You can't take it with you

So I was at Dave & Buster's recently, yesterday in fact, with some friends of mine I hadn't seen in awhile. After chowing down on some savory dinner, we got down to the important part: the games.

If you haven't been to Dave & Buster's before, it's somewhat difficult to describe, except to say that it's kind of like a Chuck E Cheese except it's not weird for adults to play too.  The objective in many of the games is to amass tickets, and you can exchange tickets for prizes when you're finished. The more valuable the prize, the more tickets it costs; for example an Xbox game could be 10,000 tickets while a D&B branded mug might cost 400 tickets. In my nerdiness, I tried to figure out the approximate dollar value of a ticket and the expected return for each game I played but that's neither here nor there.

As I perused the store after winning exactly 1111 tickets, including a 500-ticket jackpot I hit on my final play (see photo), I realized I wouldn't have a use for most of the stuff I could redeem my tickets for anyway.  And I didn't plan on coming back - at least not for a very long time - so I couldn't really take my tickets with me.

At that point it occurred to me that this is very much like how money is in the world; in my world, at least, I should say.  As I focused on gaining as many tickets as I could, I surely missed out on some bonding opportunities with these friends I don't see too often. And when I left the arcade, it's not like I could take the tickets with me in any meaningful way.

In the same way I imagine pursing a career as my first priority, and marginalizing my family and friends, would ultimately leave me unfulfilled.  Sure, I may end up with a lot of cold, hard cash, or "tickets," and maybe a slick car and a big house, or "prizes," but if I spend all my time in the proverbial arcade of life chasing after things that will ultimately have no value to me when I die, what good is it?

If, however, I had focused my time getting to know my friends better instead of piling up stacks of tickets, maybe I'd have made a bigger impact on their lives instead of walking out with some silly trinkets.

So perhaps if I spend more time developing relationships and making a positive impact in peoples' lives than worrying about my job and finances, I'd not only feel fulfilled but actually make a difference.

Those tickets ultimately end up in a shredder, and the trinkets in the trash.

I couldn't take them with me, and I won't be able to take the "real" ones with me either.

Neither will you.

The End

So it's December 21, 2012.

Actually, it's early morning on the 22nd by now in the eastern reaches of the globe.

And the world's still here.

The verse I shared with friends days before May 23, 2011, Harold Camping's prediction of the End by adding and multiplying several unrelated numbers in the Bible, still applies today:

“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only."

Synoptically stated in both Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32.

So even though Camping is supposedly a Christian, he evidently didn't take the Bible too seriously.

The Mayans, on the other hand, weren't even trying to predict anything; they just thought planning out their calendar a couple of thousand years would be enough to suit their purposes. They most likely figured they would have ample time to update but were unfortunately too busy finding themselves on the wrong side of a certain clash of civilizations with the Spaniards to be bothered to edit their calendar.

That said, the question remains: what if today was the "last day?"

What would I do, how would I act?

Well, Paul certainly lived as if the end were near (see Philippians 4:5) - he even told people not to get married partially with this in mind.  He spread the Gospel and went through untold amounts of pain and hardship, knowing that Jesus could come back at any moment.

So do I live my life the same way?

Ashamedly, no.

My close friend made the apt point that if the world was ending tomorrow (or today) it shouldn't change the way we live our lives as Christians; we should always be sharing the Gospel with the expectation that Jesus' return is imminent.

So although I do share my faith with others from time to time, typically in a dialogue whereby I listen to them describe their beliefs first and foremost, this should serve as a reminder to me to do so more often and with a greater sense of the gravity of such conversations.  I invited a friend to church this week as a matter of fact - I hope God continues to provide opportunities like that as I become more obedient in following through on them.

Although it seems like it's taking awhile for Jesus to return, Peter points out in 2 Peter 3:8-10:

"But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief."

So I don't pray that Jesus would return soon anymore; I pray for more time for people to repent and believe, and for me to help in that process any way I can.

Are you preparing yourself for what's coming?

