Back in Business (and an Apology)

To my readers (all two of you), happy new year!

I apologize that I haven’t kept up this blog. But 2017 is here, and I’m vowing that the WHYSOHARRIED blog is back in biz. Call it a “resolution”, if you’ll excuse the cliche.

I must admit that I was a bit discouraged from continuing to write this blog because there were so few readers/visitors–and yes, I can admit to that. But a main reason I keep this blog is to have a personal outlet of sorts (as stated in the “About” section of this blog). So by stopping to write this blog because of a dearth of readers is being disingenuous to the very reason I started to blog.

So with that, I will try to keep to at least one entry per week.

(Takes a bow to an empty audience)

An Ode to Driving

This weekend was the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

I’ve heard of “Le Mans” since I was a lad. You see, the first magazine I subscribed to (not counting National Geographic which was subscribed on my behalf by my parents) was Road & Track. The magazine kindled my life-long love of cars; which, to be frank, has subsided somewhat in recent years as more visceral and immediate responsibilities such as job and family came to the fore.

At any rate, Road & Track was as much a magazine about cars as it was about car culture–racing, heritage, history, and style. It had an extensive coverage of Le Mans in particular, which is a race about speed as much as endurance.

Le Mans is a peculiar race. It’s held annually at the same location–the Circuit de la Sarthe in Southern France. Like its name suggests, the race lasts 24 hours continuously. It starts each year in a June afternoon and ends the following day. Besides driving at high speeds, the team of drivers must also manage fuel, car mechanics, tire / brake wear, and eating, sleeping, and going to the bathroom… you know, things you wouldn’t otherwise be concerned with at any other sporting event which ends in a span of few hours.

Back in grade school, I loved to draw cars. I sketched out cars each day during class, some of which were existing models and some only existed in my head (side note: I think the car I drew most was the Mitsubishi Eclipse of the mid-90s). I was voted “most artistic” in 7th grade almost purely based on my skill of drawing cars. My other formats of fine art were mediocre at best–I wasn’t particularly good at watercolor or oil painting. But drawing mechanical contraptions with a pencil was a forte.

My first ride was a second-hand stick-shift Dodge Shadow ES 4-Door Sedan with a V-6. I tinted its windows, installed headlight covers, and put in ground effect lights (I was 16 and this was the year 2000, so please pardon my lack of judgment).

In high school, driving on the winding back roads of Pennsylvania was my release. Need to blow some steam or contemplate life decisions? Just hop in the car and start driving. One-two-three, dropping the clutch and brake into a corner, accelerating out of a turn… imagining myself as Steve McQueen in an E-Type.

I could lose myself for hours on the endless road; worries of the day faded among silhouettes of trees, gliding past my periphery. Each throw of the shifter a precise dance movement, meshing with the thrum of the iron-block engine serving as background music.

It was pure zen.

A Technorati’s Fear

Oculus Rift

At an event at the Harvard Club tonight, I met a young engineer from Shell (the oil & gas giant). We engaged in one of the most interesting conversations I’ve had in a while.

Our conversation encompassed various topics, from conspiracy theories to artificial intelligence, and eventually arrived back to to topic of engineering. He told me that in his field of engineering, the amount of knowledge churn is staggering. What he meant is that students graduating each year (or every few years or so) are so much more advanced in engineering than their predecessors, that he could barely keep up even with rigorous continuous education. The rate of innovation (in technology) is so staggering that knowledge pretty much becomes obsolete in merely a few years.

Anyways, he mentioned to us an article about what Elon Musk said at the recent CODE technology conference in California, specifically that Musk believes there’s a good chance we’re all living in a simulation.

From Verge (which, by the way, is an excellent website to keep up with the world of technology):

“There’s a billion to one chance we’re living in base reality,” Elon Musk said tonight on stage at Recode‘s Code Conference, meaning that one of the most influential and powerful figures in tech thinks that it’s overwhelmingly likely we’re just characters living inside a simulation.

