... seeking simple answers to complex problems, and in the process, disrupting the status quo in technology, art and neuroscience.

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Liquid Piston's New Engine Design

It's fascinating to see the various ways of converting liquid fuel to horsepower.  The Otto piston has long dominated, but is famously inefficient.  Wankel was a nice challenge, but suffered from low compression and its oil squeegee valves burned more than they wiped.


The LiquidPiston guys set out solve the problems of both designs, and they may be getting close with this inverse Wankel approach.  The picture above is of the older X1 design and the text at this link is distracting, but watch the video for a quick visualization:

Autoevolution on the LiquidPiston X Mini Engine

Here's a much better presentation of the technology:

Gizmag on the LiquidPiston X2 Engine

And here is a description of their early prototype:

MIT Technology Review of the X0 LiquidPiston

It will be interesting to see how this technology evolves.

Another weight and space efficient engine:

The Duke Axial

A better movie

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Amazing New Air Car - It's NOT About the Air!

Updates:

09-18-14 - Another radical light car for Paris.  This one is 2100 lbs and uses Air/Hybrid to get 141 MPG.  Are the French on a roll?

01-25-13 - Peugeot Cirtoen to Introduce Compressed Air Hybrid by 2016

09-07-12 AIRPod

09-07-12 Tata AIRPod


07-05-11 - Tata Air Powered Car to be Introduced in India

02-26-09 - Yet one more way to use compressed air for braking recovery from ETH Zurich

First posted 01-19-08:







And it's not even about the car!

(note - whoever owned the MDI page when I posted this blog has diverted it to a new investment group and broken some of the links below. I have redirected them to the French or Guy pages as well as possible for now - thanks to Chris from Future Net.)

Every now and then a an idea comes along that will change the world - and gets mostly ignored. Some of you have heard me talking about this new air powered car from MDI (Moteur Developpment International) in France which is now to be manufactured by Tata Motors of India.

MDI did a press release a few weeks back and it was handled like, well, another press release. The automotive press paraphrased a few paragraphs, but I wonder if they actually THOUGHT ABOUT what they wrote?

And when Tata Motors introduced their more conventional yet inexpensive Nano at the Detroit Auto Show last week, it got amazing coverage, but not ONE mention of this new air car to be manufactured by the very SAME company!

The highly touted Tata Nano is a cute little bug that will get more than 50 MPG - cool. But the MDI OneCat which is about the same size will go more than 3 TIMES farther on the same gallon of fuel! Did no one actually READ the spec sheet on the OneCAT?

To be fair, the objective of the Nano is low price, not mileage. And the OneCat is much lighter, which helps, but surprisingly, that's not the key to it's mileage advantage. Here's how they do it...

As almost everyone knows, the standard internal combustion engine is only about 30% efficient under the very best of conditions. This means 70% of the energy in a gallon of gasoline leaves the car as wasted heat.

The only heat that produces power is that narrow band of highest temperature that causes rapid expansion of air when the spark plug fires. Once the piston reaches the bottom of it's cycle, all the lower temperature energy from that cycle is wasted and must be pumped out the exhaust pipe.

If you add MORE heat at the point of ignition (higher octane), you get more power. But Carnot and his second law of thermodynamics limits us from using any of the heat BELOW the temperature of ignition. THAT is the primary reason for the INefficiency of the internal combustion engine. But what if we COULD use ALL of that heat?



CAT - Compressed Air Technology

Guy Negre of Formula 1 fame and his company, Moteur Developpment International have spent the last 14 years developing a new type of engine for automobiles.

Compressed Air Technology has been described as using air as fuel, but that's not quite right. The air works more like a battery. Guy's design actually uses a carbon-fiber air tank with up to 300 times normal atmospheric pressure driving a piston to give the car a range of 100 Km. You can think of this system as a standard compressor motor and air tank - except it's running backwards. The air tank drives the compressor, instead of the other way around.

So far, no big deal. Any advantage is a matter of strength, weight and volume per unit of energy stored in the "battery" - the carbon-fiber tanks helps some. But if a short range compressed air car is all they had, it wouldn't be very impressive. The next refinement is the key and I now believe it was created in response to the problem of freezing the engine as the air was decompressed. Whenever air pressure drops from 300 Bar to 1, the gas laws say the heat in that original volume is now spread out over a much greater area thus dropping the temperature. Guy's "fix" to this problem had a side-effect that I believe to be the biggest advancement in thermal energy extraction since the invention of the Otto-cycle in 1860! It effectively uses "wasted heat".





Bi-Energy Breakthrough

Guy Negre's brilliant innovation is to add a small fuel burner between the air tank and the motor. The heat from this burner not only keeps the engine from freezing up, it also extends the range for the compressed air tank by increasing the pressure of the air even more on it's way to the motor. Properly insulated, this burner could approach 100% conversion efficiency of the burned fuel. Here's the reason...

Small amounts of heat are not enough to turn over a reciprocating motor. But when you add a compressed air tank, it provides a pressure bias great enough to drive the motor on it's own. Now add the burner. Per the gas laws, the pressure increase is proportional to the heat added - it doesn't require a critical temperature of ignition! You could run it tepid or boiling - ANY heat adds power. It's just a matter of how much.

If you double the burn rate, you'll double the added expansion. Since there's no point of ignition, there's no critical temperature before this energy is extracted. ANY heat added by a burner (or other source) will simply add proportional expansion and energy extraction. Theoretically, most of the energy from a gallon of gasoline (or stack of firewood) could be used to drive the motor.



Check the spec sheet above. I assume these are actual measurements. The OneCAT will go 100 Km on air alone, but another 700 Km on only 10.5 (1.5 Liters per 100 Km x 7) liters of fuel! That works out to almost 157 MPG!



More Than JUST an Amazing New Car

MDI has a good chance of creating an amazingly efficient little car, and that's cool. But what's REALLY exciting are all the other potential industrial applications.

