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There are mirror websites at http://hiqnews.megafoundation.org,
http://www.geocities.com/rnseitz,
and
http://www.geocities,com/ultrahiiq
2010-1-21:
A
Municipal Report from Tornado Town:
About 5:30 tonight, Huntsville's downtown weather warning siren
went off. I headed for our TV set, where a local weather
forecaster was explaining that there was a tornado warning just
east of town. That meant that we weren't in danger, since it had
already moved past us. I took Amber to the front door so that she
could hear the sound that the weather warning siren makes. Then
the power went out for three hours. When it came back on, we
learned that a tornado had touched down (lightly) about a mile
from our house, probably when the weather siren was wailing.
2010-1-3:
The middle photo (above) now links to two other Halloween photos
of Amber in a different butterfly costume.
The middle photo, above, shows Amber, the Butterfly, in Halloween
party costume, and the January, 2009, right-hand photo depicts
Mommy and Amber (in Mommy's pinned-up smock).
Science News Updates:
At least for the time being, I'm going to stop updating the daily
Science News as of today and focus on (1) generating science news
summaries in important areas such as cancer prevention and the
slowing or partial reversal of aging; (2) pursuing and reporting
upon what could be some landmark breakthroughs in boosting IQ
levels; and (3) cleaning up this website. There are a number of
contributions that I think I can make that I don't presently have
time to address. (Amber's arrival 2½ years ago subtracted several
hours a day from my discretionary time.)
Today's
(Tuesday's) Progress Report
Update:
It might be worth mentioning that not one but several (if not
most) vitamin D researchers believe that elevating vitamin levels
in the blood could lead to
a 50%
to 80% reduction in cancer induction rates!
And
just as exciting (for me), experimental evidence points toward
these kinds of improvements occurring even in postmenopausal
women, based upon modest increases in vitamin D intake over a
period of a few years.
I mentioned two weeks ago that I had
interrupted my experiments in brain-boosting because I developed a
digestive problem that took some time to clear up (in retrospect,
nothing significant). I'm only gradually getting back to these
brain improvement maneuvers, although I'm virtually certain that
my digestive problem had nothing to do with my
brain-boosting experiments.
In the meantime, I'm trying to update the
nutritional information described under (6) below. One of the
enticing discoveries is the information (that vitamin D
researchers have been trying to communicate to the general public
for years now) that (1) our vitamin recommended daily allowances
are too low by a factor of several, and (2) vitamin D, in addition
to its well-known role in bone and dental health, is said to be a line
of defense against a range of diseases including cancer, heart
disease,
diabetes, autoimmune diseases, and other afflictions.
There are other nutritional interventions that
might possibly also
reduce the risk of cancer and other diseases. I was intrigued with
what I learned about this a few years ago; I'm now updating and
re-checking what I learned then.
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The American Association of Individual
Investors (AAII) has stock screens (portfolios) that promise
extraordinary long-term returns. I had thought about recommending
this as a viable investment strategy, but the markets have been so
chaotic that I haven't followed up on this. Here's a discussion
of some to the AAII stock screen performance claims.
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Wednesday, I wrote this discussion
of two current views of intelligence.
Sunday, I
probed others' experiences with the dual n-back program, as
well as running it for myself.
Big
News! There have been three
major announcements in the field of aging remediation in the
past couple of days.
Switching now to more frivolous topics, this
business of "brain boosting" seems to me to have
repercussions well beyond "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's
the smartest one of all?" This would seem to me to be of
importance to everyone who plans to grow old... to age-related
cognitive decline, and to the avoidance of Alzheimer's Disease,
not only for ourselves but also for those we love.
This could be game-changing.
(1) My own
personal story (Updated) .
(2) The
Flynn Effect and Age-Related Cognitive Decline
(3) Brain
Boosting: Quo Vadis, Dominie?
(4) Preliminary
Results of My "Brain-Boosting" Experiment (Sunday
Update)
(5) the first example of one of these lists is
a set of 153 cancer prevention news articles dealing with the
relationship between food, herbs, etc., and cancer. It may be
found here.
