Quote of the Day

"Never."

-Martha Stewart, responding to the question, "When do you turn off your BlackBerry?"

Quote of the Day

"Parts of the US electorate that agree on nothing else are united in their disappointment at Barack Obama's first year as president. He must be doing something right."

Editorial in today's Financial Times. The English seem to have a sense of the absurd grounded in reality that works really, really well.

A Sitcom, Venture Capital, Music, and a Piranha: Financing Woodstock

Peter Aspden, who writes the Culture column at the Financial Times, takes a look back at Woodstock. Being the FT, he focuses on how it was financed. I'd never heard this, but apparently a couple of guys wanted to write a sitcom about venture capitalists, but they needed material. So they put an ad in the paper for people with crazy ideas for new businesses, and met a guy named Michael Lang who wanted to put up a recording studio in upstate New York. The rest, as they say, is the history of one hell of a party. Aspden compares Hendrix's "Star-Spangled Banner" with Guernica, which is certainly a thot-provoking idea. This, however, is my favorite part:

“We had a pretty conservative banker who was not used to lending to rock ’n’ roll festivals. Next to his desk was a fish tank containing a piranha and another tank containing goldfish, and as he put a goldfish into the piranha’s tank, he’d say, ‘Everybody repays their loans here at the National Bank of North America.’”

Not really an image you associate with the whole peace-and-love vibe at Woodstock . . .

Physics and surfing

I've read a couple of articles recently about physics and surfing. One was in the Financial Times, about Garrett Lisi, who lives and surfs and thinks about the universe in Maui. Love this:

When I was about 16, I found out that the abstract mathematics I was learning in school actually describes how the physical universe operates. It was like stumbling on the existence of true magic in the world.

I made a movie at USC called Chasing Patterns that is about a young man discovering the beauty of math in patterns in nature, so I totally grok this idea.

On this side of the Pacific, the LA Times has a story about a class at UC San Diego that combines surfing and physics. The students attache equipment to their boards that measure various things in the ocean, and they study the physics of surfing - how waves form, that kind of thing - in the classroom.

I'm a big fan of this for a couple of reasons. First, I am a strong proponent of just about any kind of teaching that takes place outside of the classroom. I think schools in this country at all levels should do more to get students away from desks and chalkboards. That, after all, is where they are going to spend most of the rest of their lives. Also, I am an equally strong proponent of anything that combines theory and practice, particularly real-world experience. When I was a philosophy major, "real world experience" consisted of typing up papers.

Newspapers and the "unique content" problem

Newspapers are in trouble. This we all know. Today, Kos, in his latest post on the topic, looked at how many links to newspapers Daily Kos had over the course of a week. Maureen Dowd interviewed Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. She's a little nervous about her job.

One problem newspapers face is that they used to (emphasis on the past tense) have a semi-monopoly on news in their geographic area just by virtue of their format. Megan McArdle once pointed out (I think it was Megan) that the NY Times used to know at least two things about their customers. 1, they lived in the NY area. 2, they could afford a daily newspaper. Now the Times reader could be in Bangkok.

Newspapers used to have a huge advantage because they were the only source of news in a particular geographic area that was available almost whenever you wanted it. If you wanted to know if your team won last night, you could listen to the radio, watch TV, talk to someone else, or read the newspaper. Of those sources, newspapers are the only one that is available at any time after you picked it up. Radio and TV broadcast news at a specific time. If you missed any of that day's broadcasts, you were out of luck.

Newspapers also provided a great deal of content for a very cheap price. A newspaper has a lot of content, particularly compared to a radio or TV broadcast. And that content was not available anywhere else. Providing it gave newspapers a sort of monopoly. The only way to avoid that monopolization was for there to be multiple newspapers in a given city.

My grandfather, a small-town lawyer in the Midwest in the 1950's, used to subscribe to the Sunday NY Times. It would arrive on Thursday (even though NY was less than 1,000 miles away) because it took that long for the mail to deliver it. But he still read it, presumably because there was content in there that he couldn't get from any other source (I never talked to him about it, I heard this from my mother).

What newspapers have to do is figure out a way to provide unique content. I subscribe to the LA Times and the Financial Times. The LA Times is convenient (I can read it on the bus into work), but there isn't a lot of unique content. I like some of their columnists, particularly Meghan Daum, but I rarely read the articles on the front page, because I usually already know the story. The LA Times has done a fair amount of innovating in the last few years, but there is still much to do.

But the FT has a nice amount of unique content during the week. At least it's unique for me, because I don't subscribe to another business periodical, like the Wall Street Journal. And it's got global news, which I like.

