How the Stock Market Works

Great parable for investors in stock market.....or for people following any short-term panic. (Sent by friend at church)

It was autumn, and the Red Indians asked their New Chief if the winter
was going to be cold or mild. Since he was a Red Indian chief in a
modern society, he couldn't tell what the weather was going to be.

Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he replied to his Tribe that the
winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village
should collect wood to be prepared.

But also being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea.
He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and
asked 'Is the coming winter going to be cold?'

'It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold indeed,' the
weather man Responded.

So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even
more wood. A week later, he called the National Weather Service again.
'Is it going to be a very cold winter?'

'Yes,' the man at National Weather Service again replied, 'It's
definitely going to be a very cold winter.'

The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect
every scrap of wood they could find. Two weeks later, he called the
National Weather Service again. 'Are you absolutely sure that the
winter is going to be very cold?'

'Absolutely,' The Man replied. 'It's going to be one of the coldest
winters ever.'

'How can you be so sure?' the Chief asked.

The weatherman replied, 'The Red Indians are collecting wood like
crazy.'

This is how Stock Markets work.

Speaking in Tongues

One of the fascinating aspects of my visit to Scotland last June was the reminder that English is not the only British language. The extraordinary little resort of "Tongue" on the far north coast was originally the Gaelic Tonga. The language is still spoken by over 60,000 people on the Scottish mainland and islands, where geographical isolation has helped to ward off the all-conquering English dominance. This was the depressing statistic cited in a recent "Scotland on Sunday" article, where specialists fretted that this "60,000" was the figure below which its long-time survival was unlikely. "Scotland on Sunday" pays lip service by having about a quarter of a page each week devoted to an article in Scots Gaelic. But it is otherwise as marginal a presence in the Scottish media as it is in the population.

The occasion for this gloom was the very expensive launch of a BBC channel dedicated to the Scottish Gaelic language (not to be confused with the Irish Gaelic, which Irish friends assure me is as different from its Scottish relation as German is from English). I wondered if this pessimism was justified. Minority languages hang on in the most unlikely and surprising corners of the world.

The example which surprised me most was the various dialects of Sorbian, a Slavic language spoken by small communities in Eastern Germany. Despite being immersed in the German speaking majority for centuries and persecuted or ignored under Nazi and Communist regimes, they have preserved their language and culture. Estimates of the number of Sorbian speakers vary from 45,000 to 60,000, close to that of Scottish Gaelic speakers. This seems to be a magic survival number, at least for the rational computerised models which predict the number of speakers, and the extinction of the Sorbian language at some point in the 21st century has been similarly forecast . But I would not bet on it.

If you drive in the west of England and scan the radio waves, you may find an unusual text appearing on the radio display: "BBC CYMRU". Yes, you have hit the BBC Welsh channel, which caters for a much larger number of speakers than its Scottish counterpart. Cross the Severn Bridge into Wales and bilingual signs appear by the roadside. Go deep into Wales and you actually hear people speaking Welsh in the street.

You are very unlikely to hear it in the capital city of Cardiff, where Welshness is flaunted mainly by sticking a dragon on everything from the sides of buses to the postage stamps. But go to the wild and beautiful north and you hear young men out on their lunch break in small town centres in animated discussion in their native tongue (most likely of Rugby results). With 600,000 speakers, its survival looks mor assured than that of Scottish Gaelic.

I stopped at a farmhouse in North Wales for the night during a brief holiday in 1991 and my charming hostess served me tea and biscuits (cookies). The phone rang and she immediately switched to high speed Welsh talking to a friend. She took me upstairs to the bedroom, which was obviously the children's bedroom on other occasions. The brightly coloured spelling chart on the wall did not show "A for Apple" and "B for Bird". The Roman alphabet was taught using Welsh words.

In the 1970s I worked with a colleague whose second language was English. He had spoken only Welsh up to the age of seven. But then he was of an older generation, immediately before the all-conquering power of video and TVs in every child's bedroom showing multiple TV channels. The seductive attraction of this beautiful language was vividly illustrated in the recent film "The Edge of Love" about two of the women in the crowded love life of the poet Dylan Thomas. In one very telling scene Thomas and Vera, one of his old flames, sing a song in Welsh in front of her English husband. The bond of a common childhood language is something which the husband cannot share.

Many Welsh schools provide education in Welsh as well as English and universities still offer first and higher degrees. A friend has recently achieved first class honours in Welsh studies at Aberyswyth University.

