{"id":239,"date":"2012-01-13T05:36:59","date_gmt":"2012-01-13T10:36:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thequicksliver.wordpress.com\/?p=239"},"modified":"2012-01-13T05:36:59","modified_gmt":"2012-01-13T10:36:59","slug":"1-13-12-oh-man-omens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/1-13-12-oh-man-omens\/","title":{"rendered":"1.13.12 Oh Man, Omens!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yeah, yeah, Friday the 13<sup>th<\/sup>, ooh, scary.\u00a0 We already covered that topic, you can read it here:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"..\/2009\/11\/13\/11-13-09-friday-the-13th\/\">http:\/\/thequicksliver.wordpress.com\/2009\/11\/13\/11-13-09-friday-the-13th\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>But there\u2019s been enough bad luck recently and since the world probably won\u2019t end in 2012, we\u2019d prefer to be optimistic.\u00a0 There are plenty of signs we\u2019re headed for a good year.\u00a0 For example, there is a man named Rollo Maughfling (don\u2019t laugh) who is the Arch Druid of the Standing Stones of Wiltshire (OK, go ahead).\u00a0 This year at Stonehenge, on the morning of the Winter Solstice, the weather was fair and the sunrise was clear and beautiful.\u00a0 The Arch Druid declared the day a \u201cjolly occasion\u201d and a good omen for the year ahead. (Cheers, pass the mead.)<\/p>\n<p>Then there\u2019s this: one of Warren Buffet\u2019s favorite economic indicators is railroad traffic, because it\u2019s a good objective measure of the flow of raw goods. This month, the Association of American Railroads reported that rail carloads are up 3.0% versus last year and intermodal units (whatever they are) are up 3.7%.\u00a0 Since the economy moves at about the pace of a fully-loaded freight train, this year-long uptick indicates a slow but steady improvement throughout the year to come.\u00a0 (We\u2019re rolling.)<\/p>\n<p>And now the clincher: January 23 begins the Chinese New Year, and this is the year of the Dragon, the most auspicious symbol of the 12 that make up the Chinese zodiac. (Quick, name the other 11.)\u00a0 Dragon years have consistently proved to be powerful, successful periods.\u00a0 Among the Dragon\u2019s well-documented effects is the fact that more children are born in Dragon years than any other year.\u00a0 (That\u2019s a lot of folks getting lucky).<\/p>\n<p>Oh yeah, the sun is up, the economy is moving, and folks are, um, busy.\u00a0 Who cares about Friday the 13<sup>th<\/sup>?\u00a0 You\u2019ve got a whole year of good luck coming.<\/p>\n<p>(As long as a piano doesn\u2019t land on your head today.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yeah, yeah, Friday the 13th, ooh, scary.\u00a0 We already covered that topic, you can read it here: http:\/\/thequicksliver.wordpress.com\/2009\/11\/13\/11-13-09-friday-the-13th\/ But there\u2019s been enough bad luck recently and since the world probably won\u2019t end in 2012, we\u2019d prefer to be optimistic.\u00a0 There are plenty of signs we\u2019re headed for a good year.\u00a0&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[17,243,364,379,465,509,896,1013,1174,1315,1349,1379],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-7","tag-17","tag-chinese-new-year","tag-druids","tag-economy","tag-friday-the-13th","tag-good-luck","tag-omens","tag-railroads","tag-stonehenge","tag-warren-buffet","tag-winter-solstice","tag-year-of-the-dragon"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}