Where the FT really shines is on the weekend (again, particularly for me), and most newspapers could learn some things about unique content from the FT Weekend. They have columnists that I can't read anywhere else, but who I read religiously. I don't have any particular interest in real estate in London, but I read Secret Agent religiously. I have learned a fair amount about wine from Jancis Robinson. On the back page is Fast Lane, by Tyler Brule, the ultimate jetsetter, and Slow Lane, by Harry Eyres, one of the few people alive who can write about Madonna and Nietzsche at the same time.

The NY Times, of course, has a fair amount of unique content, starting with its columnists. The LA Times has some unique content, like Dan Neil's car column, which is a great read. But it needs better unique content. Which, if you think about it, really should not be a problem. LA is one of the largest metropolitan areas on the planet. There are 88 cities in Los Angeles County. There are multiple mountain ranges in this county. We have a National Forest that has 650,000 acres. This is the world headquarters of the entertainment industry. There are something like 130 institutions of higher education just in LA County. There's no lack of material. Plus, there are several thousand writers who are all on a constant lookout for work.

So here's a new buzzword that will hopefully enter the zeitgest: "unique content." It's not hard to understand. Once upon a time, all newspapers provided it, just by virtue of being what they were. That is no longer the case.

Oh, and that unique content has to be in interesting formats, it can't just be text. The LA Times is doing more interesting things with photo essays, but I still don't think they're doing enough with video, particularly since some of the best cinematographers in the world (and many aspiring camerapeople) live and work here.

Quote of the day

“Clearly, the Obama administration is re-examining US policy towards Cuba,” said Peter DeSchavo, analyst at the Centre for Strategic International Studies. “It would be an understatement to say that the embargo has not achieved what it was supposed to achieve.”

In the FT today.

And that comment is itself a massive understatement.

Quote of the day

"Even a casual observer can see that much of the damage done in the US by illegal drugs is a result of the fact that they are illegal, not the fact that they are drugs."

-Clive Crook, in his column in the FT, about how badly the war on drugs has failed.

What's notable about this is that this is being published in one of the most mainstream, Establishment publications on the planet Earth, the Financial Times. The writer, Clive Crook, has worked for the British Treasury and The Economist. He has degrees from Oxford and the London School of Economics. Other than royalty, you do not get more respectable and non-hippie than that. This idea - that the "war on drugs" is a spectacular failure - is quickly becoming the majority mainstream opinion, if it is not already. Eventually politicians will catch up.

Crook is also a blogger for The Atlantic (some great blogs over there), and his fellow blogger, Andrew Sullivan, also a highly educated Englishman, has been running an excellent series he calls "The Cannabis Closet." Pretty much every day for about the last month, he has been posting emails from readers about their experiences with pot. Just about every one is from someone who starts out with some variation of "I'm a respectable suburban professional," and then proceeds to tell the story of how and why they smoke pot. I repeat myself: Eventually politicians will catch up.

Philosophy and hedge funds

The FT has an article about an Asian funds of hedge funds, Persistent Edge, whose founders use philosophy to understand the market.

I love the FT.

Specifically, they use Kant, Ilya Prigogine, and Taoism. That's a great combination. I didn't go far enough in my study of Kant to really get into his concept of antinomy (one of my regrets about my undergraduate studies in philosophy), but it makes perfect sense: two people can come to directly opposite conclusions from the same evidence. Sure seen enough of that in my time.

I don't know much about Prigogine, but I ran across his name while I was studying complexity theory, so my ears prick up. And I was into Taoism when I was in high school. So I am totally down with this group.

Their basic theory seems to be that they look at the fundamentals, and then they look at how others in the market are interpreting those fundamentals. Makes a lot of sense. That's how I play HSX, although I don't have as much data to go on.

I have always said that studying philosophy is like driving a Ferrari; 99% of the time it's either more trouble than it's worth, marginally useful, or potentially dangerous. But that 1% of the time that it's really useful, there's nothing like it in the world.

Looking forward to hearing more about this in the future. Persistent Edge. Remember that name.

Obama at the G-10 summit

The G-20 summit seems to have gone well. President Obama made an excellent impression, including with reporters. Apparently they gave him a standing ovation. Reporters? A standing ovation for a politician? First time for everything, I guess. Why were they so impressed?

“He actually answered the questions he was asked,” says one startled Asian reporter.

The FT has the best coverage I've seen so far. I didn't find much about this on the normal blogs, like TPM or even Andrew Sullivan. Dan Froomkin at the WaPo has a nice rundown, with the headline "World Community Organizer."

