Idiots Guide to Black Holes – II Friday, Aug 31 2007

Welcome back to the guide to black holes. If you have not read part I, quit peeking and head downwards to it. If you have, read on! Today, we jump straight into the really strange aspects, having been mostly normal in the previous post.

Wormholes and Time travel — All with rotation

Rotating black holes have already been covered in my previous post. I have mentioned in passing that they have an inner event horizon and an outer event horizon. Which horizon you are in depends on which way you are orbiting the black hole. Technically, if you are in the outer event horizon, you are trapped, condemned to drop into the black hole. However, because there is also an inner event horizon, if you are travelling in the opposite direction, you could be saved if you sort of turned around quickly enough.

Of course, reality does not like being made a fool of, so the theorists said that you would probably escape from a black hole, but you would possibly end up in a totally new universe or even stranger, maybe end up somewhere totally different in space time. So they decided that a Black hole is a sort of  shortcut through space time. And hence you can call it a wormhole. Why wormhole…read my notes for that.

Science fiction writers just loved this though. Finally there looked like something that could make space travel look possible after Einstein put his ridiculous speed of light limit. But the bad news is coming up.

Black Hole Menus — You can have anything to eat, as long as its Spaghetti. 

The problem with trying to go down a black hole is best explained with a small story. I am a six foot tall chap, and lets say I jumped feet first down a black hole. In the beginning, things would be fine…I would be falling fast, but that is ok. The gruesome part comes later. As I get closer to the black hole, Newton and Einstein gang up to beat on this hapless traveller. We know that gravitational force is dependent on the square of the distance between the two attracting bodies. And the problem is that my head is 6 feet away from my toes. Back on earth, it makes little difference, as the additional attractive force my feet feels is minimal. But near a black hole, with all its super heavy mass, the problem is quite acute. Heck…its not a cute, its just plain gruesome. In simple words, my feet would be accelerating towards the Black hole faster than my head would. And that is basically like being put in a huge rack (the Spanish inquisition kind). I heard that you gain about a foot in height before your bones and tendons give up and snap. OUCH!

So basically, anything that is silly enough to fall into a black hole will end up getting horribly stretched and elongated. A lá spaghetti. Physicists (imaginative lot them) decided to call the process Spaghettification. And the name stuck. So, unless you fancy getting a lot taller (and thinner) than you ever wanted to be, black holes as a means of travel is out!

Freebies– Power from Black Holes and Killjoys 

Well, you cant keep a good physicist down. Sure, you just ruined his funky space travel plans. But he is nothing if not a creative soul. So he came up with a new idea. Now, those of you who carefully read my section on space time and the ergosphere, your just reward is here. I will show you how to get free energy. It goes like this

1. Take a handy rock, and fling it into the Ergosphere. The dashed thing begins to go faster because it is stealing energy from the black holes rotation, and gradually gains a huge amount of energy.

2. Once this energy gained is greater than the gravitational force of the black hole, it gets flung out again.

3. Grab rock and fish out the energy that it has now gained from the black hole, and you have it. Energy gained for free!

Of course, this was too good to last. A chap named Penrose decided to ruin all those Business plans of those budding physicists and brought them right back down to earth. He pointed out that if you do gain energy from the black hole, conservation laws state that the black hole loses energy as well. And if you keep doing this silly thing, like we run out fossil fuels, the black hole will run out of rotational energy and will stop. And pop goes the balloon of free energy.

All the physicists went away, thinking dark thoughts about Penrose and vowing vengeance. They are still searching for a way to get it, but don’t hold your breath for it. You would probably asphyxiate.

Black Holes and Entropy

Entropy! The concept of entropy was probably best enunciated by Mr. Murphy. “Things tend to get worse.” But physicists love complicating things. And entropy was no exception. They had to put in stuff about high efficiency energy, heat, engines, and stuff like that. But we don’t need any of that stuff. For us, entropy is a simple Thing.

We define Entropy as the measure of disorder of the universe. No more…no less. Now Stephen Hawking (generally regarded as the hot stuff of physicist circles) pointed out that even when two black holes swallowed each other up, the event horizon of the combined entity was larger in area than the event horizons of the sum of the two black holes. People noticed that this was very similar to what the second law of thermodynamics said. (Actually the second law that I remember said NOTHING about area…but hey, that is why I am BlahLa, and he is Stephen Hawking) So, the physicists all came together and said, hey boy…lets talk about the entropy of black holes.