Also there is official endorsement for Civil Service puposes. If you write to a Government department in Welsh, your letter should be answered in Welsh. After all, it is a much more ancient language than English. For a few years in the late 1980s and early 1990s I maintained the Department of Social Security's collection of standard letters - about 2,500 WordPerfect files covering all the major benefits - sickness, incapacity, widows pension, etc. One initiative which was proposed was to duplicate all these letters in Welsh. Two major problems were immediately obvious. One was finding enough skilled translators to turn all these documents into legally accurate Welsh. The second was how to shoehorn these extra 2,500 files onto the ancient PCs in local offices around the country. Even with the help of data compression software, their tiny hard drives were already bursting at the seams. Fortunately I moved on to other tasks and dumped my paperwork with my successor before we reached that impasse.

The Welsh, Scottish, Irish and Sorbian languages are all recipients of substantial amounts of public funds to assist their survival. There is good reason to doubt the effectiveness of public subsidy in the face of the overwhelming English linguistic imperialism. When even major European languages such as German and French are challenged on their home ground, it would be amazing if marginalised language groups could hold their own. One scathing Irish commentator described the results in the "Gaeltacht", the Gaelic-speaking western fringe of the Irish Republic, "We are spending millions to subsidise a Gaeltacht of rural slums where the everyday language is English, employment is unobtainable and a once proudly independent people have been corrupted into relying on public handouts". That was written well before the "Celtic tiger" revolution in the Irish economy transformed the prospects of people in the poverty-stricken west. But this financial transformation has had other utterly unpredicted results; the minority language you are most likely to hear in the west of Ireland these days is Polish. The regional centre of Limerick was grimly portrayed in "Angela's Ashes" as a place that dynamic young people of the 1940s and 50s were desperate to escape at any price - to England, Australia, America, wherever. Now it is invaded by dynamic young Poles to the extent that Polish shops, restaurants, banks and a medical centre have sprung up.

We are prepared to spend huge sums to conserve ancient buildings and works of art. A language embodies the essence of a living culture. Imagine if English disappeared as a living language and all the works of English literature could be appreciated only in translations and by a few eccentric academics studying dusty texts. It seems equally necessary to keep languages alive as to keep threatened species of animals in being; to have a living population of speakers rather than a mass of neglected textbooks and forgotten classics in the corner of a library.

At least one neglected language needs no public subsidy to keep it alive. At St William of York I go to the 900am Mass on Sunday. We cannot linger too long afterwards for coffee and conversation. The cups have to be washed and stored away because the Latin Mass Society (LMS) have arrived for their Mass at 1100am. A whole new wooden platform is quickly assembled in the sanctuary, so that the post-Vatican altar for Mass facing the people can be used for Mass where the celebrant has his back to the congregation. A sizable congregation turns up, some from as far as 20 miles away. Minivans carrying large families crowd the car park; even the parents are clearly too young to remember the Latin Mass as it was said up to the 1960s. You can hear the traditional Latin Mass in many parts of the country, but the next nearest venues would most likely be in Oxford 30 miles to the north or London 40 miles to the east.

I say "hear" the Mass because for most of the service the congregation is silent and the priest alone recites the prayers. I have been to a couple of these Latin Masses and they are a striking reminder of what a recent innovation the dialogue Mass is. It is a 1950s innovation. For 19 centuries Mass was recited as the LMS arrange it today.

It is also a reminder of how recently the Church was so powerfully united by one language. Wherever you went in the world, it was as if the curse of Babel had been temporarily suspended, for at least one sacred hour. We could all share the same words without a translator. Like the first Pentecost, people from all over the known world could hear about the marvels of God, simultaneously, albeit not in their native languages.

Go to Lourdes or some other major international religious site nowadays and you get a taste of linguistic bedlam. As if the major services at Lourdes were not long enough, you get some sections recited 4 or 5 times in French, English, Italian, Spanish and German - plus extra repeats if the Poles or Flemish-speaking Belgians (as opposed to French-speaking Belgians) are in town..... 50 years ago it was one united service which everyone could share spontaneously. It is a reminder of the tensions between the advantages of linguistic unity and preserving precious jewels from the margins of human genius.

Human Perfection and Imperfection

[This post by Stan. Bill sent me the article below, and here are my comments on it.]

Click HERE for the full article by Amy Becker about her reflections on her Down syndrome child Penny, pictured at the right with her husband Peter. The title link will take you to FIRST THINGS' website. (More links to her stuff below.)

The article begins below, but I encourage you to read it to the end and try to fully understand Amy's take on what it means to be perfect and imperfect, especially as we automatically apply the concepts to babies, but also to ourselves.

"What shall it gain a man if he should gain the whole world but loose his soul?" (Jesus' words from somewhere in the Gospels.)

