Democracy with a Queen

The UK recently had its general elections, arguably one of the most dramatic events this year. Prior to the campaigning starting in full swing I had no idea how the political system worked, however, the first TV debate did me in. So let me start by talking about this historic televised debate. Elections and campaigning in the UK bear little resemblance to that in the US. 2008 saw multiple televised debates of various formats between Obama and McCain. This is what America expects with an election. However, leaders in the UK have never agreed to televised debates until this year. The dwindling public faith in the political system called for leaders to stand up to questions from the public in a competitive format. The first debate not only put a new feel to the politics but also lead to the rise of the Lib Dem party and its charismatic leader, Nick Clegg. Irrespective of the party policies, Clegg had the power of connecting with the people and knowing how to debate well. The other leaders, David Cameron and Gordon Brown changed their campaign strategies after the public opinion polls put the Lib Dems briefly in the lead. The following weeks of campaigning and an unsure public lead to the first hung parliament in many years.

Unlike US politics, elections in the UK can only be won by a party if they secure a majority in the house. This implies that whichever party wins the elections immediately has the power to change rules at their will, there is no need to debate it in the house as happens in the US. This year however, no party won this majority and so the Conservative party, lead by Cameron, had to come into a coalition with the Lib Dems. What was surprising about this coalition was not the difference in party philosophies that was overcome to make this pact but the notion that the media and the public were surprised and intrigued by this ‘marriage.’ Over the past several days since the announcement of the coalition, not only has the media been obsessed with the new government, but people somehow believe that the coalition implies that Cameron and Clegg are now soul mates. Most questions that that new PM and his deputy are receiving are less to do with plans for the future and more focussed on the relationship between the parties, whether they will be arm in arm at meetings, and how close their offices will be! It is remarkable that the country has turned the political section into a tabloid.

Many countries run on the idea that all governments need to rule as a coalition, and this seems to be a reasonable way of working. Not only does it mean that there is some amount of competition for laws and rules, but also it means that no party can become arrogant on the campaign trail, as was the case for the 13 year long labour rule. Cameron and Clegg have a strong appreciation for this. They have both admitted to difficulties in the future for details of policies, but remain positive on the overall impact of the coalition. I myself am quite excited to follow the new government’s actions over the coming months. I believe that this new government was the best outcome for the country given its current crisis. Perhaps the pound will sneak its way back to 2 dollars a pound under a conservative government, and I will be richer by it.

Artsy Fartsy

The art culture is seemingly quintessential to the London lifestyle. Prior to moving to London, my own interest and exposure to art was limited to the teenage mutant ninja turtles (yes, Leonardo et. al.). I now know slightly more than what Nickelodeon was able to teach me and have been fortunate enough to view a few galleries in London with a good friend who is a educated in the field. While viewing the works in many of these galleries a lot of different thoughts passed through my mind that essentially boils down to questioning the value of art.

As I walked through the Saatchi Gallery a few weeks ago, viewing pieces of contemporary art, I saw a lot of things that I found to be extremely aesthetically pleasing, and an equal number of items that simply looked like trash. Among the pieces that were actually interesting to look at, the common trend was definitely that there was a unique and creative way of presenting an idea that was easy to connect with. A simple example is a collage that when viewed from afar looks like three women in veils and when you look at it up close, it is all pornographic photos making the collage. The simplicity in the theme and brilliance in its presentation made me appreciate that particular work. On the other hand there was also a bed that had a pile of inflatable mattresses that were partially melted. I saw this and asked around for an explanation and no one could give one. That was when I thought to myself that this was legitimately rubbish. However, someone paid a good deal of money for that to have been made and someone thought it was good enough to show at the Saatchi Gallery!

I can't complain that some pieces are better than others, that is the nature of anything in this world. However, what was important to me was the amount of money being spent on the art, both bad and good. Upon asking my friends how artists find funding and what kinds of prices art can fetch, I was pretty surprised to say the least. Not only do patrons pay a lot of money to sponsor the arts, but rich people pay a lot of money for something as simple as a painting. A lot of art apparently is sold in the region of 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars. To me those prices don't make economical sense! I can't fathom how someone can expect to get the amount of value from the art that is probably just hanging on a wall in their study.