Considering generation and line losses when producing electricity, it may even now be more efficient to run Bi-Energy motors at the site of the application instead of buying electricity. Or we could boost mechanical power from solar heating. Or hot sewer water for that matter! ANY source of heat could be used. It's just a matter of degree and effectiveness.

OK. You'll still need electricity to provide the compressed air bias, but the rest of the energy would be more efficiently extracted - the hotter, the better. What about recycling the heat from air conditioners to drive their OWN motors? I'm not talking about perpetual motion here. There's no free ride. It's just that the heat is no longer has to be totally wasted. This approach provides an excellent possibility of dramatically increased efficiency in anything that needs a rotating motor and has wasted heat available. (Note - MDI was WAY ahead of me - I just found this link on their site... Further Applications - WOW!)

These ideas are worth more than just a press release.

It's a whole new way of thinking about energy!


More Air Car Energy Links...

Guy Negre Page

MDI and Indranet

Dr Louis Arnoux Interview

Future Net

ZevCat

Wiki


Others are picking up on using waste heat in this fashion - The VGT RoundEngine

06-20-20 Liquid Air Battery

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

VW Redefines "Car" With A 261-MPG Diesel Hybrid






As you can read, light efficient cars have been one of my favorite topics for a long time:

07-04-06 1974 VW Dasher

Update 03-06-13:

The Volkswagen XL1 just debuted in Geneva and claims a range of 261 mpg, with a curb weight of about 1,750 pounds. Its coefficient of drag is extremely low at 0.189. It’s powered by a 47-hp, two-cylinder turbodiesel paired with a 27-hp electric motor. VW says it will make 250 examples with a price near $100,000



Top Gear First Drive: the VW XL1

Update 01-25-11:


First posted on 02-18-10:

Tuesday, August 05, 2014

The Best Bike Is a Trike

First some history.  I've been hiking since I first put on shoes.

I did my first solo long-distance hike of 13 miles when I was 12 years old.  I started distance running in my teens. When drafted into the Army I was informed that my flat feet would eventually cause nerve compression.  I got special boots.

I built up to marathons in my 20s and 30s.  In the last couple of decades I've returned to mountain hiking, but longer distances and rougher ground.  I've hike across the Grand Canyon in nine hours.  I've ran and hiked across California from Reno to the ocean at Santa Cruz in multiple sections at different times, the longest of which was 51 miles in 16 hours. I've done parts of it twice.  I've hiked most of the 175 mile Tahoe Rim Trail at over 3 MPH pace.  Most of my life I've ran or hiked 40 to 50 miles a week.

But that all changed last January.

Yep.  On a hiking vacation to Las Vegas when I logged well over 100 miles in less than a week, that nerve finally compressed. I've had the condition diagnosed and treated, but it's now down to surgery of unpredictable outcome, or I back off the miles.  So we get to the topic at hand - bikes and trikes.

I'm not good at backing off exercise, so since February I've been riding my mountain bike.  These rides remind me of why I never liked bikes.  I hate spending all my time looking at the ground. My hands get numb from the vibration of the handle-bars, and those seats didn't deserve the title.  They are literally a pain in the ass.

Over the last few weeks I set out to find an alternative to my mountain bike.  It's not that I have a bad bike. It's an aluminum alloy Specialize with full suspension. I think it cost me over $2k new, and has lots of gears and cool features. It's the riding position I dislike.  Bikes are uncomfortable.

My Schwinn Stingray in 5th grade was the exception. Thinking back, it was almost a recumbent. It had a nice wide seat which you sat ON, instead of it having it inserted. And with high-risers there was not much weight on the handle-bars. Again, that wide seat took the load off the hands. Plus the visibility was excellent. It wasn't very fast, but it was agile and fun.

Last week I rode a tadpole style recumbent tricycle for the first time.  I found this guy in Alameda, California who is an expert with recumbents.  His name is Zach Kaplan.  He is a wealth of information.  If you have any interest at all and live in the area, spend some time with him.  He let me try out a couple of his trikes, and I fell in love with the experience immediately.

I now own the Catrike pictured above.  It's light, fast and agile.  I realize I'm too early in this honeymoon to be objective, but three wheels is SO much more fun than two.  Yes, I know I'm now harder to see on the road, but we live in the age of LED strobes.  I leave mine on.  And it's true that trikes don't climb hills as well as bikes, but those are the ONLY two drawbacks.

Trikes yield a more pleasant visceral experience.

Trikes are FAR more comfortable.

Trikes are FAR more stable.

Trikes can stop faster.

Trikes can go faster.

Trikes are more fun.

You can see the world around you better.

If you get the chance, give a trike a try.

You'll see what I mean.

Monday, June 30, 2014

Back to the Future with Motorcycles

When I was a kid, our family had a number of small motorcycles for trail riding.  They were light, agile and got great gas mileage.  My favorite was a 1965 Yamaha Trailmaster 80.  I spend lots of time exploring the mountains of Norther California on that "bike".

Unfortunately, the same thing happened to trailbikes that happened to cars - over the years, they got heavier. Then motors got bigger to carry that extra weight, which made everything heavier still.  Unlike cars, this weight had more impact on handling, especially on rough ground.  It's not easy getting a 300 lb motorcycle over a log.

I'm still waiting for a modern version of the 1978 VW Rabbit which weighed 1880 pounds dry.  With modern technology it should be able to get 100 MPG.  In the mean-time, it looks like Yamaha may be thinking the same thing.  It's only a concept, but it's headed in the right direction:

Yamaha shows retro lightweight 125cc motorcycle that gets 220 mpg

Bring it on!



Sunday, June 29, 2014

Economic Predictions

Yogi Berra: “It is dangerous to make forecasts, especially about the future.”

In spite of Mr Berra's advice, I'm going to start a post here which I will update from time to time to make my economic predictions a matter of public record.  Some of these are summarized from the past.  The rest are current, predicting the future.

