Michel Houellebecq's Submission in One Sentence

Even the word humanism made me want to vomit, but that might have been the canapés.

Houellebecq, Michel. Submission. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015, 204.

To Love a Book

Yet the special thing about literature, the major art form of a Western civilization now ending before our very eyes, is not hard to define. Like literature, music can overwhelm you with sudden emotion, can move you to absolute sorrow or ecstasy; like literature, painting has the power to astonish, and to make you see the world through fresh eyes. But only literature can put you in touch with another human spirit, as a whole, with all its weaknesses and grandeurs, its limitations, it pettinesses, its obsessions, its beliefs; with whatever it finds moving, interesting, exciting, or repugnant. Only literature can grant you access to a spirit from beyond the grave - a more direct, more complete, deeper access than you'd have in conversation with a friend. Even in our deepest, most lasting friendships, we never speak so openly as when we face a blank page and address an unknown reader. The beauty of an author's style, the music of his sentences, have their importance in literature, of course; the depth of an author's reflections, the originality of his thought, certainly can't be overlooked; but an author is above all a human being, present in his books, and whether he writes well or very badly hardly matters - as long as he gets the books written and is, indeed, present in them. (It's strange that something so simple, so seemingly universal, should actually be so rare, and that this rarity, so easily observed, should receive so little attention from philosophers in any discipline: for in principle human beings possess, if not the same quality, at least the same quantity, of being; in principle they are all more or less equally present; and yet this is not the impression they give, at a distance of several centuries, and all too often, as we turn pages that seem to have been dictated by the spirit of the age than by an individual, we watch these wavering, ever more ghostly, anonymous beings dissolve before our eyes.) In the same way, to love a book is, above all, to love its author: we wish to meet him again, we wish to spend our days with him.

Houellebecq, Michel. Submission. Translated by Lorin Stein. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015, 4-5.

Bond, G-SIB Bond

[T]his is finance, so the regulator’s proposals inevitably come cloaked in impenetrable jargon dotted with obscure acronyms. The relevant measure of capital (equity plus the at-risk debt) is called “total loss-absorbing capacity” or TLAC. The ratio will only apply to the most important institutions, dubbed global systemically important banks (G-SIB). It is hard to see the public marching behind Mark Carney, who heads both the FSB and the Bank of England, shouting, “What do we want? Higher TLAC for G-SIBs. When do we want it? Phased in between 2019 and 2022, except for emerging-market banks which will have till 2025 to 2028 to comply.”

"Buttonwood: Born to Run," The Economist, Volume 417 Number 8964, November 14th-20th 2015, 72, Accessed on November 19, 2015, http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21678259-bonds-will-take-hit-when-banks-fail-born-run

That's The Economist on the Financial Stability Board's new guidelines for bank balance sheets. Their idea is for private investors to bear the cost of bank failure by issuing special bonds with terms indicating that bondholders will be the first to take a hit should something go south with the bank. This way losses would be absorbed by bondholders rather than depositors. Therefore, it is thought, bank runs will be less likely. 

Bro, Where are the Shareholder Equity Accounts?

“In the cannabis industry, there is a lot of people that lose track of a lot of things,” said Nic Hernandez, head grower at La Conte’s Clone Bar & Dispensary, a legal marijuana outlet in Denver. An app from Flowhub helps him keep his operation straight.

Dwoskin, Elizabeth. "Silicon Valley's Unlikely New Frontier," The Wall Street Journal., Tuesday, November 17, 2015, Accessed on Wednesday November 18, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valleys-unlikely-new-frontier-1447810134?cb=logged0.7287707715295255

Wholly Foul

In life there is not time to grieve long.
But this, this is out of life, this is out of time,
An instant eternity of evil and wrong.
We are soiled by a filth that we cannot clean, united to supernatural vermin,
It is not we alone, it is not the house, it is not the city that is defiled,
But the world that is wholly foul.

Eliot, T.S. "Murder in the Cathedral" from The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1980, 214.

Others Were Found Unfit

Fighters who made it to the screening centers were confused about the mission. When they learned what it was, many left. Others were found unfit, including one who showed up with open gunshot wounds.

Entous, Adam and Ballout, Dana and Al-Akraa, Mohammed Nour. "U.S. Caution Hobbled Birth of Syrian Force," The Wall Street Journal., Monday, October 4, 2015, A1, Accessed on October 4, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/conflicting-agendas-caution-beset-pentagon-plans-in-syria-1443997392

As the Romans

What cries out for explanation is not the Romans’ militaristic character or psychic aggression, but why in a world that was universally violent the Romans were so consistently more successful than their enemies and rivals. The basic answer to that has little to do with superior tactics or even with better military hardware; it has much more to do with boots on the ground. In its early centuries at least, standard Roman practice, unique in the ancient world and most of the modern, was to turn those it had defeated into Roman citizens and to convert erstwhile enemies into allies and future manpower. It was an empire built – as those desperate refugees on the Danube must have hoped, long after the policy had ceased to be feasible – on the extension of citizenship and the incorporation of outsiders.

Beard, Mary. "Why Ancient Rome Matters to the Modern World," The Guardian, Accessed on October 4, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/02/mary-beard-why-ancient-rome-matters

Markets in Baby Names

When Frank Hudock, 35, a restaurant manager in the Chicago area, first told his wife, Jennifer Hudock, 30, an executive assistant, that his grandparents wanted them to name their son Frank, per generations of family tradition, her response was, “That’s never going to happen.”

They had just decided on a name they both agreed on — Max — after arguing about dozens of others, and that had been a big relief.

But then the grandparents threw in a sweetener: an offer of $10,000 in exchange for choosing Frank.

Krueger, Alyson. "The New Tug of War Over Baby Names," The New York Times, Accessed on October 3, 2015, http://nyti.ms/1KXDz3B

On Martians and Virulently Chauvinist Buddhism

And they accuse a virulently chauvinist Buddhist monk called Wirathu of telling rural voters that an NLD victory would turn Myanmar into a Muslim country.

