Capitalism A Love Affair (2009)

I should have known better, but given that the subject of Michael Moore's latest "documentary film" is one relatively close to my heart, I thought it would at least be worth a look.

Wrong: I didn't last even to the halfway point (to be completely fair, the two glasses of prosecco consumed during dinner didn't help with this, but still...).

This film has only confirmed for me Michael Moore is a hack of the highest order (or lowest -- whichever level signifies "worst"). It is an appalling piece of self-satisfied, smug, hypocritical grand-standing that makes no attempt at any kind of balanced, honest or informed reporting.

It's not even worth going into details, but suffice it to say that he's up to his usual tricks of playing fast and loose with the facts as he cut-and-pastes events into a montage that best supports his pre-conceived thesis (nothing more than "capitalism is bad"). He flits from excruciatingly prolonged close-ups of families in tears at being evicted from their homes to heavily edited "interviews" with "fat cat" stereotypes whom he goads into saying something heartless-sounding (e.g. "would you be prepared to sack 10,000 people if that's what it took to save your company?" / "uh.. yes"/ "what about 20,000?" / "yes -- whatever it took". I mean, come on, what else could the guy say??). There's no attempt to examine how the "victims" have gotten to the point of eviction, but no doubt this wouldn't serve the simplistic case he's trying to make.

To labour the point, this is fundamentally bad, amateurish journalism. He's not going after the answers, he's fishing for juicy tidbits that portray things in a certain light, then splicing it all together -- feeling free to take some things completely out of context. The result is little more than fiction.

I wish I could say more, but as I say, I fell asleep after half an hour. But I saw enough to remind me once and for all to stay away from anything made by this idiot.

Stay away from this one.

"The turd in the punchbowl"

Finance types generally speaking have a fair knack for "colourful metaphors" -- but this is one of my favourites. It's attributed to Hank Paulson, who used it in reference to Bank of America, which ended up $20 billion in extra bailout money after its merger with Merrill Lynch.

BTW, I've just finished "Too Big To Fail" by Andrew Ross Sorkin. Overall it was an enjoyable read and it did a very good job of piecing together the behind-the-scenes machinations during the financial crisis. I think a truly authoritative work will have to wait until the after effects have played out more fully, but in the meantime I'd say this was a pretty decent effort.

Despite myself, I come away from the book with a bit more respect for some of the major players. Dick Fuld, for one, was roundly vilified by the media for his reckless mismanagement of Lehmann Brothers. But he comes across as a fiercely loyal character, who was trying until the bitter end to find a way out for the company. It's also interesting that he lost close to $1 billion in Lehmann when they went under -- leaving him with a net worth of "only" about $250 million. That suggests to me that (1) he had as much of a vested interest in the company's long-term survival as anyone could have and that therefore (2) the idea that management and shareholder interests can be "aligned" by paying out bonuses in stock doesn't have much basis in reality.

Another character who has climbed in my estimation is good ol' Hank Paulson: love or hate the guy, you can't deny he gave his all for the cause. He was apparently operating on a couple of hours sleep a night during the key few weeks of the crisis (around the very time I was begrudging having to get up a little earlier than usual to catch the train after relocating from Camden to Tunbridge Wells), and on a few occasions was so overcome by the stress/fatigue that he would be seen dry-retching into dustbins during meetings.

For my 2 cents, the real villains of the piece are the shadowy cast of characters operating well below the level of senior management, who are nevertheless able to command bonuses in the 10s of millions on the basis of their nebulous "talent". In other words, you've made the firm 100s of millions this year, and have a rolodex full of important clients, so we have to pay you that much or you'll just jump ship to the highest bidder, presumably taking that list of clients with you. A good example of this was articulated recently by Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, who cited the case a 28 year-old trader at the firm whose desk made a profit of $300-400 million last year: after receiving an $11 million bonus from MS he promptly left for a hedge fund who offered him $25 million.

