Rian Nejar's Blog, page 14

VIX: Calm Before a Storm?

A Vixen in the Woods

After predicted volatility, early this year, the VIX (SP500 Volatility Index) has settled down to a low not seen since late last year. It fell below 12 within the past trading session, and settled a little above 12 at the close. The chart below gives an indication of this measure of calm in the fear index.

The Fear Index, VIX, year-to-date

But does VIX truly reflect market conditions at present? According to Rebecca Cheong, head of equity derivatives strategy at UBS securities, the VIX is unusually low compared with similar readings of expected price swings in other assets and asset classes. Cheong is quoted as saying that VIX doesn’t stay low relative to all other assets for long, and that a tumble in stocks may lie ahead. She cites examples from 2013, in August 2013 and December 2014, when the S&P500 fell significantly, as much as 5%, in the month following.

There are other indications that all may not be well for the market ahead. June is said to be the worst performing month over the past decade. The popular saying: “Sell in May and go away” has not been realized this year; despite assurances of an interest rate hike, from the chair of the FED, later this year upon confirmation of an improving economy, the market has continued grinding upward. Weak GDP numbers, a strong dollar, and weak consumer sentiment continue to weight upon the markets.

But what is rather curious is a clear divergence between the Dow Jones Transportation (DJT) index from the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI), in the past few months, as seen in the chart below:

Dow Jones Industrials and Transportation divergence

While DJI and DJT are seen to have tracked each other very well in the first quarter, as is normal, they have diverged significantly in the second. Whereas the industrials have continued to rise by around 2%, the transportation average, reflecting the movement of goods within the economy, has sunk by more than 6%. While this divergence appears to coincide with a turnaround in the fall of OIL prices, around the middle of March, significantly lower absolute oil prices this year must surely be beneficial to the transportation sector? Despite oil price stability from early May, the DJT is seen to continue its negative trend, diverging from the industrial average, falling as much as 2% mid last week.

Such unusual conditions notwithstanding, some argue that the market is poised to break out. They refer to every signal in recent months, that indicated the beginning of a correction, reversed strongly with buyers rushing in upon a market pull back. Perhaps this also explains the low VIX, a certain absence of fear in the markets.

I am not of that opinion. I think that the present low VIX reflects complacency, a certain stupor induced by a pussyfooting FED that says and does little, and is likely a calm before an upcoming storm in the markets. Accordingly, I remain long VIX.

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Goodreads Book Giveaway: “Humbling and Humility”

“Humbling and Humility” Small Print Edition

 A Goodreads book giveaway featuring 3 paperback copies of the small print edition of “Humbling and Humility” will be active from May 19th through June 18, 2015. See below for more details, or visit the giveaway page here. (Note: Books shipped only to United States domestic addresses.)

Goodreads Book Giveaway


Humbling and Humility
by Rian Nejar

Giveaway ends June 18, 2015.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to Win

I’d Rather Be a Sparrow than a Snail

A bird in a tree home

I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail

Yes, I would

If I could

I’d surely would.

I’d rather be a hammer than a nail

Yes, I would

If I could

I’d surely would.

Away, I ‘d like to sail away

Like a swan

That’s here and gone

A man gets tied up to the ground

He gives the world

Its saddest sound, its saddest sound.

I’d rather be a forest than a street

Yes, I would

If I could

I’d surely would.

I’d rather feel the earth beneath my feet

Yes, I would

If I could

I’d surely would.

…

[By: Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel]

This song came to mind a couple of days ago, and I looked up its lyrics. Imagine my astonishment when I realized a strong connection between this beautiful expression by two of my favorite bards, and “Humbling and Humility.”

Without ever meaning to do so, I think this book lived true to their words: “A man gets tied up to the ground; He gives the world its saddest sound, its saddest sound.” Besides, even the pictures on the book’s covers reflect a simple message in the song; a sparrow and a snail, a bird and its prey – I have a nectar-sipping butterfly, hoping to scare away its predators, and an observant bird, perched on a tree branch. And, as a book reviewer put it, the narrative can be called a sad chronicle��…

Just random thoughts on Mothers Day :-)

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A Mother’s Day Gift from Lucy: Humbling and Humility

A Rembrandt sketch of a girl, a resting mother

“Humbling and Humility” is downloadable free of cost from Smashwords this weekend, for Mother’s Day, with coupon code SS78N, until the 11th of May, 2015.

A gift of love from Lucy (my feral companion and a cat mother who protected, nurtured, and launched her children into their independent lives) and the author who writes about her exploits.

Lucy peeking at the camera. Seemingly innocent, but mysterious claw marks on my arms indicate otherwise…

Lucy also sneaked a lizard into our home a few days ago…but that’s another story for another day.

