Christmas Tele-Kaleidoscope

As I sit here reminiscing about Christmases past over a cup of coffee with the tree lights and wreath providing illumination, I surprise myself feeling bittersweet pangs. Amidst the happy memories of family gatherings and joyful children, I find myself also missing the people that are gone and the times that sped so quickly by. So many Christmas days vie for remembrance, first with my brothers and parents as children, then as adults, then those hectic wonderful years with my own small children, and now they too are adults. My memories turn into a kaleidoscope of people and places, the years telescoping into a panoply of ever-shifting remembrances. Every year has its joys, and its sorrows, but perhaps the importance of Christmas is that it focuses heavily on the joys.
 

I twist the kaleidoscope, and memories of the parents' house in Hollandia come into view, their dreams on the lake perhaps not coming to fruition as they'd planned, but in retrospect I see that all the important aspects actually did, and somehow I think Mom knew this aspect better than Dad, and so she was always the happier one. The Christmas tree in the corner of the living room where it always was, probably placed there to put it as far as possible from the sparks of the fire place, and adorned with the re-used tinsel and aging garland (I guess it was new back then, once upon a time) and burning-hot incandescent bulbs. My brothers and I, as small children with our trucks and toys, then with another twist as growing boys with bikes and balls, but always the four of us and just the four of us with never an added guest. And once or twice a rare Christmas with snow on the ground, always hoped-for but rarely experienced.
 

Twist again and it's our huge tree in the Dover house, with too many presents as we went overboard in our happy celebration of our lives. Those were truly joyous years, with too little sleep and too much rushing around to get that must-have item, or to balance out the number and value of presents so no child was favored. That tree was a beast, with too many hours hanging thousands of lights, and now it lives in the attic as a daunting recollection. By then the brothers all had separate lives of their own, so that aspect rotated away and my own family took center stage, and happily so. And again there were one or two white Christmases, including one where I helped the older kids make a modest snowman.
 

Another turn and it's the harder years, where we strove mightily to maintain the joy at Christmas and freeze every happy minute, as I knew the years with Jason and aging parents were numbered and I perhaps tried too hard to capture the moments. But the happy memories abounded, with Christmas dinner at Henry's instead of the folks' house as they no longer had the energy to host the growing group, so it was a split affair with presents at our house then the broader family get-together. Though sometimes brothers were missing, it was always a large boisterous group with cousins and in-laws in varying proportions, and there was that one Christmas when everybody was in one place, all the brothers and spouses, and we fortunately took a family picture with all of us, not realizing it would be the last.
 

Another twist and our kids are teens and tweens, and we're juggling real cars as well as toy ones, and kids are running off for other engagements with friends and creating their own holiday memories. We deliberately decided not to be demanding parents that required all kids to make our holidays a priority, so eventually there were trips with friends, then older kids moving away. We lost Jason, and Mom and Dad, and suddenly Christmas was as much about remembrance as making new memories.
 

Slide another year or two and the number of presents under the tree were much fewer, as young adults desired fewer but more expensive items, and there were literally fewer people to with whom to celebrate. Now we're to the adult-children years, but before grand-children, and with COVID travel is less advised. Divorces split away some in-laws, and left new gaps and surely bittersweet memories in their wake, while new marriages bring a new dynamic as others come in. Most of the kids have moved away, alone or as couples, and I am satisfied by such as it is as it should be with kids finding their own lives. I am content that all the kids were home for Thanksgiving, and I've been fortunate enough to see all my brothers individually. It's certainly been quite a while since all four have been here at once, and the brief trip to Pennsylvania reminds me how much I enjoy having more of us together.
 

So here on a quiet Christmas morning, with no snow (at 70F+ it's not going to snow today!), looking at our small, simple tree and eternal wreath, I let the kaleidoscope spin, and I am flooded by a range of emotions -- both mine and those of others in the frame -- as the years, people, and emotions overlap in flowing juxtapositions. Surely some are not only Christmas moments, but these holiday frames stand out as bright, focused instances. I am glad I deliberately froze some such moments as they came along, knowing that years go fleeting by, and that the emotions attached to others help tag them into memories as well..
 

