Staring at Strangers

Living a Chinese Curse

Here we are a little more than a week away from the U.S. Presidential elections.  The stock market has not stopped its daily gyrations and the foundations of third world countries are beginning to buckle due to the collapse of commodity prices. 

Does anyone doubt that we are living thru a key moment of history?

"May you live in interesting times" is an old Chinese curse, and at no other time in my life have I better understood this curse than today.

Technorati Tags: elections, stock market, commodities, prices, history, Chinese, curse

The End of the World - Part II

In case you haven't been following the news, the full operation of the Large Hadron Collider has been delayed until Spring 2009 due to a helium leak.  So our planet has gotten a reprieve, temporary as it is, from a possible end of the world scenario as I described here.  

Turning this whole situation around in my mind this morning while working out at my gym, I suddenly realized that I may have solved the Fermi Paradox.

The Fermi Paradox, put forth by Italian physicist Enrico Fermi in the 1950's, can be described as follows:

The size and age of the universe incline us to believe that many technologically advanced civilizations must exist. However, this belief seems logically inconsistent with our lack of observational evidence to support it. Either the initial assumption is incorrect and technologically advanced intelligent life is much rarer than we believe, our current observations are incomplete and we simply have not detected them yet, or our search methodologies are flawed and we are not searching for the correct indicators.

Any civilization which has developed far enough to possess the technology for space travel and electronic communications would also be exploring the mysteries of subatomic particles.  To solve these mysteries, they would inevitably build their own version of the Large Hadron Collider. 

If these high energy collisions created by machines such as the Large Hadron Collider did result in the generating of mini black holes which led to the spawning of a giant black hole that consumed an entire planet, then any advanced civilization would destroy itself when it reached our stage of technological development.  This would account for our lack of discovery of other civilizations, thus solving the Fermi Paradox.

So maybe some of those black holes discovered out in space are not from the collapse of massive stars, but are merely the last remaining evidence of advanced civilizations. 

Wow, by solving the Fermi Paradox did I just prove the danger of the Large Hadron Collider?  Hey, I might become famous!  Until the world comes to an end, that is. 

To be continued in the Spring of 2009.

Technorati Tags: Large Hadron Collider, Fermi Paradox, black hole, end of the world, Enrico Fermi

What You Need to Know Before Becoming a Mexican, Part II

Last May, Staring at Strangers revealed the 100 questions which might be asked applicants for Mexican citizenship by naturalization.

Now the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores has gone and changed the questions.

 

This guide's supposed to be good between now and April, 2009.

But you knew this stuff anyway. What, you don't?

 

Technorati Tags: naturalization, Mexico, citizenship, SRE, Mexican history

Nature's Genius

Tonight I watched my dog, a 15 year old Pekingese, hobble around my apartment, with her back arched from some degenerative condition, and her mind addled.  Still, as old and as worn down as she is, she manages to get around - her blood keeps pumping through her heart and veins, her muscles contract and relax in just the right way to move her forward, however unsteady that may be, and the neurons fire in her brain which permit her even now to show some enthusiasm when a plate of cut up chicken is placed before her.

I wondered what particular genius of nature could create such a complex creature, and all of the complex creatures that exist including man, that permit them to function so well, notwithstanding the interdependency of all of the various systems and processes that are required for even the most basic of such functionality, and the decay that inevitably follows. 

Then I wondered if we could understand the concepts used by nature to create such complex systems, and make them work so well (not perfect, but pretty impressive nonetheless), perhaps we could use them to create better systems of our own, those of law and of commerce, and even of technology. My feeling is that there must be some overall methodology behind the design and creation of such complex systems which are living beings. 

This is particularly relevant in these days of the world's entire economic system being propped up by governments, with banks either disappearing or being nationalized.  Perhaps there is a better way, a better approach which is imbedded in the very systems that make up all living systems.

Now let us have no cop outs of claims of divine provenance.  My feelings about this is that even if there is a divine source of the miracle of life, the thing that makes it so miraculous is not that there is some "magic" that makes it all work, but all of such systems are grounded in the physical laws of nature.  Without the explanation of "magic," all living systems have to conform to all of the rules of nature that confine us and are completely unbending, which to me is far more impressive!

