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.