It may sound like I don't appreciate fine art, but the issue to me is simply one of money not well spent. I honestly believe that there are many other fields that could benefit far more and produce more if given the money. For example, anthropology and sociology are legitimately important, but I've never heard of an anthropologist being paid enormous sums of money for producing work that helps us understand humankind better. I suspect the only reasonable explanation is that of a luxury good, where people want to pay more money for it because of the perception, and unfortunately, perceptions are in fact reality. This is why Damien Hirst will get paid unnecessary sums of money for putting a cow in formaldehyde.

3-D Displays: More than Avatar

One of the most remarkable things about Avatar is that it will be remembered as the milestone that started the era of 3-D entertainment. Soon after the release of the film, not only have other movies been shown in 3-D, but many theatres are also showing sporting events in 3-D. This revolution in the way in which we can receive information has two key interesting aspects, the first being the future of the technology itself and the second being the implications to industries other than entertainment.

Most of us have seen 3-D movies as children. Remember the days of the red and blue images and similarly coloured glasses? Of course when we saw this over 10 years ago, it was amazing. However, the quality of the images produced in this way is very bad. Not only do you give up on contrast and hue in obvious ways, but the 3-D that was produced was not very good. What is amazing is that the movies we watch now use basically the same principle. The key difference is that the two images that make up the 3-D are made with opposite polarisations of the light instead of the blue and red. In this way it is possible to preserve the quality of the image completely while still using the idea of each eye seeing a different angle of the image. This technology has obvious drawbacks associated with it. The first is that the viewer has to wear glasses and an important second is that the screen has to flicker two different images that make the 3-D vision. This is where other ideas can come into play.

In the author's opinion the future of 3-D viewing is going to the using yet another property of the light called the phase in order to make holographic movies. The idea is essentially the same as that used by holographic stickers that make the image 3-D, however in this case the screen would be a continuously changing hologram. As you may have guessed, this system would not require the use of any sort of personal eye-wear and would not have to flicker two different images as the current technology does! Unfortunately, this system is not as simple as it may sound. Among the import challenges are having an entire display built with pixel sized lasers and making lasers of the 3 pixel colours. These are not at all trivial challenges and are in fact the research interests of many scientists around the world.

While, the technical aspects of this issue are important and intriguing, the potential impact of this technology is far more fascinating. While it is currently being used for entertainment due to the large costs, it is only a matter of time before it is viable to own 3-D systems at home. Once 3-D displays appear at home an immediate effect would be on e-commerce. The ability for vendors to display 3-D images to the buyer would be immensely powerful. Other aspects where the impact would be huge is in delivery of news. Having 3-D real time images of major events and happenings would provide an exciting new dimension to peoples' perspective. Yet another incredibly important application would be in web conferencing. Imagine the ability for surgeons in hospitals to conference with someone and explain how to perform a procedure in 3-D! I could go on with other examples of how this technology could be used, but the purpose of this article is simply to get you excited about the opportunities that will arise in the next few years all thanks to 3-D displays.

As a final thought on the impact of the technology, it is exciting to consider the potential of building 'smart' interfaces. Imagine computers that can not only project in 3-D, but also provide you with touch feedback using intelligent tactile response screens. The next step would then be to have a device to simulate smells using a basic chemical/odour repository. The day is not far away when full real world experiences can be had sitting at home in front of your laptop. You might even actually be able to take a bite out of your Apple when you're hungry!

Finance isn't Rocket Science!

While working for a large bank two summers ago, my boss pulled me aside one day to give me feedback on how I was doing and said to me ' Finance isn't Rocket Science, anyone can do this job, you just need to show you want it more than the others.' Given the tough economic climate it was a fair enough comment to be made, I was in fact highly replaceable. However, what is interesting is that while not intended by my boss, that statement helps highlight other large issues in the finance sector.

The first question worth asking is if the job doesn't require the smarts, why is it that large banks recruit only top students from top universities in the world? The answer to this question is multi-fold. First off, it is important to realise that some years ago finance was not the sector for the smartest people, law and medicine were where the 'best' went. However, as pay for the finance industry got larger and education became more expensive, the better students started taking finance jobs. Even today, a large number of the people going into finance straight out of school say that they want to pursue it for a few years to make some money and then switch to something else. Now, it is equally important to consider why banks hire such smart people, and the answer to that is actually rather straightforward, it's good marketing. A huge proportion of the CEOs and CFOs are graduates of top schools and banks want to be able to tell them that their teams are composed of the best from those very universities.

