I had the good fortune to attend the 28th annual National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs here in the US this week. I had been notionally aware of the Symposium before, just as one of those gatherings that occasionally resulted in a headline or two in Wired or Discover. But last September, I was having dinner with a friend who was going to the conference and he told me the types of companies and people who attended; so I looked into it as a possible target conference for the company for which I work. (We attend several conferences a year to find companies in the market for expert translation and localization services, and aerospace and aviation are prime verticals for us.) I decided to give it a shot this year and check it out, with an eye to perhaps being an exhibitor next year. Still to be determined how well the conference went in that respect, but for me personally, it was a lot of fun.
Speakers for the week included NASA chief Charles Bolden, Dr. Amy Mainzer, Bill Nye (The Science Guy), P.J. O'Rourke, Dr. Lisa Randall, the head of US Space Command General William Shelton, Mark Stevenson, and Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
Some of the highlights from the conference:
The panel discussion with physicists Drs. Mainzer and Randall and Bill Nye 'the Science guy' was interesting up to a point, in the way that any discussion panel with three such distinguished people would be. I wouldn't say much new was said, though. The importance of space exploration and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education was the centerpiece, but did this audience need to hear that? This was a continuing issue I had throughout the conference: too much preaching to the choir, and not nearly enough discussion of how we can do a better job of convincing the uncoverted.
In the follow-up Q&A session after the panel, mine was the first question posed. (Audience members texted questions to the moderator at a number displayed overhead; the moderator then posed them to the panel.)* My question was, quoting verbatim from the sent message, "Are dark energy and dark matter really 'discoveries' or just conclusions we must draw to keep the Einsteinian universe from (figuratively) collapsing? What if the problem is with Einstein?" The question was aimed primarily at Dr. Randall, since this is her area of expertise. She took the question with good grace, and essentially restated the case for these two concepts, though I didn't feel she addressed the true underlying issue I was trying to raise, i.e., is Einstein's universe necessarily the one that all the data point to, or are there some serious gaps which we are trying to fill with theories we can't directly test? I sometimes wonder if, in the tradition of Thomas Khun's theory of scientific progress, the Einsteinian universe isn't on the verge of collapsing under the weight of all the workarounds and bandages scientists seem to keep feeling obliged to add to it to keep it standing. Coincidentally, in the few days following this panel, I read two more articles that supported my doubts. You can read them here and here. A couple of weeks later, we also saw interesting possibilities about dark matter pop up here and here.
The talks by NASA chief Charles Bolden and head of US Space Command Gen. William Shelton were two of the speeches to which I had been most looking forward. It was therefore a huge letdown when both gave decidedly underwhelming talks. The general's was by far the worst speech of the whole conference. Instead of exhorting the crowd to get excited about space exploration and funding and enlisting their help to improve STEM education, he basically seemed to be delivering an annual financial report. In a speech full of acronyms that only people who didn't need this information would understand, he delivered dry recitations of financial goals and challenges. Imagine hearing someone read from a company's annual report for 45 minutes. NASA head Bolden's speech followed immediately thereafter, so the bar was set quite low. Even still, it failed to inspire. I was discussing the talks afterwards with a friend and we both wondered about the chicken-and-egg of this situation: does such marked lack of inspiration and excitement come from folks being demoralized by falling budgets, or does America's lack of inspired leadership in this area contribute to the dwindling resources dedicated to this field?
Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson's opening speech on Tuesday was far more stirring. He is a passionate, eloquent champion of STEM education and space exploration. I wish America had fifty more people like him out there every day, pushing for more NASA funding (which Dr. Tyson feels should be doubled to 1% of our budget from the current .5%) and advancing a STEM education agenda. My only beef with Dr. Tyson is that he is very tone-deaf to any model of space exploration that doesn't follow the traditional NASA- and US-led model. This was underscored when he was given my question at the end of the session. I asked, "Which country/countries will arrive first on Mars and will it be a public or private venture?" So firm is his assumption that any such mission must be American and must be entirely publicly funded, that he didn't even address the question at all, instead veering off onto a tangent about American middle-schoolers being groomed from that age to be astronauts to Mars. Still, the details of his own positions matter less than his important and effective advocacy, so I won't begrudge him his obduracy on these points. Still, as attested by the strong presence of SpaceX at the conference and that company's upcoming, highly symbolic docking with the ISS, as well as by this week's big announcement about private asteroid mining missions, people need to get used to the fact that it's as likely to be company logos as nation-state flags that fly on some of the most exciting voyages of the future. The sooner the 'old-schoolers' like Dr. Tyson get used to this, the better.
P.J. O'Rourke was the master of ceremonies for the corporate partnership dinner, and he was, as always, very engaging and funny. (Prior to this conference, I didn't even realize he was such a dedicated space advocate. He actually sits on the board of the Space Foundation.) I do not agree with Mr. O'Rourke's politics, but he is one of those rare Republicans these days who manages to disagree without vitriol and condescension. I had the chance to speak with him for a few minutes at his book-signing and found him to be quite a down-to-Earth**, approachable man. We talked about oil subsidies and oil price manipulation, as well as corporate taxation. I was surprised to find that we agreed on more issues than not, though that is perhaps just due to the coincidence that we happened to be discussing topics on which I have unusual views for a liberal, e.g. corporate taxation and Obama's meaningless posturing on the oil price issue.
Saving the best for last (both in its appearance here and on the symposium program), Mark Stevenson's speech at the closing dinner Thursday night was the highlight of the entire event. THIS was the kind of inspiration and unbridled optimism I had hoped to get from all the major speakers during the conference. Mr. Stevenson's theme was reasoned, dedicated optimism, much in line with a piece he wrote here and in the same vein as his book, An Optimist's Tour of the Future (which I strongly recommended last year). Mr. Stevenson really lit a fire under the audience and pushed them to look towards the future with more optimism. I just wish he had spoken at the opening ceremony instead. It might have inspired the space leaders in attendance to be bolder in the visions they laid out over the following days.
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*Ironically, the moderator said my question showed what an 'intelligent and technically astute audience we have here today.' I say it's ironic because I was probably the least technical person in the entire room, given my liberal arts background and given that many (most?) other attendees were scientists and engineers.
