by
David Galland
Casey
Research

Recently
by David Galland: Interview
with Milos Dedovic, Serbian-American Chamber of Commerce

The definition
of fear seems obvious, but only because it is.

As
a noun, it refers to “An unpleasant emotion caused by the belief
that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or
a threat.”

Used
as a verb, it references “Being afraid of someone or something as
likely to be dangerous, painful, or threatening.”

Moving to the
proverbial 50,000-foot view, we humans have an innate capacity to
experience the “unpleasant emotion” of fear in myriad ways. While
fear is an intensely personal emotion, it can sweep through entire
populations, much the same as a herd of gazelles are sent into fearful
flight by the scent of a lion.

Unlike a few
dozen gazelles foraging on the plains of the Serengeti, however,
the technological advancements made by the human ape can result
in a population numbering in the hundreds of millions, or even billions,
becoming almost simultaneously “afraid of something or someone.”
While the flash-fire of fear usually won’t result in wholesale scampering
for cover, á la the always graceful gazelle, it can absolutely result
in quick modifications in human behavior on even a global scale.

For example,
an economic crisis can cause billions to clamp their wallets tightly
shut and refuse to open them until the scent of danger passes.

That said,
while fear can be experienced more or less simultaneously by the
multitude, per my remarks just above, by definition the emotion
is intensely personal and individualized. Simply, the level of fear
experienced by each of us, and our response to that fear, will largely
depend on the nature of the fear-evoking stimulus and our individual
psychology. The aurophobic, for example, is frightened by the presence
of gold whereas I suspect most dear readers will experience exactly
the opposite emotion. (Think you know how many different phobias
there are? You’ll
think again after reviewing this list.)

With that bit
of stage-setting, I will now proceed in what I hope will be a mostly
methodical fashion on to the ways that these unpleasant emotions
can affect us as a society and, more to the point, on an individual
basis.

Institutional
Fear

It is no secret
to any thinking person that the institutions we humans allow to
grow up above us on the societal org chart – governments and religions,
to name two of the most prominent – long ago made the calculation
that fear equals control.

It is not an
accident, in my view, that in the history of most nations, there
are no prolonged periods where there isn’t some sort of big threat
dangling over the populace like the proverbial blade of Damocles.

And if, by
some oversight, a government had allowed a lapse in its drumming
up of mass fear, the gap is invariably filled by the “always there”
threat of fire and brimstone, or its equivalents in the world’s
many religions.

While it may
seem cynical to accuse governments and religions of deliberately
unleashing fearful scents into the herd, the historical record is
clear on the matter. In fact, the record is so well documented that
it must be taken as a standard operating policy. And it has only
gotten worse in modernity as the fear-spreading operations of these
institutions are made easy in the extreme by a combination of massively
improved communications and a media without any ethical reservations
when it comes to enthusiastically exaggerating the things we fear
in order to gain eyeballs on their pathetic offerings.

But even if
you were to take a kinder view toward the PIPs (Ponzis in Power)
and assume that their constant concerns are sincerely felt as opposed
to callously calculated, the net effect on society is the same.
Case in point, Lyndon Johnson was, apparently, completely convinced
that victory in Vietnam was the only thing standing between the
free world and global communist domination. In his own words, following
the end of his presidency:

“I
was as sure as a man can could be that if we didn’t live up to our
commitments in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, [the communists] would
exploit the disarray in the United States and in the allies of the
Free World.”

~ Former President Lyndon Johnson

Apparently,
he was so convinced in his fears that he used a false report of
an attack on US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of
North Vietnam as an excuse to ramp the Vietnam conflict into a full-blown
war.

Whether Johnson
was a part of the falsification of the report might be debatable,
but what is not debatable is that on the very night he purported
to have received the report, without waiting for any details, he
went on national television and announced in terms evoking comparison
with FDR following Pearl Harbor that “Aggression by terror against
the peaceful villagers of South Vietnam has now been joined by open
aggression on the high seas against the United States of America.”

