The Care and Feeding of a Financial Black Hole

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A while ago I had the pleasure of hearing Sergey Glazyev—economist, politician, member of the Academy of Sciences, adviser to Pres. Putin—say something that very much confirmed my own thinking. He said that anyone who knows mathematics can see that the United States is on the verge of collapse because its debt has gone exponential. These aren't words that an American or a European politician can utter in public, and perhaps not even whisper to their significant other while lying in bed, because the American eavesdroppers might overhear them, and then the politician in question would get the Dominique Strauss-Kahn treatment (whose illustrious career ended when on a visit to the US he was falsely accused of rape and arrested). And so no European (never mind American) politician can state the obvious, no matter how obvious it is.

Pop goes the Bubble

Running a fundraiser (which, by the way, has been a great success—thank you all very much!) has prompted me to think about money more deeply than I normally do. I am no financial expert, and I certainly can't give you investment advice, but when I figure something out for myself, it makes me want to share my insights. I know that many people see national finances as an impenetrable fog of numbers and acronyms, which they feel is best left up to financial specialists to interpret for them. But try to see national finances as a henhouse, yourself as a hen, and financial specialists as foxes. Perhaps you should pay a little bit of attention—perhaps a bit more than one would expect from a chicken?

Fundraiser Update

The fundraiser...

...is over! Many thanks to all 506 of you who donated, and especially to William who generously gave $217 just now to drive it to exactly 100%.

The Magical Content Tree

A long, long time ago books were very expensive. They were produced by copying them by hand, page by page, onto parchment, by very poor monks toiling in their monastic scriptoria, but the books they produced turned out to be expensive anyway. The aristocracy could afford them, and, of course, the clergy, but the laymen had little access to the written word.

Spineless, brainless organisms that feed on detritus

View of Boston Harbor on the morning of June 13, 2015

I think this phrase pretty well describes the mainstream media landscape in the US, to which I try to provide an alternative via this blog.

Coincidentally, this is also what most of Boston Harbor looks like at the moment. I snapped this picture minutes ago.

A new engine for my boat

My boat needs a new engine

A Sad Story—but with a Happy End?

Late last year, as I was sailing my boat south for the winter, the engine failed. I had only made it as far as the Cape Cod Canal, and was able to get a tow back to Boston. By then it was too late in the season to do anything about the engine, so I let it sit. This year, when I tried to fix it, I discovered extensive internal corrosion.

Crazyland

Banksy

[En français]

A long time ago—almost a quarter of a century—I worked in a research lab, designing measurement and data acquisition electronics for high energy physics experiments. In the interest of providing motivation for what follows, I will say a few words about the job. It was interesting work, and it gave me a chance to rub shoulders (and drink beer) with some of the most intelligent people on the planet (though far too fixated on subatomic particles).