The 12 year son of someone I have known for along time died on the weekend. The funeral was today.
Perhaps Paul Simon is right, that “sometimes even music / cannot substitute for tears”. But sometimes music can express what words can’t. And from the limited amount of music I know these days, I thought of this:
Today the MacArthur Foundation…
“… named 25 new MacArthur Fellows for 2008. This past week, the recipients learned in a single phone call from the Foundation that they will each receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” support over the next five years.”
I have heard of this in the past and typically associated these grants
with artists. While there are many artists included as Fellows, there
are other people from other professions, such as Will Allen (pictured here) who is an “urban Farmer transforming the cultivation, production, and delivery of healthy foods to underserved, urban populations through a novel synthesis of low-cost farming technologies”. Will, like many of the people on this list, are deserving recipients of the awards. And while there are no strings attached, I believe there doesn’t need to be, because people like Will Allen will continue to do what they do, regardless if someone gives them $500 or $500,000. But the latter amount is better, and the MacArthur Foundation is to be commended for the work they do.
Go see the list of Fellows at the link above. It is inspiring.
From a hearing in Washington today. Let’s see if they can turn it around from “WTF” and “FAIL” to “FTW”.
For people in Manhattan, you may have tickets to The Metropolitan Opera’s Opening Night Gala
However, the great thing is that even if you don’t, or if you live in a different city, you may still have a chance to see it. It is playing on big screens all across North America (if not the world). It’s 270 minutes of glorious opera, so sit back and enjoy.
Show time is 6:30 pm (Eastern Time).
Click on the link for more details.
I love TV ads. I used to be teased because I would mute TV shows and put the sound on for good ads.
Unlike TV shows, ads have alot to do in just 30 seconds, and they have to do it flawlessly. Directed well, they are 30 seconds films. One particular 30 second film, Leave Nothing by Michael Mann, is my favourite. I even prefer it to the 1984 Apple ad by Ridley Scott, which I have admired since….1984!
Leave Nothing is brilliant. For U.S. football fans, there is the amazing spectacle of Shawn Merriman mowing down players in the first part– including a spectacular hit midway– before knocking the ball over to Steven Jackson who heroically drives the ball home for the touchdown (and even that is well done, since you end up visualize the TD: it’s not shown). And the amazing computer generated graphics that allow the players and the weather to switch seamlessly is wonderful. Mann holds this all together and what’s more manages to shoot Merriman and Jackson in this seamless tracking shot in which they are all over place (just watch Merriman as he weaves back and forth across the field).
However, one thing about this that I think is brilliant may not seem obvious at first. And that is the sound. Watch it without the sound, and then with the sound, and you will hear how well the sound underlines everything. You can hear the rain pelting down, the snow squalls, the smashing of equipment and the grunts and breathing of the players. The score – apparently from The Last of the Mohicans (another Mann film) — starts imperceptibly and then swells up to the last few seconds of the ad, before the words “Leave Nothing” flash on screen and then all you hear is the wind.
It’s a masterpiece. And it’s half a minute long.
Michael Mann, if you don’t know, directed such great work as “The Jericho Mile”, “Thief”, “Ali”, “Collateral” and “Miami Vice”. And he directed this.
If you want to know more about the making of this, go here http://blog.theavclub.tv/post/nike-leave-nothing
And of course, now you want to see it! You can see it the Nike ad “Leave Nothing” @ Transbuddha.
Enough blogging about money. Instead, I want to point out a great post in Looking Around – Art – Architecture – TIME on a new show at the Tate Britain museum. It’s a retrospective of one of favourite artists, Francis Bacon. While it his fifth retrospective, it is apparently a great one.
But I think this one passage is an interesting one, especially in light of the attention that artists like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst have been getting lately
“To see this many Bacons gathered together reminded me again how rare it is to see new art that attempts, much less achieves, a genuine tragic dimension. Irony you can find in any gallery these days, also low comedy, puerile cool and industrial strength enigma. But in a time that has its share of tragedy — have you noticed? — where is the art that even tries to strike an equivalent note. What we have almost no language for anymore, at least not in art, is acute pain.”
While Hirst draws on Bacon, you get no sense of any great depth of emotion that Bacon has. He has dark representations without the feeling.
Instead of “I have nothing to say and I am saying it”, it is more “I have nothing to feel and I am painting that”.
Reading this, Markets Soar, but New Rules Upset Traders – NYTimes.com, it appears to me that the people who are complaining about what has occurred this week (e.g., restriction on short selling) have missed what has happened. Someone needs to tell them: you have messed up too badly; the rules have changed; you are no longer in control.