The film of
his televised
speech is available on YouTube, and worth a watch in that he
goes into some detail about the attack that never happened. And
then, having secured his rationale, Johnson never looks back as
he revs up the military-industrial complex to unleash near total
war on the backward country, ultimately causing the death of 58,000
young US men, about 30% of whom were drafted against their will
and made to serve, and another 300,000 wounded. Then there’s the
death toll on the other side, which, while the data is debatable,
almost certainly runs into the seven figures.

Coincidentally,
this morning I received an email from an ex-military officer friend
of mine on the topic of Vietnam. I am going to excerpt it here because
(a) I found it interesting, and (b) hopefully it will help head
off angry emails from those Vietnam vets who still think the cost
and the carnage of the war was justified.

I
replied to Doug on his Conversations
with Casey interview on the new Kim in Korea this week. As it
turns out, about twenty years ago, I had dinner with Aaron
Bank, the founder of modern Special Forces.  

Pretty
tough dude, even though he probably weighed no more than 150 lbs
soaking wet in his prime. He had jumped into France during WWII
to train the resistance and later went to Indochina to fight the
Japanese. It was there that he met Ho Chi Minh, whom he got to know
well and apparently found him to be agreeable and very intelligent.

While
a communist philosophically, Ho Chi Minh seemed more an anti-colonialist
than anything else. He shared with Aaron Bank that more than Marx
and Lenin, his true idol was Thomas Jefferson. Furthermore, it was
his hope that once the Japanese were drummed out of Indochina, the
Americans would support him in getting the French to take their
leave as well. Bank reported back to his American superiors that
Minh was the likely leader of the inevitable insurgency that would
be waged against the French by the Vietnamese, and given the diminishing
viability for colonialism, Americans would do well to reach out
to Ho Chi Minh and perhaps broker a deal.  

Well,
they didn’t, and the rest is history, as the saying goes. For their
arrogance, the French were rightfully rewarded with a bad case of
Dien Bien Flu, and America went on to make every idiotic choice
possible in dealing with that region. Watching Colonel Bank look
at us (we were about 12 seated at the table) wistfully was a very
powerful experience for me as a young officer starting his career
with Special Forces. Those were eyes that said “what could have
been and what could have been avoided.”

But my purpose
is not to dwell on the past – because as unfortunate as Vietnam
may have been, it is but a speck of dust in the historical record
– but rather simply to make the point that not only are governments
capable of deliberately propagating fear for their own purposes,
they are susceptible to fears of their own… some warranted and some
not. In either case, the result can lead to catastrophic miscalculations.

Given more
time, we could go on and on evaluating the motives of those people
in position to instill fear in the PIPs – for instance, foreign
governments looking to hide under the US military umbrella or to
protect steady streams of money and other concessions reserved for
regional allies. Likewise, the people in the military-industrial
complex – which is to say official military and the private concerns
that profit so mightily from military operations – have a clear
interest in protecting their turf and stirring the pot should they
think it necessary to do so.

The fact remains,
however, that each of us – including members of government, as hard
as it is to believe sometimes – is a member of the same species,
and that species is never more than an instant removed from a fear
reaction. In other words, we are completely susceptible to becoming
fearful at any time, and for a multitude of reasons. This condition
does not fade away when a person assumes power. In fact, if anything,
it is heightened.

Imagine, if
you will, what sort of preparation the military now provides a newly
elected president and senior members of his incoming administration,
and the sort of fear that preparation might evoke.

On that point,
following is an excerpt from the excellent Top
Secret America by Dana Priest and William Arkin,
describing a mock crisis meeting held for Obama’s national security
team just before his inauguration.

As
they all sat around a large conference table, Obama’s national security
advisers during the campaign, Richard Clarke and Rand Beers, laid
out the scenario: Israel was about to bomb Iran. Discuss.

