Comments on "Critical Thinking about Economics"

My friend K.S. and my Mom left thoughtful comments on my prior blog on "Critical Thinking about Economics." I started replying in as comments, but found my replies were getting rather long, so here's a new blog instead.

First, K.S. suggests that shocking events like 9-11 and the economic meltdown are required to enable Americans to accept changes that they wouldn't have otherwise, even though critical thinking might have unveiled the desirability of such changes. While I agree that shock makes such changes more popularly acceptable, there are other ways to change opinion. Most importantly: Leadership. Whether such leadership is charismatic or visionary, the kind of leadership that can change public opinion goes beyond what Bergen Evans observed in 1954: "For the most part, our leaders are merely following out front: They do but marshal us the way that we are going."

On this 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's moon landing, we're reminded of a young American president who led us to do things we wouldn't have otherwise. One might observe that Pres. Kennedy's vision was built on the shock of the Russians beating America into space. Maybe so. Or maybe Kennedy led us in a chosen new direction; he could just as easily have led us into ignoring Russian scientific advances and have Americans continue to focus inwardly, cutting taxes instead of investing in creating an entire generation of scientists, thinkers, and innovators.

Mom noted the challenge of having the masses understand vision and future greatness. She further noted that to counter greed, families and schools must develop ethical behavior and character in their kids. I totally agree. As I noted, developing critical thinking abilities and dispositions in more Americans is one way to increase openness to new visions and the possibilities of the future. And focusing on the development of virtuous character traits is so sorely needed in this country and world.

In his recent book Five Minds for the Future, Harvard Professor Howard Gardner wrote of the vital importance today of educating our kids not only in the academic disciplines, but also so they can synthesize (connect) information, create new ideas, respect the ideas of others, and behave ethically - beyond self-interest - to improve the quality of life for all.

We all see the impact of the lack of such ethical understanding and behavior in the excesses of greed in our society today. Our families, communities, and schools share the responsibility for this failure. I believe we can and must change this situation and each of us has the opportunity to improve the character of kids, ourselves, and our neighbors within our own communities. Like Ronald Reagan's "thousand points of light," by working on character development one community at a time, we can create a brighter America. The City of Pleasanton, California is a wonderful example of a community that is accomplishing this objective.

Finally, K.S. cited a Guardian article in which experts explained the current financial crisis to Queen Elizabeth. He asked for my comments on that article.

I agree with the points reported in the article. I think the underlying problem goes deeper, however, than the lack of jurisdiction, failure to understand collective risks of the system, the "psychology of denial," and personal incentives that differ from society's interests.

The basic question they didn't address is: What is the purpose of financial markets, from society's perspective? In business school, I was taught that the financial markets provide capital for investment, and ultimately, the purpose of investment is to create wealth.

Even while taking the course on stock markets, however, it seemed to me that the stock market is an inefficient means of providing investment capital. While IPOs provide initial capital for company formation, the continued trading of the stock doesn't provide any additional capital to that company for investment. Trading of already issued stock is merely gambling that the company will pay off more in dividends or the share price will appreciate. But that appreciation is based on gambling that someone will pay more for those shares, expecting more in dividends or capital appreciation. I also learned a term describing a principle in this secondary trading: "The greater fool theory." It's a theory that's hundreds of years old, going at least as far back as the Dutch tulip bubble of 1624, in which speculators bid up prices of single tulip bulbs to today's equivalent of $100,000 before the bubble burst.

Of course, continued trading of a stock can provide additional capital to a company that issues more stock or trade in their own already issued shares. But fundamentally, how much of the money that is traded in stock ultimately ends up as capital usable by companies to create wealth versus money that is just bet on future share prices? With all the concern about legalizing casino gambling, we seem to be oblivious to the fact that the stock market has made gambling legal and socially acceptable - even admired - for centuries!

We have accepted significant changes in the financial markets during the past few decades - notably the creation of increasingly exotic derivatives and increasing deregulation of the markets - during a period of unprecedentedly long market expansion. These changes have helped a relative few make fortunes in personal income for awhile. But these changes haven't created much inherent wealth or wealth-creating investment. Rather, they've created a huge casino enabling a few to make fortunes on other peoples' money and risk.

These changes have worked to lull the world into complacency and also to ignore fundamental truths and lessons of the past. For example, a basic economics lesson is that a company that is too big to fail - a monopoly - needs to be highly regulated in order to protect society's interests.