To tie this in with one of my favourite rants: it's reminiscent of the way the English Premier League has gone in recent years (viz. Ronaldo leaving MUFC for Real Madrid). There's obviously no simple answer to the problem, but I would argue that a good first step is eliminating the merry-go-round of mercenary "rogue traders" shameless pursuing ever-bigger bonuses, and encouraging long-term loyalty to the company that has allowed the profits to be generated in the first place.

floating point arithmetic 101

There is a pretty fundamental pitfall when comparing floating point precision numbers in a language like C, Python (or even with MachinePrecision numbers in Mathematica): because decimal-to-binary conversion inevitably leads to truncation errors, it is possible to get seemingly incorrect results to numerical comparisons such as:

10.05 - 10.00 > 0.05 (in Python, but interestingly not in Mathematica)

2.000006 - 2.000005 > 0.000001 (in Python AND Mathematica)

I recently fell prey to this basic gotcha. The solution is to add an "epsilon" which determines a threshold level, e.g.

def myGreater(a, b, eps=1e-6):

    return a > b + eps

In Mathematica, such problems can be completely avoided by using arbitrary-precision arithmetic, e.g.

2.000006`20 - 2.000005`20 > 0.000001`20

but at the cost of slower performance.

This article has what appears to be a good discussion of the ins and outs of fpa (one for a *very* rainy day...):

http://dlc.sun.com/pdf/800-7895/800-7895.pdf

More Than This

Just watched this documentary on Roxy Music (made in 2008). Was very good -- some very interesting footage from the early days and candid discussions with band members in the present day. Of all the (ex) members, Eno and Phil Manzanera came across as the most at peace with things; I found Eno's perspective in particular to be quite insightful (interesting that he rates the third album -- the first after he left the band -- as their best). Andy Mackay and Phil Thompson, in contrast, seemed to harbour some residual bitterness towards Bryan Ferry. Some of this seemed to be re the way the group's style evolved (from Manifesto onwards) in a more commercial direction -- with the other band members' role reduced to essentially that of a backing band for Ferry. Tellingly, I still regularly forget that "Dance Away" was a song from the Manifesto and not one of Ferry's solo albums. It is quite ironic that most of their most well-known songs came from the last 3 albums, which were actually quite uncharacteristic of most of their earlier work.

Conspicuously absent was any discussion of the band members' personal lives or solo careers. It would have been interesting to hear BF's take on Jerry Hall and Mick Jagger around the time of the Siren album, as well as Eno's first solo project "Here Come The Warm Jets".

As a side note: Kari-Ann Muller, the model from the cover of the first album, was featured briefly. She seems to have aged very well --- given that the cover dates back to 1972. Maybe she's been giving Mick Jagger some tips -- apparently she's been happily married to his brother Chris for the past 20 years (thanks to Wikipedia, I also know that she lives in Highgate and teaches yoga). Seems the Jagger brothers had a thing for Roxy Music cover models...

P.S. The show is on ABC2 iView for another 12 days or so:

http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/abc2

Whatever Works (2009)

Watched this last night. It's Woody Allen's latest piece of New York-centric quasi-intellectual self-indulgence. It was reasonably amusing in parts, but was pretty forgettable overall. A couple of comments:

- With Larry David addressing the audience on a regular basis through the film and the lengthy passages of dialogue (mostly David's morose tirades), the film felt more like a theatre show. I reckon this film would work better in that format: addressing a live audience could have a lot more impact.

- I still can't really buy Larry David as an actor. It felt too much like he was just playing himself a la Curb Your Enthusiasm. And he always seems to be struggling to hold back a smile, like he's about to crack up at himself.

homemaker photo shoot

Some photos to showcase the progress in our domestic furnishings...

1. The library, um, i mean, the dining room:

I think my whole life has been leading up to this moment: entire book collection proudly shelved and within easy reach. Thanks to Ikea (9 x Billy 40 x 202 cm) for helping this dream become a reality.

2. The living room. Resplendent in N.I. jersey and nursing jamaican mule on brand new sofa:

Lloyd keeps things in perspective

Another memorable quote from "Too Big To Fail" (start of Ch. 15)...

It's 8:00am on Sunday, Sept 14, the day before Lehman files for bankruptcy. Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein is arriving at the NY Fed with his chief of staff Russell Horowitz for a second marathon day of talks aimed at finding a way out of the crisis:

"I don't think I can take another day of this," Horowitz said wearily.

Blankfein laughed. "You're getting out of a Mercedes to go to the New York Federal Reserve--you're not getting out of a Higgins boat on Omaha Beach! Keep things in perspective."

Elements of Statistical Learning

Stumbled on this pdf version of a statistical learning textbook, looks pretty decent:

http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~tibs/ElemStatLearn/

After reading through the intro, I think I'll read the first few chapters and see if I can kick-start my long-standing plan to learn something in this area beyond ordinary least squares.

