Is your poop red?

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Blood in your stool can be a sign of a serious disorder.  WebMD is a good resource for information.  However, your ordure being red could be a symptom of something I find disgusting, but otherwise completely harmless.

CREDIT: Frito Lay

Flamin' Hot Cheetos.  Yes, this seemingly innocuous treat is turning caca red.  

I guess looking down into the toilet and seeing bright red night soil might be frightening, frightening enough to wonder about seeking medical treatment.  There are reports that scared parents are taking children to the ER because of red turds.

Evidently, red dye #40 is not metabolized, so it is passed along with the rest of the excreta.  

Red Dye #40

Here is what I find shitty, and it doesn't have to do with crap.  Frito Lay's website provide the nutritional information for its snacks.  If you chow down on an entire 8.5 oz bag, you've consumed 1360 Calories.  If you have usually eat 2000-2500 Calorie a day, this one bag is your breakfast and lunch.  You also consumed more than two grams of salt - an entire day's worth of sodium.


DISCLAIMER:  I do love Lay's Classic potato chips.  These have a nice flavor with a good balance of fat and salt.

NOTE: I tried as hard as I could to use as many synonyms for feces.  Some I didn't use are bodily waste, droppings, pooh, poo, manure, dung, bowel movement, number two, and doo-doo. I also didn't to use any words like sheisse, merde, dreck, and govno from other languages. The reader is invited to submit their own in the comments.

The Cure for Constipation

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Lest the reader thinks I am obsessing by having two posts in a row dealing with feces or that I have a desire to use all the available synonyms for feces, the timing of these two posts is merely a coincidence.
I came across QuantumMAN™: World's First Downloadable Medicine.  One of the products he sells is QLax™, a purported medical treatment for constipation.  His "radical new technology" is based on the concept that

The entire universe including the human body and disease that afflicts it operates according to the principles of quantum physics.

OK.  Ernest Rutherford said, "All science is either physics or stamp collecting." On those days when I am feeling terribly arrogant, I agree with Rutherford.  So where does QuantumMAN™ go from here?

Chemical based laxatives do not operate according to those principles and, as such, are not compatible with human physiology…

CREDIT: www.zazzle.com

Wait a minute.  Didn't he just claim the entire universe operates by quantum principles? Chemistry is somehow exempt?  Let's leave this puzzler for more pressing issues.

To solve a quantum problem you must offer a quantum treatment within a quantum operating system. Therefore, ZAG, the private humanitarian medical research group that employs QuantumMAN™, has developed the ideal quantum laxative branded QLax™. Derived from extreme advances in quantum computing, QLax™ consists of "Portal Access Keys™" (PAKs™) downloaded to your personal computer, smartphone or tablet. Accessing these PAKs™ allows your brain to quantumly receive (upload) QLax™'s master programs. QuantumMAN™ is the personification of this quantum data. When uploaded, QLax™ provides thousands of physiologic directives to your brain to program it to provide the corrective measures required to relieve your constipation without any possibility of adverse side effects no matter how long QLax™ is used. Due to repeater programs imbedded in its data, QLax™ allows delivery of its physiologic directives automatically several times a day for 24 hours with just one PAK™ dose. For extremely stubborn cases, more than PAK™ dose can be uploaded at a time without concern of any adverse side effects. ZAG guarantees your complete satisfaction for 30 days from date of purchase or your money is refunded.

For only $5, you can download 25 PAKs™ to your computer, smartphone, or tablet, and then your brain will upload - I mean, quantumly receive the program.  I do love the fact that if I'm still constipated after a month, I can get my $5 back.  Somehow after a month I think I might have more to worry about than the money.
Who's responsible for the amazing breakthrough in quantum medicine?

The Zürich Alpine Group (ZAG) is a private humanitarian medical research group of scientists and physicians working cooperatively and quietly around the world in the quest to improve the quality, efficacy and costs of medical care.

ZAG understands that quantum problems require a quantum solution and has found a way to transfer bioinformation from its quantum computer via quantum teleportation to the brain, also a quantum computer, to reprogram the brain to effect positive medical changes within the body and mind.

Why haven't we heard of this group and it marvelous products?

ZAG has quietly cultivated these phenomena and deliberately avoided scientific publication of its work until the intended release of its collaborative QuantumMANsite website.