12-12-12 - I don't necessarily agree, but nice work none the less:

Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds

01-01-12 - The US Treasury still believes US banks have $9.9 trillion in home loans.  That's down only 7% ($10.6 trillion) from it's high in 2006.  Such denial!  A quarter will have to be written down sooner or later.  Another quarter will be paid by underwater home owners who simply don't want to move or accept the real value of their house.  So between the banks and home owners, there's still plenty of denial to go around.  I've said house prices won't bottom for another year, but this real estate toilet won't completely flush for another five to ten years (lost decade?).  With new construction minimal for at least another three years, US growth will continue it's long slow pull off the bottom with real growth rates staying under 4% and averaging only 2% for the next five years.  Still, real estate will remain the best long-term investment for anyone who has cash.

01-01-12 - The Euro will survive since Germany has already involuntarily funded the weak sisters through the central Buba bank claims of half a trillion Euros.  Now they only need formally loan that much so the weak sisters can own up to their claims in their central bank and hand the money back to them. In for a penny, in for a pound.

01-01-12 - China is building 36 million new apartments to distract investors from the 64 million condos already completed, but still standing empty. That's exactly 100 million new units total, which makes our 7 million empty houses look like a minor disturbance. 


The real question is, where will these 230 million people work when they come in from the farm?  And how much will they be paid?  The growth honeymoon is over in China.  Now they'll have to do it the hard way. Ironically, organized labor will be their next major political force on the street.  Stand by for volatile times in China.

01-12-15 - Canada's housing bubble should pop within 24 months.


COLLECTIBLES

01-31-11 - Collectibles will be the next financial bubble, will have a long expansion and selective contractions over years before final collapse.

06-29-14  RIGHT!  And it continues... The pain hasn't started.


THE UNITED STATES

The U.S. will gently return to a slow growth "new normal" as we complete our transformation to the information age, and continue to lead in tech design. 06-22-10

01-12-15 - As is common, the United States is leading the recovery.  The rest may catch up in a couple of years.

China will become the world's manufacture, but have the greatest volatility as they grow too quickly in political fits and starts.  Russia will provide grain and energy, but struggle to achieve true democracy.  India will evolve more slowly around customer service. Brazil will be the emerging star of the next decade.  Still not much hope for Africa. 06-22-10


ENERGY

01-01-10 - Because of last year's $150 per barrel oil, in less than five years we will be awash in energy from multiple sources such that energy will be available at the equivalent of $1.99 a gallon in today's dollars.

06-29-14 - Somewhat right.  Though about twice that, energy has remained relatively cheap and will continue that way for another six years at least.

01-12-15 - Last June's qualification was premature.  Right on schedule, Americans are paying LESS that $2 per gallon for fuel even WITHOUT inflation adjustment.  And to confirm, fuel will remain UNDER $4 per gallon for another five years.


DEFLATION

We will have modest deflation for at least the next three years. 04-17-10

06-29-14 - RIGHT!  Four years and going strong, but has bifracated into biflation.  Basic goods and energy remain relatively cheap because of continued improvements in agriculture and manufacturing.  There is no general spiraling price increases.  But "unique" has taken on a whole new value in our culture reflected in the price of collectibles and some real estate - both have seen dramatic inflation using quantitative easing dollars of the one percent.  This trend will continue for another six years until at least 2020.


CHINA

China's construction and real estate bubble will exceed the scale and impact of our own and will pop within 24 months, with dramatic effect. 04-17-10 - Wrong!  They built 38 million MORE lower cost apartments. The reckoning remains on the horizon - by 2016? 06-29-14 


STOCK MARKET

06-29-14 - Deflation and low bond yields will continue to drive equities up for the longest bull market in history.


Friday, May 30, 2014

Embrace Burning Man 2014

The season's started!  Here's a major new project being developed in Reno at the Generator:

Embrace!






"I am.  We are.  It is" - a great summary from Larry Harvey, and a great start to the year:

Burning Man Festival: Charlie Rose - 03-21-14


DREAM - Art & Culture of Burning Man - 05-05-14

And while we're busy getting ready, here's AMAZING set of photos of an amazing event.  Afrika knows How to Burn:

AfrikaBurn - Trickster - 2014


AfikaBurn - The Movie

My favorite quote from the playa: "Burning Man is the same thing every year - completely different." - Guido

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Lindsey Stirling


5-3-13  My shortest blog post ever:

Lindsey Stirling - Dubstep Violin

5-15-14  Another excellent dance video:

Sia - Chandelier

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

The Next Economic Bubble Will Be a Zen Bubble

04-23-14 - I've been collecting data for this post since 2010.  Considering recent prices for art, it's past time to post:




11-09-15 Modigliani's "Nu Couche" recently sold for $170.4 million

Economic bubbles

Economic bubbles are fascinating specifically because they have little to do with economics, and everything to do with human behavior. In other words, little to do with logic, and everything to do with intuition.

Goods and services have a fundamental value reflected in how the thing contributes to our calories or shelter. Yes, there's more to life than than being fed and dry, but values become more abstract and subjective once security, health and aesthetics become factors.  And things get REALLY crazy when human vanity, greed and speculation are brought to bear.  These last factors are the source of economic bubbles.

Bubbles are driven by the "Greater Fool Theory" in which the value of something will increase with each transfer as long as there is another a greater fool.  Well, until there isn't.  The guy holding title when the music stops is the loser.  That's when everyone realizes the price of the last transaction was absurd. In other words, there were no more greater fools. After that, the object in question's "value" will drop dramatically and its market go quiet for decades.  Whomever is left holding the bag will have to wait until "the thing" comes back in fashion.  If ever.  There are lots of fools in history, but no one ever talks about their transactions, especially the fools themselves.