"An election looms in Myanmar: Divided we stand," The Economist, October 3, 2015, Accessed on October 2, 2015, http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21670078-campaign-takes-shape-fragile-young-democracy-divided-we-stand?frsc=dg%7Ca

Other than learning that there is such a thing as a virulent chauvinist Buddhism, I was also struck by this passage and how it contrasted with something else I had read this week in Andy Weir's The Martian:

If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it's found in every culture without exception. 

Weir, Andy. The Martian. New York: Broadway Books, 2014, 369.

Such a charming sentiment. But it may be an overly optimistic estimation of human morality. Such sentiment of universal human brotherhood is probably more likely to be produced within a rich and secure society than without it. The norm of human morality is in all likelihood closer to the out-group hostility of Wirathu, our virulently chauvinist Buddhist friend. 

Mankind may be less giving and more Gibbon, who reminds us that, "our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery*."

_____________________________

*Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. J.B. Bury with an Introduction by W.E.H. Lecky (New York: Fred de Fau and Co., 1906), in 12 vols. Vol. 8. 10/3/2015. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1376#Gibbon_0214-08_164

Here's to the Democratization of Information, Communication and Technology!

A post on the message board 4Chan Wednesday night at 7:19 p.m. local time that said “Some of you guys are alright. Don’t go to school tomorrow if you live in the northwest,” is being investigated as possibly connected to the shooting.

In the discussion thread, some users told him not to do it, while others encouraged him and gave him ideas for how he could kill people.

One person responded saying, “I suggest you enter a classroom and tell people that you will take them as hostages. Make everyone get in one corner and then open fire. Make sure that there is no way that someone can disarm you as it it possible. I suggest you carry a knife on your belt as last resort if someone is holding your gun.”

Another poster said, “You might want to target a girls school which is safer because there are no beta males throwing themselves for their rescue. Do not use a shotgun. I would suggest a powerful assault rifle and a pistol or 2x pistols. Possibly the type of pistols who have 15+ ammo.”

"Chis Harper Mercer: Five Fast Facts You Need to Know," Heavy, Accessed on October 1, 2015, http://heavy.com/news/2015/10/chris-harper-mercer-umpqua-community-college-ucc-roseburg-oregon-shooting-shooter-gunman-dead-eggman-4chan-name-id-identity-photos-twitter-social-media-facebook-youtube/

Just the normal madness. 

On "Banned" Books

There is basically no such thing as a “banned book” in the United States in 2015.

Graham, Ruth. "Banned Books Week is a Crock," Slate, Sept. 28, 2015, Accessed on September 30, 2015, http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2015/09/banned_books_week_no_one_bans_books_anymore_and_censorship_of_books_is_incredibly.single.html

Teledildonics

A fast-growing cottage industry makes sex toys that work with Oculus Rift and other VR headsets. There is also much excitement about “teledildonics”: remote-control technologies that allow people thousands of miles apart to control each other’s gadgets.

"Pornography (2): Naked Capitalism," The Economist, Accessed on September 29, 2015, http://www.economist.com/news/international/21666114-internet-blew-porn-industrys-business-model-apart-its-response-holds-lessons?frsc=dg%7Ca

Just the normal madness.  

Kissinger and History

The primary emphasis in the book is on how Mr. Kissinger arrived at the set of core ideas and convictions that he would bring with him into high office.

Many of these convictions—the idea that “most strategic choices are between lesser and greater evils,” for instance, or that history provides a crucial guide to any nation’s policies and self-understanding—will be quite familiar to those who have heard Mr. Kissinger’s story before.

Brands, Hal, "The Definitive Biography of Henry Kissinger," The Wall Street Journal., Accessed on September 28, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-definitive-biography-of-henry-kissinger-1443209592

The more I read and think about history the more I believe this sentiment to be true. 

The Fox and the Hedgehog

The book describes another contest, this time run by America’s spies in the wake of the disastrous misadventure in Iraq. Begun in 2011, it posed hundreds of geopolitical questions (“Will Saudi Arabia agree to OPEC production cuts in November 2014?” for instance) to thousands of volunteer participants. A small number of forecasters began to pull clear of the pack: the titular “superforecasters”. Their performance was consistently impressive. With nothing more than an internet connection and their own brains, they consistently beat everything from financial markets to trained intelligence analysts with access to top-secret information.

They were an eclectic bunch: housewives, unemployed factory workers and professors of mathematics. But Mr Tetlock and his collaborators were able to extract some common personality traits. Superforecasters are clever, on average, but by no means geniuses. More important than sheer intelligence was mental attitude. Borrowing from Sir Isaiah Berlin, a Latvian-born British philosopher, Mr Tetlock divides people into two categories: hedgehogs, whose understanding of the world depends on one or two big ideas, and foxes, who think the world is too complicated to boil down into a single slogan. Superforecasters are drawn exclusively from the ranks of the foxes.

"Predicting the future: Unclouded vision," The Economist, Accessed on September 27, 2015, http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21666098-forecasting-talent-luckily-it-can-be-learned-unclouded-vision

Good News, Bad News

One thing I have in abundance here are bags. They're not much different from kitchen trash bags, though I'm sure they cost $50,000 because of NASA.

Weir, Andy. The Martian. New York: Broadway Books, 2014, 31.

So the good news is that in the future we still have NASA. The bad news is the federal government is still a ridiculous over spender.

Seneca on Anger

"Anger carried to excess begets madness." How true this is you're bound to know, having had both slaves and enemies. It is a passion, though, which flares up against all types of people. It is born of love as well as hate, and is as liable to arise in the course of sport or jesting as in affairs of a serious kind. The factor that counts is not the importance of the cause from which it springs but the kind of personality it lands in, in the same way as with fire what matters is not the fierceness of the flame but where it catches - solid objects may resist the fiercest flame while, conversely, dry and inflammable matter will nurse a mere spark into a conflagration. It is true, my dear Lucilius. The outcome of violent anger is a mental raving, and therefore anger is to be avoided not for the sake of moderation but for the sake of sanity.

Seneca translated by Campbell, Robin. Letters from a Stoic. New York: Penguin Books, 2004, 69.

Gregory B. Sadler presents Seneca on Anger

 Alain de Botton offers a shorter presentation

The Most Debauched Mughal Emperor

Many teenagers have seen a greater number of sex acts than the most debauched Mughal emperor.

