Auxiliary Memory

Retiring While Oil Prices are Rising

Remember the 1970s? You personally might have been discoing, but the economy had a heart attack. Two oil shortages. Inflation. Stagflation. Recession. Investments took a dive way before the fifteenth round. Luckily the rise in oil prices were artificial due to political influence, and they settled down to allow us to have two decades of growth and relative prosperity. We baby boomers have been building for our retirements during a time when the investment future always looked rosy.

Now oil prices are climbing up again and the future is returning to the past. This time oil prices are rising, blowing through the top of the derrick, and it’s not artificial. The only way oil prices will ever go down is if demand goes down. And how likely is that? A big recession could take a bite out of prices. Everyone could start driving an electric car and put solar panels on our roofs like Jimmy Carter wanted and demand would go down, but how likely his that?

We constantly hear promises that oil prices will drop to the good ole days of $50 a barrel or less, but it’s not happening. Remember inflation and how fun those times were? Our leaders claim there are no gloom and doom shortages of oil. They’ve been promising things should be stable for decades to come. Then why is oil over a hundred dollars a barrel?

Our retirement future is based on a steady but reasonable growth that nurtures our savings and investments. If inflation returns we’ll have less to live off of from our fixed incomes. As long as oil prices rise we’ll have inflation, and maybe worse.

We can effectively cut the price of oil in half by being twice as efficient or using half as much. If we had followed the policies set up in the 1970s – yes Jimmy Carter was right – we’d have pushed this current crisis ahead in time two generations. Instead we bought SUVs and drove them fast and now it’s time to pay for our speeding tickets.

I don’t know about you but I don’t like getting old, besides the growing aches and pains I don’t like uncertainties and becoming dependent. I want to stay in control. 78 million of us are in the home stretch for the Medicare finish line. As we all queue up waiting to blast off to heaven we’ll have ten, twenty, thirty and maybe even forty years of living off our fixed incomes, savings and investments. It now appears that the quality of those years could be directly related to the price of oil.

Is there anything we can do about it? Maybe. The price of gasoline has always been unnaturally low to begin with because of government subsidies. With oil production leveling off and new demand from India and China, it’s really a matter of supply and demand which might be beyond our control.

It is possible if our society quickly switches to alternative forms of energy that we’ll beat the oil crisis and maybe spur continued economic growth so our investments will grow as we age. If our leaders drag their feet like they have been doing since the 1970s when the problem was obvious, we’ll see some very bad economic times. In essence, back in the 1980s we collectively said, let’s party while we have oil and then worry.

Having a society built on irrational greed hasn’t helped. The housing market soared off the charts with unrealistic values. The Bush years of wars and occupations, Katrina and Rita, the housing loan crisis and Republicans spending like Democrats has left a big debt. In other words, there is no trend to believe we’ll suddenly start acting rationally.

So how do rational individuals plan to retire when oil prices are rising?Can we get AARP to promote energy efficient, conservation and the development of alternative forms of energy? The issue doesn’t seem to be a major topic in the presidential debates. Does buying solar panels and an electric car make economic sense during retirement years. I could retire early, next year after 30 years on the job, but I doubt it’s practical. I’m thinking I should retire and get another full time job to save money for another ten years before thinking about retirement. I’d like to retire and write those science fiction novels I’ve always wanted to write, but that won’t be practical now.

And if the cost of living is going to shoot up, where’s the best place to retire? And do I need to rethink our 401k programs? Planning for the future seems to have suddenly changed.

Jim

Imperfect Memories

As anyone who regularly reads my posts knows, I have an obsession about memories. This post is about remembering a NPR radio show about remembering. It’s even more complicated than that, because it’s about finding that radio show from This American Life for a second time. My friend Connell called me up a few weeks ago and started telling me about a show he heard on NPR – but after a little bit I interrupted, “Hey, I heard that show years ago and I tell people about it all the time!”

Connell told me where to find the show but I promptly forgot after getting off the phone. Now three weeks later I remembered and called him back and he patched up my leaking memory. It didn’t take long to go through the back shows and find “Ich…bin…ein…Mophead” by Alex Blumberg, from 03-07-08. It took a little Googling around and I found the episode where I first heard the show on 03-23-01. The Internet is such a wonderful auxiliary memory – still imperfect, but retains data much better than my old noggin.

I highly recommend that you take the time to go listen to this show – use the 2008 link because it’s the second story in the lineup, and the first story is great too, about a seventh grade girl going back to the fifth grade and realizing how much she has forgotten and wisely noting how much she will forget in the future.

