Daily Thoughts

It is going to make me a while to read The Ten Cent Plague. It is quite interesting, some of the material on Wonder Woman is quite funny in darkly humorous way. There was an article on Library Journal's blog today on the New York Comic Con.
There are some very nice pictures of the convention on the blog.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/blog/770000077/post/270025227.html

I went to my local library today. I sat for an hour using their computers again. Mostly to fool around with the various social networking sites. Then I looked around the library to see if there was anything I wanted to read. There wasn't anything to read, however, I noticed there was a completely new selection of manga for the teenagers. Manga is not something which I know a lot about. Sometimes, you visit other libraries to see what they have to help you find material. There looked to be an interesting selection. Bleach, Case Cloaed, Fruits Basket, Full Metal Alchemist, Naruto, Peach Girl, and Yu-Gi-Oh were there. I think Yu-Gi-Oh and Full Metal Alchemist are on Nickelodeon or the Cartoon Channel.

I think I saw one of the librarians from my local library at New York Comic Con. I think she orders the graphic novels for my local library. I really didn't say anything at all.

I requested three books on socially responsible stock investing at the information desk. I didn't ask for any titles. I'll probably send one or two of them back after I look at the books. I am very interested in this type of investing. Today, I got some relief, Time Magazine has an article on a stock which I am intested in Finavera. This issue is for earth day, April 28, 2008. So the article is forthcoming.

I know this has very little to do with librarianship, or books but I feel that I should post it anyways. This is a film from Youtube on the technology. It is not fully developed yet, so there is a considerable amount of risk involved. However, it is a potentially disruptive alternative energy technology. The technology is called aquabuoy.



Everyone is talking about Earth Day. I don't think too much about it. But, I will tell you this. Everyone spends too much time in their cars. Maybe, I am a little strange. I try and walk a little bit every day. I like being outside, not in a car or a bus. I walk to the library, the deli, the produce stand, and the park. I am glad that I live in livable community, not a giant urban sprawl where you have to get in your car and drive five miles to do anything.

Go outside today and if you can make it a habit, go outside a bit every single day. You don't hear it much anymore, but my father used to insist that I went outside a little bit every day to play when my freinds came by. Now, everyone is inside all the time glued to computers and television. It is unhealthy.

Clean Technology (Green Technology) and Natural Capitalism Books,

I am very interested in industrial ecology and clean technology. It is very hard to get good reading material on this subject. I tried to get A Safe and Sustainable World by Nancy Jack Todd: The Promise of Ecological Design. John Todd is the inventor of Living Machines and Artificial Wetlands. His site Ocean Arks International is very interesting http://www.oceanarks.org/

Currently, The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity by Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder is on reserve at the library for me. I also have Freedom From Oil: How The Next President Can End The United States Oil Addiction by David Sandalow on reserve.

Two books which talk about natural capitalism, or green business practices which I can recommend are Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution by Amory R. Lovins and Paul Hawken, and Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage. The article which the book Natural Capitalism came from is here,
http://www.engineering.ucsb.edu/~ewb-ucsb/documents/articles/natcap.pdf



There is not a whole lot written on this material. I am taking home Green Gold Japan, Germany, and the United States Race For Environmental Technologies by Curtis Moore and Alan Miller. I read this but it was not that good. The information was very dated. It was written in 1994 and much of what was being talked about has changed considerably. I would suggest reading something more recent.

Getting back on topic. Recently, I had mentioned a failure by Finavera to commercialize their wave energy buoy. They wrote the technology down to zero value. Something unusual has happened. After they wrote the value of their wave energy buoy technology down to zero, they are opening a wave energy project with PG&E http://www.energy-businessreview.com/article_news.asp?guid=135144DB-4CD2-4116-9987-1425D809CAF7

It is an utterly odd experience going from thinking a company is worthless and will never do any wave energy projects to the first commercializer in the United States of wave energy.

A Few Books And Comments On Money

US Silver Certificate Dollar

Money is one of those things which bloggers seem to talk about a lot. These are a few book recommendations on investing. The first four books are currently part of the Wiley Investment Classics series. The first book is one which most stock brokers claim they have read at one point or other, Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd. Benjaimin Graham is considered to be one of the fathers of value investing. The next book is called Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Philip Fisher. Philip Fisher is considered to be the person who came up with idea on how to invest in growth stocks.

The other two books are about the condition of wall street. They show how little has changed in the way people act around stocks and money. The first book is Where Are All The Customers Yachts: A Good Hard Look At Wall Street by Fred Schwed. This book is quite fun to read. Confessions of A Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre is equally entertaining.

The best book which I have ever read on the concept of value is an art book, surprisingly. The book is called Boggs: A Comedy of Values by Lawrence Weschler. J.S.G. Boggs is an artist who draws money. He draws single sided bills. These are variations of different types of money with fantastical elements, like flowers and pictures of children, or odd colors. He then tries to use the bills to buy things from stores. He tells the people he is attempting to buy the things from that it is not real money but art, and if they want the art, they should give him some change and a receipt for the thing he has bought. Watching the process is fascinating. This link has an interview and a video of him. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/egg/217/boggs

Please don't ask me about stock tips. I'm not great at this.. Two of my recent investments were near total disasters. I invested in HOKU Scientific, a fuel cell company which recently was forced to switch from being a fuel cell manufacturer to a solar cell manufacturer. HOKU lost its contracts for fuel cells which are basically pie in the sky in most cases and was forced to invest in a form of more realistic energy, solar energy.

I also am invested in Finavera, a company that recently had another total disaster. At the beginning of November, the wave energy generation buoy which they were working on failed its commercialization test. The buoy went from a commercial value of over $4 million dollars to being written down to $1. The wave energy generator proved to be commercially unviable. Luckily, the company didn't go out of business completely because they were heavily invested in wind energy, a more traditional form of alternative energy. They received financing to stay in business.

Now is not the best time for alternative energy in the United States. Also investing in the stock market is risky. I used etrade to make my trades. One day, because Citigroup investment analysts downgraded it, the stock fell 58% in value. I pulled all of my trading money out of there quickly. In the beginning, it looked to be an online stock trading company failure. Luckily, someone bailed them out. If Etrade had gone under, it would have had incredible impact on the market. http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/11/13/etrade_stock_falls_58_after_forecast/

Things in the stock market are very scary right now.