"Are you preparing yourself for what's coming?" I heard one coworker ask another today.  Hurricane Sandy, "Frankenstorm" - a tropical storm slash nor'easter; whatever you call it, it is on the way to the East Coast, and looks to be fearsome.

Many are buying bottled water and batteries; some who have generators, fuel for them. I'm glad I already filled up on gas just the other day - if power goes out, the pumps could be down for awhile.

But what about another reality that I know is coming? Am I preparing myself for that?

It happens all too often that I am consumed by some stress or anxiety over some minute thing - compared to this coming reality, aren't all daily stressors so abjectly silly?

Am I preparing myself for what's coming? Or am I just busy worrying about unimportant things? Or am I preparing myself for the wrong things; are my priorities misaligned?


Just a brief thought.

9/11, the Injeel, and am I Jonah?

So it's been awhile.

9/11 was yesterday; the eleventh anniversary.

It's nuts to think that was 11 years ago; for some reason it seems much more recent than that to me.

It boggles my mind that a human being can wreck that type of destruction willfully on someone else. It must take someone with some type of skewed mentality, who cannot empathize with others, to commit such a heinous act.  I can comprehend, to a limited extent, someone with a mental illness committing such crimes - the Aurora, Colorado shooter, for example, seems to have signs of paranoid schizophrenia, perhaps believing in an alternate reality where he is the Joker.  But someone who is technically sane killing thousands just leaves me at a loss.  Perhaps theirs is a different kind of mental illness. They could have been trained from a young age to hate all things Western, to despise the stars and stripes, to believe that America is actually the Great Satan. Maybe they were traumatized from a young age; seeing collateral damage in their towns from American missile strikes aimed at Al Qaeda hitting schools or something.

However, I don't think it's excusable. If you read the Qur'an, it is clear that 'People of the Book', e.g. Christians and Jews, are to be respected by Islamic Muslims - in Medina the Prophet was clear on this.  It seems heretical, then, that Tehran is spewing hatred toward Israel, and splinter groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban target America (and one could argue Christianity) with such animosity - their own sacred text describes Jesus as virgin born (not even Mohammed had that honor), refers to him as 'the Spirit of God' (see Sura 5:46 onwards if you're interested; the Injeel is the New Testament), and says a lot of true things about him (though there are discrepancies as well; such as his crucifiction).

Sura 5:82, for example, says "...you will certainly find the nearest in friendship to those who say: We are Christians; this is because there are priests and monks among them and because they do not behave proudly"

Sura 3:3 says "It is He Who sent down to thee (step by step), in truth, the Book, confirming what went before it; and He sent down the Law (of Moses) and the Gospel (of Jesus) before this, as a guide to mankind, and He sent down the criterion (of judgment between right and wrong)."

Sura 5:46-47 says "And in their footsteps We sent Jesus the son of Mary, confirming the Law that had come before him: We sent him the Gospel (Injeel): therein was guidance and light, and confirmation of the Law that had come before him: a guidance and an admonition to those who fear Allah.

Let the people of the Gospel judge by what Allah hath revealed therein. If any do fail to judge by (the light of) what Allah hath revealed, they are (no better than) those who rebel."

So you can tell that those terrorists who are killing Christians and Jews in the name of Allah are truly misguided, not only by our standards, but even by their own sacred texts.  

Now as far as the reciprocal goes, Christians are definitely called to respect Muslims, as we are called to love our neighbors, as well as our enemies.  Which means we are even called to love terrorists, the very ones who are killing our loved ones.  That's a hard thought.  I never found it all too difficult to forgive, or pray for the bully that was my 'enemy' in grade school, but it's a different story when it comes to those who literally want me to die.  It shouldn't be - and I've managed to pray for them to come to know Christ and repent, etc... but still.

