Global Warming with the Ice Age Coming

 

Many scientists claim that we are long past the due date in getting back to the Ice Age. I also encountered so many people who say that the global warming can be a good countermeasure against the planet's tendency to cool itself. Of course, I do not think this argument is worth countering. I do not think either that there is a serious scientist who puts forward this kind of unsophisticated statement.

However, I am reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, and I encountered a wonderful line about the above-mentioned comment, which goes like this: "When you are confronted with a fluctuating and unpredictable climate, the last thing you want to do is to conduct a vast unsupervised experiment on it."

Of course, there are other, more scientific arguments, for example, that a rising temperature might induce an ice age by making more clouds with expedited evaporation. However, I think the argument above is more than sufficient to counter such a naive speculation.

To sum it up, we human race do not understand the delicate eco-system. However, it is much better (and safer) to contain our efforts to reducing our impact on the planet, than to tinker around it.

Books that I Read in 2011

Wrapping up the year 2011, I would like to write a brief review on the books that I read in 2011.
   - Best Non-Fiction: The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
   - Best Fiction: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Murakami Haruki
  - Worst Non-Fiction: Permission Marketing by Seth Godin
  - Worst Fiction: 1Q84 by Murakami Haruki

The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins) was the best non-fiction book that I read in 2011. I have never read any serious book on Darwinism before, so this book was enlightening, not to mention fun to read. Many questions we have about the very nature of life, such as the difference between genders, are explained clearly, succinctly, and very persuasively.

Kafka on the Shore (Murakami Haruki) was the first Murakami that I read in 2011, and was good enough to induce me to read more of his works. Unfortunately, this novel also suffers from the author's habitual anachronistic Modernism. But the overall lyrical development of the plot is so nice that the damage from the anachronism is minimal . Like his many other novels, Kafka on the Shore has the structure of parallel narratives: one by Kafka, the other by Nakata. Kafka’s part is mostly lyrical, while Nakata’s part is mostly in the realm of fantasy. When the two parts are interwoven well, Murakami saves the day, as in this novel. However, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Murakami Haruki) is better in this aspect, hence is the best Murakami that I have ever read. The parallel narratives are sewn together at the perfect moment. Most of all, I really like the final scene, where the protagonist decides not to join his shadow in escaping from the End of the World. This is an utterly selfless act on the protagonist’s side, which is extremely hard to find in any other Murakami’s novels. After Dark (Murakami Haruki) was a short novel I relished reading. This one is quite unique in that the author stays at a firm distance from what is happening in the scene. 

1Q84 (Murakami Haruki) is the worst Murakami, probably even worse than Norwegian Wood. Easily, this would be one of the worst novels written by anybody. I do not think this novel is worth criticism, but to make a point, I will give only one example: at the end of the story, the author says that the protagonists went through a terrible ordeal. This is a thing authors should never even think of doing. Authors should depict the ordeal, instead of saying that it was an ordeal. It should be left to the audience to decide if the ordeal was terrible or not, or if there was an ordeal at all. When Aomame had no real threat to her well-being throughout her hide-away except clumsy Ushikawa, to say that she went through a terrible ordeal does nothing but to make readers utter some scornful laugh. Remedios the Beauty, from One Hundred Years of Solitude, is given sufficient description about her beauty so that the readers do not feel awkward when she literally ascends to the heaven. It would have been ridiculous if Gabriel Garcia Marquez had only insisted that Remedios was beautiful, without actually describing all the events. In short, Murakami must have described the ordeal, instead of saying that it was a terrible ordeal. Anyone can say that his story is fantastic. But this kind of statement is unnecessary if the statement is true. If it is false, the statement will do nothing but drawing derision. Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Murakami Haruki) was another piece by Murakami that I didn’t like. I wrote a rather lengthy blog post about what I did not like about this novel. But this one is much better than 1Q84, about which I could not even rally initiatives to write a detailed review.

