Images for A Solemn Song

I really like the simplicity of this song and decided it needed some imagery to go along with it. It makes me think of the life cycle of a bird, so simple and innocent yet beautiful.

Writing Revolution- Best thing since movable type?

   

I'd consider myself book lover (bibliophile.) I don't just mean I love reading, or the information that I get from books, but I've had enough memorable experiences with paper and print that I am emotionally attached to books. I enjoy the experience of reading imagining the ideas and places presented in the text. I also dig bookish people, librarians and the culture that has grown around books and I know I'm not the only one. It's natural for us as individuals and collectively to be sentimental about our paper past. Still, I recognize it is an emotional attachment and if there really is a better way to store and convey information than we probably should and will adopt it. We might develop a relationship with that new medium as well. Around the time of Gutenberg people probably feared the vast implications of that new form. They might have thought that printed letters were so inhuman as compared to the calligraphy and beauty that was in the hand written word. Or authorities considered the lowered the quality of information because it wasn't personally checked by a monk scribe. I think we can all look back though and see that improvement, or invention or innovation or whatever you call it and acknowledge that it has largely helped and continues to benefit humanity. In fact, on the top of my list of things that make me optimistic for the future of humanity I would definitely put the increasing literacy* and availability of literature as one of the top, maybe number 1.
 

Since then, printing technology has continued to improve but not until recently has there been another complete overhaul. First, personal computers re-thought desks and may have helped us at work but they still didn't quite replace the book. (I think its interesting that Steve Jobs who was influential in the death of written material appreciated very much fonts, typeface and feel of letters, its almost as if he, the father of the revolution, wanted to preserve a vestige of a culture he was about to lay waste to, but was I'll post about him later.) Then came the kindle. Now we have these book-like tablets that can hold loads of books and don't waste paper or have to buy a new editions each time there are changes or edits. The pros and cons are many and the debate continues where ever people consider buying a tablet.
In the end, you can debate it all you want, but price tends to be one of the best guides of how practical things are. If I can get the same book more cheaply and quickly on a tablet, eventually the shift will happen, though as yet print has proven resilient. Another salient advantages of a tablet is as a space saver, so where space is at a premium like in a small apartment, in the city or trudging through the desert sand, sweatily lugging around a bunch of books, a tablet should win. The fall out of of the subsequent shift to digital has already been substantial: small or weakly managed newspaper, magazine and book companies have been gone out of business and many jobs lost(1), although some larger well capitalized companies with forward thinking management have successfully transitioned to online and e-books. But the floodgates are now open and I don't think the digital wave will relent.

    We can guess that the next in line are slower moving institutions like schools and I still wonder what will become of libraries if books become obsolete? One version of a book-less library attempt is already underway in San Antonio Texas. (4)
In schools, billions of dollars and more importantly, children's minds are at stake on when an how tablets will relate to  textbooks. With the promise of didactic games and easy monitoring of students activity, convincing academia is all too easy. Teachers agree, it makes and sense so why hasn't it happened yet?  Well, while there may be a huge potential future in filling schools with tablets, who exactly will stake a claim in this wide open territory is currently in serious contest. Doing it right is what really matters and real improvements don't usually happen the way we expect them to. Trying to get something as complex as a computer that is as intuitive and durable, in short, re-inventing the textbook, is not exactly child's play. In LA they've tried just throwing full size i-pads at kids with mixed results.(2)  Remember, we're dealing with kids, probably one the most un-predictable force in the universe.  In Bridge, the for-profit, mass-education enterprise in Africa, they use tablets in class in a different way, to give the curriculum solely to the teacher. Personally, I'm kind betting on Amplify as a major player in the US. They are probably most aggressively pursuing and trying to profit from tablets in schools though with no major success yet.(3) So yes, tablets may largely replace books in schools, but we can expect some failures and wasted government and corporate resources before someone gets it right. I'm sure though, with the right incentive and vision some very smart, motivated and focused people could get it done, but when those elements will combine nobody knows for certain. My own relationship with a tablet has come a long way, I started out neglectful but have since found myself using it on occasion, still its not anywhere close to books yet.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Literacy_rate_world.svg
**Other episodes http://vimeo.com/11891919 , http://vimeo.com/11891958 , http://vimeo.com/11891958# ,
http://vimeo.com/11892454, http://vimeo.com/11892516 also interesting http://darwinslibrary.com/
1) http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2012/04/four-ways-newspapers-are-failing-at.html
2) http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-ipad-adventure-20131120,0,942881.story#axzz2n3JmPH8H http://www.macworld.com/article/2065460/ipads-in-schools-the-right-way-to-do-it.html http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/10/25/240731070/a-schools-ipad-initiative-brings-optimism-and-skepticism
3) http://mashable.com/2013/08/29/news-corp-education-tablets/
http://www.geekwire.com/2013/tech-tablets-schools-mix/
http://slashdot.org/story/13/10/08/1952215/nc-school-district-recalls-its-amplify-tablets-after-10-break-in-under-a-month
4)http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-nations-first-bookless-public-library-system-opens-20140107,0,7098801.story#axzz2pmce0gj5

Refracting Sunset

 

Refracting Sunset 

Acrylic

This one is more of concept art I guess. I was thinking of an image that explores the nature of light, not so much what it illuminates, but the light itself.  A continuous wave that bounces around until it gets absorbed or some of the wavelengths are absorbed  producing color and shade by shade eventually darkening. This is what turned out. Kind of looks like a cubist sunset, a stain-glass or  as Ross says "diamond sunset." It'll probably end up on the wall at Sun Terrace.  I might at some point to do another variation maybe using neon colors or making it more symmetrical or using a computer.

