Words are Swords

Regular readers recall this theory: recipes trump manufacturing. They’re more valuable. (And one of Lux’s recent, still unannounced investments underscores this long espoused theory). But about 300 years ago, a valuable recipe disappeared.

You see, around 1700, a recipe for making steel—a special kind of steel—was lost. The process was invented 1,000 years before being lost and it was for the famously sharp and lethal Damascus sword.

Researchers who recently studied a sample of the sword’s molecular structure claim they discovered carbon nanotubes—the first ever to be found in steel. And this might explain the legendary properties. The process might’ve inadvertently created nanotubes (not formally discovered for another millennium) of iron-carbon mineral cementite and when Blacksmiths etched the finished swords with acid—the nanowires which are resistant to acid might have been protected and strengthened.

A good thing for Gillette (and CVS, Walgreens and RiteAid) that that recipe for ultra-sharp blade of Damascus was lost. Of course they’d rather sell you a one, two, three or heck, seventeen-blade disposable razor—just as long as it doesn’t last too long.

Whatever the process, this was clear: the only contact you’d want with it—was in your hand—and not at your neck.

Too often we forget: life is fragile.

And too often still we forget: dominance in life isn’t a birthright. Nor an entitlement (whether you’re a company, an industry, a country or its leader). It must be earned—and can be easily and unexpectedly lost. The more stable and predictable the system seems—the less likely it is.

Consider this image from one of my columns in 2004:

Pretend you're a turkey born on January 1st, 2006. For the next 11 months, up through Thanksgiving, life is good. Actually, life is great. You (the turkey) wake up, get fed and walk around all day. Just in time to go to sleep and do it all over again the next day. And with each new day you become conditioned to assume that the next day will be just like the one before it. And this logic works all the way up till Thanksgiving. When suddenly—boom! Off with your head! The irony is that the closer the turkey is to death, the more confident it becomes. And so it is with many investors. The turkey gets fatter and feels safer. But at the very time he should be trying to evade the blade.

Complacency is a vice. Thriving on ambiguity, uncertainty and volatility is a virtue. And against our human nature. Robert Rubin, Warren Buffett, Eddie Lampert, Bill Miller—all exemplar thrivers.

Back to swords or as Saturday Night Live once parodied Sean Connery in a Jeopardy skit, “I’ll take S words for 1000, Alex”.

There’s another sword that underscores the point that life and dominance don’t come with money-back guarantees and the delicate balance that (as you’ll see quite literally) hangs in the thread. Thirty five years ago, President Kennedy invoked words of the sword of Damocles—ever more appropriate today—when he said this:

"Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us."

The story of Damocles went like this: Damocles was a suck-up to 4th Century tyrant Dionsyius, telling him how lucky and great his life was with all his power and riches. So, Dionysius offered him a day in the life—a little taste. The next night, Damocles lived like a king: endless food and drink and women. What he didn’t notice was a sharp sword dangling by a single thread of horsehair above his head. When he did, he wanted out and immediately. Finite tragedy—within seconds and inches—suspended by chance and nearly infinite triggers (a breeze, a bump, the pull of gravity, and so on). Dionysius was trying to show the (yeah, forgive me) dual-edged sword and balancing act of power and peril.

Speaking of swords, a good friend of mine is waiting to swing his. He doesn’t know it yet—or maybe he does and plays it cool—but he’s going to be one of the great ones. Investors, that is. He reads voraciously—and not the latest Malcolm Gladwell business buzz book best-seller, but the investment classics that have stood the test of time. I can’t reveal his list, because he’s carefully cultivated it over many years. And even if I did, like Joel Greenblatt’s magic formula, and most men’s subscriptions to Men’s Health magazine, it wouldn’t do much good. People confuse owning the book with reading it, and reading it with retaining it, and retaining it with using it. This friend is a like a warrior waiting to wield his sword when the right investment opportunity comes along.

Another famous swordsman took this approach. But his wasn’t from Damascus or Damocles. It was from Kentucky. Both Michael Mauboussin and Warren Buffett have invoked baseball legend Ted Williams in how he approached swinging his Louisville Slugger, “waiting for the fat pitch would mean a trip to the Hall of Fame; swinging indiscriminately would mean a ticket to the minors."