And people can argue all they want for this change and that change, but after hastily making an enormous commitment to keep things alive in U.S. and global financial markets, the U.S. government likely has more important things to worry about than whether or not trading software can handle the new rules or
Some quotes:
Things may have calmed down, but going into next week, there is no more “normal”. That burned to the ground last week.
Just go see. It’s incredible. Really.
…when it comes to trick basketball shots. If LeBron James can’t, you can’t either!
(tip to transbuddha.com)
After the meltdown on Wall Street this week, the news that Oil Prices Return to $100 Territory seems like a ho-hum announcement in relation to that. The high price of oil is still significant, and likely will have at least as big an impact on the world economy as the meltdown, but it can’t compete with the sheer terror of seeing the global financial market seize up to the point that the U.S. government needs to swoop in and buy up hugh chunks of the financial market in a fire sale.
…in a very fine way: with a free concert of Verdi’s Requiem conducted by James Levine, who is recovering from serious illness but who managed this with gusto. Bravo indeed. It must have been a great night.
From the globeandmail.com
‘Living with a teenage daughter is like living with the Taliban. Mothers are not allowed to dance, sing, flirt, laugh loudly or wear short skirts.’
Australian-born author Kathy Lette
Can a wiki cure cancer? Can a crowds hack genetic disease? Over at the blog, Bits, they are speculating why “Google co-founder Sergey Brin on Thursday disclosed that he carried a genetic mutation that gave him a higher-than-average risk of contracting Parkinson’s disease.” Their speculation is that Brin might be thinking that it…
“…could be useful to have one’s DNA code open to the public, where it could follow a sort of open-source model. If his data was public, he said, doctors — or anyone who was interested — could look at his results and make suggestions about how he should handle them, offering treatment suggestions if it showed he might be susceptible to a disease.”
That would assume that there is information that is decentralized and unshared, which of course, is a category that the DNA of individuals falls into.
But would people share their DNA? I think they would, for the same reason that they share so much on the Internet now: the risk is very low and the reward is not insignificant.
It is only a small posting, but the post, Why Sergey Brin May Have Disclosed His Risk for Parkinson’s at Bits Blog on the NYTimes.com is interesting.
When do you think this cover is from? 2008? Nope, 1972. The quote that goes with it?
“The nation is not running out of money so much as it has misallocated its resources so badly that it now faces a staggering bill for the public services that citizens have a right to expect. Tax and governmental reforms can and must apportion that bill more fairly; to the extent that the taxpayers’ revolt is a protest against inequity, it is only too justified.”
There are so many good blogs these days, it impossible to keep up with them all. The nytimes.com has more than a dozen, all of them filled with lots of great material.
TIME has it’s share, too, including one by Richard Lacayo called Looking Around, that covers art and architecture. Worth adding to your bookmarks or feed reader if you are interested in those subjects. And unlike me, his posts on people like Damien Hirst are based on actually talking to the artist. So there’s that… 🙂
He highlighted something sad. Namely, the damage done to the Farnsworth House, a work of Mies Van der Rohe. Too bad Mies didn’t put it on stilts: it’s been hit with seven big floods since it was built. 😦 Not good.
(photo actually from the site The New Modernist).
It seems every hour news is coming out in reaction to the financial
devistation that is occurring. It appears to be just the U.S., but the
effect will be felt worldwide. It is similar to the World Wars of the
20th century, in that, while they were initially European wars, they
soon were fought across the world.
And the financial crisis is as significant as the world wars, I
believe. No one is saying that yet, but in time, they will. And while
it may not be as terrible as the Great Crash and the Great Depression,
it will be very tough on Americans for some time to come. Because all
of this money that is going to used to bailout the banks is money that
will not be bailing out the people with failing mortgages and failing
savings.
For more detail, see Vast Bailout by U.S. Proposed in Bid to Stem Financial Crisis – NYTimes.com
P.S. See the people in this photo by Brendan Hoffman of the New York Times? They don’t know what is going to happen either, although they have to act like they do. That’s Nancy Pelosi speaking with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on the far left and Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman and apparently an expert on the Great Depression, on the far right. I have no doubt that Bernanke has history in mind with everything he does.
If that sounds appealing, check out this page: O’Vineyards Winemaker Associates – Buy a vineyard in the south of France
You are responsible for doing your own “due diligence”, of course, not me. 🙂
But yes, it does sound appealing to me, and yes, it is certainly something to dream about as you spend two hours in some boring-as-watching-paint-dry meeting you may be in sometime today!
