I made the front page show summaries of recent hocoblog entries and comments while the left column links to recent goon blogs (Articles) on this site. The left column returns to showing hocoblog stuff when navigating other parts of the site. Let me know what you think or if there are problems.

I also made a hack to fix all the instances of "—", "”", "…", etc. . It's not an elegant fix, but it works. I'll just have to run it periodically to clean up the titles.

I lost interest in project hCCh about 12 hours after I posted the blog message. The idea was to submit hocus articles to sites like digg to drive people to read—without prejudice—hocus' site and see what the response is. However I found his articles quite difficult to categorize since they're often about forum behavior and seldom about finance, or at least so vaguely about finance as to be impossible to summarize. Plus it seemed like if I were going to spend effort to drive traffic to a site then I might as well put the effort in for a more direct benefit to me besides hocomanic entertainment.

And then, as sometimes happens, I simply lost interest in hocus. I've only clicked back a few times to see if anything noteworthy seems to be going on. I'm not saying I'm through with hocomania; I just have just almost completely lost interest for the time being.

When I created this site there was so much traffic on the then-REHP-now-BoH forums that the more interesting events got lost in the mix of threads, but that is not the case now. Then this site was useful to post significant developments and hocomania summaries. Now I think the main appeal of this site is the hocoblog feeds.

So I am thinking of putting the hocoblog feeds in the big center column instead of the blogs. Any thoughts? I won't get rid of anything, just put the hocoblog feeds—possibly with summaries—in the center.

As a side note, I know all the "—"es and "’"s are annoying. If I get some time I'll see if I can fix that. The safety features of the feed software prevent those from getting coded into their proper characters.

I'm just starting project hCCh: "hocus Community Come home". hocus hasn't been able to reach the community, so I'm trying to bring the community to him. Basically I'm going to try to increase traffic to his blog and/or site without offering the readers my prejudice. The thinking is that fresh readers will bring fresh comments and new interactions with hocus (which have been quite entertaining in the past). And the most fun part is that it is what hocus thinks he wants, and at least the readers will be voluntarily--if unknowingly--entering the fray. I'm not sure how easy or hard this will be, and it will give me some practical experience in bringing traffic to web sites which may help me in a more practical way in the future.

I'm also noticing that the old REHP forums--now rebranded Rob Bennett's Best of Hocomania Discussion Forum--is continuing to drop posts. I have made efforts to link to original material whenever I refer to hocus' writings here or elsewhere so readers can verify the original and judge it in context, but in my occasional checks of material I am finding that posts linked from here are steadily disappearing from the forum. The instance I just stumbled upon is the stealing of the term "bloviating" from M*; that thread has lost the early posts to it. In the recent pasts I have browsed my quotes section so I could link the original quote but found it missing.

gw posted a fine analysis that accurately describes kooks. Rob fits nearly every category . . .

I am reading The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan, which by the way is a wonderful book so far.

I am a practical, results-oriented person who doesn't fully trust my own immediate perceptions, so I tend to assume others do the same. I have noticed in the past that my own memories can change, and sometimes I am not sure if a memory was a dream or if it really happened, so I am skeptical--at times even of my own thoughts. But at times I realize many others are simply not the same, and this book refines that thought for me.

Many people define Truth by how it feels to them, and once they have felt "Truth" (or a "truth") it is nearly impossible to convince them otherwise with evidence and facts, for they Know what the Truth is. (Note capitals.) Several chapters of the book summarize similarities between unscientific and pseudoscientific beliefs and scams (faith healing, charms/talismans, transcendental meditation, visions of Mary/saints/aliens, ghosts, speaking with the dead, etc.). One common thread among those who experience and spread these things is their unwavering faith in their belief and that they serve as a channel between our reality and their belief. (Note that the common theme is that they are privy to a special truth and are specially chosen to deliver it; furthermore you need to interact with them--uncritically--to learn the truth for yourself.)

So naturally I thought of hocus. Here is an avatar or man that intuitively felt something amiss with discussions of SWR and returns even though he fully admits a lot of the math is beyond him. Over time he refines his feeling and at some point feels Truth. Now He is here to help us understand this Truth and is invulnerable to evidence challenging the Truth. How are we to learn the Truth? By joining his Community and conversing with Him, He who discovered and channels this Truth.

Sifting through the hocomania, we see that Rob acknowledges Greaney’s study accurately reports the historically surviving withdrawal rate . . .

LINK

I found and added the feeds for "A Rich Life"s blogs and comments, so we're ready for his new blog software. Over the next couple of days I'll figure out if I want to mingle them with the Financial Freedom Blog and comments or if I want a separate category for them. I'll probably mingle them.

Unless hocus removes his old blog--which, knowing him, is possible--he may still get new comments occasionally, and it would be nice to see them in chronological order here.

UPDATE: The old and new blogs and comments are all mingled together in the left sidebar under the renamed heading "hocus Blogs and Comments". In that list everything should appear roughly in the order they are posted. If you click around on the tags/categories you'll find that both blogs are under the same category and both comment systems are under the same category. The comments will probably be titled differently now, but we can't tell for sure until someone bothers to "put forward" a comment on the new blog.

UPDATE 2: Ah, good. The "A Rich Life" comments are titled as "Comment on [...]", so they still stand out from the blog entry titles. Oh, and "F1RST P0ST!1!!!11!" on hocus' new blog comments! (If anyone reads Slashdot...eh, this isn't the crowd, is it?)

Down for three weeks due to a server crash, a busy me and the need to do several updates before brining it back online. It's back and seems to be working at least superficially. I anticipated some troubles with the RSS links, but they seem to be working okay.

I still need to set up the periodic check and make sure nothing major is broken, and then there are some optimizations, but at least we're back.

On paper, Valuation Informed Investing (VII) has shown to beat Buy and Hold (B&H). However, in the real world, trading costs and taxes come into play. nfs performed an analysis that shows that after taxes, VII doesn't hold up as well. Here is the analysis.

LINK

Recall that black is B&H and violet is VII. The comparison for the recent 20-year experience between with or without tax treatment is more dramatic. Here's without taxes . . .

And here's with taxes applied . . .

Schroeder: The Dow reached all-time highs last year.

Hocus: What a relief!

[link]