Surprisingly, I find the kaleidoscope also hints at future Christmases, some at our house and in other places, with other trees, and other fireplaces, and with grandchildren and others I do not yet know gleefully tearing wrapping paper. I sit at the edge and watch contentedly, for they do not know as I do that while the joy of Christmas sometimes involves presents, the happiness comes from togetherness and experiencing the joy of others that we love. There are also shadows there, hinting at future losses, and so I know I must live the joys in the moment, capturing them and adding them to the kaleidoscope for future years.

Focus on the Car-Lite Positives

For those of us who have traveled a bit, and seen the car-free or car-lite centers of European towns with quaint streets from Medieval times, strolled the quiet walkable/bikeable streets of the Netherlands after riding their excelling trains, been in India during the age of cycling and mopeds and then again after in their age of cars, or wandered through the rebuilt cities of China with their wide multi-mode streets along with the ancestral parks with wandering paths, the impact of cars on our lives is perhaps a bit more noticeable than for our countrymen at large.

I've recently been fond of the technocratic side of cycling and autos, delving into the impact of cars on city pollution, noise, emissions, and hazards, and the relative math of transportation modes, and the uncertain Faustian bargain of EV's and self-driving cars.  I've advocated for cycling for years, from the days of recreation pathways (rails to trails and river-edge paths, etc.) to the seize-the-lane notion of shared roadways (and the now-infamous sharrows), to more recent complete streets with marked bike lanes, to current best-practices with bollards, bike-boxes, green-wave lights, and dedicated side-paths.

I've done the math on land area dedicated to cars, the drivers of sprawl, and the impacts on happiness and health.  I've seen the analysis of ponzi-economics of suburbia, and that of transit- and housing-deprived cities.  For me, the options are clear and the choices are obvious.

What I must now admit is that painting a data-driven picture of what is wrong with car-centric cities and lifestyles in the hopes of winning converts is a losing approach.  For every deeply-considered numbers-thinking convert, there are a dozen more who immediately get their hackles up and react defensively to protect their cars.  Since the early days of cars, some drivers have seen cyclists and pedestrians as enemies, and it's certainly no better now.  We're now maybe 4 generations into the great experiment of post-war highways and car-centric lives, and most drivers today outside of the largest cities have never known transit, and fewer still effective mass transit.

What fraction of ambitious young Americans have been in a car-lite city? What fraction of busy family-age parents have spent much time living on quiet, car-free street?  How many have lusted over a sharp, expensive automobile, or simply dreamed of the day they turned 16 and could drive their first jalopy?


So, now that I've decided that deep understanding isn't enough, what is a marketing approach that will work?  In my business experience, real-world examples that can be experienced first-hand work better than presentations and brochures.  Maybe what we need instead of books and articles stating all the facts, is some feel-better examples here in the US of areas that "work" without cars?

For me, reading "Curbing Traffic" by the Bruntlett's was the turning point for my thinking.   Sure, they had lots of good examples and discussion on infrastructure along with lifestyle color, but this latest book focuses a lot more on the lived experience of a car-lite existence than their earlier book "Building the Cycling City", or another great book "Copenhagenize" by Collville-Andersen, or Speck's excellent "Walkable City".  Rather than complaining about the ills of our modern suburbs (which are indeed many!), let's present a lifestyle as it could be - healthier, friendlier, safer, more independent, more equitable, cheaper, and along the way greener, more sustainable, and less CO2 generating.

Let's not "war on cars" in the mainstream, however richly deserved that may be; instead, let's just ignore cars and quietly relegate them to longer odd-ball trips or those with painful commutes, and paint a more wholesome picture of a life where walking and cycling works for most trips and we simply don't need a car for many errands.  Let's meet struggling young families where they are (and who among us hasn't struggled in some way during those early child years?) and show a better way to live, with a richer world of local interactions for young children and more autonomy for teens.  As we accomplish this, let's help those already without cars -- the elderly, infirm, and financially disadvantaged -- have a good life.

So, we need examples of livable neighborhoods.  Where are such places in the US?

Cars: How did our worst idea become our only idea?

 

I saw a question on social media about "how did our worst idea become our only idea?" in response to car traffic.