One important thing that is already fading from view is that there was supposed to be some tension at this summit around the issue of how to handle the economic crisis. The Europeans, particularly the French and Germans, want tighter regulations; the Americans and British want more stimulus. Looks like there was a little bit of both. The NY Times editorial board wasn't thrilled, but neither did they condemn the results. There were no diplomatic dustups, everyone got along fine, Obama proved his popularity has some grounding, a trillion dollars and change was committed to the IMF. Let me repeat: there were no diplomatic dustups, and everyone got along fine. For a one-day summit, that's pretty good. Maybe the crisis was not resolved to perfect satisfaction. But progress was made. It's a start.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Darwin

Today is the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. Happy Birthday, Mr. Darwin. There's lots of commentary floating out there about Darwin and his legacy, which stems in large part from the publication of The Origin of Species. There is, of course, The Origin Of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition.

The best commentary that I read in anticipation of this date was in last weekend's Financial Times. It was a review of several books about Darwin. Appropriate, isn't it?

I was particularly intrigued by this book: Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's Views on Human Evolution

The authors argue that Darwin's opposition to slavery was not merely an adjunct to his career as a biologist, but a driving force for him. The FT:

Desmond and Moore demonstrate convincingly from unpublished correspondence that abolition of slavery was more than a background belief for Darwin. It was a sacred cause. While his relations threw themselves into abolitionist rallies and petitions, he set out to subvert slavery through science – to refute its apologists’ argument that blacks and whites were created separate and unequal. Darwin’s Sacred Cause provides an interesting link between him and the other great abolitionist born on February 12 1809: Abraham Lincoln, also the subject of a good crop of anniversary books.

The abolitionist link between Lincoln and Darwin has gone tragically unmentioned in any of the celebrations or recognitions of this historic day that I have read. That's really too bad, and I hope to do more to rectify it.

Thinking of Darwin and race, it's intriguing to remember that the term "social Darwinism" has strongly regressive and oppressive connotations; it's usually associated with justifying the victory of the strong over the weak in society. Works well for strong libertarians and hardcore capitalists. It's good to know that Darwin himself was strongly opposed to slavery.

Obamamania!

There are so many great articles about Obama all over the place that it's impossible to keep track of them, and impossible to read more than a handful.

But here are some of the ones that I liked.

From London, the FT has an article about the history of the White House.

In the LA Times, Meghan Daum writes about the poet who will read a poem at the Inaugural, Elizabeth Alexander. I'm looking forward to that.

Also in the LA Times, Obama is in the house - literally. Many people are putting pictures of Obama in their house. Once upon a time, it was JFK or Martin Luther King, Jr. Now it's Obama.

Barack Obama himself observed Martin Luther King, Jr. day as a day of service. Boy does that take me back. I was part of a "day of service" a couple of days before Clinton's Inaugural. A bunch of people decided to try and renovate a historic old theater in Northeast Washington, the Atlas Theater. I was involved with a group called Public Allies. It was a great day - 400 people showed up to paint and clean. I was supposed to find out what the local community wanted from this place. I walked around the neighborhood with an older African American man named Robert Jackson (I'll never forget him). He explained to me what the neighborhood needed, but I never had a chance to communicate to the other people involved. It was just too crazy of a day. Three US Senators showed - media was there by the truckload. Cypress Hill did a concert in the street.

But at the end of the day, it was boarded up, and everybody went home, to see what tomorrow would bring. Plans were a little unclear.

I went back the next day. I was the only one. I spent the day talking to a homeless guy, and he ended up trusting me. But nothing happened there for months.

That was 16 years ago. It was symbolic of the best and worst of the Clinton administration; a lot of excitement, but not a lot of focus. But the best part was that experiences like that trained a lot of energetic young liberals who are now in a position to take advantage of the lessons they learned. For example, later that year Public Allies opened up an office in Chicago, and hired, as the Executive Director, a woman named Michelle Obama.

She was recommended for the job by a member of the board of Public Allies - her husband.

So now we have come full circle - the enthusiasm of that day did not, in fact, dissipate with the lack of follow through the next day. There was follow-up. It took a while. But wow, what results.

I didn't start out this post planning to write about that day so long ago. But I hope I can be excused for getting carried away.

Understanding Italians

This is from the Secret Agent, the nom de plume of a high-end real estate agent in London who writes a column (details are changed) about how he deals with the unique challenges of a very select and demanding clientele. It's always fascinating; it's like a mini soap opera every week. This week, a client explains Italians:

"You have to understand, Italians don't like things to be easy," she told me. "What they love is the polemic. If you can talk about it, great. God forbid anyone should offer a simple solution to a problem."

