Obviously I don't understand what is going on in the market right now. I have sold off my positions in dividend yielding companies because the dividends they would pay out simply does not keep pace with the amount of money I was losing daily from the drop in stock prices.
I've already lost about 50% of what I had in total in the market after a 25% drop in prices. I now have first hand experience in understanding what it is like to lose a good chunk of cash in the market as a result of leveraging. Relying on my gut and decent book prices of a stock wasn't sufficient to prevent myself from losing big time, as it seems that macro economic factors in the market is brining everything down.
I sold my positions today because I am believe that the market will continue to deteriorate and will admit that I made a huge mistake on trying to catch a local bounce that never did happen. For the time being, I will scale back and get out of my positions in the market over the course of the next while. I am expecting bad 3rd quarter reports and probably worse winter sales.
I will be spending the coming week/month doing research on understanding what went wrong and developing a better prediction of the future.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Friday, October 24, 2008
Will probably get slaughtered in the market
I am very amazed with the prices dropping as they are right now. To the point that they don't make sense. I originally thought I had found a bottom in the market a while back, but it seems that I was wrong as the markets are starting to panic about the 3rd quarter results, thus pushing the stock market lower.
30 minutes till the markets open today. Asia is down 10% as of today and it looks like things are going to be particularly nasty today. The stocks I hold right now are probably going to open 20% down and me being leveraged, I am going to get hit pretty badly, with numbers as they are right now, I am likely going to lose about 1/2 of what I have in the market today.
This is truly a humbling experience as I am going to have my ass handed to me. Well, I guess this is a lesson better learned now than later.
30 minutes till the markets open today. Asia is down 10% as of today and it looks like things are going to be particularly nasty today. The stocks I hold right now are probably going to open 20% down and me being leveraged, I am going to get hit pretty badly, with numbers as they are right now, I am likely going to lose about 1/2 of what I have in the market today.
This is truly a humbling experience as I am going to have my ass handed to me. Well, I guess this is a lesson better learned now than later.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Market Outlook
Disclaimer: This is obviously a personal opinion here so I highly suggest that readers here take this with a grain of salt.
I have been thinking about my plans to trade over the coming year and this post is to help me to keep track of my frame of mind over the coming months. That is, in the case that I screw up pretty badly, I'll know exactly what I was thinking.
With the stock market in confusion, I believe that the market will be over responsive to any sort of news in the coming future and I am expecting high volatility. The market will likely rebound over the next month in a similar fashion seen in the January crash after the Bear Stearn debacle. With government intervention from the US and around the world, I believe that the markets will temporally stabilize over the coming months.
However, I still believe that the fundamentals of the economy will still be weak.
My plans are to now to get myself into some positions in the market over the next few days. The market has rallied rather sharply over the course of the last 2 days and I believe that there will be a small dip coming up as people cash out to take out some profits.
I will mention that I did something rather bad yesterday and got into the market a little early (call it an emotional trade) and got hit by a small dip in prices towards the end of the trading session yesterday. I see that strong nerves are required to prevent reactionary trades and thus am requiring myself to formulate a strategy that I will stick to and evaluate as events develop over the coming year. But enough of this tangent...
After the rebound, I expect that winter sales will be poor due to the poor financial condition of the general public and will be expecting that companies to post sub-par quarterly results for the first quarter of 2009. With this said, I believe that the stock market will stagnate or slide downward towards the beginning of next year.
Officialy, the US is not in a recession yet as defined by having 2 consecutive quarters with negative GDP growth. However, I believe that the current Bush administration has been cooking the numbers so that they will not have to announce that the US is in recession and take the blame for their poor economic policies. The word on the street, however, is that the US is in recession as a result of rising commodity prices.
Monte carlo simulations on the November US election results indicate a 97.8% chance of a Democratic win for the election based on data posted at the intrade website. Assuming a Democratic party win in the US the stock market may start to rise with confidence in the Democratic nominee, Barak Obama, but that will not occur to next year.
Looking at the data posted at the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, the data there indicates that the US GDP grew by 2.8% in the second quarter of 2008 and personal income grew by 0.5%. The data here indicates to me that the average American is going further into debt because the GDP generally represents how much people are spending... and they are spending more than their earnings are increasing. I should note that the GDP represents spending by businesses and individuals but I am running on the assumption that the increased spending between businesses and individuals is approximately the same.
The next report on the economy will be on Oct 31 and it will be interesting to see the GDP growth number. If the numbers are negative this quarter, it could send the stock market down somewhat, though I am willing to bet that the numbers will be doctored to be positive. Over the past year, the GDP has been positive despite the sub-prime crisis. But it could be possible for the GDP to turn negative this quarter.
How will I play this?
I will play the current market by buying into a few positions now and holding them till after October and then selling those positions off as I do not have confidence in the current world/US economic situation. I believe that poor economic results will be posted over the winter season and probably to atleast the beginning of next year.
When the market rebounds over the next month or so, I am expecting the price of gold which is a hedge against bad economic conditions to fall as confidence in the market grows. When gold (and possibly silver prices) look attractive, I will move into take a small or medium position in the metals and keep approximately 50% of my portfolio in cash and move the money out of USD. The USD rallied recently against the CAD recently and it would be nice to take advantage of this. I believe that the USD may drop in value over the coming 6 months due to continued deficit spending and the weak economy.
I may decide on keeping small or medium positions in companies with good dividend yields while waiting for the economy to recover. During this time, I will be on the look out for good bargains in the market. I may hold some good dividend paying companies after the bounce as these companies will be paying out their dividends fairly soon in the 3rd quarter of this year.
Edit:
This was posted before the market opened on Oct 15th... the bad play I made yesterday, by jumping into taking some positions too early materialized as the market dropped today... silly me for not taking my own advice. I bought into some more positions and will be waiting (hoping?) for the market to bounce somewhat over the next few weeks.
I have been thinking about my plans to trade over the coming year and this post is to help me to keep track of my frame of mind over the coming months. That is, in the case that I screw up pretty badly, I'll know exactly what I was thinking.
With the stock market in confusion, I believe that the market will be over responsive to any sort of news in the coming future and I am expecting high volatility. The market will likely rebound over the next month in a similar fashion seen in the January crash after the Bear Stearn debacle. With government intervention from the US and around the world, I believe that the markets will temporally stabilize over the coming months.
However, I still believe that the fundamentals of the economy will still be weak.
My plans are to now to get myself into some positions in the market over the next few days. The market has rallied rather sharply over the course of the last 2 days and I believe that there will be a small dip coming up as people cash out to take out some profits.
I will mention that I did something rather bad yesterday and got into the market a little early (call it an emotional trade) and got hit by a small dip in prices towards the end of the trading session yesterday. I see that strong nerves are required to prevent reactionary trades and thus am requiring myself to formulate a strategy that I will stick to and evaluate as events develop over the coming year. But enough of this tangent...
After the rebound, I expect that winter sales will be poor due to the poor financial condition of the general public and will be expecting that companies to post sub-par quarterly results for the first quarter of 2009. With this said, I believe that the stock market will stagnate or slide downward towards the beginning of next year.
Officialy, the US is not in a recession yet as defined by having 2 consecutive quarters with negative GDP growth. However, I believe that the current Bush administration has been cooking the numbers so that they will not have to announce that the US is in recession and take the blame for their poor economic policies. The word on the street, however, is that the US is in recession as a result of rising commodity prices.
Monte carlo simulations on the November US election results indicate a 97.8% chance of a Democratic win for the election based on data posted at the intrade website. Assuming a Democratic party win in the US the stock market may start to rise with confidence in the Democratic nominee, Barak Obama, but that will not occur to next year.
Looking at the data posted at the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, the data there indicates that the US GDP grew by 2.8% in the second quarter of 2008 and personal income grew by 0.5%. The data here indicates to me that the average American is going further into debt because the GDP generally represents how much people are spending... and they are spending more than their earnings are increasing. I should note that the GDP represents spending by businesses and individuals but I am running on the assumption that the increased spending between businesses and individuals is approximately the same.
