Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

A Rock and a Hard Place

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This market was custom-designed to destroy the spirit of the four stock market bears left on the entire planet. Hell, even the guys down in Gainesville have resorted to completely mealy-mouthed, anything-can-happen kind of talk, since anyone who steadfastly holds on to a bearish view is laughed at as a dullard and a fool. There is no doubt that blindly buying anything with a ticker symbol over the past 63 months has been the winning way.

Even when the market looked like it was weakening just the tiniest bit, The Powers That Be ripped things higher. One glance at the NASDAQ Composite since mid-April shows this neatly. Sure, there are a few dips along the way, but on the whole, the market is jerking off to nude photos of Janet Yellen and celebrating The New World Order. Logic be damned, Kayne West and Kim Kardashian are getting married, and that’s all that really matters.

0525-meltup (more…)

Plausible Denial aka The Cancer Of Leadership

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No matter the headline, no matter the scandal, no matter how few or how many might be involved, one thing will become crystal clear: nobody that should have known – will have known.

There was a time when this art form of creating circumstances as to protect people of influence had its place and was used sparingly and tactfully. However, as of today both the frequency along with how and where it is used has gone from “useful ruse” to a downright childish alibi. No one seems to be accountable today. And I mean nobody! (more…)

My First Computer

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When I was kid, back in the mid-1970s, my notion of a computer was what I saw on Star Trek: a big box with blinking lights which one could address directly and, after it said “Work-ing” and made a lot of clickety-clack punching sounds, it would provide an answer in a nasal female voice (which, in retrospect, I correctly guessed was Majel Barrett, doing double duty as Nurse Chapel).

I thought it would be really cool to have such a thing, and after my parents gave me a red Panasonic cassette recorder for Christmas in 1977, I had an idea: I would make a recording that would have long pauses (during which I’d ask a question), then had clickety-clack sounds, and then – in my own best impression of a nasal computer voice, provide the pre-canned answer. (more…)