**Irony of this choice of words duly noted.
Showing posts with label Mark Stevenson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mark Stevenson. Show all posts
23 April 2012
06 August 2011
Personal Genome Project: Update August 2011
As you may recall from one of my first posts back in January, I decided to participate in the Personal Genome Project. Well, it's finally underway and I am among the first 100 participants! I received my DNA sample collection kit from Dr. Church's lab this past week and returned it. I also had to fill out some surveys and other information and link to my GoogleHealth page, as well as upload my 23andme.com genetic profile. Thanks again to Mark Stevenson and his book, An Optimist's Tour of the Future, for telling me about this amazing project.
While scientific curiosity and fascination with the possibilities are what drove my decision to participate, I must also confess that there is just a wonderful 'cool factor' here. How many people in the world have had their entire genomes sequenced? Not a lot. It's thrilling and, yes, I admit it, a little scary, too.
I am not certain when I will start to hear about results and findings, but I will update this blog as I learn more.
While scientific curiosity and fascination with the possibilities are what drove my decision to participate, I must also confess that there is just a wonderful 'cool factor' here. How many people in the world have had their entire genomes sequenced? Not a lot. It's thrilling and, yes, I admit it, a little scary, too.
I am not certain when I will start to hear about results and findings, but I will update this blog as I learn more.
27 May 2011
Beam me down, Scotty.
I said recently that there are some annoying aspects to sci-fi. But when I watch old episodes of Star Trek from the 1980s/1990s, as I did this past winter as the snow hemmed us all in, what strikes me is not how outlandish some of it is, but how much they underestimate the tide of science and technology. As I said in a recent post, there are those who suggest that we are nearing a technological singularity, a point past which society will be unrecognizable to those on this side of the singularity. I said then and repeat now that I am skeptical of this idea, but there are signs that something is hurtling towards us, for good or ill.
Look at some of the 'marvels' in those old Star Trek episodes:
-I recently saw an old episode recently in which they talked about the problem of it taking months before they could sequence a genome to find the problem at the crux of the episode. In the 24th century. In 2011, it takes a few weeks and the price is in the tens of thousands of dollars. I suspect that within a few short years, it will take days and cost hundreds. I have had mine partially sequenced for USD 99!
-In one episode, set in the future even in relation to the show's timeline, a man's sight was restored by implanting cloned eyes. A few years ago, a woman in Spain had a new windpipe implanted: it was essentially her own, as it had been 'manufactured' from an old one using her own cells.* Scientists are now experimenting with growing organs on demand. Liver failing? We'll grown you a new one and get it to you next week. That's not 24th century. That's probably a few years away.**
-In another scenario, that same blind man's clunky 'visor' was replaced with mechanical eyes a few years later. This 'breakthrough of the 24th century' is already happening now, in fact. The first primitive (60-pixel) prosthetic eyes have already been developed and approved for implantation. Wearers can at least discern light and up to eight colors, and see well enough to navigate safely. And that's version 1.0. I would be surprised if we didn't have HD-quality resolution that restored most sight within another generation or so, right here in the Dark Ages of the 21st century.
-Remember the old tricorders and communicators from the original show? My iPhone can do 1000 times more than those clunky things ever could.*** I can whip out this USD 199 device and do things Captain Picard would need his ship's computer to do.
-Speaking of computers. Are you kidding me? That piece of junk on the Enterprise often did things in hours that my laptop could do in minutes or even seconds. There are already supercomputers capable of memory and speed that are comparable to those of a human brain. In ten years, we'll probably have laptops of that capacity. And how about those huge computers on the original series?! Please. We surpassed those before Shatner bought his third toupee.
-On a related note, I saw an episode in which the characters were in awe of an android that performed at 60 teraflops. I am no expert on this, but from my admittedly cursory investigation, it seems that's peanuts! Our current supercomputers are measuring in petaflops, not teraflops.
So skip the beam-up, Scotty. I am doing just fine down here.
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Footnotes:
*You know who you are when I say that at least this time I remember where I read it.
**Well, assuming they can sort out the pesky issue with the connections: making an organ and hooking it up to the body's blood supply are two separate tasks, and it turns out the latter is harder. It's like being told that creating an HD TV from scratch is easy-peasy, but figuring out how to plug it in is superlatively difficult.
***Except getting me beamed up.
Look at some of the 'marvels' in those old Star Trek episodes:
-I recently saw an old episode recently in which they talked about the problem of it taking months before they could sequence a genome to find the problem at the crux of the episode. In the 24th century. In 2011, it takes a few weeks and the price is in the tens of thousands of dollars. I suspect that within a few short years, it will take days and cost hundreds. I have had mine partially sequenced for USD 99!
-In one episode, set in the future even in relation to the show's timeline, a man's sight was restored by implanting cloned eyes. A few years ago, a woman in Spain had a new windpipe implanted: it was essentially her own, as it had been 'manufactured' from an old one using her own cells.* Scientists are now experimenting with growing organs on demand. Liver failing? We'll grown you a new one and get it to you next week. That's not 24th century. That's probably a few years away.**
-In another scenario, that same blind man's clunky 'visor' was replaced with mechanical eyes a few years later. This 'breakthrough of the 24th century' is already happening now, in fact. The first primitive (60-pixel) prosthetic eyes have already been developed and approved for implantation. Wearers can at least discern light and up to eight colors, and see well enough to navigate safely. And that's version 1.0. I would be surprised if we didn't have HD-quality resolution that restored most sight within another generation or so, right here in the Dark Ages of the 21st century.
-Remember the old tricorders and communicators from the original show? My iPhone can do 1000 times more than those clunky things ever could.*** I can whip out this USD 199 device and do things Captain Picard would need his ship's computer to do.
-Speaking of computers. Are you kidding me? That piece of junk on the Enterprise often did things in hours that my laptop could do in minutes or even seconds. There are already supercomputers capable of memory and speed that are comparable to those of a human brain. In ten years, we'll probably have laptops of that capacity. And how about those huge computers on the original series?! Please. We surpassed those before Shatner bought his third toupee.
-On a related note, I saw an episode in which the characters were in awe of an android that performed at 60 teraflops. I am no expert on this, but from my admittedly cursory investigation, it seems that's peanuts! Our current supercomputers are measuring in petaflops, not teraflops.
So skip the beam-up, Scotty. I am doing just fine down here.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Footnotes:
*You know who you are when I say that at least this time I remember where I read it.
**Well, assuming they can sort out the pesky issue with the connections: making an organ and hooking it up to the body's blood supply are two separate tasks, and it turns out the latter is harder. It's like being told that creating an HD TV from scratch is easy-peasy, but figuring out how to plug it in is superlatively difficult.