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Great Power must come with Great Responsibility

Wisdom from life experiences, from Marvel’s “Spiderman” (pic source: web, the616project.com)

The power, of life and death, granted to our community protectors, must come with training, alike parental responsibility, where compassion governs force.

Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Eric Garner. Walter Scott. Freddie Gray. How many more children of our society must die before our parental instincts wake up? How many more families, and lives, must be destroyed before we recognize the brutality institutionalized, the grievous injuries inflicted?

Yes, this topic twists my heart. I have first hand experience of excessive force by police, of egregious rush to judgment, of vindictive prosecution that brushes all human considerations aside. It hurt me. But even more, it continues to hurt my children.

And while I, and others like me, may work to salvage the lives of our children, society as a whole fragments. Mistrust fills minds. The sight of figures of authority brings disgust and even fear into minds and hearts; I too turn my eyes away from cops, or lawyers, no longer ‘officers of the law’ in my mind. And our meager efforts cannot stitch a tattered social fabric back together, one in which our children continue to suffer inhuman injustices.

Brutalization. Dehumanization. Torture. Enhanced interrogation techniques. Exploitation. These, and other habits, are all practiced by law enforcement today. “Tough Love,” some call it. Tough policing. Have we forgotten the nightmarish, extreme vision of an Orwellian society? It matters not that it is a so-called democracy – one of the largest in the world, where billionaires have become president-makers – that employs such methods. These ways are inhuman, sub-human, and lacking in wisdom and compassion.

“So show me something better, Rian, if you think our methods are broken,” said Hofsheier to me. A senior manager in a large corporation I’d been employed in, way back in the past. A pragmatic man, one who subscribed to the ‘Get along, go along’ culture inbred in such large profit machines, a millionaire enriched by a growing corporate machine who loved tinkering with and renovating old antique cars at home.

Yes, there is something better. Family. Community. A shared consciousness, oneness. The opposite of individualism: George Orwell painted the nightmare in 1949, traumatized by the great war, but may also have driven us toward it, likely with no intention of doing so, by his advocacy of extreme individualism.�� Rampant individualism, and self-interest, isn’t what builds a family and community. I think what we need are selfless actions that hurt ourselves more than those we inflict such acts upon. Did you not see the mother in Baltimore who cuffed her hooligan teen child in public? Her anguish, and anger, were undoubtedly symptoms of her compassion and love. Did that work? You only have to ask the teenage son.

You want to be tough on crime? To employ tough policing to discourage crime? Then do so as any parent would. Solve as many other problems that lead to such behavior first. Be tough, yes, but more importantly, be humane. Let that be seen, felt, believed. Use force not to exclude, not to eliminate, but to resolve differences, to bring the young, the immature, into a better way of life. Above all, be sure of your humanity, knowledge, and wisdom, before being tough.

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Rough Rides and Police Hospitality

An excerpt from “Humbling and Humility” …

More hours later, I was called out of the cell by cops to be taken through a formal process of appearance before a judge, who would read out the charges against me, and determine release conditions. This time around, my conveyance was the ‘dog wagon,’ a small truck with its insides subdivided into compartments, one on each side of the vehicle with small diamond grille windows, and one in the middle with no windows. I was pushed into a side compartment of this wagon, handcuffed, and soon realized why the vehicle was called the dog wagon. There was barely enough space to move forward or backward. One could sit only by turning sideways, and had to watch out for one’s head hitting the chamfered top edges of the vehicle as it moved. No, the state is not concerned about seat belts or on-road safety for criminals under its responsibility, never mind any right of presumption of innocence. It does not take much imagination to realize that not even animals would be transported in such discomfort.

Police prisoner escort vehicle (source: Web, author unknown)

The wagon rolled out of 4th Ave., and I was grateful to see some sunlight through the tiny window. We stopped at a holding facility in another part of the metropolis, where a young, stocky fellow, no more than a year or two above twenty, with a large black patch of what seemed like dead skin on the underside of one of his forearms, joined me in my side of the dog wagon.

He seemed chatty, and given my brief exposure to sunlight, I conversed with him enough to learn that he’d gained his permanent black skin patch through MRSA gathered from unclothed contact with surfaces inside many jail cells he’d been in. MRSA is a bacterial strain highly resistant to treatment. It is quite common in the holding cells and incarceration facilities of the state. He was hospitalized by the state due to the severity of his bacterial infection. They’d managed to stop it, but not before the starkly visible damage. He seemed dismissive of it, but I wasn’t so sure that I would, at my age that was twice his, survive such bacterial infection.

