The Dark Wraith Forums

Not having used a ####ing BBS before, to my ####ing knowledge, this will be ####ing interesting.

The font selections for the messages are quite entertaining, too.

Good evening, Old White Lady.

Yes, there are so many features available that it's hard not to go overboard. A few of those things I could have done here on the blog, but Weblog architecture creates some limits that other Website architectures don't. It's sort of a trade-off, one that I've tried to overcome here on The Dark Wraith Forums, but with only very limited success. The message board is definitely not a substitute for the blog, but it does offer a nice extra forum in this Website complex I'm creating.

Now, I just hope people will use it... but not forget to come here, too. That just means people will have to devote less time to going to other blogs, I suppose.


The Dark Wraith moves to monopolize the Blogosphere.

Very nice. I registered, DW.

Hey Dark Wraith.

Hey oldwhitelady,

So, is anything going on around here? Looks kind of quiet...

Trailertrash, Yippee! it's a joy to see you - . It's been quiet and kind of spooky, what with the doors and windows slamming and
making noise as the dusty wind blows them around. There are even tumbleweeds rolling down the street... Dark Wraith apparently stopped by when I was getting hot chocolate... I never saw him.

Meee meow mew, we're here, too. But, you know, the five of us can have a good time over at our OWN blog.

Six of us, Yeah, let's go. OH OH, someone needs to tell fecalleukocyte we're going. She's over at the Wraith's new
bulletin board. Trolling or something. She's been bragging that she's a Dark Wraith Apprentice *snicker*
It could be difficult to pull her away.

We'll do it. She loves to play with us. Purr Meow Meow.. The minute she see's us at the door, she'll come flying
out like a scalded cat with one life left. Purr...

Of course, we didn't see Pam. She was very quiet while we were discussing this whole situation amongst ourselves.

We're Sorry, Pam...

We're Sorry Dark Wraith... for filling your comment section up with filler:)

This thread has definitely taken a turn for the weird.



The Dark Wraith is very proud of this blog.

And by the way, someone needs to try a serious obscenity over on the message board, just to see if the censoring system is really working.


The Dark Wraith has a funny feeling...

This post has been removed by the author.

By the way, Dark Wraith,
For the record, we think "Dark Wraith Apprentice" is quite nice. We were being catty at you-know-who.

Hey, TrailerTrash, I hope you're going to be doing a little posting over on the message board from time to time. The idea is to get a nice cross section of personalities and styles of writing and thinking over there. That's something that's a little harder to do in comments; and sometimes it's even hard to do on a blog.

Maybe we can even get Old White Lady every now and then to put up on the message board one of those pictures she takes.

Then again, considering that SB Gyspy put up on her own blog a picture of a Spam recipe she's cooked, I might have to insist that food pictures must come with instructions on where to order home delivery of the real thing.


The Dark Wraith gets a little too worked up around pictures of food, y'know.

Then you'll enjoy this. Edible Meat Can be Grown in a Lab

Good morning, Mr. Goat.

PoliShifter, over at Revolutionary Paradigm, had a story about this a couple of days ago.

I have a story about it, too. When I was a business consultant, I ran into some really interesting and strange little start-up companies that were trying to raise capital to get their business plans underway. I could write a book about what I saw, but no one would believe some of the stories, so I'd have to designate it "fiction," which wouldn't be accurate. Anyway, one of the stories I have is about a company that was being started by a couple of bio-tech specialists who claimed that they were working on a way to grow animal muscles in a lab. They were talking about huge things: the "scaffolds" on which the muscles would grow were almost three meters tall. They planned to use these scaffolds as the frames along which enormous cow muscles would develop while bathed in a nutrient solution. Once matured, the muscles could be harvested and used to produce a variety of "beef" products, almost like regular cow meat. They knew very little about what the muscles would be like on a large scale: would the meat be tough? would it be red? how could it be cut up to look like different cuts of meat? was it even a sure thing that it would be edible? They were really impatient with many of my questions, especially the one about edibility.

I went into their lab, which was a converted little warehouse, and I saw what they claimed were very small-scale versions of the technology: tiny, inch-high scaffolds on which something seemed to be growing along the mesh; but I wouldn't have known one way or the other if this was really cow muscle cellular activity. (In my time as a consultant, I had more than a few "entrepreneurs" create wholly believable, but completely phony, demonstration prototypes of technologies.)

The funny part of that story is that just about no one believed me when I tried a few initial inquiries to guage investment interest. Of course, now that it's in the news, I suppose people would believe me. Unfortunately, it's too late to get in on the ground floor of what was, apparently, a legitimate technology.


The Dark Wraith has a whole lot of stories that people still wouldn't believe... but soon will (much to their dismay in some cases).

Unfortunately, it's too late to get in on the ground floor of what was, apparently, a legitimate technology.

Ignore the technology; focus on the application and packaging (and along the way trademark the name Kow or Chickin or some such marketing name). Patent a method for allowing the soon to be meat to survive inside a sealed can (as dormant cells and nutrients) that only starts growing when triggered by the user.