Even though the lesson of economic bubbles has been presented many times and in vivid detail, the lesson never seems to take. Or maybe I should say, there always seems to be a greater fool.  In the interest of those thinking about becoming a fool and chasing the next bubble, I'll present some historical examples of the phenomenon, their characteristics, and why it's ill-advised to get involved.  Finally, for those still interested, I'll present my candidate for the next bubble, and why.  Maybe you can get in (and out) early. Let's review some of the more famous bubbles to understand how they expanded, collapsed, and their ultimate impact upon our economy.


 Tulip Mania

The genesis of bubble behavior almost certainly goes back to ownership of property itself.  There are likely examples lost to history, but one of the earliest and most vivid major economic bubbles was Tulip Mania.

Strange as it may seem, it was literally the selling of future contracts for, of all things, tulip bulbs. Don't let this humble flower fail to impress you. The demand was amazing and provides an example of human behavior run amuck with a thing called fashion.  For a flower.

 In February of 1637, there were examples of single tulip bulbs selling for the current equivalent of ten years salary for a craftsman - for EACH bulb!  This was certainly in the hundreds of thousands of today's dollars. Yep. One flower bulb, a decoration for the table.  The key was that each bulb was unique in color and pattern.  These bulbs could be farmed, and their contracts traded.  Even though many similar families were bred, uniqueness is well, unique.  And unique allows for amazing rationalization, or shall we say irrationalization?

Some of the stories are amazing.  In one case, a workman mistakenly assumed a valuable tulip bulb on the kitchen table of his employer was a common onion.  He sliced it up for his sandwich, (appreciating it for its aesthetic flavor, and fundamental value in calories). When discovered, he was sent to debtor's prison for his error.  There are many other examples of how these crazy tulip prices destroyed people's lives. Mania is a good description for the love of these flowers and the strange market it created.

Though this bubble was narrow (a small part of national wealth), it was extremely deep (10,000 multiple). Though narrow, the dramatic multiple significantly increased the asset value of the Bank of Amsterdam for a time.  After the bubble popped, negative effects were felt for years.  In less than 90 days from the peak price, a tulip bulb was only worth, well, a tulip bulb.  It could be argued that the workman above was the most rational person in that economy at that time.  A couple of smaller tulip bubbles in other areas happened later, but the value of tulips has never again approached that peak anywhere in the world.


South Seas Bubble

You'd think Tulip Mania would be chapter one in every business book for centuries, but less than 80 years later everyone seems to have forgotten the lesson. The South Seas Bubble had almost nothing to do with the South Seas. Instead, its major asset was literally HALF of England's debt. The hopeful trade with South America allowed for the instruments of speculation (contract shares), and much of the government was complicit in promoting the investment.  Soon, people were borrowing to speculate.  The shares increased ten-fold before they popped. This bubble was both wide (half the national debt) and fairly deep (ten times any possible fundamental value).  When the price collapsed, the resulting debt depressed the economy of England for years.


The First Tech Bubble

Let's move to modern times. The first tech bubble has many good examples, but one I know well - they were a competitor.  In 1982 Fortune Systems was building a 68000-based micro-computer system.  They raised $110 million in a public offering at a half a billion dollar evaluation. Yes, these numbers are modest compared to today, but in 1982 this was the 7th largest IPO in U.S. history, and 500 million was a lot for a new company with no profits that had shipped fewer than 200 units, most of which were having problems. Of course, the investment was lost when the product didn't pan out. This "little" bubble popped.  There were other early public tech offerings but except for a few like Apple Computer, they shared the same fate.  This shows bubbles don't have to be big to be crazy. This was a modest bubble at the time, but it provided a taste of what was soon to come.


Tokyo Real Estate Bubble

Japanese real estate prices started rising dramatically in 1986 and were highest in Tokyo's Ginza district in 1989.  Choice properties were fetching over 30 million yen per square meter ($20,000 per square foot!). Prices were only marginally less in other large business districts of Tokyo.  Literally HALF of the WORLD's real estate value was in one relatively small island called Japan.

By 1990 the party was over.  In 2004, prime "A" property in Tokyo's financial districts had slumped to less than 1 percent of its peak, and Tokyo's residential homes were less than a tenth of their peak, but still managed to be listed as the most expensive in the world, only being surpassed in the late 2000s by Moscow and other cities creating their own bubbles. The Tokyo bubble was both wide and deep.  Tens of TRILLIONS of dollars worth of "asset value" were wiped out with the combined collapse of the Tokyo real estate and dependent stock markets. Only 18 years later in 2007 had property prices begun to rise, before falling again in late 2008 due to the global downturn.  Japan has not yet recovered.  It's now been decades.


The Internet Leads the Second Tech Bubble

On the day Netscape went public I gave a talk explaining how there was NO reason to value a company with NO revenue and NO profits at almost 4 BILLION dollars.  As it turns out, this too was just a taste of what is common today.  By the time the internet bubble crashed in the spring of 2000 it had created an estimated 6.2 TRILLION dollars in value, 90% of which disappeared within weeks. Even though mostly limited to only a segment of technology, this bubble was widely subscribed.  Its impact was felt for years. 


U.S. Housing Bubble

As money shuffled out of the internet, I began wondering where it would go next.  I watched in disbelief as house prices doubled (or in some cases tripled) in California, Nevada, Arizona, and Florida. At the peak, lotteries were held for the RIGHT to buy new residential construction.  By 2006, some high-end properties were being sold for up to $700 a square foot at nearby Lake Tahoe, which was far beyond its value in materials.  The difference was (ir)rationalized by location, but even in Reno some places sold for over $500 a square foot.  And Reno is on the edge of a vast desert whose value approaches zero.

I don't need to go on about the housing bubble.  Everyone else already has.  I'll just note that it represented "assets" of around 10 TRILLION dollars and seems to have triggered a collapse of a credit bubble on Wall Street of even greater magnitude in late 2008.  This housing/credit bubble was also devastating to main street, which continues to be affected six years later.


