Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing

On the heels of my struggles with retirement accounts, I decided that a little more financial literacy wouldn't hurt me. But history is a lot more interesting than finance, so I decided to find a history book. Luckily for me, a co-host of a podcast that I occasionally listen to (Planet Money by NPR) published a book on the subject just a couple years ago. Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing by Jacob Goldstein, perfectly slots into the category of informative books that are easy to read and informative (for example, see Humble Pi). 

I've never thought too deeply about the origins of money and the modern financial system. Even personal finance is a weak point for me. However this work covered the most important ideas, with quite a bit of focus on the systems leading to the creation of banks, currencies, and stocks. I'd known the some background ideas - that individual lenders initially would give their own "banknotes", that the Dutch East India Company helped pave the way to shareholders, that there was something called "the gold standard". But it was all vague. And as for the gold standard, in my head it was basically just a conversion rate from dollars to gold. Goldstein does a great job of explaining these complex concepts. 

Due to the recent publication date, contemporary topics, including those directly affecting daily life to this day, are discussed near the end. This includes the 2008 financial crash and development of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. In fact, the last may have been one of the most eye-opening parts for me. Given frequency with which cryptocurrencies are discussed in media and the news, I thought that I had a pretty solid grasp on its history. However, they date back much farther than I thought, and took an even more convoluted path than I knew.

I'm still far from being a financial guru. I don't even know if I will retain half the knowledge that this book has to offer (probably not, but here's to hoping). But I definitely now know a lot more than I had before and enjoyed the process. Also, I did learn the most important idea - money is trust, nothing more. Lose the trust and money stops existing.

Money Monster

Yee-haw

Yippie-yee

Money for you

Money for me.

Ding-dong

Flim-Flam

This all is

A lie and scam.

Joke's on you,

Joke's on me?

Give it all

Away for free.

January 7, 2023

 

When trying to deal with retirement accounts, I became frustrated. One thought led to the next, and I remembered Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, inspiring me to attempt to express the nonsensical nature in a manner inspired by Mr. Carroll.

Cafes and Happiness

I love coffee. Perhaps even excessively. Without a doubt, it is my favorite vice, and since caffeine is the most socially accepted drug, I am able to indulge in my cravings in public as much as my heart desires (well, at least as much my wallet allows I suppose). Interestingly, coffee is largely credited with helping create the western world. With the advent of coffee houses, many of the brightest minds found new places to gather and enjoy beverages which, unlike ale or other alcoholic drinks, did not dull the wits. Coffee houses helped launch some of the oldest companies (ever heard of Lloyd's of London? Yep, that was a coffee shop if I remember history correctly) because people with a common interest would use them as gathering places.

Usually, I drink coffee at home, simply because drinking out gets expensive. But sometimes you have to treat yourself. As I write this, I've been enjoying a cozy little coffee shop in my new city. There's a lot of small cafes here, so I suppose I'll have to try a new one every time for a while. There's just something special when you can sit in a comfortable environment and are given delicious, slightly bitter and acidic espresso in a properly sized cup on a nice dish. And a proper cup and dish, not the single use ones which still proliferate since the pandemic hit. When ever I'm working on a creative endeavor, as I was prior to getting distracted by this post, these set ups make me particularly productive. The greatest part? This one I'm in right now wasn't more expensive than the chains, while providing a better environment, better drinks, and the knowledge that you're patronizing a local small business, rather than a multinational corporation. 

Please excuse the poor photography - I hadn't expected to be writing this post and so I hadn't properly staged it. By the time I wrote this, both the espresso and the biscotti were just happy memories.

Worlds of Fantasy

As I read Riordan

I thought I might be

A son of Poseidon

For I loved the sea.

I tried talking to horses

Using water to heal

And confirmed to myself

That Greek myths weren't real.

Reading Tolkien made me

Want to craft the one ring

And seize the power

That it would bring.

