When people first take an interest in finance (beyond balancing a checking account and buying a few stocks here or there) the first big revelation they have is that paper money is, in and of itself, worthless.  Really it's just a piece of paper, not even blank so you can write on it, not even big enough to wrap a fish in.

This quickly leads to the fact that "the governent" (not really but that's the thought) can print up money on a whim, at any given time.  This leads to gold fever and the urge to exchange as many pieces of paper for yellow metal as possible.  You turn into a hyperinflationista.

I went through this phase, I remember it well.

If you stop your education there, as many people do, the fact that the dollar has been on a tear increasing in value since last fall is perplexing, to put it mildly.  The government is spending money like it's going out of style, how's this possible, etc.

I've seen goldbugs go through all types of contortions to try to explain how this is possible while clinging to their um, novel--ah hell, who am I kidding, flat out WRONG--view of the world.

Here's what's really happening:

 There is something magical about creating something.  It makes your soul grow, and life richer.
Snatching an idea out of the ether, letting it percolate in your brain for a bit, and then giving it form is extremely gratifying.  You're turning something ethereal into something physical and substantive.

I think this is why I like programming--the ability to take an idea and make it real has always appealed to me.  It's the same reason why I love to paint, make music, and write.  I find that many programmers are the same way, just inherently creative people.  Many programmers I know also play musical instruments.  I assume designing a house, building a car, or paving a road give the same kind of satisfaction, but I'm just guessing there.

Somehow the very act of creating expands your mind and opens up new possibilities.  Whenever I'm doing something creative it attracts new ideas and gives me more energy than two pots of coffee spiked with Red Bull.  I get more new and random ideas while I'm creating something--writing, painting, programming--than at any other time, along with the energy to work on them.

On the flip side, doing things that are not at all creative seems to sap my energy.  This is why I hate debugging and administrivia.  It sucks the life out of me.  I feel like a button-pushing zombie.

Of course I guess that would make people that don't create anything but simply leach off of productive value created by others soulless monsters.  People like the financial engineers who repackaged and obfuscated risk and poisoned our economy--leaches.  The lobbyists spending their days and nights working hard on conning our tax money out of Washington--soulless.  I think that sounds about right.

I would never get my genes sequenced--not because I'm scared of what I might find, but because of the possibility of changing them.  I've never actually heard anybody talk about this aspect of DNA sequencing before, but it was the first thing that popped into my mind when I first heard about it.

In case you're not familiar with it, the observer effect is a completely bizarre but effect in quantum physics that says observing an outcome collapses the probability wave into a single outcome.  In other words, the simple act of observing something causes a single outcome to become reality.

For gene sequencing, this means that as long as your DNA remains unobserved it is still a cloud of potential.  As soon as you observe it, though, you're locked into a specific outcome--a specific gene sequence.  This means that sequencing your genes might actually affect them.  For example, if alzheimers in my genes is a possibility, sequencing my DNA might actually make it real.  Why would I take that risk?

For a nice easy-to-understand explanation of the quantum observer effect, check out the following video.  I highly recommend taking a look if you're not familiar with it.

I wonder what the cumulative effects of performance-enhancing drugs are on GDP.  No, not the baseball/A-Rod type, I'm sure that has a relatively small effect, but caffeine and stimulants like Alertec (and maybe coke if you're in the financial industry, reportedly).

What happens to a company's bottom line when it takes away free caffeine?  If you have to pay $1 for a Mountain Dew, surely it will have a negative effect on consumption.  This must translate to slower employees and less productivity.

Does the money saved by not giving away free caffeine outweight the performance gains by having employees wired all day long?  I'm sure you'll have healthier employees in the long run, but I'd bet money that the company's bottom line suffers.

I don't know the answers, just wondering.

... is not about convincing yourself that things are the way you want them to be when they really aren't.

Being positive is about believing that you can change things through positive action so they actually are the way you want them to be, eventually.

You can't change something if you don't take responsibility for it.  You can't take responsibility for it if you deny it happened.

Kids deny reality all the time.

When adults grow out of this they decide if they have the ability to change things or not.  If they decide that they can change things they become "positive" people, if they decide they can't they become "negative" people.

But people who continue to refuse to accept reality at all are just large children.  Or lunatics.