ZAG has shunned reporting its research and trials in the traditional medical literature because it believes this venue is heavily influenced by Big Pharma and politics. 

They report they have conducted clinical trials in order to test their products efficacy and safety, but what is strange is that when you go to the Clinical Trials section of the website, you find no data.  All you find is audio recordings of twelve so-called participants.
What other incredible (from the Latin in- meaning 'not', and credere meaning 'believe') products are available?  If you don't know what's ailing you, there's QDr™ Tricorder Plus.  Star Trek fans take note.
Then there's QFood™, the solution to starvation.

The person will not be hungry and/or feel deprived or experience cravings if instructions are properly followed. For 10 days at a time, one set of QFood™ downloads will provide satiation and sufficient quantum nourishment that the person will thrive and not be at risk of dying due to starvation. 

There are even products for the bedroom.  Know what I mean.  Nudge nudge. Wink, wink.  Say no more.  Heaven's Gate™, QBX™, TigerTail™, HEjuvenate™, SHEjuvenate™, QHE™, and QSHE™.

CREDIT: unknown

What is it a duck, quantum or otherwise, says? 

If I Were to Write a Textbook

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Most physics textbooks have titles like Physics, University Physics, College Physics, Physics for Scientists and Engineers, and Fundamentals of Physics.

If I ever write a text, it would definitely have to have a much cooler title.  Maybe something like:

 Letters of Priest on Different Subjects in Physics and Philosophy Addressed to a German Princess
Damn!  Wouldn't you know it; that title has already been used.

An Inventory of the Furniture in Dr. Priestley's Study

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Professor Eckstrom, a colleague of mine in the English department at Rio Hondo College, passed along a couple of poems.  They were written by Anna Laeticia Barbauld (née Aikin).  The first, reprinted below, is An Inventory of the Furniture in Dr. Priestley's Study; the second is The Mouse's Petition (To Dr. Priestly) that Prof. Eckstrom tells me is about a mouse that inhabited Priestley's study.

Portrait by Ellen Sharples, 1794,
National Portrait Galleery, London.

Joseph Priestly is usually credited with the discover of oxygen - what he called dephlogisticated air.  In his study of gases, he also discovered nitric oxide (nitrous air), hydrochloric acid (vapor of the spirit of salt), ammonia (alkaline air), and nitrous oxide (diminished air).  Priestley also wrote The History and Present State of Electricity, the authoritative text that was widely used for over hundred years.  In this text is the first demonstration of the inverse square nature of the electrostatic force and a detailed description of Benjamin Franklin's kite experiment.
In 1761, Priestley moved to Warrington, not far from Liverpool and Manchester.  He became a tutor at an academy where Barbauld's father also taught.  She became good friends with Priestley and his wife.  
Now to the poetry.


An Inventory of the Furniture in Dr. Priestley's Study

A map of every country known, 
With not a foot of land his own. 
A list of folks that kicked a dust 
On this poor globe, from Ptol. the First; 
He hopes,–indeed it is but fair,– 
Some day to get a corner there. 
A group of all the British kings, 
Fair emblem! on a packthread swings. 
The Fathers, ranged in goodly row, 
A decent, venerable show, 
Writ a great while ago, they tell us, 
And many an inch o'ertop their fellows. 
A Juvenal to hunt for mottos; 
And Ovid's tales of nymphs and grottos. 
The meek-robed lawyers, all in white; 
Pure as the lamb,–at least, to sight. 
A shelf of bottles, jar and phial, 
By which the rogues he can defy all,– 
All filled with lightning keen and genuine, 
And many a little imp he'll pen you in; 
Which, like Le Sage's sprite, let out, 
Among the neighbors makes a rout; 
Brings down the lightning on their houses, 
And kills their geese, and frights their spouses. 
A rare thermometer, by which 
He settles, to the nicest pitch, 
The just degrees of heat, to raise 
Sermons, or politics, or plays. 
Papers and books, a strange mixed olio, 
From shilling touch to pompous folio; 
Answer, remark, reply, rejoinder, 
Fresh from the mint, all stamped and coined here; 
Like new-made glass, set by to cool, 
Before it bears the workman's tool. 
A blotted proof-sheet, wet from Bowling. 
–"How can a man his anger hold in?"– 
Forgotten rimes, and college themes, 
Worm-eaten plans, and embryo schemes;– 
A mass of heterogenous matter, 
A chaos dark, nor land nor water;– 
New books, like new-born infants, stand, 
Waiting the printer's clothing hand;– 
Others, a motley ragged brood, 
Their limbs unfashioned all, and rude, 
Like Cadmus' half-formed men appear; 
One rears a helm, one lifts a spear, 
And feet were lopped and fingers torn 
Before their fellow limbs were born; 
A leg began to kick and sprawl 
Before the head was seen at all, 
Which quiet as a mushroom lay 
Till crumbling hillocks gave it way; 
And all, like controversial writing, 
Were born with teeth, and sprung up fighting.
"But what is this," I hear you cry, 
"Which saucily provokes my eye?"– 
A thing unknown, without a name, 
Born of the air, and doomed to flame.

