My fascination with the American Southwest began with my Grandmother. It leaves me wondering when she fell in love with it; was she younger than I am now? I bet she was.
Her house was imbued with its calm tans and grays, exuding light; pottery; coffee table books on the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley looked up at you when you sat at her sofa, itself covered in a Navajo pattern. Georgia O'Keefe - who had her own inextinguishable love for the Southwest - hung at one end of my Grandma's long living room, a sort of mirror.
The first family vacation I remember taking was also the first - and last - that I would take with my Grandmother, and it was to my aunt's house in Farmington, New Mexico, and then on to the Grand Canyon, where we camped. I was a sheltered child. My parents stayed in a tent; my Grandma and I, in her camper van. That was just the right amount of adventure for me. I wonder what emotional "stamps" would be different today if I had experienced a few horrible nights in a tent at that age. I wonder if I would ever have felt like returning to the Canyon.
I will most likely spend the rest of my life slowly picking apart the reasons that my Grandmother affected me as profoundly as she did. If my parents assured that my roots were established deeply and securely, my Grandmother did a lot to show me which direction to grow. I have always associated my relationship with the natural world with her; she put it there. For as long as I can remember, the sacred spirit I sense in the world is felt most strongly in the presence of juniper trees and sandstone.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
John Irving and the X-Files
I have been reading "A Prayer for Owen Meany" in a focused manner for the last week or so (I am a purposely slow reader), and I have reached the end of the chapter entitled "The Dream", in which a story is slowly crawling into focus. I have really enjoyed this book. It reminds me of both "The World According to Garp", as well as the likes of "Lunar Park", by Brett Easton Ellis - there is a darkness unfolding upon the world.
It reminds me, in both mirrored and inverted senses, of the episode of the X-Files entitled, "Sein Und Zeit" ("Being and Time"), named after Martin Heidegger's philosophical treatise. I suppose to be accurate, I have to point out that the X-Files episode was only part one. Part two, "Closure", actually possesses the most powerful moments of the pair, although it is wrong, I suppose, to talk about either episode without the other; they make two segments of one statement. In all the years of the X-Files - a show that played second-to-none, before or since, in its ability to bring not only supernatural matters but spiritual matters to the human level - this statement was always one of my favorites.
I don't believe I would "ruin" the episode for anyone - even if a thousand people read this. If you liked the X-Files, you would have seen this episode. But that is not the point. Selfish or deluded, I simply won't say more about it.
It reminds me, in both mirrored and inverted senses, of the episode of the X-Files entitled, "Sein Und Zeit" ("Being and Time"), named after Martin Heidegger's philosophical treatise. I suppose to be accurate, I have to point out that the X-Files episode was only part one. Part two, "Closure", actually possesses the most powerful moments of the pair, although it is wrong, I suppose, to talk about either episode without the other; they make two segments of one statement. In all the years of the X-Files - a show that played second-to-none, before or since, in its ability to bring not only supernatural matters but spiritual matters to the human level - this statement was always one of my favorites.
I don't believe I would "ruin" the episode for anyone - even if a thousand people read this. If you liked the X-Files, you would have seen this episode. But that is not the point. Selfish or deluded, I simply won't say more about it.
Monday, February 22, 2010
A Brief Exercise in Stretching Systemic Design Issues Too Far
Our mind is wired to adapt through an inference into causes and effects. This is - almost certainly - the evolutionary requirement fulfilled by the phenomenon we know as "memory" (yes, I am indeed skeptical that the existence of memory has anything to do with spirituality - although it may be the mechanism that creates the illusion of "spirit" from which people extrapolate preorigin; or, if you prefer - "divine origin"). I can make no promises that this post follows an organizational pattern to any meaningful degree.
Interpersonal relationships, learned first through our family members, consist of dynamics that follow predictable patterns. When we experience things we do not like in these dynamics, our first instincts are to cry. Slowly, we learn to compromise - inside or out - behavioral change, a change in our beliefs, or both. In these relationships, we achieve an inherent perception of ethical behavior, which society will later attempt to encourage us to follow in our actions.
The imposition of rules is a tricky business - not because rules cannot be implemented (they clearly can), but because complex systems inherently invite contradiction. Simple systems, then, must achieve their goals through fewer rules, which must necessarily be more general, encompassing, universal. Far from the conclusion that simple systems are easier, they often require an order of magnitude more thought to design properly. Why? Because it is easier if you are allowed to band-aid over each of the rough edges.