While
they debated next steps, Clarke announced some more bad news: al-Qaeda
was carrying a nuclear bomb on a freighter headed for Manhattan.
Discuss.

The
team forgot about Israel and Iran, and called upon a clandestine
U.S. rapid-response team to interdict the ship. But the scenario
shifted again: the terrorists had slipped off the freighter and
onto a boat. Al-Qaeda was now headed to Boston. Discuss.

Before
the team could identify which boat carried the deadly device, they
were informed it had been offloaded and detonated. Cities along
the eastern seaboard were evacuating. Discuss.”

Far be it from
me to rationalize the steady missteps of the PIPs, but after going
through such an exercise, I’m surprised that the Obama administration’s
first collective act upon assuming power wasn’t to just turn most
of the Middle East into a glass-topped parking lot. Is it any wonder
the US has a trillion-plus-dollar defense budget?

In my opinion,
which will come as no surprise to regular readers, the way to greatly
reduce these sorts of institutional fears is to stop running around
the world taking sides with petty despots and starting wars. Isolationism?
Maybe, maybe not – but it seems like things couldn’t get a whole
lot more screwed up than they have by following the current policy
of widespread meddling.

Pulling sharply
back onto the tracks, the point I am trying to make is that fear
as both a policy and a policy driver is of no small consequence.
Continuing with the US-centric commentary that is an understandable
consequence of the geographic accident of my birth, fear has rarely
been as big a factor in US policy as it is today.

In addition
to the massive military budget that provides funding to huge new
entrenched bureaucracies that will resist every attempt at real
cuts, I’ll also mention:

• The
  trashing of the Constitution. I have written enough on
  this topic – you and I both know the situation, so it doesn’t
  need to be repeated.
• Economic
  uncertainty. The policy of constant meddling in the Middle
  East is only causing things to get more uncertain and unstable.

  Sure, some of the ruling thugs in the area are being chased out
  – but only to be replaced by a new group of ruling thugs.

  Much of this is happening in and around the world’s fuel station,
  and the situation has the potential to get much, much worse if
  any one of the sparks now floating in the air of the Middle East
  – especially those around Iran – touches one of the many piles
  of powder that have been allowed to build up. At that point the
  price of oil is going to go ballistic – and if there is one thing
  a struggling economy can’t handle, it is another surge in oil
  prices. (You can click on the interactive graphic to get some
  sense of the relationship between oil prices and GDP growth.)

Interestingly,
now that the fires of discontent in the Middle East are burning
brightly, the Obama administration has announced that the Pentagon
will be shifting its attention to Asia in order to counteract the
threat from China. That should be fun.
• A
  steady increase in the public’s reliance on the government to
  protect it. A culture of fear inevitably leads to public
  support for government policies ostensibly designed to protect
  the citizenry from every possible bogeyman. One result of the
  ramp-up of fear following September 2001 has been the proliferation
  of massive new bureaucracies, as well as huge new bodies of regulation
  that hamper the free movement of people, materials and technology
  so essential to economic growth. At this point, things have gotten
  to the point where they are as ridiculous as they are concerning. 

  Case in point, we now have TSA “VIPR” squads setting up security
  check points here, there and everywhere. This
  video shows such a checkpoint set up to screen people getting
  off a train in Savannah, Georgia. Which makes me wonder what they
  would do to a citizen who refuses to play along? Force them back
  onto the train? And how is this different, I ask, from the iconic
  line associated with fascists the world over, namely, “Your papers,
  please!”? Ultimately, not only is 99% of this dangerous nonsense
  ineffective, but it is also emasculating to the character of the
  people. Hey,
  did you see the latest?

The
spread of mandates and discussion of ignition interlocks will “prime
the public” for the day when the government requires auto manufacturers
to install even more sophisticated alcohol-detection devices as
original equipment, Longwell said.