(6) A general listing and discussion of some
putatively beneficial nutritional foods, spices, and supplements
is given here. Entire
books have been written regarding each of the items set forth in
this list. I plan to expand upon this material, but this gives a
skeletal outline of foods, and food-derived extracts that I try to
consume. (What's needed most is a presentation of what these
"nutriceuticals" have done for some of us and might do
for you.)
There should be a lot happening on this website
over the next few days and weeks, given time to report on these
topics.
2010-2-8: Today's
Investment Commentary
Given the grave concerns about our current
economic crisis, I'm going to try to address, as best I can, some
problems and concerns that we might be sharing about this subject.
Links
to Daily Investments Interpretations (Individual Dates)
First-Half,
2010
Second-Half,
2009
First-Half,
2009
Second-Half,
2008
First-Half, 2008
Investment Archive,
January 1, 2010 to July 31, 2010
Investment Archive,
July 1, 2009 to December 31, 2009
January 1, 2009 to June 30, 2009
July
1, 2008, to December 31, 2008
May
7, 2008, to June 30, 2008
11/12/2008:
The stunning implications of the fact that we're, perhaps, in a
super-bear market are only now penetrating my skull.
A Buy-and-Hold Strategy Applied from
the Start to the Finish of a Super-Bear Market (e. g. 2000 to
2018, Assuming That This Concept Is Valid) Would Typically Lead to
60% to 65% Losses Over the 17-18-Year Period After Correcting for
Inflation and Adding in Dividends!
Over the course of a (typical?) 17-to-18-year
long
super- bear market, the value of an S&P 500 index fund, after
correcting for inflation and adding in dividends, typically
drops to 1/3rd of its value from the
beginning to the end of the 16-year secular (super-) bear
market period. In talking about a "typical" super-cycle,
I need to mention that these super-cycles are inferred from the
chart pattern of the S&P 500 from 1871 to the present. Over
that time span, there have been 3 super-cycles and, it would
appear, part of a fourth, from 2000 to the present time... if, in
fact, these super-cycles are real enough to have predictive value.
But no two of these super-cycles have been just alike.
("History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes."?) You
might take a look at the above-linked chart
displaying the S&P 500 from 1871 to 1997 and see what you
think.
Where We Stand Right Now, and Where We
Might Go from Here:
So far, money invested in an
S&P500 index fund in March, 2000, has fallen
by now, after correcting for inflation and adding in dividends, to about ½ of what it was worth in March, 2000.
However, because the S&P 500 was overpriced by... 65%?... in
March, 2000 (by far the most overpriced it's ever been), then if
we are in a super-bear market, this money in 2018 should be worth
about 40% what it is now. In other words, money
invested in a buy-and-hold S&P 500 index fund in March, 2000,
should be worth, in 2018, only about 1/5th what it was when it was
invested in 2000!
A Buy-and-Hold Strategy During a
Super-Bull Market Yields Dramatic Gains
(b) All of the long-term gains registered
by buy-and-hold investors occur within super-bull markets, and
they're sufficient to overpower the fall of the price of equities,
in real value, to 1/3rd of their previous highs, plus the average
6.8% a year that Dr. Jeremy Siegel has found for the long term
average rate of return of the U. S. stock market from 1802 through
2004. This points to a staggering
conclusion: our best stock market strategy would be to sell our
stocks at the beginning of a super-bear market, and to avoid stock
investments for the next 16-to-18 years until the beginning of the
next super-bull market. So how many individuals and
companies that make money by selling investment services do you
think are willing to tell their customers to avoid the stock
market for 16-to-18 years at a stretch? Yeah, that's the same
number I came up with, too.
But... We're in Uncharted Territory
Because we're in uncharted territory,
experiencing the first deflation since the Great Depression, the
markets could go lower than usual, although we might expect them
to return to their hypothetical trend lines by 2018 (no
guarantees, of course).
These Speculative Predictions and
Interpretations Apply Only the the U. S. Stock Market
These predictions, if they unfold as
they have in the past, apply only to the U. S. stock market. I
have no data concerning non-U. S. markets (although non-U. S.
markets have a habit of moving more-or-less in lock-step with the
U. S. stock market). I'm particularly hopeful that the Chinese and
Indian stock markets may decouple from the U. S. market over
the coming years.
