We all have heard about this so called global warming. Apparently it’s true. Scientifically a fact. But it doesn’t necessarily mean we need to cut back our gas guzzling ways or make the government invest in alternative energy. Why not? Peak oil theory.

The United States used to dominate the world market for oil (and thus gasoline) – no, I’m not talking about the demand for oil, I’m talking about the production! The US had tons of oil – Texas, Pennsylvania, California – and the rest the world had a mere pittance. But in 1956 a man named M. King Hubbert predicted these good times would come to an end within 15 years.

He noticed that every oil well and field shared a similar timeline – first discovery, the logistics to extract the oil being put in place, a peak or plateau of production, followed by a decline. In the US he noticed the decline took place 32 to 35 years after the discovery. Armed with this information he analyzed all the oil fields in the US and predicted US oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970. And wouldn’t you know it, US oil production hit its peak in 1970. By 1973 gas prices skyrocketed, which led to the government enforcing rations and artificially setting prices.

This history lesson can also be applied to today’s global oil production market. When you do this analysis, we are dangerously close to the peak. This year could be when the most oil is pumped out the ground or it could be 5 or 10 years from now. It’s hard to predict exactly, but a decline is inevitable according to peak oil theory. Oil is getting harder to find and reach. The low hanging fruit is all gone. Even though there is a lot of oil left underground, it won’t do us much good – if we started drilling now, the flow rate won’t come close to sating demand and at some point it will become cost prohibitive.

Let’s zoom out and imagine both huge problems: global warming and peak oil. Do they cancel each other out? Will the world really keep warming if we run out of oil to warm it? Does peak oil theory tell us not to worry about global warming? Even if you believe in peak oil theory, doesn’t it just seam irresponsible to not do anything about global warming? Won’t it make things a lot smoother if we can identify excellent alternative energy options before we are forced to use them?
 

I read a paper recently on the economics of the QWERTY keyboard. No, it’s not about how keyboards are priced – economics isn’t limited to just the study of money – it’s the study of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Basically the paper is about how we ended up with the standard keyboard layout we have today, approached from an historic and economic angle. Yes ladies, this is what I do with my spare time.

The paper explains how the keyboard layout first came about – it was first used to limit some mechanical issues and so salesmen could type TYPEWRITER using only the top row. But then the economics discussion comes in, how this became locked in as the standard despite better alternatives. Basically the layout had a narrow advantage because it was used by a slightly more popular typewriter manufacturer – and this narrow advantage snowballed over time.

Soon the keyboard became so entrenched that even a proven superior alternative couldn’t knock it off its perch. DVORAK is roughly 20% faster, leads to less errors, and reduces repetition injuries by moving your fingers less. Crazy.

Today you can easily switch you keyboard “layout” with software – basically remapping the keys to use the DVORAK layout (but when looking at it the stickers will still show QWERTY). So everyone has the option, but you won’t bother. Educating you that DVORAK is better isn’t enough to entice you to switch – information alone usually isn’t enough to change behavior! Ethos, pathos, logos! What if President Obama (or someone you really respect) told you to learn DVORAK because China is and going to dominate the US if we don’t all learn it. Slightly more effective than just spouting logic?

Now that I fully understand just how silly it is that we still use QWERTY, will I personally switch? I have a desire for efficiency, but there is a limit. You have to pick your battles – you can’t be perfectly efficient in every aspect of life. There is only so much time to perfect skills. But maybe your hobby is learning these esoteric skills rather than reading esoteric papers from the 80′s and pedantically writing about them. If so, here is another really neat one to try out – a font optimized for reading rather than writing called Dotsies.

Photo: julian

I was never the student that actually completed the readings before lecture. It was always way too many pages and there were better things to do with my time like playing soccer in the hallway. I am now that student.

This quarter I am taking Stanford’s CS183. The title of the course is “Startup”, which sounds right up my alley. Here is the course description:

Conception, launch, scaling, and growing of a successful tech company. Bridging the subjects of engineering, science, business, finance, and world history, topics will include: the technology revolution of the 20th century and prior eras; the economics of business; founding a startup; the importance of team vision and passion; long-term strategic planning; building a successful founding team; financing and the VC perspective; secrecy vs. openness; recruiting, managing growth, marketing, regulation and other operational topics. Assignments are designed to explore key concepts at greater depth, using real-world and hypothetical example companies. Inner accounts from the early days of startups including PayPal, Google and Facebook will be used as case studies. The class will be taught by entrepreneurs who have started companies worth over $1B and VCs who have invested in startups including Facebook and Spotify. Students can expect to be proficient in the core skills critical to the founding and growing of a tech company upon completion of this course.

Sure sounds interesting, but there are plenty of interesting courses, none of which I have actually attended since graduating in 2008. So what made this such a compelling opportunity that I wasn’t going to let it slip? The course is taught by Peter Thiel, one of the biggest ballers in the Silicon Valley. The guy drops knowledge like Snoop drops hot items.

Yes, I am finally willing to admit my intellectual man crush on Peter Thiel. And if you are reading this, I think you would probably like him as well. He is a free thinker that isn’t afraid to state his mind in a time that groupthink and conformity reign supreme. But what separates him from other freethinkers is that he is a man of industry rather than a politician or behind the scenes puppet-master (like many other billionaires). He has founded two billion dollar companies (Paypal and Palantir) and been heavily involved in another (Facebook).

