Despite a bunch of Hollywood pinkos doing their best to ensure this film was never funded, it's been made. Whether it lives up to the book will be interesting.
Here's the trailer - Atlas Shrugged Part One:
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Where Not to Eat in Paris
Thankfully, I've never heard of this little sh*t hole. What a fantastic piece of restaurant reviewing from A.A. Gill. If this doesn't dent L’Ami Louis' income, nothing will. Here's a sample:
What you actually find when you arrive at L’Ami Louis is singularly unprepossessing. It’s a long, dark corridor with luggage racks stretching the length of the room. It gives you the feeling of being in a second-class railway carriage in the Balkans. It’s painted a shiny, distressed dung brown. The cramped tables are set with labially pink cloths, which give it a colonic appeal and the awkward sense that you might be a suppository. In the middle of the room is a stubby stove that also looks vaguely proctological.
What you actually find when you arrive at L’Ami Louis is singularly unprepossessing. It’s a long, dark corridor with luggage racks stretching the length of the room. It gives you the feeling of being in a second-class railway carriage in the Balkans. It’s painted a shiny, distressed dung brown. The cramped tables are set with labially pink cloths, which give it a colonic appeal and the awkward sense that you might be a suppository. In the middle of the room is a stubby stove that also looks vaguely proctological.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Recent Reading
I've been asked for links to the best financial markets reading I've had in the last few months. I've read a lot of good stuff (and some bullshiitake), some of it subscription only, some of it free (and the paid stuff generally differs little in quality from the smarter free stuff). I especially focus on commentary + analysis style pieces - it's usually more useful and helps fade out the noise of the short-termism 'news'.
Anyway, from what I can remember of the good stuff, below is my list of four non-subscription must-reads. Even the Howard Marks note which is a quarter old, and the Xie article which is a few weeks old, are not yet dated reading (rather the contrary is true):
- A GMO White Paper authored by James Montier: The Seven Immutable Laws of Investing. Montier is a member of GMO's Asset Allocation team, has authored a number of books on value investing and behavioural finance, and used to be the Co-Head of Global Strategy at Societe Generale. No link for this one as it's behind a free registration wall, so it's below:
GMO - Montier March 2011
- PIMCO Co-Founder & Co-CIO Bill Gross's March Investment Outlook note to investors;
- A client note from the end of last year by Howard Marks, Chairman of Oaktree Capital Management;
- And finally Andy Xie's late February article in the English Caixing Online: Hot Money, Fast Riots. Xie is on the Board of Rosetta Stone advisors. But better known as the former star Asia-Pac Chief Economist for Morgan Stanley. All of his stuff is very good, not just the one article linked to above.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Flying Toilet Terror Labs
A great article from 2006 detailing the bullsh*t rationale behind banning liquids on planes. Officious rule-making morons at work. . . . Something to think about when you're next at airport security fumbling with that zip-lock bag of 100ml containers. Here's a sample:
. . . . Now we have news of the recent, supposedly real-world, terrorist plot to destroy commercial airplanes by smuggling onboard the benign precursors to a deadly explosive, and mixing up a batch of liquid death in the lavatories. So, The Register has got to ask, were these guys for real, or have they, and the counterterrorist officials supposedly protecting us, been watching too many action movies?
We're told that the suspects were planning to use TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, a high explosive that supposedly can be made from common household chemicals unlikely to be caught by airport screeners. A little hair dye, drain cleaner, and paint thinner - all easily concealed in drinks bottles - and the forces of evil have effectively smuggled a deadly bomb onboard your plane.
Or at least that's what we're hearing, and loudly, through the mainstream media and its legions of so-called "terrorism experts." But what do these experts know about chemistry? Less than they know about lobbying for Homeland Security pork, which is what most of them do for a living. But they've seen the same movies that you and I have seen, and so the myth of binary liquid explosives dies hard. . . .
. . . . Making a quantity of TATP sufficient to bring down an airplane is not quite as simple as ducking into the toilet and mixing two harmless liquids together.
. . . . Now we have news of the recent, supposedly real-world, terrorist plot to destroy commercial airplanes by smuggling onboard the benign precursors to a deadly explosive, and mixing up a batch of liquid death in the lavatories. So, The Register has got to ask, were these guys for real, or have they, and the counterterrorist officials supposedly protecting us, been watching too many action movies?
We're told that the suspects were planning to use TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, a high explosive that supposedly can be made from common household chemicals unlikely to be caught by airport screeners. A little hair dye, drain cleaner, and paint thinner - all easily concealed in drinks bottles - and the forces of evil have effectively smuggled a deadly bomb onboard your plane.