At first glance this article looks like it might be an argument against abortion when the child has Down syndrome, and indeed it is that. (cf. Sarah Palin and the fear people have of her because she sees perfection in babies at a different level than most. Her insight into this is supernatural and transcendent...a valuable asset for a world leader.)

But the article is more significant than just an argument against abortion. As Becker explains there is an extra chromosome that gave Penny the disease (something extra that apparently "distorts" physical perfection). Becker inmplies, but never says it, that there is a more serious affect of adding extra "chromosones" -- to our lives and culture. Such "extras" have a more serious impact on our spiritual perfection before God. Penny's chromosome "problem" is small compared to what we do otherwise to our "spiritual" chromosomes.

But her point is actually better than that.

She writes, "humanity includes limitations and dependence on one another." But what she is really saying is that humanity is not defined by culture's view of physical "perfection" but by God's view which NECESARILY includes limitations and dependence. That is "humanity is DEFINED as something that includes 'limitations' and 'dependence.'" To be truly human is to be dependent on others and God. If we believe we are independent we buy into Satan's lie that we can be like God. Humanity IN ITS PERFECTION requires, demands, begs, screams for limitations and dependence. IN THOSE THINGS we are made PERFECT (James 1).

She writes, "when we conceive of healing simply as miraculous cures for abnormal states of being—blindness, deafness, cognitive delays—we miss the point." Indeed! Some years back I began to look at all the aged and mentally dependent senior citiziens I was meeting in several churches that ministed to such folk. It occured to me that one of their purposes in life was to teach us abled body, and mentally "capable" people to CARE for them. By their "disabilities" they were teaching us to love, to be charitable, to give of our time and resoruces, to be like Christ. Just as we can never pay back Christ for all he's done for us, so these aged and mentally dependent people I was meeting could never pay back their caregivers. But that was the point. When society sees them as "disabled" or "not living fully" or as "unnecessary" we should be seehing them as just the opposite, if we have any interest in seeing heaven and God. Humanity was designed as a DEPENDENT DISABLED specese for a reason... so we could accept God's love, and share it with others.

Indeed, Penny, in the ways that matter most (eternal values) is more perfect with her Downs than many others. Pray for us Penny. (More pictures of Penny at link below.)

BABIES PERFECT AND IMPERFECT
by Amy Julia Becker

Copyright (c) 2008 First Things (November 2008).

Our daughter was born at 5:22 p.m. on December 30, 2005. Two hours later, a nurse called my husband out of the room. When he returned, he took my hand and said, “They think Penny has Down syndrome.” As this news began to make its way into my consciousness, we heard shouts from the room next door. Another child had been born. “She’s perfect!” someone exclaimed about that other baby. “She’s perfect!”

Amy's website, with more pictures and her other writing is HERE. She's working on a Masters in Divinity at Princeton, and has a book coming out. Her blog is THIN PLACES. Thanks to my bogging-pal Bill Murphy for sending this. This is also posted on my blog at CROSSING NINEVEH.

British View of U.S. Events

Dear Stan,

Here is Melanie Phillips' typically cogent view of the US election fray: (I'm going to post this on my own site, Bill. Her summary is very cogent and to the point.) See HERE.

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=618

Further to the financial meltdown: the headlines in one paper yesterday described our boss Sir Fred Goodwin, chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, as falling on his sword. Falling on several sackfulls of money, more like. He has quit his job after RBS was forced to accept a £20 billion ($35 billion) bailout from the Government (i.e. the ever-luckless taxpayer), but will be consoled by a £580,000 ($1 million) a year pension. Also it's nice to see that someone's doing well out of the Lehmann Brothers debacle....the lawyers of course. It will cost $350 million in legal fees to sort out the mess. At $950 an hour, some lawyers are going to have a very Merry Christmas.

I loved the explanation of one American legal firm whose hourly rates were at the top of the table for US lawyers. Their rates were inflated because they had two partners in London who were billing at British rates. With the currency conversion rates at the time, they outstripped the most expensive US lawyers. Of course Shakespeare said it all in Henry VI: "The first thing we do is kill all the lawyers..."

The Finaical Crisis in the UK

Dear Stan,

Thanks for the news. The financial disasters are heavily dramatised in the media, as you might expect, though the wise have been warning about the unsustainability of our housing-price boom for years. The bail-out proposed for the big 4 British banks, including the royal Bank of Scotland where I work, is £500 billion ($850 billion). This is more than the fortune proposed for the US economy with 5 times the population, but the figures are so insanely huge it is like talking about the distance to the "nearest" galaxy - still beyond human understanding.

