Failure

J.K Rowling at the Harvard Commencement Address :

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.
I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.
However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person's idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.
Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

The Oil Drum

The Oil Drum.

123$ Oil

Fun times. (Photo courtesy NYTimes)

Bloody Inflation

My Starbucks Grande Latte used to cost $3.30. It now costs $3.70. Bloody agro-inflation and weak dollar.

I will stop sounding like a spoilt whiny child and point you to this excellent article. Major oil exporting countries (Saudi Arabia and other Opec members) have always subsidized internal supply while making up for it by yanking up export prices (by not producing enough essentially). This is now happening in food as well, thanks to the sky high prices and rioting. India has imposed steep duties on exported rice. Argentina has hiked tarrifs on exported beef. I think this is a good thing especially if consumers in the major importing countries (United Kingdom for e.g.) can afford to pay the additional cost of food at little cost to their lifestyles, while for consumers in the exporting countries the cost of a bag of rice decides whether they are to have a square meal or go hungry. Some of the poor sub-Saharan African countries which import food worry me though. But all in all, Mr. James spends 40 cents more on a Latte, so that Ganesh back in Central Madhya Pradesh can afford to feed his family. The world should not always be flat.

Suggestions

I am soliciting suggestions for the following things.

- Good books to read over the summer.

- Good 3-4 day vacation ideas which are relatively easy to plan, fun but different. Trekking maybe? Or a roadtrip?

- Good things to do over the summer that would aid my overall development and growth into a wonderful human being.

In turn I am going to suggest to you what you should not do:

- Do not try to read Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra. It is a bollywood style gangsta movie written as a book - gangsters, smugglers, pimps, prostitutes, murder, money, more money put into the usual set of semi-predictable plot scenes. It starts off promisingly but 100 pages in starts meandering, sounding cliched and contrived. It has another 900 pages after that, which I haven't been able to get myself to trudge through. If he had cut it down to about 500 pages and done away with the 25 side stories, I would probably want to finish it.

- A healthy sense of paranoia and circumspectness would go a long way in pushing up the mean and reducing variance on your life's happiness function. In non nerdy english, you would be happier if you did choose to follow my advice. This does not mean going crazy, but has more to do with keeping a langorous, relaxed but watchful and wary eye. Thus you should not be non-circumspect.

- In addition to not being non-circumspect, you should also not not maintain information assymetry. As a trader, information assymetry is all you want (in your favour obviously), but even otherwise it has its benefits. Information should be released on a purely need to know basis. Believe me or not but it leads to solutions that are more optimal for everyone. In Economics, the fancy word given for changes that make no one any worse off is "Pareto improvement" (you learnt something new today, but then you probably knew it).

Do you know why babies are adorable?

I think its because of how they look at you. Blankly, unblinkingly, without fear, anger or malice, completely trusting and vulnerable. I realized it when I was riding down an elevator with a baby in a pram next to me. I was quite uncomfortable, as I was almost automatically trying to figure out what the real deal was ! But, once I get over that initial phase of distrust, it was quite nice and caused much satisfaction and feel goodness. The problems start when they grow older and start talking back to you, or at least thats what my mother says!

Funding Priorities

US'09 Budget

Keeps the U.S. the most innovative nation in the world by implementing the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI).
$12.2 billion total for the National Science Foundation, DoE's Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, an overall funding increase of $1.6 billion, or 15 percent, above the 2008 enacted total of $10.6 billion.
The President's FY 2009 Budget returns ACI research to a doubling path to ensure this consensus national priority objective is realized.
Increases energy security by focusing on renewables, accelerating technological breakthroughs, and expanding traditional sources to reduce our reliance on foreign oil.
$400 million as the first installment of a three-year, $2 billion U.S. commitment to an international clean energy technology fund that will increase and accelerate the deployment of clean technologies in developing nations to help confront climate change.
Doubles the capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to 1.5 billion barrels.
Nuclear power: $242 million for Nuclear Power 2010 to promote the licensing of new nuclear plants through an industry cost-shared effort with streamlined regulatory processes. $302 million for Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative research and development.
Coal: $648 million for research, development, and demonstration of advanced coal technologies. This represents a $197 million increase from the President's FY2008 request and is the largest amount requested for DOE's coal program in more than 25 years. With private sector match, this budget represents an approximate $1 billion investment in advanced technologies that can produce power from coal with significantly lower carbon emissions.
Keeps America Safe
Supports the national defense and funding for America's troops.
$515 billion for the Department of Defense base budget – a nearly 74 percent increase since the President took office – to support military readiness and continue the transformation of our military to meet twenty-first century threats.
$70 billion for an emergency allowance to support activities related to the Global War on Terror that help achieve the strategic goal of creating free, democratic, and self-governed ally nations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Defence Spending / Scientific Research Funding = 585/12.2 = 48. In other words, the defense department blows through a years worth of scientific funding in a week. Worth thinking about...