Or at least that's what we're hearing, and loudly, through the mainstream media and its legions of so-called "terrorism experts." But what do these experts know about chemistry? Less than they know about lobbying for Homeland Security pork, which is what most of them do for a living. But they've seen the same movies that you and I have seen, and so the myth of binary liquid explosives dies hard. . . .
. . . . Making a quantity of TATP sufficient to bring down an airplane is not quite as simple as ducking into the toilet and mixing two harmless liquids together.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
The Apprentice: Russian Style
Great essay from the London Review of books:
. . . .Putin’s PR men dress him like a crime boss (the black polo top underneath the black suit) and his soundbites come straight out of gangster movies (‘we’ll shoot the enemy while he’s on the sh*tter …’). . . .
. . . .Putin’s PR men dress him like a crime boss (the black polo top underneath the black suit) and his soundbites come straight out of gangster movies (‘we’ll shoot the enemy while he’s on the sh*tter …’). . . .
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
"All of Life is a Wager"
An excellent interview recorded late last month with the sick and (probably) terminally ill Christopher Hitchens. . . It's long, but well worth watching.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Peter Thiel- erutuF ehT oT kcaB
An interesting interview with libertarian, tech entrepreneur and new venture investor Peter Thiel. And also a curious article on what Thiel's up to in New Zealand. Here's the intro/ bio from the National Review, with links for the National Review interview and NZ Herald article following:
Peter Thiel may be most famous for his role (portrayed by Wallace Langham in The Social Network) as the venture capitalist who gave “The Facebook” the angel investment it needed to really launch. Before that, Thiel was known in Silicon Valley circles as the “Don of the PayPal mafia,” (his official role at the e-commerce site was founder and CEO), and more generally for his centrality as an investor in tech startups. Now, Thiel serves as the president of Clarium Capital, a hedge fund that (though it has suffered recently) made extravagant gains by betting against the housing market in 2007.
Though he’s primarily a businessman, Thiel has dabbled in libertarian activism. Most recently, he caused a stir by establishing the Thiel Fellowship, which will select 20 college students under the age of 20 and pay them $100,000 each to drop out of college and embark on entrepreneurial careers. Thiel is also an intellectual of astonishing breadth and depth who finds time, while running a major hedge fund, to produce thought pieces that survey the Western Canon, the geopolitical landscape, and financial economics at a gallop (such as this one for the Hoover Digest).
NRO’s Matthew Shaffer spoke with the philosopher-CEO in a wide-ranging conversation about net neutrality, the higher-education bubble, the future of seasteading, income inequality, why the wealthy have gone blue, Leo Strauss, and more. Thiel wants to take us back to the future, to once again, like in the 1950s, imagine how innovation — technological and otherwise — can radically improve our lives.
National Review Peter Thiel interview.
NZ Herald article.
Peter Thiel may be most famous for his role (portrayed by Wallace Langham in The Social Network) as the venture capitalist who gave “The Facebook” the angel investment it needed to really launch. Before that, Thiel was known in Silicon Valley circles as the “Don of the PayPal mafia,” (his official role at the e-commerce site was founder and CEO), and more generally for his centrality as an investor in tech startups. Now, Thiel serves as the president of Clarium Capital, a hedge fund that (though it has suffered recently) made extravagant gains by betting against the housing market in 2007.
Though he’s primarily a businessman, Thiel has dabbled in libertarian activism. Most recently, he caused a stir by establishing the Thiel Fellowship, which will select 20 college students under the age of 20 and pay them $100,000 each to drop out of college and embark on entrepreneurial careers. Thiel is also an intellectual of astonishing breadth and depth who finds time, while running a major hedge fund, to produce thought pieces that survey the Western Canon, the geopolitical landscape, and financial economics at a gallop (such as this one for the Hoover Digest).
NRO’s Matthew Shaffer spoke with the philosopher-CEO in a wide-ranging conversation about net neutrality, the higher-education bubble, the future of seasteading, income inequality, why the wealthy have gone blue, Leo Strauss, and more. Thiel wants to take us back to the future, to once again, like in the 1950s, imagine how innovation — technological and otherwise — can radically improve our lives.
National Review Peter Thiel interview.
NZ Herald article.
Friday, January 21, 2011
So You Thought It Was Cold ?
Geoff Mackley throws a cup of boiling water into the air at Oymyakon, Siberia, the coldest permanently inhabited place on earth, on February 1, 2004 while the temperature stood at -53°F (-47°C). The water converted to ice crystals before reaching the ground. . . . . Where can I buy one of those suits ?? Ripped from WeatherUnderground:
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