Surprisingly Productive

On Black Friday family members wanted to join the mobs at the mall. The mall was the last place I wanted to be--we INTJs don't like shopping in crowds--but when one has a family one must sacrifice one's own preferences for the greater good. It took only 15 minutes of driving around to find a parking space.

I ordered a coffee at Barnes & Noble and planted myself at a table with the MacBook. (Free Wi-Fi is a blessing to INTJs.) During the next hour I cleared over a hundred shopping messages from various e-mail inboxes. Black Friday at the mall turned out to be surprisingly productive. Tip for the day: always keep your expectations low, then you'll feel better when things don't turn out as bad as you thought.

Old Friends

My Agatha Christie
phase lasted 20 years

Parting with books that we own is somewhat like parting with old friends. They were once important, and giving them up acknowledges that they won't be as important in the future. Our mortality concentrates the mind.

We took six boxes of mystery and sci-fi novels and college humanities texts to the library used book store. Most social and natural science books were obsolete and put in the paper recycling unless they were historically significant, e.g., the Origin of Species or the Wealth of Nations. As with old friends, we hope that some will find a new life bringing enjoyment (and edification) to others. © 2013 Stephen Yuen

iTunes Sale on eBay

With only a moment's hesitation I clicked on an order for some $50 iTunes gift cards that are on sale for $35 each (4 maximum) on eBay. The gift cards can be used not only for music but also for videos, books, and apps. Your humble observer spends much more on apps and iBooks--more than half of the amount for business--than he does on music and videos and will easily consume the gift card purchase in the coming year. Even if he doesn't, they make welcome presents for anyone under 30, and even a few over-30's, too.

Whose Books Does Bill Gates Read?

Vaclav Smil has unconventional observations [bold added]:

If you ask “what has been the most important invention of the past 100, 150 years?” it’s been the synthesis of ammonia. If we could not synthesize ammonia by taking nitrogen from the air, hydrogen from natural gas and pressing them together in the Haber-Bosch cycle… if we could not do this to make nitrogen fertilizers, we could not grow enough food for about 40% of people. So you are talking about something like three billion people. In existential terms, that is the most important invention. [snip]

People think that we are getting better because we are dematerializing. Look at your iPhone. A perfect example of dematerialization. Before that you would need, what? An alarm clock. A telephone. A camera. A compass and a map. Now you don’t need any of these things — you just need one cellphone. So instead of having the mass of all these things like before, you dematerialize....

Many things are dematerializing, but they are dematerializing per unit. Yet we are selling many more units, so in total terms, global consumption is vastly increasing. This is like efficient energy consumption. We increase the efficiency of energy consumption, but have three televisions instead of one. Per refrigerator, per television, per car, the consumption is down. But overall, the consumption is up. [snip]

What would be the reason to rush into renewables? Global warming. But, China will burn every bit of coal it can lay its hands on. So whatever you do in the US or Germany, it’s irrelevant because China will wipe it out in a matter of weeks or months.

The example of Vaclav Smil shows that Bill Gates doesn't restrict his reading only to books that confirm his biases and predilections. That's why he's Bill Gates, and we aren't. © 2013 Stephen Yuen

Even As Winter Approaches

"Father's Day" books at Barnes&Noble

I used to frequent bookstores often, but now that most of my reading is done electronically I rarely darken their doors. Today I spent a couple of hours at Barnes & Noble and remembered why that used to be one of my favorite pastimes.

By displaying wares that one can touch and browse, bookstores---and libraries---tempt me to reach for books that would not have popped up in a search request. I toss them into the basket, and so it is that I have many more books than I'll ever be able to read. The half-completed and never-opened volumes on the nightstand may, to some, represent unrealized ambition. As winter approaches, I prefer to think of them as a sign of life's endless possibilities. © 2013 Stephen Yuen