***Except getting me beamed up.
03 February 2011
Great Books, Part I of ∞ : An Optimist's Tour of the Future
I've no experience at all with book reviews. Giving my opinion is hardly problematic, as I warned in my inaugural post. But summarizing is not my forte. If anything, I tend to do the opposite of summarizing: give me a paragraph and I will give you a book. When trying to review an entire book, then, well....I just hope blogspot doesn't charge by the word.
Nevertheless, here I am trying to do a book review. Why? Because I am suffering from an embarrassment of riches of late. I have come across so many wonderful books in the last couple of years that I am bursting to share them all. I haven't come across such a wealth of wonderful reading since I was a very young man*, back when ALL wonderful literature was new to me. So, over the coming months, I will share some of these titles and my thoughts on their content and worth.
Among the most recent is Mark Stevenson's An Optimist's Tour of the Future, an insightful and inspiring (if occasionally mildly terrifying) book about the latest trends in all the technologies and ideas that will shape the world to come. I was fortunate enough to read an advance copy of the book, which is being released in the US on 3 February 2011. After I read it, I began a correspondence with the author, who is one of the most genuinely kind people I have had the pleasure to 'e-meet', the electronic nature of our acquaintanceship notwithstanding. I mention this only in the interest of full disclosure: I am reviewing a book of a person whom I have come to know (albeit to a necessarily very limited extent). But to be clear, reading and admiring the book came first and my reflections are thus free of any bias: I would not have reached out to the author had I not already respected his work. So with all the disclosures out of the way...
Think back over the past few years and think about the books you've read on the current state of the world and/or its fast-approaching fate. Then, when you get back from the pharmacy and take your copious amounts of anti-depressants needed to cope with those books, pick up a copy of this book and throw out the pills. Amid all the doom and gloom, here's a blossom of hope. Mind you, Mr. Stevenson is no naïf in rose-colored glasses: he approaches his subjects - among them some of the world's most brilliant people - with an intelligent skepticism, challenging their assumptions and never letting them off the hook when they try to wiggle out of the tough questions.
To get a sense of Stevenson's style and approach in this book, think about the motivations behind "What Are You Optimistic About?: Today's Leading Thinkers on Why Things Are Good and Getting Better", combine it with the probing intelligence and never-say-die quest for creative answers behind "Freakonomics", then dash in the wit and wisdom of a Bill Bryson.
Each section of the book covers a specific topic, with subjects ranging from transhumanism to robotics to the environment to genetic engineering (to name but a few). But more interesting still are the people working at the cutting edge of these fields. In each section, we follow Mr. Stevenson around the world as he visits some of these leading minds of our time, visionaries like Ray Kurzweil, George Church and Vint Cerf. Through wit, charm and intelligence, he elicits a level of frankness that you will not witness in any other interview format. (In that sense, the book is worth the price for the biographical components alone.)
I think the biggest selling point of this book, though, is the way it alters the reader's whole way of looking at an exciting future that is so much closer than most of us might think. Stevenson calls it a 'reboot', and that's a very apt descriptor: the reader finishes the book with a sense of awe (and yes, some trepidation) about a future in which everything we have taken for granted for so long, is suddenly washed away in favor of very new definitions of things as fundamental as success, happiness, relationships, even mortality.
So put down the doom and gloom for a while, turn off the 24/7 parade of dismay and pick up this reason to be optimistic. The future is going to be a wild ride, and Stevenson's book is a good road map.
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Footnotes:
*1938-ish?
Nevertheless, here I am trying to do a book review. Why? Because I am suffering from an embarrassment of riches of late. I have come across so many wonderful books in the last couple of years that I am bursting to share them all. I haven't come across such a wealth of wonderful reading since I was a very young man*, back when ALL wonderful literature was new to me. So, over the coming months, I will share some of these titles and my thoughts on their content and worth.
Among the most recent is Mark Stevenson's An Optimist's Tour of the Future, an insightful and inspiring (if occasionally mildly terrifying) book about the latest trends in all the technologies and ideas that will shape the world to come. I was fortunate enough to read an advance copy of the book, which is being released in the US on 3 February 2011. After I read it, I began a correspondence with the author, who is one of the most genuinely kind people I have had the pleasure to 'e-meet', the electronic nature of our acquaintanceship notwithstanding. I mention this only in the interest of full disclosure: I am reviewing a book of a person whom I have come to know (albeit to a necessarily very limited extent). But to be clear, reading and admiring the book came first and my reflections are thus free of any bias: I would not have reached out to the author had I not already respected his work. So with all the disclosures out of the way...
Think back over the past few years and think about the books you've read on the current state of the world and/or its fast-approaching fate. Then, when you get back from the pharmacy and take your copious amounts of anti-depressants needed to cope with those books, pick up a copy of this book and throw out the pills. Amid all the doom and gloom, here's a blossom of hope. Mind you, Mr. Stevenson is no naïf in rose-colored glasses: he approaches his subjects - among them some of the world's most brilliant people - with an intelligent skepticism, challenging their assumptions and never letting them off the hook when they try to wiggle out of the tough questions.
To get a sense of Stevenson's style and approach in this book, think about the motivations behind "What Are You Optimistic About?: Today's Leading Thinkers on Why Things Are Good and Getting Better", combine it with the probing intelligence and never-say-die quest for creative answers behind "Freakonomics", then dash in the wit and wisdom of a Bill Bryson.
Each section of the book covers a specific topic, with subjects ranging from transhumanism to robotics to the environment to genetic engineering (to name but a few). But more interesting still are the people working at the cutting edge of these fields. In each section, we follow Mr. Stevenson around the world as he visits some of these leading minds of our time, visionaries like Ray Kurzweil, George Church and Vint Cerf. Through wit, charm and intelligence, he elicits a level of frankness that you will not witness in any other interview format. (In that sense, the book is worth the price for the biographical components alone.)
I think the biggest selling point of this book, though, is the way it alters the reader's whole way of looking at an exciting future that is so much closer than most of us might think. Stevenson calls it a 'reboot', and that's a very apt descriptor: the reader finishes the book with a sense of awe (and yes, some trepidation) about a future in which everything we have taken for granted for so long, is suddenly washed away in favor of very new definitions of things as fundamental as success, happiness, relationships, even mortality.
So put down the doom and gloom for a while, turn off the 24/7 parade of dismay and pick up this reason to be optimistic. The future is going to be a wild ride, and Stevenson's book is a good road map.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Footnotes:
*1938-ish?