Many people argue about politics. Candidate A, candidate B. Perhaps we can draw certain conclusions about whole groups of candidates by some criteria. Left, right, populist, centrist, minority, lobbyist. Indeed, maybe we can draw conclusions about the actions of politicians in general. Is it right to complain that Candidate A is a "damn crook"? Well, it may be true, and I wouldn't suggest that it is not worth discussion. But perhaps the crime is that the system of politics invites corruption, and thus selects citizens adversely (the crooks become politicians). In as much as these crooks operate in politics as crooks, the architects of the political system enable them. Now, I am not suggesting that the founding fathers - in their roles as political architects - were either crooks OR unsuccessful (our system has worked well enough for long enough to debunk any case I could attempt to build, assuming I wanted to try), but as human beings, they were fallible. Perhaps a better way to say it is that their foresight - although great - was not perfect.
One could argue that interpersonal relationships, politics, society - all rest on larger and larger systems that must operate under more and more elegant, simplistic rules in order to be effective. I like to look at the nature of existence as the largest such system. Setting aside the question of whether an architect was present in any sense is beside the point - the system is exposed to the same Darwinian qualities as all these other systems. In other words, it is obvious, if you have an appreciation for physics, chemistry, biology - the universe didn't have to produce "life". You could have an educated conversation where you invoke the modern understandings of those various disciplines and come to some guess as to how likely "life" was to occur in this blindingly vast (and strangely peculiar) expanse we know as the universe.
The part of the universe that I find the most extraordinarily peculiar is the illusion of free choice. Of course, there is no rational argument that can be made in the context of mathematics (as the language of the universe) to support the theory of true free choice. But, the universe possesses an extraordinary quality that does the next best thing - which is, it provides the illusion of free choice. How does it do that? Of the dimensions of the universe - all ten or eleven (my reference is a trust in the basis of string theory as the most legitimate "theory of everything" that our society has come up with), it decided that one - no more, no less - would act so peculiarly that we can only travel one direction through it. Three others, of course, are bidirectional. The others are "wrapped up at the Planck scale", whatever that means.
When you start talking about the physics of the universe, you have to keep in mind how predisposed human minds are to perceiving certain things in a certain way. But, ten/eleven dimensions is an arbitrary number, which in my mind, is highly suspect. If a dimension is a dynamic of two directions, even the innocuous number one is an arbitrary value. So, we have two suspect occurrences of the number one - one dimension of them all, which is locked into unidirectional travel.
It amazes me that people believe that the argument for God is whether he designed the illusion that things older than six thousand years exist in the world as a test for nonbelievers. The evidence of God, of a predisposition for arbitrary decisions and whatever that means - is in the fabric of existence. The universe could have been one-dimensional. At least it would have one fewer arbitrary element in its architecture. Suffice to say, I would not be writing this now. Thus, all of the peculiarity might just be a sort of randomness that is solved through the idea that we will never know the nature of universes not suited to our existence because we can never visit them. There is a term for this that eludes me. We have some sort of negative-selection criteria at work that colors the conclusions we can draw about whether the architecture of the universe is representative of other universes, which I believe almost certainly have to exist.
Since I constantly need to quote Jorge Luis Borges, and since he was both familiar with these issues and wrote eloquently about them, we're getting that quote, which to a thinking man might be a better starting point than MY rambling:
"We (the indivisible divinity that works in us) have dreamed the world. We have dreamed it resistant, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and firm in time, but we have allowed slight, and eternal bits of the irrational to form its architecture, so as to know that it is false."
Interpersonal relationships, learned first through our family members, consist of dynamics that follow predictable patterns. When we experience things we do not like in these dynamics, our first instincts are to cry. Slowly, we learn to compromise - inside or out - behavioral change, a change in our beliefs, or both. In these relationships, we achieve an inherent perception of ethical behavior, which society will later attempt to encourage us to follow in our actions.
The imposition of rules is a tricky business - not because rules cannot be implemented (they clearly can), but because complex systems inherently invite contradiction. Simple systems, then, must achieve their goals through fewer rules, which must necessarily be more general, encompassing, universal. Far from the conclusion that simple systems are easier, they often require an order of magnitude more thought to design properly. Why? Because it is easier if you are allowed to band-aid over each of the rough edges.