The next report on the economy will be on Oct 31 and it will be interesting to see the GDP growth number. If the numbers are negative this quarter, it could send the stock market down somewhat, though I am willing to bet that the numbers will be doctored to be positive. Over the past year, the GDP has been positive despite the sub-prime crisis. But it could be possible for the GDP to turn negative this quarter.
How will I play this?
I will play the current market by buying into a few positions now and holding them till after October and then selling those positions off as I do not have confidence in the current world/US economic situation. I believe that poor economic results will be posted over the winter season and probably to atleast the beginning of next year.
When the market rebounds over the next month or so, I am expecting the price of gold which is a hedge against bad economic conditions to fall as confidence in the market grows. When gold (and possibly silver prices) look attractive, I will move into take a small or medium position in the metals and keep approximately 50% of my portfolio in cash and move the money out of USD. The USD rallied recently against the CAD recently and it would be nice to take advantage of this. I believe that the USD may drop in value over the coming 6 months due to continued deficit spending and the weak economy.
I may decide on keeping small or medium positions in companies with good dividend yields while waiting for the economy to recover. During this time, I will be on the look out for good bargains in the market. I may hold some good dividend paying companies after the bounce as these companies will be paying out their dividends fairly soon in the 3rd quarter of this year.
Edit:
This was posted before the market opened on Oct 15th... the bad play I made yesterday, by jumping into taking some positions too early materialized as the market dropped today... silly me for not taking my own advice. I bought into some more positions and will be waiting (hoping?) for the market to bounce somewhat over the next few weeks.
Stock market watch: Local Bottom hit, on Rebound
In terms of the market, I believe that we have hit the bottom on Oct 10th. Looking at some of the stocks right now, some of them are trading below or at their book value, meaning that further decline in prices represent excellent buying opportunities, especially for companies that have positive net cash flow for the past 5 years.
The market rallied today and yesterday and I expect a small drop tomorrow or the day after with some profit taking going on. I believe that over the course of the next month that we will likely see a 30%~40% increase in stock value as the market rebounds.
For the past few days, I have been skimming small profits on volatility in prices over a period of a few days (and no! I am not doing intra-day trading).
I will now be changing my strategy to pick up some stocks that I think are undervalued starting tomorrow and hold them for the next month and then pull out of the market after gunning for a 30%~35% appreciation in capital value. During the whole financial meltdown, I have not gone on margin (I abhor loans!) however in this case, I believe that I am willing to go on margin for about 50%~75% of my equity (ie. a debt:equity of 0.5:1 ~ 0.75:1) for a short period of time.
Fortunate for me, amount of capital I have at stake, though a moderate sum, will not put me into financial danger in the worse case scenario. This next month will be interesting.
The reason I write this is to prevent myself from getting caught up in the day to day movements in stock prices (as watching the numbers is quite addictive!) and focus on a medium/short term plan.
I will post more later on.
Wish me luck.
The market rallied today and yesterday and I expect a small drop tomorrow or the day after with some profit taking going on. I believe that over the course of the next month that we will likely see a 30%~40% increase in stock value as the market rebounds.
For the past few days, I have been skimming small profits on volatility in prices over a period of a few days (and no! I am not doing intra-day trading).
I will now be changing my strategy to pick up some stocks that I think are undervalued starting tomorrow and hold them for the next month and then pull out of the market after gunning for a 30%~35% appreciation in capital value. During the whole financial meltdown, I have not gone on margin (I abhor loans!) however in this case, I believe that I am willing to go on margin for about 50%~75% of my equity (ie. a debt:equity of 0.5:1 ~ 0.75:1) for a short period of time.
Fortunate for me, amount of capital I have at stake, though a moderate sum, will not put me into financial danger in the worse case scenario. This next month will be interesting.
The reason I write this is to prevent myself from getting caught up in the day to day movements in stock prices (as watching the numbers is quite addictive!) and focus on a medium/short term plan.
I will post more later on.
Wish me luck.
Monday, October 13, 2008
North American TV programming is obnoxious
I have just returned to Japan after staying in Canada for a week to attend a good friend's wedding and doing some relaxing at home. While at home, I had plenty of spare time that I decided to watch some TV to see what kind of programs there are since I haven't seen much North American programming in a long time. What I did manage to see was rather disappointing.
The first thing about North American TV programming, after living in Japan without a TV for 4 years, was that the characters on most programs were obnoxious, petty and incredibly loud mouthed. I also think that compared to last the last time I was home, I also found that people in general tended to be far more loud mouthed. But first, I should illustrate this with a few examples.
Reality TV
I think Reality TV is probably one of the worst culprits when it comes to obnoxiousness, and this is a result of the design of TV program itself-- the program is based around the drama and conflict between characters, if there was none, there'd really be no content.
I saw a program called I want to work for Diddy while I was back; it was basically was a rip off of Donald Trumps "Apprentice," where the contestants were competing to be the main assistant to Puff Daddy, a rapper. Like the Apprentice, the show was about focusing on the conflict between the contestants, for example how they would argue against each other about who didn't do their job, who did their job the best and etc. But the things they would argue about were so incredibly petty, things such as who was working properly at some event, about how they didn't agree about the kind of food they would order and so on.
The whole show was like taking an ordinary uneventful grocery shopping event and turning it into a drama over 2 people arguing apples vs oranges and then having some kind meltdown occur because they couldn't agree. It's as ludicrous as that.
I could even talk about another show called Say yes to the Dress, which is a bridal TV reality show where brides bring their family and friends to help them out to pick a wedding dress. The portion of the episode I watched had a picky and somewhat demanding bride trying to choose a dress with the husband and and their respective families. The whole show would basically be a semi-drama about the bride trying to pick a dress that would appease herself and the family. The show would go on about where some people didn't like how bride's but stuck out in one dress or the bride not liking the amount of cleavage showing in another dress or whatever, but the thing that bothered me the most about this show was how they some how they turned the act of simply choosing a wedding dress into some drama.
Our society has become more obnoxious
As a result of the abundance of TV programs like these increasing over the years, I personally feel that our society is becoming more and more obnoxious and judgemental from the conversations I've overheard while being back home.
I'd be hearing conversations like how some person might not like Indian food and then make sweeping disapproval about "how could they like such spicy and pungent spices" or how something arbitrary sounding is better than some other arbitrary thing. A mode of thought like this breeds contention and conflict instead of acceptance and understanding.
Often I find myself with having a hard time relating to such people because I simply do not have an interest in participating in an intense, inconsequential discussion. Actually, when involved in such discussions, I usually have very little to say.
When is comes to an argument about the superiority of oranges versus apples, I would much rather say that I like apples and don't really mind at all which fruit you like best, because I would much rather be doing something enjoyable/important instead.
The first thing about North American TV programming, after living in Japan without a TV for 4 years, was that the characters on most programs were obnoxious, petty and incredibly loud mouthed. I also think that compared to last the last time I was home, I also found that people in general tended to be far more loud mouthed. But first, I should illustrate this with a few examples.
Reality TV
I think Reality TV is probably one of the worst culprits when it comes to obnoxiousness, and this is a result of the design of TV program itself-- the program is based around the drama and conflict between characters, if there was none, there'd really be no content.
I saw a program called I want to work for Diddy while I was back; it was basically was a rip off of Donald Trumps "Apprentice," where the contestants were competing to be the main assistant to Puff Daddy, a rapper. Like the Apprentice, the show was about focusing on the conflict between the contestants, for example how they would argue against each other about who didn't do their job, who did their job the best and etc. But the things they would argue about were so incredibly petty, things such as who was working properly at some event, about how they didn't agree about the kind of food they would order and so on.
The whole show was like taking an ordinary uneventful grocery shopping event and turning it into a drama over 2 people arguing apples vs oranges and then having some kind meltdown occur because they couldn't agree. It's as ludicrous as that.
