We're number 30!

Congratulations Bethesda, MD (and the rest of the Bethesda-Gaithersburg-Fredrick statistical area) the CDC ranked you the 30th healthiest place to live in the US. Handily beating out Northern Virginia, which came in at 41. 30th doesn't sound so bad when the list has 184 entries, putting Bethesda comfortably in the top 20%.

From there, things get a bit more confusing. It is supposedly based on 2007 data, but the study that is linked by several news outlets is for 2006. "Surveillance of Certain Health Behaviors and Conditions Among States and Selected Local Areas --- Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), United States, 2006" That's a mouthful. Further, the CDC says "A news outlet recently conducted an analysis of CDC′s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) 2006 data, released August 2008. The outlet ranked some cities healthiest vs. unhealthiest, but CDC does not rank cities."

Other news articles reference a particular part of the BRFSS the Selected Metropolitan/Micropolitan Area Risk Trends (SMART) database. It doesn't explicitly rank them, but I guess you could get a decent ranking if you put the time into it. It also has 2007 data, so I bet that is the true source of the report.

It has all sorts of nuggets of information, for instance, 10.5% of the people here are binge drinkers, 34.3% are overweight and 18.1% are obese, even though 31% consumed 5 or more fruits and vegetables a day.

[where: Montgomery County, MD]
[where: Bethesda, MD]

They even pulled out the hoses

This morning the fire trucks came to the Chevy Chase bank building on the corner of East-West highway and Wisconsin Avenue (Route MD-355) in Bethesda, MD. They closed off two northbound lanes on 355 (out of 3) and two westbout lanes on East-West (again, out of 3). That really causes traffic problems. I didn't see anything obviously wrong although they did have the hoses out and connected to the buildings standpipe. As I am writing this, they are packing up the hoses and getting ready to go home, so lanes should re-open soon. I didn't see anything on the WTOP traffic page about it but it was the lead story on the traffic report I heard.

[where: MD-355 and East-West Hwy, Bethesda, MD]

Hmm, what to eat

Whoever got this license plate had a great sense of humor.



see more pwn and owned pictures

Free Food on election day

I saw this article on the WTOP web site. There are a number of places that will give you free food today if you vote including California Tortilla, Krispy Kreme, Starbucks, and Ben & Jerry's.

It's neat, and patriotic, but it really is to get you to go into their store, not to get you to vote. I can't even imagine someone saying "I wasn't going to bother voting, but since I could get a free donut, I did."

Sign overload

I took this picture a couple of months ago. It looks like one of the signs is missing, I gues it didn't apply. The remaining eight Signs on the sign are: "Danger Hard Hat Area", "Danger Overhead Lines", "Restricted area no atmittance", "Fall protection required", "No tresspassing or loitering on this property", "Designated Drug Free Work place", "No drugs or alcoholic beverages allowwed", "Fire extinguisher located inside trailer"

[where: Bethesda, MD]

Are the Republicans true to their platform?

Here's an interesting article on ReasonOnline Nothing short of defeat will put the GOP back on its limited government track It makes a useful point. It says "The Republican Party has ... given up all pretense of any allegiance to limited government." The evidence? "In the last eight years, the GOP has given us a monstrous new federal bureaucracy in the Department of Homeland Security. In the prescription drug benefit, it's given us the largest new federal entitlement since the Johnson administration. Federal spending—even on items not related to war or national security—has soared. And we now get to watch as the party that's supposed to be "free market" nationalizes huge chunks of the economy's financial sector." Worse yet "This administration believes that on any issue that can remotely be tied to foreign policy or national security (and on quite a few other issues as well), the president has boundless, limitless, unchecked power to do anything he wants."

The article isn't optimistic about an Obama administration either saying "He'll just be bad in different ways". Nor is the argument about choosing the lesser of two evils. No, his argument is that since neither party is truely about a conservative, limited government, if the Republicans lose they will have to regroup and rebuild "around the principles of limited government, free markets, and rugged individualism".

It's a good read, not going to the level of insightful because it doesn't go in depth enough but it is an interesting opinion.