Surprisingly, I know the answer to this, both practically and theoretically.  Get comfortable and see what you think of my traffic manifesto:



Network theory says that the value of a network grows as a function of the nodes connected, generally on the order of a square law (the factor is argued, but not the general statement).  This is known as Metcalfe's Law.  We already collectively knew this for millennia, which is why paths, streets, and roads have grown to connect everything related to humans, and you hear stuff like "all roads lead to Rome" and such.  The dawn of the telephone age formalized Metcalfe's Law, and the Internet has provided another data point, and recently Amazon and AirBnB have yet again.  With any "iteration with preferential selection" situation, you end up with winner-take-all patterns, as more users add push for destinations to connect, and more destinations push more users to connect, and more connections expand the network.

As for human transport, not much differed if all were on foot, or some were on horses (note that everything that people complained about cars was once said about horses and carriages, which too often ran over poor kids with little repercussion).   A carriage could go too fast for existing traffic, but get to more places conveniently, so all would naturally gravitate to horses if they could.  But horses are expensive, so a secondary feedback loop prevented a horse-traffic takeover.

In the 1800's, railroads arose for the same reason.  A steam train is fast compared to a horse, and much cheaper for an individual trip/load, so rail took over for longer-distant connectivity, and with later electrification streetcars came along also for local travel.  Trains and trams have complex and expensive infrastructure, so it's hard to have rail as a door-to-door solution, hence ToD and DoT became valid concepts.  Rail did not really compete with streets, other than to create dangerous at-grade crossing - the networks connect and overlap, but do not directly compete.  Rail did compete with roads between towns, but generally rural right-of-way land was pretty cheap so dual networks evolved. 

After 1875, a bunch of interesting things happened.  Electrification brought along sewing machines and washing machines for the home, and completely changed the central power model of factories.  That's and interesting story....but also at the same time came the bicycle.  Most people today do not know that bicycles quietly took over the world after the Penny Farthing (and its coining of the term "took a header") gave way to the "safety bicycle".  Cycling manufacture around the world exploded, and paved streets, which were already common in big European cities, grew in expanse.   Bikes were cheap compared to a horse, and cleaner, and became popular with men going to newly distributed craft jobs driven by machine electrification and with women with new spare time due to sewing/washing machines. 

This is where we see "iteration with preferential selection" playing its game -- for every trip, a person could decide what conveyance to use, and for each purchase, whether to buy a horse, a bike, a new pair of shoes, etc.  Most people did not buy railcars (though some did), and many could not buy horses (though some did, and complained a LOT about cyclists taking "their" streets), but they could buy a bike.  With each new bike, another person could easily reach more distant destinations, and with each new cyclist there was value to have housing and shops a little further out.  At the same time, electric trams/streetcars were invented, and these too used street space in cities, but were relatively few in number so the time-space occupancy was small and speeds were limited to manage risk acceptably.  Theory would say that soon enough, cycling and streetcars should take over, and cities would also expand.  And they did.

So, in essence, bicycles and streetcars could leverage the same network to better advantage than previous transmission protocols, and yet coexist, so the network adapted to match.   Nobody notices the history of cycling now, as bicycles are small and fit pretty well into a world with lots of people, some horses, and a few carriages.  I'm sure they had parking issues, but this doesn't much show up in the "hard assets" we see as streets have evolved.  Streetcars are still remembered, given the "streetcar suburb" housing layouts and continued existence of derelict rails peeking through here and there.

Then along came cars.  Cars offered the same value that horses enjoyed, and the same issues, only more-so.  When there were only a few, they were owned by the wealthy, and the same issues were handled the same way: "don't get in my way!".  Since as we've seen the network connectivity value is driven by network size, and that is determined by speed (given a static density), going fast was desirable.  Early on, we had a few fast cars trying to go more places, and cars competed with bicycles and horses and then streetcars, but the secondary limit of price was still in place.  Note that cars also competed with rail, where connectivity existed between towns.

As car prices dropped, the iteration and preferential selection mechanism did its thing, and as we know that for any trip one can choose whether to walk, bike, ride, or drive, and often the car was (and is) the fastest solution from A to B, so it gets picked.

