Welcome To Josh's Blog O' Thoughts: May 2007

We live in a capitalist economy right? And capitalism is driven by competition amongst business. This competition forces businesses to perform better and to better meet their customers' expectations. So why is it that there seems to be an apparent lack of competition in some areas of business?

Take for instance doctors. While many doctors are driven by a need to help people, we must realize that they are in businesses too. Just as anyone in business, they need to make money to make it worth their while. However, to me, there doesn't seem to be much competition in this area. Most of the time you don't even know what you'll be paying for and how much you'll be paying. When you are sick, you go to the doctor's office and they perform their tests and diagnose (hopefully correctly) without ever mentioning how much it will cost. We are just expected to pay whatever comes up on our bill a few weeks later.

Suppose they tested you for an illness when there was a low probability that you had it. Also suppose that you'd be charged $50 for this test later on. Many people would probably opt out of having this test.

And there's also this feeling of being locked in to a certain doctor or clinic. We don't shop around. Obviously, in the medical world the cheapest provider might not always be the best but customer value is driven by many things. When I make a purchase for anything over a $100, I really like to shop around and make sure I'm getting the best value for my money. But with doctors we don't do this. We go to the same place we always go. They could charge us $100 or $500. We don't have any way of knowing until the bill comes.

Doctors should post their pricing for common procedures or maybe there should be a pricing index that would allow us to see which doctors are the priciest. Then we as consumers could make an educated decision on where to seek services based on price, customer service, and other areas of value to us.

Well gas prices went up another 18 cents a gallon in my area yesterday. That's a 6.1% increase in one day! This is prompting me to question why this product's pricing could be so volatile. How many other consumer products are out there that will go up 6% in one day and then maybe another 5% in two weeks? We buy other products that are traded as commodities and whose trading price changes daily, but those changes never really seem to be reflected in the end-price to the user. Somehow, those products are able to level their sales prices out so, as consumers, we don't see many changes. I mean how often do groceries go up in price? Maybe once a year or so. But you aren't expecting a 5% increase every time you go to the supermarket.

Unfortunately, there are so many differing views on the state of oil supply. Some people say there's tons of oil left while others say a lack of supply is driving prices higher. I wish I could find some real good statistics about exactly what is driving these price increases? How much of it is just oil companies raising prices because they know we'll pay for it?

The meeting of the Federal Reserve board today ended with the expected results. The Fed has decided to leave interest rates unchanged for the time being. The last time rates were chagned by the Fed was in mid-2006 which ended a long run of rate hikes aimed at curbing inflation.

While they did leave rates unchanged, their outlook for the future did not mention any rate decreases, something that many investors were hoping to hear. At this point, their outlook appears to be steady with a slight chance of a rate increase if inflation doesn't slow as much as predicted. However, there are people that feel rates will lower near the end of 2007 to help with a slowing economy.

Unfortunately, the lack of expectations for lowering rates caused some havok on the stock market again. Some times I just can't fathom how fickle investors are. Do they really think they need to dump their stocks right away because of an unchanged outlook? An article I read recently pointed out that the people that really do well in the stock market are not the people that make these kinds of trades. Those people that get wealthy from stocks HOLD their stocks for extended periods of time usually only making a couple trades a year. If they have invested in a reasonably sound company, they are likely to weather the market fluctuations just fine.

Bottom line is interest rates don't appear to be changing much for the rest of the year, so don't hold off (or rush) on getting that mortgage.

Like a lot of people, I am a big fan of Wal-Mart. I mean where else can I buy groceries, print my digital pictures, get an eye exam, buy a small appliance, and get an oil change at one place all at a reasonable price? And with Wal-Marts popping up all over they place, you have to assume they are doing something right.

Throughout my MBA program, we have used Wal-Mart as a case study several times. They are a study in logistics management and efficiency having employed such tactics as radio frequency ID tags to track their inventory.

However, their latest news is that they plan to begin using solar energy to power some of their operationsin Hawaii and California. Considering their presence across the country, this is a small piece of the pie, but it is definitely a great step forward. In fact, they claim to have plans to be 100% energy supplied by renewable resources.