There of course is a small problem. Entropy is measured by the energy levels of constituent molecules (or atoms) and in a hairless black hole, all of these energy levels cant be defined because the black hole swallowed it all up. So while a Black hole may have entropy, nobody could figure out how much entropy it did have. But physicists are a hardy bunch, and they said, “Well, we know the event horizon areas. Why don’t we measure entropy in terms of the area of the event horizon?” This was unanimously accepted, as the cabal of physicists neglected to invite anyone with the sense to ask, “How on earth are area and entropy related” and it is now standard theory. So, if you want some free entertainment go to a physicist, and ask him to try to explain how area and entropy are related. Watching him squirm and twist facts into pretzels and doughnuts (with or without wormholes) will certainly make for an engaging afternoon.

Some Like it Hot–But the Big Bad ones are Cold!

Now, if Black holes have entropy, well they have to have a measure of temperature as well. And this was a sticking point in the whole entropy thing with physicists. For how the heck can you measure the temperature of a black hole? For one thing, it would swallow any thermometers without even a by your leave!

But Hawking comes riding to the rescue again (metaphorically of course). But before we explain that, we will have to discuss some rather esoteric ideas. One of them is Vacuum energy.

Vacuum Energy–Something from Nothing?

Physicists (the clever buggers) have this great idea about a vacuum. Now, you and I know what a vacuum is. Its basically…Nothing. In fact, you cant get more of a nothing than a vacuum. But physicists say, “No! What a vacuum is is really a sea of particles. But you cant really see them because them because in order to see them, you need a reference. But since the vacuum is our frame of reference, you can never see them!” Talk about circular logic! But strange as it may, its true. Now, my explanation is going to sound a lot like magic…but bear with me.

Imagine that you had an instrument that could recognize particles. But one of the problems is that you can only detect the particles if you had enough time to sense them. And speed of light puts a limit on how fast you can sense particles. Now, if a particle were to form, meet its antiparticle, and be destroyed; and do all this in less time than light could be used to measure it, it would not break the laws of reality…because nobody is there to see the particle break the laws of reality. Its a bit like Zen. “Who can hear a tree fall in the forest.” For all practical purposes, no-one. In the same way, if a particle were to sneak in and out of reality fast enough, you could technically say that its not breaking the laws of physics.

(Fine…I accept. It still sounds like magic. If you want a better explanation, ask Dr. Hawking)

So, at the end of the day, vacuum can be said to contain a heck of a lot of energy. But nobody can use it, because it is the lowest level of energy. (the whole entropy concept again).

Black Holes and Vacuum Energy:

“But what do Black holes have to do with this?”, you are asking. Here comes the answer. At or near the event horizon, if a particle were formed, and its antiparticle were also formed at the same time, one of them could escape into the universe, and the poor pair would get sucked into the black hole. And suddenly, it would seem as if the black hole would have emitted a particle! Nifty, eh?

So, what it would mean is that a black hole would actually be emitting some energy. And once something emits energy, its temperature can be measured. Once again, Stephen Hawking had saved the day.

Now, the smaller a black hole is, the more likely it is to emit this energy. Simply put, lets explain it like this. A small black hole has less gravity, so it cant absorb as much stuff. But it has to emit the same amount of energy. The net difference means that amount of energy emitted is greater than energy absorbed. So, a small black hole looks hot, because its emitting more energy than it absorbs. In the case of a large black hole, of course the situation is opposite. (If you are still unconvinced, go ask Stephen Hawking!). So, small Black holes are hot things, burning themselves out, and dying off. But large black holes are cold…and will continue to be cold as long as the background energy of the universe is high enough. But just you wait. Even the largest Black hole will finally evaporate once the universe gets sufficiently cold. Of course, this process is likely to take about a google years. That is 1 followed by a 100 zeros. Lets put it this way. That is a Looooong time away.

So, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. A brief outline of Black holes. All that I know, reduced to as few pages as I could get away with! And if you did not understand a huge amount of it…don’t worry. Infinity is rather difficult to comprehend. Don’t believe any physicists who try to con you into thinking that they understand it either! They are fibbing as well!