Stripper Physicist

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Columbia University requires all undergraduates to complete a set of courses "considered the necessary general education for students, irrespective of their choice in major." One of those courses is Frontiers of Science.

The course is designed both to introduce students to exciting ideas at the forefront of scientific research, as well as to inculcate in them the habits of mind common to a scientific approach to the world. Each semester, four scientists in different disciplines deliver a series of three lectures each describing the background, context, and current state of an area of research; readings and other activities supplement the lectures. Consistent with the Core tradition, the course also includes small seminar sections in which these topics are discussed by students.

Professor of Physics Emryn Hughes took a rather unusual approach to introduce freshmen to the concepts of quantum mechanics.  He stripped down, changed clothes, lay on the floor all while a strange video played on the screen with the audio being Lil Wayne's Drop It Like It's Hot.  Then some ninjas showed up and stabbed some puppets.
Here's the link to the Vimeo video uploaded by Bwog.
While this is an approach I would never take and for as strange as it is, his explanation at the end of the video makes some sense.

To understand quantum mechanics, you have to undress everything, start new, and forget all the bad stuff.

Winter 2013 Snapshot of Expected Future S&P 500 Earnings

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Starting last year, we began taking snapshots of Standard & Poor's forecasts for where the S&P 500's trailing twelve month earnings per share would be in the future at approximately three-month intervals. Our chart below illustrates how the expected future has changed over time:

Since our last snapshot in November 2012, we find that the earnings for the S&P 500 in the last two quarters of 2012 and the first two quarters of 2013 are now expected to be recorded at levels below where they had been expected three months ago.

But not all is gloomy, as S&P is now projecting a slight increase over previous expectations for earnings in the third and fourth quarters of 2013.

Still, perhaps the most important take-away from our chart though is how different the earnings expected for 2012 (shown as our snapshot of expected future earnings on 17 January 2012) are from where the level at which they are being finalized (shown as our 15 February 2013 snapshot). Going by the S&P 500's estimated total market capitalization of $9.8 trillion in March 2012, the fall in expected earnings for 2012 from January of that year to the present means that over $80 billion worth of earnings expected in 2012 failed to materialize during the year.

We just wonder if today's snapshot of the expectations for earnings in 2013 is as off-target!

Previously on Political Calculations

The previous snapshots we've taken of the way the future looked to investors for the S&P 500 at different points of time are presented in reverse chronological order below:

• Winter 2013 Snapshot of Expected Future S&P 500 Earnings
• Fall 2012 Snapshot of Expected Future S&P 500 Earnings
• Summer 2012 Snapshot of Expected Future S&P 500 Earnings
• The Spring 2012 Snapshot of Expected S&P 500 Earnings
• The Changing Futures for S&P 500 Earnings
• How Good Are Earnings Forecasts?

References

Silverblatt, Howard. S&P Indices Market Attribute Series. S&P 500 Monthly Performance Data. S&P 500 Earnings and Estimate Report. [Excel Spreadsheet]. Last Updated 14 February 2013. Accessed 15 February 2013.

An Elephant and Three Blindfolded Wise Men

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Let's start today's post about where stock prices are headed by retelling an old Indian fable:

Three wise men were blindfolded and led one at a time into a room where an elephant stood. Each was asked to discern what was in the room without removing his blindfold. The first, upon touching the elephant's trunk, concluded a "snake" was in the room. The second, upon contacting a leg, concluded a "tree" was in the room. The third, upon grasping the tail, concluded a "rope" was in the room. All were surprised to discover the elephant once their blindfolds were removed.