09 January 2011
Fun with Artificial Intelligence
I have been having a ball for the past week playing with Eureqa, an AI I mentioned in an earlier post. Eureqa is the brainchild of Profs. Schmidt and Lipson at Cornell. When it comes to data, my main fascination has always been economic data, so I have been toying with trying to find models that best account for why equities markets move in one direction or another. As I said in that previous post, there are far too many irrational factors involved in the movement of equities markets to come up with the S&P 500's answer to E=MC². Even if you managed to come up with a more or less reasonable predictive model, the theoretical economic characteristic of so-called 'perfect knowledge' eventually becomes not-so-theoretical economic reality; people begin operating under this new spotlight; next thing you know, the model is dead precisely because everyone knows about it and therefore behaves in ways not predictable by the model (since this new knowledge and resulting behavior are themselves major new variables).
Quite aside from the fact that eventual knowledge of a good model would itself make the model obsolete, is the fact that there is a HUGE difference between an equation that explains data and an equation that reveals cause and effect for data. Just ask all the people who have wasted good time and money 'data-mining' the history of equities markets. A perfect example is O'Shaughnessy's 'What Works on Wall Street'. The author dug through decades of data on the stock market and came up with elaborate models showing what would have been extremely effective ways of making money....assuming one had the knowledge of the entire period, but had gained that knowledge at the beginning of the period studied. It's amazing to me that an internet search of this man still pulls up almost universally positive, glowing articles and interviews, despite the fact that the mutual funds that he opened in the 1990s, funds entirely built on his 'research', were abject failures. He managed to spin this somehow, get out of mutual funds, and open a private wealth management company. This allowed him to continue making money and claiming he was right all along, but in fact freeing him to use completely unrelated methods of investing (since he isn't required to divulge his techniques). So he is undoubtedly a gifted marketer, and obviously even a good money manager...as long as he isn't following his own advice.
If this is all still (quite understandably) rather abstruse, I'll illustrate with a metaphor. Imagine you stand outside on the street corner and observe the weather and the passing of cars and people. Three out of ten days it rains. On those days, you notice people wearing raincoats. You also notice there are no open convertibles. Data-mining your way to 'good' equations tells you that an absence of convertibles and a presence of raincoats cause it to rain. That's an example of mixing up cause and effect. In another example, imagine that you observe that on the days it rained, you observed ten percent more people named Jane. Aha! An excess of Janes is causing rain! No, this is just coincidence.* I could go on, but for more examples of these kinds of problematic reasoning, there's a far better resource: read Crimes Against Logic by Jamie Whyte. This book is one of my top fifteen all-time favorites, not so much because it taught me anything I didn't already know (though it did that, too), but because he so eloquently and clearly expressed ideas I had known well but that I had been unable to articulate.
However, an inability to find well-performing predictive models for equities markets, doesn't mean that feeding such data in Eureqa is itself useless. By watching how Eureqa treats all the different variables, you start to see how they interact and which ones haven't even a correlative relationship with equities market performance. For example, Eureqa rarely seems to 'care' much for inflation. There appears to be very little correlation. BUT, it does 'care' quite a lot about the Fed Funds rate, which is essentially the public policy reaction to inflation. It also 'likes' CD rates, which might be a decent stand-in for opportunity costs, though that implies some cause-and-effect (CD rates are low -> opportunity cost of foregoing them in favor of equities is low -> I will buy equities -> everyone does same -> equity prices rise)**, which requires a heavier burden of proof, one that I am far from meeting. And employment? Almost always tosses that out as irrelevant very quickly. But it 'loves' consumer confidence, which suggests that while the markets don't 'care'*** about how many people are out of work, they care very much about how confident people feel in the economy (which is presumably in turn driven by how many of them have jobs, though not directly). But again, there is no straight cause-and-effect here. You can't say Consumer Confidence = y ergo stock performance will = z as an exact function of y.
Early days yet, but so far, so fun! After I get bored with this round of experiments, I think I'll move on to GDP.
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Footnotes:
*Don't even get me started on people who say 'I don't believe in coincidences.' Do you have ANY idea what kind of universe we would live in WITHOUT A HUGE LOT OF COINCIDENCES? Randomness permeates the very fabric of existence. The 'problem' is that our human brains have evolved with this incessant need to find patterns. I say this facetiously because of course that very same 'problem' is doubtless one of the very core elements of our intelligence, not to mention a key explanation to our very survival as a species. But it does have the unfortunate side-effect of making us see Jesus in breakfast food far too often.
**This introduces an intriguing interplay itself. Perhaps the opportunity cost (in form of CD rates or T-bills) must reach a certain threshold before prompting consideration of equities, but that consideration is in turn colored by the confidence one has in the markets and the overall economy (as measured by U of M consumer confidence index?), and that interplay in turn drives the degree to which investors commit to equities, thus determining the demand for (and therefore value of) those equities. Add in a dash of price-to-earnings data (i.e., the 'real' cost of 'buying' the earnings behind an equity) and you might just have some soup worth tasting.
***Please forgive the anthropomorphic words here. And if you are a lefty like me, do not fall into the temptation of attributing 'feelings' to markets. That a market does not move in reaction to a tragedy like high unemployment, does NOT mean that the people who make up those markets do not care about unemployed people. The phenomenon is merely an observed outcome of the aggregate behavior of the people acting in the market, not the 'evil' intent of any group of people within the market. I enjoy demonizing Wall St fat-cats as much as the next liberal, but do so for their individual behaviors, not those of the markets in which they act.
Quite aside from the fact that eventual knowledge of a good model would itself make the model obsolete, is the fact that there is a HUGE difference between an equation that explains data and an equation that reveals cause and effect for data. Just ask all the people who have wasted good time and money 'data-mining' the history of equities markets. A perfect example is O'Shaughnessy's 'What Works on Wall Street'. The author dug through decades of data on the stock market and came up with elaborate models showing what would have been extremely effective ways of making money....assuming one had the knowledge of the entire period, but had gained that knowledge at the beginning of the period studied. It's amazing to me that an internet search of this man still pulls up almost universally positive, glowing articles and interviews, despite the fact that the mutual funds that he opened in the 1990s, funds entirely built on his 'research', were abject failures. He managed to spin this somehow, get out of mutual funds, and open a private wealth management company. This allowed him to continue making money and claiming he was right all along, but in fact freeing him to use completely unrelated methods of investing (since he isn't required to divulge his techniques). So he is undoubtedly a gifted marketer, and obviously even a good money manager...as long as he isn't following his own advice.