The Driver
Alcohol Detection System for Safety, funded in part by automakers
and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, says it
is working on “potential technologies that could detect alcohol
from air samples in the vehicle passenger compartment, through the
driver’s skin using tissue spectroscopy, from emissions through
the skin, from eye movements, and from driving performance.”

It matters
not that drunken-driving fatalities have fallen by half over the
last twenty years, the nanny-state meddling will continue apace.
And while you could argue that a car that senses when you should
drive based on what has been shown to be a largely artificial and
dubious standard (a topic for another day) is a good idea, when
you look to the government to provide total security in a world
that is inherently insecure, you multiply the meddling to the point
where you might as well just have the state plug you into the Matrix
and be done with it.  

As you know,
I could go on, but chances are good I’d just be telling you things
you already know. The point, though, is that the build-up of fear-driven
policies has been so extreme since September 11, 2001 that we now
face the very real potential of a police state-caliber crackdown
on the citizenry should another 9/11 occur. And, given the amount
of meddling the USG does around the world, such an event could happen
anytime.

At least that
is my personal fear. Which, conveniently, brings me to the next
segment of these musings.

Personal
Fears

There is, of
course, a feedback loop to the societal fears discussed above. For
example, the stampede caused by self-serving NGOs’ over-inflated
environmental concerns that resulted in a fearful public demanding
that governments spend yet more money they don’t have on wasteful
and often counterproductive subsidies, such as those involved with
ethanol and Finland-built
electric super cars. However, as mentioned, the need to assess
threats and deal with fear is something that each of us have to
deal with on a very personal level.

While there
is literally no end to the fears that might torment the human mind,
I’d like to tackle just a couple of the big ones that I know – from
your letters and from your comments when we meet at our events –
weigh heavily on the minds of many.

Fear
of Government. In his client communications, libertarian
defense attorney Marc Victor likens the government to a crazed ape,
explaining that job number one for anyone who comes into contact
with the crazed ape is to get out of its grasp as quickly as possible.
This advice, Mark will tell you, applies to every interaction with
the ape – including something as mundane as a routine traffic stop
that, should you decide to be confrontational or think it a dandy
time  to lecture the officer on your constitutional rights,
could end with you bleeding out on the pavement.

Given the wanton
trashing of the Constitution in recent years – and the trashing
has been done by all three branches of government – you are entirely
justified in fearing your government. The question, then, comes
down to, “So, what can I do about it?”

Following Marc
Victor’s advice, the decision tree is fairly simple.

?
Stay within the easy reach of the crazed ape, but quietly tip-toe
through daily life in the hopes of avoiding attention. Should a
hairy hand be laid on your shoulder – or, in the case of a TSA pat-down,
your groin – make appropriately supplicating sounds (thanking them
for protecting you, or even a slight whimper may suffice) and hope
they will let you go. Try your hardest to comply cheerfully with
all the latest taxes and regulations (I say “try” because at this
point, no one can even know what all the regulations say, let alone
afford the bevy of legal counsel required for complete compliance)
and get on with your life.

? Spread the risk. Having all of your assets, and all your personal
support systems, within the boundaries of one political regime leaves
you and all you own as so much chattel. Diversifying your assets
and your life across jurisdictions, if you can afford to do so,
will open up new intellectual and lifestyle horizons, as well as
provide you with the peace of mind that should the crazed apes in
one country become especially frenzied, you can more readily step
out of reach.

There really
aren’t any other options, making your decision on how to cope with
this particular fear actually quite simple. So, make your choice
and fall in line with it and stop worrying so much.

Personally, I
choose the latter.



Economic
Outlook. We investors have any number of fears related
to the economic outlook, many of which are overlapping. Again, these
fears are justified, for the simple reason that serious bouts of
inflation, deflation or depression can literally wipe out the personal
assets we have spent a lifetime of hard work accumulating. Though
the government
is capable of taking abrupt actions that result in near instantaneous
wealth destruction, the persistent effects of a serious economic
crisis – which are almost always also the result of government meddling
– can be just as devastating, albeit over a somewhat longer period
of time.