To recap: essentially, the most powerful and influential person in technology thinks that the world we’re living in is a computer-generated simulation.

Now, I don’t think Musk is an idiot (quite the opposite, actually). But that’s an outlandish thing to say, right?

Let’s examine. Musk argues that we “stand now on the cusp of a new wave of virtual and augmented reality experiences.”

Musk, of course, is talking about virtual reality (VR). What’s VR you ask? Well, when I was in elementary school, there was a show called VR Rangers. The show was about a bunch of teenagers wearing  goggles which “transported” them to a virtual reality where they do battles with monsters.

Yep, in 20 short years, the world depicted by VR Rangers is now a thing. VR devices such as Oculus Rift (born on Kickstarter, recently acquired by Facebook) on the high-end, and Samsung VR on the low-end, all allow their wearers to experience being “transported” to a virtual reality of their choosing, depending on the simulation software / video game they are experiencing / playing (if you’re not familiar, I suggest doing some additional research… the whole topic is fascinating).

More from Musk:

“If you assume any rate of improvement at all then games will become indistinguishable from reality,” Musk said. “Even if that rate of advancement drops by a thousand from what it is now, let’s just imagine it’s 10,000 years in the future, which is nothing on the evolutionary scale.”

Musk’s concern is that given the rate of innovation, VR will soon become so real that it would make the virtual reality indistinguishable from actual reality.

Think about this… if you’re fed up with the world or your problems are piling up, just plug into VR and you can live a simulated second life (or first life, which is it?). You can choose to ignore the real world, because, you know, the virtual world will soon be just as real as the real world.

You’ve all read reports about how robots and automation are going to replace 50% of the workforce. What are those displaced workers going to do? The idea is that we’re going to use the money generated by robots’ productivity to create a VR “utopia” where instead of working, we’ll live out the good life however we want in virtual reality.

In other words, we’re going to be plugged into THE MATRIX.

Where is Everyone?

A far-away galaxy.

Have you ever sat there and considered our place in the universe?

We’re busy people, right? We wake up each morning, get dressed, and hurry to work. Then after 8-12 hours, we go home, relax for a bit, and then go to sleep. Rinse and repeat.

OK, stop yourself for a second. Forget everything you learned in your life. Imagine you’re a being arriving on earth for the very first time, or even imagine yourself as a baby who was just born (assume such a baby has a fully developed brain but without the data–e.g. without all of the knowledge learned in life, but have full set of cognitive and critical thinking skills). You’d probably stare at this world–and the people who inhabit it–in awe and ask, “Who are these people?” “What are they doing?” “Why do they swing their limbs to and fro as they walk?” “What are those pods they’re riding in?” “What is that material they cram into that hole on their heads a few times a day?”

We think we’re fairly unique in this universe. I mean, we only EVER think about ourselves. We think we’re important, we have important challenges, and you know, everybody’s got problems.

But in the context of the entire universe, we (and our world) seem so… small and inconsequential. The vastness and scale of the universe is almost incomprehensible (or even panic-inducing).

Consider our galaxy, the Milky Way. Scientists estimate that there are between 100-400 billion stars in our galaxy (that’s a huge gap, btw. If the margin of error in any of my work report was up to 400% I’d probably be told to leave the premises immediately). It’s also estimated that there are between 100-400 billion galaxies in our universe.

So, if you’re counting at home, that’s about 10^22 stars in the universe, conservatively speaking (we’re not going to get into if there are other universes out there, as some physicists have suggested. Those kinds of numbers would elicit a ‘blue screen of death’ in my brain).

That 10^23 figure is hard to illustrate, so here’s an analogy: for each grain of sand on earth, there are 10,000 stars out there. Let that sink in for a second.

Now, how many of those stars are “sun-like”? Meaning, around the same age as our sun with the ability to give off the temperature and light that we know of. Scientists estimate that between 5 to 20% of stars are “sun-like.” So doing that math (using the smallest figure of 5%) gives us about 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars just like our sun out there.

