2005-08-05
Thoughts for a Better Tomorrow
So I have been thinking about a lot of things recently, mostly things that don’t affect someone’s day to day life, but are important nonetheless. This is probably going to come out in a stream of consciousness form, so be warned. And I am putting in some links that I have found interesting and recommend reading them as you get some time.
1) Energy and Oil Prices: I don’t know how many of you read Thomas Friedman’s articles in the New York Times, but, in my opinion, he has exceptional ideas for improving many things that most of us only complain about. I would recommend his book The World Is Flat as necessary reading to anyone who wants to understand the changes going on in the world that are allowing India and China to so rapidly make the jump from ass-backward third world countries to first world global powers seemingly in just a few years. If you are not familiar with him, trust me, liberal or conservative, his stuff with make you think about in ways that you have not before. Anyone, one of Friedman’s ideas that has most resonated with me over the last year is the idea that we are funding both sides of the war on terror. We are paying for our troops and technology to combat terrorism with our taxes (and government borrowings) but we are also paying for the terrorist funding by paying for oil at $60 a barrel. If the United States were energy independent, the price of oil would crash, suddenly there would not be money available to fund terrorism (not to mention that the secular voices of the Mid-East might finally have a say in what is going on there). I am a guilty of oil indifference as the next person, if not more so. I live in a 2 SUV family. The price of oil is likely to continue to rise over time as the middle class in India and China decide that the “American Dream” of home and car ownership is really the “Global Dream” and an extra half-billion to billion people start to demand gas for their cars. Obviously this is not going to happen overnight, but we can see the beginning of this demand today each time we drive past a gas station and look at gas at $2.30 a gallon. The U.S. Energy Bill that got signed into law this week is a joke. Instead of tax breaks to oil companies, we need to spend that money on research into clean fuels to power our cars and light our houses in the future. Maybe fuel cells are the answer and how much more quickly could those hit the market if we were to spend money on fuel cell research rather than giving tax breaks to companies drilling holes in the deep Gulf of Mexico. I am not a wacky environmentalist, but we need to wake up and get a jump on the next generation of technology because the status quo seems unsustainable to me in the long-term.
2) Math: People who have read this Diary for a while know several things about me. I am a nerd (well aren’t we all, we all have on-line Diaries). I work in Finance. If you read my Gambling Entry you know that I enjoy numbers and statistics. Why are Americans so afraid of math? My wife is. She took at Calculus class while we were dating and I tutored her nearly every night. The frustration of helping her study for the final almost ended our relationship. There are many problems in our educational system. Not the least of which is that math just seems to taught in such as way as to turn off most students. Does it need to be? No, I don’t think so, it just always has been taught that way. It is taught as something dry, intimidating, and lifeless. I always looked at math as a puzzle and the laws and rules of math were just the laws and rules that you needed to use to solve those puzzles. Math certainly was not always fun and I certainly was not a math major, but deal with numbers all day long. In the esoteric world of Hedge Funds which I deal with tangentially (trust me when I assure you that the linked article is not talking about my salary) is often based on math. Most of guys who goose the best strategies are mathematicians or physicists who are using mathematical concepts to model markets and portions of the financial markets and are making a killing, mostly off of people who are not sophisticated enough (or are too lazy) to do the required math themselves. Ultimately all these brain cells and computer power applied to the markets will only make they more efficient (much like the Mortgage Bond Markets became more efficient in the 1990s after the excess returns of the 1980s. But I guess what American’s really should be telling our smartest students is that becoming a lawyer who starts and wins class action lawsuits is not the only way to become wealthy in America. You don’t just have to take English and Acting (or just pray you hit the lottery), you can mix in some Math and do great for yourself too. Come on aren’t there enough lawyers as it is?! Don’t even get me started on the desperate need for Engineers, but who am I to talk, I dropped out of an Engineering major to take Econ, Finance and Accounting.
3) Adult Education and Reading: I am always reading at least two books. I use reading sort of loosely, I guess I am only reading a single book at a time and listening to another as a book on tape in my car during my commute. I work with a very bright and highly educated group of people, however, I probably read a fairly high multiple of books above the average for my office and I am sure it is much much higher than that when compared to the national average. I love read and learn about things. I guess you could say that my education has never stopped but it seems sort of sad that many other people never pick-up a book and never try to learn something new just because. A few weeks ago I had the epiphany that while I understand how to use a computer and can write some the most complex Excel spreadsheets you have ever seen, I really don’t know anything about programming computers. I mean I had some basic BASIC programming on an Apple IIe in grade school or whatever, but as for real honest to God build it yourself programming, I had no clue. So being a nerd, I decided to teach myself some programming. During my lunch break for the last two weeks, I have been doing a self-study programming class. At this rate it is going to take me a year to finish, but at least I have gotten started. Rather than getting support from my co-workers, they all think I am crazy (which I probably am). They can understand learning something new but I think they have fear of programming. I guess I am trying to learn some programming to overcome my fear of programming. Anyway, computers are arguably the most important tool for the 21st century and I figure the more I know (and can teach my kids) about them, the better. So I entreat each of you reading this to find a book on a topic you know nothing about but are interested in and start reading.
I did not mean this to be a going to hell in a hand basket kind of entry. I did not mean this in that way at all I hope it did not come out that way. All I was hoping was that anyone who took the time to read this post and the links associated with it would think about the points I brought up. What am I going to do after having thought about it? Well I have been thinking a lot and I am not selling either of my SUVs for the time being, however, the next car I buy (in several years) will be more fuel-efficient. My boys as they grow up will be exposed to math in a fun way (the same ways my Engineer grandfather introduced math concepts to me). I also plan on encourage my son’s to learn to program computers so that they have additional understanding and appreciation of the machines that will most influence their lives over the course of the 21st century.
-- rockabillie at 2:38 p.m.