If this is all still (quite understandably) rather abstruse, I'll illustrate with a metaphor. Imagine you stand outside on the street corner and observe the weather and the passing of cars and people. Three out of ten days it rains. On those days, you notice people wearing raincoats. You also notice there are no open convertibles. Data-mining your way to 'good' equations tells you that an absence of convertibles and a presence of raincoats cause it to rain. That's an example of mixing up cause and effect. In another example, imagine that you observe that on the days it rained, you observed ten percent more people named Jane. Aha! An excess of Janes is causing rain! No, this is just coincidence.* I could go on, but for more examples of these kinds of problematic reasoning, there's a far better resource: read Crimes Against Logic by Jamie Whyte. This book is one of my top fifteen all-time favorites, not so much because it taught me anything I didn't already know (though it did that, too), but because he so eloquently and clearly expressed ideas I had known well but that I had been unable to articulate.
However, an inability to find well-performing predictive models for equities markets, doesn't mean that feeding such data in Eureqa is itself useless. By watching how Eureqa treats all the different variables, you start to see how they interact and which ones haven't even a correlative relationship with equities market performance. For example, Eureqa rarely seems to 'care' much for inflation. There appears to be very little correlation. BUT, it does 'care' quite a lot about the Fed Funds rate, which is essentially the public policy reaction to inflation. It also 'likes' CD rates, which might be a decent stand-in for opportunity costs, though that implies some cause-and-effect (CD rates are low -> opportunity cost of foregoing them in favor of equities is low -> I will buy equities -> everyone does same -> equity prices rise)**, which requires a heavier burden of proof, one that I am far from meeting. And employment? Almost always tosses that out as irrelevant very quickly. But it 'loves' consumer confidence, which suggests that while the markets don't 'care'*** about how many people are out of work, they care very much about how confident people feel in the economy (which is presumably in turn driven by how many of them have jobs, though not directly). But again, there is no straight cause-and-effect here. You can't say Consumer Confidence = y ergo stock performance will = z as an exact function of y.
Early days yet, but so far, so fun! After I get bored with this round of experiments, I think I'll move on to GDP.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Footnotes:
*Don't even get me started on people who say 'I don't believe in coincidences.' Do you have ANY idea what kind of universe we would live in WITHOUT A HUGE LOT OF COINCIDENCES? Randomness permeates the very fabric of existence. The 'problem' is that our human brains have evolved with this incessant need to find patterns. I say this facetiously because of course that very same 'problem' is doubtless one of the very core elements of our intelligence, not to mention a key explanation to our very survival as a species. But it does have the unfortunate side-effect of making us see Jesus in breakfast food far too often.
**This introduces an intriguing interplay itself. Perhaps the opportunity cost (in form of CD rates or T-bills) must reach a certain threshold before prompting consideration of equities, but that consideration is in turn colored by the confidence one has in the markets and the overall economy (as measured by U of M consumer confidence index?), and that interplay in turn drives the degree to which investors commit to equities, thus determining the demand for (and therefore value of) those equities. Add in a dash of price-to-earnings data (i.e., the 'real' cost of 'buying' the earnings behind an equity) and you might just have some soup worth tasting.
***Please forgive the anthropomorphic words here. And if you are a lefty like me, do not fall into the temptation of attributing 'feelings' to markets. That a market does not move in reaction to a tragedy like high unemployment, does NOT mean that the people who make up those markets do not care about unemployed people. The phenomenon is merely an observed outcome of the aggregate behavior of the people acting in the market, not the 'evil' intent of any group of people within the market. I enjoy demonizing Wall St fat-cats as much as the next liberal, but do so for their individual behaviors, not those of the markets in which they act.
03 January 2011
Yet another step towards the singularity...
A few years back, I remember reading an article about Vernor Vinge and his case for the technological singularity. I found it fascinating, but soon it crept to the back of my mind. I didn't see much evidence that it was approaching anytime soon. But recently, some breakthroughs in science and a wonderful new book by Mark Stevenson, have made me revisit the idea. In its simplest expression, it basically just says that at some point in the not-too-distant future, accelerating returns will result in a watershed moment, after which humankind will be so changed that all of our current assumptions about even the most fundamental concepts will be swept away, leaving us in a world so completely different from the one we had come to know as a species, that it will be essentially impossible to predict from this side of the singularity. So when will this point be reached? It is not too surprising that no two people agree and even less so that many people think the whole concept is bunk. But people like Ray Kurzweil seem to feel that many people alive today will live to see it. I am not sufficiently convinced even of the validity of the idea just yet, never mind having an opinion about timing. But after reading books like Mr. Stevenson's and seeing some of the mind-blowing advances happening in so many fields, it is certainly something that won't be creeping off again to the back of my mind any time soon.
To cite just one (albeit very powerful) example, consider Eureqa, a program developed by Professors M. Schmidt and H. Lipson at Cornell. Mr. Stevenson visited the team at Cornell and discusses it in his book. Basically, this AI 'program' - calling it a program seems akin to calling Mt Everest a 'mound of dirt' - takes your data and derives principles on which such data are built. That may sound rather dry and dull, but consider this: it figured out Newton's Laws of Motion based on data it was fed. In a few hours. So imagine brilliant careers in research distilled down to a few hours. Then consider that of course such minds won't retire after they feed an AI like Eureqa some great data and get some cool new fundamental laws. They will keep going. So imagine Newton figuring out his laws in a day and then going for another 40 years or so. (Well, OK, he DID keep going for another 40 years or so, but you get the point.) Starting to see how accelerating returns might be leading us somewhere unrecognizable?
If you're one of the select few scientists with access, you can feed...oh, wait, what?! Eureqa is a free download. Anyone in the world can use it. I have.* It's laid out like Excel. I'm no scientist and I doubt I will come up with any Earth-shattering theorems with Eureqa. But imagine this tool in the hands of thousands of brilliant researchers around the world.
Hold on to your hats, folks. It's gonna get wild.
................................................................................................
Footnotes
*I love playing with economic data, so I fed it 30 years worth of such data to see what equations it would come up with. This was just to amuse myself, mind you: one must be careful to distinguish between deriving laws from data gotten from the natural world v just plain data-mining. My exercise was essentially the latter. In other words, any equation derived from something as erratic as economic data will serve just one purpose: more or less accurately predicting a data point within the universe of data already provided to the AI. So if I got an equation for predicting, say, the value of the S&P 500 based on CPI and consumer confidence, all I could be certain of would be that the equation could more or less accurately 'predict' the values for 1987, using the other 29 points of data within its universe. Still, it may serve to give a general sense of trends.