Chinese Real Estate and Debt Bubble

What may come to be known as the Chinese bubble is similar to what happened in the west but may be far larger when evaluated in retrospect, once good data is available.  In the United States, approximately five million "extra" housing units were constructed during the early part of this century.  China has built between 70 and ONE HUNDRED MILLION housing units in a similar time-frame.  Now, China has a lot more people and many of them need houses, but there was a disconnect in market forces of this construction.  Most of these units are executive homes and do not match the need nor demand from the market. Mitigating these glorious ghost cities will be far more difficult than foreclosing and reselling the American homes.  If you own anything in China, sell. Which brings us to the point of this post.  Where will all the fools go next?

05-05-14 - "Forget it, Jake; it's Chinatown" - more signs of cracks in China:

Zombies once destroyed Japan’s economy—now they’re infecting China’s

11-19-14 - Prices have tripled to over $2600 per square foot in Hong Kong since 2003

And the result:

The Next Bubble...

Now that bubbles are understood, we'll never again get caught.  Right?  Not necessarily. In Wikipedia on Bubbles it's noted that bubbles are generally identified in retrospect, much like bull and bear markets. Bubbles sneak up on people. As a matter of fact, people (and their human behavior) seem to be their secret sauce.

Is a fool someone who pays more for a thing than its fundamental value? Or is a fool someone who doesn't manage to sell the thing to a greater fool before the music stops? As the price increases well beyond fundamental value, at what instant does one become a fool? Where do the lines get drawn? In retrospect it's easy. Seeing that line while it is happening is more of a challenge.

The truth is, ALL investors are fools to one degree or another. It's just a matter of how long we feed the bubble, and how it eventually deflates. It's all depends on where you get in, and where you get out. That's where the human behaviors of greed, denial, and fear come in.

So what will be the next bubble?

Real estate? Not in our lifetime.  Population growth is finally flattening out and may even head down in a couple of decades.  In any case, China will be the final nail for real estate bubbles.  The upturn in the U.S. real estate last year was just a dead cat bounce.  It will abate soon, and mark the beginning of a long flat market for residential real estate in America, and around the world, with a few exceptions.

Stocks? Nope.  Like real estate, the current bull market is just a return to normal after the crash. There's already stock bubble talk, which will likely dampen the drive upward in time.

Gold Bubble?  Nope.  It's too obvious to do more than double unless we have major civil disruption. Also, since it has virtually no fundamental value, it could be argued that gold is always in a bubble. By degrees.

The next significant bubble will be none of the above.  The next bubble will be in collectibles, and it's already well underway.


... will be a Zen Bubble

Let's start with contemporary paintings.  According to Businessweek, auction sales of postwar contemporary art has gone from a few million dollars in 1988 to nearly $8 billion dollars in 2014. And most of those gains have been since 2003.  In another article, Businessweek notes, "There has been a 434% increase in value of the top 50 contemporary and postwar artists since 2003".  A record high of $142 million has been set for "Three Studies of Lucian Freud" who only died in 2002. Usually, artists have to be dead for MUCH longer to fetch such absurd prices.

A total of almost $66 BILLION of fine art was sold in 2013.  That's only ONE year of ONE segment of collectibles. There's also fine wine, cars, books, stamps, money and too many other obscure segments to be named, which is the real point.  With tulips, it was only tulips.  With web start-ups, it was only web start-ups.  In collectibles, there are at least a million places for fake value to hide, many of them unique.  This bubble has truffles at $100K per pound, a figurine for $5 million and a puppy (!) for $1.5 million.  Did you even realize people collected truffles? I didn't.  And a puppy dies.

The point is, the prices for art (and cars, and wine, and etc.) reflect far more than typical aesthetic value. These prices are dominated by speculation.  This is clearly a bubble, no matter how you wish to (ir)rationalize it. Or more precisely, these are bubblets as each of these segments lives in its own world of "investors" who generally ignore the other segments.  There is no limit to their (ir)rationalized value.  This segmentation is what will make this bubble so different from the ones that have come before. This bubble is not a bubble at all.  It's more like foam rising off the euphoria of too much champagne.  And as foam, it will play out in a far different way than the typical bubble.

This collectibles bubble is both wide, deep and insidious.  Worse than its absurd dollar value is its stealth. The types of collectibles are almost infinite since virtually anything ever created by man or nature can be collected.  Many unique items are literally in a class of one.  If it has value to anyone, it has value to a speculator. And if it has value to a speculator, its price will ultimately be driven far beyond it's fundamental or aesthetic value.

Like other bubbles, the price of any unique item or the whole segment will increase right up until it doesn't. If you dig deep, you'll find many examples of bubblets collapsing, but most investors don't even notice unless they own something in the segment or that particular item.  When each price collapses, these collectors lick their wounds in silence.  Who wants to brag about a loss?

Its stealth nature will be the hallmark of this bubble.  This collapsing foam of bubblets will not make any major news, well unless a big segment such as fine art collapses in general.  But that's less likely because each piece can be effectively (ir)rationalized then hidden away, which will be another aspect of this bubble - the absence of liquidity. Pieces will ultimately be hard to sell, and will therefore go back in the closet.  We may even see a time when collectible sales drop off, and the items simply used as collateral for loans, which may drive yet another credit bubble.  In any case, this Zen bubble may go on for decades.  Or longer.

Here's an example of how a minor bubblet goes out with a whimper, not a bang in only two years:

08-15-18 A Million Dollar Porsche 911 R?

Since a unique item can have a theoretically infinite value, expect some wild examples.  Here are a few more I've "collected" over the last several years.  Most are just headlines or links.  You'll have to Google for details.

The next question is, "when will we see the first BILLION dollar transaction for something with no fundamental value?"