Just think of the applications of a potential food source that weighs only slightly more than its packaging. When I read the headlines in a few years about how Dark Wraith Industries made the first Mars base feasible because of the development of Kow in a Kan, I will come knocking on your door to collect my royalties.

YOU, Mr. Goat, sent a chill up my spine with that message: just about every one of those small consulting gigs I did had sessions like that, where the inventors would start doing this wild, forward-looking stuff about where the technology could lead.

Some of it was so science-fiction sounding, but it was all so possible in some cases. That's what made it kind of difficult when I had to throw water on such brain-storming festivals by going into the lecture about how, "If I actually do manage to find some suckers... er, investors for this deal, you need to keep away from talking about the science fiction stuff."

Usually, they'd listen to me about that... except when they didn't.

Gawd.



Even to this day, the Dark Wraith cringes.

... drip.... drip... drip... it sure is quiet over here. I can hear a leaky faucet. Or can that be... Rain from Dennis?
It's sad, but here in MO, we're hoping for a little rain. I'm afraid if any of the cats got out, I would never find them. They would fall into the earth's cracks and disappear.

I saw this on a random DKos diary and it has some Econ stuff about the stock market and liquidity available for stocks just before terror attacks. I didn't know quite what to make of it so I wanted to ask the wise people here if this was bunk or not.

Link about Capital Liquidity I was talking about

Thanks for your thoughts...

-Gary A

The meat growing in a vat is a standard sf trope. Specifically, it is part of the GURPS setting, at TL9, I believe.

Good evening, Gary. Thanks for that link. I go over to the Cunning Realist's site from time to time, but I hadn't lately.

Below is the text of the comment I just posted in response to the article to which you provided a link. Although my comment grinds away somewhat and uses a few technical references, the gist of it should be pretty clear... or perhaps not. Anyway, here's the comment I provided over there:

-----------------------------

Good evening, Cunning Realist, from the Dark Wraith, host and administrator of The Dark Wraith Forums.

As we look at the open market operations, we must also look at the magnifier created by the money multiplier, itself: to the extent that the required reserve ratio and the demand for cash balances both increase, any action by the Fed becomes more and more mitigated. Although some might argue with me on this point, as the price of gasoline and petroleum distillates surges, the demand for real cash balances (as opposed to delivery into demand deposits) might become greater, but even if it doesn't, the velocity of money circulating through the demand deposit base in the banking system is increasing.

The Federal Reserve has forward-looking analysts in its ranks, and they need not have known about the attack, itself, to have been privy to national security information related to internal models setting probabilities on terrorist-related activities. If this is not the case, then the Fed is being denied a tool that would be critical to its effectiveness in the post-9/11 world.

There is plenty of evidence that both the United States and Great Britain were aware that the Western Hemisphere was approaching what is called a "node" in the parlance of a field of mathematics known as "crisis theory." It would be surprising if other intelligence agencies around the world had not picked up some indication through the level, quality, details, or even structure of communications traffic that something was about to happen. That the central bank would be apprized of this is not surprising in the least.

Although I personally believe that the U.S. and Great Britain knew more than they will ever admit about the bombings that were about to happen, it is not necessary to go that far to explain why the Fed was moving aggressively, if quietly, to provide forward liquidity.

Eventually, however, the economy will pay for these actions: for the better part of the Bush Administration, the Federal Reserve has accommodated the irresponsible taxation policies of the neo-conservatives by an expansionary monetary policy. The only reason that did not create inflation before now was the substantial, if artificial, strength of the American dollar that permitted much of that continuously increasing overhang to move through negative net exports into the central banks of other countries. Ultimately, though, our current account deficits must be matched by capital account surpluses, which means that the dollars have been returning here like the components of a slowly building time bomb. Now, with the return to hard-core expansionary policy that you have noted occurring in the era in which that overhang of greenbacks is beginning to appear as an uptick in the domestic aggregate price level, the combination will cause an acceleration of inflation that will appear to many analysts—in particular, to the neo-cons who thought they actually did get something for nothing—as a wholly unexpected, economy-wide price shock.

Commodities prices are merely the leader in what is to come; and it remains to be seen which way the Fed will go: on the one hand, if it has some semblance of intestinal fortitude, it will to turn off the greenback printing press and resume contractionary monetary policy, thereby precipitating severe recession; on the other hand, if it prefers to continue its enabling relationship with the neo-conservative radicals who pretend they're actually Republicans, it plow ahead and monetize the coming waves of price shock, thereby ultimately setting off spiraling inflation expectations, which will ultimately be impounded in the yields on financial instruments, thereby precipitating an even more severe recession down the road.

My bet is that the Fed will inflate the economy, then allow it to collapse in the aftermath of the 2008 Presidential election, and then allow the Democrat elected at that time to bear the brunt of the responsibility for the crisis.

That's my bet, anyway.


The Dark Wraith has spoken.

---------------------------


Well, that should be enough to put people to sleep for a while... and probably weird some people out over there who aren't used to the troubling, third-person references.


Lord knows, the Dark Wraith does his best.

