Things I Like

Neal Stephenson Essay

I am a huge fan of the author Neal Stephenson. In fact, Jill is sick and tired of watching me re-read Cryptonomicon, my favorite of his outstanding novels.

Today, he turned his talents to the Op Ed page of the New York Times, with an essay using the Star Wars movies, and particularly, popular complaints about the most recent film, Revenge of the Sith, as a jumping off point for discussing "geeking out" versus "vegging out" as ways that Americans spend time.

In sum, very little of the new film makes sense, taken as a freestanding narrative. What's interesting about this is how little it matters. Millions of people are happily spending their money to watch a movie they don't understand. What gives?

Modern English has given us two terms we need to explain this phenomenon: "geeking out" and "vegging out." To geek out on something means to immerse yourself in its details to an extent that is distinctly abnormal - and to have a good time doing it. To veg out, by contrast, means to enter a passive state and allow sounds and images to wash over you without troubling yourself too much about what it all means.

Stephenson goes on to discuss the discomfort that most Americans have with people who are in the midst of geeking out about something. This brings us to my favorite quotation in the entire essay, in which he describes the Jedi order as:

the geekiest people in the universe: they have beards and ponytails, they dress in army blankets, they are expert fighter pilots, they build their own laser swords from scratch.

Stephenson then argues that current scientists and technologists occupy the same "geeky" space in our culture that Jedi occupy in the Star Wars universe. Geeks are critically needed, sort-of admired, sort-of feared, and sort-of resented. Young people avoid studying math and science, and the culture would generally rather outsource the work of geeks, leaving "us" free to veg out instead of geek out. Which doesn't have great consequences for our long term political and economic prospects.

I thought this was a very interesting and apt observation, and I love that he articulated it in such a geeky and pop-cultural way. Go geeks!

UPDATE: A Plethora of Yummy Booklists

I have the delightful feeling of too many good choices for reading ideas in the next few months. :) :) :)

First, I have Pat Skarda's reading list for her first year seminar, Groves of Academe. Oddly, I'd read about a third of the "recommended reading" list, but only one or two books on the required reading list. I thought the syllabus was online, but sadly, I can't seem to find it. I'll add books as I read them.

UPDATE:  THE GROVES OF ACADEME  READING LIST

From the hard copy Pat distributed:

Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis
The Horizontal Man, by Helen Eustis
Publish and Perish, by James Hynes
The Crazed, by Ha Jin
Changing Places, by David Lodge
The Groves of Academe, by Mary McCarthy
The Student Body, by John McNally
Overnight Float, by Clare Munnings (aka Jill Ker Conway, former President of Smith College, and Elizabeth Kennan, former President of Mount Holyoke)
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath (I'm probably going to skip this one)
The Human Stain, by Philip Roth
Straight Man, by Richard Russo
The Small Room, by May Sarton (haven't read this book, but she's great)
Ivy Days, by Susan Allen Toth -- I read that some time back, maybe even before I went to Smith
The Wife, by Meg Wolitzer.

That's just the required reading list. I'm out of energy to add the entire recommended reading list.  I'll leave it only at the three I've already read and can recommend: Gaudy Night (my absolute favorite Dorothy Sayers mystery), Moo (which is very funny!), and both The Road from Coorain and True North, by Jill Ker Conway.

END OF THE UPDATE

Second, the Georgia Center for the Book published a list of the 25 books it recommends for all Georgians in 2005.

Personally, I think 25 is an awfully large number of books to recommend in one year. Most people just don't read that much, and  I'd like to get recommendations from more sources than that. At my current rate, that's almost 3 months of reading, just from the Georgia Center for the Book. I might read a lot of books on their list, but I'm unwilling to commit to a full quarter of Georgia-oriented books. 

There is a book on both lists, Wit, which I'm not going to read having seen the play so many times when Jill was in it last year. But I recommend it highly -- you may want to try the film version, with the incomprable Emma Thompson as Dr. Vivian Bearing.

Then, this morning, listening to public radio on my drive in to work, a really fun reading list came up. Celeblibrarian Nancy Pearl recommends a cool list of 11 children's fantasy books for those of us waiting impatiently for the next Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince , due out July 16.

The only bad thing about Pearl's list is that I've already read Five Children and It, The Phantom Tollbooth, and Sabriel. But from Pearl's comments on NPR, Whales on Stilts, Half Magic, and Gregor the Overlander sound wonderful and I can't wait to read them.
 

Brokerage Reviews

I have been reading seemingly endless reviews of brokerage options, as I get ready to consolidate all of our various IRAs, stock option accounts, 401ks, and experimenting-with-investing accounts.