Here are some readings to check out to get a feel for what Peter Thiel is all about:

• Peter Thiel: 21st Century Free Radical
• New Yorker Profile
• The Education of a Libertarian by Peter Thiel
• The End of the Future by Peter Thiel

Let me know if you are interested learning some of the nuggets of wisdom that Professor Thiel teaches in class.

Question for you: do you have any intellectual man/woman crushes?
 

No, I did not add the flowers to that picture. I think it is really how it was shot! Source

The Blame Game is something I like to play. No, this does not mean projecting my faults upon others – do you really think that lowly of me? The Blame Game is where I assess the multiple factors of blame for a given problem. You will commonly see what I call the Blame Game used in civil lawsuits determining to what extent someone is financially responsible. A more commonly used term for this is comparative fault or comparative responsiblity.

I’ll explain it with an real world example – determining who is financially responsible for a car accident when both drivers are “at fault”. Bob rolled through the stop sign drunk, but James was speeding and didn’t stop at all. The court would have to decide who is responsible for the damages – the judge might decide Bob is 70% financially responsible and James is 30%.

I use the Blame Game as a way to think through all the factors that contribute to a problem. While driving around New Zealand, I noticed that the FM radio reception is piss-poor. Why is this? Well Brian, there are a number of things that contribute, it isn’t just a simple answer. Ok, so let’s break it down into comparable responsibilities.

Of course there isn’t really a right answer, just something that you can defend. If you are so inclined, help me out by assigning some percentages:

1. Landscape (lots of mountains in the way)
2. Lower frequency band than in the States
3. Differences in how signal is broadcasted (for example using less power to send the signal)
4. Shape of the earth (the spheroid bends away faster here, FM is line of sight)
5. Other
 

Our Blame Game answers can then be used to determine which corrective action will yield the greatest result (also useful would be estimates of how difficult each corrective action would be). Now you’re thinking like a product manager – effort and reward tradeoffs.

Yes, this is something that actually goes through my mind while alone. Not the nerdiest example either (it would probably involve maths (kiwis use “maths” rather than “math”)).

Photo: Randy von Liski

I have been crushing books recently. But before we jump into that, let me provide a little background.

Why Do I Keep Track of Books Read?

Flashback to 2008 … Michael Phelps won in the most exciting finish ever, Barack Obama became president, and I graduated from college. There is an incredible jump in freedom when 18 year-olds go off to college – no parents, no curfew, and easy access to your choice of poison. It crushes some people while others learn to thrive in the new environment. There is also an incredible jump in freedom when 22 year-olds graduate into the working world – no grades, more structured free time, and money to spend. It crushes some people while others learn to thrive in the new environment.

After a couple months of adjusting, I started creating the changes I wanted to embrace in this new period of life. The largest was becoming vegetarian after a self-imposed two month vegan challenge. But the one relevant to this post is keeping track of the books I read.

I learned about the field of personal informatics – tracking specific data from your life to keep as a record or use for optimization (I blogged about it here). I ultimately decided tracking too much data is OCD and to be avoided. So I would only track data for short term optimizations and one long term record – the books I have read. This is important to me as a history of what I was interested in at various points of my life and so I have a list to refer back to when giving book recommendations.

Why Do I Make My Book List Public?

I find it very interesting to learn what smart people are reading (this mainly means non-fiction, since smart people become smart from a thirst for knowledge, and books are quite possibly the best way to explore an idea in depth). It successfully communicates the influences upon that person in a way that has yet to be beat. I also look to see if the person reads across many disciplines and seeks out viewpoints that contradict from their own.

Since I pretend to be one of these smart people, I will keep my book list public.

What are the Results?

For the last three and a half years I have finished roughly 1.5 books per month. There were periods of learning about investing, behavioral economics, startups, and more.

But then there is a period of 6 months in 2011 where I did not finish a single book. With hindsight, this is a red flag signaling something is off – what was happening in my life to put an abrupt end to my thirst for knowledge? First, I was struggling in a job going nowhere which stunted my intellectual curiosity. Second, my spare time was used to create Breakout Mentors to provide fun computer programming lessons to 10-15 year-olds.

Then I retired from the working life and have finished 13 books in the 4-5 months since (and going to finish 3 more in the next week). In my relaxed state I have branched out and tried new things: the Hunger Game series, 2 biology books from Tom’s New Zealand science collection, and a classic 1000 pager I have put off for many years. It has been great and I hope to sustain this pace upon my return to the States.

Who is with me – are you going to start keeping a book list if you aren’t already? Have you drawn any interesting insights looking back on your list?
 

• You can find my book list here (its also on the top nav bar)
• Web article reading lists are also good but less common and shorter works aren’t as influential as books – check out uber-blogger Ramit Sethi’s delicious psychology tags for some good reads.
• Dedicated reader B.Lindy has requested notes or ratings of the books so that he can better use the list as recommendations. Good idea, but not yet implemented (Derek Sivers’ list is what I aspire to have some day). Anyone interested can drop a comment about specific books or what they are interested in and I’ll try to help.
• My sister Lisa is doing 1 second videos each day for the year. Going to be an awesome keepsake and hopefully not too hard. Check out this example result:

2011 from hey_rabbit on Vimeo.

Photo: Martin Gommel