I feel like I know how Jonah felt when God told him to go preach in Nineveh to Israel's enemies - Jonah was flabbergasted and went the other way (hence the whole whale story).  The Assyrians / Ninevites had done some pretty rapacious deeds to Israel in Jonah's life time, and he didn't want to see God forgive them; when he did end up begrudgingly preaching to them, and they sincerely repented, he was actually upset! He wanted God's justice to be done to them, while God had mercy in mind.  It is often thought that God sent Jonah to the Ninevites not only for their benefit, but for his; God wanted to melt Jonah's heart of stone, but it appears that Jonah would have none of it - the book of Jonah ends unresolved and we never hear anything more about him.

So the question becomes apparent; am I like Jonah? Or am I willing to forgive and preach to my enemies, praying that God would forgive them for what they've done? I pray I'm the latter, but it's a journey.  Eleven years later, the world is quite a different place.  But one thing surely hasn't changed; God still wants his Muslim children to come to know Him. And we are called to love our enemies.

Good Stewardship

So in light of my post-before-last, I thought I'd share some internal debates I've been having on the subject.
Also, as an aside, epic fail at keeping my streak alive. Guess I jinxed it! Haha.

Anyhow, at a church service the following Sunday, our pastor, let's call him Brett (because that's his name), basically copied my idea! He spoke on Matthew 6, and discussed clothes & food, and other silly things we go around worrying about. He even justified, with a logically sound argument (in my opinion) why he dresses up to preach each week, but why he doesn't really care how we dress going to church. Which was awesome.

But I have been thinking about my car a lot lately. Those of you who know me well would be quick to point out that I really enjoy vehicles - whether it's cars, motorcycles (even planes & boats I guess), etc.  My last 3 cars have all been stick shift, and I have put some inordinate amount of money into making them go faster, and look shinier.  Which, all told, is completely pointless.

However, the justifying part of my brain wants to say...
"But Brian, you employ those people that makes those parts you buy, and they feed their families with that money! It's not like you're just setting that money on fire and throwing it off a bridge! (Fire marshals would be displeased, anyway) Plus, if you didn't use it on car parts, you'd just save it, and the government wouldn't get all those juicy taxes when you pay sales tax and the seller pays income tax and sales tax when they spend it in turn, etc! (that's called the money multiplier effect, 'M' in econ 101)..."
But in reality, I think I just like my car to make loud noises when I press on the accelerator, and for it to look nice. Which is really a pride thing I think; I like it when people look at my car and give me a thumbs up, or when they nod at me because they are a car enthusiast too.

I think that the main place I found joy in it at one point was installing the actual parts, and working with my dad in putting them in, but eventually it got warped into this narcissistic self-love... sad, I know. Plus the parts are actually worse for the environment and my fuel economy (incrementally), and probably attract more unwanted attention than wanted (people try to street race me all the time - I just have to not make eye contact).

That's why I decided to sell all of my aftermarket parts - it's called "parting out" in the modding community, and get my car back to stock.  Then I think I will sell it and get something more utilitarian - it's a V6 Coupe; not very efficient, and there is practically no legroom in the back.  It's a sad process because most of my mods will not go for even 50% what I paid form them just months ago, for some reason, and it's quite expensive to ship heavy stainless steel pipes around the country as well. Some of them are still unopened, too! But I really felt convicted after writing that post - it's something I've been struggling with for quite awhile.

In the future instead of spending thousands of dollars on car modifications, I will probably just save. Or maybe spend it on car-related things that are actually useful; like a trailer or safety features - things that will go to good use, and hopefully actually increase the resale value instead of decreasing it like racing mods do (people assume if you put these into your car you've treated it badly - revving past the redline, etc).

So thank you, dear readers, for helping me in this introspective journey that is actually leading to real change in my life. Tonight I meet with a fellow Accord enthusiast who wants to buy some pipes from the bottom of my car for $800. Thank goodness I kept the originals!

And thank God He is changing my heart - I want any hint of pride in me to be completely killed off.
We are told to take up our crosses daily, die to ourselves, and crucify our flesh. I'd be remiss if I didn't take those words seriously.

And in Matthew 6, which I mentioned earlier, we are told to Seek first His Kingdom... and not worry about these secondary things because He will take care of us. In being so focused on my car, I definitely was worrying about some pretty pointless stuff. This is a chance for me to realign and remind myself where I should be focusing.

