Mar 26
lindsayrgwattFinance markets, policy
When I was a kid my dad used to say that when politicians wanted to lie they spoke “with a marble in their mouth.” (I have yet to hear anyone else use this expression, but it’s stuck with me).
I couldn’t help but remember that today when John Paulson-the hedge fund manager who made billions last year-was in the New York Times saying that no hedge funds had failed in the current economic crisis ans hadn’t really causwd it and therefore shouldn’t be heavily regulated. After all, it’s the greedy bankers and insurers who caused this right?
Let’s check the facts. First, this crisis was accelerated by the failure of Lehman Brothers (that was the day the financial earth broadly stood still). Lehman brothers failed because their was a fall in confidence in it-which drove it’s stock price down and created a vicious cycle that ended in bankruptcy.
Now here’s the dirty little secret: when it failed, their were 38 million naked shorts on it that failed as trades. That means that essentially the entire market bet against it, trying to drive down it’s share price for profit-which of course reinforced it’s ultimate failure (Paul Kedrosky’s blog links to the facts).
So who made these trades? I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t an army of retail investors using eTrade. I’m betting that it was a bunch of hedge funds-which means that they’re now right at Ground Zero of the current debacle.
Of course, I can’t prove this-and that’s the magic. Hedge funds are surrounded by such a thin, slippery skein of regulation that there’s no way to tell. I love free markets but they only work when there’s an open flow of information-and that’s exactly what’s missing here.
Mar 24
lindsayrgwattTechnology health, statistics, Technology, trends
I’m always amazed by what correlates with education. The latest statistic I’ve learned about is regular exercise. It appears that the less education you have, the more likely you are just to laze around:
This data comes from the CDC and is technically the percentage of adults aged >25 years who reported regular leisure-time physical activity. Two things immediately stand out here:
- If you’re poorly educated, you’re not exercising (and therefore, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest more likely to be obsese)
- The trend is incredibly disturbing: only the well educated are engaging in more physical activity now vs. 10 years ago
I can’t help but wonder if this is going to become a self-reinforcing process. Let’s speculate: if you’re poorly educate, you’re probably poorer. Therefore you might have to work two jobs/more hours and have less time for leisure time and be more tired. You probably also have less disposable income and therefore eat more fast food. You’re getting squeezed by the current economy (and the long term trend that Chinese/Indian/Mexican workers are always going to be cheaper than you…).
If you’re highly educated, you can afford to eat better and have more job opportunities to keep your salary up while you are enough of a commodity to maintain a work-life balance. What’s more, is that there are a whole host of services for you to keep you fit: gyms are an obvious one, but more interesting are the emerging class of high-end devices like the the LifeScan diabetes iPhone application and tracking tools like the FitBit.
This will be one long-term trend to monitor; hopefully the CDC will get us data more than once every 10 years.
Mar 23
lindsayrgwattBusiness advertising
I work for an Internet company. I’ve noticed that a lot of the time I have a totally different perspective from my non-Internet geek friends on how the world works. I think that this is largely due to the fact that working for an Internet comany is like giving a man a hammer: everything becomes a nail.
However, every now and then I’m shown something that reminds me that the world is genuinely composed of many, many nails. Today it’s a slide (#127) from a Morgan Stanley presentation on the economy and the Internet. This one’s a killer:
The skinny: newspapers get a tonne of ad dollars, but little time by users. Mobile and the Internet are the exact opposite. There’s a lot of discussion as to how advertising is going to play out on these platforms, but it’s safe to say that these areas are going to keep growing for the forseeable future. If you’re not thinking about the web or the mobile web, start thinking about it. If you work for a newspaper, run for the hills (or at least their web department).