To cite just one (albeit very powerful) example, consider Eureqa, a program developed by Professors M. Schmidt and H. Lipson at Cornell. Mr. Stevenson visited the team at Cornell and discusses it in his book. Basically, this AI 'program' - calling it a program seems akin to calling Mt Everest a 'mound of dirt' - takes your data and derives principles on which such data are built. That may sound rather dry and dull, but consider this: it figured out Newton's Laws of Motion based on data it was fed. In a few hours. So imagine brilliant careers in research distilled down to a few hours. Then consider that of course such minds won't retire after they feed an AI like Eureqa some great data and get some cool new fundamental laws. They will keep going. So imagine Newton figuring out his laws in a day and then going for another 40 years or so. (Well, OK, he DID keep going for another 40 years or so, but you get the point.) Starting to see how accelerating returns might be leading us somewhere unrecognizable?
If you're one of the select few scientists with access, you can feed...oh, wait, what?! Eureqa is a free download. Anyone in the world can use it. I have.* It's laid out like Excel. I'm no scientist and I doubt I will come up with any Earth-shattering theorems with Eureqa. But imagine this tool in the hands of thousands of brilliant researchers around the world.
Hold on to your hats, folks. It's gonna get wild.
................................................................................................
Footnotes
*I love playing with economic data, so I fed it 30 years worth of such data to see what equations it would come up with. This was just to amuse myself, mind you: one must be careful to distinguish between deriving laws from data gotten from the natural world v just plain data-mining. My exercise was essentially the latter. In other words, any equation derived from something as erratic as economic data will serve just one purpose: more or less accurately predicting a data point within the universe of data already provided to the AI. So if I got an equation for predicting, say, the value of the S&P 500 based on CPI and consumer confidence, all I could be certain of would be that the equation could more or less accurately 'predict' the values for 1987, using the other 29 points of data within its universe. Still, it may serve to give a general sense of trends.
02 January 2011
The Personal Genome Project
I recently read Mark Stevenson's "An Optimist's Tour of the Future" and among the many new ideas and innovations to which I was introduced, was George Church's Personal Genome Project. I am going to cop out here and just quote directly from the project homepage:
"In an unprecedented achievement, the Human Genome Project provided the first drafts of nearly complete human genome sequences in 2001 after more than a decade of effort by scientists worldwide. This information is now being used to advance medicine, human biology, and knowledge of human origins.
We foresee a day when many individuals will want to get their own genome sequenced so that they may use this information to understand such things as their individual risk profiles for disease, their physical and biological characteristics, and their personal ancestries. To get to this point will require a critical mass of interested users, tools for obtaining and interpreting genome information, and supportive policy, research, and service communities. To catalyze these developments, we launched the Personal Genome Project (PGP)."
In other words, let's multiply that historic human genome mapping project by a factor of 100,000, and along the way 1) help drive down the cost of genome mapping; 2) figure out better and faster ways to do it; 3) share massive amounts of data that could one day save millions of lives; 4) see how all this affects society, in ways far beyond just medicine (e.g. legal ramifications, social policy, privacy, etc.); 5) advance research in everything from genetics to medicine to genealogy to forensics to...well, you name it; 6) potentially allow designer medical treatments that could result in miraculous cures using drugs that would be lethal to someone else. So, maybe call the family and let them know you won't be home for dinner til around 2072-ish, Dr. Church.
I applied to be one of the hundred thousand guinea pigs they will be needing to make this insanely ambitious project work. Last week, I was accepted as a volunteer subject and will hopefully soon be providing the DNA sample and requested information. I would encourage everyone to consider volunteering. I say 'encourage everyone to consider volunteering' and not 'encourage everyone to volunteer' for very good reasons. This undertaking is not without risks and is by no means something to be undertaken lightly. I do not mean it is risky to your health or physical safety (it's just a DNA sample!), but it has the potential to impact you in just about every other way. First of all, you are agreeing to have your genome sequenced...and then shared with the entire world. So privacy is out the window. Of course, your name isn't attached to the information, but who can guarantee that information will never come out? And no one can be sure how such information would be used. Maybe your insurance company finds out, links your results to you, sees you have a much higher risk of cancer, then dumps you. Imagine someone artificially creating DNA 'evidence' from your genome and leaving it at a crime scene.* Let your imagination run wild and you still won't think of all the potential for harm. This is a cutting edge project, and sometimes cutting edges lead to injury.
But now stop and think of the practically limitless good this project can do for so many different aspects of our daily lives. Even if the study yielded zero short-term medical breakthroughs, the very exercise of processing 100,000 genome sequences will help improve the process and drive down costs. It will teach us (and our lawmakers) some lessons on things like privacy, ethical treatment of people with diverse genetic backgrounds, even civil rights.** And it could potentially open the door to novel treatments using existing drugs that are deemed too dangerous because of their fatal side-effects in some patients. (If you can figure out what genetic markers are associated with such adverse reactions, you could provide such a life-saving drug to one person, but withhold it from someone to whom it would be fatal.)
But perhaps the most compelling reason to help out is the fact that Dr. Church is doing something no private company would do: he's going to release all of the data to the whole world, no strings attached. So instead of some small group of people trying to sift through all that data looking for a handful of profitable potentials, you have the whole scientific world delving into it, everyone from university researchers to pharmaceutical companies looking for the next big drug pay-off to medical researchers at hospitals to biologists to, well, everyone.
So, please consider participating if you are a U.S. citizen*** and can accept the risks. Just go to the project sign-up page to get started. You will need to pass a short 'exam' that covers some very basic, junior high school-level genetics + areas specific to the project (including risks). It's easy and they even give you a link to a special site where they basically spell out all the answers in a study guide! And whether or not you decide to participate, please consider donating to the cause. It is a not-for-profit, 503(c), so you can even deduct the donation from your taxes!
Meanwhile, yours truly will be publishing the occasional blog post on the experiences of a willing guinea pig in one of humankind's most ambitious endeavors. So stay tuned!
...............................................................................................
Footnotes:
*Nuts, right? Believe it or not, the project sponsors specifically cite this as a potential risk.
**Yes, civil rights. Yesterday's oppression was based on ethnicity or sex. Today's on sexual orientation. Tomorrow's...on genetic propensity for certain traits?