With this huge influx of intelligent people into the banking industry, you must ask the question 'how did these smart people screw things up so badly?' The problem here is simply that some are smarter than others. The problem is that with financial tools getting increasingly more sophisticated, it gets difficult it uncover all of the various risk elements hidden in any one financial product. A lot of very intelligent people make up smart ways of structuring products, unfortunately the people who trade those same tools don't understand them as well! Further, among banks, some have better teams than others and in the doggy dog world of finance, banks actually unload risk onto other banks. To make the issue even more complex, given the extremely bright younger demographic in banks, often the decision making bosses don't understand what the bright analysts have done. This disparity in the understanding of the way different instruments work is in fact what some people point to as the reason why we are in the current economic crisis. Banks didn't appreciate the risk of CMOs and CDOs.

So here is the problem, people are forgetting that 'Finance isn't rocket science!' The industry would do better to bring back the simpler times.

The Positive Effect of Facebook Addiction

I was trying to think of what I should blog about next and was making no headway, so I decided to procrastinate by going to Facebook! Immediately I thought to myself, 'wow, I really do check Facebook way too much,' and started to think about why it is that so many of us are addicted to Facebook. I realised that when it comes down to it, I do in fact use Facebook mainly to keep in touch with my friends, not to waste time.

I think that it is an innate curiosity about our friends that makes us check Facebook whenever we want to procrastinate. Facebook made a smart move by putting a news feed up as the home page instead of the profile page. I definitely spend a lot of time randomly checking things that appear on my news feed, and sure enough it serves the intended purpose of informing me of my friends lives. If you think about the number of times you know what someone is up to because of Facebook, it is not insignificant.

Of course there is also the issue of intentionally scouring a particular person's profile in order to figure out more about them for whatever reason. All of the detail people put up on their profiles makes this rather straightforward. It is also important to realise that your pictures on Facebook are probably even more telling than all of the information you have posted about yourself. In this particular case, it is obvious that stalking can be for reasons other than trying to get news about a friend. However I won't bother discussing my thoughts on the negative aspects.

Overall, in spite of the fact that it seems to you that you are simply wasting time browsing Facebook, in reality, I believe it is actually a good thing that to procrastinate so many people are taking an interest in their friends lives. Then again, maybe I am simply justifying to myself the endless hours I spend on Facebook?

The Hurdle for Solar Energy

A lot of research in academic institutions is going into ways to harvest energy more efficiently and in a sustainable way. The obvious source of clean, unlimited energy is the sun, however,as is popular in the news, solar energy is not yet economically viable. My own research interests are in materials and methods to create cheap solar energy, so I will describe here the main scientific hurdles in the field and ways to address them.

Most solar cells are made of either Silicon or a derivative of a compound called Gallium Arsenide (GaAs). The basic principle on which the materials convert light to electricity is that they are able to absorb light of a certain wavelength (colour) and use the energy in the light to excite an electron to become free like in a metal. By 'freeing' many electrons in this way, electricity is produced and you can simply connect a device to the cell just like you would a battery. This brings us to the first problem with solar cells, that only certain colours of light can produce electricity. The chief way in which people are trying to solve this problem is by taking light of different colours and using certain chemicals to convert that light to the colour of light suitable for the solar cell. Another way of attacking this issue is to use different types of solar cells to convert different parts of the solar spectrum to electricity.

The next major issue with solar cells is that even with the right colour of light hitting it, only a certain amount of the incoming light actually excites electrons and of the fraction of electrons only some actually make it to the wires connecting to the device. In order to ensure more electrons actually make it to the device, the solar cell has to be a perfect crystal so that the electron doesn't lose any energy before going to the wires. Doing this is extremely expensive, which is also the last major issue with solar cells right now, they are too expensive! There are again two major approaches to solving this problem, one is concentrating the light onto a small solar cell, and the other is making cheaper solar cells at the cost of conversion efficiency.