Personal Pacifism

Hello again, and welcome!

I seem to be getting into a groove here, posting a couple week days in a row - I am kind of surprising myself, really! Just hope to continue using this momentum and hoping to not run out of interesting things to ponder.


So today's topic is personal pacifism, and my musings on the matter (awesome alliteration, right? I crack me up).

I was in Charlottesville the night before the 4th of July, eating dinner with a bunch of college friends from my fellowship I hadn't seen in ages - they'd flown in from as far as Seattle and Chicago, it was epic.

Anyhow, we somehow progressed down the path of philosophical discussion, and I won't feign innocence - I love those deep conversations. Somehow just babbling about the weather doesn't seem to cut it (even if the weather has been eerily wacky at times - oh wait, there I do again).

So a close friend and mentor of mine has discussed pacifism with me a handful of times, and he was one of the ones at the table.  I really admire him and over time have really started adopting (read: stealing) parts of his view, even though it was quite foreign to me at one point. And, as an aside, I hope I am always that willing to learn from a differing viewpoint and change my own - though it is quite hard at times. Pride is such an addictive drug.

Basically, the point of the discussion was whether or not he'd defend himself, and why.
He said if someone was trying to kill him, and the only option was to kill the other person, he would rather die.  After all, Jesus said to turn the other cheek (more on that later).  However, there's usually the option of running away.  This was a bit surprising to some, less so after he made the parameters so stark.

I would tend to agree, and here's why (borrowing heavily from his reasoning):

First of all, let's assume I'm single, with no children (it shouldn't need to be said that the one should presuppose the other but alas). Thus I can't use an argument that me dying would leave my wife and/or kids any worse off.

Second, let's assume the attacker is not a Christian.  I mean, if someone is trying to kill me, and you know a tree by its fruit, I'm thinking it's a bad tree.

What follows, in my line of thinking, is that if I die, I go to Heaven. If he dies, he goes to Hell (though I am not the judge, for the sake of this example I would definitely be assuming that).  However, if I die and he repents, in prison, and comes to Christ in a prison ministry a la Chuck Colson, he goes to Heaven, too!  And I really hope my last words would be something like "I forgive you... Jesus loves you" to point him in that direction, but I'm not making any promises. They'd more likely be a variant of "ouch!"

Thus I would agree, and would rather die than kill in that scenario.

The scenario gets a whole lot more complicated with more variables, however.  What if he was attacking some innocent, helpless person? Would it matter whether or not they were a Christian? I'd say no, I would defend them as the Bible is clear that helping/defending widows and orphans is always a good idea. Would I try to maim the attacker instead of killing him? Of course.  But, as was pointed out in said conversation, it is often hard in the heat of a fight to "aim at an arm" or what not, assuming you have a weapon.

What this really can boil down to, in my opinion, is philosophy.  From my last post, Kantianism and Utilitarianism both have very different things to say in scenarios like this.  For Kant, every human life is sacred. For John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism), the ends justify the means, and it's really just a numbers game - the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people.  However, it gets tricky when your definition of "good" differs.

For example, the Third Reich Nazi scientists wanted the greatest good for the greatest number - their crazed experiments were not merely punitive torture - they tested on human subjects to better the human race, to create the Übermensch (Unfortunately all philosophy discussions seem to denigrate toward the holocaust in my experience).  For Kant, it's clear that that would be reprehensible - and I'm not saying this to say that every Utilitarian is a Nazi - just that if taken to the extreme it can lead to some crazed thinking.

Another classic example used in philosophy classes is the one where you must determine whether or not to kill an innocent person to save more innocent people. Your plane crashed in a jungle, and terrorists give you a gun with one bullet, in a twisted experiment. They say, shoot this one passenger, or we will kill all the rest of the 40 passengers. It's clear that Utilitarianism would find that preferable; Kant would say no - human life is sacred, no matter what is gained.  And I would agree - assuming you could even trust the terrorists; they could have you kill 19 of the passengers to save the other 21, or kill 39 of them to save the last 1, where does it stop? The only way I could see it working would be: they ask me to take my own life in exchange (yes) or the person they want you to shoot pleads with you to do it; he'd like to sacrifice himself for the rest.

