GaryMVasey.com - Blog

I created a new blog for CommodityPoint called the CTRMBlog. It seems to be getting quite good traffic already - check it out at http://www.ctrmblog.com

COP15 (the United Nations climate talks) in Copenhagen came to a close on December 18 after a tumultuous two weeks in which emotions and expectations rose and fell on a daily basis. In the end, COP15 produced a relatively weak political agreement that committed to keep global warming at 2°C or less and promised $30 billion in funding to battle climate change by 2012. It also created a framework for international transparency on climate actions for both developed and developing nations. The deal allows each country to attach their national actions and mechanisms for combating climate change and to then provide information on those actions. The accord is not legally binding.

“Climategate”

One thing that the recent “Climategate” episode may have done is to rightly focus more attention on the science that is really the driving force behind the COP15 meeting currently taking place in Copenhagen. Reading through the hacked e-mails published on various blog sites, it becomes obvious very quickly that the rigor and pure approach of science has been totally overwhelmed and compromised by politics and money.

Science should work on the basis of an open, free debate and a fair peer review process. If that is stifled then what we have is neither science nor reliable. What these e-mails show can be summarized as follows:

* The neutral and unbiased approach necessary in science has been replaced with almost a religious fervor that seeks a particular finding at almost any cost including carefully choosing exactly what data is used,
* The data is a mess with, for example, instances of data from recording stations predating that stations inception and, data of unknown quality and origin,
* Avoiding public scrutiny of the data and assumptions even to the point of destroying it,

Just had a break and I have made a discovery.... what women think about laying on the beach. As I lay there thinking about work and things - like you do - my partner suddenly broke her considered silence to ask me a startling question....

"Do you think if you shaved a cat, it would tan?"

Well, there you have it......

Originally posted at http://rant-here.com/drupal/beachtalk

A good brand and awareness of that brand is one sure way to be successful at selling anything. But what is a brand? While many people might believe that a brand is some statement like “I’m Lovin’ It” (MacDonalds) they would be wrong - that is a tag line that hopefully supports the brand. No, a brand can be likened to a person’s personality. A company will develop its brand essence - essentially a carefully composed and considered annunciation of its personality and value – and then use various means to communicate that to the market. Like a personality, getting that brand to ‘stick’ isn’t just about communicating it, it is about living it. It is about how customers, employees and other interested parties perceive and respond to the brand. In reality, the brand is what the market perceives in its interactions with the company.

Three years ago this month I moved back to Europe after some 12+ years in Texas. They talk (ExPats do) about a thing called reverse culture shock and I know why. It is quite different in Europe on many fronts. In fact, arriving in the USA all those years ago was a big culture shock. Brits tend to think that going to the US will be easy – after all we speak the same language (almost!) and our culture is permeated with American TV, movies and fast food chains. But, like many Brits going to the US, I found America more alien than any other foreign country I had ever been to. Of course, you get used to it in the end which is why coming back is also a shock.

Pace of Life

Never a hairy person I took delight in cultivating three long hairs that grew on the inside of my forearm - I even christened them Tom, Dick and Harry. It was rather strange that on my pretty hairless arm there where three quite long and thick strands growing where hair really shouldn't grow but I was proud of them. At school, I used to play with them by trying to run them between my fingernails so they would curl. Well, it was better than Mathematics! Over time, I grew quite attached to Tom, Dick and Harry. They were something permanent in my life and were always available when I was bored.

Call an ETRM software vendor these days and they will tell you that despite the financial crisis, there are plenty of Requests for Proposals being issued at the moment. Further, they will tell you that the key driver behind these activity levels is risk management.

Risk Management was identified by the respondents to our Commodities study¹ earlier this year as the primary critical business issue facing them as traders and executives a trading firms. In fact, it ranked an average score of 4.38 (on a scale of 1 to 5 where 5 was critical). Drilling down deeper into the responses to the study, the emphasis on risk management under current market conditions was even more emphasized by some of the other important business issues mentioned by the respondents which included:

• General Market Liquidity
• Understanding the Factors Behind Price Formation
• Rising Credit and Collateral Requirements
• Portfolio Management
• Reporting
• Credit Scoring
• Errors & Omissions
• Lack of Audit Trails
  

Today, Asteroth told me write about love.