Mar 21
lindsayrgwattRandom media, volcano
This week an undersea volcano erupted off the coast of Tonga. This is a truly spectacular rare event that happens to have been captured by many news organizations. If you haven’t seen any photos, here’s the warm-up:
And launch, as captured by the AP’s Lothar Slabon via the New Zealand Herald:
Lothar’s getting good mileage out of this event, because he sold the same photo – just uncropped and untouched – to the AFP and they posted it too:
I’m now starting to wonder about how much of my paper’s news is actually written by them versus just a slightly different version that they’ve licensed from the same source as their competitors. No wonder old media is dying…
Mar 13
lindsayrgwattRandom conflict, India, pakistan, siachen
I was recently reading an article in a magazine and it mentioned a place I had never heard of: Siachen Glacier. As an avid backcountry skier I have a soft spot for glaciers, but I was shocked as I learned about this one.
It turns out that Siachen runs through a hotly disputed part of Kashmir and has been the site of battles between India and Pakistan for 25 years now. Was is horrible to begin with, but a battle on this glacier takes depravity to a whole new level. The glacier sits between 11 and 18 thousand feet above sea level. At that height you barely breathe let alone fight. It is routinely -50 degrees and avalanches and crevasses are a constant danger. Moreover, your food is constantly frozen (as is your rifle) and you’re at constant risk of pulmonary edema. It is probably the worst place on earth to be a soldier.
Equally tragic is that both India and Pakistan are turning this area into a giant ecological tragedy. The area is littered with the waste of 25 years worth of thousands of soldiers. Apparently it’s making the glacier melt faster than it should.
I highly recommend reading this New York Times article; there’s more in this Outside article. To help you struggle with the geographical beauty and human horror, here are some photos from the region:
Mar 09
lindsayrgwattFood, Travel Toronto
I spent the weekend in Toronto visiting my bro and checking out his new place. Here are a couple of thoughts about it.
Toronto’s Got a Big Building Boom
I haven’t lived in Toronto for a few years now, but it is unreal how much the city is changing. The skyline is dotted with cranes – and almost all of them are making condos (why, oh why, do I feel like I’ve heard this story before and I know how it’s going to end…).
Two items signify just how extreme this is. The first, is the pit for the new Shangri-la hotel/condo. It’s about 10 stories deep:
The other is a dilapidated house near Chinatown where someone has graffitied it with turn me into condo daddy.
Toronto’s Got Some Great Public Buildings
In the last few years, Toronto’s upgraded a lot of their institutions: a new opera house, an addition to the ROM and a complete reworking of the AGO.
The ROM now has a brilliant facade – a rotated cube that juts out over the street:
Just a few blocks away is the new and improved AGO. It’s now got a blue cube on the back…
…with a Frank Gehry-designed galleria on the front:
The inside of the galleria is just as beautiful:
One of its entrances is from the Henry Moore gallery and the effect is spectacular:
The central atrium is possessed by an anthropomorphic, soothing, wooden staircase (made less soothing by Andrew standing in front of it):
If you climb to the top of the stairwell, you can sit under forty foot ceilings, surrounded by contemporary art and sip an espresso with a killer view of the skyline:
The most important part of the AGO is that it is not simply archiporn. It has the single best collection of Canadian art in the world. Period. There are more Krieghoffs, Colevilles, and Group of Sevens here than you will find anywhere else. You can visit this gallery and then feel like you know Canada.
This collection is better than what is in the National Gallery (and I’m an Ottawa boy originally, so I should be looking down on a Toronto gallery). Thank you Ken Thomson.
Kensington Market is Still Great
We spent a lot of time bombing around Kensington Market. On Friday, Andrew and I had dinner at La Palette. The steak and frites are amazing; sit at the bar to eat and humour the bar staff. We asked one what a beer was like. Her response: smooth – comme le petit Jesus dans un cour de velour. She’d picked that one up from a French Canadian woman; it translates as ‘like the baby Jesus in a velour suit’ – quite the image.
Later on in the weekend we picked up some cheese at Global Cheese…
…plus a quick bite of tacos at El Trompo. Go there for some authentic mexican. The building might not look like much but the food holds its own with the best:
City Center Airport is the Only Way to Travel
I flew in to the City Center airport right at sunset and it’s the only way to travel. Here’s what the flight in looks like:
You can then walk into the city (when was the last time you walked to an airport?) and if you go at sunset you’ll see something like this:
Mar 06
lindsayrgwattBusiness economy, recession
This is what a recession looks like. It’s 3:15 on a Friday afternoon at Newark Liberty airport and there’s nobody here. There should be the weekly mass exodus of business travellers fleeing New York for their homeland, but instead the airport feels more like a very lonely convention center.