Another novel I enjoyed reading was The Shining (Stephen King). I liked it so much that I went after the movie as well, which was a big disappointment. The novel is set in a stage so small that it contains only a handful of people - but the depth of each character is so rich, like some Greek tragedies. The psychological development of what is happening inside and outside of each character is described with such vividness that you can imagine the scenes in your mind while reading (hence the big disappointment with the movie).

The Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell) is what I liked best among Gladwell’s books. The logic is most plausible, and the take-away is relatively concrete. What makes people so crazy about Gladwell’s books is the wonderful story-making based on solid research, strewn with statistics. The flip side of this is the danger of putting the cart (stories) in front of the horse (arguments), and losing focus. Outliers (Malcolm Gladwell) and Blink (Malcolm Gladwell) are books that fell in the trap. Perhaps the storytelling has a negative correlation with the logic of what he tells, since Blink, which has the worst logic and no take-away at all, has the most riveting story lines. What the Dog Saw (Malcolm Gladwell) is another very fun-to-read stuff. However, the articles are only briefly inspirational and the theme is not pursued thoroughly. Of course, this is natural because the book is a bundle-up of Gladwell’s blog postings and published articles. Still, this book is full of food for thoughts, and very fun to read.
Permission Marketing (Seth Godin) came into my radar when I was looking for a good marketing book. Seth Godin must be a good marketer himself because he seems to be selling this contentless book very well. The book reiterates what everybody knows, in such a way that you won’t even remember a thing after reading it.

Good to Great (Jim Collins) was on the top seat of a marketing books list that I found by googling. This book is well written with solid research. But can it be used to make a good company a great one? It can, in the sense that a self-help book can make you a different person. It contains many findings that might take you by surprise - for example, that you cannot change the people you have, and that you should fire them before tackling the task of going from good to great - but most take-aways are not concrete enough to be taken into action.

When I decided to read The Story of Stuff (Annie Leonard), I was looking forward to many interesting facts about the stuffs we use in everyday life, like how much CO2 is generated to manufacture a can of Coke. In other words, I expected a micro-level stories, but I found none - it was a macro-level story. Except that, the book itself is a very well written book with persuasive macroscopic views about consumerism. It gives you tons of food for thoughts.

Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength (Roy Baumeister & John Tierney) is a new kid on the block, and it got spotlights instantly when it was published. The book itself is a result of a lengthy research by two professors. It contains results of many interesting experiments. However, the action items presented by the book are rather weak and vague. But again, there are tons of books on procrastination with even weaker propositions. The book is interesting, and makes you think once more about how you do things.

Black Swan (Nassim Taleb). I’ve been hearing about this book for a long time, and finally found the time to read it. Of course, I totally agree with Taleb in that the tail is thicker and longer than we expect them to be. So what? His arguments are repetitive, and his suggestions are abstract at best. Worst of all, his unsophisticated sarcasm drives people away from his arguments.

The Big History (The Teaching Company) is an audiobook that describes what the author calls a Big History - from the Big Bang to the 20th century human history, and surprisingly enough, beyond. The author is a history professor with Russian history major, but he clearly shows good understanding of astronomy, physics, chemistry, paleontology, and archaeology. Best of all, this audiobook achieves what it aims to do: it gives you the really big picture of everything - well enough to make you think about the meaning of everything. This audiobook made me read The Selfish Gene and A Short History of Nearly Everything.

A Short History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson) is basically about the Big History. This book was on my mind vaguely for a long time, since it was introduced in The Economist magazine in 2003. Somehow, only a week ago I came to grab it. This book is different from The Big History in that it focuses more on the development of the theories and the academic development behind the big history, telling more about the scientists who found the secrets of the universe. The book is also full of good humors, unlike The Black Swan. I am only half way through this book yet, but I can tell that this one is a good read.

Groupon: Cheap is Not a Brand

 

OK, Groupon finally got the fancy IPO that has long been waited for. Groupon got the place of big winner in the year-end special edition of Canadian Business. Yet, the name of Groupon do not sound as appealing as Twitter or LinkedIn, not to mention Facebook or Apple.

Some while ago, I read a very persuasive writing by Bruce Philip, a.k.a. Brand Cowboy, a blogger and consultant, who talked about Groupon, in Canadian Business. (This article was published before the IPO.)