I could even talk about another show called Say yes to the Dress, which is a bridal TV reality show where brides bring their family and friends to help them out to pick a wedding dress. The portion of the episode I watched had a picky and somewhat demanding bride trying to choose a dress with the husband and and their respective families. The whole show would basically be a semi-drama about the bride trying to pick a dress that would appease herself and the family. The show would go on about where some people didn't like how bride's but stuck out in one dress or the bride not liking the amount of cleavage showing in another dress or whatever, but the thing that bothered me the most about this show was how they some how they turned the act of simply choosing a wedding dress into some drama.
Our society has become more obnoxious
As a result of the abundance of TV programs like these increasing over the years, I personally feel that our society is becoming more and more obnoxious and judgemental from the conversations I've overheard while being back home.
I'd be hearing conversations like how some person might not like Indian food and then make sweeping disapproval about "how could they like such spicy and pungent spices" or how something arbitrary sounding is better than some other arbitrary thing. A mode of thought like this breeds contention and conflict instead of acceptance and understanding.
Often I find myself with having a hard time relating to such people because I simply do not have an interest in participating in an intense, inconsequential discussion. Actually, when involved in such discussions, I usually have very little to say.
When is comes to an argument about the superiority of oranges versus apples, I would much rather say that I like apples and don't really mind at all which fruit you like best, because I would much rather be doing something enjoyable/important instead.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
It's more about controversy/drama and less about consensus
I am not a huge fan of the mainstream media. The news in general is usually depressing, stories about car crashes, accidents, scandals, wars and about the kinds of mischief the celebrities are up to. Most of the news reported on TV is utter garbage. The only redeeming thing about the news is that sometimes, something important get reported on (like the crashing and burning US economy), but after that, you're better off on your own doing research to figure out what is really going on.
But for all controversies or crisis', the one thing I hate the most about the way current news is being reported is all of these so called "analysts" that come onto the show and have some kind of contrived debate for all of 5 to 10 minutes where the reporter pretends to ask superficially important seeming questions and have the analysts bash their heads against each other. The segment ends with no sort of consensus or any conclusion.
I would say that the whole point of the whole exercise is to "stir shit up." Complete and utter garbage in my not so humble opinion.
But this is pretty much what the whole news business is all about.
A Conflict of Interest
If there is anything good for news ratings, it all about controversy. The news could give less of a damn about coming to sound conclusions or justly educating their viewers.
The current US election cycle is a prime example of this phenomenon. I will disclose that I have positive bias to Obama, the Democratic candidate. Before the beginning of the election cycle and the exceptionally low approval ratings of the current administration (dipping to the 28% range!) it simply baffles me as to how can the current opinion polls between the Democrats and the Republicans sit fairly close to tied (with Obama with a slight lead).
The answer is simple-- the more dramatic and controversal the political news, the more views the news programs are going to have. If one of the candidates are 70%-30% in the opinion polls I can most certainly guarantee you that there is going to be far less intensity in the interest in political news as compared to a close 50%-50% split.
Current mainstream news reporting is not interested in thorough analysis or looking at information in an even handed manner. For example, looking back at the big controversy over Obama's "flag pin" issue during his run as Democratic party's presidential candidate, I would like to ask you as readers, was that controversy truly significant in the big scheme of things? I would answer that that the whole "flag pin" debaccle was irrelevant and neither Obama nor McCain wore a flag pin during their first debate last Friday. Yet, CNN and other news outlets actually went so far as to have "analysts" to come on to their show to actually debate whether if wearing or not wearing a flag pin on their suit is a sign of their patriotism for the country.
Seriously, what is the world coming to?
Perhaps I can illustrate my point using a different example.
Here's a billion (trillion) dollar question for you
What do you know about the sub-prime crisis? What are the terms of the bad mortgages that these people signed (general interest precenteges)? How many people took out these morgages? For the given interest rates, why were they too high?
Being honest, how many of these questions were you able to answer without looking anything up? If you're lucky, you might be able to answer 1 of them on the spot. But I highly doubt that any other questions can be answered without doing some real research.
The news has been spewing out to the general public for more than a year now about the sub-prime loan crisis and yet I find it particulaly hard to believe the general public does not have any tangible knowledge about the problem. I'll be honest myself, even I don't know how many people took out these loans off the top of my head from what I've seen from the news... over the past year!
I think this is utterly pathetic.
Why I've stopped caring about debates
I used to enjoy debating, but not anymore, especially after studying science and engineering.
Debating is less about coming to a consensus and far more about appearing to be "right" about whatever position that you're arguing for. This is the fundamental thing I dislike (ie. hate with a passion) about debates.
Debating automatically puts people into a defensive/offensive posture, where victory is making the most convincing argument. So what about the case if your position was wrong? Would you still try and argue that you are/were "right" to the ground? It is the nature of a debate that prevents people to admit that they were wrong and build a consensus.
Engineers and scientists don't debate. They may have unproven ideas and hypothesis', but the proof of everything comes out of the experiment, where everyone can do the experiment and everyone can come to the same result. I doesn't matter how right or wrong your idea seemed at the time, the only real thing that matters is if the results match up with your ideas.
The real recipe for progress in my humble opinion is far less about who does what, but rather about what gets done and I am afraid that this is a key point that few, if any politician understands. Compare the number of "political achievements" versus the number of "scientific/technological achievements" and their pervasive impacts on society, science and technology would win hands down. I believe that ought to say something about the difference between the "political vs scientific" process (and yes, I will admit that there is some "politics" in the scientific process, but far less compared to "normal" politics)... but I digress. So where were we... ah yes... about debates and the farce called the news.
So let me ask you, after all the debates you have seen on TV, whether be it the presidential debates or the "analysts" on the news shows you might have seen, how much more well informed have you become? What concrete conclusions have you drawn from what you've seen? If you can't answer these question now or can't ever make use of what use of what you've seen on the news in your life, then what you've seen was complete and utter waste of time.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled program.
But for all controversies or crisis', the one thing I hate the most about the way current news is being reported is all of these so called "analysts" that come onto the show and have some kind of contrived debate for all of 5 to 10 minutes where the reporter pretends to ask superficially important seeming questions and have the analysts bash their heads against each other. The segment ends with no sort of consensus or any conclusion.
I would say that the whole point of the whole exercise is to "stir shit up." Complete and utter garbage in my not so humble opinion.
But this is pretty much what the whole news business is all about.
A Conflict of Interest
If there is anything good for news ratings, it all about controversy. The news could give less of a damn about coming to sound conclusions or justly educating their viewers.
The current US election cycle is a prime example of this phenomenon. I will disclose that I have positive bias to Obama, the Democratic candidate. Before the beginning of the election cycle and the exceptionally low approval ratings of the current administration (dipping to the 28% range!) it simply baffles me as to how can the current opinion polls between the Democrats and the Republicans sit fairly close to tied (with Obama with a slight lead).
The answer is simple-- the more dramatic and controversal the political news, the more views the news programs are going to have. If one of the candidates are 70%-30% in the opinion polls I can most certainly guarantee you that there is going to be far less intensity in the interest in political news as compared to a close 50%-50% split.
Current mainstream news reporting is not interested in thorough analysis or looking at information in an even handed manner. For example, looking back at the big controversy over Obama's "flag pin" issue during his run as Democratic party's presidential candidate, I would like to ask you as readers, was that controversy truly significant in the big scheme of things? I would answer that that the whole "flag pin" debaccle was irrelevant and neither Obama nor McCain wore a flag pin during their first debate last Friday. Yet, CNN and other news outlets actually went so far as to have "analysts" to come on to their show to actually debate whether if wearing or not wearing a flag pin on their suit is a sign of their patriotism for the country.
Seriously, what is the world coming to?
Perhaps I can illustrate my point using a different example.
Here's a billion (trillion) dollar question for you
What do you know about the sub-prime crisis? What are the terms of the bad mortgages that these people signed (general interest precenteges)? How many people took out these morgages? For the given interest rates, why were they too high?
Being honest, how many of these questions were you able to answer without looking anything up? If you're lucky, you might be able to answer 1 of them on the spot. But I highly doubt that any other questions can be answered without doing some real research.