But over time, as car volumes increased, the network itself had to grow, and the combination of demand for road space and parking plus the growing hazard to other traffic types first impact street usage, and then the roads, and finally the city layouts themselves.  As with bikes and streetcars, higher speeds enable cities to grow at the edges, but the desire for connectivity is insatiable (Metcalfe's Law is even bigger than linear, remember!), so speeds must tend to go up as well.  Unfortunately, the demand for speed and space presses back on the structure of cities, which responded by becoming less dense (since costs are lower at the edges) and more car-centric, as increasingly each trip choice would favor the car.  Where streetcar suburbs tend to be dense and close-in, car suburbs tend to be sprawling and thus further out.

What limits car traffic?  We have seen that this is actually known, with the Downs-Thomson Paradox -- it grows until another mode of connectivity is faster.  This is precisely what the "iteration with preferential selection" networking model would say -- if another mode works better, it'll get picked.  But now we know that cars, bikes, and peds (and rail) do not really share the same network without friction.  Cars took over streets completely, so to use another mode a new network has to be built, and this requires explicit decisions that are NOT part of the daily iterative selection and preference process. 

There is absolutely nothing new about this, as transit planners have been saying for a long time that headway frequency is critical, and yet the destination coverage is critical too.  The square law of network theory says that transit will be pulled toward covering more destinations, but the preferential selection per trip says that transit will only be used when it is the fastest choice. 

This also means that on-street buses, as in Tulsa, will never successfully compete with cars.  It is theoretically and practically impossible....the only point favoring on-street buses is cost, and even that requires public support.  The only people who will use such buses are people who do not have cars, and that makes sense as a choice for them ONLY IF the cost is lower, AND their destinations are reachable by bus, AND the time is not too long.  For others, a bus might make sense if a lethargic bus connection is a small inconvenience on the end of a faster trip using another mode.  So, if you have a fast train into town and then a slow bus, you might still see the combination as better than a slow drive with parking hassles and expense. 

So, what does this say:

• Alternative choices about transit architecture can NEVER be made by auto interests, including drivers themselves.  Once you have paid for a car, the incremental cost per trip is small, and it will self-justify the auto -- it's a stable and durable state.
• On-street options, like ordinary buses, will not be acceptable trip options UNLESS they are prioritized over other traffic.  Buses are impacted by the same delays as cars, yet with fewer destinations available and more stops to slow them.  BRT will only attract drivers if given dedicated lanes and priority.
• Parking is part of the problem in that convenient, free parking favors cars in multiple ways.  If parking costs more, autos are less affordable as a per-trip option.  If parking is hard to find, it adds to the effective trip time, and impacts the trip choice trade-off IF other options are available.
• If all traffic is by car and bus, car traffic will tend to increase until the travel cost (time and money) exceeds the trip value, unless there is a point where another mode makes sense.  In some cities without transit this happens when walking is faster than traffic-jammed streets, yet even for this situation cars hold an edge by making walking physically hazardous, noxious, and long due to sprawl.  Without options besides cars, the network will favor cars and nothing else, not even human life in general.  You'll be able to go anywhere in theory, but most trips won't be worth the time and hassle, and crashes and pollution will continue to be major issues for humanity.  
  
• Thus, separate network infrastructure is critical to enable reasonable choices along with decent living.  With convenient options for transit and cycling, or even walking, cities can be denser and more connected, AND car travel will work better too.  Oddball trip connections can still be made by car, while most routine trips can more easily and effectively be done using another mode.  Metcalfe's Law and the Downs-Thomson Paradox will work together to expand useful connectivity, while our explicit choices about transit network investments will reign in the most undesirable aspects of each option.
  
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Essentialism

Maybe 18 or 24 months ago a coworker mentioned Mindfulness as a mechanism he'd adopted to reduce work stress, and he briefly described his journey as he recommended it to me. Some of his personal progress reminded me of Deep Work that I'd read not long before, and earlier research into Happiness and I decided to give it some thought.

I read a book or two on Mindfulness (as is my usual approach with something new), and some of it seemed a little touchy-feely and nebulous from my perspective. However, one of the books mentioned minimalism, and this resonated more strongly. I pulled on that thread, which led to Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, which I enthusiastically embraced. Some of it overlapped much earlier thinking I'd had back in the BigStoneHeads days. 

Somewhere along with Mindfulness I decided to pick up Journaling, and I selected Evernote as a tool to facilitate that. I also started using Evernote for my on-again/off-again pseudo-blogging on various topics. 

