Sambal

This Sunday my wife and I gave a service on what’s variously called the Universe Story, or the Great Story, or New Cosmology, or various other things. I like this version, if only because I first heard it from Michael Dowd. The essential idea is to create an anthropological cosmology from the physical one, to tell the scientifically rigorous story of the creation of the universe and ourselves as a sacred story, the kind of story which can inform us, comfort us and guide us. The service consisted of me blabbing for awhile (too long, really), then a ritual of walking a spiral of time, from the Big Bang to the present gathering, lighting a candle to mark each major event. It went okay, I think, considering it’s the first time we’ve tried to do this sort of thing. It even had a decent turnout, bout twenty people, for a summer service.

One thing which always impresses me about the story is the origination of life. There’s lots of definitions of life, so I mean it in the reproducing-genetically-heritable-structures sense. Quite a bit is known about it, both from geological and fossil records and from paleontology in our genetic material themselves, which carry the echos of our very first ancestors. Once the Earth had cooled enough for liquid water to form, and meteor impacts slowed down enough, and it rained for hundreds of millions of years to establish the oceans, the conditions were established for molecules to start reproducing, and carrying information. Once bacteria were around, it took billions of years before they grew nuclear membranes, adopted mitochondria, and then turned into multicellular organisms like us. And the Universe took a few billion years to establish the conditions where genomes and bacteria could arise. The hard part, to me, has always seemed to be that step in the middle, going from the chemical soup (whatever and whereever it was)
to reproducing creatures, no matter how simple. But that hard part was basically instantaneous. A few hundred million years, maybe less, an interval so small it’s hard to measure in the records (geological and genomic) that we have. Once the Earth was ready for life, it arose immediately. Irrepressible creation.

Afterward, one participant remarked on an interesting implication of this. If we screw up, and get snuffed out, the Universe will, somewhere, sometime, recreate us. Not like us people, maybe. But life, and maybe even thinking, feeling creatures, will endure. And this she found comforting — we are, in the end, not the Universe’s one and only chance. No matter what the enviro doomsday theorists say, there is hope. Hope, yes, just not for us. (A Kafka line, I’m told.)

There’s lots of ways to screw up, of course. I’ve been interested in the energy angle. Jared Diamond’s latest thriller, Collapse, is supposed to go through them all, with prescriptions for the future, in Clintonian detail and depth. I’m reading the much shorter A Short History of Progress, from the Massey lecture series by author Richard Wright. I’m now all worked up about agricultural land salinization and desertification, the processes which turned the Fertile Crescent into modern Iraq, that agricultural powerhouse. (Don’t confuse with dessertification, the transformation of cuisines which adds more and more shorter and shorter chain carbohydrates to every part of the meal, until they all taste like dessert, leading to unsustainable tooth decay and the ensuing collapse of civilization. Witness Alphaghetti, which my children sometimes insist on eating for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.) Now, depending on where you are, soil destruction isn’t permanent, though it seems to be for the middle east. After the Aztecs collapsed, the jungle retook the land, and soil gets regenerated at an inch per century or so. Somebody, or something, will be able to eat from the lost land again. Just not the people who lost it in the first place.

Environmentalism — expanding your Universe by giving you new things to be frightened of, every day. Sometime I’ll tell you about helium, the ultimate nonrenewable resource.

Clear thinking about currencies can make a lot of money — remember George Soros’ billion-dollar day pushing the Bank of England over the edge of devaluation, back in the day. I have neither the bucks nor the nuts to play that game, but still I like to understand stuff that seems complicated. (A quick Soros story: Among the interview questions for prospective traders for his Quantam macro hedge fund was this: “Imagine that you a certain of a major market move. How big a position do you take?” Now, all your wealth is tied up in the fund, along with that of all your peers and investors, not to mention your professional future and your good name. How big a risk do you take? The only acceptable answer was “All of it”. If you’re certain, put down all the chips. Diversification is for low-risk wimps, go work at a mutual fund or something.)