My answer to Queen Elizabeth's question "How come nobody could foresee it?" is that many people could and did foresee the economic crisis. However, most of us just didn't like the pronouncements of the critical-thinking, ethical Cassandras. Instead, we hoped the easy money would continue to come along with the easy answers. Well, most of us are paying for that misplaced hope.

The current economic meltdown is providing "a teachable moment." Will we learn or will we continue to keep our heads in the sand? I guess the answer will depend on our families, teachers, and the leaders we elect.

Critical Thinking about Economics

I was delighted when the Ohio Board of Regents hired me as Chancellor to help them and the state "think out-of-the-box." That's what my education and management consulting career had trained me to do. So I've been especially pleased when I find others who do so and help others stretch their thinking.

Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational introduced me to a new field - behavioral economics - and it challenged my previous thinking.

The only economics courses I took in college were in my MBA curriculum. While taking those courses - which I enjoyed - I thought I would have enjoyed taking economics as my undergraduate major (instead of the mathematics and physics which I took), and I have advised others interested in studying business as an undergraduate major to major in economics instead. With my math background, I quickly understood the economics principles from the models on which they were built. My understanding of the simple principles of supply and demand and economic efficiency became the basis for my self-described moniker of "free-marketeer."

From Prof. Ariely's book - and then a couple of sessions by Cornell University professors in Ithaca last year for the Trustee/Council Annual Meeting entitled "Why Trial Judges Make Mistakes" and "Using Psychology to Create a Better Economics" - I learned that the economics models that have been developed to describe decision making are perhaps too simplistic to reflect decisions that are actually made.

The notion that models don't perfectly predict performance isn't surprising to me. All models necessarily simplify the real world and hence must be produce somewhat inaccurate depictions of reality. The research done by Prof. Ariely at Duke and Profs. Jeffrey Rachlinski, Thomas Gilovich, and Edward O'Donoghue at Cornell, though, leads to real questions on how useful many of the fundamental economic theories are in depicting the real world, since their research shows that people behave so differently from what those basic theories predict.

This issue is not one of mere "academic" interest. The world has experienced an economic meltdown that has affected hundreds of millions of people - a meltdown that, at its core, was enabled by notions based on those basic economic theories. Alan Greenspan, for example, has testified that his lifetime of free-market thinking and economic policies were based on the mistaken belief that financial institutions would do what was necessary to protect their shareholders and institutions.

For over 20 years, I have questioned whether CEOs really would act in the long-term interests of their companies and shareholders. While I was certainly trained in my MBA studies to act with such interests, I remember first questioning that objective the year Michael Eisner earned what I recall was $104 million in his first year as CEO at Disney. I asked if any CEO who could make more money in one year than he or his heirs could ever spend in their lifetimes would be concerned about the future earnings, let alone survival, of their institutions. Wall Street earnings and bonuses have since made that $104 million look like chicken feed.

I cite the difference between Greenspan's and my thinking not to in any way to suggest that I'm smarter than he is. Rather, I do so to note the crucial importance of challenging old thinking. Trillions of dollars in net worth have evaporated because a basic old thought wasn't sufficiently challenged by those with the authority - and responsibility - to do so.

Developing "critical thinking" in its students is the professed objective of virtually every college and university in America. How these institutions accomplish this objective is a largely unexplored mystery. Certainly, some students have mastered the required disciplinary knowledge to think deeply about questions and are able to synthesize their knowledge to apply it to questions other than those they have studied. But how has their education systematically developed these abilities? Further, to be applied in the appropriate situations, critical thinking must also be a personal disposition, for unless a Greenspan challenges his own thinking, the mere possession of the knowledge and the ability to think critically will be woefully wasted.

As demonstrated by this new work in behavioral economics, one way academe gets its scholars and students to think out-of-the-disciplinary-box is to encourage interdisciplinary studies - in this case, the interaction of psychology and economics. Looking between the cracks in organizations has been a fundamental strategy I learned in my management consulting career. However, such exploration is a very unnatural act in academe, in which scholars' academic careers have been built on being experts in precisely small fields within single academic disciplines. As it's been said, a Ph.D. learns more and more about less and less. Then gaining tenure has required a slavish dedication to one's chosen discipline, if only as an act of career self-interest (for if you don't gain tenure in one institution, you'll need to look to your colleagues in your discipline to help you secure a position in another institution to try again).