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Black Holes — The idiots guide part I Thursday, Aug 30 2007

I loved physics when I was a kid. Mainly, it was because of this book called “Physics can be Fun” by Y Perelmen, from Mir Publications. I remember, when I was in fifth or sixth standard, he explained the concept of escape velocity.

Back then, I was a bright kid, and my head was full of facts. So I thought to myself…what if you have a body that is so big that that the escape velocity for that is greater than the speed of light! Then you would have something nothing could escape from. I think I even spent some time trying to convince my friends about this cool idea, but I am not sure that they got it! You can imagine my devastation when I learnt that I was not the first chap to think of such a strange thing! And that they were called black holes (way cooler than my name…which was something like big star or something).

So, lets talk about black holes. In order for a good discussion, I will assume that you chaps know about Newtons law of gravitation. That will be a beginning.

Black holes– An initial definition

A Black hole is something that is big enough that the escape velocity of the body is greater than the speed of light. Since nothing escapes from it (including light) you cant see it. Hence the name.

Black Holes — Singularity…what’s in the name?

Well, the description above is good enough, I guess, but lets think about it logically. IF the body had enough mass that even light could not escape it, then the mass of the body would also start getting compressed due to the gravitational forces. And as it gets compressed even more, it experiences a still higher force, and so on, until the whole blooming thing collapses into a point. Thus, you will have a dashed huge amount of mass compressed into nothing (by definition a point has zero volume). Now physicists love to confuse people, so they decided to call the Black Hole a Singularity. Why? Because whenever you have zero in the denominator, you get a whole huge bunch of infinities, which are a pain to calculate with. Physicists are also lazy, and had no desire working with infinity, so the whole thing was abandoned as a bad job, and the Singularity was left alone because nothing could be explained inside it. This brings us neatly into the next section

Black Holes have no Hair!

Yes ladies and gentlemen. Its true. Apparently there are no hairy black holes! (I was so concerned about that). But more seriously, there is this theory called the No Hair Theory, which seeks to explain that Black holes can be completely described by only 3 properties. These are

1. Mass

2. Electric Charge

3. Angular Momentum

Anything else is completely irrelevant because the black hole pretty much swallows all the information available. So for example, a black hole made of matter is absolutely identical to one made of antimatter, so you will be in trouble in either case if you get swallowed. The theory used to say that information is completely destroyed once it enters a black hole. Updates are still happening here, so keep your eyes peeled for any hairy black holes!

Types of Black Holes

When I was a kid, I was pretty proud of myself for thinking of the concept of black holes. But of course, physicists are a real bunch of smart Alec’s, so they had to say, “Hah! There are 4 different types of black holes!” Basically, these four types are split into a combination of charged or uncharged, and rotating or stationary black holes!

Now, I am not sure that the Charged Black holes can be strongly charged, because as everyone knows, the charge force between particles is way stronger than gravity, so it seems hard that a black hole could be formed if its electric charge was too high. The damn thing would blow itself apart before it could attract enough mass. In the same way, non rotating black holes seem a bit tougher to imagine. All stars rotate…(as far as I know), and rotation does not stop if you compress all the mass. Its a bit like an ice skater doing a pirouette. It starts with her extending her arms at full stretch. As she brings her arms closer, she begins to rotate faster. In the same way, the black hole should also rotate faster as its mass gets compressed. So charged and stationary black holes are out! (but I could be wrong).

More about the Singularity

For an uncharged and stationary black hole (Which is easier to explain), its pretty easy. All the mass is concentrated on a single point. At the point of the black hole, the whole general theory of relativity collapses, and we are left with no explanations, and all the physicists shuffle their legs, staring at the floor and sidle away hoping not to be noticed.

Of course, all the quantum theorists still stand around saying, “But you cant have zero length…there is a quantum unit of length after all.” But to heck with them….they haven’t got any good explanations either, so they can all go into a big black hole if they like.

So, to summarise, for a black hole which is uncharged and stationary, there is one point at which the laws of physics give up and go away.

Event Horizon and Rotating Black Holes

First, we say what an event horizon is. Basically, it is the closest anything can get to a black hole without getting sucked in. Every black hole has an even horizon. But for rotating black holes, the situation is slightly more complicated. Now general theory of relativity says that matter distorts space and time around it. Now, it gets a bit more complicated when the matter is going to also be rotating at the same time. General theory goes on to state that rotating masses have rotational inertia, which drags space-time along with them. Sounds logical? Wait a bit longer.