On a lighter note, one of the ads that was on the page had the text "Who's more likely to Cheat: Obama or McCain" Is that really the most important part of the election? Where is the "Who's more likely to put the country in an extended depression?" or "Who's more likely to piss other countries off more?" (Neither of which I know the answer to)

Of all the ridiculous things

A few months ago, they took out the perfectly speedbumps on Fernwood Road in Bethesda and replaced them with identical speed bumps. What was the point of that, there was nothing wrong with them (except for their very existance, I'm not a big fan of speed bumps). Yesterday and today they have been doing the unimaginable. They took out the speed bumps again, and are replacing them with....(wait for it)....speed bumps... that are just like the once they are taking out... you know, the once they just put in two months ago. What are they thinking? In the space of a few months, we have had three sets of speedbumps and there was nothing wrong with the first set. Do they have that much money lying around that they can replace them over and over? Did they forget they just replaced them? I'm not positive, but these new ones might be one inch smaller than the old ones, but is that a good enough reason to remove the whole thing and start over?

[where: Fernwood Rd, Bethesda, MD]

(did I use to much bold and italic?)

It's election time

The presidential elections are coming up quickly and I saw this great bumper sticker. Not sure if it will change my mind about who to vote for. Here is a an old Ford truck with a NIXON/AGNEW bumper sticker on it.

Can I leave Pallets there?

I noticed this sign on the loading dock of 3 Bethesda Metro Center Plaza. "Notice. No Trash, No Pallats. Violators will be charged" Is it ok if I leave pallets there? Does anyone proofread signs anymore? How long has it been there? If managment notices, will they replace the sign or just leave it?

Here's another sign on on the same loading dock. It starts "NO PARKING IN LOADIING DOCK. For Unloading Only". What's this, A loading dock where you can't load? Why don't they just call it an unloading dock. And, what if you need to load something, where do you do that? To be fair, there is yet another sign on the loading dock that says you can use it for both loading and unloading.

[where: 3 Bethesda Metro Center, Bethesda, MD]

Where is the stock market headed?

The Dow first closed above 10,000 on March 29, 1999. Here it is again at10,000. Is this what Prince meant when he said "Party like its 1999"?
With the DOW crashing down from over 14,000 to below 10,000, I start to wonder where the market is headed. Is now a good time to invest? Will it keep going down? Should I be planning the DOW 5,000 party? Will it just trade sideways for a while? I don't have the answer to any of these questions, but I did a few interesting tidbits.

Looking at the DJIA chart I can see that the rate of growth picked up significantly around 1995. In fact, if the rate of growth had stayed the same as it was between 1985 and 1995, we would be around 7,500 now. If the rate of growth had stayed where it was before 1985 then we would be somewhere south of 5,000.
Is 7,500 what the Dow "Should" be at? I think that there are fundemental changes to the world economy. Outsourcing has hurt U.S. workers some, but helped U.S. corporations and Indian and Chinese workers. The market largely reflects what is happening to Companies, not people. U.S. companies are more global now too. These things should push the rate at which the stock market increases up a bit. On the other hand, markets tend to go from overly optimistic to overly pessimistic, so they could well go below 7,500 before coming back.

The Dow is a pretty poor index to track, the S & P 500 is much better, extrapolating the growth rate from '85 to '95 out to today would give us right around 800, about 20% below where it is now. There are other things to consider.

Take a look at the average price to earnings (PE) ratio of the S&P 500, it has fluctuated from below 10 in bear markets to around 20. After 1995 it goes up and peaks above 45. The historic norm is 15 (but the period of 1995 to 2000 pulls up the norm a bit, I think the norm was around 12 pre '95). Figuring out the P/E is a bit tricky, but you can get close by looking at the PE of "S&P Depository Receipts" Ticker symbol SPY. That shows a PE of around 13. Of course, if earnings (the 'E' in P/E) deteriorate, that could push the P/E higher even if prices go down. If we are headed to a P/E below ten like serious bear markets in the past, we still have a ways to go by this measure, but it looks reasonably valued at this point.

Another way of looking at the value of the market is by looking at the dividend yield. For a long time, the yield has been going down and is quite low. Way back in 2002, when the Dow was at 8,500, Bill Gross, the manager of the worlds biggest bond mutal fund said the dividend yield of large market indexes need to be 3.5% for the index to be fairly valued. Getting there would result in the Dow going down to 5,000. (or companies increasing their dividends). The S&P is currently yielding 2.18%, so by that measure it still looks overvalued, even 8 years after the article was originally written.

You can look abroad too, the Japanese Nikkei average closed at almost 39,000 at the end of 1989. Right now it is at 9,200. 18 years after hitting it's high, it is still down over 75%. How is that for depressing.

To me, it looks like the market could go down a bit more, but then again, maybe it will go down alot, or maybe it will start going up. Dow 7500 is possible, Dow 5000 seems like unlikely, but I can't rule it out. Looking back in time only tells you past trends, it is myoptic to only consider these. Who knows what will happen next.