So how do we actually get students to develop the knowledge, ability, and disposition to think critically? As I've noted, this is a crucially important question and it is one that transcends individual academic disciplines. The answer must not be sloughed off with simplistic replies like "Well, that's what liberal education is all about." After all, our current economic and political situation is one that has been developed by public officials, leaders, and voters who are largely products of that liberal education system.

We need to do better. Challenging our old ways of thinking is a way to start.

Veggie U's 2009 Food & Wine Celebration

More than 30 chefs from 10 states prepared tastes of their food and 10 wineries and purveyors kept supporters of Veggie U's fundraising Food & Wine Celebration in Milan, OH very happy last Saturday, 7/18/09. I joined several of my International Wine and Food Society - Columbus Branch members to partake in this event this year. We chartered a mini-bus to do the 2-hour drive for us, letting us all taste as much wine as we wished. (Milan is in farm country near Lake Erie, halfway between Cleveland and Toledo.)

The event supports Veggie U, which provides a 5-week interactive curriculum for fourth-grade and special needs children throughout the U.S. to learn about healthy food and eating. It's part of the Slow Food movement in the U.S. I first learned of Slow Food in my 2007 trip to Barolo, Italy (it was started in nearby Bra in Piedmont). With my friends Roger & Sherran Blair, we luxuriated in a week of Slow Food dinners there, savoring carefully prepared meals each night in our typical 8:30 pm to midnight dinners. As suggested by the name, the Slow Food movement was started in reaction to the opening of the first McDonald's burger joint in Bra in the 1970s.

The 2009 Food & Wine Celebration was wonderful! I've had the pleasure of (over)eating at many such fundraising events over the decades. This was one of the most impressive, in terms of quality of food & wine presented. The chefs prepared most of the food on site and each taste was presented beautifully. The program provided diversions from eating and drinking, with cooking demonstrations, presentations on wine and food pairing, garden tours, and an Iron Chef-like cook-off judged by Food Channel personalities.

Since pictures are worth thousands of words, I'll let my photos do the talking. I've posted 160+ photos from the event on my smugmug photo website in the gallery 2009/07/18 Veggie-U Food & Wine Celebration. There, you can see many of the dishes offered and the chefs who did the cooking right on the spot. Warning: The photos might make you very hungry (or at least salivate)!

Hearty thanks to Sherran Blair for organizing the trip for us! It was definitely "worth the trip!"

Love of Eating and Cooking: Pop's Cold Sesame Noodles

My father developed my foodie tendencies and from them, my love for cooking. From Pop, I learned to love to cook for my love to eat! Alas, I don't prepare fancy, home cooked dinners much anymore - and never got up to Pop's standard of preparing gourmet Chinese cuisine - but I still enjoy preparing specialty dishes for gourmet cocktail parties, picnics, and dinners at friends' homes. Having grown up with so many happy memories of home cooked meals, it's been wonderful to recreate these dishes - some that I haven't had for decades.

I usually carry around a camera to catch pictures of dishes I've eaten and enjoyed sharing them in my holiday letters and more recently online. The pictures help me remember the wonderful meals I've had and let me recommend specific dishes and restaurants.

My friend Kaity Tong's blog has inspired me to go further and share the recipes of my favorite dishes. I've enjoyed reading her stories about her mother's recipes and salivated in anticipation of trying them out.

I recently learned how important it is to share recipes, even amongst family members. While visiting my sister, I found she didn't know Pop's recipe for cold sesame noodles; she had been using Mom's recipe. While I love my Mom, she's not the great cook that Pop was! The simple cold sesame noodle recipe proves this.

So here's the first of what I plan to be a series sharing the recipes I use - recipes I've collected from watching Pop cook (and taking measurements as he did, since he never had to measure anything), to others I've collected from the Internet. I've tweaked these recipes along the way (with great hubris, in some cases, daring to modify recipes by chefs as legendary as Thomas Keller of French Laundry fame), to make them what I think is clearer and more foolproof. While those modifications make the recipes longer and look more imposing, I've found they help me avoid mistakes that I've made in trying to follow the original recipes. Enjoy!