I suspect it'll be sooner than you think:

"$210,700 for a $666.66 Computer! An Apple computer purchased more than 30 years ago has sold for 316 times its original selling price. From the article: 'An Apple-1, one of only about 200 such machines built in Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' parents' garage, sold at Christie's auction house in London today for 133,250 pounds (about $210,700). The Apple-1, which didn't include a casing, power supply, keyboard, or monitor, originally retailed for $666.66 in 1976. Apple discontinued the model in 1977.'"

10-23-14 Apple I Price Update - $905,000!

$330K for 2.87 lbs of rare white truffle!

05-23-11 A Rolex wristwatch made in 1942 sold for a record $1.16 million at Christie's!

$194K for a 38-inch toy boat once owned by Malcolm Forbes!

$302,500 for Andy Warhol print of Mao Zedong - TEN TIMES the estimate!

1923 Leica 0-series becomes world's most expensive camera, fetches $1.89 million at auction!

Marilyn Monroe's Seven Year Itch dress, which went under the hammer at auction on Saturday, is a record breaker.  The iconic white dress fetched $5.5 million!

A Stradivarius built in 1721, which once belonged to Lord Byron's granddaughter, sold online for $15.9 million!

06-27-2011 - A Jean-Michel Basquiat self-portrait sold for $3.3 million, five times more than in 2003!

World's oldest running car fetches $4.6 million at auction

10-24-11 - Gerhard Richter's 1982 painting Kerze (Candle) fetched $16.6 million at a Christie's sale, an auction record for the artist, who says the price is "as absurd as the banking crisis".

12-03-11 - Why IS Art So Damned Expensive?

11-07-11 -Queen Victoria's bloomers sold for $15K, three times estimate.  Skid marks included for free.

Rare 1787 Gold Coin Sells for $7.4 Million

11-14-11 - Roy Lichtenstein's 1961 painting, I Can See the Whole Room!... and There's Nobody in It! sold for $43 million

11-30-11 - A set of eight scrolls of lotus flowers PAINTED THIS YEAR by Chinese artist Cui Ruzhuo sold for $16 million!

01-16-12 - The ultimate inflation: A 1793 copper one-cent coin sold for $1.38 million at Heritage Auctions, an increase in value of more than a hundred million times.

02-19-12 - The 1889 van Gogh Vue de l'asile et de la Chapelle de Saint-Remy formerly owned by Elizabeth Taylor sold for $16 million.

02-20-12 - The 1963 Francis Bacon "Portrait of Henrietta Moraes" sold for $33 million.

04-09-12 - A Ruyao bowl that dates from 1086 to 1106 sold for $26.7 million at Sotheby's, a record

05-01-12 - This year paintings by Warhol and Munch are expected to sell for more than $50 million each. WRONG!

05-04-12 - Munch's "The Scream" went for $119.9 million dollars, more than twice estimates. Warhol's Elvis only brought $37 million, for an average of $78.5 million, 57% over estimates.

Why did this Mini sell for over $65,000?

05-08-12 - A teacup Lady Gaga used last year in Japan sold for $75,000.  What's next, used toilet tissue?

05-09-12 The $412 check that DC Comics gave artist Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1938 to buy the right to the Superman character fetched $160,000 at an online auction.

05-11-12 A blue flannel New York Yankees baseball cap worn by Babe Ruth in 1930 is on the block, estimated to be worth $400,000.

05-15-12 Mark Rothko's fiery 1961 canvas, Orange, Red, Yellow fetched a record $86.9 million after a $45 million estimate.

07-07-12 Joan Miro's 1927 Peinture fetched $37 million at Sotheby's

08-20-12 Cover art for issue 328 of The Amazing Spider-Man sold for $657,250, a record for comic book art.

09-01-12 and setting new records in each category:

Cezanne's painting "The Card Players" for $250 million
Superman's first edition went for $2.16 million.
The first map of the United States for $1.5 million
A live Red Tibetan Mastiff puppy for $1.5 million
Audubon 1st edition bird book $11.5 million

10-18-12 - The two guns taken off Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow sold for a total of $504,000.  I wonder if they could have appreciated the irony.

10-22-12 - Two 1941 Sun Yat-sen stamps sold for $709,000

11-19-12 - The 1951 drip painting Number 4 by Jackson Pollock sold for $40,400,000 at Sotheby's.

Indian weddings have become a bubble and are an excellent example of bizarre human fashion.  The wedding industry in India is now growing at 25% per year.  India is now consuming 30% of the world's gold production, and half of it goes for Indian weddings.  The estimates for 2012 wedding costs in India are about $40 billion, and this is in a country with a per capita GDP of only $4000. Could this gold be considered a collectible?







1988 Jeff Koons sculpture of Buster Keaton on a horse - sold for $5 million 12-17-12





2013 It's not exactly collectible, but perhaps ephemeral gastronomic art? A record price for a single tuna of $1.8 million was paid for one 490 pound fish.

01-24-13 - "Rick Champagne, a 56-year-old company owner from Arizona has bought the original Batmobile (dating back to Burt Ward and the '60s) for $4.2 million. He's quoted as saying it 'was a dream come true.' From the article: 'The Batmobile design was based on a 1955 Lincoln Futura, a concept car built in Italy by the Ford Motor Company. It was the first time that car had come up for public sale since it was bought in 1965 by car-customizer George Barris, who transformed it in 15 days, at the cost of $15,000 (£9,400), into the superhero's famous vehicle.'"

  03-20-13 - A blood-stained sock worn by Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling in the 2004 World Series fetched $92,613 at auction.

04-06-2013 A 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card sold for $2.1 million

$38 Million for a car?

1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 NART Spider sells for incredible $27.5 million

07-01-13 An untitled 1982 painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat sold for $29 million at Christie's

09-04-13 A vintage Ferrari Spyder convertible sold for 28 million in the same week that a diamond and a yacht went for about same amount.  Is $30 million a special price point?

10-14-13 Sotheby's sets new record prices in China with $30,800,000 for a diamond, $30,500,000 million for a bronze Buddha and $23,300,000 for Zeng Fanzhi's, "The Last Supper", the highest price ever for a contemporary Asian artist.