Our memories are so imperfect, so untrustworthy, but so loved and trusted. Alex Blumberg’s story is about being nine and having a memorable babysitter. Twenty years later he talks to his mom and sister about her and finally decides he wants to talk to the babysitter herself. After a lot of amateur detective work he hires a professional private eye and he finds Susan, his old babysitter, and they have a three hour phone conversation reconciling memories.

I tell people about this story all the time, so it was fun to hear it again, especially since I was able to learn how much I had remembered correctly, and how much I had forgotten. Our minds are like sieves – we just can’t hold memory details worth a damn. The moral of this story I got right – that different people remember things differently, and even when we remember something significant to our lives, other people won’t remember that significance. The story is also about reconnecting with long lost friends, and I think that’s something we’d all like to do.

This month I was also asked to join Facebook by my friend Dario that I met while at Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2002. I did join and also got connected with other people from the workshop, as well as getting people I haven’t talk to in years asking me to be friends again. I’m not sure exactly what I’m supposed to do on Facebook – a technology up to now I considered for young people, but it is neat. Facebook found three people from my high school class of 1969 at Miami-Killian. Sadly, I remembered none of these people. Even more sadly, I could have known them and have forgotten.

We meet so many people in our lives, and many of them we think about from time to time. There’s a reason we forget people, so I’m not sure if maintaining acquaintances through Facebook is good or not. But like Alex Blumberg I would like to track some people down and ask them their view of past memories. Even in his piece about Susan he realized that Susan worried she had affected him badly in some way and was hesitant to recall old memories.

I remember my babysitter from when I was nine years old. I don’t remember her name. I don’t remember what she looks like. I have only sketchy memories of what she did while taking care of me and my sister. She sometimes dumped us on her parents, and mostly she spent her time with us hanging out with her boyfriend. The last time I saw her was when she ran out of our house bawling hysterically and jumping into her two-seat sports car to zoom home. She had been wailing because I had punched her in the face.

I suppose I should get a private detective and find her and apologize, maybe even see if I had inflicted any permanent psychological memories on her. She probably even gave up her career in babysitting because of me. However, I still feel justified in my action. She had kept my sister, who was seven, and I, out all day at the beach in Hollywood Florida while she spent time with her young beau. We were burned to a crisp, cranky, and hungry, and it was time for The Flintstones. Our fight was over The Flintstones. She wanted us to come back over to her house and hang out with her and her boyfriend, I wanted to see the cartoon. When I dug in my heels, she leaned over and put her screaming face a little to close to mine, just close enough for a good poke in the kisser. She should have known better to get to close to a wild brat.

If I was going to call someone from my lost memories I think it would be Charlotte Travis my 12th grade English teacher. I owe her a big thanks. Every week she’d tell me about a classic novel that I would go to the library, check out and read for the next week. Then we’d talk about it on Fridays after class. She got me to read books other than science fiction. Miss Travis treated us kids as adults and gave us a lot of good advice. She was the kind of teacher that all teachers should be – inspirational.

If Facebook was a perfect technology and I could see listings of all my classmates from first grade to twelfth with the teachers – how many would I really want to talk with? And what would I say? I don’t know, but it would be cool tech. It would help if Facebook collected photos to prompt our memories. Here’s a good idea for that company to really get some some attention. Borrow, buy or steal all the high school annuals and grade school photos and put them online. Everyone with any kind of large group shot should register their photos with Facebook and ask viewers to help attach names to faces.

Another thing Facebook could do is to allow more school networks, including options for all classes back to Kindergarten. Not everyone lived in one place and graduated together with their childhood friends in the 12th grade. For every academic year you should be able to register up to three schools. I say three because I went to three first grades and three seventh grades. If anyone went to more schools in one year they should put in their own request. Then allow people to attach class photos to those years and schools.

Another good idea for Facebook is allow people to register neighborhood streets and years, and encourage people to register photos of them too. I’d love to see photos from Maine Avenue at Homestead Air Force Base for 1962 and 1963 and Air Base Elementary for 1961/62 and 1962/63 academic years. Hurricane Andrew blew away Maine Avenue, and all that is there left of my cherished neighborhood is a mown field and decaying asphalt. (At least, that’s how it looked the last time I saw it.)

Our memories are imperfect. They are fleeting. We baby boomers are getting old – so chances of finding people who can collaborate and corroborate memories are disappearing. Most people can’t afford detectives, so Facebook may be a wonderful tool. Then again, maybe we like living with our faulty memories. Maybe they are good enough.