They own the night

Mr. Family Orientation has been driving for the last 30 years. Enjoys talking to and observing the variety of people he meets. Will retire in 4 years and head to his newly constructed home in Puerto Rico. Plans to run his own little rickshaw company there, importing bright yellow rickshaws from India. Loves to watch discovery channel. Knows about the Bombay meal carriers. Told me among all the people he has met, he finds Indians to be the nicest. He likes them because they are family oriented. Feels happy that Indians in the US are going out a lot more than when he started driving; they are better integrated into society. Thinks Indian girls are very pretty, especially when they free their long straight hair.

Mr. Part Time has been driving a cab for the last 3 months. Brazilian who was traveling through the US and decided to stay. Has been working odd-jobs for the last 2 years while studying for his degree in art. Barely knows the routes, and very polite; not at all used to the ways of a cabdriver. Apologized when he missed the intersection, and offered to take 4$ off the bill. Asks me what I think of the United States. Thinks that Americans are too conservative and boring. Is learning to speak English, Portugese being his native language.

Mr. Chevrolet has roamed the city's streets in his yellow Caprice Classic since the year 2000. Came from Uganda. Thinks that there is good money driving a cab in the city. Loves cars. Asks me what car I like most. I say that the Audi is a car I like. He likes American cars. Thinks the Mercury is the best car. Spacious, big, fast. Also likes the Lincoln. Thinks European cars are too small - not good value for money.

Mr Big Shot has been driving a cab ever since he came to the US from Pakistan about 10 years back. Is a Civil Engineer. Owns a business. Drives a cab for excess money. Tells me that life is good in the US. Lots of money to be made. Asks me what I do. I tell him I work on a computer. Asks me how much I make. I tell him. Says that I dont make enough. Tells me I should change jobs or work as a consultant paid by the hour.

A post

It looks like the posts are becoming increasingly sporadic. Lets make a little market shall we.

What are the other odds:

1) The next 12 months will produce > 24 posts

2) The next 12 months will produce >=12 and <=24 posts

3) The next 12 months will produce <>

At the end of 12 months, all those who bet over the mean would pay those who bet below the mean. This would be "AR's BlogSwap". I expect this product to take off so quickly and the speculative trading in it to be so reckless that the stability of the world economy will be in question.

Speaking of world markets in terrible jeopardy, have you ever realized how screwups tend to be highly correlated. When things are appearing to get bad, they usually soon get worse. Case in example, rental car broke down on Friday night right before a weekend trip to Madison, and as a result we had to wait 2 hours for the tow truck, and then spend another hour taking the train to midway for a replacement car, which gave us the opportunity to be bumped by the attendant there who had no spare cars, and which in turn had one of the guys bailing out, which in turn increased the likelihood of a sucky trip. However, the trip turned out to rock. Upstate Wisconsin can kick upstate New York's ass (note content of previous post.). Rolling woods, lakes, hiking trails, fall colors - yellow, violet and red, long winding roads and quaint towns.

I have come to note that increasingly, people I know are either married, engaged or in the process of getting engaged/married. I am growing old. When I finished undergrad and entered graduate school, the senior graduate students looked OLD. It felt like it would be eons before I would be where they were (like never). Though I am not currently in graduate school, many of my friends are in the last legs of their phd. Another sign that indicates the passage of time. Another even more shocking sign is the fact that I have come to accept that I will be old one day. Brilliance at its most lustrous.

Thank you for your time. Now go do something more useful!

Artic

I have been visiting the the Art Institute of Chicago for the last few weeks, for the most part because it is free on Thursdays and Fridays. It has been a fun learning experience.

I have come to be more open to different styles of painting. Its quite interesting to see the transformation of painting style from the precise and picture perfect in the 17th century to the increasingly stylized and abstract today.It is not so surprising that much of the move into abstract representations came with the influx of photography. The change in the end consumer of the art is also quite evident, from churches to rich old men to modern 20th century folks who need something to decorate their steel and glass homes.

However, what I don't get are those morons who do something inane (3 stripes green, blue and black or put a shark in a tank or mix random colors, splash and waste good canvas), throw a convoluted uber-intellectual spiel onto it and pass it off as art. To distinguish between skill and idiocy I propose a test. If a painting cannot be made by a 4 year old kid under instructions from his/her teacher or through complete randomness (splashing paint on canvass), it must be art.