Anyhow, now that we are nice and off track, pacifism. Why the 'personal'? Well, I think that it makes sense on a personal level - not an a national one.  If our country is under attack, we should defend, for the same reason that we should protect the innocent/helpless.

But when should we go on the offensive, if ever? Is Just War Theory tenable, and is it ever okay to have a pre-emptive strike?

I'm still struggling through those issues, but for now, I'm leaning towards defensive wars only, or perhaps intervening wars if humanitarian atrocities are happening (e.g. Libya, Syria, etc) - but I'm not sure about that. The US is not the world police, but I know I could not stand idly by if I had the power to stop the raping, killing, pillaging and burning of a people - genocide.  How that works out in the real world, though, is difficult to grapple with.

Lastly, that takes me to WWII, again, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  I think I've probably written enough for one post, but wanted to touch on that debate I mentioned yesterday.  I do not think it was a good idea to drop those bombs on innocent people. I might dig deeper on this later, but I just don't - the alternative, land invasion would have been costly, yes. But at least our soldiers would be killing people who were actually fighting them - voluntarily. The schoolchildren who died, or were mutilated by radiation, were not at fault.

I don't think it would have been an easy decision, and were I president Truman I can't say what I would have done.  I probably have much more to think about, and don't believe criticizing our commander in chief, past or present, is ever very productive.

I hope you've enjoyed reading!

Morality of the Markets 2.0

So, based on the interest I received on my last post, I thought I'd take a deeper dive.

If you haven't already, read that one first.

It has been said to me many times that "money is the root of all evil." That, however, is only a partial quote, and an out of context one at that (Sorry 'G'!)
The true quote is from a book of the Bible, First Timothy.  It't in the sixth chapter, and is part of verse ten:

"For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs."
From that quote, the 'love of' part is often left out.  Money itself, I would argue, is amoral - it's just an instrument. Loving money, however, is no good. We aren't supposed to love stuff, just God and people.

Anyhow, with that out of the way, let's look at other parts of 1 Timothy 6; earlier in that paragraph, Paul cites "unhealthy interest in controversies" as problematic - something that I definitely can struggle with. Do things like the debt ceiling, healthcare reform, calvinism vs. arminianism, etc. really matter as much as we make them out to? Probably not.
  
For example: I got in a pretty heated debate on the 4th of July with some guy I had never even met about Utilitarianism vs. Kantianism, the validity of John Stuart Mill's 'end justifies the means' philosophy against Kant's categorical imperative - which unraveled to relativism in general. Robust moral relativism, the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Holocaust, etc... you get the picture.  Needless to say I am doubtful that anyone else found our "conversation" (read: debate) enthralling besides the two of us, and maybe a third who joined in.  And the two of them probably even less so than I; it wasn't really a fair fight in that I love this stuff - but need to be reminded frequently not to get tied up in such 'hollow and deceptive philosophies' referenced in Colossians 2:8 (also written by Paul):

"See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ."

Basically I'm quite sure that both John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant weren't Christians - and that their philosophies were based on human tradition rather than Christ.  But as far as the predestination vs. free will debate I mentioned, that may be more worthwhile somehow.  
Perhaps I will post more on my philosophical musings later; I've gotten quite off track.



Back to 1 Timothy 6, verses 7-9 have some good advice going back to the financial piece:

"...we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction."

So food and clothing - we should be content with that. To be fair, I guess they didn't have as many expensive options for status symbols as we do today. Instead of that fresh car, I suppose one could go with a shiny white mare? Or perhaps a strong donkey. Haha.

As far as the food and clothes go, take a loot at Matthew 6 if you get a chance. Especially vv 19-34; they have a lot to do with what I am thinking about here. I won't paste them all, but here are some excerpts:

"do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear
Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?"

" Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them... And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.
Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these."

Again with the theme of food and clothes - the premise being that God takes care of wild animals, even the not-worth-much-to-sacrifice birds (not some big unblemished bulls, or something), which don't work away and store away in fear, and that God clothes the lilies which are so temporary. He will definitely take care of us, even more so.

However, this verse reminds me of the various places in the Bible where people are chided for storing up things in barns.  And that has always seemed to be exactly what saving up in a savings account, retirement vehicle (Roth IRA in my case), even the stock market could become.  If it is better to take care of the poor with our excess money (and not just the 10-15% or whatever number our tithes might be), should we be saving it up for our kids, or our retirement?

There I go, raising more questions when I was aiming at answering more from last time.  Let's drop back to that for a bit.


I got some great insights from a friend who is into the legal side of all this (eg shareholders' rights, etc) so he had a lot to say - some of his good points on why the stock market really isn't a zero-sum game:

  "the company can distrubute dividends, cash out to shareholders, merge, etc

  aka, there are 'limiting events' at which point a share may be cashed out at a higher value than the sum total of initial purchases

  thus making it not a zero-sum game"

So while the initial argument was that options markets were a zero-sum game, it's pretty clear that there definitely are cases where the equity markets (read: stock market) are not zero-sum.  Mainly because someone else doesn't have to lose for you to win, and vice versa - if Johnson & Johnson, a popular example of a high dividend-paying stock, pays you (the investor) every quarter, it's because more people are buying their products and thy're profitable, not because anyone is selling.

Also, the big difference, as he also pointed out, may be between those who 'buy and hold' such as Warren Buffett, believing in the value of the underlying company, the 'fundamentals', and those who day-trade, try to time the market, and are basically gambling, trying to 'ooze out gains from suckers' as he put it.

So I'm a bit more at ease now about the morality of the stock market in general, but I'm assured that the greedy are clearly not in the right - those investors that are partnering with the companies they buy stock in, saving for worthwhile causes, etc. should do well to invest, however.


I may write more on this in the future but I think the random philosophy tangent, along with the 'storing up in barns' tangent have piqued my interest.  Probably more to come on those soon!


Thanks for reading.

Morality of the Markets

This is a subject I had written about in my prior blog, but had only saved it as a draft - leaving it unpublished as I wrestled with possible conclusions. Here I try to do so out in the open; not finding one concrete, acceptable solution, but enjoying thinking about it.

The other day, the CEO of our fine organization was in a meeting with me and rest of our investment team.  We were discussing futures and options, investment vehicles that underlie some of the products we were researching.  We were hoping to come to a conclusion as to whether to recommend these to clients, or whether they were suitable to client goals - basically, we wanted to understand what they were founded upon.

While I won't bore you with the details (they aren't necessary for this discussion), they brought up some interesting moral questions for me.  If the only way for me to win is for someone else to lose, is that morally praiseworthy, or at the very least acceptable? And I'm not talking about sports here - these are peoples' livelihoods - their nest eggs - their investments.

The ultimate reason I stopped playing online poker (please don't ever do it, it's dumb) was that for me to win, I had to take money from people, people who likely had gambling addictions, or should not be playing because they couldn't afford to lose.  Another reason was that I was spending too much time on it, but that was the main one.

In the same way, if the only way I can make money from one of my investments is for someone else to lose money (the person selling it to me or buying it from me, usually) is that okay?

Let me give you an example, not rooted in the options markets or futures markets, but in a simple stock transaction.  Let's say I want to buy Google stock (ticker: GOOG).  Suppose GOOG is trading for $500 per share.  I buy two shares for $1000, hoping it is pretty near a low point, so I can make money when it goes up -- it has been near $600 recently and has fallen for whatever reason, let's say.  So I bought the shares from Jimmy, who has spent his life savings, $1200, to buy GOOG when it was at $600/share, but got scared when it dropped down to $500 over the past few months, a 17% loss.  He decided to sell it because of his emotions - he was scared he would lose everything, and maybe hadn't thought through his decision to buy it in the fist place, and didn't realize that he could lose serious money on it.  I mean, Google seems like a very reputable company - someone investing for the first time might not realize that a company's stock price often has little to do with that (at least nowadays; 'fundamentals are out the window' is a common phrase).