The figure above shows that the event horizon for the black hole is now split into two. The inner event horizon is valid for a body that is orbiting the black hole in the direction of rotation. The outer ellipse is the orbit that a photon would take if it were orbiting the black hole opposite to its direction of rotation. Now here is the funny bit. According to theory, the space-time that is being dragged around by the black hole has to travel faster than the speed of light. Of course, no physical thing can travel faster than light, but there is nothing in the laws that prevent area from moving faster than light! As a result, no stationary object is allowed to exist within the outer event horizon (called the ergosphere), because it would look as if it were moving backward faster than light which is impossible. It can only orbit around the black hole, because then it would look like it were moving slower than light. And here is the funny bit. Its actually stealing a bit of energy from the rotation of the black hole, so theoretically, if it gets enough energy, it should be flung out of the black hole like a stone being twirled around too fast breaking its string.

Falling into a Black Hole— the View from the Outside

From the outside, seeing a body falling into a black hole is extremely weird. It will look as if the object falling into the black hole begins to fall slower and slower, until it looks stationary at the event horizon. Of course, for the poor falling object things are a bit different. It continues to fall beyond the event horizon too, right into the black hole. But the information cannot be relayed, because the light that transmits the information is also trapped.

So there, part I is completed. Part II will have other funky details. Such as black holes escaping to other universes, spaghetti and how its not just an Italian dish. We also discuss entropy and other such interesting details later. So till then, same bat-blog, same bat-link.

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Happy Birthday Liverpool Wednesday, Aug 29 2007

Liverpool is now 800 years old!

Why am I writing about Liverpool? Why not? For one thing, I always did like the name, and today is the city’s birthday after all!

Liverpool was established in 1207 by King John. Yes, that is the very same one who features in Robin Hood! In history, he was called Lackland, for his ability to give away territory almost faster than he could get his army to retreat, as well as for other lacks, which we shall not discuss here.

Anyway, Liverpool began, but till the 16th century, it was no more than a village, with only about 500 living there. But the dawn of the industrial revolution saw a turnaround in its fortunes. It soon became a port town, and was one of the hubs of the industrial revolution, facing towards the emerging America’s with its western facing port. At the same time, the rivalry with its neighbouring town of Manchester was begun, with Manchester as the production centre for textiles, while Liverpool was the transport hub of The industry.

Of course, all good things end, and Liverpool entered hard times since the 1930’s. But it has always been a home for culture. And today, Liverpool is best known for its greatest export: The Beatles. Scowsers all, they were icons, and even today Liverpool gets tonnes of Beatle tourists. They also had the Merseyside poets and galleries and the football club. But people will still remember them for the Beatles. And for good reason too.

Talking of football clubs, the city has two. Everton FC. And of course, the most successful team of them all, Liverpool FC. But unlike Manchester United and Manchester City (just to name one) the rivalry between the two teams has not been filled with acrimony!

So, here is to Liverpool. 800 and still rolling!

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Reading List Sunday, Aug 26 2007

This month, i was reading

1. Knight of the word trilogy– 3 books by Terry Brooks. Not my fantasy author favourite. I found the series pretty slow and lousy. But then, I did finish it!

2. Dresden Files– Jim Butcher : 8 books about the wizard P.I Harry Dresden. I liked it, mainly because I like Film Noir style fiction. And Harry is a hero I could get used to.

3. River of Death — Alistair McLean : From an acknowledged master, this book disappoints. Lousy is the best I can give this book

4. Adventures of Conrad Stargard — Leo Frankowski : Finished 3 out of the 5 books. I generally like the engineer stranded in the past, and Leo has done a good job, with excellent detail. The later books pall, but you cant have everything.

5. A for Alibi — Sue Grafton : Another PI series, set in California. First book is OK. Not great, but can be read once.

6. For a Breath I tarry — Roger Zelazny : A short story. But one that I really liked. Explores the meaning of humanity. And the limits of analysis.

7. Chronicles of Amber — Roger Zelazny : 6 books of the adventures of Corwin of Amber. Told in the First Person, its rather good fantasy. Though again, the series begins to weaken towards the end.

8. The Gap into Conflict — Stephen Donaldson : A 5 book series that I revisited recently. Donaldson tortures his characters dreadfully, and they are dreadfully dysfunctional one and all, but he still weaves a good tale.

