Matthew Engel

Hello All! We are having a concert in the Staller Center this Wednesday November 19, 2008. The Stony Brook University Wind Ensemble is led by conductor Bruce Engel (Hi Dad!), a fabulous director and musician. Come and watch, it will definitely be worth your while!

There has been a lot of talk recently about how changes in the economy are affecting the energy sector. This is an extremely important topic to anyone who has money invested in mutual funds, stocks, their 401(k), mortgages, housing or any retirement portfolio. Why? Because the face of the stock market, as we know it, is about to change. The past decade has seen large oil companies reigning supreme posting double digit growth, with natural gas vying for a close second. It is indisputable fact, that these products are natural resources. And it is also indisputable fact that these resources are finite, and their steadily increasing consumption will lead to a jump in price as the Earth’s reserves dwindle. Therefore, at some point in the future, any company which relies solely on oil or gas supplies will be bound for failure. This can be validated by the divestment of the world’s largest energy companies into renewable sources such as wind and solar.

The New York Times reported in late October that investors are nervous about prices for fossil fuels falling, which could cause alternative energy start-ups to incur heavy losses or declare bankruptcy as their market dries up. It is already difficult enough to obtain venture capital or equity financing in these times. Fluctuations in energy prices add considerable uncertainty to alternative energy (AE) technology based companies. It is well known that this industry is currently extremely vulnerable and will probably require strong government backing by means of subsidies and research financing. Personally, I think this would be a tremendous investment in our nations future - much better than investing in other securities that may continue to decline in value, such as American automakers.

Let it be known, that I have full respect for American car manufacturers - I just believe that are much to slow reacting to market forces and have been at the mercy of American oil companies for too long. Why else would they continue to market and manufacture the gas-guzzling SUV’s when all other nations across Earth are making smaller, lighter, faster cars which run on less fuel. I find that absurd, and unless Detroit mounts a drastic change and realizes that the future is electric and hybrid vehicles, they will be out of business by Q4 09.

This is my challenge to the next president of the United States: many of us see a new way forward, and hope that you can realzie this vision. Our hope is that you can solve both the economic and energy crises simultaneously with one blow: bringing alternative energy sources and electric vehicles to market will no doubt require large amounts of man power and resources while slashing our most damaging expenditure - oil. Creating thousands of new jobs for AE contractors, mecahical and electrical engineers, and scientists to design and install solar panels, geothermal systems, wind turbines nationwide. This would destroy our addiction to oil and usher in the green century we all so desperately need.

This fall, I was invited to attend the wedding of a good friend of mine. It was one of the most spectacular displays I have ever witnessed, with extravagant foods presented over 12 courses and enough flowers for 3 weddings. It was truly amazing, and I will try and post some photos.

As a wedding gift, I painted him a watercolor piece depicting the first line of the Shema, a Jewish prayer. Alex met his fiance in Israel, while studying at Yeshiva.

Below I show the evolution of the piece starting from my inking, to the watercolored layers, to the frame. Enjoy!

Recently, I have been learning alot about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is the practice of designing a webpage so that it can be readily discovered by Google. More specifically, it can be used to increase your page rank, anotherwords it will show you closer to the top of Google search results. I think I will write more about this later, but would like to ackowledge the help of my good friend Andrew Perry.

Andrew runs his own florist business (perrysflorist.com) and maintains a website for finding florists all over the globe. Find him at www.find-florists.com.

Today I spent at least one hour trying to fix some code on another site I am working on. It was such a pain to do, that I am writing the solution here so that others may learn from my struggles.

The problem was that I had a piece of php code outputing some nice html on the webpage, but I could not figure out how to edit the font of the html. Php uses the ‘echo’ command to output html, which is great and really simple. However, for the life of me I could not make the desired output in bold face, which was so frustrating. I was not sure if I would need to use css or not, but found finally found the quick and easy solution here.

Originally my code looked like:

Which I needed to change to:

Notice the bold html tags <b> are in quotes. This was critical to get it to work, but not sufficient. The critical part was actualy putting the periods! So annoying. Anyway, notice the additional periods after the opening bold tag quotation marks and after the php command itself.

The Stony Brook University Graduate School magazine (sbgradmag.org) is looking for writers to contribute their thoughts and ideas to an online forum. Get involved!!