I asked for more detail and she said ‘love as acceptance’. I didn’t need anymore words because the words themselves conveyed the entirety of the suggestion. This is a difficult concept to explain but it seemed as if the words themselves conveyed the feeling and understanding of love as acceptance. It’s as if the words are only a key to a packet of understanding which opens up and engulfs me.

What those words conveyed to me was along the lines that when we are told to ‘love one another’, we are told to accept one another for what we are and what we have the potential to be. It’s a surrendering of one’s own ego and viewpoint. A letting go of our own conditioning and biases allows us to see our fellow humans simply as they truly are. In itself, this is an act of magic since it involves first changing ourselves in order to see more clearly - to see the divine spark in each and every person.

Last year UtiliPoint, undertook a snapshot survey to look at blogs in the energy industry. That survey suggested that, whilst 98 percent of the survey respondents knew what a blog was, only around one-third of them ever visited blogs in the energy space¹ and around one- third of those told us that information from those blogs factored into their decision making. Amongst our conclusions from the study were that blogs were becoming an increasingly important source of data, information and opinion in the industry. However we also sounded something of a cautionary note stating that while blogs were certainly a growing source of industry opinion and information, the credibility of the blogger should always be carefully considered in accepting information and opinion posted on blogs. Some respondents to the study also made this important point. Some provided further input stating that they monitored the various environmentalist and other pressure group blogs to gain intelligence and information about such group's activities to gauge the likely future impacts on their own companies.

I have been giving a good deal of thought recently to a variety of topics that came up during my 5-year SOL course. Reading through my own meditation notes, some things suddenly make more sense that they did before. It's prompted me to start out on a certain path with enthusiasm again.

One idea that struck me is that the Tree of Life gives you a great insight into reality. First, lets assume that Kether already exists - and let's discuss the tree in terms of developing an idea and turning it into reality. Kether is the source but as the tree unfolds down into Malkuth, things become more set, more constrained. Yes- the tree evokes an unknowable number of possibilities but how does it actually work?

As I write this article, the price of crude oil has already exceeded $70/bbl for a time and other commodities such as coffee and sugar have also reached record prices. Media headlines are beginning once again to highlight "speculation" by hedge funds and other investment vehicles as, yet again, being the culprits for driving up commodity prices—particularly oil. Once again, I feel compelled to counter this media theme and try to focus attention on the real issue which seems to be largely and constantly ignored by both the media and politicians alike. That is that we (the human race) are in deep trouble simply because we are finally facing the end of the era of plentiful and cheap natural resources. The movement into a supply constrained environment will have significant social and political impacts.

The Truth about "Speculators"

Hedge funds and other investors smell profit in commodities because they have understood that where we left things midsummer 2008—with almost every commodity at or close to record prices—was not a temporary phenomenon. It was the rapid collapse of commodity prices that was and remains a temporary situation.

Minoritska is a small street in the center of Brno that leads from Namesti Svobody back towards the tram station. It's a beautiful street characterized by several churches.

The churches are very worth stepping into since they are beautifully designed but cameras are not allowed inside. On the outside, the churches are decorated with status of saints.

And the doorways are also magnificently decorated in stonework.

Enjoy your stroll down Minoritska....

There is one way my blogs make money at the moment and that is TNX. My income from this revenue stream is now more than $50 per month and increasing.

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Well, you sign up your website, add a small piece of code to your site and then wait for the site to be approved. Once approved, you will start displaying small ads with links. For each page (allocation of points depends on page rank) these small ads are placed, you get points and at any time you can cash in your points for cash via paypal. It is THAT SIMPLE.

Finally, I have discovered a way to make money and this is it. Click on the link above and sign up to make your own money.