How do you
cope with fears over the future of the economy? For starters, by
facing the facts. For example, while we here at Casey Research have
a very respectable track record of forecasting economic trends –
as often as not by analyzing the most likely actions a government
will take, and the most likely consequences of those actions – the
truth of the matter is that no one can predict the future.

Let that sink
in, because it’s really important.

Thus, while
we believe that the logical consequence of any fiat monetary system
is the creation of excess debt leading ultimately to the wholesale
currency debasement of the currency and, so far, that’s the way
things have mostly worked out, tomorrow, literally, everything could
change. Things could, in fact, get much worse, much quicker, than
we expect. Or things could surprise us by getting much better. Who
knows, maybe the US government will come to the conclusion that
the path it is currently on is not going to be helpful in fulfilling
its political agenda (i.e., to retain power) and make actual change,
versus just flapping its collective gums about it. 

The key point
I am trying to make is that no one can predict how any particular
economy, let alone the rather wiggly construct of a “global economy,”
will roll out over the next few years. So how can you and I personally
manage the risk that the economy is headed towards a net worth-destroying
outcome? After all, if we can’t get a handle on that risk, we can’t
get a handle on our fear.

Some thoughts.

First, recognize
that if you actually knew how things were going to unwind, you would
be entirely justified in betting the house (literally) on the investments
that would do well in the environment you expect. But given that
none of us can really know how things are going to turn out, that
sort of certainty will almost always cause you to end up being not
just a loser but a bankrupt one.

Sad to say,
a number of dear readers regularly tell us that they are “all in”
on precious metals in expectation of elevated levels of inflation.
If that sounds like you, then good luck… but given the vagaries
of the future, you should give serious consideration to dialing
back your allocation to something less than a “do or die level.”

Accepting that
the future is immune to accurate prediction, what approaches can
you take to avoid a life-changing wipeout?

• Diversify
  assets internationally. This diversification has to take
  a number of forms to be effective. For instance, the assets you
  invest internationally have to be denominated in a variety of
  different local currencies. And the assets should include gold,
  as that is the soundest form of money.

  Equity investors should also look to build a portfolio of common
  stocks of financially strong and profitable companies in foreign
  markets that are deeply undervalued. Even if you thought the US
  market were going to do well in 2012, you would need to approach
  the matter from the perspective that there are much cheaper markets
  elsewhere. For example, while the US stock markets were flat in
  2011, the Brazilian market fell close to 20%. I would contend
  that when it comes time to go equity shopping, shopping for high-quality
  issues in the Brazilian bargain basement makes a whole lot more
  sense than sticking entirely to overpriced US issues.

  (On this general topic, gold stocks are now looking very undervalued,
  something addressed in the just-released Casey International
  Speculator (risk-free
  subscription details here). To put that contention in perspective,
  while gold bullion was up about 9% in 2011, the Toronto Venture
  Exchange index, which is dominated by junior resource stocks,
  was off 35%.)

  Sadly, it is a well-documented fact that most investors pour their
  money into stocks and markets only after they have had their big
  run-up, versus taking the run-up as a signal that the market is
  more likely to be overvalued and therefore it’s time to think
  about selling.

  Regardless, while the US government has been creating de facto
  price controls by implementing regulations that make few foreign
  institutions want to do business with Americans, there are entirely
  legal and prudent ways to open foreign bank and brokerage accounts
  and relationships with financially sound precious metals storage
  businesses.
   

• Understand
  the true nature of risk, and operate your investment portfolio
  accordingly. If you ask the average investor to explain
  the meaning of risk as it applies to investing, the vast majority
  will get it wrong. They might, for example, say risk means that
  a particular market or markets could crash, or that this gold
  stock or another is risky because it could go down. Risk in terms
  of an investment, however, has to do with the probability that
  you will be forced to sell your investment at a loss.