Groupon has been a beloved icon of social commerce. When Groupon rejected Google’s billion-dollar buyout offer, the majority opinion was that Groupon was wise to pursue its own way in its golden path, and I was not the exception. But these days, I hear things I’ve been hearing about Reach In Motion, on Groupon. Still, I thought those statements about Groupon was on comparative basis. When I heard that Groupon is running low on cash, I thought that their cash reserve came down to several billions from tens of billions. But Brand Cowboy’s posting corrected my stance about Groupon for good.

In Korea, actually, the business model of social commerce is making a lot of nasty noises. Social credibility, I believe, is one of the society’s maturity indices. In this regard, South Korea is still in par with those countries with lower scores. Consequently, businesses often come up with less than what is promised on the coupons when people come to redeem them. This has been broadcast several times in the mass media, but is not corrected. Nowadays, people seem to think of social commerce as semi-scam, or at best, a raffle of a sort. In short, the business model of social commerce is on the downward path, experts say.

Then what about Groupon? Brand Cowboy says being cheap is not a brand. What Groupon does is not differentiated from myriads of its competitions. Groupon’s argument is you must buy because you don’t want to miss a bargain. I have hoards of things (mostly electronics and boardgames) that sit in the attic of my mom’s house, most of which I spent less than a few days playing with. Sometimes I bought them out of curiosity, but quite often, I bought them because they were on sale. As Brand Cowboy puts it, this is surely a less desirable aspect of human nature. And Groupon’s business model is based on that aspect.

Cheap is not enough. Groupon has first-mover advantages, most notably, larger subscription base than any other followers. But this is not a sustainable strength, because there is no distinct network externality in social commerce. Groupon must find a way to make it to the future, and one way of doing it might lie in building a sustainable brand.

1Q84 - Do NOT read it

I am writing this to save people's time by the tons. 1Q84, by Murakami Haruki, was surely one of those lucky books that took space in many people's reading list this year. But, I will save your time - Do NOT read this terrible book. It took me over a month to finish this book, only to find that I came across the worst book by Murakami, perhaps even worse than Norwegian Wood. It almost feels like I've finished the Twilight saga. Then again, that one made sense at least.

It is pointless to list what are so bad with this book, since I could not really find anything good to mention. Murakami wrote this novel in three parts, publishing books 1 and 2 first and publishing book 3 after about a year. I am not sure - whether he is easily swayed by the public's reception or simply he does not have what it takes to finish what he has started. However, he created a total mess of immature curiosity (I feel sorry for the word curiosity, for goodness's sake), then could not make a plausible meaning out of the havoc.

In conclusion, do NOT read it, and you will save 40+ hours, which can be put to much better use.

Corporate Bond Credit Risk - A Very Long-Term Perspective

The National (of course, American) Bureau of Economic Research recently published a paper titled “Corporate Bond Default Risk: A 150-Year Perspective,” which CBS MoneyWatch summarized in an article. I could not access the paper free of charge because I could not fit in any category, but I believe the summary by CBS is worth noting. So here it goes: my summary of the CBS summary, plus some thoughts of mine for those numbers.

The long-run average default risk, for the period of 1866-2008 is 1.5% - a rather high number if you ask me. They are not just listed companies - but they are powerful enough to issue bonds. During the Great Depression, the default rate was well over 10%, but this is nothing compared to the whopping 36% default during the railroad crisis of 1873-1875. Without these outliers, the average will be smaller.

Default events had weak correlation (about .26) with business downturns. Recession indicators have little predictive ability with regard to corporate defaults. Defaults showed their own patterns over time, and had a cycle of about 3.2 years, which is longer than the business cycle.

The credit spread was only 1.53%. I think this is already quite small, but the realized premium for the spread was only .8%. Realized premium was quite low compared to the yield the bonds had when purchased. This is natural, because the yield is there to compensate for all kinds of risks - default, illiquidity, risks from embedded options if any, etc. Yield never equals expected return, but investors confuse them and keep chasing after high-yield bonds.