The news has been spewing out to the general public for more than a year now about the sub-prime loan crisis and yet I find it particulaly hard to believe the general public does not have any tangible knowledge about the problem. I'll be honest myself, even I don't know how many people took out these loans off the top of my head from what I've seen from the news... over the past year!
I think this is utterly pathetic.
Why I've stopped caring about debates
I used to enjoy debating, but not anymore, especially after studying science and engineering.
Debating is less about coming to a consensus and far more about appearing to be "right" about whatever position that you're arguing for. This is the fundamental thing I dislike (ie. hate with a passion) about debates.
Debating automatically puts people into a defensive/offensive posture, where victory is making the most convincing argument. So what about the case if your position was wrong? Would you still try and argue that you are/were "right" to the ground? It is the nature of a debate that prevents people to admit that they were wrong and build a consensus.
Engineers and scientists don't debate. They may have unproven ideas and hypothesis', but the proof of everything comes out of the experiment, where everyone can do the experiment and everyone can come to the same result. I doesn't matter how right or wrong your idea seemed at the time, the only real thing that matters is if the results match up with your ideas.
The real recipe for progress in my humble opinion is far less about who does what, but rather about what gets done and I am afraid that this is a key point that few, if any politician understands. Compare the number of "political achievements" versus the number of "scientific/technological achievements" and their pervasive impacts on society, science and technology would win hands down. I believe that ought to say something about the difference between the "political vs scientific" process (and yes, I will admit that there is some "politics" in the scientific process, but far less compared to "normal" politics)... but I digress. So where were we... ah yes... about debates and the farce called the news.
So let me ask you, after all the debates you have seen on TV, whether be it the presidential debates or the "analysts" on the news shows you might have seen, how much more well informed have you become? What concrete conclusions have you drawn from what you've seen? If you can't answer these question now or can't ever make use of what use of what you've seen on the news in your life, then what you've seen was complete and utter waste of time.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled program.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
The Tanking US Econonmy
It should be apparent that the US stock markets are taking, something that I have since long been expecting since last year. Debt owed by the individual is still far too high and the banks are laden with bad sub-prime loans which they still need to sort out.
With dropping housing prices, people walking away from their loans, the financial institutions that thought to buy these sketchy collateralized loans are getting bit in the ass when they cannot recover the money loaned. Expect the financial crisis to continue throughout the year, and as the US government and the Federal Reserve continually have to pump money into the financial markets, expect the US dollar to devalue further.
As large financial institutions, especially those that bought these sub-prime loan packages on margin (ie. a loan) are forced to write down their bad investments, they are likely to sell off stocks or other financial devices to make up for their losses to stay capitalized. There is a significant amount of volatility in the stock markets right now as a result of large sell offs which depress prices and people buying in to take advantage of cheap stock prices, driving the prices back up.
In short, expect a significant amount of volatility in the markets for atleast the next few months due to uncertainty of the financial institutions and how the government will respond.
Barring any catastrophic news in the next month or so, I believe that the stock market will recover temporarily. If there is a bounce in the next month or so, I will likely sell off some of my positions in the market and wait to figure out my next steps.
As of current, I find it rather hard to find any reliable sources of information because most financial sites are filled with plenty of headlines and very little analysis. Most news sources have been painting very optimistic outlooks of the economy (especially press releases from the US government) to prevent sellout fear/panic. In a sense, I do believe this behavior to be rather dishonest.
The US will not be recovering any time soon. I think it is rather likely for the US will stagnate for the coming years. High personal debt, increasing prices and a weakened production base from outsourcing will prevent a quick recovery in the economy.
Looking globally, I think that the Euro will continue to get stronger and there is a high chance that the Euro will take over the USD as the global reserve currency. Should that happen, the value of the Euro may increase somewhat as other counries buy into the Euro.
Developing nations with a strong production base will likely be the least impacted by the financial crisis as their economies should be able to produce for themselves and other markets even if the US economy continues to falter. The US, on the other hand is highly vulnerable as it is very reliant on other countries for production.
I wish I had more time to back up my comments with links, but as of recent, I haven't had much time to summarize my thoughts or keep track of what I have been reading due to being rather busy from work and havnig fun on the weekends.
For those in the stock market, good luck.
With dropping housing prices, people walking away from their loans, the financial institutions that thought to buy these sketchy collateralized loans are getting bit in the ass when they cannot recover the money loaned. Expect the financial crisis to continue throughout the year, and as the US government and the Federal Reserve continually have to pump money into the financial markets, expect the US dollar to devalue further.
As large financial institutions, especially those that bought these sub-prime loan packages on margin (ie. a loan) are forced to write down their bad investments, they are likely to sell off stocks or other financial devices to make up for their losses to stay capitalized. There is a significant amount of volatility in the stock markets right now as a result of large sell offs which depress prices and people buying in to take advantage of cheap stock prices, driving the prices back up.
In short, expect a significant amount of volatility in the markets for atleast the next few months due to uncertainty of the financial institutions and how the government will respond.
Barring any catastrophic news in the next month or so, I believe that the stock market will recover temporarily. If there is a bounce in the next month or so, I will likely sell off some of my positions in the market and wait to figure out my next steps.
As of current, I find it rather hard to find any reliable sources of information because most financial sites are filled with plenty of headlines and very little analysis. Most news sources have been painting very optimistic outlooks of the economy (especially press releases from the US government) to prevent sellout fear/panic. In a sense, I do believe this behavior to be rather dishonest.
The US will not be recovering any time soon. I think it is rather likely for the US will stagnate for the coming years. High personal debt, increasing prices and a weakened production base from outsourcing will prevent a quick recovery in the economy.
Looking globally, I think that the Euro will continue to get stronger and there is a high chance that the Euro will take over the USD as the global reserve currency. Should that happen, the value of the Euro may increase somewhat as other counries buy into the Euro.
Developing nations with a strong production base will likely be the least impacted by the financial crisis as their economies should be able to produce for themselves and other markets even if the US economy continues to falter. The US, on the other hand is highly vulnerable as it is very reliant on other countries for production.
I wish I had more time to back up my comments with links, but as of recent, I haven't had much time to summarize my thoughts or keep track of what I have been reading due to being rather busy from work and havnig fun on the weekends.
For those in the stock market, good luck.
Monday, September 08, 2008
A lull in writing
It's been a while since the last time I've done any serious writing. I was working on a complicated post just up until now but I simply could not bring my self to finish it because of all the different points I wanted to make and going everywhere with the post. In short, I've gotten rusty when it comes to writing.
It's what happens when you start slacking off on anything. Eventually, I do want to get back into writing well thought out articles. I am just going to have to make time and motivate myself to do.
I'll be back, later on.
It's what happens when you start slacking off on anything. Eventually, I do want to get back into writing well thought out articles. I am just going to have to make time and motivate myself to do.
I'll be back, later on.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Countering Laser Weapons: Some Screwed up Logic
I am still in the programming class and bored out of my mind so I am spending most of my time surfing the net.
I was just reading on Wired about the US and Israel working on defensive technologies against laser based weapons. What they are currently developing is the obvious solution, spray-on reflective or diffusive coatings for their missiles to prevent them from being shot down when other countries finally develop laser based weapons. I think the idea of developing new counter measures against new weapons to be an incredibly silly game of cat and mouse.
The article closes with the comment:
'In the end, the service suggests, it won't just be the military who benefits. The spray-on laser defense could protect "commercial airliners against worldwide terrorism and proliferation of ground-based laser weapon threats."'
So the people that go out to develop laser weaponry technology that has "worldwide terrorism" implication is supposed to heralded as the good guys for developing counter-measures for their own weapons. That's some seriously screwed up logic or some crazy spin.
Seriously, I wish these guys were honest with their intent. Something to the lines of "we want to be able to kick your asses with our weapons and have total impunity from whatever you have." At least that would be honest.