In terms of concentrators, there are a lot of interesting advances being made to different ways of concentrating light that can be incorporated in urban buildings by essentially have light fall on a sheet and directing that light to the edges of the sheet where you place a solar cell. At the other end of the 'spectrum', cheap solar cells are being made out of plastics, however, the conversions efficiencies are extremely low (~4%) as opposed to silicon cells that can reach ~30% efficiency. Here again a lot of research is being done to increase the efficiency, and it seems to be a promising area of development.

While there is still some time before economically viable solar energy is available, what is important to realise is that at the end of the day, oil companies will need to be shut up. The actual biggest problem right now is creating political incentives to promote solar energy, and of course pushing in the opposite direction are the large oil companies. There has to be more political interest in investing in clean energy. The only government that is doing a good job right now is Germany, with excellent incentives to set up solar energy farms. Then again, if it wasn't for oil, perhaps Bush wouldn't have given the Iraqi people democracy?

Academic Life in London

As an American, I have always had a romanticised version of what academic life in the UK would be like. As someone else once said while discussing the education system in the UK, 'just listen to their accents, they must be intelligent!' More seriously though, most of what is taught throughout high school science is all people who came up with brilliant ideas in Europe, and mostly in the UK. However, I honestly believe that like the empire itself, their days of dominance are well behind them.

I started pursuing my Masters in the Physics department of Imperial college last Fall with the hope of pursuing a challenging course considering the Masters is awarded in just one year. However, I must admit that I am quite disappointed in the academic demands of the program. Nevertheless, I won't write here about specific issues with my program, rather I will try to stay general about the issues in the education system.

The biggest problem I see is the lack of continuous evaluation in the courses. All of the grade that holds any consequence is decided by an exam at the end of the term, or in some cases the year. There are multiple issues with this system, the obvious one is that there is no incentive to do work until a few days before the exam, thus increasing pressure at the time and also leading the lethargy during the term. The next problem with it is that there is no form of feedback on your progress through the term, that your exam's results will tell you whether or not you understood what was going on. Finally, it rewards test taking ability far more than understanding the material. At the end of the day it becomes a game of seeing who is best at handling the pressure of one exam determining the grade and how well you navigate the paper.

A second problem with studying in the UK is that the people who are studying a particular subject are typically students who enjoyed the subject in high school and decided that they want to pursue it, and then the system makes them stick to it. The inability to change the course once you start the program is a significant problem when it comes class morale and interest. I spoke with a lecturer at a prominent London University a while ago who is also from the US and he expressed this exact sentiment. In essence, what he had observed is that by the time students reach their third year, most either realize the subject was not for them or they have done so badly in exams that they no longer bother with their classes. This breeds a cohort of students who simply don't care. This is of course opposed to a system where you are free to choose your major, so people who end up staying in the subject do so because they enjoy it!

An issue specific to Masters courses in the UK is the tenure of the program. Offering one year Masters degrees seems like a good deal to students, however in reality the amount one can learn in one year is not significant. Most one year programs are structured such that a student takes 4 classes each term and does research over the summer. To me this sounds like a Bachelor's extension program. There is no 'Mastery' gained by doing this. More intensive Masters programs around the world are two years and the student typically does research for the entire duration of the two years. Thus actually allowing some amount of competency to be gained.

A final thought is on the selectivity of the programs. I know a lot of Americans who come to the UK for a Masters because it is easier to get into, and honestly, it really probably is. A lot of people come here to attend a well known school, like LSE, the Oxbridge system, etc. where getting into an Ivy or equivalent is much harder. I don't understand why programs in the UK aren't more selective, I can only guess its a money issue, Masters programs must make the University money. If the Universities in the UK simply reduced the number of programs, instead of circumstances like LSE's 100s of programs, and made admission more competitive, the class would be stronger and feed off each other's ideas.

I will stop here for the moment with my own opinions on the faults of the British education system. Mostly because it doesn't matter at all what I think about the system, nothing will ever really change it. I know professors who hate it and they can't do anything about it within their own institutes, so my opinion will do absolutely nothing. The only way to get reform to happen is for either a notable brain drain to occur, or for the economy and R&D in the UK to worsen as a consequence of the education. Neither of these are realistic, probably because Americans keep coming to London!