About Me

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
                                  —Emily Dickinson

June 13
simplypi: Typographic Macbook Stickers Actually, there is a reason. A good one. Say I’m working, but I’m about to leave for the airport. When I unplug my laptop, I want the battery to be fully charged. To do this, I must keep it plugged in. This axiom only applies to people that know they’ll always be near a power supply. But I sort of think the promise of a laptop is its mobility. For instance, I’m typing this on my couch, but at any moment in the future I have in the back of my mind that I might get up and go work in a coffee shop, where the plug might be already taken and then I’d want a 100% charge on my laptop. This freedom is fundamental to my ability to work. I find that if you keep changing locations as to where you work (the beach, the forest, the library, bed, the couch, a restaurant) then it doesn’t feel like you’re working all the time. Even if you are. And, even if I don’t change locations (I usually don’t) the mere possibility that I could changes everything. Such as when I’m in LA, I never actually go to the beach, but the fact that I could fills the city with a distinct sort of pleasure, even when I’m only alone in my hotel room working on my laptop, which is usually the case.

simplypi:

Typographic Macbook Stickers

Actually, there is a reason. A good one. Say I’m working, but I’m about to leave for the airport. When I unplug my laptop, I want the battery to be fully charged. To do this, I must keep it plugged in.

This axiom only applies to people that know they’ll always be near a power supply. But I sort of think the promise of a laptop is its mobility. For instance, I’m typing this on my couch, but at any moment in the future I have in the back of my mind that I might get up and go work in a coffee shop, where the plug might be already taken and then I’d want a 100% charge on my laptop.

This freedom is fundamental to my ability to work. I find that if you keep changing locations as to where you work (the beach, the forest, the library, bed, the couch, a restaurant) then it doesn’t feel like you’re working all the time. Even if you are.

And, even if I don’t change locations (I usually don’t) the mere possibility that I could changes everything. Such as when I’m in LA, I never actually go to the beach, but the fact that I could fills the city with a distinct sort of pleasure, even when I’m only alone in my hotel room working on my laptop, which is usually the case.

+
I don’t malign protesters: I think that in the end, almost all of history has happened because of people resisting with their bodies. But why do modern protesters always seem to ask for such unreasonable things? Such as in the photo above where protesters are demanding JUSTICE NOW! As anyone with any knowledge of the law knows, justice is a pretty complicated thing to administer: it would more reasonable to ask for JUSTICE BY THE END OF THE WEEK! Or, better, to ask for something that might actually be possible: JUSTICE BY THE END OF THIS YEAR! But seriously, it strikes me that protests with highly reasonable and pragmatic political demands would be a powerful political weapon. For example, at the beginning of the Iraq war, the protest signs said things such as, NO WAR FOR OIL! At the time, I remember reading that Hans Blix, the UN Weapons Inspector was pleading with Bush for six more months; he said that they weren’t sure that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, but that in six more months they would probably know. Six more months strikes me as something very reasonable to ask for; something that addresses the argument of people that believed in the war. It seems possible to gain the political traction to delay the war for six more months. Millions of protesters asking for SIX MORE MONTHS might have gotten somewhere, whereas demanding NO WAR was quite the political stretch. It’s a basic tenant of negotiation: first get something small, to establish a cooperative relationship, then work towards bigger things. Find the common ground first. Rarely in negotiation does demanding the world up front (in a rather strident manner) get one anywhere. I’d love to see a protest, a big protest, that asked for something reasonable, something possible. That just might change the world.

I don’t malign protesters: I think that in the end, almost all of history has happened because of people resisting with their bodies.

But why do modern protesters always seem to ask for such unreasonable things? Such as in the photo above where protesters are demanding JUSTICE NOW!

As anyone with any knowledge of the law knows, justice is a pretty complicated thing to administer: it would more reasonable to ask for JUSTICE BY THE END OF THE WEEK! Or, better, to ask for something that might actually be possible: JUSTICE BY THE END OF THIS YEAR!

But seriously, it strikes me that protests with highly reasonable and pragmatic political demands would be a powerful political weapon. For example, at the beginning of the Iraq war, the protest signs said things such as, NO WAR FOR OIL! At the time, I remember reading that Hans Blix, the UN Weapons Inspector was pleading with Bush for six more months; he said that they weren’t sure that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, but that in six more months they would probably know.

Six more months strikes me as something very reasonable to ask for; something that addresses the argument of people that believed in the war. It seems possible to gain the political traction to delay the war for six more months. Millions of protesters asking for SIX MORE MONTHS might have gotten somewhere, whereas demanding NO WAR was quite the political stretch.

It’s a basic tenant of negotiation: first get something small, to establish a cooperative relationship, then work towards bigger things. Find the common ground first. Rarely in negotiation does demanding the world up front (in a rather strident manner) get one anywhere.

I’d love to see a protest, a big protest, that asked for something reasonable, something possible. That just might change the world.