Jim

Faith in Science

Unless you are a scientist working on a very specific area of research and actually understand a particular phenomenon in detail, you take everything else stated as true by science on faith. When I argue with my friends we need to change society to slow down global warming I’m really preaching on faith – my faith in a particular idea. I can’t personally prove its true. I’m testifying for the global warming gospel. I am not a scientist. I read a lot of popular science books and magazines, and that isn’t science either, nor does it make me a scientist or even scientific in my thinking. Popular science books are the Matthew, Mark, Luke and John gospels of the world of science. The real enlightenment is through understanding experiments.

Last night I attended the Memphis Astronomical Association meeting and heard a lecture about how the speed of light was figured out over the centuries. We are told the speed of light is 186,282 miles per second in a vacuum. I can’t prove that. The lecture last night covered several methods that scientists used since the 17th century to calculate the speed of light. If I wanted to I could recreate those experiments myself and have a better understanding – one that is not based on faith.

For our culture to be based on scientific experience rather than faith we need to train kids to practice science. Even though measuring the speed of light is a difficult problem, there are probably many many ways to get the job done. One creative approach I found was by melting marshmallows in a microwave. I have no idea if this experiment is real or not. Right now it’s in the faith realm. There are other stories like it on the net but using cheese instead of marshmallows. My point is people can come up with creative ways to solve the problem. Teachers need to find more of these experiments to help raise kids to understand how things actually work. If the marshmallow experiment is bogus, then they need to learn why?

I’m reading Death by Black Hole by Neil deGrasse Tyson, and in one chapter he explains how much astronomy can be achieve by an ordinary person with a stick. I don’t need to duplicate these stick experiments because Tyson explains them so well that I’m willing to accept them as true. However, I think our schools would be better if we actually let kids do these stick experiments. Knowledge is more than words. Our society is failing because people live too much in fiction and not enough in fact.

When I argue with my friends about global warming I need to understand the science behind the concept and I need to do some experiments on my own to have experience, or at least read about specific experiments and understand them. So I’m wondering what are a basic list of experiments that can prove that people are impacting the global weather? These can be thought experiments too – Einstein discovered a lot about reality with some good thought experiments.

From my reading, most scientists now support the idea that humans are impacting the global environment, but many people do not believe that or refuse to believe that. Global warming is a vital issue with many people but it ranks very low among all vital issues the public is considering in the current presidential campaign. If the impact of global warming will be as dire as some scientists predict it should be rated #1. Why isn’t it then?

There are very few climatological scientists in the world, and few people want to take up the discipline as a hobby. Most of the talk about global warming deals with CO². Normal people have to take on faith that extra carbon in the atmosphere is bad and that people are at fault by adding it to the air in their daily lives. I meet lots of people who flat out say they don’t believe this. How can I counter this belief without whipping out a series of scientific proofs to change their mind?

Our society and all the other societies around the globe need to be more scientific in their thinking. Faith in science doesn’t cut it. We need an educational system where more real experiments are practiced by school kids. After that, they need to study of historical experiments until their logic is a sixth sense in which they view the world. We need to develop a mind set where we can understand scientific ideas and not just argue the ideas on faith, like ancient religious scholars discussing how many angels fit on the head of a pin.

Now all I have to do is go out and find those proofs – any help will be welcomed.

Jim

Hugo Winners on Audible

Years ago when I first started listening to audio books I felt there wasn’t much available in the way of great science fiction. Recorded Books did have a lot of good Sci-Fi titles, but they weren’t easy to get. This week I noticed many of those Recorded Books titles have come to Audible, and many other award winning science fiction books are now available. I decided to see just how many Hugo winning novels could be bought at Audible.com and I was surprised to find quite a few.

The Hugo winning novel I’d like to hear the most on audio is Hyperion by Dan Simmons. But if you’re an audio book publisher there’s plenty of good titles to produce.

I also checked these other sites to see if I could fill in any gaps – but with limited luck.

BA – Blackstone Audio
BOT – Books on Tape
RB – Recorded Books
AB – AudioBookstandDL