Let’s assume half of the suns out there have a planet orbiting them that are within the “habitable zone,” i.e. a range of distance from a star that would support life as we know it. That gives us about 250,000,000,000,000,000,000 “earth-like” planets. In other words, for each grain of sand on earth, there are 250 earth-like planets out there.

That’s, um, a lot of earth-like planets.

Which brings us to our question–posed famously by the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi–“Where is everyone?” This is also known as the Fermi Paradox.

And, keep in mind, we’re just considering planets similar to earth, presumably those that can support life similar to that we have here. We’re not even counting life forms (which we may or may not be aware of) that conceivably could live under other circumstances unfit for humans.

I’m not going to get into the answer of this question (I mean, if I knew the answer, I wouldn’t be here writing this blog).

Each can deduce his or her own hypothesis, but scientists and philosophers have generally proposed the following theories (all having some degree of merit):

1. We’re truly unique, and one of a kind. There is no other life out there
2. We’ve been visited by aliens, and we just don’t know
3. We’ve been visited by aliens, but there’s some kind of government cover-up
4. We’ve been visited by aliens, but in the past (e.g. they contacted the Mayans)
5. There is intelligent life out there, but for some reason they haven’t found us (and we haven’t found them)
6. There is super intelligent life out there, but we’re too primitive to detect them (e.g. we’re like ants in an ant hill, completely oblivious and unaware that there is a highway ramp far above us because our entire worldview is limited to the ant hill)
7. We’re wrong about everything we know (e.g. we’re all plugged into the matrix)

If you really have time, and are interested in reading more about this topic, here are some other great reads:

http://io9.gizmodo.com/11-of-the-weirdest-solutions-to-the-fermi-paradox-456850746

http://www.space.com/25325-fermi-paradox.html

 

 

Predictions for Today… from 1950

Last week I read a column on ESPN about how one can only judge the merits of an NFL draft 5 years after it happens, to see how the players pan out (or not).

In the spirit of judging the past, let’s see how well experts from the 1950s did in predicting the distant future–today.

So I dug into the archives of this blog (kidding) and pulled out an Associated Press article entitled “How Experts Think We’ll Live in 2000 A.D.” published on December 27, 1950. This fascinating article covered how scientists at the time imagined the future of movies, flight, space travel, healthcare, and role women, would manifest.

I’ll list the predictions one by one, and then offer some remarks.

Third dimensional color television will be so commonplace and so simplified at the dawn of the 21st century that a small device will project pictures on the living room wall so realistic they will seem to be alive. The room will automatically be filled with the aroma of the flower garden being shown on the screen.

Hmm… this one is hard to judge. We have 3D TVs (though they are now considered passé), as well as small TVs (think your smartphone or tablet), and mobile projectors. We do not yet have machines to project the aromas of flowers… while the technology is there I’m sure, but there probably isn’t a demand for that.

The woman of the year 2000 will be an outsize Diana, anthropologists and beauty experts predict. She will be more than six feet tall, wear a size 11 shoe, have shoulders like a wrestler and muscles like a truck driver. She will go in for all kinds of sports – probably will compete with men athletes in football, baseball, prizefighting and wrestling.

So that’s Diana the Roman Goddess, not the Princess of Wales. To be frank, people today are probably more “out-sized” than people from the 1950s, and that’s a truism for both men and women. So I would say no, most women of today are not built like truck drivers or professional wrestlers. But there certainly is more opportunities for women to participate in sports which, back in 1950, were less accessible to women.

The Third World War – barring such a miracle as has never yet occurred in relations between countries so greatly at odds – will grow out of Russia’s exactly opposite attempts to unify the world by force.

I’m actually shocked that we haven’t had a WWIII yet. The 1950s prediction of Russia being the aggressor is ironic–although Communism fell apart in the Soviet Bloc during the early 1990s, Russia is still considered a warmonger even today.

