How Screwed We Are

How Screwed We Are / Technology — 5 Comments
11
Feb 11

Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, and The Moon Titan

This is the only surface picture ever taken in the outer solar system, taken on the same day Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston broke up.

Today I was asked by Florida Atlantic University to speak in front of a group of 300 of Palm Beach County’s bright middle and high school kids in a couple of weeks. My task: to inspire future engineers.

It’s something I’m excited about, can’t wait to do, but I am completely aware that getting people as psyched as I am about science and engineering isn’t easy. As far as math and science is concerned, in my opinion, much of America has its head in its ass. Science is viewed as geeky. Boring. Dry. Uncreative.

When I worked in New York, I had a Chinese friend from Shanghai. She told me that in her high school, the cool kids were the ones that were good at math and science. That’s a hard concept for me to to get my head around. When I think to my high school, the cool kids were usually those who organized keg parties in the woods and lit their farts.

Think about the cool kids from your high school. Can you imagine them engaged in a scientific discussion?

American pop-culture disdain for math and science is thorough and ridiculous, even as we slobber all over our iPhones and Droids.

Consider this: six years ago, a space probe called Huygens landed on Titan, one of the most fascinating objects in the solar system and Saturn’s largest moon (Saturn is a planet).

Engineers launched Huygens in 1997. It slept dormant during its interplanetary journey, just like Jake Sully in Avatar. It woke up on cue, nearly 7 years later, and separated from its rocket. It landed on its target, 1.3 million kilometers away from the launch pad. It took a picture of what’s believed to be an alien shoreline. That’s right. A freaking alien shoreline.

The same day Huygens landed on Titan, Brad Pitt broke up with Jennifer Aniston. Guess which dominated the news for the next year.

Fast forward to March of 2010, when scientists achieved the first planned particle collisions in the Large Hadron Collider. The Hadron Collider is a particle accelerator 17 miles in diameter. According to Wikipedia, it “will address some of the most fundamental questions of physics, advancing humanity’s understanding of the deepest laws of nature.” It took engineers 9 billion dollars and 15 years of wizardry to bring this thing to fruition.

The same day particles collided for the first time in the Hadron Collider, Ricky Martin came out of the closet. Those sounds you heard last year on March 30th? That was me weeping. And not because of the lost virility of Mr. Martin.

So that’s why, when the president lectures us about the need to emphasize science and math in this country, I get swept up in the enthusiasm, idealistic as it may be. And I’m going to do everything in my power to bring the mystery, creativity, and downright sexiness of science and engineering to our next generation of professionals.

How Screwed We Are / Movies — No Comments
26
Apr 10

Cat Food. I Hope You Like It.

At the urging of some of my more hip-to-the-financial-news friends, I watched the movie I.O.U.S.A. last night (available on Netflix on-demand), which explains in an entertaining and informative way what the national debt is, why it matters, and why we’re so incredibly screwed.

I hope you like cat food. Because that’s all you’ll be able to afford to eat when we retire. The baby boomers are gonna clean us out, folks.

You know that Social Security money that gets taken out of your paycheck, Gen X and Gen Yers? You ain’t never gonna see it again. Look up “Ponzi Scheme” in Wikipedia. That’s how Social Security operates.

Here’s the problem in a nutshell: the U.S. government spends more than it earns (through taxes). That’s not a problem in the short-term, but it’s a big problem in the long-term. I won’t go into why, but let’s just say that other empires throughout history, among them Rome and England, were undone by their debt.

But you have to watch the movie to see why and just how hard we’re going to get our asses handed to us.

When I owned cats, I always thought that I would prefer Tender Vittles. The dry stuff looked like it would tear your mouth up worse than stale Cap’n Crunch, and the wet stuff was just plain gross. I hope they still make T.V. (I already have slang picked out) in 30 years.

Part of the problem is our government. If you’re an institution for the people by the people, when the people are addicted to debt, you’ve got a tricky situation.

No one wants to hear about cutting Social Security or Medicare, or on the other hand, raising taxes. We expect it all for nothing. We want big government benefits with small government taxes.

And the leaders running the country don’t have either the cojones or mojo to tell it like it is, and complex economic ideas need documentaries, not sound bytes, to be understood.

So what can we do? My suggestion is you invest what little nest egg you have left over from the recession and put it all into Nestlé, parent company of Purina. Because cat food is all you’ll be able to afford to feed yourself, and everyone will be buying it.

And if you live in Florida or New York City, make sure you buy some Ziplock bags. If you recall from Inconvenient Truth, we’ll be underwater and you won’t want your cat food to get wet.