June 12
Rebranding the License Plate: 4 Designers
+
Chinese Dream Up a High-Speed Train that Never Stops
+
“ Most people agree that today’s FDA would not have approved aspirin; even penicillin, the miracle drug that helped dramatically extend the human lifespan when introduced in the early 1940s, is questionable. Allergic reactions to penicillin kill a higher percentage of its takers than Vioxx ever did, while the gastrointestinal bleeding produced by aspirin means it probably would have flunked while still in animal testing. No Refills, The Atlantic
January 5
If the FIRED NY pubstaff are such hot fucking shit, let them coalesce and form an EBOOK-ONLY IMPRINT to crush t heir fmr employers.
+
“ Indeed, Ethan Berman, the chief executive of RiskMetrics (and no relation to Gregg Berman), told me that one of VaR’s flaws, which only became obvious in this crisis, is that it didn’t measure liquidity risk — and of course a liquidity crisis is exactly what we’re in the middle of right now. One reason nobody seems to know how to deal with this kind of crisis is because nobody envisioned it. In a crisis, Brown, the risk manager at AQR, said, “you want to know who can kill you and whether or not they will and who you can kill if necessary. You need to have an emergency backup plan that assumes everyone is out to get you. In peacetime, you think about other people’s intentions. In wartime, only their capabilities matter. VaR is a peacetime statistic. RISK Mismanagement - What Led to the Financial Meltdown - NYTimes.com
+
“ As we approached his car, he began talking about his own performance in 2008. Although he is no longer a full-time trader, he remains a principal in a hedge fund he helped found, Black Swan Protection Protocol. His fund makes trades that either gain or lose small amounts of money in normal times but can make oversize gains when a black swan appears. Taleb likes to say that, as a trader, he has made money only three times in his life — in the crash of 1987, during the dot-com bust more than a decade later and now. But all three times he has made a killing. With the world crashing around it, his fund was up 65 to 115 percent for the year. Taleb chuckled. “They wouldn’t listen to me,” he said finally. “So I decided, to hell with them, I’ll take their money instead. RISK Mismanagement - What Led to the Financial Meltdown - NYTimes.com
December 28
Cayman waits on new political wind blowing from Washington

In the Cayman Islands, on the way to the airport, there’s a building that looks like a strip mall, except there’s no H&M or Orange Julius: it’s all hedge funds.

Now, they say wind from Washington might blow it over. Somewhere, on some island, a golden spike is being driven into the ground to begin construction on a new strip mall. This time they’ll think to hide it behind tall hedges.
December 26

Best Date Movie Ever.

Revolutionary Road

+

On Love Stories

Just saw Slumdog Millionaire, a fantastic story about a boy in the slums of India overcoming the most adverse circumstances, but, of course, it was all wrapped up in a Hollywood bow of love story. She, in the end, is why he does everything: why he endures.

Perhaps romantic love really is the most important thing in the world. It’s the one gesture of choice you have, the one conscious choice you can make in the entirely random circumstance of the family you were born into. Making your environment a little more hospitable to you isn’t a bad way to spend your life.

But what was he in love with? He barely knew this woman. They were children together, briefly, and yet the ideal of her remained inside his head his entire life. It couldn’t have been her he loved. Though she was beautiful and seemingly lovely, she was only a slip of a character. His great love for her obviously wasn’t about who she was — she represented his romantic ideal of making whole his childhood loss. It wasn’t about loving her. I’m not sure why women find that romantic.

Or maybe it is better to be loved as a deity, with all the passion that engenders, despite the fact it has nothing to do with who you are. Human love is much more fleeting. Perhaps love only survives in the hothouse of ideals.

December 22

Best. Christmas. Ever.

A Christmas miracle happened today! I was starting to get anxious since I hadn’t started my Christmas shopping yet. (It was only yesterday I realized I wasn’t actually going to knit everyone sweaters like I’d been planning.) Then, I heard about this e-commerce site on NPR. It is one-stop-shopping with the perfect Christmas present for everyone, such as, “a malaria net for a child in Africa” or “a year of school for an orphan.” Perfect! Who wouldn’t pretend to love that?

Now, everyone knows that if you have a family, you should never, ever mention a preference for a specific farm animal. My mother mentioned casually, about 12 years ago, that she thought pigs were cute. So, every birthday, every Christmas, thus after—each holiday we were obligated to buy her stupid shit to prove we loved her, well, it was always a ceramic pig, or a country-home style pig portrait. Last Christmas, I sat in our kitchen, counting the pigs. There were 62. I heard my mother sigh as she added another one to the shelf.

“Mom, do you even like pigs?” I finally thought to ask.

“Not really,” she said.

So this year, what did I buy her? A pig! An actual, real live pig! (For a family in Africa.)

From there it was a shopping bonanza. I bought a “small business loan for a woman living with HIV/Aids” for my sister; “10 fruit trees” for a family in Africa for my grandmother; a “goat for a woman” for my father; and “a blanket” for my great aunt.

But the best of all? For my sister’s boyfriend I bought “hope for sexually exploited girls.” At only $25, I thought it was quite a bargain. (The pig was $60.) I couldn’t figure out why hope was so cheap this year, particularly in a recession. Then I realized—Obama has flooded the market. Basic economics: more hope on the market means the price goes down.

December 6
"The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the nonobvious."
October 28
“ I see a changing landscape in which the emphasis is less on the sex than it is on the openness and intimacy and the revelation of secrets,” said Dr. Pittman, the author of “Private Lies: Infidelity and the Betrayal of Intimacy” (Norton, 1990). “Everybody talks by cellphone and the relationship evolves because you become increasingly distant from whomever you lie to, and you become increasingly close to whomever you tell the truth to. Well - More People Appear to Be Cheating on Their Spouses, Studies Find - NYTimes.com
September 5
“ The Japanese sociologist Mizuko Ito first noticed it with mobile phones: lovers who were working in different cities would send text messages back and forth all night — tiny updates like “enjoying a glass of wine now” or “watching TV while lying on the couch.” They were doing it partly because talking for hours on mobile phones isn’t very comfortable (or affordable). But they also discovered that the little Ping-Ponging messages felt even more intimate than a phone call. Brave New World of Digital Intimacy