"Pornography: Generation XXX," The Economist, iPad app, Accessed on September 24, 2015, http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21666614-free-pornography-ever-more-plentiful-online-right-response-involves-better-sex

Investing Strategies for Tough Times

It makes sense for investors to consider what assets they should buy to hedge against a sudden plunge in the value of equities or bonds.

New research by AQR, a fund-management group, looks at the ten worst quarters for global equities and government bonds between 1972 and 2014. On average, equities lost more than 18% during such quarters while bonds, a less volatile asset, lost 3.9%.

[...]

The AQR numbers show that government bonds do act as a useful hedge for equities, earning an average return of 4.8% in the quarters when shares plummeted. That is good news: both assets may look overvalued but they are unlikely to fall in tandem.

[...]

There are a number of asset-picking strategies that have been shown to work over time. A combination of five of those strategies (value, momentum, carry, defensive and trend-following) would have produced very good returns during past stockmarket sell-offs.

"Buttonwood: Looking for lifeboats," The Economist, Volume 416 Number 8956, September 19th-25th, 68, Accessed on September 23, 2015, http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21665026-which-investments-work-best-when-markets-decline-looking-lifeboats

Read the full AQR report here. 

Law (of Supply and Demand) and Regulation

The global market for electric cars has been weak because of low gas prices and concerns about vehicle price and battery range. To date, Tesla Motors Inc. and Nissan Motor Co. sell two of the best known and highest-volume battery-powered vehicles, but volumes are only a sliver of the industry’s 85 million annual vehicle sales.

Emissions standards are tightening around the world, however, leading most major car companies to invest billions of dollars in plans to launch electric cars between now and the end of the decade. By the time an Apple car would make its debut, brands spanning General Motors Co.’s Chevrolet to Volkswagen AG’s Audi and Porsche will have long-range electric vehicles aimed at the mass market.

Wakabayashi, Daisuke. "Apple Sets 2019 Goal to Build Auto," The Wall Street Journal., Tuesday September 22, 2015, A1, Accessed on September 22, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-speeds-up-electric-car-work-1442857105?mod=trending_now_2

I like these two paragraphs. They illustrate how both the natural laws of economics and the artificial dictates of regulation shape prices, producer decisions and consumer preferences. 

Soylent $Green$

Soylent, a two-year-old startup, is trying to save consumers time and money by selling them a healthy, cheap “meal” that they can drink. Each vegetarian portion has only around 400 calories, costs around $3 and boasts of being as nutritious as, and more environmentally-friendly than, processed food and meat.

[...]

Several years ago Sam Altman, an entrepreneur who is now president of Y Combinator, a startup boot camp, was so cost-conscious and focused on building his first company, Loopt, that for weeks he ate only ramen noodles and coffee ice cream, until he developed scurvy. He later became an investor in Soylent.

[...]

Soylent has proved that it can appeal to a niche, as well as to a handful of financiers: in January the firm raised $20m from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, a well-regarded venture-capital firm.

"Food technology: Liquid lunch," The Economist, Volume 416 Number 8956, September 19th-29 2015, 58, Accessed September 21, 2015, http://www.economist.com/news/business/21665068-startup-called-soylent-wants-change-way-people-consume-calories-liquid-lunch 

A Prophet's Profit

Yet where there are pilgrims, there are profits.

"Muslims head for Mecca: Prepping for the pilgrimage," The Economist, Volume 416 Number 8956, September 19th-25th 2015, 45, Accessed on September 20, 2015, http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21665019-logistics-haj-prepping-pilgrimage

From "Preludes" by T.S. Eliot

The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.

[...]

His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.


Eliot, T.S. "Preludes" from The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1980, 12-13.

If Ever There was a Reason for Force

Japanese fight over pacifism.

The Wall Street Journal., Facebook timeline photo, Accessed on September 18, 2015, https://www.facebook.com/wsj/photos/a.392580748127.173020.8304333127/10153712465753128/?type=1&permPage=1

Sorry. Let's Run it Again.

Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, called parliamentarians back to a special session to hear him read his state-of-the nation address a day after he mistakenly read out a speech he had previously given in August. The 91-year-old has ruled Zimbabwe continuously since independence in 1980.

"Politics This Week" The Economist, Accessed on September 17, 2015, http://www.economist.com/news/world-week/21665047-politics-week

from "Flying Man" by Rabindranath Tagore

I feel the age we live in is drawing to a close - 
   Upheavals threaten, gather the pace
      Of a storm that nothing slows.

Hatred and envy swell to violent conflagration:
   Panic spreads down from the skies,
      From their growing devastation.

If nowhere in the sky is there left a space
   For gods to be seated, then, Indra,
      Thunderer, may you place

At the end of this history your direst instruction:
   A last full stop written in the fire
      Of furious total destruction.

Hear the prayer of an earth that is stricken with pain:
   In the green woods, O may the birds
      Sing supreme again.

Tagore, Rabindranath translated by Radice, William. "Flying Man" in Selected Poems. New York: Penguin Books, 2005, 113.

A Time to Hold and a Time to Trade

Buying and selling by individual investors is especially heavy in the minutes immediately after the market opens in the U.S. at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time, when the chances of getting the best price for a stock are lower and swings tend to be bigger, traders and other market observers said.

But within minutes, the gap between the price sellers want for a stock, known as the “ask” price, and what buyers are offering, the “bid,” shrinks sharply and continues to narrow up until the end of the trading session. This quirk in the market has been amplified in recent weeks amid the big market swings.

The smaller gap, or spread, is better for investors because they are less likely to overpay for a stock or sell below the prevailing price in the market. The wider the spread, the more exposed investors are to high costs, which can erode returns at a time when major stock indexes are down for the year.

In the first half of the year, the difference between the bid and ask prices of shares in the S& P 500 was 0.84 percentage point in the first minute of trading, according to data from ITG, a brokerage. That gap shrinks to 0.08 percentage point after 15 minutes and to less than 0.03 percentage point in the final minutes of the trading day.

This difference often amounts to only pennies a share. But it can add up for the many individual investors who pile into the market early in the trading day.