If you are a conservative investor, you may have a significant investment in money market funds. If you do, you may have been shocked by what has been happening with them over the last few days. While money market funds are much lower in risk than other funds, there is always a risk when it comes to money, even if you lock it up in a safety deposit box or tuck it under your mattress (then the risk is inflation).
If you are worried, I recommend you read this article: Your Money – Money Market Funds Enter a World of Risk.
It’s a good article, and there are some reassuring things you can read and consider.
Finally, remember: there is always a risk. If you are a conservative investor, you simply want to minimize that risk and still profit from the money you do have. Money market funds are still a good way to do that.
(Photo of an old vault door from Daniel Leininger’s photostream on flickr)
If you are thinking of buying, leasing, or even (like me) renting a new car, the question that will come to mind is: is it good on gas? And if you want the answer to what is best with gas, see this: The 15 Cars with the Best Gas Mileage from BusinessWeek.
While some are dead obvious (Toyota Prius), others surprised me (Ford Escape Hybrid). See for yourself, at businessweek.com.
Oprah appears to be going from the being the most powerful woman in American media to the most influencial woman on the planet. And why not? She has a universal appeal that transcends cultural barriers. And she has the means – her TV show – to reach people all over the planet.
For people who think Oprah is too mainstream for their liking, I’d like to point out this one key quote in this article, Saudi Women Find an Unlikely Role Model – Oprah,
“In a country where the sexes are rigorously separated, where topics like sex and race are rarely discussed openly and where a strict code of public morality is enforced by religious police called hai’a, Ms. Winfrey provides many young Saudi women with new ways of thinking about the way local taboos affect their lives — as well as about a variety of issues including childhood sexual abuse and coping with marital strife — without striking them, or Saudi Arabia’s ruling authorities, as subversive.”
And that may be the most subversive thing about Oprah. It certainly allows her to be highly influential.
For people who like a fitness challenge, there is always the marathon. However, if for whatever reason that doesn’t appeal to you, the folks at the site one hundred push ups have a strength challenge for you (I think you can guess).
They have a clean, straighforward site and an easy to follow program that is challenging but achievable.
They make a good case for the program too. Check it out.
P.S. Interestingly, they just tweaked the program. I think this will make it even better. C’mon! Wouldn’t you like to be able to do 100 pushups? With this site, it’s possible.
…based on this story of a $12B money market fund (Putnam Prime Money Market Fund) closing up. As the Washington Post says,
“The Putnam action is likely to increase concern among investors about the safety of investments in money-market funds, traditionally viewed as basically comparable to bank accounts. Investors pulled an estimated $80 billion from money-market funds yesterday, according to Crane Data, which tracks the industry.”
People in risker investments expect and are told to expert downturns. People with money market funds do not. As well, if money market funds are in taking a hit, no type of investment is safe.
More here.
Not only is this book good, but there is a very good web site for it here: The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson.
It is a book of many subjects and many ideas conveyed along with a strong narrative. I’d highly recommend it, just for that.
The ideas are not idle, however: though set in 19th century London, I kept thinking about the listeria outbreak and the SARS epidemic the whole time I was reading it. I also thought of a recent comment by an expert on cancer who spoke of how our current approaches many not be right to deal with cancer. This reminded me of the experts in this book who struggle to deal with cholera without any of the ideas of disease that we have. Perhaps in 20 or more years, people will look back and see how we struggled with dealing with cancer. To them it will be a disease that is will be as straightforward to deal with, just like we deal with cholera.
If you get an opportunity, pick up the book. At the very least, check out the web site. Either way, you’ll get lots of good ideas that will get your thinking.
Slate magazine uses the topic of a new film, Bottle Shock, to go over the history of California chardonnay. It is ironic that after beating the French at their own game, California chardonnay evolved away from that taste and towards the oaky, buttery, non-acidic wine that most people love, save the author of this piece (and those of the ABC crowd: anything but chardonnay).
As for me, I think there is a time and place for everything, and there are times when I like that rich taste of those wines. But I like to go with the ABC crowd too and find other varietals and other styles to try, whether it is Viogniers, Reislings, or Chenin Blancs, to name a few (though I tend to avoid Pinot Grigio).
See the article here: The last great California chardonnays. – By Mike Steinberger – Slate Magazine
If you are one of those people scratching their head/worrying about this, check out this:
AIG bailout might work out well for taxpayers – CNN.com
Notice the word might.