Breaking Bad

Just started watching season 1 (eps 1-2 of 7). It's another Greig reco, and so far it looks like another good one. It's not particularly uplifting, but the script and acting are strong and it has a slow, gripping quality. At this stage I'd describe it as a slightly darker take on the "American Beauty" mid (or, more accurately in this case, near-end) life crisis. Also thematically similar to "Weeds" -- but this time not for the Desperate Housewives crowd.

The bathtub-thru-ceiling scene in episode 2 was a classic -- the first time in a long while I've found myself literally convulsing and (half) turning away from the screen. Maybe it was partly the home-owner in me...

a Lost cause

The final season of Lost is under way and, once again, I find myself drawn seemingly against my will to start watching. And once again, rather than start to reel in some of the multitude of dangling plot threads, they are straight back to work casting out even more. A bifurcated reality, with one where the plane crash never happened, and the island sits atlantis-like at the bottom of the ocean? Another band of "others", led by an enigmatic oriental gent, who looks and sounds like an extra from Big Trouble In Little China? Jack's father lost in transit? John Locke inhabited by an ancient and malevolent being from the island, and sahid "infected" by something similar? Enough already!

Of course, that the writers are more or less playing it by ear, making it up as they go along, has been fairly clear to even the most credulous fan since the second or third season. But what kept me coming back each time, apart from a small but nagging desire to find out "what happens", is the fact that, basically, it was pretty entertaining.

This season, however, it's feeling like more of a chore than ever before. It's just not fun any more, and I simply don't care enough to follow the diverging, looping, incoherent story lines. There's no shock factor -- a few cans of worms too many have been opened and now I'm just expecting the unexpected. Juliet is dead, supposedly, but they could bring her straight back to life next week and I wouldn't bat an eyelid. Sahid died, and then came to life, and I didn't bat eyelid. When you break too many rules -- introduce too many supernatural occurrences -- you sacrifice the value of any of them, and the suspension bridge of disbelief collapses under their weight. The show has become the t.v. equivalent of a Ponzi scheme, but one in which the biggest losers are the original investors -- the suckers who have been watching since day one.

I guess there's a good story-telling lesson in this: maybe the one enduring legacy of Lost will lie in its becoming a case study of how NOT to develop a storyline. Or, more worryingly, maybe the executives will look at viewing figures and conclude that this is precisely how to do it.

As for me, I've come too far to stop now. I'm just hoping there'll be another writers' strike and then maybe we'll get a shortened season...

Dick Fuld

I was kind of amused by this anecdote, early on in "Too Big To Fail": on the weekend of the Bear Stearns collapse, Hank Paulson calls Fuld, who's in India schmoozing with clients, to apprise him of the situation. Fuld decides he has to fly straight to New York, and the first thing he thinks to ask Paulson is whether he can get him clearance to have his private jet fly over Russian airspace --- in order to shave 5 hours off the flight time. The answer from Hank: "Even I can't get permission for that".

Too Big To Fail, by Andrew Ross Sorkin

Have started reading this brick of an account of the credit crunch. So far I'm enjoying the style: fast-paced, "journalistic" writing with plenty of character background to bring to life the main players in the story.

La Grammaire Est Une Chanson Douce, by Erik Orsenna

Just finished reading this entertaining french children's book. I
don't know if many kids would really get into his fantasy "grammar
island", but for someone trying keep in touch with their french
language skills it was just the thing...

the floodgates open

This weekend's torrential downpour made us aware of a significant drainage problem with our property: water draining down from the back garden seems to be overflowing the drain next to the back wall, going through the ventilation gaps and thence under the house. On sunday morning we saw the traces of a flood of water through the garage caused by what must have been a considerable amount of water. Looking in the underfloor area, we were a little alarmed to find the water flow has already started to carve through the limestone bedrock (grand canyon in miniature). Presumably this has been going on for some time, judging by the fact the drain was completely blocked up when we first moved in.

It looks like we'll need to beef up the drainage in the back garden, and, as a side effect improve the aeration in the underfloor area.

A related issue: I'm curious to know where our gutters actually drain to. It seems unlikely that soak wells would work well here, given the clay-like nature of the soil. Could they drain into the street drain?

(not so) superdrive...

...but super service.