11-18-13 The car that won the 1954 Formula 1 world championship, a Mercedes-Benz W196R coupe became the most expensive car ever sold at $30 million.

04-30-2014 "In 2013, one blue-fin tuna was auctioned off for $1.7 million..."  I hope they froze some of it.

05-01-14 Even sales of early scraps of an artist's work have exceeded a million dollars:

DYLAN'S 'LIKE A ROLLING STONE' HEADS TO AUCTION

04-25-14 A collector paid $2 million for Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone", a record for lyrics.

05-15-14 I'm not sure if unique houses qualify as collectible, but it's hard to imagine any other reason to pay this much and it would certainly break the billion dollar absurd threshold I mentioned above :

The Most Expensive Homes in the World


And one more from the age of opulence:

This Absurd Mansion Features Star Trek-Themed Rooms And Could Be Yours For $35 Million

And what's up with Popeye?

Steve Wynn paid $28 million for Jeff Koons sculpture of Popeye.
Andy Warhol's Popeye is appraised at $50 million.
Roy Lichtenstein's Popeye is appraised at $47 million.
It makes one want to open a can of spinach and draw some cartoons.


Why are so many people paying so much money for art?

"Owning collectibles offers one major advantage – one that I think drives 90% of the demand for collectibles: It's a great way to protect your wealth from the IRS. People know that when they die, the IRS won't have any idea what is hanging on their walls or hiding in their vaults. Or what they are worth. Often they have to use the purchase price from years ago. So they hide money in these trophies to give to their children to avoid estate taxes. Mind you, I'm not passing judgment on these actions, nor am I recommending them. I just believe that's why a lot of demand for collectibles exists.

Collectibles are also easily transferable across borders. You can take a Picasso on a private jet and move $100 million offshore. And no one has to know.

When you buy collectibles, you're betting on the irresponsibility of the government and the wickedness of the tax system… If the government gets more irresponsible and the tax system gets more heinous, you'll probably do well. And I think that's a good bet. But you should understand what you're betting on."

04-29-14 - The above observation is an excellent example of how tax policy can distort markets.  It's also an excellent reason to collect, and a reasonable rationalization.

07-09-14 Claude Monet's "Water Lilies" sold for $54 million.

09-04-14 A copy of the first Superman Comic which originally went for ten cents sold for $3.2 million yielding a multiple of 32 million times its original value.

09-07-14 A 1962 250 GTO Ferrari sold for $38 million and is lifting prices for all sports cars of the era - a nano-bubble of its own?

09-18-14 - Hyundai spending $10B for 20 acres turns land into a collector's item for the first time. This is in the price range of the Tokyo bubble of 1989.  They could have done a lot better in the Nevada desert like Tesla just did - a THOUSAND acres for FREE.  Even Tesla's 370 acres in the BAY AREA, some of the more expensive land on Earth only cost them $42M - and it had a 5.5 million square foot working factory on it! Has Hyundai been bit with bidding fever in the process of taking the site away from Samsung?  Did this bidding war turn this plot into a collector's item?


10-16-14 BUY THE PAINTING HOLD THE PAINTING SELL THE PAINTING

From the above link: "A Francis Bacon triptych set an auction record for any artwork, at $142.4 million. Jeff Koons’s sculpture Balloon Dog (Orange), at $58.4 million, set a high mark for a living artist. An Andy Warhol picture of a Coca-Cola bottle sold for $57.3 million, pushing the overall take that night to $692 million, at the time the biggest single sale of art ever."

"The final price for Apocalypse Now, including the buyer’s premium paid to Christie’s: $26.4 million. It had appreciated roughly 350,000 percent in 25 years."

11-25-14 - The Cowardly Lion costume from the classic film "The Wizard of Oz" and the piano from the movie "Casablanca" each sold for over $3 million at a New York City auction.

01-19-15 - $100 Million New York Apartment

5-5-15 A Honus Wagner baseball card sold for $1.3 million

5-12-15 Picasso's Picasso's Les Femmes d'Alger, "Version O" sold for $179 million, a record.




05-13-15 A Mark Rothko painting sold for $46.5 million at a Sotheby's 

06-08-15 Hedge fund billionaire Steven Cohen is the secret buyer of the world’s most expensive sculpture, Alberto Giacometti’s “Man Pointing,” for $141.3 million at Christie’s.

06-20-15 A Hermes Birkin purse sold for $222,000. It certainly wouldn't hold that much.

11-11-15 Cohen's Warhol `Mao' Portrait Fetches $47.5 Million at Sotheby's

11-11-15 Titanic cracker sells for $23k

11-30-15 $173k paid for a Michael Jordan jersey

12-17-15 A letter signed by Mao Zedong sells for $918,000

02-05-16 1937 Mercedes 540K sets Arizona record at $9.9 million

02-16-16 Delaware license plate #14 sold for $325K as an investment. Here there was no magic art involved at all, just a magic number.


02-28-16 The most paid for a Basquiat was set in 2013 when $48.8 million was paid for Dustheads:























05-08-16 Or for nearly the same price, you can get a 12 karat blue diamond ($48.5 million).  Tough call.

06-01-16 An auction yielded $1.3 million dollars for the Winchester rifle owned by the Army captain who captured Geronimo.

07-29-16 Perhaps much of the art world is not what it seems:

Miles Mathis on Laundered Art

08-01-16 Richard Mille fountain pen sells for $100,000, just the normal retail price.

08-01-16 $300k for a new Birkin handbag. When does something become collectible?

08-20-16 Very first Shelby Cobra sells for $13.75 million, a new record for an American car

08-24-16 1955 Jaguar D-Type that won Le Mans sets $21.78 million record price at auction

10-03-16 $600k for a new Cartier watch - is this an attempt to create collectibles because of a 1982 Nautilus watch sold $909k last year?