But rings granting power

Aren't found in this world

Except when they're mentioned

In the legends of old.

My attempts with the Force

Proved fruitless as well

But there is still use

In these stories we tell.

From Potter to Eragon

Dragons and elves

Have worlds of their own

But reveal our inner selves.

These fantasy worlds

Should be known to each lad

To teach him to tell

Who's good and who's bad.

Aug. 16, 2019

Sea Lions

On beaches and rocks

The sea lions sleep

And dream of wonders

They see in the deep.

They swam and they ate

And now came ashore

To pose for some photos

The tourists are sure.

People are watching

The lions don't mind

They're dreaming of fish

On which they had dined.

October 13-16, 2018

 

Cigs and Society

    One of my favorite podcasts recently did a couple of episodes about the cigarette industry's impact on the modern world. Not the effect of the cigarettes themselves, but of some rather unexpected effects on our daily lives. The podcast is called "Behind the Bastards" and is hosted by Robert Evans, a tough and courageous journalist who is has reported from the front lines of many conflicts, including the Iraq War, and has done a significant amount of reporting about the current rise of far-right armed groups in the United States. Evans has a rather left-leaning approach and a slightly eccentric style, but I really enjoy his style. Furthermore, his podcast "Behind the Bastards" is one of my favorites, providing in-depth and well-researched chronicles about the lives of not-so-good people and the stuff that they did to be called "Bastards". Very entertaining and informative, but not for everyone. Anyway, there were a few parts from those two episodes that I wanted to share.

    First - I hadn't realized that one of my childhood hobbies, would probably have gotten me hooked on cigarettes. Sounds pretty bad, but it was a fairly innocuous collection - hockey cards. Yep. The idea was to attract younger buyers, specifically targeting the young male audience. Each pack contained trading cards with baseball players, pin-up girls, etc (and regularly introduced new categories) to convince the youth to continue buying new more to complete sets. And the collectable hockey cards I had? They're a decedent of that sales strategy, luckily sans nicotine.

    Next up: a better integration of men and women. We all know about Rosie the Riveter and how the the world wars did their part in incorporating women into the workforce. But cigarettes helped social integration. The traditional after meal cigarette at social gatherings helped the women join, since they were not as welcome while it had been cigars. Look at the little cancer sticks, democratizing lung cancer and making everyone welcome.

    Finally, the idea of thin models owes quite a lot to cigarettes. Even aside from the "Cigarette Diets" (probably not approved by modern dieticians), big tobacco helped push the skinny narrative. Lucky Strikes even had a campaign, pushing women to "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet". Funnily enough, candy had helped kids get into smoking with their chocolate cigarettes. Although, to be fair, as a child I'd also pretended to smoke on plenty of occasions, except I used baby carrots, Gen Z's version of the once popular snack.

These are only a couple brief notes regarding this topic. It's frankly amazing how much of what we consider normal in day-to-day life stems from potentially problematic sources, but was sanitized by the decades.

If you do decide to try listening, the episodes in question are linked below:

Part One

Part Two

The Path

Fear, pain, anger, wrath

I am on a dangerous path.

Learning self control,

No matter how droll,

Will pull me from the edge.

August 3, 2021

Humble Pi

    Recently, I wrote about SuperFreakonomics, the disappointing follow up to the much enjoyed (by me) original Freakonomics. Now, I have found a worthy successor, with a small caveat. It's a mathematician's take on numbers and how they affect the world, rather than an economist's interpretation of incentives. If you are the type of reader who involuntarily shudders at the words binary permutation, or resonance, this book is not for you. If not, I recommend finding Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World by Matt Parker as soon as you finish reading this review.