Originally posted at Blogs Pay U?

I believe that we create our own reality and have written many articles on this site about that concept. Its the basis of Magick that we can and do create the world around us. But what if that were not true? Last night I had a dream in which I discovered that our lives were preordained. It was such an amazing dream that it prompted me to write this post....

Imagine that for each millisecond of time, our preordained life was captured. Our life comprised millions and millions of snapshots in time sequence a bit like a movie in which each frame is a still photograph but when run through a projector we get a concept of time and movement. Follow? Our life is already mapped out like a movie script and each millisecond of that script is there already waiting for us in sequence. Our consciousness then moves through the scenes reacting to events - to the script - so to speak. Instead of running the movie through a projector our consciousness is the projector. We don't have free will but we just react and learn. Learn and adapt to the journey created for us.

The City of Brno features some magnificent buildings and architecture. The Czech Republic was once the richest country in Europe - prior to the First World War - and that wealth established itself as opulence in its buildings. Many of those buildings were somewhat ignored until recently when European money started to pour into the country and the city. Many buildings have now been restored to something of their former glory.

Taking a short walk through the city center, one can see many interesting buildings and features of this industrial city. One only has to walk from the main railway/tram station up Masarykova towards Namesti Svoboda and then back down Minoritska (to see many examples).

On Masarykova, take note of what is above eye level. Such as this facade;

Entering into the main square - Namesti Svobody - take a look at some of the buildings surrounding the square such as these;

Having learned how to relax and found a suitable location where we will not be disturbed, the next phase in meditation is the actual meditation itself. In general, there are two or perhaps three methods of meditating;

• Focus on a word, phrase, image and drill down into it;
• Keep the mind blank and allow images to arise;
• Guided meditation – also know as ‘Pathworking’

Let’s look at each in turn.

Focused Meditation

Introduction
According to Wikipedia, Meditation can be defined as “a state of concentrated attention on some object of thought or awareness. It usually involves turning the attention inward to a single point of reference.”

For me, meditation involves reaching a state known as ‘mind awake, body asleep.’ Several techniques may then be used to actually meditate including constant thought and attention on an object, symbol or a statement or, my favored approach, emptying of the mind to simply let images arise that are noted and then dismissed. I will discuss these two approaches in more detail in a later continuation of this dissertation.

To meditate properly, that is, to reach the correct state of ‘body asleep, mind awake’ is in fact quite difficult and some students have immense problems getting there at all. The key however to reaching such a state is relaxation.

Relaxation

Since my days of running my own PR and Marketing Consultancy, VasMark Group, Inc., I have valued market surveys as a marketing tactic. Market surveys, if properly set up, can provide a wealth of information for your firm. A survey can actually generate sales leads, improve our brand awareness, help you gain knowledge about the competition, the market and buying criteria. They are an underused tactic in marketing from my perspective.

How To Set Up A Market Survey
A market survey has to be thoroughly thought through to be effective. It can't be too long and yet it needs to ask the right questions. Often, those dong a market survey miss the chance to truly add value by not asking the right questions or framing the questions wrongly i.e. they are open to interpretation on the part of the respondent.

The first question to ask is what information do you really require from the survey? You then have to construct a profile of the respondents you are looking to survey and frame the questions in a way that is not open to interpretation and yet provide the data that you are looking for.

Gaining Additional Information

By Gary M. Vasey, Ph.D., General Manager, Europe
and Patrick Reames, Vice President, Trading & Risk Management

An article by Ralph Nader caught my eye this week. In that article he makes the case, with very little evidence, that speculators are to blame fair and square for the high and increasing price of crude oil. It's the sort of piece you would expect from a politician, especially one not overly fond of the oil and energy industry. It's also an example of the true level of ignorance of anything and everything energy amongst politicians and the media. It's why we don't actually have a coherent energy policy—because the industry simply isn't well understood by the people with high profile names or magazines that like to sound off about the issue.