  There are two facets to that concept.

  1) Your personal balance sheet is in tatters.
  If you owe more than you own, or your outgoing exceeds your incoming,
  then the odds are pretty high you might be forced by circumstances
  to scramble for liquidity during a downturn in the market or the
  economy.

  Conversely, if your incoming exceeds your outgoing, and you have
  liquid assets tucked safely away in sufficient quantities to meet
  your reasonable needs for a year or more, then the odds of you
  being forced to liquidate at the wrong time – and therefore take
  a real loss, versus a paper loss (a misnomer) – are very low. 

  A good way to think about this is to think in terms of your home.
  If you plan on living in your home for an extended period of time
  and can easily handle the mortgage and attendant costs, then whether
  the housing market sinks or soars is largely of no consequence.
  Likewise, if you own good assets and have no foreseeable need
  for the money tied up in those assets, the price action of the
  markets those assets trade on will, in most cases, be irrelevant.

  2) You don’t overpay for your investments. In
  the paragraph just above, I used the term “good assets.” So, what
  makes a good asset when it comes to an investment portfolio?

  Generally speaking, it is an asset with strong fundamentals that
  has some specific role to play in meeting a particular investment
  goal. Sometimes that goal will be to contribute to portfolio appreciation,
  sometimes it will be to generate yield, and sometimes it will
  be as insurance to protect against currency debasement. Regardless,
  there are no conceivable goals to be met by an overvalued asset.
  Put another way, overpaying for an investment is the quickest
  way to add risk to your portfolio. That’s because while an undervalued
  investment may get even more undervalued over some period of time,
  the inherent value in the asset ensures that it will return to
  fair value at some point in the foreseeable future.

  By contrast, the best an overvalued asset can do is to fall to
  its fair market value. More likely, given the nature of markets,
  it will almost certainly fall even further than that. Thus, paying
  too much for any asset you buy is essentially buying investment
  risk.

  Know what you own and why you want to own it… never chase a stock
  or a market after it has already had a big run-up (unless you
  know of an external reason why it almost certainly must go higher)…
  and even when you find a fair value, be patient in buying it (either
  with a stink bid or through buying it in a series of purchases
  to take advantage of dollar cost averaging).

Owning good
assets, internationally diversified, will go a long way to reducing
your fears over both the actions of your government and the uncertainties
of the economy. While it may not be as easy as parking your money
in CDs down at the local bank, it’s not brain surgery either. 

As I am, as
usual, running late and long, let me try to wrap this up.

It is ingrained
in all of our nature to worry about things. Objectively, there is
no question that the US and many of the world’s largest economies
have been misdirected by all-powerful governments into a state of
heightened risk. Thus, we are correct to fear what’s coming.

But it is very
difficult, and entirely counterproductive to a high quality of life,
to mentally stay in crisis mode over a prolonged period of time.
In other words, it’s not healthy or helpful to spend hours each
day fretting over the future.

In these musings,
I have tried to make what I believe are some commonsense suggestions
for breaking the cycle of fear, at least as it relates to the big
issues of governments that are increasingly willing to trample individual
rights, and to the consequences of historic levels of sovereign
debt that make the dead hand of the state on the economy especially
heavy just now. As things are likely to get worse on both fronts
before they get better, caution and taking active measures to mitigate
the risks are certainly warranted.

But once you
take those steps, then do yourself a favor and step away from the
electronics and get on with whatever gives you the greatest pleasure
in this life.

In the final
analysis, no one gets out of here alive, and that makes time your
most valuable asset – don’t squander it by spending even a minute
longer than necessary in fruitless worrying.

And now I must
move along.  Because I’m running so late, I’m going to skip
Friday Funnies this week in order to ensure I have time to share
a quick review of some items that came to my attention over the
holidays that I think you might enjoy.