The telephone will be transformed from wire to radio and will be equipped with the visuality of television. Who’s on the other end of the line will seldom be a mystery. Every pedestrian will have his own walking telephone – an apparatus by a combination of the X-ray and television. 

Now we’re getting somewhere. This prediction is eerily close to what we have today, with the combination of smartphones, Facetime, and Skype. Everyone has their walking telephones! What seemed absurd in the 1950s is now a reality. Let’s all give ourselves a collective pat on the back (wait… what do you mean we don’t yet have automated back-patting machines in 2016?).

The nation’s industrial and agricultural plant will be able to support 300 million persons 50 years from now – twice the present population. Land now unproductive will be made to yield. Science will steadily increase crop production per acre. Technological, industrial and economic advances will give the American people living standards eight times as high as now.

As of 2014 the United States had 318 million people, so that prediction is fairly close. Crop production has increased, though with the help of GMOs and non-organic fertilizers, but I guess you can’t win ’em all. And that bit about people’s living standards? Eh… I’m not so sure:

Space platforms, sent out from earth, will end mid-century’s “iron curtain” era by bringing the entire globe under constant surveillance.

Whoa. Edward Snowden, is that you? We are definitely under constant surveillance today. As a matter of fact, the NSA is probably watching me as I’m typing up this blog post (side note: dear NSA, if you are watching, you should already know that my lawn is in disrepair and I am having trouble finding a good lawn guy. So since you monitor everything and know everything, please send a good lawn contractor my way. I’d be very grateful).

Combination automobile-planes will have been perfected.

If you’ve ever sat in traffic, you probably at some point zoned out, looked into the sky, and wondered to yourself, “man, if only my car was the Autobot Bumblebee and could just transform and fly away, I’d be home already.”

We supposedly already invented the flying car as early as the early 1900s. So, 1950s scientists, perhaps you should do your homework before you write predictions for the so-called future!

People will live in houses so automatic that push-buttons will be replaced by fingertip and even voice controls. Some people today can push a button to close a window – another to start coffee in the kitchen. Tomorrow such chores will be done by the warmth of your fingertip, as elevators are summoned now in some of the newest office buildings – or by a mere whisper in the intercom phone.

With the “Internet of Things,” we’re fairly close to this prediction. Today we have self closing blinds, automatic coffee makers, and other gizmos. Well done, 1950s scientists.

Radio broadcasting will have disappeared, for no one will tune in a program that cannot be seen. Radio will long since have reverted to a strictly communications medium, using devices now unheard of and unthought of.

Two hits in a roll. Well done, 1950s scientists. This one has come true as well. Since the advent of TV and internet, fewer people listen to the radio today.

Some movie theaters of A.D. 2000 may be dome-shaped, with ceiling and walls arching together like the sky. These surfaces would be the “screen.” Most action would still be in front of you, as now. But some could be overhead, some at the sides, and some even on the wall behind. A little girl steps into a street in the action before you – and you turn around and look behind you to see if an auto is coming.

We don’t have these theaters today, but virtual reality (VR) headsets (a la Oculus Rift or Gear VR) are making this type of entertainment very accessible. VR, by the way, shall be the subject of a blog posting in the near future.

So tell your children not to be surprised if the year 2000 finds 35 or even a 20-hour work week fixed by law.

ROFL. LOL.

Despite all of the technology innovation and increase in productivity since 1950, it’s mind-boggling how much we still work today. Seriously–why are we so busy? 50 years from now I bet our children and grandchildren will all be working 100 hour weeks.

Economics Shmeconomics

Guards march in Beijing. Too bad they can’t guard the internet against “rogue economists and analysts” who question the Chinese government’s economic forecasts.

This is one of those serious topics that somehow elicits a “WTF?” response (no, I’m not referring to the fact that Donald Trump may actually become the president).

I’m talking about the Chinese government threatening economists and analysts because they apparently don’t share the same sanguine view of the country’s economy as the ruling communist party.

From the WSJ:

Securities regulators, media censors and other government officials have issued verbal warnings to commentators whose public remarks on the economy are out of step with the government’s upbeat statements, according to government officials and commentators with knowledge of the matter.