    Excellent writing and a great sense of humor greatly contribute to the analysis of bad math and its effects on the world. Much like Freakonomics, it reads amazingly easily for a nonfiction work. However, content wise, it might be closer to Henry Petroski's To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design. When discussing how issues in math affect the world, Parker takes care to break down the chain of events leading to the failures. It's amazing to consider how small errors snowball and lead to catastrophic events in a variety of life's aspects. Everything is mentioned - from trying to design an accurate calendar, to rollover errors in computers leading to radiation poisoning, to a US Navy ship becoming unresponsive because its computer could not handle a divide by zero error. Overall, I easily recommend Humble Pi. Also, I listened to the audiobook version, and attest to great narration.

    Funny story connected to this book: I was walking to class, listening to the portion about the Challenger disaster aftermath. In it, the question of the shuttle's SRBs, which are thin-walled pressure vessels and thus easily deformed, arises. Specifically, the focus was on the difficulties associated in verifying that it is a perfect cylinder. Twenty minutes later, the topic of verifying whether or not a rocket is perfectly cylindrical came up during a conversation about 3D Digital Image Correlation. And no, we didn't get there via the Challenger. Or even SRBs. Textile composite shear modulus measurement was the topic at hand. Good thing Humble Pi also has a section discussing probabilities and coincidences...

Oh Canada, The Ski and Riding Land

Closing out my travels for 2022 was a trip to Mount Tremblant in Canada, to spend five days skiing and snowboarding. Well, it was supposed to be five days, but the weather had other plans. It's a bit of a drive to get there, but a totally worth it. Pretty standard first two days, but the giant cyclone hitting most of the continental US on 12/26 hit us pretty hard as well. As in, the mountain closed for the first time since 1998. It kept snowing the next two days as well, creating amazing deep powder. Ultimately, what was supposed to be riding Wednesday - Sunday got switched around a bit. We rode Wednesday and Thursday, rested on Friday, rode with a bit of a caveat on Saturday, and had amazing riding on Sunday.

By Sunday, we'd seen about 70 cm of fresh snowfall in a bit over two days. We were ready when the mountain opened and hit the deep, loose powder even on the trails. So much so, that at one point the front of my board dipped a bit and went under. I came to a stop buried up to mid-thigh in snow and had to dig to try to find my bindings and extricate both myself and the board. 

Saturday had a bit of a caveat due to the lingering aftershocks of Friday's storm. There were still high winds and power issues, so only one lift was running. The line was awful. So, my father and I took matters into our own hands and hiked up the slopes several times instead of spending the time waiting. Funny enough, the time walked vs the time we would have stood was almost the same. Tiring fun, but totally worth the effort, since I got some awesome photos. 

At Tremblant's base, there is a pedestrian village with shops, food, etc. There is a little cafe which I scouted out during a previous visit with a friend. I'm happy to say that it is still serving up great coffee, pastries, and lunches. 

Now for some photos:

And Burton, if you need photos of your boards, I'm happy to sell :)

New Year, Old Me

Dear Reader,

    This is getting published on January 1, 2023. At least it is according to what we call the Gregorian calendar. Not that Pope Gregory was the one who created it, and not that it's still exactly the same one that he popularized, but it is what it is. 

    Rants about calendars aren't the point of this letter. What I truly wanted to say is Happy Holidays. I really hope that everyone had a chance to enjoy it, preferably with loved ones, be they family, friends, or anyone else. 

    This is a very special time of year in my opinion. As a child, every New Year's Eve we had a tradition of cleaning the house and taking a very good shower. Specifically, for some reason I remember putting effort into really soaping up between my toes. The point is that traditions matter - they mean more than the actions themselves. If you ask me what I did for all my birthday parties, I could name a couple of them - the time my parents rented the rock climbing gym, the gymnastics gym... But I know how we celebrated our New Years. The family lunches, going into the city for fireworks, midnight with family friends, a movie afterwards to top it off... And these memories really stick with you, be they washing your toes, or watching The NeverEnding Story while laying on the floor of friend's house. Traditions matter. Holidays matter. 

    I hope you had an amazing holiday period. And may joy, happiness, love, luck, and all that good stuff join you on another trip around the Sun.

 -Medved