Many people argue about politics. Candidate A, candidate B. Perhaps we can draw certain conclusions about whole groups of candidates by some criteria. Left, right, populist, centrist, minority, lobbyist. Indeed, maybe we can draw conclusions about the actions of politicians in general. Is it right to complain that Candidate A is a "damn crook"? Well, it may be true, and I wouldn't suggest that it is not worth discussion. But perhaps the crime is that the system of politics invites corruption, and thus selects citizens adversely (the crooks become politicians). In as much as these crooks operate in politics as crooks, the architects of the political system enable them. Now, I am not suggesting that the founding fathers - in their roles as political architects - were either crooks OR unsuccessful (our system has worked well enough for long enough to debunk any case I could attempt to build, assuming I wanted to try), but as human beings, they were fallible. Perhaps a better way to say it is that their foresight - although great - was not perfect.
One could argue that interpersonal relationships, politics, society - all rest on larger and larger systems that must operate under more and more elegant, simplistic rules in order to be effective. I like to look at the nature of existence as the largest such system. Setting aside the question of whether an architect was present in any sense is beside the point - the system is exposed to the same Darwinian qualities as all these other systems. In other words, it is obvious, if you have an appreciation for physics, chemistry, biology - the universe didn't have to produce "life". You could have an educated conversation where you invoke the modern understandings of those various disciplines and come to some guess as to how likely "life" was to occur in this blindingly vast (and strangely peculiar) expanse we know as the universe.
The part of the universe that I find the most extraordinarily peculiar is the illusion of free choice. Of course, there is no rational argument that can be made in the context of mathematics (as the language of the universe) to support the theory of true free choice. But, the universe possesses an extraordinary quality that does the next best thing - which is, it provides the illusion of free choice. How does it do that? Of the dimensions of the universe - all ten or eleven (my reference is a trust in the basis of string theory as the most legitimate "theory of everything" that our society has come up with), it decided that one - no more, no less - would act so peculiarly that we can only travel one direction through it. Three others, of course, are bidirectional. The others are "wrapped up at the Planck scale", whatever that means.
When you start talking about the physics of the universe, you have to keep in mind how predisposed human minds are to perceiving certain things in a certain way. But, ten/eleven dimensions is an arbitrary number, which in my mind, is highly suspect. If a dimension is a dynamic of two directions, even the innocuous number one is an arbitrary value. So, we have two suspect occurrences of the number one - one dimension of them all, which is locked into unidirectional travel.
It amazes me that people believe that the argument for God is whether he designed the illusion that things older than six thousand years exist in the world as a test for nonbelievers. The evidence of God, of a predisposition for arbitrary decisions and whatever that means - is in the fabric of existence. The universe could have been one-dimensional. At least it would have one fewer arbitrary element in its architecture. Suffice to say, I would not be writing this now. Thus, all of the peculiarity might just be a sort of randomness that is solved through the idea that we will never know the nature of universes not suited to our existence because we can never visit them. There is a term for this that eludes me. We have some sort of negative-selection criteria at work that colors the conclusions we can draw about whether the architecture of the universe is representative of other universes, which I believe almost certainly have to exist.
Since I constantly need to quote Jorge Luis Borges, and since he was both familiar with these issues and wrote eloquently about them, we're getting that quote, which to a thinking man might be a better starting point than MY rambling:
"We (the indivisible divinity that works in us) have dreamed the world. We have dreamed it resistant, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and firm in time, but we have allowed slight, and eternal bits of the irrational to form its architecture, so as to know that it is false."
Friday, February 12, 2010
More Books
For some time, I have vacillated between books and movies as an "escape of choice", with the past three months marking a turn towards books. For the record, I do find it to be a blessing of the modern age (Amazon.com, especially) that I find things to read that I generally like, despite a lack of like-minded cohorts to provide any recommendations.
I have recently read two books by Italo Calvino. I am thankful that I read "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler..." first, even though "Invisible Cities" was the title that first brought him to my attention. "Winter's Night" is far more engaging, which is perhaps inevitable when you consider that "Invisible Cities" is all but bereft of characters. "Winter's Night" shows Calvino's powerful imagination and equally powerful ability to convey these images. It is quite unafraid of itself, acknowledging of its own limitations and existing completely in its own excesses. In concept, it may be nothing as much as it is an exploration of the possibilities of the literary act. In this way, these two books are somewhat analogous, "Invisible Cities" being an exploration of the nature of cities. In "Invisible Cities", however, the philosophical act suggested upon the subject is closer to the surface of the writing. Perhaps it even IS the surface.