Entertainment
and Apps

Never being
particularly good at coping with excessive amounts of free time
of the sorts normally accompanying year-end holidays, this year
I did some casting about for diversions and found a couple I thought
you might also find diverting, and maybe useful, in the new year. 

Cool
iPhone Apps. There were two free iPhone apps that tested
out over the holidays that I thought you might also find pretty
cool. 

Dragon
Go! I haven’t yet experienced the Siri feature that is
built into the latest iPhones, as I have the previous-generation
phone sans Siri, but my understanding is that the Dragon
Go! app provides much the same, and maybe better, functionality.

The app allows you to push a button and say what you want to know,
or find, on the Internet – and in the proverbial blink of an eye,
a page comes up with tabs for various website pages containing the
information you are looking for. For example, if you say, “Chinese
restaurant near here,” Dragon Go! might assemble a page with tabs
for OpenTable, Trip Advisor, Maps, and
Google… all of which would have used your phone’s location
to hone in with the names of local Chinese restaurants, complete
with ratings, reviews, contact information and the quickest routes
to get there.

But it’s much
more robust than that – and so far I have been hard pressed to stump
the chump – despite periodically (and, admittedly, annoyingly) whipping
my phone out in the middle of conversations throughout the holidays
to ask it to produce arcane bits of information to settle a question
or point of contention.

Why, I bet
I could ask it, “What’s better, Siri or Dragon Go!” and get a prompt
answer. So I will. (The answer, according to PCMag Mobile, is Dragon
Go! If I wanted to watch a YouTube review, there were dozens of
those, too.)

Not so long
ago, I did a write-up of the Singularity conference presentation
by the folks who designed the Watson computer that unseated a human
Jeopardy champion. While that computer and programming are clearly
a lot more sophisticated than Dragon Go!, it’s worth noting that
it takes up a space the size of a cargo container and requires massive
power inputs whereas Dragon Go! requires an undetectably small corner
of your iPhone’s memory.

Though it won’t
give you a single answer to your request and takes a few seconds
longer than Watson might, the end result is that it is remarkably
effective at getting you the information you are looking for in
just seconds. Not only is it a great tool for quickly finding the
answers to just about anything, it’s great party trick – although
you might wear out your welcome at said party if you pull it out
every couple of minutes to settle some discussion point.

Google
Translate. Google Translate, which is also free, is just
as much of a game changer. Those of you familiar with the books
and TV series The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will remember the Babel
fish, a small fish you can stick in your ear that automatically
translates spoken foreign languages into your own. While you wouldn’t
want to try to cram an iPhone with the Google Translate app on it
into your ear, the functionality is much the same.

Specifically, you speak any phrase you want, and it is immediately
translated into text in any one of 60 languages, on many of which
you can also then play back the audio. Thus, when you are lost in
transition somewhere, you can talk your question into your phone
and either show the resulting translation to a helpful local or
even play it back. Of course, not all the translations will be perfect,
though that they have come this far, this fast makes it a certainty
it will only get better. But it sure beats waving your arms around
and speaking louder in the hopes of being understood.

Damages.
Changing mediums to entertainment, I will mention that while we
caught a couple of decent movies over the holidays, none were particularly
noteworthy. But we did stumble across a television series – Damages
– running on the FX cable channel that very much was. The series
is available as a Netflix instant download (we don’t have cable),
and after watching the first episode of Season One, we were utterly
hooked. The series is about a high-powered, high-stakes lawyer played
by Glenn Close who, if memory serves, won an Academy Award for her
performance in (wait a second… “Academy Award winner Glenn Close”
I say. The
World According to Garp, Dragon Go! helpfully
answers). The show is designed so that each season is a single story,
told episodically. And the story, much to our surprise given normal
television fare, is very complex and intriguing. Once you start
watching, it is very hard to stop.

Hope you find
those diversions of interest.

January
10, 2012

David Galland
is the managing editor of Casey
Research.

Copyright
© 2012 Casey
Research

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