So, whatever you wish to claim is the source of it all, I believe that there is still an opportunity of discovery and understanding, and all of the benefits which will follow. Once discovered and understood, one simply has to have the vision to take nature's model and transfer it to man-made systems.

Technorati Tags: nature, miracle, divine provenance, systems, dog, complexity, magic, religion, science

Our Favorite Chilean Dwarf is Back!

 

Technorati Tags: La Pequeña, Sarah Palin, Felipe Avello

Look Who Came to Dinner

 

Technorati Tags: Filo Arbusto, First Stop in the New World, Stuff White People Like

The Financial Crisis: Here's What's Next

For those of you who are curious as to what will happen after the dust finally settles on the current financial crisis, this is what will transpire:

1. All of the developed nations will agree on uniform laws that prohibit the activities that created the crisis, and their respective legislatures will adopt them as local law. 

2. It no longer will be so easy to become a billionaire. It will still be possible, but you'll have to do it by creating the next Microsoft, not by starting a hedge fund, which uses sophisticated hedging and arbitrage techniques to achieve above average investment returns, because hedge funds will be illegal. Why? The assets under management of a hedge fund can run into many billions of dollars, and this will usually be multiplied by leverage, meaning that their influence over markets is substantial. So enormous selling pressure is being created by hedge funds having to liquidate to pay off nervous investors who are pulling out their money, and prices are collapsing. It's your basic supply and demand theory in action.  Outlaw hedge funds and you eliminate a major destabilizing force of the markets.

3. The year 2008 will be remembered as a pivotal year. The history books will characterize the times before as a "Wild West" in the financial markets, an "anything goes" playground for the financial elite. The post-2008 era will be seen as a more secure and sober time, due to the laws enacted worldwide to eliminate the instability that the pre-2008 unregulated era created.

Of course, there will be one thing that will be overlooked.  The same thing happened after the Great Depression of 1929.  In 1933 the Securities Act of 1933 was put into law to curb speculative stock offerings by requiring strict disclosure of the details of stock offerings.  The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 was adopted the following year to regulate stock markets and public companies, and the Securities and Exchange Commission was created to enforce these new laws and provide oversight of the capital markets.

But as we see today, people found a way around these laws to create unstable capital markets, which is undermining investor confidence, something that this post-Depression legislation was supposed to stop.

So the question is, how will the financial community find a way around the new laws that will be adopted, creating a new financial crisis 75 years from now? That I cannot predict, but I'm pretty sure that they will find a way. 

Postscript: For those of you who doubt the parallels which I am drawing between this era and the Depression era (at least as far as regulation and investor confidence is concerned - it's my belief that the financial consequences will not be nearly as harsh as they were back in the 1930's), please read the following which comes directly from the SEC's website, describing the history of the SEC's creation:

The SEC's foundation was laid in an era that was ripe for reform. Before the Great Crash of 1929, there was little support for federal regulation of the securities markets. This was particularly true during the post-World War I surge of securities activity. Proposals that the federal government require financial disclosure and prevent the fraudulent sale of stock were never seriously pursued.

Tempted by promises of "rags to riches" transformations and easy credit, most investors gave little thought to the systemic risk that arose from widespread abuse of margin financing and unreliable information about the securities in which they were investing. During the 1920s, approximately 20 million large and small shareholders took advantage of post-war prosperity and set out to make their fortunes in the stock market. It is estimated that of the $50 billion in new securities offered during this period, half became worthless.

When the stock market crashed in October 1929, public confidence in the markets plummeted. Investors large and small, as well as the banks who had loaned to them, lost great sums of money in the ensuing Great Depression. There was a consensus that for the economy to recover, the public's faith in the capital markets needed to be restored. Congress held hearings to identify the problems and search for solutions.

Based on the findings in these hearings, Congress — during the peak year of the Depression — passed the Securities Act of 1933. This law, together with the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which created the SEC, was designed to restore investor confidence in our capital markets by providing investors and the markets with more reliable information and clear rules of honest dealing.

Here we go again.

Technorati Tags: Securities and Exchange Commission, Great Depression, 1929, legislation, Securities Exchange Act of 1934, Securities Act of 1933, financial crisis, investor confidence, prediction

The Financial Crisis Explained