I can’t help but wonder what the airport in Washington is like…
Mar 06
lindsayrgwattRandom photography
I recently put together my best iPhone photos into a giant collage and had it printed; it’s 5 inches by almost 5 feet wide. Click the image for a higher resolution version; it’s a pretty accurate summary of my life, grouped by theme:
Mar 02
lindsayrgwattFood, NYC brooklyn, cheese, coffee, meat
A recent New York Times article inspired a weekend visit to Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens in search of good food – and what a trip it was. I’m sitting on my couch feeling like a sated pig, so here’s a list of places to check out:
Stinky Brooklyn 261 Smith St
Meat. Cheese. Repeat. I bought some Chorizo and they were kind enough to let me try a few types of cheese plus some Jamon Iberico. You gain weight the moment you walk in the store as you’ll want to eat everything:
The Chocolate Room 269 Court Street
Eat in for some of the richest hot chocolate you’ll ever have or take out if you’re in the mood to bring home some pumpkin/tangerine + chili/earl grey + green tea/etc.-flavoured chocolates.
Nunu 529 Atlantic Avenue
You can’t help but be impressed by a store that has a massive showroom and uses it to sell only three varieties of chocolates. We tried the salt + caramel + chocolate one; I can still taste it.
G Esposito & Sons Pork Store 357 Court Street
If you’re looking for sausages (try the apple chicken), mozzarella cheese and any cut of pork under the son, swing by. The fresh pasta is also great; last night’s dinner included both the sausages and cheese-filled ravioli medallions.
Clover Coffee 338 Atlantic Ave
This combined art gallery & coffee shop felt a little odd when I was there as they were just storing art for an upcoming exhibit. However, the coffee was some of the best I’ve ever had. The store is kitted out with some of the best equipment you’ll find (La Marzocco espresso and Clover filter coffee machines, respectively) and you can taste the difference. I had a black Kenyan and it literally tasted citrusy plus it was so smooth that the last few sips mixed with the sugar at the bottom tasted more like juice than coffee.
Frankies Spuntino 457 Court Street
This restaurant oozes Sunday afternoon charm (but it’s by no means for Sunday afternoons alone). Tin roof, exposed brick, bare bulbs, wooden bar and packed tables. I had the frittata sandwich alongside bacon that was cut at least a half an inch thick – after cooking. They also have Stumptown Coffee, making it even that much better.
Mar 01
lindsayrgwattNYC culture, society, thinking
One of the pleasures of living in America is how someone, somewhere, is trying to make your life easier. The locals here balance a notion of rugged individual freedom with a mass market consumerism that is focused on making the average life as easy as possible.
Frequently, ‘making your life as easy as possible’ equates with ‘not having to think.’ One of the ways this manifests itself is in signs. Stupid signs that tell you to do the most mindless things. In fact, sometimes the signs are so truly stupid that it requires thinking about them to ignore their message (thus reasserting our individualism?).
To me, the ultimate example of this are the Icon Parking signs. The image below is taken from the parking lot in my office in the old Port Authority building:
As you enter the well-lit, one lane, whitewashed tunnel to descend into the bowels of the parking lot, you are greeted with no fewer than 11 signs. 10 of them consists of the alternating slogans “pull ahead” and “drive slow”. Recall that you are in a narrow tunnel. By definition it affords no action other than driving ahead. Does one need to be told to drive slow? Presumably the driver has rounded a corner before and therefore can gauge the appropriate speed for turning?
I have no idea (and I’ve never parked there as I don’t drive to work; perhaps it is a truly treacherous corner and cows people in to attempting to reverse), but I can’t help thinking that’s there’s a larger message in the signs…
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