The stepped-up censorship, many inside and outside the ruling Communist Party say, represents an effort by China’s leadership to quell growing concerns about the country’s economic prospects as it experiences a prolonged slowdown in growth. As more citizens try to take money out of the country, officials say, regulators and censors are trying to foster an environment of what party officials have dubbed “zhengnengliang,” or “positive energy.”

Now, this isn’t the fellow Yankee fan sitting next to you–after Severino gives up that two-run homer–telling you that you should keep giving “good vibes.”

This is like a defendant who thinks threatening the jury would somehow make them sympathetic to his cause. Short answer–no; long answer–hell no.

Unfortunately, China’s economy is teetering. And anyone who denies it has either been living under a rock in the last two years, or is one of those poor economists who got threatened…

China’s traditional industry base of manufacturing and steelmaking is in deep decline, with the an expanding service sector unable to pick up the jobs slack. Due to legacy state-owned “zombie companies,” its estimated non-performing loans ratio of 22 percent is ten times higher than its officially quoted statistic due to so-called shadow banking/off-balance sheet loans. Its regulators and banking system are mired in a never-ending game of chicken: on one hand, the state-mandated GDP increases demand banks to churn out loans, and on the other hand such cycles exacerbate its problem of bad debts which would only increase the pain during an inevitable hard landing. And on top of that, China’s foreign reserves are quickly drying up in order to defend the yuan currency against a massive wave of outflows. In layman’s terms, it’s the equivalent of being stuck in quicksand with three starving lions circling around you. And oh, you’re allergic to sand (and lions).

China thinks all of that independent analysis is overrated. Why worry about the impending real estate collapse when you can dream about rainbows, butterflies, ponies, and puppies instead?

What’s alarming is that this means things have gotten really bad–bad beyond repair. Because if there’s an opportunity to fix the problem, then you bet the regulators and officials would be busy doing that instead of busy imitating North Korea.

For the rest of the world, it confirms what you already suspect. So carry on shorting Chinese banks. And the yuan.

Poetry Website

I’ll keep this short and sweet since it’s a shameless plug. I help run the Society of Classical Poets, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote and revitalize poetry and writing.

The society holds periodic contests and events, and offers poetry workshops and critiques. There’s also an annual journal of poems written by member and non-member poets available for purchase.

Please visit its website if you’re interested, or tell your friends about it. Thank you!

http://classicalpoets.org/

Mechanical Watches & Human Engineering

Glashutte Original PanoMatic Lunar and PanoReserve

In the mainstream, watches have become passé.

Indeed, who needs a watch when we have smartphones in our pockets?

For those who insist on wearing one, today’s watches generally fall in three camps. If you’re hip and pride yourself for being on the cutting edge of technology, you own a smartwatch, which is less of a watch and more of an extension of the smartphone. It does many things, the least impressive of which is telling time. The smartwatch is a mini computer that just happens to be in the form factor of a watch and attached to your wrist via a strap.

Most people who do wear a normal watch have a quartz watch. That is, a watch which requires a battery. Quartz watches were invented in Japan in the 1970s, and they’re the most accurate watches in the world. If one views watches as an instrument of keeping time, there’s no better watch than a $20 quartz watch. It’ll do the job, and do it cheaply and reliably.

The small population of people who regard themselves as watch enthusiasts prefer mechanical watches. Mechanical timepieces–like the ones our parents or grandparents wore–are an anachronism. They are, as their name suggests, mechanical and do not require electricity to run. The watches operate via gears and are powered by winding a spring, either automatically via a rotor (which rotates as our hands and arms move) or manually wound by hand.

The reason mechanical watches only appeal to enthusiasts is that they’re just not rational. They’re considered “luxury goods,” often costing thousands of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. And they’re nowhere near as accurate as quartz watches. Logically speaking, it makes little sense to buy a mechanical watch. Each time I feel the urge to buy a new (mechanical) watch, my rational side tells me: “do you realize how many burritos you can buy with $6,000?”