Norton Chu's Cold Sesame Noodles

1 lb dried noodles or thin spaghetti
2 T sesame oil

SAUCE:
¼ c sesame paste (tahini) or peanut butter - or both
¼ c sesame oil
1 T sugar
¼ c soy sauce
¼ c Worchestershire sauce

OPTIONAL TOPPINGS:
1 peeled, julienned cucumber
2 c shredded chicken
1 c dried shredded pork
2 T toasted sesame seeds

1. Cook noodles in salted water until tender, but still slightly firm.

2. Drain and rinse cooked noodles in cold water to stop cooking.

3. If serving immediately, chill noodles in ice water. Drain well.

4. Toss noodles in sesame oil. Chill in refrigerator.

5. Put sesame paste and/or peanut butter in mixing bowl.

6. Stir in sesame oil to make a smooth paste.

7. Slowly stir in sugar, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, making a smooth sauce. Chill.

8. Toss chilled noodles in sauce, thoroughly coating the noodles.

9. Serve with optional toppings.


NOTES:

This recipe is so quick and easy, it makes a terrific snack even just for one serving, after cutting down the proportions.

I prefer the texture of plain white Chinese noodles, available in Asian grocery stores in 5 pound boxes. Spaghetti also works well, though.

In addition to adding flavor, the sesame paste and peanut butter act as binders. Mixed with the watery soy and Worcestershire, the resulting sauce clings to the noodles and prevent the ingredients from dripping onto diners' clothing.

If you use the long English cucumbers, you can julienne the skin too. It adds an interesting textural difference (a little tougher, but still tender), and beautiful color.

Using a mandolin makes easy work of julienning long strips of cucumber that make a wonderful presentation (they look like green noodles).

The optional toppings add interesting textural and visual contrast to the noodles, but for a snack, the noodles don't need any toppings.

This dish works very well for tailgating. The ingredients are less prone to spoiling, so they keep well in a cooler for an after-game snack while waiting for the traffic to clear out.

My $863 Refrigerator Repair

Four weeks ago, I found that the ice dispenser of my refrigerator had run out of ice. Here's my long story, but you can cut to the end for my conclusions from this experience.

My ice maker had stopped making ice once last year, so I went through my records and recalled the answer the helpful Kitchen Aid customer service people gave me. I tried the old solution to no avail - still no ice. Then I realized that though the refrigerator side was okay, my freezer had warmed up from its normal -5° to +30°!

I called the Kitchen Aid 800 number and was quickly told I needed a service call. They said Capital City Appliance Service in Columbus was my locally authorized service provider. I called them and they arranged a service visit for the next day. My service guy, Mike, told me I had a slow leak somewhere in the system. He recharged the freon, saying that would get my freezer cooling normally again, and said he'd need to return with a dye injector which would show where in the hundreds of feet of cooling system piping the leak was. He said that since my refrigerator (a 36" side-by-side built-in) was 11 years old, parts were still covered by Kitchen Aid's 12-year warranty, but I'd have to pay for labor (confirming what Kitchen Aid customer service told me over the phone). I paid $177 for that first visit for his hour's time plus the freon.

The next day, I got a call from Mike's office. A woman there told me it would cost me $800 for my refrigerator repair. I asked how much time it would take and she said it would be about 3 hours. Well, since parts were covered, I asked if that meant I would be paying almost $200 per hour for labor (given the charge for freon). After getting inadequate explanations to my questions about the seemingly unreasonable charge, I asked her to schedule the next service, but told her that I'd shop for a new refrigerator to consider replacing rather than repairing it and would call her back the next day.

I went to my local Home Depot and Lowe's hardware stores and saw regular refrigerators that might fit in my space, but no built-ins. (I was also surprised in this economy how hard it was to find anyone to ask for help on such a high-priced item!) I realized that with regular refrigerators, I would't be able to have custom cabinet panels on the doors, so it would't look good in my kitchen. I then went to the Great Indoors store and there found built-ins and sales help. Instead of the $1500-2500 for regular side-by-side refrigerators, a new Kitchen Aid built-in would cost over $5000 (confirming my recollection of what I paid for it when I bought it for my new house 11 years ago). In the context of $5000, an $800 repair didn't seem too bad.