Just to show that I don’t understand, here’s an Economist piece (subscription required I think) about US foreign debt falling, despite the high current account deficits. A puzzlement. Here’s the main explanation (after noting the outperformance of foreign stocks):

Even more important over the past three years has been the impact of a cheaper dollar. About 70% of America’s assets abroad are denominated in foreign currencies, so when the greenback falls, their dollar value rises. Meanwhile, as the home of the world’s main reserve currency, America has the advantage that virtually all of its foreign liabilities are in dollars, so that the currency’s depreciation does not increase their value. Thus a fall in the dollar boosts America’s net wealth.

So devaluing your currency makes you richer? Why didn’t anybody tell me that before? Seems like it would have been good to know. And this game of compensating huge deficits by devaluing your external debt, how long can that last?

Being a reserve currency helps. One piece about the China announcement, the importance of which doesn’t seem to be getting heavy press play, is that the trading band is against a basket, not just the US dollar. In other words, at least in one respect, and as far as China is concerned, the USD has just been cut from its reserve currency status. Reserve currencies don’t change overnight, but they do change. Gold is gone, eg. And the German mark was as a reserve currency for awhile, for some countries, back when there was a German mark. How much longer will the USD be a reserve currency? And what will the consequences be of its loss of status?

At the moment, fossil fuels, with some hydro, provide most of our energy (not counting the sun on the plants we eat). I think the energy mix for next few decades, maybe even 100 years, is reasonably easy to predict. For transportation, easy oil will continue to get used until it’s gone, then replaced by difficult oil (eg tar sands and oil shales) and liquifaction from natural gas or coal. At some point, for greenhouse gas reasons, the energy may be delivered as hydrogen rather than hydrocarbons, but the sources will remain fossil. For grid electricity, I understand that pretty much all the hydro available is being used, and wind and nuclear will increase, but fossil fuels (gas while it lasts, coal after that, hopefully with sequestration) will remain popular.

More interesting is what happens after the coal runs out, maybe 100 or so years from now. Renewables like hydro, wind, geothermal, biomass, and solar PV will still be around, but new sources may be required or become economical. I don’t know enough about nuclear to talk about fuel depletion, or what advanced processes could make possible. I’d bet against fusion ever being economic, even if it becomes possible. More likely are things like OTEC (a form of solar), gas hydrates, and deep coal, perhaps liquified in situ.

Charles Krauthammer has a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal: The Neoconservative Convergence. I’d say my favorite part is where he claims that the US is justified in dealing with and supporting dictators, even though we stand for democracy around the world. I can’t quote it because it’s not argued — just asserted.

The most useful piece of information was that women gained suffrage in Kuwait sometime since January’s elections in Iraq. I hadn’t heard that before.

Strangely, this article from an ABC affiliate in Philadelphia appears to be original reporting; or at least, I didn’t find any other reference in Google News to the names of the two programmers interviewed.

I find several points interesting:

• The Sims has sold over $1 billion.

• Although games buyers are 70% male, buyers of The Sims are 55% female.

In general I hope that the success of The Sims will prove that games for women can be highly lucrative, and that the market will rush to supply more of them without the need for the sort of fatheaded intervention that seems to be coming down the road. But it will probably take at least two more blockbuster “women’s games” to convince the industry that The Sims a) is not just a fluke and b) is not just something that EA can make.

Below, TFox writes:

The dollar has already fallen, and will do more if China decides it no longer needs so many dollars in its banks.

To which I can only say, It’s about time. The dollar has been needing to fall — or something else had to happen to countervail the US balance of payments — for many years. Andrew Coyne pointed out (in 1989!) that, as Herbert Stein says, Anything that cannot go on forever will eventually stop.

China dumps the peg to the dollar, finally. Here’s the NY Times. Two points: 1) not just changing the pegged value, but going to a band — more flexibility, and 2) not against the USD, but against an undisclosed “basket” of currencies — i.e., whatever they want. The dollar has already fallen, and will do more if China decides it no longer needs so many dollars in its banks.