Strumph, Dan and Driebusch, Corrie. "Early Birds Suffer in Market" The Wall Street Journal., Tuesday, September 15, 2015, A1, Accessed on September 15, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/early-birds-suffer-in-market-1442273794

from Flute-Music by Rabindranath Tagore

   Kinu the milkman's alley.
      A ground-floor room in a two-storeyed house,
Slap on the road, windows barred.
   Decaying walls, crumbling dust in places
         Or stained with damp.
            Stuck on the door,
         A picture of Ganesa, Bringer of Success,
               From the end of a bale of cloth.
      Another creature apart from me lives in my room
                  For the same rent: 
                     A lizard.
            There's one difference between him and me:
                   He doesn't go hungry.

Tagore, Rabindranath translated by Radice, William. Selected Poems. New York: Penguin Books, 2005, 96.

Explaining Out Group Hostility

Every individual thing, and consequently every individual person, strives to preserve and to increase his or her individuality, against the threat of being overcome and absorbed by external forces. The drive to self-assertion, and to an aggressive sense of my own power and distinctiveness as a person, is always present, and some of this sense of unity and this aggressiveness is transferred to communities of persons. Nothing is more useful to a person, [Spinoza] claims, than the added strength that comes from the union with other persons in community, which then becomes itself an individual thing, with its own drive to self-preservation. The aggressive maneuvers of Churches and sects in the seventeenth century, and of nation states in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, are intelligible within Spinoza's natural philosophy and his idea of history. It is natural that every composite entity, whether a nation or a religious sect, should hold itself together by trying to extend its freedom of action and its power as far as they will go, exactly as an individual person does.

Hampshire, Stuart introduction to Ethics by Benedict de Spinoza, xiii. New York: Princeton University Press (Penguin Books), 1994.

Joys of the Poly-Reader

For the Lusts, Pleasures, and Profits of this World; in the injoyment of which, I did then promise my self much delight, but now even every one of those things also bite me, and gnaw me like a burning worm.

Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim's Progress. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, 35.

So says the Man in the Iron Cage to Christian in John Bunyan's classic The Pilgrim's Progress. I can't help but draw parallels between the Man in the Iron Cage's woes and the mental anguish Epictetus warns accompanies lusting after those things that fall outside of your control (material possessions, sexual conquest, etc.). 

Serendipitously locating such synergies is one of the joys I find in reading multiple books at once. 

IPOs and Stock Market Volatility

Recent stock-market volatility caused by jitters about the health of China’s economy and the Federal Reserve’s plans for raising interest rates haven’t helped the IPO pipeline. Companies are more likely to list their shares when markets are strong, to maximize proceeds. Sharp swings in share prices complicate IPO planning and cause potential investors to be more cautious.

Winkler, Rolph and Telis Demos. "Tech Firms are Notably Scarce in IPO Market" The Wall Street Journal., Friday, September 11, 2015, A1, Accessed on September 11, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/ipo-parade-continues-without-many-tech-companies-1441929152

Epictetus on the Power of Habit

It is impossible for any one to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows.

Epictetus. The Discourses, The Handbook, Fragments. Vermont: Everyman, 1995, 115.

I like this. But - dealing with quickness of temper and frustration issues myself - I like the following even more.

If, then, you do not wish to be ill-tempered, do not feed the habit. Give nothing to promote its growth. Keep quiet to begin with, and count the days on which you have not been angry.

[...]

If you set these thoughts against your impression, you will overpower it, and not be swept away by it. But, in the first place, do not allow yourself to be carried away by its intensity: but say, 'Impression, wait for me a little. Let me see what you are, and what you represent. Let me test you.' Then, afterwards, do not allow it to draw you on by picturing what may come next, for if you do, it will lead you wherever it pleases. But rather, you should introduce some fair and noble impression to replace it, and banish this base and sordid one. 

If you become habituated to this kind of exercise, you will see what shoulders, what sinews and what vigor you will come to have. But now you have trifling talk, and nothing more.

Epictetus. The Discourses, The Handbook, Fragments. Vermont: Everyman, 1995, 120-21.

Epictetus's idea that we should keep count of the days that we have not been angry reminds me of the weight-loss method of weighing yourself every day. It helps you keep yourself disciplined.

Here is to making tomorrow day one.

A Short Introduction to "Bond-Auction Strategies"

Element is among the last to embrace “bond-auction strategies,” trading maneuvers that have become less popular since the financial crisis. 

These trades aim to take advantage of the effects of supply and demand in the $12.8 trillion Treasury market. Demand for these bonds often fluctuates based on factors including investor perceptions of economic growth and market risk, while supply can be affected by regular auctions of different-maturity Treasury securities. A burst of new supply tends to slightly depress prices for short periods, sometimes for less than an hour. 

In the past, Wall Street dealers and hedge funds scored profits shorting “when-issued” bonds. These are contracts conferring the right to purchase Treasury securities when they are sold days later at auction. Then, these traders would buy bonds during Treasury auctions at the slightly lower prices and use these newly purchased bonds to close out their short sales. 

The difference between the higher price at which they sold the Treasurys and the lower price they paid at auction was their profit.
There are a number of variations to this strategy, traders said. The maneuver involves a bet against bonds, so traders usually purchased hedges such as Treasury futures or interest-rate swaps to protect against rising bond prices while the trade was under way, said Tom di Galoma, head of fixed-income and rates trading at ED&F Man. 

[...] 

There are dangers with the auction strategy. Once in a while, the prices of bonds being auctioned jump, rather than fall, for reasons such as bad economic news that prompts an investor flight to safety. Hedges sometimes don’t work out. And the strategy relies on inexpensive borrowing because each trade usually yields minimal profits. 

In the 1990s, hedge fund Long Term Capital Management used leverage to profit from small discrepancies in the Treasury market before a market reversal swamped the firm. LTCM used much more leverage than Element does.

Cui, Carolyn and Zuckerman, Gregory. "Obscure Funds Buys Billions in Treasurys" The Wall Street Journal., Wednesday, September 9, 2015, A1, Accessed on September 9, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/an-obscure-hedge-fund-is-buying-tens-of-billions-of-dollars-of-u-s-treasurys-1441704601

from Shah-Jahan by Rabindranath Tagore

          O human heart,

     All that you gather is thrown

To the edge of the path by the end of each night and day

   You have no time to look back again,

       No time, no time.