We thought it might be fun to illustrate just what the modern equivalent of those three wise men "see" as they attempt to describe what's going on in the stock market with the charts that we've developed over the last several years to analyze stock prices, as described in a recent article from the Reuters news agency.

Odds of a pullback are increasing, with the market in slightly overbought territory, said Bruce Zaro, chief technical strategist at Delta Global Asset Management in Boston.

"I do suspect the closing of the earnings season will lead to at least a pause and possibly a pullback," Zaro said. The S&P 500 could shave 3 to 5 percent between now and early April, he said.

It would seem that Bruce Zaro is a blindfolded wise man who feels the market's potential for mean reversion, such as might happen if volatility in stock prices could be described by statistically normal distribution that might be observed in something that looks like a control chart:

Here, having the most recent data be below the mean trend would suggest a rising market as stocks would be "underbought", while being above the mean trend would suggest that stock prices are "overbought" and are increasingly likely to either stall out or fall in the future.

In this chart, which picks up the major trend that has existed in the U.S. stock market since the QE 2.0 bubble popped in late July 2011, we see that stock prices are in what Bruce Zaro describes as "slightly overbought territory". The 3-5% "shave" he predicts by the end of March would represent a little over a one-standard deviation decline in stock prices, which would be a move from the central black trend line to the light-gray dashed line immediately below it.

Next, let's see what another blindfolded wise man discerns as he examines the stock market:

At the same time, other analysts say, the market has not shown significant signs of slowing, including a break below 15- and 30-day moving averages.

Such moves would be needed to show that momentum is slowing or that the market is at risk of a correction, said Todd Salamone, director of research for Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati, Ohio. The S&P 500's 14-day moving average is at 1,511 while the 30-day is at 1,494. The index closed Friday at 1,519.

Todd Salamone is what we would describe as a "momentum" guy. Unlike a practitioner of momentum trading, which is really a kind of crowd-following/crowd-anticipating investment strategy, Salamone believes in the physical force of inertia, which is a way of saying that once stock prices get onto a particular trajectory, they'll stay on it!

All you have to do to see that prediction on our chart above is to draw an imaginary line from a point at the bottom of the most recent short-term trend up through the most recent data point for stock prices. And then on out as far as you dare dream. Kind of like Chuck Prince's dance party investment strategy, because what can possibly go wrong so long as you don't see stock prices suddenly dip below the moving line average shown on the chart?...

Let's get one last take on the current state of the stock market from the Reuters article:

The S&P 500 has been trading near five-year highs, and it notched its highest level since November 2007 this week. But the gains have pushed the benchmark index almost as far as it is likely to go in the near term, with strong resistance hovering around 1,525 and 1,540, one analyst said.

As a result, the index is set to move sideways, said Dave Chojnacki, market technician at Street One Financial in Huntington Valley, Pennsylvania. "We just don't have the volume or the catalyst right now" to go above those levels, he said.

Dave Chojnacki is described as a market technician, which means he is a practitioner of technical analysis. Here's how Investopedia explains that black art:

Technical analysts believe that the historical performance of stocks and markets are indications of future performance.

In a shopping mall, a fundamental analyst would go to each store, study the product that was being sold, and then decide whether to buy it or not. By contrast, a technical analyst would sit on a bench in the mall and watch people go into the stores. Disregarding the intrinsic value of the products in the store, the technical analyst's decision would be based on the patterns or activity of people going into each store.

In essence, what he is saying as he senses the stock market today is that because investors have never gone shopping for stocks much above the 1,525 and 1,540 level for the S&P 500 before, they're resistant to go shop for them above that level now.

But then, he goes on to say something actually interesting - he loosely perceives that some sort of physics might be involved, as he doesn't find any forces that might drive stock prices higher as he surveys the market's current environment.

The two comments together would seem to describe how stock prices might behave given the lack of upward room to move that is indicated by the current changes in the growth rates of stock prices and dividends per share driving them as the gap between them narrows in our chart below, if only the analyst knew of the relationship between the two!:

The only perspective that's missing from the Reuters article is the consideration of a steep decline for stock prices once we get past the near term. We guess they couldn't find a fourth wise man to blindfold before going to press....