I'm not quite sure if that applies to Italian-Americans, but it's very funny.

This week, he's dealing with one of his clients that he calls the Mattress, because she's a model/actress. The Mattress is apparently quite charming, but a ruthless negotiator. The Mattress has spent a lot of time in Hollywood.

Obama: the view from Britain and France

The rest of the world's highly enthusiastic reaction to the election of Barack Obama as president (well, most of the world - I noticed the Russians have already made some unpleasant noises) has been one of the more wonderful aspects of this astonishingly wonderful event. One of France's preeminent public intellectuals, Bernard Henri-Levy, had this to say in The Financial Times:

Anti-Americanism will not suddenly, magically disappear. But it will have a harder time surviving and it will be forced to revisit its sales pitch. Will there be a planetary shock wave? Another New Deal, a geopolitical one? One thing is certain, the new president will feel a meta-historical weight on his shoulders: never before has an American election aroused in the rest of the world so much wild yet reasonable hope.

"Wild yet reasonable hope." In this respect, we Americans have much in common with the French: we are at once incurable romantics and diehard pragmatists.

Quote of the day - Republicans and intellectuals

Quote of the day:

"[T]he Republican party is no more a natural home for intellectuals than it is for feminists or trades unionists."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Definition of "intellectual" from the Oxford English Dictionary:

"A person of superior (or supposedly superior) intellect, esp. one having an analytic mind; an enlightened person."

The quote is from Christopher Caldwell, a columnist in the Financial Times. Mr. Caldwell, it should be noted, is a graduate of Harvard, with a degree in English literature.

The fact that such an unfortunate turn of phrase, regardless of intention, can be written by a respected conservative writer (I admit that I usually respect Mr. Caldwell's writing), without apparent irony, is strong evidence of the truth of the statement itself. One wonders if Mr. Caldwell includes himself in either "intellectuals" or "Republicans," since, according to him, they are mutually exclusive.

Michael Palin has lunch with the FT

Michael Palin is this week's guest for Lunch with the FT. This is one of my favorite parts of the Financial Times. The guests are always interesting, and incredibly diverse. The focus of the interview with Palin is almost exclusively on his career as a TV travel guide. The interviewer, Rahul Jacob, the FT's travel editor, admits that he is not familiar with Monty Python because he grew up in Calcutta. This is fine with Palin, who admits to not being fascinated with being treated as a legend. Well, yes, humility is all well and good, and it is well in his past, but his presence in Monty Python is the reason why I am reading this interview, so couldn't we have had just one or two good anecdotes about John Cleese or Eric Idle? Or one line about A Fish Called Wanda?

Of course, he has had plenty of publicity for Python, enough, presumably, for several lifetimes, and who am I to lay down demands for Michael Palin? He deserves credit and publicity for his second career traveling around the world, and that is the focus of this lunch. Amidst the stories of the Dalai Lama and traveling with armed guards in Pakiston is this bit of common sense, which could bear repeating numerous times:

“I’m not pretending there aren’t dangers but I think saying, ‘These are the places we should not go,’ restricts communication and curiosity. I do a lot of talks and people sometimes ask you very earnest questions, ‘What do you know about the world now?’ And, God, I don’t know anything. Whoever said travel is more about questions than answers got it exactly right. I get more confused but the one thing I do feel is less afraid of the world than I would if I didn’t travel.”

It's a truism that the more people meet strangers, the less like strangers they appear. It's also a truism that the more strangers they see doing strange things in the far distance, the stranger they will appear. Modern technology at once brings us closer to people in other countries, and instills fear in us; seeing people from foreign countries up close and personal is very different from seeing them on a TV screen. Palin, most fortunately for us, has resolved this contradiction by using television to bring other countries up close and personal.

Jacob ends the column (which seems to be longer online than in print) with a cliched, but appropriate, sendoff for a comedian.

hearing the jollity prompted by Palin’s goodbyes to the staff at the front of the restaurant, I think that you can’t put a price on that ability to make people laugh.

I can think of a price: I read somewhere that Eric Clapton does not have a knighthood, while Paul McCartney does. I think "Sir Michael" has a nice ring to it.

This interview is also an opportunity for me to post some great hidden gems of Michael Palin that I found on YouTube. The first one is the Pythons receiving some terribly prestigious award from Bafta in 1988. I couldn't embed it, so just go here. Michael Palin has the best line at about 3:30.