With Essentialism, I formalized some loose earlier thinking on Best Life and Best Self, with incorporation of specific statements and Goals. All of this came together by early 2020, and despite distractions with COVID and elections I mostly maintained the general thinking and journaling throughout the year. As was the expectation from earlier Happiness thinking, the improved focus seems to be resulting in improved happiness with my life overall, and all the intentional changes seem to be proving out. Recall that one view of happiness is "making progress toward being the best version of the person you see yourself to be", so making deliberate steps to improve yourself should result in a happier life. 

As 2020 progressed, and I increasingly tried to use Evernote to capture notes and thinking about various topics, I noted a combination of strengths and shortcomings in the tool...it was easy to use, but it wasn't always easy to manage keywords rigorously, and finding and re-using previously captured notes was clunky and effort-consuming. I again revisited earlier thinking about having a Commonplace Book, and late in the year stumbled across the notion of Second Brain which takes a more voluminous and expansive view of the same concept, and then a friend gave an unsolicited recommendation for Roam Research. That brings us to late 2020, as I moved ALL my previous blogs, journals, and musings into Roam, and I think I finally have a digital Commonplace Book that will work for me. 

In summary, for my life focus efforts I'm pretty happy with the Essentialism journey, and my self-defined Best Life and Best Self principles, and with most of my deliberate Goals. Some items, like weight loss and exercise, didn't go as well as desired this year, but I don't think that's a fault of the tool or the overall approach. I still have more aspects of my life to reign in and align, including work (day job and Side Hustle), and maybe related concepts of Eudaimonia Machine and Flow. 

Most recently, I'm now reading Digital Minimalism, and from that I'm creating my own view of Digital Essentialism. This is one of those minor epiphanies where I suddenly see that while I'd been refocusing much of my life to be more purposeful, I'd left my on-line life untouched and it was sucking up too much of the time freed by my Essentialism progress. I fully intend to take control of this aspect of my life and set the bar higher for myself in 2021. I find it satisfying already to see the various topics of Big Stone Heads, Essentialism, Happiness, Deep Work and Commonplace Book all coming together in a harmonious gestalt, fitting together and mutually reinforcing. I feel strongly that I'm "getting it right", and I'm very interested to see what emergent behaviors manifest from this new system.

Key points:

• Less, but better 
• Be deliberate about how you spend your time -- your attention is the most valuable asset you have 
• Be explicit about what is important to you -- the "why" and major themes of your existence 
• Prune off aspects of your life that do not align, starting with ones that are negative or destructive, then those that are ineffective or distracting, and finally improving efficiency of those that clearly should remain. 
• There is as aspect of minimalism, but not minimalism for minimalism sake; instead, decluttering to provide space for essential focusing. 
• Life satisfaction, and then happiness, with a long-term goal of a "life well lived" is the intended result. Career success is perhaps a nice-to-have.

 

• Bibliography:
  • Mindfulness for Beginners
  • Essentialism: The displined pursuit of less
  • Declutter Your Life: Minimalism and Essentialism
  • Free to Focus: A Total Productive System to Achieve More by Doing Less
  • Indistractible: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life
  • Deep Work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world
  • Digital Minimalism: Choosing a focused life in a noisy world

Big Stone Heads - A Prospective

I should probably note for general information that any text in atypical capitals means it's a specific topic of thought in my Second Brain (the evolution of my Commonplace Book). 

Last time in the Retrospective we covered a LOT of years of recent history, and asked a lot of questions. But what about the future (which, incidentally, is all we can do something about), instead of the past?

What of our current economy will best survive the post-Fed bubble-pop? What will endure and survive any restructuring that will eventually come along with the Rise and Fall prognosis? What about a post-Capitalism shift that is probably coming with AI and automation making in-roads into human employment?

Perhaps just as importantly, how do I want to spend my remaining career time and personal efforts? Do I want to keep gears spinning in the big Sand Castle machines of international engineering machines, or should I focus more specifically on a specific area, or even dare to strive to build a Big Stone Head?

