a great 'flatness' descending upon the world... Apparently.

You would think that no one interesting lives on the planet anymore. And of course, the rationalists will always say that someone like me has watched too much news and has become jaded because of the quantity I have consumed.

It must be a short trip for me then, to Depression!

I notice Momofuku Ando being remembered yesterday, as the inventor of packet noodles. I noticed that because of the doodle, on Google.

Funny because, I also remembered eating Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup from a WWII supply crate of the type that used to be parachuted into the jungles where my dad was hanging out during that particular episode. These used to come in 'softpacks' of cardboard. In fact, they even had little accompanying tins made of two metals fused together that, when a ring-pull was lifted, and a hole punched at the top, boiled the water that was sealed inside them through a chemical reaction process.

I'm not sure I understand what the exact difference is, between 'Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup' (dry powder plus dry noodles) in those small portable containers - and Ando's Ramen invention.

The Campbell's version happened a lot earlier than Ando's soup.

Same as the Younger Dryas Stadial happened a lot earlier than most biblical accounts of The Great Flood, and in fact, there were two or three earlier, shorter but also pretty 'great' floods before THE Great Flood.

Plato's account of the YDS - in his Atlantis story - is dated by his Egyptian priests telling the story to exactly the correct historical (or really, pre-historical) time. And moreover, he also says the people were given warnings beforehand by smaller flood and earthquake events, though the people paid no heed.

Of course, HE says this thing was all about gods and men; not science and happenstance. 

I go by the RAND Corporation's hypothesis about the decline effect of uncovering unusual phenomenon - once you observe something in a way that is known both to the doers and the done-to or the observers, the phenomena subside, although they don't immediately disappear altogether. James Randi's challenge about Twilight Zone phenomena on the other hand, is a little different to the way RAND approaches things; he has a very narrow and constructive framework for his observations. His structure for looking at things doesn't allow for 'shades' of 'event' and so, he always observes an immediate 'stop' rather than a decline.

And by this I am not talking about observing that there is emotional content synchronicity in media reporting. I am specifically talking about going too far in exposing those who act, let's say more or less covertly in assassinating people like De Margerie and Nemtsov, and more than that, I am really specifically speaking about those who turn around and enact some retribution, or some real justice, or who take control away in order to restore by discipline, the errant leaders, back to the path of decent behaviour. The media generally does not like to face difficult facts.

Plato, I believe, couches his story about something he clearly knew to be factual, as a myth, on account of both the political dimension of it, and of people's expectations - whether of creating fear of some disastrous future, or endless demands of 'the gods' and thus a futile obsession with religion and 'the gods' as opposed to actually doing things to make something you want, happen.

Politically, there was an implication at that time, that leaders were in some way divinely appointed, but also that they were nonetheless capable of miscreant ways. And hence, the general public would always use their leaders as a 'sink' for their malaise of any kind - and never look to themselves as really responsible for anything.

Hence, it was a myth, that a great pre-Athenian society once ruled but went off the rails because of the leaders.  

Plato makes his point clear that each individual carries a kind of personal responsibility for their own futures and for the happiness of their own lives. He says that some people survived the Great Flood.

Nostalgia, What Nostalgia?

One of the great historical icons of Australia - was originally started by an American, Freeman Cobb.

Cobb & Co were the equivalent in Australia of the great stagecoach companies of America before the 'iron horse' came to rule the plains.

I've had the pleasure and the privilege of having seen one of the premium, when at their peak after the Lambing Flat gold discovery, Cobb & Co stagecoaches, and my god, it is something like an even more luxurious thing (if you can imagine it) than a Rolls Royce. It is dramatically solid, and stylish, and high-quality, and beautiful.

Simply beautiful - Japanese caliber,
battery-powered workings

Today, you can I think, still get the occasional men's aftershave from Avon called 'Cobb & Co.' 

And there is a company which makes clocks using the 'Cobb & Co' name. And they also make a very beautiful style of watch of their own design using varieties of Australian natural wood and gold or steel. 

Soon, I believe even the Postal Services in Australia will be cutting back on the 'normal' delivery of envelope mail. 

Personally I really approve of the way I see ordinary everyday people of almost every kind sitting at bus-shelters thumb-tapping away on their latest Samsung intelligent phones. People like to write and read more than they ever did; which is a good thing.

Some things you read and/or write are of course, constructed with a great deal of thought and skill and art. 

Tomorrow the 2015 Geneva Motor Show will open to the public and in it, will be the new Aston Martin Vulcan track racer. In limited numbers of maybe around thirty, this car is the equivalent of a Samsung Galaxy Intelligent Phone.

The following pic is not of the Vulcan, but it is an Aston Martin and you will not see much publicity about this edition anywhere.

Aston Martin DBC - rare,
but real...

The fact is, today, there are at least two different worlds.