In Case You Were Wondering What I Was Thinking
• If you believe that no one will ever be able to find what you post or write on the internet, or say on a phone conversation or in a text, then you’re living in a dream world. Act on the assumption that someone may be listening to or reading about all your “private” comments.
• A New York Times columnist wrote a piece on how many black actors won Tony Awards. When does the tribalism ever end? Can we simply see people as people and leave identify politics behind?
• Note to those who loved to write about the US as a declining Rome and the end of the “American Century”: The US is poised—in a rebounding economy, and approaching energy independence, and demise in Europe—for it’s greatest economic influence ever.
• The Tesla is a fascinating and potentially exciting car, but the future of automobiles in the US in in internal combustion engines, and the future of power in this country is oil. We will not be able to power this society on nuclear, solar, tidal, wind, or other sources, due to technological limitations and politics. And we will have the ability to seriously diminish carbon emissions from better technologies and tax disincentives. Your children’s children will be driving primarily gasoline-powered cars.
• People who constantly complain remind me of poison ivy. There must have been a cosmic plan that called for their existence, but I choose not to go near.
• Small business owners, entrepreneurs, and professional services providers who can’t return your call within 24 hours aren’t slow or disorganized. They are dumb.
• I’m tired of being asked in restaurants every 20 minutes if everything is okay. I’m capable of flagging you down if it’s not. Otherwise, serve the food, remove the used dishes, and leave me alone.
• Any idiot with $250 can choose a good $250 wine. It’s finding the good $25 wine that’s the challenge.
• You know you’re on top of your game when strangers start taking shots at you. Welcome to leadership.
• The growing use of bizarre initials after one’s name reminds me of ants invading the kitchen. I want to call an exterminator before the darn things multiply still more.
• People who “tell” and never “ask” are among the dreariest I know—smug and comfortably wrapped in their own carefully defended fortress.
• I’m always impressed when someone reaches for a check. It’s a small generosity that creates huge good will.
• The amount of people applauding THEMSELVES on Facebook and “commenting on their own photo” should dispel any notion that we have a confident, high self-worth group on social media. My dogs aren’t that needy.
© Alan Weiss 2013
Alan Willett
I am highly confident you are correct about all the things you say about oil except for this last statement. “Your children’s children will be driving primarily gasoline-powered cars.”
I believe that breakthroughs in Nanotechnology will happen within this longer time frame. The breakthroughs are going to move solar from being 10% effective to 60% and higher. Further, batteries will be a whole new breed in cost and longevity. The economics of this will for the first time overwhelm “oil”.
I do write this with somewhat cautious optimism. I have been watching this field for 25 years and the big breakthroughs have not happened yet. I just believe that what Feynman said years ago is possible, thus it will happen. When? I do hope it is before my children’s children begin to drive!
Alan Weiss
Duly noted, but I doubt that’s the way to bet, to paraphrase Damon Runyon.