Economics:

• We are almost certainly headed for some form of crash and serious correction, and probably a restructuring more painful than 2008. Since 2009, we've vastly expanded our national debt spending. Already we have bizarre phenomena occurring, and probably this weirdness will not persist. I struggle say "when", but I think "as soon as the Fed stops spending, and some inciting event occurs".
  • Brooking's projects that it will take several years for consumer spending to get past the pandemic setback. This means bad things for a lot of service workers and for many businesses. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2020/12/14/the-decline-and-recovery-of-consumer-spending-in-the-us/?utm_campaign=Brookings%20Brief&utm_medium=email&utm_content=103005940&utm_source=hs_email
  • Realistically, as soon as we're past one crash, another is brewing. Usually we have something every 7-10 years, and a larger one every 30-60. Dalio says every 80-100 we should expect a "restructuring". The COVID crash is going to shift the landscape for the current cycle, but it's not clear it actually cleared any of the old bubbles and debt, so I think more pain is yet to come.
• Deflation? Inflation? I think as long as the US is still the primary reserve currency, any global stress will cause a flight to dollar, which coupled with purchasing collapse will be deflationary. This is the common US response since business supports are stronger than individual supports, so most big crashes are going to be demand-implosion-driven. When the Fed acts, it will be inflationary, but more-so if our reserve status is weakening. So far, we have not much seen this, and the dollar remains pretty strong, but it will eventually weaken.
  • Carrying debt will be risky, as loss of work and strengthening dollars will hurt those with debt. This is the mode we're in today, for example, in housing. Food is up in price, but energy is way down. Even without actual deflation, debt can be hazardous. The recession taught us "prices may be low, but that doesn't mean you have any money to buy stuff with".
  • Making it through the first phase and into the spending phase will mean that debt will inflate away...maybe. This will be a hard pattern to time it through. Inflation can pay off debts for you, but income increases lag expense growth, and those near the edge may fail.
  • There is always the possibility of stagflation, if we loosen up creation of money and the dollar re-positions. The next variant may be different, with job challenges driven by automation and AI while prices increase, and all scramble for few jobs.
• End of superpower? End of reserve currency?
  • Honestly, I think Rise and Fall of Empire will be more of a concern for my kids -- I'll probably retire before the next restructuring, so my goal is to simple "hide" assets from major impacts of such shifts so I can survive my latter years. As for durable professions, it's always safe to address the lower layers of Maslow's Hierarchy -- you're better off addressing existential needs than minor luxuries when TSHTF, especially in a situation where those who buy luxuries are being dragged off to guillotines and gulags. People always need places to live, and they need food, water, and the basics of communications and transportation. People who just keep things working are in pretty high demand during any downturn.

Personal Legacy

• I'd like to at least more intentionally build Sand Castles for forward-looking industries. The whole world runs on Sand Castle building, so this isn't a bad thing, per se, it just won't provide strong self-actualization if you look at your legacy this way.
• If I can manage it, I'd like to make attempts at building Big Stone Heads.
  • Sure, I'll support family and community -- replicating DNA is a pretty basic target.
  • Technology, such as increasing Economic Complexity, is a good goal. This is how we keep our local community and US economy vibrant.
• It might be easier than it seems to accomplish this, as most people don't think in terms of creating durable, replicating information or expanding Economic Complexity. It's not quite a Blue Ocean Strategy, but it's close. In my experience, it's not hard to accomplish things when the rest of your organization is moving randomly and you push hard in one direction; the trick is in convincing yourself which way to push!

Investments - What will I do?

• Keep the barbell - part really safe, part very risky, not much in the middle. I've always struggled on the risky side -- my life is too "safe".
• The "safe" end includes wholly-owned property, cash, and metals. This, for me, is quite attainable.
• "Safe" retirement investments include US property, US bonds, Int'l bonds, as low-risk but not large volume investments. These are valuable in a deflationary situation, or a status-quo future.
• The risky end? This is high-return to beat inflation in debt-collapse futures, or upside wealth in good times.
  • US equities - high-alpha stocks, probably?
  • Int'l equities - same as for US, only geographically hedged with EU and Asia.
  • Maybe a property bought with credit? A resort AirBNB? A 4- or 6-plex in a college town? The debt is the risk, so in a bad case this gets foreclosed...in a good case, it pays itself off.
  • Maybe a start-up business? This is the fun one to think about, but the hardest by far.