Much has been made of the recent drop in oil prices world wide. As we all understand, the price of almost everything in the U.S is directly tied to the cost of non-renewable fossil fuels. This is an extremely unfortunate situation, which we hope to change in the next century, the ‘green’ century some are calling it. I have seen more commercials and ads claiming their product are ‘going green’ in the past month than ever before. Apparently, even the oil companies are going green if you believe BP’s television ads, hardly a trustworthy source of information. The truth is, we could only hope for that type reality right now. Our automobiles are no cleaner than they were last year and our consumption of oil has steadily increased, even with record prices. You should note that value of stocks on the London Stock Exchange skyrocketed, bolstered by record profits of BP - British Petroleum. BP’s earnings were up 83% this year, meaning profits nearly doubled!! Profits increased from $4.4 billion to $8.05 billion this year alone, due to an increase in energy prices.

However, as Thomas Friedman of the New York Time’s reports, the recent (temporary) slump in energy prices has sent the alternative energy (AE) companies scrambling. AE investors are watching their stock holdings crumble as people run to the gas station to buy their $2.89/gallon petro. This is a real shame, however it is fleeting. I think we can all safely assume that after the election prices will resume their normail uphill climb and alternative energy technologies will once again be in full demand.

Therefore, we should all be prepared for a huge spike in gas prices at the end of this year. For the record, it should be noted that in July regular gas was costing $4.11 in the US and oil was selling for nearly $150 a barrel, which is now down roughly 25% at the pump and 50% less for a barrel of oil ($64.02 today on NYME). With the economy diving and spiking wildly, consumer confidence has steadily declined leading to less spendong on recreational items. In turn, this has led to a decrease in fuel consumption and with an oil glut, prices have bottomed out. Thankfully, OPEC has been on the case and called an emergency meeting in Switzerland this week to discuss reducing supply. In fact, OPEC has decided to cut supply by 5%, or 1.5 million barrels a day beginning November 1, 2008. Be prepared.

Ali Naimi of Saudi Arabia - Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Oct. 23 in Vienna.

If I were a commodities trader, I would be stocking up on barrels of oil. Imagine oil bought at $65/barrel - what profit could be made when it reaches $150/barrel in a few months? If you had the capacity, individuals could store large volumes of gasoline for a personal inventory in preparation for the eventual price spike.

I seriously hope this company takes off !! (No pun intended) But seriously, a car that runs on compressed gas? How genius is that! Big thanks to my brother Seth for pointing this out to me. I am seriously excited about this technology, developed by ex-Formula One engineer Guy Nègre . Think about how a car which produces zero emissions, travels long range with low horsepower could transform commuting in America today, reinvigorate our automotive culture and promote environmental awareness? Would these vehicles be socially acceptable? What if, the vehicle cost $17,800 and could travel up to 1,000 miles with one fill up and a top speed of 96mph? Granted, a 75-horsepower engine may not sound impressive, but when you consider that Zero Pollution Motors (ZPM) is selling a car capable of running on compressed air, the feat becomes remarkable.

Popular Mechanics reports that ZPM, a New Paltz, N.Y. start up, has acquired licensing rights from MDI- the original Luxembourg-based inventor of the compressed air engine and plans to begin manufacturing in the Northeast U.S. by 2009. MDI is an exciting young french company, which self reports financial investment from AirFrance. In my brief international expereince, I have found that most other countries are embracing new clean technologies, leaving the U.S. in the dust. Europe and India are already deploying many small, fuel-efficient vehicles which are profitable. Where is the American part of that equation? When you ask Ford or GMC, they show a complete lack of global integration into the American market, which may eventually be their downfall if they continue to produce vehicles reliant on petroleum.

In 2007, it was reported that the original Air Car, called CityCAT would only be marketed in India’s most congested cities for a retail price of $12,700 with a range of 125 miles hitting 68 mph. It would be forced to refuel at gas stations equipped with custom air-compressors, requiring $2 for to fill the car’s carbon-fiber tanks with 340 liters of air at 4350 psi in just a few minutes. However, the car also sports a built in air compressor which can self-refuel the vehicle in four hours when plugged into the electrical grid. For all the skeptics, I would highly recommend reading MDI’s engine technology pages off their homepage, which go into much more detail than I have at this time. Enjoy and good luck!