I was just reading on Wired about the US and Israel working on defensive technologies against laser based weapons. What they are currently developing is the obvious solution, spray-on reflective or diffusive coatings for their missiles to prevent them from being shot down when other countries finally develop laser based weapons. I think the idea of developing new counter measures against new weapons to be an incredibly silly game of cat and mouse.
The article closes with the comment:
'In the end, the service suggests, it won't just be the military who benefits. The spray-on laser defense could protect "commercial airliners against worldwide terrorism and proliferation of ground-based laser weapon threats."'
So the people that go out to develop laser weaponry technology that has "worldwide terrorism" implication is supposed to heralded as the good guys for developing counter-measures for their own weapons. That's some seriously screwed up logic or some crazy spin.
Seriously, I wish these guys were honest with their intent. Something to the lines of "we want to be able to kick your asses with our weapons and have total impunity from whatever you have." At least that would be honest.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
The programming course I am taking is a joke
This is the second day of a 5 day C programming course at my company. There are 3 levels of programming starting from the very introductory level, intermediate and advanced level. Supposedly at this level, by the end of the program we are supposed to write our own fprint program.
This is day 2 and about 11 hours into the program... I have programmed for all of about 30 minutes on a microprocessor connected to a little robot that runs around a track painted on a board. I did this kind of stuff in second year university... almost 5 years ago. I am ridiculously annoyed with this course. A complete, utter, waste of time.
The other things is that some how the teacher for this course has gotten into the guts of assembly language without a good primer into the subject. I am quite certain that most of the other students in the course have no idea what is going on when it comes to the inner workings of assembly or how a microprocessor works. This is terrible!
The people that are teaching these courses, internally at the company are former employees that have started their own education company to teach the new recruits some basic skills. They charge about $600/week/person. There are about 20 people in the class. Doing the math, that yields, $12,000 per week or $48,000 per month! And I only paid $250 for a microcontroller course at UBC which is sufficient to dance circles around this class.
Hell, I have learned way more about programming on my own compared to what these people teach. I've found ways of interfacing programs directly into the Windows memory system, written automation programs, data analysis, a 2D differential equation solver and a monte-carlo robot position tracking system (a real simple one, albeit) over the past few years and I am some how in a class which is reviewing how to use *pointers.* And we have been doing this for the entire morning. If this were UBC, we'd probably have covered the topic in about 1.5 hours with far better depth.
In a sense, I am really happy to have gone to UBC, especially graduating out of the Engineering Physics program. I honestly have to say that surviving Eng Phys was a miracle. Even for me, I took more than the average course load and some how managed to graduate on time. There were tons of stuff I was learning at the time that I really never understood, until I started seeing their applications in research while in grad school. Simulation techniques that was in my head from a Electro-statics course was perfect for me to model electric fields for my research project as a grad student. The 2D differential equation calculus was rather useful for application to a multi-variable robotics course... where people were using complicated math packages to simulate an equation, where I did some really simple calculations in excel and was done in half the time it took everyone else... and yes, I even did find a use for my quantum mechanics (which I did rather poorly the first time around when I took the course) for an electron beam emission project.
I see application to the knowledge I learned everywhere and think the mathematics and physics I've learned is incredibly applicable, especially from the project experience I've had. I honestly have to say that there is nothing I have seen in Japan so far that comes remotely close to the educational experience I've had in Canada. Though I would no go far as to say that I learned nothing while in Japan, most of my learning came from the self-study I've done while working on research and project opportunities while over here.
I will have to remind myself that taking courses are not a real good use of time. The only problem is that I wonder if they wouldn't mind me taking a week out of work time to do some self-study to find new/better techniques of getting the job done.
This is day 2 and about 11 hours into the program... I have programmed for all of about 30 minutes on a microprocessor connected to a little robot that runs around a track painted on a board. I did this kind of stuff in second year university... almost 5 years ago. I am ridiculously annoyed with this course. A complete, utter, waste of time.
The other things is that some how the teacher for this course has gotten into the guts of assembly language without a good primer into the subject. I am quite certain that most of the other students in the course have no idea what is going on when it comes to the inner workings of assembly or how a microprocessor works. This is terrible!
The people that are teaching these courses, internally at the company are former employees that have started their own education company to teach the new recruits some basic skills. They charge about $600/week/person. There are about 20 people in the class. Doing the math, that yields, $12,000 per week or $48,000 per month! And I only paid $250 for a microcontroller course at UBC which is sufficient to dance circles around this class.
Hell, I have learned way more about programming on my own compared to what these people teach. I've found ways of interfacing programs directly into the Windows memory system, written automation programs, data analysis, a 2D differential equation solver and a monte-carlo robot position tracking system (a real simple one, albeit) over the past few years and I am some how in a class which is reviewing how to use *pointers.* And we have been doing this for the entire morning. If this were UBC, we'd probably have covered the topic in about 1.5 hours with far better depth.
In a sense, I am really happy to have gone to UBC, especially graduating out of the Engineering Physics program. I honestly have to say that surviving Eng Phys was a miracle. Even for me, I took more than the average course load and some how managed to graduate on time. There were tons of stuff I was learning at the time that I really never understood, until I started seeing their applications in research while in grad school. Simulation techniques that was in my head from a Electro-statics course was perfect for me to model electric fields for my research project as a grad student. The 2D differential equation calculus was rather useful for application to a multi-variable robotics course... where people were using complicated math packages to simulate an equation, where I did some really simple calculations in excel and was done in half the time it took everyone else... and yes, I even did find a use for my quantum mechanics (which I did rather poorly the first time around when I took the course) for an electron beam emission project.
I see application to the knowledge I learned everywhere and think the mathematics and physics I've learned is incredibly applicable, especially from the project experience I've had. I honestly have to say that there is nothing I have seen in Japan so far that comes remotely close to the educational experience I've had in Canada. Though I would no go far as to say that I learned nothing while in Japan, most of my learning came from the self-study I've done while working on research and project opportunities while over here.
I will have to remind myself that taking courses are not a real good use of time. The only problem is that I wonder if they wouldn't mind me taking a week out of work time to do some self-study to find new/better techniques of getting the job done.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
The problem with people pushing their religon around
For the most part, I don't mind it if people are religious, if they believe in things like a God or have certain customs passed down because of their beliefs. Sometime is it the psyche of a people. I still remember the time I was in Thailand, where I made a wonderful friend that showed me around Bangkok.
She showed me all the beautiful temples and taught me all about the lives of the Buddhist monks. She invited me into a temple, where I had the chance to sit in prayer with the ordinary Thai people. I asked her what she would usually pray for, and she told me that she would pray for good health for her family and good luck for her friends. I was all good natured and I had a lot of respect for the kindness I found in the Thai culture. They never told me that their beliefs were the right way to life or anything but they were quite happy with their way of life nor were they threatened by the beliefs of others. It was incredibly pleasant learning about the culture of the Thai people.
Months later since I came back to Japan, I've lived a peaceful life, doing my own thing, minding my own business. But if there is something that annoys me, it would always be some western missionary in the street. "Free English lessons" they'd say, or they'd be even be more direct and tell me that "God loves you" and that I should come to their Church. The part that bothers me the most about all this beneath the surface, they are trying to push their beliefs on to other people, whether they want it or not. I think that's deceitful. Wasn't there a commandment in the bible that said "thou shalt not lie?" Well, I guess, the technicality is that they're not lying, par se, but they aren't really honest.
But the burning question that I have to ask, is what right do these people have to come in and try and change the beliefs of a culture and what right do they have to get offended when other people have beliefs different from them? I really do get quite agitated when people, especially Evangelicals, come out on to the streets to profess that believing in their religion will send you to a place of eternal happiness after death, where as otherwise, you are sent to a place of eternal hell. A friendly bunch of people, wouldn't you say?