 

Big Stone Heads - A Retrospective

• Big Stone Heads thinking goes back to 2005-2007...almost 15 years already! This was the appellation I came up with for part of human endeavors, and since I was for the first time starting to put my thoughts on life, economics, and everything down in writing, it sort of stuck for the overall effort.

  At the time, I was tracking "peak oil", and striving to see a path through a demand-driven price run-up, my prediction of associated economic stresses popping the post-2000 bubbles, the resulting inevitable (in my view) major economic crash, and then divining what would come next. Would it be a deflationary crash with a run to dollars, or a crash-then-bailout leading to inflation (as the end-of-the-US-dominance people thought)? Would it be a V or a U recession, or even an apocalyptic TEOTWAWKI? Would it be the "end of oil", as a true peak, or just a local maxima? My friend Fred was very bullish on technology, as I always had been, but I was pretty sure any technical solution would not come quickly, and I wasn't sure oil volumes would ever recover. For something as existential as oil, I was unwilling to blindly believe that technology alone would quickly suffice. After getting hit pretty hard by the 2000 recession, I was motivated to not get caught wrong-footed. It was pretty clear to me that an oil-driven price shock would hit over-stretched consumers, and then equities. I was sure enough by 2007 to get my modest investments out stocks and into bonds, cash, and some gold. I was also pretty sure that regardless of whether we had a recession or society disintegrated, those on the "non-discretionary" side of the economy would do much better than those in "luxury services". I wasn't sure how telecom would do, given the slide after 2000, so I changed careers and shifted to the oil and gas industry, with an expectation that oil would be good for at least a decade and get my kids up and out...and maybe get me to retirement.

  As it turns out, Fred and I were both right; the crash occurred, conventional oil has never surpassed the levels of mid-2000s, and technology in the form of shale oil eventually came to rescue the US economy and the global oil volumes. It also happened that telecom did just fine for the past 15 years, as smart phones like the new iPhone hit the markets at about that time. The markets indeed did crash, and by then I'd projected it would be a demand-driven crash, so it would be deflationary here and dollars would be short due to a global view of safety, and indeed it was. Dollars and gold did great, and I was too slow getting back into stocks...I definitely learned "don't fight the Fed!", but still I think I did better than many.

  While thinking all of that through, and considering careers and the future, I came up with mental models of how I and most others spend their time, and I had an informal e-mail "blog" with some family and friends comparing thoughts. It was during this period that "Big Stone Heads", my term for this thinking, came into being. Big Stone Heads are one of 3 categories of human effort, as described below, and I was convinced that going into a recession the "non-discretionary" part of the economy wasn't going to be peacock feathers, but probably consumable stuff -- the more durable of sand castles.

  • Big Stone Heads - Large, conspicuous creations built to impress, and to persist. Moai on Easter Island, great pyramids, the Mona Lisa, calculus, and the Theory of Relativity are all examples of this. My friend Lissa helped me latch onto this, and encouraged me to keep thinking along these lines.
  • Peacock Feathers - Conspicuous show-off displays to attract mates, or recognition, or notoriety....and short-lived. F150 grocery-getters, McMansions, and private planes all are examples.
  • Sand Castles - Stuff that takes a lot of work and seems like worthwhile accomplishment, but that fades to nothing with the passage of time. This is what most of us spend our lives doing, personally and professionally. Eventually a routine high-tide, a major storm, or the long-term effects of rain and wind will reduce all such to nothingness. "And to dust we return." This is perhaps a bit fatalistic, as much is quite durable, and as "cogs in the machine" what we do sometimes contributes opaquely to global success.

  So, all of that worked out fine, and the kids are mostly through college and out, and oil has again had a demand crash with COVID, but now there are new pressures of EVs and climate change, plus concerted price competition from OPEC and Russia, and demand competition from China. Since I already had a recession playbook, as soon as COVID hit China I hit "replay" on my 2007 moves, and only slightly lagged getting back into the market, losing some of the recovery, but it was at least stress-free.

  What does the future hold now? We are still in "don't fight the Fed" mode, but we've never really recovered from the last crash -- we've just spent (borrowed?) our way into new bubbles. With COVID funds, we're back to that again. The bubbles are big and overlapping, and it's not clear to me how these will pop when the Fed is determined to keep blowing, but I am positive that the market will eventually move to address it.