Year	Title	Audible	Other
2009	The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman	Yes
2008	The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon	Yes
2007	Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge	Yes
2006	Spin by Robert Charles Wilson	Yes
2005	Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke	Yes
2004	Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold	Yes
2003	Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer	Yes
2002	American Gods by Neil Gaiman	Yes
2001	Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling		Yes
2000	A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge	Yes
1999	To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis	Yes
1998	Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman	Yes
1997	Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson	Yes
1996	The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson	Yes
1995	Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold	Yes
1994	Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson	Yes
1993	A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge Doomsday Book by Connie Willis	Yes/ Yes
1992	Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold	Yes
1991	The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold	Yes
1990	Hyperion by Dan Simmons	Yes
1989	Cyteen by C. J. Cherryh
1988	The Uplift War by David Brin	Yes
1987	Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card	Yes
1986	Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card	Yes
1985	Neuromancer by William Gibson		BOT
1984	Startide Rising by David Brin	Yes
1983	Foundation’s Edge by Isaac Asimov
1982	Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh
1981	The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge
1980	The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke	Yes
1979	Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre	Yes	BA
1978	Gateway by Frederik Pohl	Yes
1977	Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm	Yes
1976	The Forever War by Joe Haldeman	Yes
1975	The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
1974	Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke	Yes
1973	The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
1972	To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer	Yes
1971	Ringworld by Larry Niven	Yes
1970	The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
1969	Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
1968	Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny	Yes
1967	The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein	Yes
1966	Dune by Frank Herbert This Immortal by Roger Zelazny	Yes/Yes
1965	The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber	Yes
1964	Way Station by Clifford D. Simak	Yes
1963	The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick	Yes
1962	Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein	Yes
1961	A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller
1960	Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein	Yes
1959	A Case of Conscience by James Blish	Yes
1958	The Big Time by Fritz Leiber	Yes
1957	Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein	Yes
1956	They’d Rather Be Right by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley
1954	The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester

Going Paperless 4 – Alternative Methods

I’m not sure how many people are interested in the topic of going paperless since it gets few hits on the stats page – but I’m enjoying exploring the idea. And I did get an email from Adam Kadleck suggesting I try out Zinio, an online magazine service. Since he works for the company he also provided me with a sample subscription to Saveur Magazine, a colorful periodical about cuisine.

A huge shortcoming of the Kindle is its lack of ability to show photographs and color graphics. I remember reading an early complaint about the Kindle from a Slashdot kid who whined the Kindle couldn’t handle comics and porn -reading material that Zinio can handle.

A magazine is not very magazine-like on the Kindle. Zinio sells magazines and has a custom software reader so magazine pages look exactly like they do in their paper form. It even fakes page turning with graphics and sound. Zinio is paperless but with more of the natural features of paper. Saveur Magazine would not work on the Kindle. Without the appetizing photos of the food it would lose much of its appeal.

The Zinio software reader works very well on my 19″ wide-screen LCD monitor showing two full page at a time. However, I need to zoom in to read the content. Zinio makes this a breeze, but I wonder if I had a 22″ monitor if I could read without zooming. The height of my 19″ monitor is about an inch less than the height of a standard magazine after you take into account the Zinio menu. The screen view on 22″ monitor could well be the same height as a paper magazine.

Right now Zinio has a decent selection of magazines, but far from the selection of a good bookstore. And like ebooks, the issue of the pricing of e-magazines is still questionable. Why pay the same subscription price for a paperless magazine when the publisher isn’t covering the overhead for paper, printing and postage? It’s not uncommon to see $5.99 and $6.99 mags at the bookstore – I would think going paperless and using Zinio they should sell for $1.99 at most. PC World is $19.97 a year on Zinio. I’ve gotten better offers than that in the mail. Science is $99.00 – and that seems way too much for electrons.

The photographs on Zinio look pretty good but nowhere near the quality of a slick paper print. Strangely enough the quality reminds me of the new paper used in Sky & Telescope, a big step down from their old paper. You can magnify Zinio photographs but they break up. It would be great if the Zinio photographs offered quality features over print magazines, like larger hi-rez popup views.

The feature I would want the most from Zinio is full text indexing. I have several years of Sky & Telescope on my shelves, but finding an article means lots of flipping pages. It would be great if I had a library of Zinio magazines that I could quickly query for instant data.

There is an online company Press Display that offers reading newspapers online in the same way Zinio works for magazines, but their reader is browser based. Even though many of these newspapers offer free online editions, the ability to read a newspaper that looks like the printed edition does have value, maybe even value worth paying. The New York Times offers the Times Reader for $14.95 a month. It’s not a system for seeing the paper as printed, but a online viewer to making newspaper reading better than reading through a web browser, so its yet another alternative to paper.

The problem with these solutions is being tied to your monitor for reading. Now I don’t mind reading off a monitor – screen resolution is now better than newsprint and fonts can be enlarged to beat tiny magazine typefaces. What I’d like is to read in my La-Z-Boy, but to do that will require waiting for an ebook reader with a hi-rez color screen the size of a standard magazine page. I expect such a Star Trek like tablet in the next few years.

I don’t think it will be long before we’ll stop murdering millions of trees just to let people read a couple headlines and do the daily crossword. Going paperless means changing habits but I think there will be technology to help us to keep our old addictive reading behaviors while adding new features that help us process knowledge.

Going Paperless 5

Jim