I called Capital City back and after getting the same woman who couldn't explain why I was paying so much for labor, I asked to speak with a service manager. He explained they were required to charge according to a schedule of national standard service charges for types of repair. Further, I'd have to pay for a 2nd entire recharge of freon since federal regulations didn't permit them to reuse the freon they just put into my refrigerator until it had been cleaned. Before calling Capital City back, I had checked Angie's List and called Kitchen Aid again to see what alternatives I had, but found that although Capital City had many customers who were unhappy with their service, the alternative service company's ratings were even worse. So, I was stuck.

The service manager told me he advises customers to consider repair vs. replacement cost and expected refrigerator life. If the repair is more than 1/2 the replacement cost, he suggests buying a new one. He also told me that the expected life of a regular refrigerator is 10-12 years, but that of a built-in is 20 years, so my 11-year old unit still had plenty of life left. He said the work had a 90 day warranty and the parts warranty would run out with the 12-year warranty of my unit. When I expressed concern that inadequate repair of a slow leak may not show up until after the 90 day warranty had expired, he assured me that they would consider such instances on a case-by-case basis. I thanked him for his patience and explanations and told him to go ahead with the repair.

From there, things went smoothly. Mike came back to put in the dye injector (with a service charge of $77.55), and 3 weeks later, after the parts came in and my schedule permitted, found the expected slow leak. He replaced the parts, taking the predicted 3 hours. Mike had originally told me to empty my freezer, since everything would thaw during the repair. So in the intervening weeks, I've been trying to eat up my frozen foods (they had survived the few days of warming from -5° to +30°). I hadn't thought that all I needed to do was to put the frozen food into cooler chests during the repair, but I realized this once Mike came for the final repair.

So that's the story. My freezer's running fine again (so far) - I have ice! Mike confirmed that the leak wasn't anything I had caused; it was in a sealed part of the freezer. I was charged $785 for the final repair, less $122.60 I paid for the initial visit, so my total cost was $862.55 for 5 hours of labor and freon.

CONCLUSIONS

Most significantly, I've learned that I really don't need to keep much in my freezer. Fortunately, my side-by-size refrigerator doesn't hold all that much as it is, and one freezer bin is filled with coffee beans (since I've stopped drinking coffee, drinking tea instead). So I'll continue to eat up my frozen food and be more aware of what I put in there (which should be mainly for last-minute entertaining). I should also invite more friends over for coffee!

I'm concerned that the federal government and industry have created a situation where customers are stuck with unreasonable charges. I can understand regulators wanting to ensure that freon is properly recycled for reuse. But why can't we have our own freon put back into our own refrigerators? Also, while diagnostic-based charges may help prevent unscrupulous overcharging for repairs, what assurance do customers have against unreasonable "standard" charges? These may be examples of unintended consequences of government policies (far preferable to being examples of government-industry collusion to bilk customers); I'll have more to say about unintended consequences in a future blog.

Still, I'm happy that here in Columbus, I continue to be able to find service people who can help promptly and courteously (and, hopefully, competently).

Photo Editing Software: Photoshop & Lightroom

My friend K.S. Liu blogged on his experience with Adobe's Photoshop and Lightroom software. His blog is in Chinese (which I read using Google Translate), and I offered him my comments on the 2 programs. I'm repeating my comments here in my own blog (with some additions) for anyone interested.

Adobe offers several programs under the Photoshop name. Their most comprehensive product, which started as Photoshop, is now known as CS (for "Creative Suite"), now in version 4 (CS4). It's aimed at professional photographers. At the other end, the most elementary product is called Elements (now in version 7) and provides some basic photo editing tools for casual picture takers with tools much easier to use than those in CS.

I learned to use the old Photoshop (and now CS - I have the previous version, CS3) and it had become my photo editing program of choice. I tried Elements years ago (it was quite inexpensive - sometimes bundled for free with other stuff), but it just didn't have all the tools I needed to touch up my photos to my satisfaction. My niece's husband, Gian, introduced me to Lightroom several months ago (now in version 2: LR2), and I've become a huge fan.

Once you learn them, CS and LR are very powerful. Alas, both CS and LR require some study before you can use them effectively, though LR, being simpler, takes less study. (I like Scott Kelby's books, but some may not like his CS approach which focuses on memorizing keyboard shortcuts and doesn't tell you how to access the commands via the menus).

LR provides a "left-to-right, top-to-bottom" workflow that helps me quickly edit the hundreds of photos I take at an event. The tools work very well with a touchpad or mouse. It lets me correct a photo and then apply the same correction to all the other photos I've taken under the same conditions, thus saving lots of time. I find I can now get the photos done quickly enough that I'll get them done the same evening and onto my smugmug and facebook webpages for everyone to enjoy.