9. The Serpentwar Saga — Raymond E Feist : 4 book Sequel to the Riftwar and a couple of other series’. We continue the tale of Midkemia, with a new generation of heroes, with a few old favourites still around. I still think my favourite character Tomas did not get enough screen time. But well, you cant have it all.

Till Next month then. Further reading suggestions welcomed.

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Contra Investing — Am I smarter than the market? Thursday, Aug 23 2007

There is this old economist story. Once upon a time, an economist and his prize student were walking down a street (in the USA). While they were walking, a drifting piece of green caught their eye.

“Hey, that looks like a $100 bill”, cried the student. “Let me go pick it up!”

“Don’t bother”, replied the economist

The student of course knew better, so ran and picked up the green thing…it turned out to be a flier in the shape and size and colour of a $100 bill.

Walking back disconsolately, he asked the economist, “How the heck did you know it was fake?”

The sage economist replies, “My dear boy, if there was a $100 dollar bill just flying around, there are a million other people walking the street before you who would have picked it up. The fact that it is floating around at all means that it is not a $100 bill!”

This story illustrates that in a perfect economy, you cant make money by doing nothing. And that everything has a value that is already fairly determined.

Thus, in stock markets, the theory goes that the market is usually fairly priced and so its not possible to beat the market. This is the economic theory.

However, there are always those who show a finger to the theory and do things differently. These are contra investors. Short, I guess, for contradictory investors…or just plain old controversial investors! They look at a company’s fundamentals, such as its order book, sales and profit margins, management structure, leadership, and all the other things that are pre-requisites for success.

Of course, most of these companies are already fairly valued, so gains from them are limited. But what the Contra fund seeks to do is to see companies which have these great traits and low valuations as well! In theory any companies that satisfy the criteria for success should succeed, and the contra fund makes huge packets of money.

Essentially though, there is one major problem. It is this. The contra investor expects the market to be unfairly valued when he invests, and to correct to fair valuation once he/she has invested in the firm. This is a rather naive view of the world at best, and misguided and disastrous at worst.

But today, more and more people are advertising contra funds. So there must be a good reason why these people think that these funds will work. Simply put, if the theory of market efficiency is altered by the fact that not all sections of the market are given the same access to information, it might be a bit easier to digest. After all, not every investor looks at every stock closely. A contra investor would look at selected stocks, invests in them, and then forget about the investment till the profits are good enough that people are forced to notice the firm. Then the stock price would go through the roof, and the contra fund would make a killing. This is the theory upon which these funds operate.

Unfortunately, this means that most contra funds are now invested in small cap funds which usually do not see much activity. In other words, money put in contra funds is not liquid and is exposed to significant risk. So Contra investing is for the brave and the arrogant. If you believe that you know more than 10 million other investors, go ahead and invest. If you believe that you are one of the crowd and the crowd has most of the MBA’s, then you are better off not jumping in where angels fear to tread.

However, Warren Buffet has occasionally been described as a contra investor, because of his reliance on financial parameters for investing, as well as his famed refusal to invest in .com companies because he “did not understand them”. So go figure!

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Poetry in Fantasy Tuesday, Aug 21 2007

This is a collection of the various verses of The Road goes ever on by JRR Tolkien. For some reason, these verses are not often talked about when discussed with the Lord of the Rings. In my opinion though, these verses are possibly one of the things that the series of books should be remembered for. So without much more ado,

From the Hobbit:

Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains of the moon.

Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.

From the LotR:

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow it who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

Amazing poem. My thanks to http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/4.html

An addendum. This is the final verse, sung by Bilbo as they leave….

 

Still round the corner there may wait

A new road or a secret gate,

And though I oft have passed them by,

Aday will come at last when I

Shall take the hidden paths that run

West of the Moon, East of the Sun.

 

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What does Accounting really mean? Sunday, Aug 19 2007

Although I am an MBA (mostly), I don’t really have a full understanding of the bean counting side of the business. And I keep realizing that perhaps it is important to have a deeper knowledge of the game.

After all, if Business is a game, your Profit or Loss is one of the ways we keep score. And as a Master of the world of Business, I ought to know more about the keeping score part of things. Today, while I was at home, I received a crash course in the basics of Accounting. I still have a long way to go, but at least some things are more clear than they were before.