This, coupled with the 2012 investment outlook from Canadian Business (dated Jan 23, 2012), perhaps we should go with equities, and entrench ourselves in the long-term perspective, and behave like an institutional investor. Most of the companies listed in NYSE today, I believe, will still be there after 20 years.

You can be cool and save the Earth

There are easy little things we can do to help protect this green planet. Not using garburator (http://junsearth.blogspot.com/2011/07/little-things-we-can-do-1-stop-using.html) is one such thing. Another great easy thing to do is cold water laundering.

1.

According to Carbon Conscious Consumers, a US climate campaign body, 90% of energy used in washing laundry is used to heat the water.

Pushing cold/cold when you start the washing machine, instead of hot/warm, saves you carbon footprints equivalent to 9 miles of driving. This might not sound too impressive. Let me give you additional figures.

A standard American household washes 392 loads of laundry every year. Let’s round it to 400. 9 miles multiplied by 400 times of washing... means you can reduce carbon footprint by the amount of 3600 miles of driving.

On average, people drive around 12 to 15,000 miles per year. Using cold water in washing alone is equivalent to three to four months of “no driving.” Anyway, I don’t drive really. I use public transportation, and use Zipcar only when I really need it. For people like me, I should give some other comparable measure.

4 ounces of beef produces green house gases equivalent to 6.6 miles of driving. This means, 9 miles of driving will be equivalent to about 5.5 ounces of beef. This is a lot for me or for my wife, as an amount of beef to be consumed in one meal. Even for average people, a hamburger usually comes with a 4-oz beef patty. Again, 9 miles of driving is not to be taken as too little. However, I do not eat meat on Mondays because I am on the campaign of Meatless Monday anyway. Let’s use some other measure, then.

An average household in San Diego, California, emits about 11.5 thousand pounds of CO2 per year. (I used my old address in San Diego because the site wouldn’t accept a Canadian zip code.) Following this number, 9 miles of driving is equivalent to 6 hours of total abstention of energy use in home! In other words, if you use cold water to wash your clothes than hot and warm water, you can live for 6 hours, consuming the normal amount of energy, at the rate of an average American, the number one ranking citizens in terms of per capita energy use!

Still don’t get it? Now I will use a measure everyone can understand very quickly – dollar amount. If you wash 80% of your laundry in cold water, you can save $60 per year. (Of course this depends on your area. I think it will be something like $100 in San Diego.)

In addition to the environmental benefits, using cold water is better for the fabric. Furthermore, some dirt, notably protein-based dirt like blood or egg, will not go away if you wash them with hot water. Use cold water.

2.

However, there is one caveat in this great advice. Cold water is not as effective as hot water in killing viruses and bacteria. Use hot water for heavily soiled clothes and other clothes that require extra attention in terms of hygiene.

3.

I believe you now understand the benefits of cold water laundering well enough. To make life easier, I will make bullet points to remember for cold water laundering.


- Wash your laundry in cold water whenever possible.
- Pre-soaking or pre-treating enhances the efficiency of washing greatly. For example, I carry this pen-type detergent <show it> wherever possible, so that I can do a first-aid type of treatment when I spill some spaghetti on my Ferragamo tie. This same pen can also be used to pre-treat heavily soiled laundry items, before you put them into the washing machine. Just soaking your laundry in cold water for half an hour can help the washing
- Use specific detergents that say “cold water.”
- Do not underload or overload your washing machine. Washing with full loads help you save energy.
- Front-loading washing machines use less water. Use them.

I will repeat and summarize once more: 1) use cold water whenever possible, 2) pre-treat or pre-soak laundry before washing, 3) use specialized detergents, 4) wash with full loads, and 5) use front-loading washing machine.

This is a small and easy thing to do, but you can save the planet and feel great. Also, you can save some money as well.

What Is the Ultimate Driver of Evolution? - The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

What Is the Ultimate Driver of Evolution? - The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins


My favorite subject of philosophy is epistemology. No wonder philosophers like Husserl, Heidegger, and Derrida occupies strong spots in the realm of my favorite philosophers. Skepticism must be the starting point of all this search for the true perception of the world. Believing thus, I have been always quite skeptical about so-called “certain facts.”