I do believe that I will read more of Calvino's works in the future.
I also recently read "The House of Sleep", which by my perceptions of the categories of literature, exists in the amorphous blob of modern literature, so many of which are "bestsellers" by default (Really, how much does that term mean anymore?) that are long on situational creativity and tenuously short on any sort of discipline in the story-making or writing processes. The book, like so many of its categorical brethren, is marked by unlikely situations, unlikely characters, unlikely decisions, and heaps of coincidence. Quite simply, this is lazy writing for the sake of entertainment and sales; some sort of literary equivalent of the soap opera. At least THIS literary soap opera contains the correct elements of the genre in order to be enjoyable. Ahem, I'm looking at you, "Wuthering Heights".
I did finish the book (as if that is hard to do), and I did enjoy many parts and several overall aspects of it. Some time ago, I vowed to work hard at appreciation, so that I would choose to endure things that produced feelings of both affection and disgust, rather than reject them wholly. This book was a beneficiary of this attitude.
Next up: Gravity's Rainbow and One Hundred Years of Solitude.
I have recently read two books by Italo Calvino. I am thankful that I read "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler..." first, even though "Invisible Cities" was the title that first brought him to my attention. "Winter's Night" is far more engaging, which is perhaps inevitable when you consider that "Invisible Cities" is all but bereft of characters. "Winter's Night" shows Calvino's powerful imagination and equally powerful ability to convey these images. It is quite unafraid of itself, acknowledging of its own limitations and existing completely in its own excesses. In concept, it may be nothing as much as it is an exploration of the possibilities of the literary act. In this way, these two books are somewhat analogous, "Invisible Cities" being an exploration of the nature of cities. In "Invisible Cities", however, the philosophical act suggested upon the subject is closer to the surface of the writing. Perhaps it even IS the surface.
I do believe that I will read more of Calvino's works in the future.
I also recently read "The House of Sleep", which by my perceptions of the categories of literature, exists in the amorphous blob of modern literature, so many of which are "bestsellers" by default (Really, how much does that term mean anymore?) that are long on situational creativity and tenuously short on any sort of discipline in the story-making or writing processes. The book, like so many of its categorical brethren, is marked by unlikely situations, unlikely characters, unlikely decisions, and heaps of coincidence. Quite simply, this is lazy writing for the sake of entertainment and sales; some sort of literary equivalent of the soap opera. At least THIS literary soap opera contains the correct elements of the genre in order to be enjoyable. Ahem, I'm looking at you, "Wuthering Heights".
I did finish the book (as if that is hard to do), and I did enjoy many parts and several overall aspects of it. Some time ago, I vowed to work hard at appreciation, so that I would choose to endure things that produced feelings of both affection and disgust, rather than reject them wholly. This book was a beneficiary of this attitude.
Next up: Gravity's Rainbow and One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Sleep Bloviation
Amazing- the heart a dream can contain. A dam breaks, lets a feeling through that seems obvious in retrospect but that was precious, and obscenely missing, all along. Can feelings be so concrete? Perhaps such a dream is a distortion. I am unsure.
Many of my dreams take someone that I have formed into my mind in quite a strong way and embellish them with some detail that amounts to an "a-ha!" moment in the dream. I am not sure what these dreams represent, except perhaps an omission on my part, an act of consciously convincing myself of the understandability of something that I had some distance left to go on. I believe that the mechanism that leads to this phenomenon is known by psychologists as "projection", which I think suggests that the distortions we place onto other people come (this should be unsurprising) from our own predispositions, or our own desires.
I wonder if someone who grew up without verbal or written language would relate to their inner dream world with greater intuition. I can't believe there is anything inherently mysterious about dreams, except that we choose, as members of an outwardly-focused society, to avoid trying to speak their language. I certainly don't believe that dreams are the act of "trying to tell ourselves something", except to the degree that we attempt to anthropomorphize the nature of our own perfectly explainable (though not understood) subconscious into a separate being.
I believe it would be okay for me to outlaw dreams as a blogging topic for, say, six months.