Tagore, Rabindranath translated by Radice, William. Selected Poems. New York: Penguin Books, 2005, 78.

Disconcertingly Animate

HOW many times can one man die? At least four, in the case of Abubakar Shekau, the slippery leader of Boko Haram. Nigerian security forces celebrated his demise in 2009, 2013 and 2014, only for him to pop up again, disconcertingly animate, on camera.

"Boko Haram: Shadow army" The Economist, Volume 416 Number 8954, September 5th-11th 2015, 54, Accessed on September 7, 2015, http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21663254-nigeria-has-surprisingly-little-idea-what-it-fighting-against-shadow-army

I Know Not Whither to Go

If this be thy condition, why standest thou still? He answered, Because I know not whither to go.

Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim's Progress. Oxford University Press: Oxford World's Classics, 2008, 11.

The Teenager's Bedroom

The second law of thermodynamics puts into mathematics the commonplace observation that heat flows from hot things to cold ones, and not the other way around. This mathematical treatment, though, has many consequences. One of the best known is that any system will become more disordered as time passes. That applies as much to two gases mixing as it does to a teenager's bedroom.

"Wy does time pass?: The moving finger writes" The Economist, Volume 426 Number 8954, September 5th-11th 2015, Accessed on September 5, 2015, http://www.economist.com/news/science-brief/21663184-our-fifth-brief-scientific-mysteries-we-ask-why-travelling-through-time-unlike

¡Occupy Licensing!

The United States economy is a free enterprise system because anyone is free to start a business. You do not have to get permission from the government to start a business, although you will be expected to obey laws and regulations.

Mariottti, Steve and Glackin, Caroline. Entrepreneurship: Starting and Operating a Small Business. New York: Pearson, 2013, 5.

If ever a qualifying clause swallowed the main clause of a sentence this is it. In today's America (we're number 20 in freedom!) it is increasingly the case that you do indeed need permission from the government to start a business. Occupational licensing - that is, asking the government for permission to start a business - is something that has been debated in certain political quarters for quite some time now. Luckily, it's an issue that is starting to get attention from all quarters. The Obama administration even recently published a report on this problem and though they find a lot to criticize about the practice, the report offers a bit too much support for my tastes. 

Anyway, it's a start. 

It's in the Delivery

In attempting to ride social-media trends, companies can easily fall flat on their faces. DiGiorno, a frozen-pizza maker, noticed that a number of people were using the hashtag “#WhyIStayed” on Twitter and sent out a jocular tweet that they had stayed for the pizza. It turned out that the comment thread was about domestic violence and why women remained in abusive relationships.

"Marketing in the digital age: A brand new game," The Economist, Volume 416 Number 8953, August 29th-September 4th 2015, 52, Accessed on September 3, 2015, http://www.economist.com/news/business/21662543-people-spend-more-time-social-media-advertisers-are-following-them-brand-new-game

The Answer is Probably Nothing

Some things are hurrying into existence, and others are hurrying out of it; and of that which is coming into existence, part is already extinguished. Motions and changes are continually renewing the world, just as the uninterrupted course of time is always renewing the infinite duration of ages. In this flowing stream, then, on which there is no abiding, what is there of the things that hurry by on which a man would set a high price?

Aurelius, Marcus translated by Long, George. Meditations. New York: Dover Thrift Edition, 1997, 39.

From Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva by Rabindranath Tagore

Clouds show a rainbow,
Gardens show flowers.
The roar of Creation
Resolves into music.

Tagore, Rabindranath translated by Radice, William. "Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva" Selected Poems. New York: Penguin Classics, 2005, 46.

The Immediate Object of Life

Smugglers are exploiting the political vacuum in Libya to transport Africans across the Mediterranean to Italy. Refugees from Syria’s civil war clamber into rubber dinghies at Turkish ports to reach Greek islands. Then they traverse the continent by the thousand, causing havoc at borders and leaving officials to choose between haplessness and brutality. Migrants who have endured the savagery of the Islamic State or the caprice of Eritrea’s police state find themselves tear-gassed by Macedonian police or evading the clutches of French security guards.

"Migration in Europe: Looking for a home," The Economist, Volume 416 Number 8953, August 29th-September 4th 2015, 41.

***

Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim. It is absurd to look upon the enormous amount of pain that abounds everywhere in the world, and originates in needs and necessities inseparable from life itself, as serving no purpose at all and the result of mere chance. Each separate misfortune, as it comes, seems, no doubt, to be something exceptional; but misfortune in general is the rule.

Schopenhauer, Arthur translated by Saunders, Thomas Bailey. Studies in Pessimism: A Series of Essays. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1908, 11.

Just Ask Two Animals

The pleasure in this world, it has been said, outweighs the pain; or, at any rate, there is an even balance between the two. If the reader wishes to see shortly whether this statement is true, let him compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other.

Schopenhauer, Arthur translated by Saunders, Thomas Bailey. Studies in Pessimism: A Series of Essays. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1908, 12. 

Truth in Fiction

Some truths cannot be told except as fiction.

Gray, John. Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002, 131.

I May Have Not Posted This (Or, Did Lord Jim Really Jump?)

These are strong arguments against free will; but recent scientific research has weakened it even more. In Benjamin Libet's work on 'the half-second delay', it has been shown that the electrical impulse that initiates action occurs half a second before we take the conscious decision to act. We think of ourselves as deliberating what to do, then doing it. In fact, in nearly the whole of our lives, our actions are initiated unconsciously: the brain makes us ready for action, then we have the experience of acting. As Libet and his colleagues put it:

" . . . the brain evidently 'decides' to initiate, or, at the least, prepare to initiate the act at a time before there is any reportable subjective awareness that such a decision has taken place . . . cerebral initiation even of a spontaneous voluntary act . . . can and usually does being unconsciously."

If we do not act in the way we think we do, the reason is partly to do with the bandwidth of consciousness - its ability to transmit information in terms of bits per second. This is much too narrow to be able to register the information we routinely receive and act on. As organisms active in the world, we process perhaps 14 million bits of information per second. The bandwidth of consciousness is around eighteen bits. This means we have conscious access to about a millionth of the information we daily use to survive.

