Oct

30

There are a number of free internet radio stations, and in honor of the pending savage bear market rally, here is a good site.

I like the Bartok station from Hungary, and of course Zappateers which is on now (that man died too young).

But since this is a trading list, certainly you have read, "Trader know thyself". Which I think means that when you are intimately involved with the market it is difficult to disentangle your interpretations from unbiased signals, because you kind of merge with it. As if it is about you.

Last week while sitting in the kitchen with a mug of Costco coffee (Jose brand), a hapless bird struck the nearby bay window with a loud thud. I went out and found that she had banked off the glass into a waste bin; not dead but disoriented and bleeding. I picked her up –it looked like she could make it, so I set her on the lawn to recuperate.

Half hour later she had flown; but suspecting not far, I put out some bread crumbs and filled the bird-bath. Almost immediately she flitted from a tree into the bath, sipped it, and looked at me in appreciation. It felt good to bridge across inter-species bigotries (I eat her cousins), and being recognized by her felt like how Adam must have before he got poisoned.

When we came back later that night she was perched incautiously on our porch looking quizzically at her savior, and it was hard to resist thoughts of Cult Cargo Science and that she might now worship me.

The next morning I found her dead there. Clinically, probably internal bleeding, shock, and cardiac arrest. But at least someone was nice to her in her last day.

The next day I saw another bird like her; a kind of "tit".

If you read the description, when you have seen one tit, you have seen them all (which in all species never derails the inquisition). And over the next few days I noticed there were many, and it occurred to me that the bird which hit the window may not have been the one who came to the bath. And it also may not have been the one that was stooped on the patio, and maybe even a different one had died. Maybe this "one bird" was all a self-constructed story, originating at the center of the universe, like the one running in every one of us.

All of which perhaps argues for another conservation law: The more you strive to know yourself, the more self-obsessed you become, and the less accurately you can visualize your unique irrelevance.


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2 Comments so far

  1. Nelson Rangel on November 1, 2008 11:25 pm

    What a great piece, what a pleasure to read … loved it

  2. Jeff Watson on November 2, 2008 7:46 pm

    Kim,
    Thanks for the info on Zappateers, and yesterday I got my fix of Zappa for the day. I’ve been listening to Shoutcast all day long today, and find it to be a great toy. It makes me want to create my own station, and from the looks of it, it seems pretty easy to do. Of course, my eclectic music tastes would probably only find an audience of 1 or 2 at most. I wonder if an internet station with dialogue about speculation would attract an audience.

    Jeff

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