Many of my dreams take someone that I have formed into my mind in quite a strong way and embellish them with some detail that amounts to an "a-ha!" moment in the dream. I am not sure what these dreams represent, except perhaps an omission on my part, an act of consciously convincing myself of the understandability of something that I had some distance left to go on. I believe that the mechanism that leads to this phenomenon is known by psychologists as "projection", which I think suggests that the distortions we place onto other people come (this should be unsurprising) from our own predispositions, or our own desires.
I wonder if someone who grew up without verbal or written language would relate to their inner dream world with greater intuition. I can't believe there is anything inherently mysterious about dreams, except that we choose, as members of an outwardly-focused society, to avoid trying to speak their language. I certainly don't believe that dreams are the act of "trying to tell ourselves something", except to the degree that we attempt to anthropomorphize the nature of our own perfectly explainable (though not understood) subconscious into a separate being.
I believe it would be okay for me to outlaw dreams as a blogging topic for, say, six months.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
A Survey of Investment Activity, 2009.
- The Fairholme Fund was named Morningstar's "Mutual Fund of the Decade" for the domestic class. I'm very happy and I think it was a shoo-in for the award. It has outperformed almost everything else out there - emerging markets, energy, sector-rotation strategies, etc... And the most extraordinary thing about the fund is that it doesn't require macroeconomic bets. The fund outperforms both because of and despite an aversion to guessing future trends. The only trend the fund plays is the trend that durable, cash-generating businesses bought at attractive prices will outperform the market as a whole. Although I hope we never find out, I am strongly confident that it will prove to be one of the most durable funds in the mutual fund universe if true disaster (i.e. dirty bomb in a U.S. city, severe inflation) one day strikes.
- Clear Choice Health Plans received a buyout offer for $26/share. At the time, it was trading for less than $10/share, which is approximately the price I paid for it. I am fortunate that my investment mentality had been enlightened at that point by a not-irrelevant bit of wisdom from Charlie Munger: that if you know what you are doing, then when a great opportunity is identified, a person should commit a significant amount of money to it - regardless of what may be small (but real) risks - and that action will meaningfully improve the financial results of one's lifetime.
- Wellcare Health Plans went on a tear after March, recovering approximately 500% from its low. I believe that it still has significant upside, given that they carry approximately $30 in cash - net of reserves - on their balance sheet. This is not a risky proposition, either; they are trading for 9x free cash flow in an industry with significant growth prospects (or perhaps they will simply be bought during this secular acquisition phase). Indeed, unlocking the value of the cash is quite a contingent upside possibility, not the necessary thesis.
- KSW installs HVAC systems in New York City, so their business fell off a cliff when building activity went into free-fall. Now their backlog has reached near-record levels again and the stock price hasn't recovered. Another story of cash obscuring earnings power. This one was trading for $21m when I bought it, with $14m in cash net of all liabilities. Basically, they were trading for 2x their 2007 earnings number once you backed out the cash. The point of the cash buildup is uncertain (as well as the conditions for it to cease), but the company could probably pay out $10m in cash, the P/E ratio would plummet, and the price would come right back to where it was once people figured out what was happening. Expecting a significant return unless building activity double-dips, and the huge amount of cash limits downside, making the risk/reward profile on this one excellent. (another stock with a similar story and even more cash as a % of market cap is EnviroStar)
- Manhattan Bridge Capital makes short-term loans to businesses, secured by inventory, real estate, etc... They are profitable, but the business is trading for 50% of book value, which is primarily comprised of cash and notes receivable. Management's record so far is strong in the arena of lending. Let's see if they can convince investors that the company is worth a premium to book - that would achieve a 100%+ return in stock price.
- I am investing approximately 25% of my cash into a local real estate venture. The base scenario provides me good diversification and a decent return thanks to the power of the most secure type of leverage - real estate mortgages. There are several factors that could provide significant upside, and the diversification effect extends to the exemplary inflation protection that real estate provides.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Comment from the Vegetable Gallery?
"Most philosophers concede that whether others experience consciousness is strictly unknowable. Some take this one step further and argue that consciousness and perfect simulation of consciousness are the same thing. Here most people object. You probably feel that there is a difference between consciousness and the lack thereof, even while admitting that no possible observation or experiment would establish it. Is this a rational objection?"
~ from "Labyrinths of Reason", William Poundstone
~ from "Labyrinths of Reason", William Poundstone
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