The upshot of neuroscientific research is that we cannot be the authors of our own acts. Libet does retain a faint shadow of free will in his notion of the veto - the capacity of consciousness to stall or abort an act that the brain has initiated. The trouble is that we can never know when - of if - we have exercised the veto. Our subjective experience is frequently, perhaps always, ambiguous.

Gray, John. Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2002, 66-67.

An Irrational World and the Normal Madness

It is a strange fancy to suppose that science can bring reason to an irrational world, when all it can ever do is give another twist to the normal madness.

Gray, John. Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2002, 28.

Ouch

Since Aug. 17, more than $2 trillion in market value has been wiped out of U.S. stocks.

Wei, Lingling and Iosebashvili, Ira. "Late Tumble Dashes Hope for Rebound" The Wall Street Journal., Wednesday, August 26, 2015, A1, Accessed on August 26, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/late-tumble-in-u-s-stocks-dashes-hopes-for-rebound-1440546405

Hatred is a Leech

Hatred is a leech:

The thing that sticks to a person's skin; that feeds off them and drains the sap out of one's spirit. It changes a person, and does not leave until it has sucked the last drop of peace from them. It clings to one's skin, the way a leech does, burrowing deeper and deeper into the epidermis, so that to pull the parasite off is to tear out that part of the flesh, and to kill it is self-flagellating.

Obioma, Chigozie. The Fishermen. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015, 207.

The Problem with Complex Systems

The expected move to free up more funds for lending—by reducing the deposits banks must hold in reserve—is directly aimed at countering the effects of a weaker currency, which could send more funds away from Beijing’s shores. The moves reflect an economy increasingly failing to cooperate with Chinese leaders’ playbook to control the world’s No. 2 economy.

Wei, Lingling and Magnier, Mark. "China's Economic Turmoil Spreads" The Wall Street Journal. Monday, August 24, 2015, A1, Accessed on August 24, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-to-flood-economy-with-cash-as-global-markets-lose-faith-1440380912

For decades now Beijing has been lauded for its management of the Chinese economy. But economies, as Taleb reminds us, aren't that amenable to being managed. They often fail to cooperate. In fact, the heavy hand of direction in any complex system seems to cause unforeseeable problems which we're only starting to see again in the world economy this week:

Evolution proceeds by undirected, convex bricolage or tinkering, inherently robust, i.e., with the achievement of potential stochastic gains thanks to continuous, repetitive, small, localized mistakes. What men have done with top-down, command-and-control science has been exactly the reverse: interventions with negative convexity effects, i.e., the achievement of small certain gains through exposure to massive potential mistakes. Our record of understanding risks in complex systems (biology, economics, climate) has been pitiful, marred with retrospective distortions (we only understand the risks after the damage takes place, yet we keep making the mistake), and there is nothing to convince me that we have gotten better at risk management.

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. New York: Random House, 2012, 348.

It Was the Stupidest of Times

We may not be living in the worst of times, although a case might very well be made for it, but anyone with a thought in their head would be entitled to say that we’re living in the stupidest.

Haverty, Anne. "Book Review: 'Notes on the Death of Culture' by Mario Vargas Llosa" The Irish Times, Saturday, August 8, 2015, Accessed on August 20, 2015, http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/book-review-notes-on-the-death-of-culture-by-mario-vargas-llosa-1.2308929

A Short Introduction to Capital-Relief Trades

Capital-relief trades are opaque, little-disclosed transactions that make a bank look stronger by reducing its “risk-weighted” assets. That boosts key ratios that measure the bank’s capital as a percentage of those assets, even as capital itself stays at the same level.

In a capital-relief trade, a bank can keep a risky asset on the balance sheet, using credit derivatives or securitizations to transfer some of the risk to a hedge fund or other investor. The investor potentially gets extra yield and the credit risk of smaller borrowers in a way it would be hard for them to get otherwise, while the bank gets to remove part of the asset’s value from its closely watched “risk-weighted asset” count.

Banks say the trades help them manage their risk, even if they don’t go as far as a bona fide asset sale, and are just one tool among many they are using to meet new capital requirements.

[...]

Critics fear the trades can spread risk to unregulated parts of the financial system—just as similar trades did before the financial crisis.

Rapoport, Michael and Tracy, Ryan. "The Hot Thing for Wall Street Banks: Capital-Relief Trades" The Wall Street Journal., Tuesday, August 18, 2015, C1, Accessed on August 18, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hot-thing-for-wall-street-banks-capital-relief-trades-1439852844

Most Peculiar

To be the best Amazonians they can be, they should be guided by the leadership principles, 14 rules inscribed on handy laminated cards. When quizzed days later, those with perfect scores earn a virtual award proclaiming, “I’m Peculiar” — the company’s proud phrase for overturning workplace conventions.

Kantor, Jodie and Streitfeld, David. "Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace" The New York Times, August 15, 2015, Accessed on August 17, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html?_r=1

Same Sex Divorce

One Louisiana court processed a same-sex divorce before marrying its first same-sex couple. 

Ellis, Lindsay. "Supreme Court's Gay-Marriage Ruling Allows Something Else: Gay Divorce" The Wall Street Journal. Saturday, August 15, 2015, A3, Accessed on August 15, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-courts-gay-marriage-ruling-allows-something-else-gay-divorce-1439583846

A Feast of Blood Bread

The following is about the Arab conquest of northern Iran in the early eighth century. It relates the story of the proud, recalcitrant Turkish Chol dynasty who consistently reneged on their treaty obligations with the Arabs. So the Arabs had to forcefully subjugate them:

The region was left alone until the reign of Sulayman (715-17), who dispatched the redoubtable general Yazid ibn al-Muhallab to seek its submission. He besieged the incumbent monarch for several months, but was not able to obtain his surrender and agreed to leave on condition of payment of tribute. As soon as he had gone, the locals threw off their allegiance and killed the agent of the government who had been left behind. This provoked a furious reaction from Yazid, who fought them for months until they finally surrendered, and this time "he gibbeted their warriors" and, in fulfillment of an earlier threat, he made bread from their blood and ate it. Thus this country became part of the Arab Empire.

