The Power of Decentralization has been Unleashed

“Decentralization has been lying dormant for thousands of years.  But the advent of the Internet has unleashed this force, knocking down traditional businesses, altering entire industries, affecting how we relate to each other, and influencing world politics.  The absence of structure, leadership, and formal organization, once considered a weakness, has become a major asset.  Seemingly chaotic groups have challenged and defeated established institutions.  The rules of the game have changed.”

– The Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom

Irish Oatmeal - Wonderful! And Easy to Cook (Here’s How)

For years I have been eating oatmeal for breakfast (Quaker Oats). A month ago some friends introduced me to Irish Oatmeal [1]. It is wonderful. It has a nutty taste. I can’t imagine ever going back to Quaker Oats.

If you read the instructions on the can of Irish Oatmeal it says to bring the oatmeal to a boil and simmer 30 minutes. Well, that’s a large investment of time (much larger than with Quaker Oats). However, I discovered a way to reduce the time, so the time investment is comparable with Quaker Oats. The key is to soak the Irish Oats in water overnight. Then you only need bring it to a boil for 2 minutes.

Here’s my recipe that makes beautiful Irish Oats: (this is for a single serving)

1. Soak overnight in water 1/3 cup of Irish Oats.
2. In the morning, drain the water, place the oats in a pan, and add 1 1/3 cups water and 1/8 tsp salt.
3. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Boil for 2 minutes.
4. Cover and let sit for 15-20 minutes (go take a shower).
5. Stir and eat.

I usually add raisins, walnuts and prunes to the oatmeal (just prior to eating). For Quaker Oats I added cinnamon but I don’t do so with Irish Oats because the cinnamon masks the wonderful flavor of the Irish Oats.

[1] McCann’s Irish Oatmeal

My Recommendation on a Laundry Drying Rack

A year ago my electric laundry dryer broke. Rather than getting it fixed, I decided to purchase a couple collapsible/expandable drying racks. I have gone through a number of racks in the past year and have learned some valuable lessons:

1. Don’t buy the wooden variety. The wood dowels break after a couple months.
2. Do buy the chrome metal variety. They endure, plus they stand up to the wind quite well.
3. Buy the rack that is 42″ wide. The other size (29″) is too small to hold shirts and towels.
4. The metal, 42″ rack costs about $30. That is 3 times what the wooden, 42″ one costs. But it’s worth it in the long run.
5. Linens and Things doesn’t have the 42″ metal rack (at least, the store in my town doesn’t), but Bed, Bath and Beyond does.
6. I now have three of the metal, 42″ racks. That provides sufficient space for even the largest laundry loads.

By the way, I estimate that in the past year I saved $600 in electric costs by hang-drying my clothes rather than using the electric dryer. During the summer I hang the clothes outside and they smell wonderful. And during the winter hang-drying my clothes indoors releases valuable humidity into the air of my house.

Here’s a picture of the type of rack that I have. I can’t tell from the picture what size it is, but you can at least see from the picture what type of rack I have.

Disadvantages

Of course everything has both pros and cons. Here are the cons of drying clothes on a rack rather than using a drying machine:

• Drying Speed: I typically allot 24 hours for drying clothes on the racks. During the summer, when I can hang the clothes outside in the warm sun, it takes less time, perhaps 8 hours. So if you regularly need clothes dried quickly then racks might not be good for you.
• Ease of Use: it can be more difficult to use a rack than a drying machine. With a drying machine you can simply pull out of the washer all your clothes and then stuff them all into the dryer. With a rack you have to lay out the clothes on the rack, one item at a time.
• Space: when the drying rack is in use it takes up space in your home. If you live in a small home that could be problematic.
• Softness: clothes dried on a rack tend to be a bit stiff until they are worn for a few minutes, whereas clothes from a dryer are soft.

Recipe for Managing Complexity

Here is a recipe for managing complexity of any type:

• Do simple things first.
• Learn to do them flawlessly.
• Add new layers of activity over the results of the simple tasks.
• Don’t change the simple things.
• Make the new layer work as flawlessly as the simple.
• Repeat, ad infinitum.

Complexity must be grown from simple systems that already work.

– Out of Control by Kevin Kelly

Congestion Pricing

Definition: Congestion pricing is increasing the price on something during peak usage.