In the truest sense, what is certain is limited to tautologies. One plus one equals two because we defined them that way. Mathematical axioms are given as true because they are what they are defined. Everything else in this world is quite vulnerable to the attacks of skepticism. For one thing, most people would believe (including a friend of min who is an engineer and doctor) that the Earth is orbiting around the Sun. “Yes, it sounds quite plausible” was what I told him when we had a debate on this theme. Today’s physics does not admit the concept of centerpoint - everything is relative. Back to the Copernican thesis, what is (relatively) certain is that everything is explained better when we regard the Earth to move around the Sun, than vice versa. The so-called Okam’s Razor is a good criterion in terms of efficiency, but I am not sure of its legitimacy if I must give my best guess about the order of the universe.

The question of truth itself will be a solid topic for several blog postings. So, I will finally wind up and get down to today’s topic: the wonderful book by Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene. What I wanted to say in the two paragraphs above was, in short, being a skeptical, I was not sure about Darwinism either, like other theories. When I was in junior high, I was lucky to have a wonderful biology teacher. She was not just a smart teacher, but also a very conscientious person who wanted to make her students think about important things in life. After teaching us the evolution theory from the textbook, she took time to introduce us to the alternative, the creationism. At that time, I was not yet initiated into the realm of skepticism, and was like a sponge absorbing knowledge about the world. Consequently, at first I thought she started a joke. But she was so effective in raising questions about Darwinism, that she succeeded in planting a seed of suspicion in my mind, myself not aware of it.

To think about it, we all learn the theory of evolution in school, but rarely do we seek to read more about the omnipresent theory. Most people take it as granted. As for me, it was really lucky that I found Dawkins’s famous book in the local library. It was entertaining, educational, and quite often insightful. I can say I understand Darwinism better. And I hope the opposite side - anti-Darwinists - also wield the same weapon, science, to strengthen their theses.

This is already too long. Let’s dive into what the book says.

The single most important take-away from this book is this: the motivation and driving force behind evolution is the selfish interest of the genes who strive to thrive by making as many copies of themselves as possible. Living organisms, be they animals, plants, or the single-cell organisms in the Primordial Soup, are simply “survival machines” programmed and run by those selfish genes. However, it is not that the genes are micro-managing your body in details. They (collectively) programmed the way you behave, so that they can thrive and make more copies of themselves by letting you live longer and be prolific. Thus, it is true that your free will is bound by those genes’ selfish interests in the profound sense, but it is by no means that you are controlled by those genes like a zombie controlled by some virus. (Of course we do not know the interactive mechanism between a zombie-making virus and the zombie controlled.) Furthermore, genes are doing the engineering in a collective manner. Some genes are beneficial to each other when they cooperate, so that they both can prosper better. In some other cases, they generate a negative synergy and reduce their chances of prolonged survival. A good example of the latter case will be a gene that makes strong biting jaws and a gene that makes long and complex intestine that digests fibers well. The gene that makes herbivore intestine will be better matched with a gene that makes the legs leap farther, in which case they both can prosper by making their collective “survival machine” digest plants better and run away better from predators.

In other words, the driving force of evolution is not some kind of subconscious awareness in the individual organisms that strives to make its species prosper. Dawkins says that this is the most popular belief among evolutionary biologists. This was exactly what I learned in school. Contrary to this common belief, it is the selfish interest of the genes in living organisms that is driving the evolutionary process across the vast history of time.

Putting the first and most important cornerstone in the right manner makes everything thereafter much easier to explain. To answer the question “what is the selfish subject that strives to prosper by evolving?” with “the gene” makes other explanations much easier and plausible. This is an Okam’s Razor.