I don't care what you believe in, as long as it doesn't infringe on the freedoms of others
There are states in the US that explicitly require people to be a practicing Christian to get into an elected office. I ask, then, what about the others whom follow a different faith? What right do these people have to tell others that they cannot hold an elected office unless they be a Christian? There are other parts in the US where Christians are battling against the Education system to have scientific theories like Evolution thrown out of the curriculum, or at least have it watered down and have "intelligent design" taught with the same level of footing that evolution has. If that was the case, I would think it would be equally fair to have the Muslim and Buddhist ideas of life taught in the same classroom. But to do so, would entice outrage and anger. Since when did religious tolerance get redefined to "You must tolerate our religion and we have the right to reject yours?" Somebody is trying to have their cake and eat it too.
But it goes further than this. Personally, I don't really mind what you believe in, so long as you don't infringe in the lives of other people (so long as they don't do likewise to you). I draw the line when people believe they have the the right to deny people of different faith into an elected position, or people of the same gender to get married or the decision use birth-control should they choose to. That, frankly, is none of their business.
The results of science are independent of religion
There are people out there who chose to not realize that the experimental results and conclusions that come out of the field of science has nothing to do with religion. The most important part of science is that the experiments are repeatable no matter who conducts them. Thus it shouldn't matter if a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddist or a wiccan decides to conduct the same scientific experiment-- they should all get the same result.
But the problem is, that for some religions, the results that come out of the scientific process is that it may contradict what they believe in and for that sin, those ideas are to be quashed. A man by the name of Galileo one thought that the Earth revolved around the sun. For that idea, he was held in house arrest by the church until his death. So I ask, is that right? Is that fair? For those think that was right, don't complain if others decide that it is fair to persecute others in the same manner for having different ideas. And yet still, the laws which govern the motion of the planets remain unchallenged. For those that do disagree, I suggest you throw out your satellite TV dishes and GPS systems and walk the walk.
The concept of the scientific method is to eliminate human bias to come down to objective conclusions.
Let's Be fair
I don't come down on other people about if their beliefs are different than mine. If my friends are Muslim, Buddhist or Christian and they don't get in the way of other people minding their own business or cause general unpleasantness then I completely don't mind. But cross that line, then don't start complaining when other people take issue.
She showed me all the beautiful temples and taught me all about the lives of the Buddhist monks. She invited me into a temple, where I had the chance to sit in prayer with the ordinary Thai people. I asked her what she would usually pray for, and she told me that she would pray for good health for her family and good luck for her friends. I was all good natured and I had a lot of respect for the kindness I found in the Thai culture. They never told me that their beliefs were the right way to life or anything but they were quite happy with their way of life nor were they threatened by the beliefs of others. It was incredibly pleasant learning about the culture of the Thai people.
Months later since I came back to Japan, I've lived a peaceful life, doing my own thing, minding my own business. But if there is something that annoys me, it would always be some western missionary in the street. "Free English lessons" they'd say, or they'd be even be more direct and tell me that "God loves you" and that I should come to their Church. The part that bothers me the most about all this beneath the surface, they are trying to push their beliefs on to other people, whether they want it or not. I think that's deceitful. Wasn't there a commandment in the bible that said "thou shalt not lie?" Well, I guess, the technicality is that they're not lying, par se, but they aren't really honest.
But the burning question that I have to ask, is what right do these people have to come in and try and change the beliefs of a culture and what right do they have to get offended when other people have beliefs different from them? I really do get quite agitated when people, especially Evangelicals, come out on to the streets to profess that believing in their religion will send you to a place of eternal happiness after death, where as otherwise, you are sent to a place of eternal hell. A friendly bunch of people, wouldn't you say?
I don't care what you believe in, as long as it doesn't infringe on the freedoms of others
There are states in the US that explicitly require people to be a practicing Christian to get into an elected office. I ask, then, what about the others whom follow a different faith? What right do these people have to tell others that they cannot hold an elected office unless they be a Christian? There are other parts in the US where Christians are battling against the Education system to have scientific theories like Evolution thrown out of the curriculum, or at least have it watered down and have "intelligent design" taught with the same level of footing that evolution has. If that was the case, I would think it would be equally fair to have the Muslim and Buddhist ideas of life taught in the same classroom. But to do so, would entice outrage and anger. Since when did religious tolerance get redefined to "You must tolerate our religion and we have the right to reject yours?" Somebody is trying to have their cake and eat it too.
But it goes further than this. Personally, I don't really mind what you believe in, so long as you don't infringe in the lives of other people (so long as they don't do likewise to you). I draw the line when people believe they have the the right to deny people of different faith into an elected position, or people of the same gender to get married or the decision use birth-control should they choose to. That, frankly, is none of their business.
The results of science are independent of religion
There are people out there who chose to not realize that the experimental results and conclusions that come out of the field of science has nothing to do with religion. The most important part of science is that the experiments are repeatable no matter who conducts them. Thus it shouldn't matter if a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddist or a wiccan decides to conduct the same scientific experiment-- they should all get the same result.
But the problem is, that for some religions, the results that come out of the scientific process is that it may contradict what they believe in and for that sin, those ideas are to be quashed. A man by the name of Galileo one thought that the Earth revolved around the sun. For that idea, he was held in house arrest by the church until his death. So I ask, is that right? Is that fair? For those think that was right, don't complain if others decide that it is fair to persecute others in the same manner for having different ideas. And yet still, the laws which govern the motion of the planets remain unchallenged. For those that do disagree, I suggest you throw out your satellite TV dishes and GPS systems and walk the walk.
The concept of the scientific method is to eliminate human bias to come down to objective conclusions.
Let's Be fair
I don't come down on other people about if their beliefs are different than mine. If my friends are Muslim, Buddhist or Christian and they don't get in the way of other people minding their own business or cause general unpleasantness then I completely don't mind. But cross that line, then don't start complaining when other people take issue.
Accepted to the Journal of Nanotechnology
2 years of study and experimentation was first written into an 80 page document which became my graduation thesis. I would make my first research conference debut at the 2007 Micro and Nano Engineering conference held in Denmark coveting an oral presentation slot where my research was presented to an international audience of professors and students.
Now finally, after 6 months of review and editing, my research paper has been accepted to the Journal of Nanotechnology; 2 years of work summarized into 6 pages. As of current, the last device I fabricated as a grad student has the lowest turn on voltage for an electron emission device (5V) in the world. I wasn't aiming for such a result, but as luck would have it, it's what I ended up with.
Not many masters students are able to have a research paper accepted into a research publication as the principle author, but I am quite happy to say that I did manage to get out of my masters degree with some tangible result.
Now finally, after 6 months of review and editing, my research paper has been accepted to the Journal of Nanotechnology; 2 years of work summarized into 6 pages. As of current, the last device I fabricated as a grad student has the lowest turn on voltage for an electron emission device (5V) in the world. I wasn't aiming for such a result, but as luck would have it, it's what I ended up with.
Not many masters students are able to have a research paper accepted into a research publication as the principle author, but I am quite happy to say that I did manage to get out of my masters degree with some tangible result.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Got money and want to leave the US? Prepare to Pay!
There is no doubt right now that the US is having serious debt problem. According to the US national debt clock as of July 5th 2008, the US stands to be in $9.45 trillion in debt. With an estimated population of about 300 million people, that's $31,000 per person. In other words, a family of4 carries a debt of $120,000. Imagine trying to pay off that kind of debt? For the average American I think that would be close to impossible.
There are many people in the US whom are dismayed with the current state of affairs, particularly with the currently rising debt and deteriorating economy (not to mention the low support with the current administration having an approval rate of about 27%). Suffice to say, the US as it stands right now is incredibly screwed and even if the general public didn't support the actions of the administration, the US government's debt and the economic catastrophe they cause is still the responsible of the average American citizen.
The question to ask is if this is fair for the average person to pick up the tab for the debt they didn't want or responsible for in the first place. The answer for most people is a resounding 'No.' So even if the current Bush administration draws to a cataclysmic end, the legacy of it's debt will continue for atleast a generation or few. For those that don't want anything more to do with this debt, there is a way out and that way is through renouncing their US citizenship.
The most common method of renouncing a US citizenship is simply by leaving the country and writing out the appropriate forms at an US embassy abroad. But for the most average US citizen, most people do not have any experience living abroad nor are most people readily in a position to take up a foreign citizenship. The people most likely able to do this are the most affluent, who do a lot of traveling or working abroad (this assumes that they are skilled to be in demand in an international market).