Way to go Wal-Mart. Keep up the good work. Now if only more companies would follow suit.

As if there aren't already enough side effects of global warming, scientists have concluded that global warming may actually change the speed with which the Earth rotates thus changing the length of a day on this planet. However, there seems to be conflicting views.

One study shows that as global warming heats the ocean water, water pressure will increase due to the volume expansion that occurs in water when heated. This extra water pressure will force a lot of the water from the deep ocean areas to shallower ones at the poles. By bringing that amount of mass closer to the axis of rotation, the speed of rotation will increase, thus shortening the length of a day by approximately 0.12 milliseconds by the year 2200.

Other evidence shows that global warming may slow the speed of rotation and increase the length of an Earth day. This study theorizes that as global warming heats the air and increases the speed of airflow, the rotation of the Earth will slow. This is because the rotation of the atmosphere and the rotation of the planet have an inverse relationship. When one increases, the other must decrease. Over the course of the next 200 years, this could lengthen an Earth day by 0.22 milliseconds.

So basically, we are to surmise that global warming will cause both an increase AND decrease of ~0.11-0.22 milliseconds in the length of an Earth day over the next 200 years. So do they cancel out? Maybe. The bigger question is why are these scientists spending a considerable amount of time trying to estimate if the earth's rotation will change by less than a millisecond over a 200 year period? That wouldn't even be noticeable. Seems that there are probably other side effects of global warming that could use some extra attention.

So, what would you do with an extra 0.3 nanoseconds per day? Or what would you cut out if you lost it?

When considering a lot to build your house on (or when considering purchasing an existing home for that matter), it is important to find out if the lot is in a flood plain. Basically, this will tell you the liklihood that your home will be involved in a flood. Not only do insurance rates increase for people in flood plains, but you may also end up in fear of floods everytime it rains (I know I would be).

If have found a great website to easily help determine flood plains in your area. The FEMA Map Service Center allows you to zoom in on a map of the U.S. to any location of interest. It will then pull up the appropriate flood plain map for that area.

All you have to do is browse to the FEMA Map Service Center website and click the Map Search menu item. Good luck!

Just wanted to provide an update on my lawn. After having posted around September last year (2006), and posting at AllAboutLawns.com, I received some good tips to help revive my lawn. The one that was repeated the most often was that I appeared to be under-fertilizing it. It didn't make much sense to me since the fertilizer bag claimed to cover 5,000 sq ft which is roughly the size of my lawn.

Basically, I decided to ignore the weeds for the time being and just get the grass growing again. In early September, I put down 2 bags of fertilizer (supposedly enough for 10,000 sq ft) with high nitrogen content. Things started to look better. Towards mid-October I put down 2 bags of winterizer fertilizer.

My grass stayed green in the fall longer than all my neighbors, and when the snow melted it was still greener than the neighbors. This March, I put down another 2 bags of fertilizer (with crabgrass preventer). So far this year, things are looking pretty good, here are some pictures:

From late March (just as it's starting to green):




From late April (just after a mowing):




As you can see in the April pictures, the grass is looking green and full. I have been cutting on the highest or second-highest setting on my mower. You can also see that I have some dandelions mixed in there. About a week ago, I sprayed with Weed Stop selective herbicide which contains 7% 2-4d. So far seems to be working. I will have more of an update on that later.

There was a recent discovery from European astronomers showing they have likely found an Earth-like planet in another solar system. Since light from neigboring stars usually drowns out the light from any planet, we have a hard time trying to find extra-solar planets. Because of this, the astronomers used a method of observation where they monitored the "wobble" of the system's star related to the gravitational pull of the planet. From this, they were able to surmise quite a bit of knoweldge about this planet.

Basically, they estimate it to be about 50% larger than Earth and circling a red dwarf star (a third the size of our sun) about 20 light years away. It is relatively close to its star thus one year on that planet is only 13 Earth days. However, due to the fact that the planet's star is so cool, the planet's mean temperature is in a range that would support liquid water and possibly life (as we know it).