  For me, I have a stack of questions to resolve:

  • What's the future of US on-shore oil? That, as always, comes down to "at what price?" Somehow this was a topic that peak-oil adherents and economists always miss...projects of quantity always show slow growth, but as with shale oil, increased production is always a function of technology and economies of scale offsetting resource scarcity. Clearly, $40 means decline in production, and $100 (in 2008 dollars) meant economic slowdown, and $100 is the price that KSA wants to see, but so far cannot manage to attain. At $100, wind and solar are clear winners, and nukes almost make sense. At $40, wind is competitive, and solar gets close, but intermittency remains an issue.
  • US shale has been built on loose investment money, so it's actually part of the easy-Fed bubbles, but benefitting the US economy overall. And yet, with cheap oil, rather than raising gas taxes and improving our infrastructure, we've just relaxed CAFE improvements and gotten bigger vehicles. We are squandering the "second chance" of oil, and ignoring climate change as we go. How long will we (the US and the world) stay on the oil-fed, car-centric direction?
  • Where will fusion fit into the future on top of renewables, and when, and at what cost?
  • How will we address intermittency? Will batteries drop in price, or will we adjust to higher energy costs?

  Personally status check: will oil and petrochem carry me through to retirement, and am I happy with this trajectory? Would I be happier on a "greener" path into the future?

  Speaking of happiness, what about legacies? As we go into 2021 and the end of COVID, I am trying to decide if there are any "big stone heads" in my future, or am I happy building sand castles? Since 2007 or so, when I developed this model, I've learned a LOT about information, and complexity, and entropy, and the spontaneous generation of information by dissipation structures in energy gradients at every scale. Big Stone Heads are simply durable information trying to hide out from entropy.
  
  What are perhaps some accessible Big Stone Heads? Well, the most common example for the masses is DNA -- replicate and perpetuate the particular patters of DNA that make you up, and the universe will be happy. So, raise kids and grandkids, and support communities of people around them. Check - I can do this!
  
  Is there more? Mathematical theories are great, and so is timeless art -- these are effectively eternal. But I am neither a mathematician or an artist.
  
  Open source? Computer code is a pretty good example of persistent, replicating, information. It will last a long time (we don't really know how long, but COBOL built in the 60's, which SHOULD be a sand-castle, is somehow still standing), and it can shape the world while expanding the flow of other information. I like the sound of this.
  
  Previously I noted useful life extension, AI, quantum computing, and fusion as "big bets". I think I'd be happy helping with any of those, but how to get there from where I am now? Is it good enough to support technology from the underpinnings, as I have always done, helping migrate emerging technology into existing industries?
  
  Short answer: I am not sure.
  Long answer: Stay tuned for part two.
  

 

National Petroleum Lab

How did Oklahoma, both Bartlesville and Tulsa, lose their parts in a national lab?   This lab had industry researchers working to improve oil recovery and reservoir characterization.

I wasn't in oil and gas at the time, but I'm surprised I didn't hear about this lab.  How did we lose part to Chicago in '83 and then more to Sugarland in '09?

From Wikipedia: "In 1910, the U.S. Department of Interior’s (DOI) Bureau of Mines established the Pittsburgh Experiment Station in Bruceton, Pennsylvania, to train coal miners and conduct research on coal-mining-related safety equipment and practices. ... Just eight years later in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, the Bureau of Mines opened the Petroleum Experiment Station to pursue systematic application of engineering and scientific methods to oil drilling, helping the oil industry create operating and safety standards. 

...

In 1983, however, operation of the Bartlesville Energy Technology Center transferred to IIT Research Institute, based in Chicago, and the Bartlesville Project Office was established to oversee petroleum research activities. Then, in 1996, the Morgantown and Pittsburgh Energy Technology Centers, a mere 65 miles (105 km) apart, were consolidated under the same administration to form the Federal Energy Technology Center (FETC). The National Petroleum Technology Office (NPTO) in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was established in 1998, and the Bartlesville Project Office was closed.

^...

The Tulsa, Oklahoma, office moved to Sugar Land, Texas, in 2009."