The Thoughtful Investor- The Intelligent Investor for the Modern Mind

  Benjamin Graham's modern equivalent is this guy: Seth Klarman. Some may think that Warren Buffet is living out Graham's principles, but more than anyone Klarman really mirrors Graham's thinking.* Like Graham, Klarman grew up Jewish and on the East Coast. They both did well in school and had plenty of opportunities in academia but decided to take to money management instead. Like Graham, Klarman's greatest claim to fame was a book he published: Margin of Safety- Risk Averse Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor bleck! what an unappealing mouthful of a name! I'll just call it the Thoughtful Investor.
     The weird thing about the Thoughtful Investor is that the book itself is kind of an object lesson in investing. If you look on Amazon right now its selling for about $2000 used! As happens with many stocks this thing is way over-valued and if you are a real value investor you wouldn't think of paying that much for a silly book. I think this also is telling of the kind of ridiculous thinking that goes on among the types of people have their head in finance.  People in these circles produce the outrageous thinking that paying that kind of money for something so simple could actually be worth it! If you want to read the book and are a normal human being that doesn't throw around $2000, just look for it online, there are PDF's of the text floating around out there or e-mail me and I'll send you a copy.
        So what does Klarman talk about that is so valuable? Really, its mostly a modern, version of The Intelligent Investor. The language is more polished, and the approaches are more up to date, but the principles are much the same.  Where Graham used Price/ Earning, Book Value and Dividends, Klarman uses Net Present Value, Liquidation Value and Stock market Value to gauge price. He defines Net Present Value as the discounted value of all future free cash flows a business is expected to generate. Klarman also mentions private market value as a rule of thumb which I completely agree with, to give an idea of a businesses value when the market's going nuts. One useful resource I've found for private company info http://www.privco.com/  Klarman also brought to my attention spin-offs as a re-occurring source of investing opportunities.
     Even though Klarman isn't as original as Graham, he makes some great points and brings a modern intellect to Grahams principles. He has greatly added to the value investing cannon by writing and  practicing value investing and is definitely a heavy hitter in the world of finance.

Klarman's Fund https://www.baupost.com/

*One difference I see between Buffet and Klarman is their holding time. Klarman thinks its necessary to "continually compare their current holdings in order to ensure they own only the most undervalued opportunities available." Buffet says "When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever." I think Buffet is a less likely to sell just because he sees something better out there, while Klarman might try a little too hard to demand the best bargain as did Graham.
     Klarman also says: "Few value investors own technology companies, banks or insurance companies because they have un-analyzable assets and liabilities." If he sticks to this, it would be a huge difference between him and Buffet, Buffet obviously has no problem investing in banks like Wells Fargo and his first and most successful investments were GEICO and Illinois National Bank and Trust.  
     And finally, Klarman also demands hard assets to provide safety while Buffet is more comfortable with a strong moat whether its tangible or not.

Other quotes that I found interesting, useful or just plain liked in his book:

 "Value, like beauty is often in the eye of the beholder."

Once you adopt a value-investment strategy, any other investment behavior starts to seem like gambling.

Some people act responsibly and deliberately most of the time but go berserk when investing money. It may take months or years of work and discipline to earn the money and only a few minutes to invest it. Some spend more time buying a stereo or camera than buying stocks. Many regard the stock market as a way to make money without working rather than a way to invest capital in order to earn a decent return.

Greedy short-term-oriented investors may lose sight of a sound mathematical reason for avoiding loss. It is very difficult to recover from even on large, loss, which could literally destroy all at once the beneficial effects of many years of investment success.  

Downfalls For Institutional Investors: Size, Self Imposed Constraints and Willful Ignorance of Fundamental Analysis.

I believe indexing will turn out to be just another Wall Street fad. (REALLY??!!)

Above all, investors must avoid swinging at bad pitches.

If the prevailing stock price is not warranted by the underlying value, it will eventually fall.

Value investors are not super sophisticated analytical wizards who create and apply intricate computer models to find attractive opportunities or assess underlying value. The hard part is discipline to avoid the many unattractive pitches, patience to wait for the right pitch and judgment to know when to swing.

There are only a few things investors can do about risk: diversify adequately, hedge when appropriate and invest with a margin of safety.

Many investors insist on affixing exact values to their investments, seeking precision in an imprecise world, but business value cannot be precisely determined.

How do value investors deal with the analytical necessity to predict the unpredictable? The only answer is conservatism.

 Investors relying on conservative historical standards of valuation in determining private-market value will benefit from a true margin of safety, while others’ margin of safety blows with the financial winds.

Like Einstein’s theory of relativity this (Soros's theory of reflexivity) may slightly affect calculations but only in rare or extreme circumstances, and for the most part fundamental analysis is still on largely right.

Spinoffs seem to frequently be undervalued and large emerging industries seem to be frequently overvalued like railroad companies were, air freight was, computer companies were.

...it is important to remember that numbers are not an end in themselves. Rather they are a means to understand what is really happening in a company.

Good investment ideas are rare and valuable things, which must be ferreted out assiduously.

Value investing by its very nature is contrarian. Value investing exists where the herd is selling, unaware or ignoring.

Information generally follows the 80/20 rule: the first 80 percent of the available information is gathered in the first 20 percent of the time spent. 

No one understands a business and its prospects better than the management.

Arbitrage is a riskless transaction that generates profits from temporary pricing inefficiencies between markets.

Although trading based on inside information is illegal, the term has never been clearly defined.

And my very favorite! "Value, like beauty is often in the eye of the beholder."