Obviously, this is a huge find. Could this planet possibly support life like ours? Would we be able to survive on a planet like this? Could our bodies survive on a world that had twice the gravitational pull as our own? Everything would weight twice as much.

I think I'd be able to survive if I was transplanted to this new planet, but I figure there would be some who would not be able to. It would be almost like a massive and quick form of natural selection whereby the people that were in good physical condition would survive. Future generations would then learn to adapt. But that's just a theory.

Scientists and inventors never cease to amaze. They have now come up with a product to help combat global warming in an entirely new way. To date, most emphasis has been put on reducing the emissions into the atmosphere at the point of origin. Namely, this would include installing scrubbers at power plants and on individual cars (which contribute 20% of emissions). Unfortunately, it would be pretty much impossible to retrofit all the power plants and automobiles in the world.

However, a new device claims to be able to take the carbon dioxide that is already in the air and extract it. They are likening the whole process to a big CO2 vacuum cleaner. This is the same principle of trees removing carbon dioxide through natural processes except that this vacuum can extract the CO2 1,000 times faster than plants can. That gives us a little advantage. The device works by using absorbants to extract the CO2 molecules from the air. The CO2 then has to be "scraped" off the absorbant for disposal.

Interestingly, I was recently fortunate enough to have sat in on a presentation by a graduating chemistry student covering the surface absorbtion of gold molecules onto pyrite (fool's gold) and arsenopyrite. Sounds to me like the same sort of principles are being applied here. Afterward, I talked to him about the possibility of being able to extract this gold for business purposes. His response was that these particles were so extremely small that it would not be profitable or maybe not even possible to do so. I wonder what method the creators of this vacuum are using to extract the CO2? I suppose this is why that part of the process is the most costly.

So what do we do with all this carbon dioxide that we extract from the atmosphere? Some people think it might be a good idea to "inject" it back into the Earth in areas of porous rock or empty mines. I'm not sure how much good that will do us. We'd probably end up finding out that putting that much CO2 into the Earth's crust causes it to slowly leak out all over the world and suffocate people, plants, and animals (or some other dire consequence). Of course, we could always eject it into space, but throwing away all that matter could also cause serious problems on the planet.

Like always, this is another one of our attempts to simply hide our problems rather than get to the root cause. It seems to be our preferred method of problem "solving" - push your problems somewhere else until they cause a new one. I personally favor much stronger emissions control laws and environmental protection. If you have other ideas of what do with this CO2, let me know.

Some of you may have heard about the recently high number of die-offs in the honeybee population in the U.S., Brazil, Europe, etc. Beekeepers are reporting up to 75% losses over the winter which is much higher than usual. In fact, this die-off is so great that scientists have given it a special name: Colony Collapse Disorder. The major causes of this die-off are so far unknown, however there are many theories. At this point, it appears that the most likely explanation is a parasite or virus that is affecting the bees. Apparently, the genome of a honeybee contains very few genes for protection agains diseases. This means that a new disease could rapidly spread through bee popluations killing many in a short time.

So now that you have an idea of the situation, you may be wondering "Who cares. Bees can sting me and I don't like them." Well you probably like them a lot more than you realize. Bees, through their pollenation practices, are the main reason that we have so many different types of crops. In fact, bees are estimated at being directly responsible for 80% of all pollenation and up to $15 billion in food output per year. Without them, plants that require pollenation to produce crops (such as most fruits and vegetables) and livestock that feed on bee-pollenated plants are in jeopardy. Someone told me that Einstein once said that if the bees died out so would mankind (sorry I don't have a source for that quote). While scientists agree that we are not to the point yet where we should be concerned about a total wipeout, these could be early warning signs of a problem. In a worst case scenario, we would be reduced to a diet of primarily grains and water. Luckily, there are very smart people working on this problem so hopefully, it will get solved.

From my standpoint, I've never been bothered by bees. I've rarely ever been stung and the couple times I was I probably deserved it! I honestly hope that the cause of this die out is not another side effect of what we, as humans, do the environment. Perhaps this die out is just part of a cycle.

How about just to be on the safe side, we try to come up with some recipes that can be made without using any food requiring bees? Think you can do it? Anyone have any ideas?