1. The Basics– Starting off

When you start, there are basically 4 primary books that need to be managed. These are

1. Cash Book

2. Bank Book

3. Purchase Book

4. Sales Book

These 4 are primary books. In addition, to manage the fact that the world is not perfect we have something called a Journal that takes care of extraordinary entries such as depreciation and errors and corrections.

From these, we can make a Trial Balance, which is basically an accounting of cash that has to be paid to or received from each specific individual or business concern. A trial Balance consolidates several entries across all the books into one neat balance.

In turn, from the trial balance, we prepare a profit and loss account, which can easily be constructed, because you now have the trail of the money that comes in and out. The profit (or loss) now generated will now be moved into the Balance sheet.

Very simple indeed in concept. In application, I still have to work out some practical problems to see how it works. Until then, this is WiP!

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Chak de India Saturday, Aug 18 2007

I am not sure I got the spelling right, but I did watch the movie today. First, its been a loooong time since I saw a movie in Rex, which is practically a relic from bygone eras in Bangalore. I think the last movie I watched here was Rang de Basanti, which was quite good.

Anyway, watched it sitting in the front rows, which was awesome fun. The movie itself revolves around the sport of hockey, and Kabir Khan, a disgraced Indian goalkeeper who committed the ultimate crime of being held responsible for losing the world cup final to Pakistan. He seeks redemption in coaching the Indian Women’s hockey team to victory in the World Cup.

All in all, a decent tale. Predictable and cliched, but still well told. Along the way, the movie tackles bigotry, womens’ rights, eveteasing (what a mild word for sexual harassment), and other such issues, without being too preachy.

So, does this story mark a new beginning for Yash Raj films and Shah Rukh Khan. Sadly, not quite. While the story is told well, the undercurrent of jingoism is rather strong. Yes, it does appeal to the local audience though. I was sitting in the front seat, so the cheers and whistles were easy to note and appreciate. But it was still a trifle overdone. As for Shah Rukh, no doubt he has done a much better job than most of his overacted roles in his other movies.

But the show is stolen by the girls in the team. None of them is a particularly big star, but they all deliver good performances. Overall, the movie hangs together better because of them.

So all in all, probably worth a watch. Its a bit different from your usual Masala Sport movies about cricket mad India.

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Technical Analysis I — A short Introduction Friday, Aug 17 2007

There are two ways of investing scientifically, is what my finance lecturer told me. One way makes money. The other does not!

But more seriously, the two ways are called fundamental analysis, and the other is called Technical analysis. These two methods are strikingly different, and need some sizeable amounts of explanation.

Let us look at Technical analysis first. Technical analysis looks only at the price of a stock over time, rather than the profit and loss, or the book value, dividend payout and stuff like that.  Instead, you look only at the share price. That tells you enough, is what the technical analyst will say.

And how is that true? Basically, the technical analyst says, “There are a million people out there who are thinking about the fundamentals of a stock and will pay only so much for it. But honestly, its too complicated. We can’t really say how much a stock is worth absolutely, because there is no absolute benchmark” So, the technical analyst goes on, “what the market pays, is the fair price”.

The technical analyst looks at how the stock prices changes with time. This he does with trending, and moving averages, and all sorts of complicated statistics. In essence though, he is determining a relationship of Price versus time. If he finds that the relationship is positive and significant, the stock is likely to go up. If it is relationship exists, but is slowing with respect to time, the stock may be peaking. And if there is a negative correlation between the stock price and time, then it means that the stock is likely to go down further.

Technical analysis has a large number of devotees. I have just about touched the surface of it. I will try to explain more when I have more time, and knowledge too!

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Amazing News Items Tuesday, Aug 14 2007

You can’t call a baby 4Real in New Zealand. So the proud parents called him Superman!

You want to smuggle monkey…you hide him under your cap in an airplane

“Nice Try Toots” : Reply from Porn Film to UK girl who found a pic of hers on its CD cover. Yes. The movie Bombed. And NO. The Girl was NOT AMUSED.

Monday, the 13th of August was Left Handers Day. Commemorative ceremonies were held all over the world.

“I am Moby Dick to Congress’ Ahab” Karl Rowe on resigning.

This was a brief snapshot of news stories that I found. Who says News cant be fun!

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