So I buy GOOG from Jimmy, hoping that it's going to bounce back up to $600 and beyond - being a sophisticated investor (in this example - ha).  I have done my due diligence and know its earning per share, its EBITDA, its <enter other impressive-soundings stat here> and realize that it may well drop 17% or more, but in the long term, 5+ years from now, I am confident it will more than likely be up. And I don't need the money today - I can afford to let it go on a roller coaster ride without worrying.  Plus I'm diversified and it's not my only stock - but it was Jimmy's.

Basically I'm hoping Jimmy sold it at the wrong time, losing money, and that I will profit off his mistake as it goes back up.

Now, fast forward a few years. GOOG is trading at $700, I've made a hefty 40% profit, and have considered selling.  I read some analyst reports that the market is saturated and Google is becoming obsolete in its field of expertise (advertising and search).  I believe the stock will go down, and have other needs for the cash, so I sell both shares, for $1400, to Timmy. Perhaps I pocket the $400 profit, or reinvest in something else, it doesn't matter.  I just am hoping I sold at a peak, and that the stock starts going down soon. If it were to run up on to $800 or $900 per share I would be kicking myself for not holding onto it.

So basically, I am hoping Timmy bought at the wrong time and will lose money.

Does that sound very ethical to you?

Let me go back to my investment team meeting. The CEO is talking. He's talking about futures and options but it seems that from our example above, the stock market is similar:

At his old job, he says, options traders were stupid; they traded on emotions.  He described how his company could make so much money on it when they acted irrationally.

He said it's a zero-sum game, "in order for someone to win, someone else must lose."

That just doesn't sound like loving your neighbor as yourself to me, though.  To justify it, other members of the team assured him that the people 'losing' were big banks, hedging their bets elsewhere.  But hey, banks are made up of people, right? Or at the very least, peoples' hard earned money.

I think I'll write more on this subject in the future - this is just me fleshing out some of my thoughts. I don't believe the markets are evil - they might just be amoral.  I mean, Jesus says to "invest our talents" - literally our gold, our money, for the master... if investing and making gains were a sin, His parable of the talents would be flawed seriously. But back then, did people have to lose money for people to make money?

Welcome to BK's Blog 2.0!

Good afternoon, reader.

Thank you for visiting my web log, aka 'blog'.  I had no idea that's where the word 'blog' came from for quite some time -- but now we both know (you probably already knew, didn't you, spartypants?)

I write to announce the formation of a brand new, shiny, fresh, clean, other impressive adjective web blog, called BK's Blog 2.0, aka bkb2.0. You can find it at bkb20.blogspot.com, but you already know this, as you are reading this text (unless you followed a hyperlink).

Anyhow, I digress.

I feel that this blog may be quite a tangential, word-vomit-esque, experience, which I hope you like since you're reading it.  But if you don't there is this little 'x' shape in the top right corner of your screen - just click that and you won't be bothered again. These letters and words and punctuation will just cry themselves to sleep for a few nights, but eventually will get over it, and start seeing someone else, another reader. Don't blame yourself.

Alas, it happened again.

Every blog needs a good mission statement, and this blog's mission statement is to be a good blog, written (typed) onto the internet by an author (me) that gives entertainment and learning to it's readership (you (no one)).  So enjoy! Tautological statement is tautological

I hope that you have enjoyed the blog so far - stay tuned, I may or may not post any number of posts at some time at some frequency in the future. I'm done making promises on how often I will update anything, as we all know how that worked out for bkb1.0 (those of you who don't were probably wondering what the 2.0 was all about, weren't you? Suffice to say, to soon. Do not bring it up.

Many thanks for taking the time out of your somewhat busy day to read some words such as these by a humbled writer (typer?) such as me.