The US government is realizing through their poor management is that rich people want to leave, taking their money to greener pastures. So, just recently, the US has instigated a special tax (called HEART) to hit people emigrating out of the US (for both foreigners and US citizens) taking bringing out more than $600,000 in wealth (while the first $600k being tax free, the rest being taxed). If you lived debt free, sold your house and all your belongings (total assets more than $600k), be prepared to pay this new "exit fee" out of the US.
So if you became rich in the US, don't expect to get out with all of your wealth intact. If you don't have much money and don't want anything to do with the ballooning US debt, get out while you still can.
There are many people in the US whom are dismayed with the current state of affairs, particularly with the currently rising debt and deteriorating economy (not to mention the low support with the current administration having an approval rate of about 27%). Suffice to say, the US as it stands right now is incredibly screwed and even if the general public didn't support the actions of the administration, the US government's debt and the economic catastrophe they cause is still the responsible of the average American citizen.
The question to ask is if this is fair for the average person to pick up the tab for the debt they didn't want or responsible for in the first place. The answer for most people is a resounding 'No.' So even if the current Bush administration draws to a cataclysmic end, the legacy of it's debt will continue for atleast a generation or few. For those that don't want anything more to do with this debt, there is a way out and that way is through renouncing their US citizenship.
The most common method of renouncing a US citizenship is simply by leaving the country and writing out the appropriate forms at an US embassy abroad. But for the most average US citizen, most people do not have any experience living abroad nor are most people readily in a position to take up a foreign citizenship. The people most likely able to do this are the most affluent, who do a lot of traveling or working abroad (this assumes that they are skilled to be in demand in an international market).
The US government is realizing through their poor management is that rich people want to leave, taking their money to greener pastures. So, just recently, the US has instigated a special tax (called HEART) to hit people emigrating out of the US (for both foreigners and US citizens) taking bringing out more than $600,000 in wealth (while the first $600k being tax free, the rest being taxed). If you lived debt free, sold your house and all your belongings (total assets more than $600k), be prepared to pay this new "exit fee" out of the US.
So if you became rich in the US, don't expect to get out with all of your wealth intact. If you don't have much money and don't want anything to do with the ballooning US debt, get out while you still can.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Books vs the Internet
I am starting to find it quite hard to get a hold of quality information worth reading, recently through the internet. As I sift through a variety of social bookmarking sites, either I keep finding more and more garbage (which might be entertaining for the first little while but largely a waste of time) or news information which I highly doubt to be anything close to reliable.
If you want really unreliable information, go read the commentaries at yahoo finance, where by is it clearly impossible to have any idea about where the economy might really be going by reading most of the garbage put out by the pundits. Some people were going on for the past 3 months that the US economy is in perfect shape (minus the "little financial troubles" it was facing with the sub-prime loans and the faltering industrial base).
Reading the news is also another sore spot for me. There used to be a time where the news was about reporting important events or things that were genuinely relevant to the general public. Gone are those days to be replaced by 24 hour news channels that love to make a big deal about insignificant events. I could not give any less of a damn about Britney Spears checking into rehab or pundits on politically biased TV "News" shows having an axe to grind about some political or idealogical agenda, or etc. None of the information being broadcasted is nourishing information that provides to the well being of the general human being and therefore I find it largely useless.
So instead of the mainstream media, I look elsewhere where perhaps real or thoughtful information might be had. I look for essays or thought provoking ideas backed up with significant data or well constructed articles. Unfortunately, as of late, I am having trouble finding anything worth reading and I've broken down to buying a book to read... for the first time in a long time, which just arrived today.
There is something nice about reading a book. The ideas are far more complete compared to reading a 1-2 page article online. Short articles hardly provide for any depth of understanding. How am I supposed to understand anything about international relations in a 1 page article summarized by say "Saudi's promise to raise oil output to reduce oil prices." Surely the issues at hand are far more complicated then that and yet the general population is supposed to judge the actions of a nation based on a simple sliver of information. We have TV pundits and online pundits putting bits and pieces of these tid-bits of garbage to make one grand picture of garbage. As the saying goes, "garbage in, garbage out." But I digress...
The book I am reading is "Out of our minds: How to be Creative" by Sir Ken Robinson. Admittedly, the title does sound a little cheesy ("How to be Creative!?"), but Ken Robinson (I highly recommend watching his TED talk which is quite fascinating) writes about the current shortage of "creative" workers to further propel us into the future. He has a very good understanding of the problems in the current education system and it is worth a read. I have so far gone through 50 pages of the book and have been quite satisfied with most of the ideas and the background information he presents. Nothing of the sort that you'd find easily on the internet.
I think that is the new problem that the internet will face in the future. With access to countless billions (trillions??) of webpages, it will become harder and harder to find information worth reading now that anyone and their dog can post to the cloud that is the internet. Social bookmarking, which I thought were the wave of the future for democratically aggregating pieces of information worthy of reading, had now been replaced by the frivolity of the masses with continual up voting of trivial matters. I once used to love these sites as the density of well educated people that used to frequent them led to a higher density of good quality articles being posted. Perhaps it is time for me to look for smaller and better communities to find reading material from.
If you want really unreliable information, go read the commentaries at yahoo finance, where by is it clearly impossible to have any idea about where the economy might really be going by reading most of the garbage put out by the pundits. Some people were going on for the past 3 months that the US economy is in perfect shape (minus the "little financial troubles" it was facing with the sub-prime loans and the faltering industrial base).
Reading the news is also another sore spot for me. There used to be a time where the news was about reporting important events or things that were genuinely relevant to the general public. Gone are those days to be replaced by 24 hour news channels that love to make a big deal about insignificant events. I could not give any less of a damn about Britney Spears checking into rehab or pundits on politically biased TV "News" shows having an axe to grind about some political or idealogical agenda, or etc. None of the information being broadcasted is nourishing information that provides to the well being of the general human being and therefore I find it largely useless.
So instead of the mainstream media, I look elsewhere where perhaps real or thoughtful information might be had. I look for essays or thought provoking ideas backed up with significant data or well constructed articles. Unfortunately, as of late, I am having trouble finding anything worth reading and I've broken down to buying a book to read... for the first time in a long time, which just arrived today.
There is something nice about reading a book. The ideas are far more complete compared to reading a 1-2 page article online. Short articles hardly provide for any depth of understanding. How am I supposed to understand anything about international relations in a 1 page article summarized by say "Saudi's promise to raise oil output to reduce oil prices." Surely the issues at hand are far more complicated then that and yet the general population is supposed to judge the actions of a nation based on a simple sliver of information. We have TV pundits and online pundits putting bits and pieces of these tid-bits of garbage to make one grand picture of garbage. As the saying goes, "garbage in, garbage out." But I digress...
The book I am reading is "Out of our minds: How to be Creative" by Sir Ken Robinson. Admittedly, the title does sound a little cheesy ("How to be Creative!?"), but Ken Robinson (I highly recommend watching his TED talk which is quite fascinating) writes about the current shortage of "creative" workers to further propel us into the future. He has a very good understanding of the problems in the current education system and it is worth a read. I have so far gone through 50 pages of the book and have been quite satisfied with most of the ideas and the background information he presents. Nothing of the sort that you'd find easily on the internet.
I think that is the new problem that the internet will face in the future. With access to countless billions (trillions??) of webpages, it will become harder and harder to find information worth reading now that anyone and their dog can post to the cloud that is the internet. Social bookmarking, which I thought were the wave of the future for democratically aggregating pieces of information worthy of reading, had now been replaced by the frivolity of the masses with continual up voting of trivial matters. I once used to love these sites as the density of well educated people that used to frequent them led to a higher density of good quality articles being posted. Perhaps it is time for me to look for smaller and better communities to find reading material from.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Dealing with uncertainty
For the last 3 days, starting on Wednesday, I was on an orientation retreat; the HR team at Sony wanted to imbue the new employees with a sense of "character" of what Sony is. If there was one thing that I took away from the orientation was that the company was "unconventional," which might be a good thing for a Japanese company.