I still use CS for about 5% of my photos requiring specific touch-ups that I can't do with LR tools. However, CS really requires a pen tablet to work efficiently; using a mouse with CS is quite tedious. I like my IBM ThinkPad PC for this work, where I can select areas directly with a pen on the screen. LR and CS are well integrated - they send the photo to and from each other, keeping a smooth workflow.

Photoshop Creative Suite (CS4) is quite expensive - about $700 at retail. Lightroom (LR2) is about $300. They're available with big academic discounts, if you know someone connected with a school or university. Because they're so expensive, they're also pirated (but reportedly riddled with viruses). Also, Photoshop has gotten more diligent about checking valid registrations before allowing downloads of patches to their programs (though such patches aren't frequent or required). I'm happy, though, to pay for software that works well - as these products do, and I've bought LR licences for family and friends.

The only thing the Photoshop programs don't do well is making panoramic photos. I still use my old Panorama Maker program on my PC to stitch together my panoramic photos (the older version, no longer offered, is better than the one they currently have, since it lets me align adjoining photos manually when the program hasn't matched them properly). For those really interested in panoramic photos, look into Gigapan. K.S. did and bought it, creating some beautiful and amazingly detailed photos (alas, zooming into the detail is provided only on online).

Since I usually take 100s photos at an event, editing my photos is a lot of work. But it's worth all the work to be able to share the photos with family and friends. A picture, as Confucius said, is worth 10,000 words (not the mere 1,000 words many misquote him for), so I get say a lot with all my photos!

My Orchids

I've been lucky growing plants my whole life - at least with those that need watering only once a month. So imagine my delight when my orchid plants re-bloomed this year!



My story begins a few years ago, when Mom came to New Albany for a visit. To help brighten up her room, I bought a blooming orchid plant at Home Depot. It had a nice stalk with about 8 blossoms, which lasted not only the 2 weeks of her visit, but on for another 4 months! The little tag on the plant said it was the easiest type of orchid to grow: phalaenopsis or "moth" orchid. I spoke to neighbors who had similar orchids, and they confirmed that they re-bloom every year. I didn't know how to care for them and cut off the blossom stalk after the blossoms fell off - only to see when visiting friends that I should have left the bare stem there. I dunked the plant into water when it had dried out (once every 1-2 weeks) and bought orchid plant food to add to the water every month or so. Sure enough, several months later, I was rewarded with a new, short flowering stalk and a couple of blossoms.

I became more adventuresome and bought another couple of phalaenopsis at Whole Foods (which, I found, has very good prices on orchids in November and December). I also bought a few bare-rooted orchid plants at the Franklin Park Conservatory's orchid sale after their orchid show for a few dollars each. I don't have any bright growing places for plants in my house and only a couple of ficus benjamina and a ponytail palm which have thrived through my benign neglect (my watering scheme is to drown them once a month, whether they need it or not). Well, my orchids weren't as tolerant.

I transplanted the orchids when I saw (through their clear plastic pots) that the pots were growing algae. I gave them new bark/peat medium in their transparent plastic pots. I put them in a plastic tray with pebbles on the bottom, which I would water to help provide a little humidity. Also, seeing how happy they were when they came back after being plant-sat at Tally & Midge's home during a couple of my multi-week trips away from home, I finallly put them among other plants (a braided Chinese money plant, and a Jerusalem cherry - from a cutting from a plant originally raised by Thomas Jefferson!). I think I over-watered them last fall and a few of the plants died.

The good news is that one phalaenopsis and a more difficult to grow odontoglossum are now re-blooming! I had even killed off a new bulb of the odontoglossum, but it has bounced back and has given me a spray of 5 buds, 3 now open with a delightful rose-like scent.

I've learned to dunk them in water only once every 6-8 weeks and not to let their pot bottoms get too wet from standing in the water around the pebbles. I think they also like being in with the bigger green plants. The sun from my north facing kitchen window appears to be enough (the money tree and Jerusalem cherry appear to be quite happy and are growing much taller and bushier). While the temperature varied widely during the winter (I turned down the thermostat to 50° when I was away on trips; while I was home, it would get up to the low 70s), the plants all survived.

My orchids: Testaments to the tenacity and beauty of life!