***Yeah, I don't really get that either. But for some reason, the scope is limited to Americans for now.
"In an unprecedented achievement, the Human Genome Project provided the first drafts of nearly complete human genome sequences in 2001 after more than a decade of effort by scientists worldwide. This information is now being used to advance medicine, human biology, and knowledge of human origins.
We foresee a day when many individuals will want to get their own genome sequenced so that they may use this information to understand such things as their individual risk profiles for disease, their physical and biological characteristics, and their personal ancestries. To get to this point will require a critical mass of interested users, tools for obtaining and interpreting genome information, and supportive policy, research, and service communities. To catalyze these developments, we launched the Personal Genome Project (PGP)."
In other words, let's multiply that historic human genome mapping project by a factor of 100,000, and along the way 1) help drive down the cost of genome mapping; 2) figure out better and faster ways to do it; 3) share massive amounts of data that could one day save millions of lives; 4) see how all this affects society, in ways far beyond just medicine (e.g. legal ramifications, social policy, privacy, etc.); 5) advance research in everything from genetics to medicine to genealogy to forensics to...well, you name it; 6) potentially allow designer medical treatments that could result in miraculous cures using drugs that would be lethal to someone else. So, maybe call the family and let them know you won't be home for dinner til around 2072-ish, Dr. Church.
I applied to be one of the hundred thousand guinea pigs they will be needing to make this insanely ambitious project work. Last week, I was accepted as a volunteer subject and will hopefully soon be providing the DNA sample and requested information. I would encourage everyone to consider volunteering. I say 'encourage everyone to consider volunteering' and not 'encourage everyone to volunteer' for very good reasons. This undertaking is not without risks and is by no means something to be undertaken lightly. I do not mean it is risky to your health or physical safety (it's just a DNA sample!), but it has the potential to impact you in just about every other way. First of all, you are agreeing to have your genome sequenced...and then shared with the entire world. So privacy is out the window. Of course, your name isn't attached to the information, but who can guarantee that information will never come out? And no one can be sure how such information would be used. Maybe your insurance company finds out, links your results to you, sees you have a much higher risk of cancer, then dumps you. Imagine someone artificially creating DNA 'evidence' from your genome and leaving it at a crime scene.* Let your imagination run wild and you still won't think of all the potential for harm. This is a cutting edge project, and sometimes cutting edges lead to injury.
But now stop and think of the practically limitless good this project can do for so many different aspects of our daily lives. Even if the study yielded zero short-term medical breakthroughs, the very exercise of processing 100,000 genome sequences will help improve the process and drive down costs. It will teach us (and our lawmakers) some lessons on things like privacy, ethical treatment of people with diverse genetic backgrounds, even civil rights.** And it could potentially open the door to novel treatments using existing drugs that are deemed too dangerous because of their fatal side-effects in some patients. (If you can figure out what genetic markers are associated with such adverse reactions, you could provide such a life-saving drug to one person, but withhold it from someone to whom it would be fatal.)
But perhaps the most compelling reason to help out is the fact that Dr. Church is doing something no private company would do: he's going to release all of the data to the whole world, no strings attached. So instead of some small group of people trying to sift through all that data looking for a handful of profitable potentials, you have the whole scientific world delving into it, everyone from university researchers to pharmaceutical companies looking for the next big drug pay-off to medical researchers at hospitals to biologists to, well, everyone.
So, please consider participating if you are a U.S. citizen*** and can accept the risks. Just go to the project sign-up page to get started. You will need to pass a short 'exam' that covers some very basic, junior high school-level genetics + areas specific to the project (including risks). It's easy and they even give you a link to a special site where they basically spell out all the answers in a study guide! And whether or not you decide to participate, please consider donating to the cause. It is a not-for-profit, 503(c), so you can even deduct the donation from your taxes!
Meanwhile, yours truly will be publishing the occasional blog post on the experiences of a willing guinea pig in one of humankind's most ambitious endeavors. So stay tuned!
...............................................................................................
Footnotes:
*Nuts, right? Believe it or not, the project sponsors specifically cite this as a potential risk.
**Yes, civil rights. Yesterday's oppression was based on ethnicity or sex. Today's on sexual orientation. Tomorrow's...on genetic propensity for certain traits?
***Yeah, I don't really get that either. But for some reason, the scope is limited to Americans for now.
01 January 2011
Inaugural Post
[Updated 2019]
<tap, tap> Is this thing on? Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3....
Welcome to my second attempt at blogging. My only other attempt at online writing was a rather messy webpage back in the good ol' days of tripod.com. (And apparently, that blog is still out there.) I was living in Paris at the time, but I am originally from Memphis, so, pun-tificating pun-tiff that I am, I selected the name 'Tennesseine' (which is Tennessean + Seine, for the humor-impaired among you). Despite the fact that I am over two decades removed from the muddy Mississip' and by now (2019) 14 years from being nearly in Seine, I am sticking with that moniker for the very simple reason that it's Saturday evening, I am tired, and I am not inclined to exercise my mind enough to come up with something new.
While I am not very experienced with blogging, writing for public consumption isn't entirely new to me. As anyone who knows me can tell you, I am not lacking in opinions, so googling me will turn up many a letter-to-the-editor in several publications, including Norwegian-language Bergens Tidende (from when I was living in Bergen), New York Times, International Herald Tribune (many letters over quite a number of years living abroad), Time and Newsweek. When living in Norway, I even had a letter published in the Commercial Appeal, the newspaper of my native Memphis; but I made a mental note never to submit articles there again. To make a long story short, the letter was a tongue-in-cheek 'story' obviously not meant to be taken seriously, but the next week the paper printed a furious reply to it, something penned by a woman whose sense of humor had clearly been bleached out by the excessive chlorine in her gene pool. It's not the woman who disturbed me...there are people like her everywhere. But clearly the newspaper editors themselves, these bastions of intellect for that fine city, weren't playing with all their chips, either. So that was the day I realized you truly can never go home again.
[If at this point you are wondering if all my musings will start at one point but end up light years away from that point and yet somehow still in the same paragraph, let me just sum up that answer for you by pointing to the signpost ahead: 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here'.]
