Having just finished reading George Soros’s latest book The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crash of 2008 and What It Means my brain is now full of his theories around reflexivity.  I have always instinctively agreed with Soros’s philosophy even though I find it incredibly difficult and chewy to work my way through (but that’s true of all philosophy for me.)

I’m a great fan of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which, according to my friend Wikipedia, "is the statement that locating a particle in a small region of space makes the velocity of the particle uncertain; and conversely, that measuring the velocity of a particle precisely makes the position uncertain."  Wikipedia suggests that this is often conflated with the Observer Effect (when you observe a phenomenon, you change it), but I think the intersection of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and Soros’s Theory of Reflexivity reduce nicely in my brain to the Observer Effect. 

That leads me to the real point of this post, which is the great short article in the New Yorker by James Surowiecki titled Oily Speculations (thanks Amy.)  In the last month a new class of villain has emerged in the rapidly escalating price of oil – the "speculator."  Surowiecki calls bullshit on this (not on the involvement of the speculator, but why this is both irrelevant and why the speculator is not the villain.)

The key sentence in the article is "Speculation has been a favorite target of politicians looking to mollify anxious voters since the time of ancient Greece, when the orator Lysias protested that wheat traders had reduced Athens to a state of siege.” 

The conclusion, which Surowiecki bashes us (appropriately) over the head with is "The difficulty for Congress, of course, is that none of the problems that have driven up the price of oil lend themselves to a quick fix, and most, like the boom in global demand and the inaccessibility of certain oil fields, aren’t under our control at all. That’s what makes speculators a perfect target: by going after them, Congress can demonstrate to voters that it understands their pain, and at the same time avoid doing anything that might require real sacrifice from Americans. Our dependence on foreign oil, together with the fiscal fecklessness that has helped reduce the value of the dollar, means that there is no easy way out of where we are. But in an election year that’s hardly a message that anyone in Washington is going to deliver."

If you net it all out, it’s the Observer Effect writ large.

I heard a "superb" cynical statement today.  I have no idea if it is factually correct, have no data (empirical or anecdotal) to support it, but it is such a great potential example of unintended consequences that I thought it was worth putting out there.

The statement was "While hybrid vehicles make us feel better, they actually do more harm than good because they result in more driving." 

The follow up thought is that for hybrid cars to really work (at today’s efficiency levels), people still need to modify their behavior and drive less (e.g. relying on public transportation or carpooling.)  However, once you’ve bought a hybrid, you suddenly feel like you are doing your part and subsequently drive more!  This additional driving adds up across the system and increases total system fuel (and other resource) consumption.

Ponder that the next time you get in your hybrid.

I’ve been keeping my eyes out for one of these.  I hope my friends at Microsoft have been also.  Apparently the New South Wales Department of Education and Training (that would be Australia) just dumped Microsoft Outlook/Exchange in favor of Gmail.

Before you say "ho hum – it’s only Australia" or "it’s not enterprise – it’s only academia", let’s look at the numbers.

• 1.3m seats
• Previous cost to implement Outlook/Exchange: $33m ($AU) over three years
• New cost to implement Gmail: $9m ($AU) over three years
• Outlook/Exchange storage/mailbox: 35MB
• Gmail storage/mailbox: 6GB
• Weekly emails sent: over 300k

That’s a non-trivial install.  (via TechCrunch)

This is a public service announcement for all great software developers in the Boulder / Denver area that are bored and restless at their existing job.

Earlier this year, along First Round Capital and SoftTechVC, we funded a new company called Gnip.  They’ve added a few people to their team in Boulder and are now looking for a few System Architect / Senior Software Engineers.  If you fit the description, drop them an email. 

If you are a software engineer at Xilinx that is caught in the current layoff, please drop me an email with your resume. Several of the companies I’m involved in locally – including Rally Software and Gnip – are actively hiring experienced software engineers.

Some great images are coming in already in response to my Request For Images For A Presentation post.  I couldn’t resist putting this one up on the heals of the Microsoft / Yahoo! drama.

If you don’t get it – well – I can’t help you.  (Thanks Ray)

I love a good rant.  Especially about software.  Joel is one of the best ranters out there – when he gets going there is no stopping him.  Last week’s rant was titled Architecture astronauts take over.  He takes Microsoft Live Mesh to task and reminds us of the legacy of Hailstorm, Groove, Lotus Notes, and – well – the past.  And he explains why synchronization is not the killer app.  Well – it sort of it – as long as we don’t realize it’s happening.  But then again, the real problem is that there just aren’t enough programmers in the US anymore.

Joel – nice rant.

Perfect.

My title is tongue in check.  As Marc Andreessen said in his outstanding analysis of the situation in If Microsoft goes fully hostile on Yahoo – "So this may yet come to remind you of the Democratic presidential primary season — it may last a while."