For example, the phenomenon of decrepitude can be (more) easily explained. Certain genes that increase the probability of death at younger age of the survival machine (especially before the survival machine can bear children) will not prosper 1) because they fail to make their own copies because of the death of the survival machine, and 2) because they will find it difficult to find other genes to cooperate with them. On the other hand, certain genes that increase the probability of death at older age of the survival machine will not have such problems. In other words, they do not care about the well being of their survival machine because they already spread their own copies to the world through reproduction at the heyday of the survival machine. Thus, genes that cause lethal conditions in the survival machine after a certain threshold - when its reproductive function becomes highly inefficient or defunct - are not removed from the pool of “fittest” genes, nor do they cause too serious harm in their pursuit of self-reproduction that they find it too difficult to find other genes to cooperate. This is decrepitude.

As another example, the bifurcation of the two genders is deliberated in a very intuitive and interesting way. At first, one survival machine, by chance, came out with a slightly bigger gamete than others. Because this organism (and the genes within) put extra efforts in the first stage of reproduction, it is beneficial to focus more on increasing the prospect of survival of this gamete, than to focus on producing more gametes to diversify in its investment portfolio of gametes. By contrast, other organisms with (relatively) smaller gametes will be better off if it can attach its gamete with the above-mentioned bigger gamete to form an embryo, because this diploid will have better chance of survival without any extra efforts on its side. Thus, for this organism with smaller gametes, the optimal strategy is to produce more gametes to enhance the probability of combining with the bigger gamete. To produce more gametes with the same (given) resources, it will choose to produce more, but smaller gametes. Thus, the two types of organisms will be drawn more and more towards its own optimal strategy - fewer bigger gametes for one, and more smaller gametes for the other. Now, we might be able to call them female and male, respectively, after they have gone separate paths far enough.

The final chapters of this wonderful book also show a true epitome of what a good book - or any type of truth-seeking efforts - can achieve. In chapter 12, he says “nice guys finish first.” Many people might think the author starts selling a philosophy (or even worse, a religion) at the end of a series of nice logical mind games. That will be a gross misunderstanding. First of all, the definition of Dawkins’s “nice” might not be accepted as nice by certain people. Second of all, he shows how nice guys finish first mathematically, using simulations based on game theory. Axelrod’s simulation of a Prisoner’s Dilemma game situation will be an excellent example to show the two points. His simulation showed that the nice tactic of Tit-for-tat (TFT) wins the day. TFT cannot be considered to be all too nice because it revenges against a harm done. TFT is nice in that it does not initiate a betrayal, and the revenge is employed only once to even out the previous betrayal done against it. (The fact that the simulation was a mathematical process need not be explained, I guess.) The conclusion, however, bears a rather Utopian connotation. TFT was found to bring everybody better result. Being nice brought happiness to everybody, even though it originated from an intent to earn big in the long term i.e. from a selfish intention. After depicting all the blood-smeared contests for survival among friends and family members, Dawkins presents readers with such a beautiful, even fable-like, but scientifically true insight.

One more thing I must not omit when I attempt to put my homage to this wonderful book is the concept of “meme.” The concept of meme shows that the concept of self-interested self-copier need not be limited to genes only. Memes, only short-lived yet compared to genes, evolved at spectacular speed, with the help of language and communication revolution. The concept of meme is, in one sense, as revolutionary as the first appearance of Darwinism itself. The first living organism evolved from the “primordial soup,” a huge step in the whole process of the “Big History.” Meme, I think, is another such huge step, in that the selfish self-copier has transcended the limit of biological form of gene. Does a meme have a “self” that wishes to prolong its own (collective) life? This question comes from misunderstanding of Dawkins. The selfish gene is defined as selfish. We cannot say a gene will become happier when it successfully proliferate through generations. The selfish gene was created as selfish, to strive to proliferate its own copies in the world. Memes can be understood in the same way. Shakespeare, I believe, must have wished that his works will be read and enjoyed by more people. But this wish of the author is not the creator of the meme’s (in this case, for example, a famous line from Hamlet) selfish wish for proliferation. Meme, I believe, has a selfish trait that wished to proliferate its own copies in the world. And this trait is basically there, innately, inside the meme, as genes have these selfish wishes. With memes, or some other forms of self-copiers beyond carbon and metabolism, the future might witness new kinds of living organisms - survival machines - completely different from the life we know today.