Good evening, Phoenician.

Yeah, I know. There were more than a few consulting gigs where I had this feeling that, either reality was being led by fiction, or I was hearing a scam that was based on someone's reading of an old science fiction novel.

In at least some of the cases, the technology was at least partially legitimate, and that's what's so funny about our time: we're seeing more and more of those old science fiction lunacies becoming the bases for directions of real technologies now. That's why it might be a good idea to go back through some of the old sci-fi just to see what's going to happen within our lifetimes.

As for me, I'm going to see how many of my old Ray Bradbury short story collections I still have.


The Dark Wraith read all of the great science fiction writers of his day.

There's nothing new about that, DW. I can't imagine Werner Von Braun was wholly unaware of Journey from the Earth to the Moon, or that the folks who created submarines weren't aware of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Science fiction has always been a driving force among the engineering geeks - once the first bits of relevant basic science showed them how to create the relevant technology.

- oddjob

BTW, I don't understand all the technical terms (or even half of them, really), but I do follow the gist of you Cunning Realist comment, and no, I don't find it boring. I've lived through too many times of severe economic setbacks not to pay attention to macroeconomic shenanigans when someone points them out to me.

- oddjob

Good morning, OddJob.

When I started this blog last December, I was rather convinced that I would be lucky if, after six months, I would see more than one or two participants. I am still convinced that it takes a special kind of person to actually be interested in this subject matter, but I have to admit that I have been quite surprised by the number of regular commenters and visitors, here.

The Cunning Realist has a strong readership base; but if I am guaging his audience correctly, those people over there are mostly pros in the business or in related fields, so it's more or less a matter of their professional bearing to be interested in macroeconomics and finance. Here at The Dark Wraith Forums, the regulars don't have to be interested in the subject matter; instead, they choose to be.


The Dark Wraith finds that rather remarkable.

"I was rather convinced that I would be lucky if, after six months, I would see more than one or two participants. I am still convinced that it takes a special kind of person to actually be interested in this subject matter..."

And then again, perhaps the way in which "this subject matter" is presented is the deciding factor.

Morning DW,

ditto what PeterofLonetree said!!!

And btw, thank you for the time you take to explain it all for those of us unable to attend your "other" classes.

It may not stick in my brain for long, and the verbage can be difficult to decipher, but that is ok. Ultimately it is up to me to try and figure it out. You are a great guide tho!!

Good morning, elf.

One of my projects underway is a series of posts here at The Dark Wraith Forums in which I'll take on very specific, narrow topics in macroeconomics and finance, one after the other, and explain them and show the particular terminology we use. I'll throw in examples every time.

I was preparing one of them last week, and it hit me that I was stalling out big time trying to clearly and completely show the concept without immediately resorting to math equations. I actually got in my old Jeep and drove to the store, thinking to myself that this was one of those bedrock principles of macroeconomics, and I'll be darned if I could think of why this principle was obvious without using equations and graphs.

Now, understand that it doesn't hurt to use math; in fact, it's absolutely necessary for getting precise measurements of what's going on out there in the "real world"; but at the same time, if all I have to make a point is a bunch of algebra, then I'm not talking about something "real," anyway.

As I was walking around in the Walmart, I kept thinking to myself that this was really stupid: usually in class, I tell real-world stories, often times making up some off-beat fictional account that involves students living alternate lives and dealing with the economic problems of the scenario in which I put them. But for this one topic, I could not recall ever doing that. It was like a hole where I just dump in a bunch of graphs and some algebra, and then hope everyone gets it.

While I was wandering around at Walmart, the story finally began to come together. In fact, I'm going to use it in the last installment of my tax reform series this weekend. Keep an eye out for the explanation of something in macroeconomics called the marginal propensity to consume.

And now, I need to think about where else in economics classes I've been running to the graphs and the math without motivating the concepts with how life, itself, works.



The Dark Wraith thinks every economist should have to write articles for a blog like this.

If economists did perhaps reading econ. texts wouldn't feel like water torture.

- oddjob

More likely, reading their blogs would be like water torture.

Actually, you're right, Wild Clover. I've been almost in pain reading some professors' econ blogs. In one case, a fellow had heard about mine and wanted me to have a look at the one he started a couple of months ago. It looked for all the world like he was posting articles that he was going to eventually compile into a traditional microeconomics textbook. In a textbook, the writing style and graphs would have been fine—pretty standard approaches to topics and very ritualistic sequencing of subjects, just the way the big academic publishers like it.

As a blog, though, it didn't work. Not even close. Mercifully, the blog disappeared after a little more than a month, but I think that had more to do with the author getting the material out of circulation and ready to submit in proposal form to a publisher. In that month, he had pounded out maybe a fourth to a third of what would constite a full book draft, and that's a phenomenal pace of textbook development as far as I'm concerned.

My bet is that the first or second publisher who gets those first couple of chapters will offer him a publishing contract.



That, however, would not happen if the Dark Wraith compiled and submitted his blog articles to an academic publisher. Not even close.

Ouch!

- oddjob