10-31-17 Paul Newman's Rolex Daytona watch just sold for a record $17.75 million

11-16-17 Leonardo Da Vinci (?) Portrait Of Christ Sells For Record-Shattering $450 Million

Even the tools of art take on a special value:

03-14-18 Leica Camera Sold for $2.96 Million, a New Record

03-14-18 When a tip became worth $1.56 million, from Thus spake Albert :

"The paper was inscribed and autographed in Japan on the stationery of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo and dated November 1922, the month in which Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. He stayed at this hotel during his massively popular lecture tour of Japan, when he attracted even more attention than the Japanese imperial family. Apparently somewhat embarrassed by such frenetic publicity, Einstein decided to record some of his thoughts and feelings about life in writing. He gave this particular sentence (and another shorter one) to a Japanese delivery courier, either because the courier refused to accept a tip, in keeping with local practice, or because Einstein had no small change. ‘Maybe if you’re lucky those notes will become much more valuable than just a regular tip,’ Einstein apparently told the unnamed Japanese courier, according to the document’s seller, reported by the BBC to be the courier’s nephew.

The Jerusalem auction house estimated that the note would sell for between $5,000 and $8,000. Bidding started at $2,000. For about 20 minutes, a flurry of offers pushed up the price rapidly, until the final two bidders vied for the trophy by telephone. By the end, the price had risen to a scarcely believable $1.56 million.

Translated into English, Einstein’s sentence reads: ‘A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.’

The absurdity of this auction would not have been lost on Einstein, were he still with us. During the second half of his life, following the British-led astronomical confirmation of his theory of general relativity in 1919, he was unfailingly puzzled by his celebrity and uninterested in amassing money for its own sake."



OK, I admit it's not a collectible, but perhaps the first real cybercoin bubble? Either way, it's interesting to follow:

09-07-17 Bitcoin Breaks $5,000 in Latest Price Frenzy

12-02-17 At $11,000, when Grandma joins the frenzy, you know bitcoin is turning into a bubble

09-20-18 - The housing bubble, part 2?  Hong Kong’s previous record sale was set in 2016, when a house at 15 Gough Hill Road on the Peak fetched HK$2.1 billion, according to Colliers International Inc.





07-28-19 $437,500 for a pair of old shoes: 

Holy Relics








What will it be next?

01-11-20


Bullitt Mustang fetches high-caliber price: $3.74 million



Housing Bubble 2.0?

01-23-20 Texas Real Estate Broker Reveals Why the Housing Market Could Implode


03-02-21 Collecting has left the physical world. Are NFTs a great place for value to be stored?

03-08-21 - A 10-second video of LeBron dunking just sold for $200K. We're talking NFTs.

03-11-21 Beeple's 5,000-day digital art collection sells for $69.4 million

03-18-21 NYC man sells fart for $85, cashing in on NFT craze

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Favorite Quotes

‘If our species had started with just two people at the time of the earliest agricultural practices some 10,000 years ago, and increased by one percent per year, today humanity would be a solid ball of flesh many thousand light years in diameter, and expanding with a radial velocity that, neglecting relativity, would be many times faster than the speed of light.’Gabor Zovanyi


As opposed to "Do to others what you would have them do to you", "Do to others what they would have you do to them". The golden rule presumes we are all alike. The Platinum rule is more subjective. 12-2714

"Freedom, to me, is the ultimate value. There is nothing higher than freedom." OSHO


Humor is intuition landing in our logic, like a fly in our metaphor. 04-02-14


"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." - Paraphrased from Albert Einstein by Bob Samples 1976


“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” - Marthe Troly-Curtin July 1911


“I know one thing, that I know nothing.” - Socrates 500 BC


"I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief" - Gerry Spence.


"Expectations are premeditated resentments. Let the future find it's form."


"In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it." - Robert Heinlein


"Art is that which everything else isn't" - Theodore Roethke


"Moderation in all things, including moderation." - Oscar Wilde?


"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein


"Revenge is for children and the emotionally retarded" - Frank Herbert


"Stay hungry, stay foolish." Stewart Brand


"Choice is just another word for discrimination, so when does my choice become your discrimination?" Rod Coleman 02-12-14

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Standards of Truth




If absolutes are an illusion of the human mind, how do we gauge relative truth?  When does a generalization become useful?

The American justice system takes this illusion into account and presents a good example of something useful with its two standards of proof. "More likely than not" is required to indict (bring to the court).  "Beyond a reasonable doubt" is required to convict (and proceed with sentence and execution).  Both evaluate evidence but ultimately require subjective conviction.  If all proof was truly objective, judges and juries wouldn't be needed.

"More likely than not" simply means anything with a probability of greater than 50 percent, even by just a little.  This reflects nature's effort to exceed the average. The test covers half the spectrum of probability and also reflects how the intuitive mind reaches conclusions.  Evidence is presented, but "feelings" one way or the other are used to describe our ultimate conclusion.

"Beyond a reasonable doubt" is a far stronger test. It means almost certain and requires substantial evidence, logic and nothing contrary that raises "reasonable doubt". Still, mistakes are made and innocent people are put to death.  Most convicted ARE guilty, but there are exceptions.

These are the same tests we unconsciously use to filter our experience.  If something makes sense, we find it more likely than not to be true.  We put it in the probable category and wait for more evidence.  Once we get multiple independent verification, we move beyond a reasonable doubt to conviction.  It's conviction that drives our action. But even after conviction we sometimes discover error. Does it make us more careful? Usually not. Generally we rationalize our action as based on bad data.  We blame someone else and move on.

Still, these two standards of truth are powerful tools and the best we have in critical thinking.  Keep them handy.  Weight the evidence.  Be ready to be wrong.

Friday, January 17, 2014

Your Body Is My Canvas

An excellent TED talk on how art evolves:


Alexa Meade Self Portrait





Your Body Is My Canvas














As Theodore Roethke implied, "Art is that which everything else isn't."