Wait for your pitch. Swing your sword.

DEC.08.2006 by Josh Wolfe (email: nanotech@forbes.com)

Portrait with one ear...

We are the intrauterine competition winners.
Few days ago, Elena Zoe Ceusescu, daughter of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu lost the battle against cancer and now is smog and dust. God bless her.
At the same time one stupid, stupid as mach as Romanians could be, (I am native Romanian), started debate regarding religious signs in low schools. Well, for the unfamiliar people with orthodox area, those are Byzantine type paintings on glass, wood with silver and gold or copies. This remember me a huge movement of changing the portraits of Ceausescu from classrooms due the fact the current portrait have only one ear and in Romanian language this mean "crazy".
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. Remember all the people, things, experiences, triumphs, failures (and resulting lessons learned) that you have to be thankful for. Theres sure a lot (good or bad) I feel incredibly lucky about. There’s a story I think of Warren Buffett — who asked billionaire John Kluge how much he’d pay to live another year. Most rich old men would give their fortunes away. Time is the one completely inelastic good we have.

As Richard Dawkins has said with morbid pragmatism...“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.”

Molecular switch

Frankly, some researchers didn't think what we were attempting was possible because standard descriptions in physics, for example the Stokes equation for viscosity indicated that the system might not work. But viscous forces do not apply at the nano-scale," says Dr Keith Firman, Reader in Molecular Biotechnology at Portsmouth University and coordinator of the Mol-Switch project, funded under the European Commission’s FET (Future and Emerging Technologies) initiative of the IST programme. "However, we got our molecular switch to work."

Team develops DNA switch to interface living organisms with computers from PhysOrg.com

Researchers at the University of Portsmouth, UK, have developed an electronic switch based on DNA - a world-first bio-nanotechnology breakthrough that provides the foundation for the interface between living organisms and the computer world.

But the DNA switch has immediate practical application in toxin detection, and could be used in a biodefence role as a biological sensor to detect airborne pathogens.
[...]

Nanotechnology could promote hydrogen economy

Say "nanotechnology" and people are likely to think of micro machines or zippy computer chips. But scientists are using nanotechnology in chemical reactions that could provide hydrogen for tomorrow's fuel-cell powered clean energy vehicles. Now researchers describe how they make a finely textured surface of the metal iridium that can be used to extract hydrogen from ammonia, then captured and fed to a fuel cell. The metal's surface consists of pyramids with facets five nanometers across, onto which ammonia molecules can nestle like matching puzzle pieces. This sets up the molecules to undergo complete and efficient decomposition.

Further information from:
news21e@stp-gateway.de
or tray IEN...

National Chemistry Week 2006: Building for the Future

A broad range of affordable semi-synthetic penicillins and chephalosporins have been made possible by the use of the intermediate 6-aminopenicillanic acid (6-APA).


You probably are not aware of it, but from the moment you wake up in the morning and step onto your bedroom floor virtually everything you see and touch and use in your home is part of the world of chemistry. Read more...

Don't worry, be happy!

Contrast Priciple

Scientists have long demonstrated this contrast principle with a neat trick. Take three buckets of water—one hot, one cold, and one room temperature. Start by putting your left hand in the hot and your right hand in the cold for 30 seconds. Then put them both into the room temperature water. The one that was in the hot water will feel cold and the one in the cold will now feel hot. Einstein it’s not. Relativity it is.

We like control

“The whole universe is change, and life itself is but what you deem it.” So said Roman ruler Marcus Aurelius. And centuries later Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

The value of silence

As the cliché goes, there’s a reason we have two ears and only one mouth. Its interesting that Pythagoras in 500 BC and Leonard Da Vinci were separated by a millennium but had the same idea. The former said, “It is better wither to be silent, or to say things of more value than silence. Sooner throw a pearl at hazard than an idle or useless word; and do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in a few.” The latter invoking much the same imagery said, “Oysters open completely when the moon is full; and when the crab sees one it throws a piece of stone or seaweed into it and the oyster cannot close again so that it serves the crab for meat. Such is the fate of him who opens his mouth too much and thereby puts himself at the mercy of the listener.”

Where is nanotechnology?
...An insider's blog on the science, markets, and undiscovered trends of nanotech

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