11/9/2008:
Over the weekend, I've re-examined the subject of super-bull
markets and super-bear markets, and I don't like what I've
found. Of course, there's nothing that says things have to work
out this way, but the numbers are suggesting a super-bear market
bottom in 2018 that would be 55% to 65% below where the popular
indices stand today even if our current malaise turns out to be a
standard, garden-variety recession, with a cyclical bull market
starting up again in 2009 or 2010.
A buy-and-hold strategy in most mutual funds in
such a scenario would be a disaster, although there may be a few
funds that can outperform the market sufficiently that you'd come
out well ahead even if the blue-chip index funds lose 2/3rds of
their purchasing power. The above-linked write-up will explain.
11/2/2008 Important (Second) Update: This "recession" is
categorically different in cause
and consequences than any of the normal recessions we've
experienced over the past 60 years.
Unlike all the other recessions since World War II, this recession
(Depression?) is deflationary, driven by a credit crisis, rather
than a result of the Federal Reserve Board's overshooting its mark
in its efforts to slow the economy in order to rein in inflation.
This may be "The Perfect Storm".
6/7/2008:
As many of us are probably aware, there are now techniques that
seem to subtract 15 or more years off our biological ages. It will
be decades before such results can be verified through
large-scale, long-term studies, but some of us are availing
ourselves of these "bleeding edge" stratagems, with
dramatic improvements in such ponderable parameters as blood lipid
profiles, fasting glucose and insulin sensitivity levels, and
related health measures. Along with living
longer (and, in fact, these disease reductions are prerequisites
to living better longer) are techniques for putatively
reducing the risks of cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's
disease, Parkinson's disease, and Type 2 diabetes. Again, there
are no guarantees. It will take decades of large-scale, long-term,
placebo-controlled studies to validate the various pilot studies
that have been conducted to date... studies that are concerned
with special nutritional and supplement interventions that don't
involve patentable drugs. Still there's compelling evidence that
some of these maneuvers really do work. For example, As an
example, four years ago, I was going to my dermatologist every
three months to have actinic keratoses--sunlight-induced,
pre-cancerous lesions--frozen off the top of my head. After I began
drinking green tea four years ago, these lesions disappeared and
have never returned--in keeping with numerous studies showing that
green tea fights skin cancer. Other members of the Calorie
Restriction Society have had a similar experience. This is
certainly anecdotal, but nevertheless, this is what's
happened.
Another example of startling discoveries that,
to my knowledge, haven't made it into widespread public view is
Harvard Medical School researcher Dr. Norman Hollenberg's
discovery that the Kuna Indians, who live on a relatively isolated
group of islands off the Caribbean coast of Panama, have 1/10th
(that's 10%!) of the age-adjusted rates of heart attacks,
strokes, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer than do their
North American counterparts. (See this
for diabetes.) The key to this seems to lie in their drinking 3 to
5 cups a day of "raw"
hot chocolate. (The crucial ingredient seems to be epicatechin.).
These dramatic reductions in degenerative diseases aren't
attributable to genetic inbreeding, because Kuna Indians who move
to the mainland and adopt mainland diets suffer the same ills that
plague the rest of us. (You can buy this unprocessed cocoa at
outlets like iHerb.)
Because this is more potent than resveratrol,
I'm wondering what effect this has upon aging and life
expectancies.
In the meantime, here's an article
about aging interventions that I wrote in 2006 but never
published.
5/6/2008: I
Goof Up: Last fall, on the 21st of
September, I declaimed that "My personal guess is that the
stock market is going to recover from its deep, steep dip and
climb higher (with some ups and downs) for the remainder of the
year. I'm also speculating", quoth I, "that we won't go
into a recession before 2009, after the 2008 presidential
election."
Boy, was I wrong! Actually, the stock market
continued to rise to new heights, peaking on October 11th. But
then it did the unthinkable: it plummeted to new lows--like two
tornadoes howling down the same path.
Having lost all of my own August-to-October
ill-gotten gains and a bit more besides, I'm going to try prognosticating
again, along with some ideas about investments. (This will be
changing rapidly over the next few days, so you may want to check
back again.)
Here is an article
I published in the March issue of "Gift of Fire"
reviewing recent articles and books that discuss psychopaths.
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