Hoyland, Robert G. In God's Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire. Oxford University Press, 2015, 118.

A War on Women

In the moments before he raped the 12-year-old girl, the Islamic State fighter took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin. Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted.

He bound her hands and gagged her. Then he knelt beside the bed and prostrated himself in prayer before getting on top of her.

When it was over, he knelt to pray again, bookending the rape with acts of religious devotion.

“I kept telling him it hurts — please stop,” said the girl, whose body is so small an adult could circle her waist with two hands. “He told me that according to Islam he is allowed to rape an unbeliever. He said that by raping me, he is drawing closer to God,” she said in an interview alongside her family in a refugee camp here, to which she escaped after 11 months of captivity.

The systematic rape of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority has become deeply enmeshed in the organization and the radical theology of the Islamic State in the year since the group announced it was reviving slavery as an institution. Interviews with 21 women and girls who recently escaped the Islamic State, as well as an examination of the group’s official communications, illuminate how the practice has been enshrined in the group’s core tenets.

Callimachi, Rukmini. "ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape" The New York Times. August 13, 2015, Accessed on August 13, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/world/middleeast/isis-enshrines-a-theology-of-rape.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

The Economist on Inversions

That giant sucking sound is the noise of American companies realising tax savings by redomiciling abroad. Terex, a cranemaker, is merging with Konecranes and moving its headquarters to Finland. CF Industries, a fertiliser-maker, and Coca-Cola Enterprises, a bottler, announced deals this month which redomicile them in Britain. American policymakers tried to stamp out such “inversions” last year, but firms still yearn to escape a combined federal and state corporate-tax rate of 39%, the OECD’s highest, and a worldwide tax net that scoops up foreign earnings when they are repatriated. (Most rich countries tax only domestic earnings.) Even if the rules are now tightened further, foreign companies still have every incentive to buy American targets and reap the same tax advantages by changing their domicile. Already this year foreign firms have shelled out $315 billion on such deals; the annual record, set in 2007, is $325 billion.

The Economist Espresso App, "Inverted reality: America's firms flee" Wednesday, August, 12, 2015, Accessed on August 12, 2015, https://espresso.economist.com/2fd5e234bd8230eaa4b1769f39d74864

Robert G. Hoyland on the Pre-Conquest Arab Peoples

They are very difficult to write about because the term the term "Arab" has, as one would expect, meant different things to different people at different times since it was first introduced into the historical record almost three millennia ago. A recent academic study into the nature of pre-Islamic Arabs concluded that they were nomadic, camel-rearing, religiously fanatical desert warriors, essentially lumping together all the stereotypes about them held by settled peoples, on whose writings the author had relied for his data. These stereotypes have endured into our age, reinforced by films such as Lawrence of Arabia, and so it is immensely difficult to persuade even educated people that Arabs were not all nomadic desert-dwellers, and indeed that some were sedentary and even members of the imperial elite. The idea of Arabia as a harsh unchanging desert world populated by only heroic, martial Bedouin has a romantic fascination for Western culture - and for many Middle Eastern societies too, which have regarded the Arabian deserts and their denizens as the source from whence they all hailed. In reality, Arabia has harbored a number of different peoples, some of which did not define themselves as Arabs, and some of which possessed advanced and complex cultures. It was also not as remote as is generally assumed, but was heavily exposed to the influences and machinations of empires and enjoyed mercantile contacts with other polities such as Ethiopia and India.

Hoyland, Robert G. In God's Hands: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire. Oxford University Press, 2015, 21-22. 

Better to Be Lucky Than Right

Democrats cannot believe their luck.

The Economist Espresso App, "Life Imitates Satire: Donald Trump's Campaign" Monday, August 10, 2015, Accessed on August 10, 2015, https://espresso.economist.com/254e1e1ff2da526bc9a17e5f6b70d9df

Trump Carnivals

[T]he carnival atmosphere Mr. Trump has brought to the race.

O'Conner, Patrick, Hook, Janet & Ballhaus, Rebecca. "GOP Candidates Hold Raucous Debate" The Wall Street Journal. Friday, August 7, 2015, A1, Accessed on August 7, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/gop-candidates-hold-raucous-debate-1438914703

Deo volente there will be more. I'm going long on popcorn futures.

From Conquest

This book tells how a small party of well-led adventurers fought against a large static monarchy. It is also a study of a clash between two empires. Both were imaginative and inventive. Though different, they had some things in common: they held many things sacred, they had conquered others, they loved ceremonial. Both were by most standards cruel, but cultivated. Both intermittently dreamed of conquering what they thought of as "the world". Both were possessed of powerful beliefs which their leaders looked on as complete explanations of human life.

Thomas, Hugh. Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés, and the Fall of Old Mexico. New York: Simon & Shuster, 1993, xi.

That's the opening paragraph from Hugh Thomas's book on the conquest of Mexico. It pretty much sums up succinctly exactly why I find the subject of those wars so fascinating. A few years ago I read the accounts of the conquistadors and some other Hugh Thomas books. I plan on reading this one soon. After, of course, In God's Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire. 

I guess I like empire. 

A Taxing Problem

Also remember last year when Burger King, financed in part by Warren Buffett, said that its deal to buy donut-chain Tim Hortons and relocate to Canada wasn’t driven by lower taxes? Senate investigators, drawing on internal Burger King documents, report that while the merger was motivated by business considerations, the decision on where to locate the combined company’s headquarters had a lot to do with minimizing future tax bills. 

“Burger King calculated that pulling Tim Hortons into the worldwide U.S. tax net, rather than relocating to Canada, would destroy up to $5.5 billion in value over just five years,” according to the report. The company says that was merely a rough estimate, but that’s still enough to deter management from subjecting Hortons’s non-U.S. income to the U.S. tax code. 

Shareholders deserve nothing less from management than the Warren Buffett approach of paying the lowest possible legal tax rate. And shareholders demand it, which absent American tax reform will end up pushing more U.S. companies into foreign hands. 

[...] 