This is part 4 (of 5) of a BBC documentary about the making of The Life of Brian. I chose this part because Michael Palin and John Cleese go on a talk show and argue with two prominent Christians (one a bishop) about whether or not the movie was blasphemous. I always knew Michael Palin was smart and funny, but in this video, he's also quite the fighter for freedom of speech. The entire documentary is fascinatnig, but this is particularly good. It's amazing that less than 30 years ago, The Life of Brian was so controversial that it there were protests against it, and that it was even banned in some places.



Long live Michael Palin.

Susie Boyt on the fine art of complaining

Susie Boyt, fashion editor of the Financial Times, has a simply wonderful column in today's FT Weekend on the art of complaining. It is worth quoting it at length.

The art of complaining is very hard to master. To complain about things in my experience is always lowering. Who wants to draw attention to the fact you have been slighted? Isn't that in itself a form of failure? Complaining stylishly and with grace and or flair seems virtually impossible. A good complaint requires both a lightness of tone and high-handedness, humour, collusion from the other party and a quiet tenacity. This is a lot to muster when you've just been disappointed. Yet you do have to stick up for yourself in life on occasion. Is there a way of pointing out poor treatment in a way that doesn't auger humiliation? Ought we all to practise complaining in a manner both debonair and imperious on Sunday nights to prepare us for any disappointing occasions in the coming week?

What she assumes in this column is that our complaints are legitimate and not, for example, the result of a misunderstanding. More times than not, this is the case. However, it is entirely possible that your complaint is not, in fact, justified, and her emphasis on being gracious is even more important if this is the case. You might be overreacting; there might be extenuating circumstances that explain the situation. Perhaps your order is extremely late coming from the kitchen because the chef just received a phone call that his daughter has been in a car accident, and he had to leave just as a number of orders came in.

There's also the possibility that you might be wrong. Always something to keep in mind. Perhaps you didn't get that big promotion at work because the woman they hired really is much more qualified than you. Maybe you got a lousy grade on your paper because your argument was pretentious and nonsensical. Perhaps your neighbors filed a complaint against you because your son has been practicing with his rock band until early in the morning. It's always important to remember the other person's perspective.

Excellent advice from across the pond. Much obliged, Ms. Boyt.

FT Weekend, #3

I'm a little late posting about the Financial Times Weekend, but all of this stuff will be relevant for a long time.

First up is the cover story on the Life & Arts section, about a young woman in China who is working her way up. She started in a factory, moved into real estate, and is moving on again. And she's in her early 20's, with a junior high school education. Sounds like my grandfather. Horatio Alger is taking over China.

Lunch with the FT this week is with Isabel Allende, who is a political activist, a novelist, a journalist, and a matriarch.

There are a couple of pieces on Northern Ireland, which is technically at peace, but, apparently, still not peaceful. Attitudes change follows political change, in this instance. Matthew Engel describes it as a "truce," rather than peace. The area is the beneficiary of a different American cultural/entertainment export than what we normally think of. It's a blockbuster, but not a profitable one: Sesame Street has come to Belfast. It's called Sesame Tree, because they can't imagine a street that is both Catholic and Protestant. I didn't know that Sesame Street has been seen in 130 countries. Sometimes the American version is just dubbed over, but sometimes, like this time, it's specific to the country. Somewhere, Jim Henson is a happy camper.

Mark Sellers has some good advice on who to trust when it comes to financial advice. Hint: make sure their interests are aligned with yours. He has some insights about the financial press in particular. Then he says goodbye. This is one problem with the FT: they find great writers in the world outside of journalism, and they bring different perspectives, but they don't tend to last long in the paper.

I don't think I've seen a ballet in years, but I would be interested in seeing whatever Wayne McGregor does with the Royal Ballet. Very thougtful and curious, but decisive. Peter Aspden spends most of the article trying to exploit the tension between the traditions of ballet and this guy's clearly cutting-edge instincts, and fails. He finds inspiration in cognitive science, and apparently finds lots of great opportunities in trying to bridge art and science, mind and body, ballet and modern dance. Clearly very artistically challenging. Very cool.

Jancis Robinson finds a new area for wine, in, get this, Italy. On Sicily, on the slopes of Mt. Etna. Sometimes it helps to look for the new in your own backyard, I suppose.

Susie Boyt once again brilliantly channels her insecurities, this time obsessing about linen towels and napkins.

And finally, Chrystia Freeland comments on the new twists in the debate between wealth and happiness. Apparently economists don't buy that there is one. My guess is that very few of those people have been poor. But still, it's a good debate to have in the FT.