See here: Washington Mutual Is Said to Consider Sale – NYTimes.com
You can also see who the players are that are in a position of strength: Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase. In fact, the nytimes has a great graphic here that shows the major financial companies and who is/was in trouble. (It’s alot!)
How much has been lost in the last year? Only 4 trillion, give or take a few billion.
Signs of that can be seen in this article in the the Globe and Mail’s reportonbusiness.com: Banking crisis crosses Atlantic.
First, smart banks, like Lloyd’s, are going to take advantage of this crisis to snap up banks that they have had their eye on for some time. Bank of America did the same thing. If you start to see mergers over the next few weeks, it may not be so much that both parties are desparate; rather it may be that one party is the wounded prey and the other party is the stronger hunter.
Second, you may see the concept of “national” banks come to the fore. Just like countries subsidize agriculture and airlines, you may see countries subsidize national banks, as well. It would be an extension of a country’s central bank, but it would be a commercial enterprise with restrictions. (For example, they may have a mandate to do a certain percentage of banking within the country they reside in.)
This is merely a prediction, but not an unlikely one, given the way things are going.
On the other hand, Chinese banks could come along and just swallow up a good portion of American and European banks, and that would be that. I am betting on the former, but we will see.
Galbraith writes well, and he writes particularly well on the subject of the Great Crash of 1929. If you don’t know much about it before reading his book, you may be surprised to read that the Great Crash was something of a prolonged affair. Indeed, throughout the crisis, there was more than one occasion when people thought and hoped that stability had been achieved, only to see that hope destroyed.
You can find Extracts from “The Great Crash: 1929” by John Kenneth Galbraith (First Published 1955; 1961 Reprint) at Lachlan Cranswick’s Personal Homepage.. I recommend the book. If ever there was a time to read it, this week would be a good one.
(photo Brian Snyder/Reuters)
…is best captured in this quote from this article, Morgan Stanley Considers Merger With Wachovia:
“executives like John A. Thain, the chief executive of Merrill and a former Goldman executive, say investment banks will need large bases of deposits to shore up their capital for times of trouble.”
The problem is, capital is moving across the world, to China and India. It’s the Asian banks that will have more of the capital as the years pass, not the American banks. The Asian banks will be the ones that grow in the near future, provided that they can run their affairs wisely.
When I read this article (6 Food Mistakes Parents Make) I thought: I do just the opposite of many of these things. And for good reason! I tried following some of these rules, and found when I did the opposite, I got a better result. Results trump rules.
As a parent, it helps to have guidelines, especially when you are uncertain. But you should always do what’s best for your child, not what may work for children generally.
While it remains to be seen how well this works, news of Zimbabwe Rivals Sign Power-Sharing Agreement (at NYTimes.com) should halt the downward spiral that Zimbabwe had been in and perhaps reverse the direction of the country. If things go well, Zimbabwe could be a great nation. Sometimes things do work out for the best: let’s hope that happens here.
Why? According to TIME:
“Its collapse would be as close to an extinction-level event as the financial markets have seen since the Great Depression,” wrote money manager Michael Lewitt in Tuesday morning’s New York Times. There’s also the fact that through its insurance policies AIG touches far more regular Americans (and consumers around the world) than Lehman Bros. did.
It astounds me that businesses are aloud to be this toxic and get away with it. There was also this quote:
Plus, AIG’s insurance businesses make so much money that they could conceivably pay off the cost of the bailout within a few years.
What will be interesting for me is whether or not this actually happens. I suspect, instead, that the U.S. taxpayers will get stuck with the bill and then some other company will swoop in and take the assets.
Now, this is news to alot of us Canadians in the IT business. And to be fair to John McCain, it’s likely news to him, too. But not to his advisor, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who perhaps got a bit too excited in his praise of his boss.
See here for more details: Adviser calls BlackBerry ‘miracle’ McCain ‘helped create’ – CNN.com
It’s all fun and games on the campaign trail. Well, not all fun and games, but this certain is.
As this Slate article puts it, All Eyes On AIG today. This article is good because it has a rundown of what all the business press is saying. Read it now and get the scoop on everyone else.
Bonus: it mentions Damien Hirst at the end! 🙂
This is funny:
No, I don’t think they are really hockey moms. In fact, it’s a great poke at the political ads that crop up like weeds on U.S. television (and now the Internet).
Whatever your thoughts on Sarah Palin, pro or con, her ability to bring juice boxes to a hockey game is not really one that should be considered in assessing her as a candidate. 🙂
(tip to andrewsullivan.com)
Smart People I Know 