Skimming the news this morning I found a piece in the IHT on the Chinese response to a DoD report on their current millitary buildup. The report itself is here, and the PLA response here. It’s all peaceful, apparently, and China has no desire to take over Taiwan by force. Modernize your military enough, of course, and force will not be required, but maybe I’ve been reading too much Tom Clancy on summer holidays. Bush is quoted as saying that the US and China have “a complicated relationship”, with “areas of concern where it comes to values”. Good speechwriting: it’s a lover’s quarrel, in other words. Kind of like walking in on a couple screaming and throwing knives at each other, asking how things are, and hearing two cheery voices answer, “Just fine, thanks!”

I don’t see China as a third world country anymore, if I ever did. It’s big, with a lot of rural poor, and their currency is kept cheap to support exports, but I really do see them as first class players on the world stage, with a responsibility every bit as big as Europe and the US with respect to things like international security and the environment. Not long ago I heard someone talking about adopting a girl from China, and among the reasons offered was to give her a better life. Inside my head, I was taken aback. Me, if I was twenty, I’d think about going the other direction, as Henry Blodget suggested. China is a real place, with economic opportunities every bit as big, if not larger, than Silicon Valley or Bangalore, and environmental responsibilities to match. More on that later.

Forget terrorist bombings and hurricanes; Sambal.org is bringing you the information you need to live your life.

For example: Is it possible to parking-lot-surf from the old IKEA on 51st Ave at Calgary Trail all the way down to the Second Cup

Yes, my child, it is.

(Click for larger view in a popup window; 100k)

Points of interest (these makes more sense if you’re following along with the numbered markers on the larger image):

1. Starting point: the new CIBC bank center in the parking lot of the old IKEA (now Finesse home furnishings or some such garbage). I stupidly drive the long way around Finesse.
2. First difficulty: Having passed the Motor Association, Red Lobster and Olive Garden, I’m faced with the back of the Zellers/ToysRUs building. I know if I turn right, I will be forced onto Calgary Trail, breaking the rules of the silly game I’m playing in my head. But left looks equally unappealing. I take a gamble on the loading dock ramp and discover a way around the East side of Toys R Us!
3. After zipping through the parking lots of all those little stores between TRU and Canadian Tire (Reitman’s? Scholar’s Choice? Can you tell I don’t shop here?) I am confronted with the behemoth Canadian Tire building. But the solution is the same as for TRU: go East, young man.
4. The Canadian Tire building. From here it’s easy: avoid Denny’s parking lot (it’s a dead end) and zip past the Super 8 Motel through the Esso parking lot.
5. The Future Shop building. Past this, through the little gap and up the hill into the parking lot of the fitness club, and finally …
6. The Second Cup.

The things I do while trying to put my child to sleep.

We went to the Alberta Centennial / Canada Day event last Friday - it was a free concert at the Coliseum, headlined by the Barenaked Ladies. Since my parents read this, let me just add that the Barenaked Ladies are a “music group” which does not actually involve any bare or naked ladies, so it’s OK to click on that link even if you’re at work or in a public place.

Right.

Anyway. Did I mention that we went to see BNL in concert for free? Yeah. Thppt.

Kaija had a great time; she danced in the aisles and made eyes at the people sitting around us. We hadn’t been planning on going to Folkfest this year, but we’re reconsidering now, since she liked the environment so much.

I can even tie this into economics a bit. The concert was free, but you had to have a ticket from Ticketmaster which they’d mail out, also for free. By the time we got around to trying to get tickets of the Ticketmaster site, they were all gone. We wound up getting 8 tickets at the last minute from a friend with connections (he knows people who know people….) and spreading them around some friends and family.

But the event was only half-full. At first there was restricted access to the floor area, but by the time the Barenaked Ladies came out, the floor area was so empty that they opened it up to anyone who wanted to come down and be near the band.

It would have been better to let in anyone who showed up as long as they could pack them into the stadium than to allocate tickets to people on the basis of their ability to hit Ticketmaster’s web site in the first half hour after the tickets became available.