Examples:

• long-distance calls are more expensive during the day
• airplane tickets are more expensive during the summer
• in NYC the tolls on certain bridges and tunnels are increased during rush hour
• in London people who drive their car into town between 7am and 6:30pm are charged a toll of £5

All of these are examples of price responding to demand: when demand for a resource is high, the price goes up, and when it’s low, the price goes down.

The telephone line, the seat on a plane, the bridge, the tunnel, and the road space are “resources”. They are not unlimited. When demand for a limited resource is high, the persons who are willing to pay the most get the resource.

Individuals weigh the cost of using the resource against its benefit. If the cost is too high, they find alternatives (such as calling during a non-peak time, or taking public transportation).

The goal of congestion pricing is to make the costs obvious to people. The hope is that when people are clearly aware of the costs they will make individual decisions that produce a collectively smart result, i.e. congestion is decreased.

– extracted from The Wisdom of Crowds by James Suroweicki

The hallmark of science is its ability to explain things

“The hallmark of science is not its ability to forecast the future, but its ability to explain things - to increase our understanding of the workings of the universe. The role of predictions in science is to help us distinguish competing explanations.”

“Science is full of examples of fields where researchers can explain phenomena and test the validity of their explanations, without necessarily being able to make accurate forecasts. For example, biologists can explain but not forecast the folding of proteins, and physicists can explain but not forecast the exact motion of a turbulent fluid.”

“Science is a continuous learning process in which the logical implications of competing explanations are tested and a body of evidence is accumulated over time. As Karl Popper showed in the 1930s, there is no ‘final proof’ that a theory is correct, but one can say whether a theory is disproved by data. For example, one cannot say that Einstein’s theory of relativity has been proven, but one can say that its predictions have been well tested, it has yet to be contradicted, and it fits the data better than any alternative explanation proposed thus far. Science thus goes through a process of proposing various explanations, rigorously articulating them in ways that can be tested, eliminating theories that fail the tests, and building on the ones that succeed.”

– Origins of Wealth by Eric D. Beinhocker

Veneration for Human Creativity and the Power of Ideas

“[The plots of the Tom Swift books are:] Tom would get himself into a terrible predicament, in which his fate and that of his friends, and often the rest of the human race, hung in the balance.  Tom would retreat to his basement lab and think about how to solve the problem.  This, then, was the dramatic tension in each book in the series: what ingenious idea would Tom and his friends come up with to save the day?  The moral to these tales was: the right idea has the power to overcome a seemingly overwhelming challenge.”

“[My grandfather had the rare opportunity] to touch with his own hands some original manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci.  He described the experience with reverence … I was raised with veneration for human creativity and the power of ideas.”

– Ray Kurzwell

“Resources” - a Fundamental Idea in Economics and the Web

Economists talk about resources.  For example, they talk about the demand for a resource, the abundance or scarcity of a resource, allocating resources, the price or value of a resource.

Examples of resources: mahogany wood,  oil, land.

The founding fathers of the web (e.g. Tim Berners-Lee) chose to also use the word “resource”.  On the web anything that can be identified by a URL is a resource.  For example, Google is a resource, identified by www.google.com.  A resource that no longer exists is indicated by the error message, 404: Resource Not Found.

Why did Tim Berners-Lee choose to use the word resource?  Did he see a parallel with resources in an economy?  I think the answer is yes.  Consider this: there is demand for web resources, e.g. there is a high demand for the Google resource, and there is a low demand for many other resources.  Web resources have a price or value, as evidenced by the recent purchases of certain web sites.  I am not sure that the web has a parallel concept of abundance or scarcity of a resource, or allocating resources.  (Can you think of a parallel?)

“Resource” seems to be a fundamental idea.

What distinguishes a society from just a bunch of people living together?

Answer: Cooperation

It is cooperation that distinguishes a society from just a bunch of people living together.

What is cooperation?

Cooperation is contributing to the common good (sometimes at the expense of one’s own self-interest).

For example, when you volunteer to take an “action item” at a meeting you are doing so not in your own self-interest, but rather in the interest of the group.  You are cooperating.

Contributing to a charity is another example of cooperating.  It doesn’t benefit you, but it benefits society as a whole.

Cooperation, on both a small and large scale permeates any healthy society.  It is what distinguishes a society from just a bunch of people living together.

– The above is a summary of a portion of The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

Economics in Three Words

No Free Lunch

– Henry Hazlitt