Last week the iMac's dvd drive (after a good couple of years burning DLed material at a feverish rate) had enough and decided to stop ejecting discs. Luckily, the apple care warranty is still valid (despite the computer being purchased in London --- actually, since you ask, it was bought in the Apple Store on Regent St and carted home via the packed Central and Northern tube lines to the apt in Camden), so I was able to get it repaired. Not only that, after one phone call they were happy to send someone out to replace the drive. Pretty decent service -- in a silly way, it feels satisfying that I was able to get value from the apple care.

Turns out the most stressful part was spending the guts of an evening looking for the original receipt. The most embarrassing part: the repair man having to extract my Dr Who dvd from the old drive...

King of Kong

Just watched this documentary-film. Hilarious and highly recommended for anyone who remembers 80s video games. It tells the story of laid-off engineer Steve Wiebe and his attempts to topple the Donkey Kong world record held by Billy Mitchell since 1982. Surprisingly, Steve comes across like a pretty nice and well-adjusted guy. In contrast, Billy comes across as a conceited, cretinous bad sport, jealously guarding his record and unwilling to come and defend it publicly (while closely monitoring Steve's attempts through constant mobile phone calls to his "fans"). Some of his moments had me thinking the whole thing was a send-up. (

Highlights: Billy having "Never Surrender" on his mobile; one of his friends referring to him as "the closest thing to a jedi"; the other player running around Funspot telling everyone that "there's a possible Donkey Kong kill screen coming up if you're interested...

Reading up on it afterwards, it seems that "bad guy" Billy has sinced reclaimed the record (though not publicly). And apparently the film maker manipulated things a little to fit the story he wanted to tell (though Billy's character is apparently fairly, or even positively, represented).

Some aspects of the geekiness of these guys is uncomfortably familiar to me, and I'm sure there's a large part of it is universal whenever groups of men follow a common interest (e.g. football fans discussing the ins and outs of their football team at the pub and getting dressed up for the game seems no less sad). But there is something special about the geekiness that occurs around science fiction/computer games/games workshop stores...

Baby steps with Logic Express

Have finally bitten the bullet and started playing around with LE. At first glance I find it daunting -- so many buttons, menu items and features in general. More like the cockpit of a 747 (or perhaps, closer to home, the multiple screens filled with spreadsheets that options traders stare at all day) than any program I'm used to. The fact that everything is GUI-oriented (no config files or scripting language) is a little disorienting for a dilettante unix user such as myself. I can already see, though, that when one is familiar with all the short cuts it is a different story.

The first milestone was getting the M-Audio 410 audio interface working. It seems a little unreliable, although I gave up trying to figure out whether the failures were reproducible or not. Bottom line, it seems like it is best to plug the AI in before opening LE. Apart from that, it is fairly straightforward to get it up and running. I first got things working in Garageband (and celebrated by recording an awful version of the slow interlude from Master of Puppets on the acoustic).

Back in Logic, and following through the Apple Pro Training book, I hit a snag when trying to use the guitar tuner. Google turned up a useful thread on the logic-users-group forum:

http://www.logic-users-group.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2381

Setting up an auxiliary track (not sure what that is meant for, in general) worked for me, and it makes sense that it doesn't work in normal tracks (since effects and plug-ins are added "post recording"). Fine and dandy, but it means the book is wrong -- I hope this isn't a pattern to be repeated through the book..

Anyway, for now I've hung up the axe content with these small successes.

Next step: record something with a couple of guitars in LE (Master of Puppets encore?) and play around with the effects. Also, look into what auxiliary tracks are all about...

History of Modern Britain

Have been watching Andrew Marr's 5-part t.v. show -- very interesting so far (and easier than reading the book, which has been sitting on the shelf for well over a year!).

Reading

Just finished "The Ancestor's Tale" by Richard Dawkins. Another excellent read: the idea of tracing the evolution of life through a pilgrimage back in time really worked for me. It would be great to see a documentary version bringing to life some of the examples.

Of course, the sci-fi nerd in me is also fascinated by the idea of literally going back in time (in steps of steadily increasing length) to witness the earlier stages. The quote from Richard Fortey (p. 461) captures this idea: "I can imagine standing upon a Cambrian shore in the evening... Apart from the whistle of the breeze and the crash and suck of the breakers, it is completely silent, and nothing cries in the wind..."