As we were led into the civic center in Dilbut that housed the courts, through back doors into a holding area, I saw the same cop who’d mocked my request for toiletries at the 4th Ave. intake line. This Hispanic member of law enforcement������from his name, Carillo������seemed to enjoy playing sadistically with the emotions of those in the state’s unrelenting grip, presumed innocent or not. His face had all the refinement of a Halloween mask. It was a face not even a mother could love.

He was engaged in loud conversations with those awaiting a court appearance, declaring that judges may not come in during the weekend. And in that event, we would all be carted away to one of Sheriff Waspoia’s infamous tent camps for the weekend, roasting in the summer sun, with violent bullies and predators for company.

In time, an officer came in to inform us that a female judge had put in an appearance, and the sadistic cop changed his slant to discussing how she’d been making bail release determinations. It’s rather redundant to indicate that he worked at raising our hopes, with claims that the judge had, just the past week, let many in arraignment leave without bail, right from the courtroom, on their own recognizance. It is also not hard to now see why those arrested and subjugated by law enforcement refer to them as pigs, which I hardly think stands for ‘people in government service,’ though you may again be forgiven for such a gentle assumption.

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A Conversation with God

The Celestial Rose (Pic: from self-built telescope and camera by P. Lind)

Did I tell you about my one (and only) conversation with God? No? I think you’ll enjoy it… so here goes.

On a fun exploration adventure with a good undergraduate college friend, AGS for short, we rode out on my motorcycle to a gorge cut into uninhabited land by a seasonal river. The side of the gorge was largely comprised of loose yellow-brown mud, and small rocks, with sparse clumps of vegetation. On impulse, we decided to climb a side of the gorge with nothing but our riding clothes and shoes, and a length of nylon rope about two meters long. We had nothing in our stomachs either, having started out early that morning with no breakfast. Suffice it to say that we soon found ourselves stuck about two-thirds of the way up, exhausted, facing a near vertical dry mud and gravel face, no vegetation to hang on to, and large rocks far down below to receive anyone slipping down. The fun had evaporated entirely in the hot noon-day sun.

I asked AGS to carry on climbing, if he could, and solicit help from anyone he may find for a rescue. He refused to leave me perched precariously on the side of the gorge. The two meter nylon rope we carried was simply too short to connect us together for safety and climbing assistance. The crumbling mud face was perilously slippery, and our motorcycle riding shoes were no help at all. Neither of us could climb any more: I, because of the gorge wall’s characteristics and exhaustion, and AGS, because he could not abandon me.

It is thus in my intemperate youth that I took a long moment to rest and contemplate on the presumed, assumed immortal. Not one to subscribe to “pbraying,” I bargained with the timeless creator, sustainer, and destroyer all rolled into one. Pointing to the rocks down below, I argued that it would be an inordinate waste of a useful life if I were to end up smashed on them. And that I had shown promise in life to that point, and could help the all-in-one make things better.

AGS, perched at a short distance from me, immersed in thoughts of his own, did not participate in my debate with the unknown unknowable. After a few minutes of my rigorous, vigorous, rather humorous presentation of my case, with no perceivable or conceivable counter arguments coming along, I relaxed into smiles and inner laughter. And thought pragmatically about my predicament, rather than negotiate with the vast emptiness of endless space and time.

It occurred to me that I might find a jagged rock, and cut holes into the side of the gorge face. Could that give my slippery-shoed feet better footholds? And could the holes made also be used as locations to grip with my hands on the surface? Converting this promising thought into action, I found myself a sharp implement and began this method of climbing the mud face. AGS climbed with me, and in just an hour or so, we found ourselves at the top, hugging for joy. Ancient tooling and tool-use skills came to my rescue that day…

And so concluded my one conversation with whatever is perceived in whichever, however manner…and it’ll exhaust me no end if anyone argues that my thoughts, imagination, knowledge, and action are all gifts from the omniscient omnipotent omnipresent. But feel free to carry this conversation further… :-)

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A Distinct Lack of Empathy: The Drawbridge Story

The Drawbridge story: A continuing excerpt from “Humbling and Humility“

It reminded me of my own circumstance, and the apparently conscience-less individual involved romantically with my wife, Bert Burgess. Yes, I did track him down with all the calls and messages my wayward spouse exchanged with him at all hours of the day and night. These days, one can obtain almost any information about another from a mobile phone number.

His statement to me, when asked if he had physical intimacy with my wife, and of his intentions, was that he had indeed done so, and was looking to make it long term. That sounded about right������his first reaction elicited on being caught red handed������this was all that he cared about, for that was his nature. There could be no empathy expected from him, nor any compassion, in conversation with a troubled and wronged husband and father.

Yet, there were indeed serious consequences. I approached the workplace that had allowed such close, uninhibited contact between married individuals������I’d learned that their affair began with hugs during a workplace incident������and asked for a full investigation, which the folks there were compelled by law to undertake.