Sony does face some serious challenges right now. My opinion is that the company is stagnating and the current environment doesn't really breed creativity, nor does it seem like it gives opportunities for new ideas (from what I've seen so far), though the upper management people keep telling this is exactly what they want, but I some what digress from the title of this article.
Many of the new grads coming into the company, after this retreat seemed to have a lot of anxiety about their jobs. From one of the promotional videos we saw describing the company as having a long history of innovation, the new grads seemed to feel like they had big shoes to fill. I wouldn't blame them, especially coming out of the Japanese educational system, where encouraging creativity not is one of it's strong points.
For the majority of these new grads, working at Sony will be their first job and most of them are quite worried if the jobs they are given is something suited for them. I for one had a very crappy first job doing incredibly boring work, cutting clouds out of satellite images (I studied how long for a boring job like this!?) after my undergrad in Canada. On top of this, most of them aren't really sure about the kinds of jobs they would be really be suited to since they don't really have any working experience.
Personally, there's been a lot of uncertainty in my life. I would never have imaged that I would come to Japan to study nanotech, then getting hired off by Sony after graduating after considering that I started off with a really pathetic first job. In the future, I really have no idea what kind of work I will be doing and where I'll be working. But I think the most important thing is developing the skills to deal with whatever comes up. Say if you got fired tomorrow and knew that you could just setup your own little company or just hop ship to do other things, I think that most people would have very little worries.
Sony does face some serious challenges right now. My opinion is that the company is stagnating and the current environment doesn't really breed creativity, nor does it seem like it gives opportunities for new ideas (from what I've seen so far), though the upper management people keep telling this is exactly what they want, but I some what digress from the title of this article.
Many of the new grads coming into the company, after this retreat seemed to have a lot of anxiety about their jobs. From one of the promotional videos we saw describing the company as having a long history of innovation, the new grads seemed to feel like they had big shoes to fill. I wouldn't blame them, especially coming out of the Japanese educational system, where encouraging creativity not is one of it's strong points.
For the majority of these new grads, working at Sony will be their first job and most of them are quite worried if the jobs they are given is something suited for them. I for one had a very crappy first job doing incredibly boring work, cutting clouds out of satellite images (I studied how long for a boring job like this!?) after my undergrad in Canada. On top of this, most of them aren't really sure about the kinds of jobs they would be really be suited to since they don't really have any working experience.
Personally, there's been a lot of uncertainty in my life. I would never have imaged that I would come to Japan to study nanotech, then getting hired off by Sony after graduating after considering that I started off with a really pathetic first job. In the future, I really have no idea what kind of work I will be doing and where I'll be working. But I think the most important thing is developing the skills to deal with whatever comes up. Say if you got fired tomorrow and knew that you could just setup your own little company or just hop ship to do other things, I think that most people would have very little worries.
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Will rent prices go down?
Given the current foreclosures in the US housing market and the state of the US economy, more and more people are looking toward renting as an alternative to owning a home. it would be interesting to see if rent prices in the US will go down, which is something that I've never really seen happen before.
Logically speaking, with falling housing prices, it becomes cheaper to buy a house and if one was a landowner, then it would be possible to rent a home for less money to encourage people to move in. Given this line of thinking, I would think that rent prices in the future to go down, which would be a good thing for most renters out there, though I would expect that it would require a move out of your current residence or a negotiation with your current land lord to get a reduction in rent prices.
Logically speaking, with falling housing prices, it becomes cheaper to buy a house and if one was a landowner, then it would be possible to rent a home for less money to encourage people to move in. Given this line of thinking, I would think that rent prices in the future to go down, which would be a good thing for most renters out there, though I would expect that it would require a move out of your current residence or a negotiation with your current land lord to get a reduction in rent prices.
I do better when I don't pay attention in class
I am in a microprocessor class right now; a course setup for the new employees that got into Sony to learn a little about microprocessor programming. The class level is more introductory than I was expecting so I am ending up having a lot of free time. As a result, I've brought a spare laptop and currently surfing the web and doing some misc reading while the teacher blabbers on about the fundamentals of electronics and microprocessor programming.
The interesting thing about this experience is that I fare better than the rest of the student that pay attention. I'm really just half listening to the teacher, just catching the main points about what he's talking about and then when it comes to doing an assignment, I just look at what needs to be done and go about doing it on my own. The good thing about not paying attention to everything is that it forces me to think on my own to solve the assignment instead of following some contrived program the teacher has setup to solve the problem. The fun part about thinking on my own is that I'm usually thinking a few steps ahead of the class and finding some bugs in the example code (which I've caught the teacher on).
The other good thing about thinking on my own in class is that I tend to be more creative than just listening to what the teacher has to say. I've been plugging the outputs of the microprocessor to a LED light display while making the lights dance around instead of just at the data through an oscilloscope. Apparently, I've gained some notoriety for not paying attention and going my own way at doing my own things.
On an interesting side note, I do believe that people become more creative when they do more thinking on their own instead of being told what to do, as that shuts down the creative process and hence I think the idea of managers telling employees to be "more creative" to be somewhat paradoxical in this sense. My 2 cents. I'd elaborate on it more but the lecturer just gave us a new circuit to build and I'm off to go build it.
The interesting thing about this experience is that I fare better than the rest of the student that pay attention. I'm really just half listening to the teacher, just catching the main points about what he's talking about and then when it comes to doing an assignment, I just look at what needs to be done and go about doing it on my own. The good thing about not paying attention to everything is that it forces me to think on my own to solve the assignment instead of following some contrived program the teacher has setup to solve the problem. The fun part about thinking on my own is that I'm usually thinking a few steps ahead of the class and finding some bugs in the example code (which I've caught the teacher on).
The other good thing about thinking on my own in class is that I tend to be more creative than just listening to what the teacher has to say. I've been plugging the outputs of the microprocessor to a LED light display while making the lights dance around instead of just at the data through an oscilloscope. Apparently, I've gained some notoriety for not paying attention and going my own way at doing my own things.
On an interesting side note, I do believe that people become more creative when they do more thinking on their own instead of being told what to do, as that shuts down the creative process and hence I think the idea of managers telling employees to be "more creative" to be somewhat paradoxical in this sense. My 2 cents. I'd elaborate on it more but the lecturer just gave us a new circuit to build and I'm off to go build it.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
A short hiatus from writing
I've been quite busy recently with work, participating in activities, exercising, reading and resting that I haven't had much time or energy left over to do much to keep this blog up-to-date. I will return to posting more frequently later on.
As of current, I have been somewhat tired and have not been in much of a mood for human interaction. As a result, I haven't been logging into any of the social network sites I used to frequent or any of my internet messengers as of late. Actually, I've started to find more solace in reading than I used to find in chatting online for some strange reason.
I attribute this to the many interesting and well thought out articles I've been reading online, offering compelling and well thought out ideas. I am starting to find normal conversation to be somewhat boring now that I can't seem to find conversations that "go anywhere." Perhaps my character is taking a somewhat of a shift towards "less talking and more action" but this requires some more exploration.
Anyways, I will probably have more to say (well, I have plenty) after I have some time to kick back and relax. But for the time being, posting might be a little bit sparse.
As of current, I have been somewhat tired and have not been in much of a mood for human interaction. As a result, I haven't been logging into any of the social network sites I used to frequent or any of my internet messengers as of late. Actually, I've started to find more solace in reading than I used to find in chatting online for some strange reason.
I attribute this to the many interesting and well thought out articles I've been reading online, offering compelling and well thought out ideas. I am starting to find normal conversation to be somewhat boring now that I can't seem to find conversations that "go anywhere." Perhaps my character is taking a somewhat of a shift towards "less talking and more action" but this requires some more exploration.
Anyways, I will probably have more to say (well, I have plenty) after I have some time to kick back and relax. But for the time being, posting might be a little bit sparse.
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