My bio (updated April 2019): I was raised in the Southern US (in the aforementioned Memphis). Up til my departure, all my father's family had pretty much stuck to the South since around the American Revolution, mainly in North Carolina at first, later Mississippi, only in my grandfather's generation coming to the 'big city' of Memphis. Similar story on my mother's side, though they arrived in the South much earlier. We're of mainly Irish/English stock on Dad's side, Welsh/English on Mom's. Translation: plain ol' vanilla American. The one curious fact about my background is that no matter how far back I go and on how many branches of my family I research, all sides have been here since at least the 18th century, in many cases 17th century, and they every single one come from the British Isles. That's not so odd for one's direct line (father to father and so on), , but it holds true no matter how far afield I go (father's mother's, mother's father's mother, etc.). You'd think at some point I'd have some interesting ethnicity or an Ellis Island type story to tell.
I left the US first in 1991, when I moved to Norway. I did my BA there, with a semester at Université du Havre in France thrown in for good measure and just that right amount of nasalization. My studies were essentially languages and international studies. Afterwards, I came back to America for a few years (Atlanta and DC), back to Europe in '98 (Barcelona, Malaga, then Windsor), back to the US in 2001 (mainly Chicago), then to Europe again in 2003 (Florence, then Paris), then back again to the US (Boston) in 2005, and finally landed here in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, as of 2013. (And yes, that transoceanic ping-pong was exactly as exhausting as it sounds. But it was also quite thrilling and I am truly humbled by and grateful for the adventure.) Along the way, I got married and divorced and had a wonderful son, now 23 and living in California, where he works in the tech sector. In 2007, I remarried, but we split up in 2016. We remain close friends, though, and are raising two beautiful boys together (aged 7 and almost 4). I like to say that while I am no one’s favorite husband, I am everyone’s favorite ex-husband.
To pay my way through life, I own a medical billing services and EMR software-reseller company. To pass my time, I read more than I should but less than I want; I run very reluctantly; I do some volunteer work; and (not surprisingly) I travel. I also torture my loved ones with the same cringe-worthy kinds of puns to which I have already subjected you. And finally, yes, before you ask: I also spend a lot of time silently judging you for your bad grammar. If it's any consolation, I even do that to myself. (It's not easy being me.)
[User alert! If you are easily offended when people challenge your beliefs, steer clear. I've not much use for superstition, unfounded belief, dogma, conventional wisdom or prejudices (except of course my own, which I am sure are perfectly justified and quite likely aimed at you).]
<tap, tap> Is this thing on? Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3....
Welcome to my second attempt at blogging. My only other attempt at online writing was a rather messy webpage back in the good ol' days of tripod.com. (And apparently, that blog is still out there.) I was living in Paris at the time, but I am originally from Memphis, so, pun-tificating pun-tiff that I am, I selected the name 'Tennesseine' (which is Tennessean + Seine, for the humor-impaired among you). Despite the fact that I am over two decades removed from the muddy Mississip' and by now (2019) 14 years from being nearly in Seine, I am sticking with that moniker for the very simple reason that it's Saturday evening, I am tired, and I am not inclined to exercise my mind enough to come up with something new.
While I am not very experienced with blogging, writing for public consumption isn't entirely new to me. As anyone who knows me can tell you, I am not lacking in opinions, so googling me will turn up many a letter-to-the-editor in several publications, including Norwegian-language Bergens Tidende (from when I was living in Bergen), New York Times, International Herald Tribune (many letters over quite a number of years living abroad), Time and Newsweek. When living in Norway, I even had a letter published in the Commercial Appeal, the newspaper of my native Memphis; but I made a mental note never to submit articles there again. To make a long story short, the letter was a tongue-in-cheek 'story' obviously not meant to be taken seriously, but the next week the paper printed a furious reply to it, something penned by a woman whose sense of humor had clearly been bleached out by the excessive chlorine in her gene pool. It's not the woman who disturbed me...there are people like her everywhere. But clearly the newspaper editors themselves, these bastions of intellect for that fine city, weren't playing with all their chips, either. So that was the day I realized you truly can never go home again.
[If at this point you are wondering if all my musings will start at one point but end up light years away from that point and yet somehow still in the same paragraph, let me just sum up that answer for you by pointing to the signpost ahead: 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here'.]
My bio (updated April 2019): I was raised in the Southern US (in the aforementioned Memphis). Up til my departure, all my father's family had pretty much stuck to the South since around the American Revolution, mainly in North Carolina at first, later Mississippi, only in my grandfather's generation coming to the 'big city' of Memphis. Similar story on my mother's side, though they arrived in the South much earlier. We're of mainly Irish/English stock on Dad's side, Welsh/English on Mom's. Translation: plain ol' vanilla American. The one curious fact about my background is that no matter how far back I go and on how many branches of my family I research, all sides have been here since at least the 18th century, in many cases 17th century, and they every single one come from the British Isles. That's not so odd for one's direct line (father to father and so on), , but it holds true no matter how far afield I go (father's mother's, mother's father's mother, etc.). You'd think at some point I'd have some interesting ethnicity or an Ellis Island type story to tell.
I left the US first in 1991, when I moved to Norway. I did my BA there, with a semester at Université du Havre in France thrown in for good measure and just that right amount of nasalization. My studies were essentially languages and international studies. Afterwards, I came back to America for a few years (Atlanta and DC), back to Europe in '98 (Barcelona, Malaga, then Windsor), back to the US in 2001 (mainly Chicago), then to Europe again in 2003 (Florence, then Paris), then back again to the US (Boston) in 2005, and finally landed here in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, as of 2013. (And yes, that transoceanic ping-pong was exactly as exhausting as it sounds. But it was also quite thrilling and I am truly humbled by and grateful for the adventure.) Along the way, I got married and divorced and had a wonderful son, now 23 and living in California, where he works in the tech sector. In 2007, I remarried, but we split up in 2016. We remain close friends, though, and are raising two beautiful boys together (aged 7 and almost 4). I like to say that while I am no one’s favorite husband, I am everyone’s favorite ex-husband.
To pay my way through life, I own a medical billing services and EMR software-reseller company. To pass my time, I read more than I should but less than I want; I run very reluctantly; I do some volunteer work; and (not surprisingly) I travel. I also torture my loved ones with the same cringe-worthy kinds of puns to which I have already subjected you. And finally, yes, before you ask: I also spend a lot of time silently judging you for your bad grammar. If it's any consolation, I even do that to myself. (It's not easy being me.)
[User alert! If you are easily offended when people challenge your beliefs, steer clear. I've not much use for superstition, unfounded belief, dogma, conventional wisdom or prejudices (except of course my own, which I am sure are perfectly justified and quite likely aimed at you).]
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