Automatic movement of a Breitling Chronomat 01

Allow me to be irrational for a moment as I espouse the virtues of a mechanical watch.

A Pinnacle of Human Engineering

So many items we behold today are electronic; they’re soldered onto circuits, controlled by 0’s and 1’s, and powered by electricity.

A mechanical watch is different. I’ll allow futurist William Gibson to explain:

“Mechanical watches are so brilliantly unnecessary. Any Swatch or Casio keeps better time, and high-end contemporary Swiss watches are priced like small cars. But mechanical watches partake of what my friend John Clute calls the Tamagotchi Gesture. They’re pointless in a peculiarly needful way; they’re comforting precisely because they require tending.”

“Each one is a miniature world unto itself, a tiny functioning mechanism, a congeries of minute and mysterious moving parts. Moving parts! And consequently these watches are, in a sense, alive. They have heartbeats. They seem to respond, Tamagotchi-like, to ‘love,’ in the form, usually, of the expensive ministrations of specialist technicians. Like ancient steam-tractors or Vincent motorcycles, they can be painstakingly restored from virtually any stage of ruin.” –William Gibson

Each watch contains hundreds of moving parts, and once assembled together in a precise manner, is a celebration of human craftsmanship that is at once delicate, beautiful, and awe-inspiring.

It’s not a computer–it’s a machine on your wrist. It’s a machine invented hundreds of years ago, and has undergone little change since. With its clicks, ticks, tiny cogs, gears, and jewels, the mechanical watch is a relic.

It tells time no better than quartz watches, in the same manner that a Hermes handbag is no better at carrying one’s belongings than a canvas tote.

And that’s the point–owning a mechanical watch is an emotional decision.

In today’s modern world where we exalt utmost expediency, soulless efficiency, and technological innovation that only exists virtually in a “Tron”-like ether, the mechanical watch is a breath of fresh air. If you stop to stare at it, you’ll notice that it’s a whole little world unto itself. And unlike the internet, it’s reassuringly tangible and real.

Trumped Again.

“Trump me once, shame on you. Trump me twice, well… um, you just don’t get Trumped again.” — George W. (or something to that effect)

Trump and Clinton won big again today in the ‘Northeast Primaries’. Wonder why you’ve never heard about the vaunted ‘Northeast Primaries’ in previous elections? Oh right, the primaries never lasted this long, that’s why.

A candidate only had to win Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina in the primaries; and can then proceed to order champagne bottles.

A friend pointed out to me today (thanks M!) that the reason TV trucks park themselves outside my office was not because the Mr. Softee around the corner is handing out free sundaes, but Mr. Trump physically lived in the Trump Tower nearby.

That makes a lot of sense. But it does beg the question: if your name is plastered on dozens of buildings around town, you think they’d be better decoys to shake reporters off your tail. Nope, they’re smarter than that!

But I digress.

At this rate, Trump is going to run away with it. If this were a script we’d surely be hoping for Deus ex Machina. Unfortunately, Trump is 20% bad-ass, 80% buffoon. If the ratio of bad-assness to buffoonery were more equal, say 50-50, I’d be a little more inclined to support him. A general election draw of Trump vs. Clinton will be a disappointing outcome. It’s like when you get to the bottom of the Jelly Belly jar, and must choose between licorice or bubble gum flavors. Oh the horror.

But wait! There is a silver lining. We’re actually due for a good President. We as a country deserves one. Both our last President (Bush) and our current President (Obama) rank among the top 20 worst leaders of all time, which means America can only go up from here.

No matter who wins the general election, we can rest easy knowing that neither Trump nor Clinton are anywhere close to the likes of Adolf Hitler (#3), Kim Jung Il (#5), or Josef Stalin (#6), right? Right??

Kind of a Long Game

That’s um, game one of a two-game double-header.

This is why baseball games should end in a tie after 11 innings.