The ultimate losers in all of this aren’t so much the owners as American workers, who often lose their jobs when a company moves abroad. Sometimes layoffs are necessary, no matter who’s in charge. But job losses are greater when the company is run—not by the most competent manager—but by the one most able to exploit a government-created advantage. It’s well past time for our government to stop creating advantages for foreign competitors.

The Wall Street Journal. "Abetting a Foreign Takeover" Wednesday, August 5, 2015, Accessed on August 5, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/abetting-foreign-takeovers-1438732072

Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be

"Invest portable property in a friend?" said Wemmick. "Certainly he should not. Unless he wants rid of the friend - and then it becomes a question how much portable property it may be worth to get rid of him."

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Oxford University Press: Oxford World's Classics, 2008, 266.

Talking Shit

English has absorbed a myriad of influences, but our usage has tended to prioritise imported words over those of our Anglo-Saxon roots. In fact, our core profanities today derive originally from Anglo-Saxon words, which only became vulgar to use when French became the language of the court (this also explains why these curse words tend to be four letters long and have strong consonants). It’s not that those words – or these scatological topics – were inherently profane. It’s that we made them so by distancing ourselves from what use to be native. 

Black, Christina. "On Giving a Shit" book review of Between Two Stools: Scatology and its Representations in English Literature, Chaucer to Swift by Peter Smith. Review 31, Accessed on July 31, 2015, http://review31.co.uk/article/view/332/on-giving-a-shit

Dickens on Tears

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlaying our hard hearts.

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Oxford University Press: Oxford World's Classics, 2008, 145.

Bush League

An 81-year-old Stratford man has been charged with public indecency, accused of performing a sex act with some shrubbery.

WINY Radio, "From the Newsroom" Facebook Post, Accessed on July 29, 2015, https://www.facebook.com/topic/Stratford-Connecticut/103121246394551?source=whrt&position=10&trqid=6177036864848483383

Pip and the Emperor

I set off on the four-mile walk to our forge; pondering, as I went along, on all I had seen, and deeply revolving that I was a common labouring-boy; that my hands were coarse, that my boots were thick; that I had fallen into the despicable habit of calling knaves Jacks; that I was much more ignorant than I had considered myself last night, and generally that I was in a low-lived bad way.

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Oxford University Press: Oxford World's Classics, 2008, 59.

That's Pip as he returns home from his first meeting with Miss Havisham and her daughter, Estella. Pip is broken and hurt because he is of the opinion that their belittling him is bad. What would Marcus Aurelius say about that? As it happens, we know exactly what he'd say. He'd say to Pip:

Take away your opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, "I have been harmed." Take away the complaint, "I have been harmed," then the harm is taken away.

Aurelius, Marcus. Meditations. New York: Dover Thrift Edition, 1997, 14. 

The Panacea and the Problem

Many denizens of the Valley believe that tech is the solution to all ills and that government is just an annoyance that still lacks an algorithm. 

The Economist. "Empire of the Geeks" July 25th-31st, 2015, Accessed on July 26, 2015, http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21659745-silicon-valley-should-be-celebrated-its-insularity-risks-backlash-empire-geeks

That's from a leader from The Economist as it reports on the current culture of Silicon Valley. The full article is here. It's interesting throughout. 

Stanza Sunday: from A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In the world’s broad field of battle,
   In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
   Be a hero in the strife!

Longellow, Henry Wadsworth. from "A Psalm of Life", Accessed on July 26, 2015, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173910

Stoic Saturday: How I Applied Stoic Principles to Lose Weight

But I do not despair even of a hardened sinner. There is nothing that will not surrender to persistent treatment, to concentrated and careful attention; however much the timber may be bent, you can make it straight again. Heat unbends curved beams, and wood that grew naturally in another shape is fashioned artificially according to our needs. How much more easily does the soul permit itself to be shaped, pliable as it is and more yielding than any liquid! For what else is the soul but air in a certain state? And you see that air is more adaptable than any other matter, in proportion as it is rarer than any other.  

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Epistles, Volume 1: 1-65. Translated by Richard M. Gummere (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1917), 333-35. 

Mastering one's appetite is the very foundation of training in self-control. 

Robertson, Donald paraphrasing Musonius Rufus. Stoicism and the Art of Happiness. McGraw-Hill, 2013, 12.

Appetite and thirst are the natural 'sauce' of life and the secret to making even coarse bread and plain water taste delicious. 

Robertson, Donald. Stoicism and the Art of Happiness. McGraw-Hill, 2013, 8.

On June 2, 2015 I weighed 283 pounds. Today I weigh 267.8 pounds. Though there is still a long way to go in terms of achieving my target weight I am very happy with the results so far. I have stoic principles to thank for any success I've had and any success that I may have in the future. Since weight loss is an important issue for many people these days I thought I'd share what I've learned so far.

At the outset I should probably say that weight loss per se is something that falls outside of my control. So at best it's a preferred indifferent. But while weight loss is beyond my control, what I chose to consume is within my control. So diet, I've found, is an excellent method of building self-control and willpower after a stoic fashion. Further, according to Epictetus, we have roles to play in life. Some of mine are the roles of father and husband. As such I need to do all I can to be healthy so I can stick around for my wife and child. 

When I decided to lose weight I knew that the biggest challenge I'd face is portion control. Indeed, up until June 2nd I'd eaten like a wild, ravenous beast. If there was food in front of me, it wouldn't be there for long. I'd tried controlling portions before and always failed. This is where today's first quote from Seneca comes in. It reminded me that I could change so long as I made a serious effort. Habits can be amended. 

Which brings me to the final two quotes above. When I started studying stoicism last year during Stoic Week I began writing short stoic passages in a Moleskin pocket notebook which I now carry around with me at all times. Throughout the day I like to read from the notebook in an effort to ingrain their ideas into my mind. This practice has helped greatly in dieting. 

My diet is designed in accordance with the USDA's dietary guidelines. And it's significantly less food and less tasty food than what I'd long been accustomed to consuming. So I'd get hungry real quick. Now, whereas in my previous attempts at weight loss I'd give in and start eating, now I am armed with stoic philosophy to assist me. So every time I got hungry and wanted to eat something I'd take out my notebook and read those two quotes repeatedly until I convinced myself to abstain from eating anything not in my diet.

So far it's worked for me. It might work for you too.