Most unbelievable of all is the heavy British involvement in Icelandic banks - around $7 billion invested in the Icelandic banks by all sorts of British institutions, due to the favourable interest rates offered. Major charities, hospital trusts, local councils.... I didn't know the SOBs had so much of our cash to invest. I bet some of them have an extra hard time fund raising once the dust has settled. One cautious council which did not take the Icelandic bait said that they thought the offers were "too good to be true". Spot on. I sometimes think that our more rabid political bloggers are far too vicious, cruel and foul-mouthed about our politicians. Then something like this happens and you realise that they are too kind and tolerant about them.

The "Daily Mash" had merciless fun at some of the investors in Icelandic banks, quoting one appalled "financial expert": "I thought Iceland was a huge economy next door to Belgium. Now, after checking the internet, I realise it is a stinking volcano in the Arctic inhabited by 3 weirdo singers and six fishermen....no one warned me." Slight exaggeration, but its total population is about that of Reading. Given the amount they owe British investors, we probably own the whole country lock stock and barrel.

The weird thing about being at the centre of this storm is how little everyday life is affected. At the bank, there has been frantic business as customers spread their funds between multiple banks - the Government is guaranteeing up to £50K per person per bank. But even that has not been as manic as you might expect. Given that the Government has taken huge numbers of preferential shares in all 4 big banks to prop them up, we have had no clear guidance as to whether our status has changed - are we all going to be civil servants now?

Thanks for the news about your changing parishes (our liberal priest got to me - sw.) Part of the problem with Reading is that we are part of an extremely liberal diocese (Portsmouth), so the rot afflicts all parishes to a certain extent. I have not done the obvious thing and crossed to a parish on the north bank of the river - the Thames marks the boundary with Birmingham diocese.

Abortion and Families

Dear Stan,

As a follow up to earlier posts:

Here is a typically superb article from Theodore Dalrymple in "City Journal", looking at the state of childcare in Britain. Part of it heavily overlaps with one of my earlier posts. Of course, his experiences as a prison doctor and a doctor in a grim inner city area of Birmingham colours his outlook, but you cannot accuse him of dishonesty. The state of physical neglect, emotional abuse and spiritual vacuity inflicted on helpless children by grossly inadequate or depraved parents beggars belief. The ultimate consequences can be seen in prisons where the dedicated workers find themselves helping prisoners who have no concept of family life and have never sat at a table for a meal.

Of course, many children suffer in a way which is not quite bad enough to force decisive action by social services and/or the police, whereby they are taken into care or subject to supervision orders. One of my friends works as a teaching assistant in a school on the west side of Reading. This school is by no means the lowest of the circles of Hell in British education, but in a "remedial class" she tries to teach 12 and 13 year old students who do not know left from right or simple concepts such as North and South. One of the pupils is visibly filthy with ingrained dirt in his skin. As children are notoriously merciless to any child who is slightly odd or different, you can imagine what his school life is like. Another teacher friend recalled how she used to wash a little girl as part of the weekly swimming lessons at school. Each week she took a fresh sponge because, after a thorough scrubbing down in the shower, the sponge was black. The poor child confessed how lovely it was to feel clean.

Of course, there have always been inadequate parents. And in the past children from otherwise good homes suffered terrible deprivation due to desperate economic conditions. But now that we have standards of living beyond the dreams of people 100 years ago, we still have large numbers of deprived and neglected children. A significant part of the problem, as Dalrymple clearly describes, is the attitudes of people in positions of authority. Plainly the lunatics have taken over the asylum when esteemed commentators regard grossly disordered families as a valid lifestyle choice. No one should criticise such choices and everyone, including the cruelly "judgemental", should be forced to subsidise them.

http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_3_otbie-british_children.html

Of course, such "commentators" in the pages of the Guardian or Observer would regard incompetent parents as blameworthy only insofar as they had failed to use contraception or abortion to prevent the birth of children who they couldn't look after. Further to my recent posts on medical experiments, I remember the autobiography of A J Cronin, another of the distinguished company of doctor/authors, along with Dalrymple and Chekhov. Cronin wrote the "The Citadel", which was made into the 1938 classic starring Robert Donat. Robert Donat's dedicated doctor loses his way and by implication his soul when he moves to the big city and starts making truckloads of money treating the wealthy. Cronin was also the author of "Doctor Finlay", a huge favourite of my 1960s childhood when it was a long running BBC serial. It portrayed the lives of two Scottish doctors in a small Scottish town in the 1920s. Cronin recalled as a matter of undisputed fact how any doctor performing abortions was an utter outcast and pariah, a lost soul. Cronin was Catholic, but he was clearly describing the matter-of-fact professional assumption of his generation of doctors. How things have changed. Now movies get made about experimenters who conducted sexual abuse of little children (like Alfred Kinsey).