And Sid was also right in that such a lover may not be in any committed relationship. I determined from additional conversations, with my wife, that this Bert Burgess was previously married, and his wife had left him, and their marriage, because she’d realized her own lesbian nature. He apparently was neck deep in debt at that time as well, having lived a life of relative excess. As a consequence of their divorce, he was forced to sell an expensive home purchased and place his personal belongings in a storage facility. His casual relationship with my wife, and statement to me when caught, made a lot more sense upon discovering these details.

I wondered what exactly was the thought experiment intended with the drawbridge exercise. Compiled in 1978, it perhaps held little relevance three decades, a generation, later. Nevertheless, the State of Wariduna, in its wisdom, appeared to be employing deeply patriarchal and violent examples to convey its messages.

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The Thirsty Hummingbird – A Fortuitous Encounter

The Black-Chinned Hummingbird (Picture by Andrew C, from Wikimedia Commons)

It had been a good few days since I watered plants in my backyard. Ever since my decade-old automatic irrigation system gave up, I have taken to watering the landscaping plants myself. A good way to conserve water, I think; something that may become increasingly important as the drought in nearby California worsens. Leaves on my lemon tree were beginning to reflect a similar dearth of life-giving water.

So there I was, in my backyard, with a hose spouting water from an open end. Yes, the multifunction nozzle functioned no more, and was duly separated from the hose. It’s back to the good old days of a finger serving the water jet shaping function. My thumb works best for me.

After watering the apple tree, and the ground around it, I moved the longish horizontal stream of water to a vine clinging resolutely onto the sidewall. I could get most of the water flowing in a jet stream, but some did spray out in a spreading shower of sorts. I kept the stream aimed at the base of the vine and waited the minute or so necessary.

It was then that I saw her. A small, soundless, dainty little gray thing, a blur of wings above and around her, hovering just outside the shower around the stream of water, moving out of the thicket of apple tree leaves and blooms. She seemed intent upon the spray of water; I stayed still and held the stream steady. To my growing surprise, she seemed to want to venture into the shower…I held my breath and remained motionless. What was it that compelled her to move into a strong shower of water, something that must surely be dangerous to her?

She moved a couple of inches…into the edge of the spray. And then some more, until she was within the spray itself! It was all I could do to stay as still as humanly possible and keep the stream of water steady. The jet could’ve harmed the tiny little thing that likely weighed less than an ounce. She then turned, to face the jet…and in the most delicate movement, moved an inch to insert her long beak into the water jet. Just as quickly as she moved forward into the jet, she turned away and flew back into the apple tree. I followed her until she moved to dip into an apple blossom…and relaxed, laughed, rejoiced.

The thirsty, brave little hummingbird took advantage of my water hose for a drink of cool water. She saw me, surely, but how did she know that the fast moving stream of water in the air would stay in place? Had she observed me before? Regardless, I was honored to be able to quench her thirst. The old heart smiled, and I cherished this most endearing little encounter.

I’ll always look forward to my backyard watering chore now…

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A Green Moon

A Green Moon: Total Lunar Eclipse

Much has been made of a Blood Moon, a reddish moon in a total eclipse…and we all know of a blue moon. But how often do you hear of it being green?

I caught the moon in one such view with a Kodak AZ251 at its maximum optical zoom (25X) during the recent total eclipse early Saturday morning. See the greenish tint in the picture above? It doesn’t appear to be a camera or low-light artifact. Another view a few minutes later, with even less light and the very same camera settings, appears correspondingly darker in the picture below.

Silver and reddish brown moon at the cusp of a total eclipse

If you look carefully enough at the very beginning of the total eclipse, as in the second picture above, you may see the rest of the moon colored a faint reddish brown. Beyond this, with a complete absence of direct sunlight shining on the moon, I did see it a brighter red, lasting for a while before direct sunlight began to shine on an edge again. My rather basic digital camera could not capture the red phase at all.

Discussing this with a friend, a professor in optoelectronics at a preeminent university in India, we think the green moon is an opportune capture near the cusp of a total lunar eclipse. Through a combination of refraction (varied bending of different light wavelengths, as in a Prism) and scattering through earth’s atmosphere, that limits the spectrum of sunlight reaching the moon, a mixing of light from the yellow to the blue wavelengths could have given us this greenish tint. This may only occur for a very short period of time before the eclipse, if at all.

It did make me wonder: could there also be a blue tint, for a fleeting moment even? But blue is a color scattered most by the atmosphere – hence the blue skies we see so often – and any such light passing through the atmosphere on to the moon is most likely quite dim… A blue moon is hence highly unlikely, making it an apt indicator for similarly unlikely expectations!

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