Letters to the Editor
Greg in FL
Published Letters: 70 Editor's Choice: 17
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Cramer is an entertainer
[Read the article: Mad, mad, mad money]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is what to remember. He is fun to watch. Watching his show is eating Pop Rocks - Bang! Buy! Bang! Sell! Not that he isn't smart or decently informed about investing, which lulls the viewer into rationalizing that the hilarity is really giving you something wholesome. It's a floor wax and a dessert topping! Pop Rocks with all the vitamins of spinach!
I learned something about Cramer by paying attention to a few of his buy recommendations. This past March: buy Toyota at $133! Well, it's hovering at around $114 now. It is a good long-term company and Cramer hit all the positive fundamentals, but that doesn't make his timing worth squat. He offered no obvious caveats such as (1) watch out for the price of raw materials such as steel and rubber and (2) watch out for the value of the yen. [I waited, bought at $117; we'll see what happens.] So Cramer is really a performer; sit back and enjoy the show, but for gosh sakes don't actually take what he says as soothsaying.
It seems to me to be impossible to distill that mania of his show into cold text on paper. But I'll check it out at the bookstore, not for serious advice, just to see if it gives the Cramer Chuckles.
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Scales of things and people's perceptions
[Read the article: Desperate times, desperate scientists]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Who, other than the minority of technically trained people understand exponential functions, positive feedback, and probability to even a decent extent? Honestly, I tell you this: most people, certainly most Americans, don't have a clue. Once-in-a-century storm, once-in-500-year flood, once-in-a-millennium drought, does any of this mean anything to the average sports addict, the average Hollywood tabloid reader, the average stock trader? And as for those who just scrape by, many working multiple jobs at slave wages with no benefits and are one injury or accident or illness away from devastation, who can spare the worry - there's too much else to worry about.
Time scales outside the domain of direct human experience are difficult to internalize. Less than one second and longer than one decade are awfully tough. And how about a billion tons of carbon? Or 400 parts per million?
So global warming is unlike war, something we Americans internalize with ease. And so mobilizing the country and the world to take painful action, to sacrifice as if at war (I know, we don't even do that nowadays, we put it on the tab for our kids to pay) I think will be impossible.
However, I do believe it will be possible to have a zero-emissions energy society at current and even higher per capita energy use. This will involve many new or greatly expanded now-fledgling technologies, no one single solution. But sadly I expect it will take real catastrophe first, to break the mind set that we can individually act separately from community without consequences - something like pulling wisdom teeth for Americans.
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@ Irit
[Read the article: Desperate times, desperate scientists]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Ok, a really major solution for the long haul is inertial-confinement fusion. Nearly infinite fuel, nearly no residual radioactivity, lots of hydrogen everywhere - hence no geopolitical energy wars. The United States has had a fusion energy program for at least thirty years now; at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory there's a football-field sized laser called the National Ignition Facility (NIF) that's getting close to doing real fusion experiments at the energy-breakeven level. It's been proven that scaling up the laser energy would produce gain.
So, for a practical action to consider, write your Congress critters (Democrat John Barrow and Republican Nathan Deal are Georgians on the House Energy and Commerce Committee) and lean on them to advance the timeline of the NIF-successor laser and on engineering studies of high radiation doses on reactor materials such as optical glasses.
For the nearer term, consider investing in solar photovoltaic energy. Many ways to do this - there are some pure play companies such as Sunpower (SPWR) and Yingli (YGE) that have unfortunately God-awful P/E ratios (which is why I do not own them but I'm watching them for a future buying opportunity). But perhaps a cleverer way to invest here is to look for mortgage companies and homebuilders (both of which are real cheap now) that will partner with photovoltaic suppliers to offer solar PV systems as new home options and hence carry the cost into the mortgage, making it way easier for people to buy. Centex (CTX) is doing this, also some regional homebuilders in California (Disclaimer: I own CTX).
I hope that helps a bit. -- Greg in South of South Georgia
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Much less the candidates,
[Read the article: Let's have a presidential debate on science]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]does any of the distinguished signatories - each of which is and has been pretty secure in their positions for a long time - have any idea how much of our scientific talent is underutilized? By way of some though perhaps not much exaggeration, how many physics Ph.D.s drive cabs for a living? Don't look to professional societies like the American Physical Society to give accurate answers, as they rely on voluntary-reply surveys which strongly skew to those who are stable and well-off.
Until it's known what's out there, any push for more science talent through the educational pipeline may be tragically misguided.
I would argue that - like medical doctors who now have to learn business and law and coding, for God's sake, instead of concentrating on what they loved to do at the outset of their lives - so it is true that scientists must now be good sales people and self-promoters and grants-maze navigators and tacticians in the hustle for dollars.
Decades ago, there were still ways to do long-term exploratory research in both private sector and educational environments. That took a huge turn toward short term, narrow focus, milestone-metrologized, bottom-line-oriented, PowerPoint producing patchwork that in honesty should not be called science.
To imagine the Presidential candidates having even a wink of awareness of this is a laugh. Sadly, I can't see the roster of comfortable Who's Who notables mentioned in the article knowing much about this either.
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@dawnlp
[Read the article: Let's have a presidential debate on science]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think anonymous was being sarcastic.