Right now, I have accounts with: Wachovia Securities, Fidelity, E*Trade, and BuyAndHold. Plus Earthlink uses Putnam for their 401(k), so as of my next paycheck, I will have accounts in five brokerage houses. That's at least 3 too many. (It might be 4 too many, but I'm stuck with Putnam.)

I opened the accounts at Wachovia when I first started working for Leslie Harris & Associates, because I had no idea what I was doing and found a Smith alumna who was a financial advisor in DC. But commissions are high, and having spent a couple of years in an investment club and learning more about stock and mutual fund investing, I'm not sure it's still the right fit.

It was out of that frustration that I tried the BuyAndHold account, but frankly, I'm finding them frustrating too. The trades are often slow, past the window I expected; the UI is confusing and I don't think the 2-trades-included/monthly fee of $6.99 *actually* works for me.

E*Trade is what I chose for my AOL stock options and Employee Stock Purchase Plan stocks, because it had low fees. But somehow the account wound up in a wierd hybrid of Jill's and my names. Which seemed like the wrong way to treat my stock options. Also, they don't seem to have much in the way of research and planning tools. Probably what I should do is sell my tiny quantity of TWX stocks and close the account.

So far, Putnam is off to a rocky start with me. Part of it may be Earthlink's responsibility, but I think it's mostly Putnam. I became 401k eligible on Wednesday and hadn't gotten any paperwork that would let me log into their web site. It turns out you have to call and ask them to send it to you, but the only way to get that information is to call and tell someone you don't have it and you want it. :(

The other concern I had is that the person I spoke to couldn't answer my question and didn't call me back with the answer. One of my 401k options is a "non-public" mutual fund that tracks the S&P 500 index. The other Putnam funds open to me all had really high expense ratios -- all but one greater than 1.00, and that one was 0.99. I wanted to know what the expense ratio was for the index fund.

Customer Service Guy #1 did not know, and said he'd call me back with the info. Customer Service Chick #2 told me that the policy was to call back within 48 hours and it had only been 6; she looked and the question had not yet been answered by their researchers. Customer Service Guy #3, who I called about 54 hours after my original call, looked up the answer and told me right away.

Happily, the answer was .25, which acceptable to me. There are better ratios for index funds -- Vanguard's S&P 500 Index fund has a ratio of .18, and Fidelity recently lowered theirs to .10 -- but Putnam's is at the industry average for index funds and well below my other options in my new 401k.

It makes me nervous that the fund isn't publicly traded. I don't know if that means anything or not -- I've never heard of it before. What does that make the fund WORTH? How will I track how it's doing?

On the other hand, I'm not wild about the other 2 investment options I consider acceptable in my new universe of 401k choices. Both are American Funds, one of which is in Jill's Wachovia IRA (purchased on Sharon's recommendation): AGTHX, expense ratio of .70, and AEPGX, expense ratio of .87. The first one is fairly straightforward and has a good track record and reputation, but we already own a lot of it. The second is a EuroPacific growth fund, and although it has a good reputation and track record, that's a much higher risk type of fund.

Where has that left me? Not maxing out my 401k. Participating, and at a respectable level, but not where I was in my last job and not with the same level of enthusiasm.

Of the companies I've used, Fidelity is far and again the best. They have cool financial planning calendars, easy to use 401k tools, and a nice intuitive UI. On the down side,  they don't have as much research stuff available as I would like, I think it's strange that my unvested AOL matches still appear to be in my 401k, and their fees aren't that low.

Part of my satisfaction may have been superior options for my investments. Over the 2 years I was with AOL, I invested in a total of 4 mutual funds. Two of them, including my very largest holding, made the National Association of Individual Investors top ten mutual funds list. DODGX and FLPSX and were both given 5-stars by Morningstar; of my new options, only the EuroPacific sector fund got 5 stars from Morningstar.

The other candidate for transfering the accounts is Scottrade. The commissions are very low, they got good reviews, and they offer good research tools like ValueLine to customers. Hopefully I'll get a chance to visit one of their offices in the next 2 weeks, and then be able to make a choice between Scottrade and Fidelity.

Other review sites and comments:
http://www.consumersearch.com/www/personal_finance/online_brokers/reviews.html
http://www.businessweek.com/@@gy0IoYYQqxQlphkA/magazine/content/04_20/b3883121_mz070.htm
http://www.smartmoney.com/ontheagenda/index.cfm?story=20040823
http://forums.kiplinger.com/showthread.php?t=2221
http://www.forbes.com/bow/b2c/category.jhtml?id=5