In a museum there are 2 types of visitors, no make that 3. People who know nothing about art and would like to impress Uncle Silvio/Chen/Al Haj/Kumar back home. People who know nothing about art but find it interesting and a good substitute for staler forms of entertainment (e.g. movie at AMC Cinema), and those who know their art and actually have some artistic skill. Its quite easy to distinguish between varieties 1 and 3 though 2 is a tough one. Anyone belongs to category 1 if the first impulse on sighting a painting is to go as close up to it as possible and squint at it. Those in 3, first capture the overall effect of the painting from a healthy 10ft and then move in to take in the micro technique employed by the painter. The ones in 2 come in multiple hues, starting of as 1 and ending up somewhere close to 3. In any case, let me make my case why it is not beneficial to look at a painting as if one were examining a bacterial infection.

For example,
This conveys little or no information to you while this

is most striking. The shades of blue emphasize the sadness and loss felt by the old guitarist. This is especially true for impressionist paintings where the overall scene conveys a larger visual effect that one misses by close staring.

For e.g.,
The very specific effect of the light and the rustic coarseness of the scene comes to you only from a distance.

What I find most shocking about the Museum Shop, are not the prices which by the way are a complete rip-off. As a matter of fact, high prices are a good idea. It allows the re-distribution of capital from the inept to the deserving, from bone headed tourists to talented but impoverished artists. What I find shocking is the kind of material that the museum attempts to sell. The available prints are the same old set of "famous" paintings that have been publicized for eternity. For a museum with a most impressive impressionist collection, it really does not need to make one more copy of "Sunflowers" by Van Gogh which is not even part of the collection.Who really needs one more copy of Dali's melting timepiece?

There are a number of things I like as well - the breadth of the collection, the care that is taken to preserve and promote art, the ambience, the list goes on. It is a great way to spend an evening. Part meditation, part education.

Goldspan opens his mouth...

..and the market drops. Or was it the 8% move in China? Or was it the Yen carry trade * ? Or was it the sub-prime meltdown ? Predictability is to finance what coyness was to Anna Nicole Smith. You can try as hard as you want, but it just isn't there, and is never going to be. Every guy has his own pet theory which predicts the state of the economy out to 20 years, and weirdly if 1000 guys come out with their theories, in the end someone is going to be right! It is impossible to distinguish skill from luck! Better be a lucky fool than an unlucky genius! (Think about it, why do you need to be smart if you have rich parents?! Not the paavam middle class boy I am.) Anyway, most of the trouble comes from it being this weird cat and mouse game, where all your time is spent double guessing the joe across the street.

Of late, I have been following the market quite closely. A bit too obsessively you might say. I can tell you what the SPX did on each day over the last 2 weeks. A 2% move is actually life event, and a quite a talking point. (That would also provide generous hints as to the quality of my life). Its not that I have a stake in whats going on. As a matter of fact, I do, in some vague general survival of the universe sense, but not enought to get worked up though. However, if you are surrounded by a bunch of people whose lives print tick by tick you cannot but help.

One result of this is that my "GK" a.k.a "General Knowledge", that thing you knew to do quiz contests in school and college, is better than it has ever been. See, I have heard something about anything and everything that can move the markets. Democrats vs. Republicans. Obama vs. Clinton vs. Mc Cain vs. ?!. Iraq war. Will US declare war on Iran ? (Well do you want to pay $4.00 a gallon? In that case you might have to. ) Medicare. Medicaid. Social Security. The imploding housing market. Ford and GM. The wreck that is the American car industry. Cheap money. Takeovers and mergers Happy times ! Lets get hitched! Arcelor and Mittal. Tata and Corus. (Even Indian companies have joined the fray. Brothers to the rescue! ) And who can miss the skyrocketing and exploding (like fireworks) markets of India and China. And I follow the non business section as well. Britney baby, to the rehab, one more time! Life is busy but interesting.

* Any trade tries to buy something that is cheap and sell that is expensive, thus making a profit. People lose a shitload of money when they interchange the cheap and expensive part. ( Not very hard to figure that one out, but hard to carry out in practice.) So, the Yen carry trade borrows in Yen (which is cheap as interest rates in Japan are zero) and buys stock in India (which gallop up and down, so you can net 25% if you get lucky). In other words, borrow money from the bank and bet it all on horse or two.

** A month or two back a couple of friends of mine were giving me heat about my largely sceptical view of the crazy run up of real estate prices in India, US and elsewhere. Well guys, take a look at whats happening in the US now. The piece of shit is exploding. Finally, its a good time to buy a house. Palm it off some bankrupt dude in foreclosure. Heh.

*** Spring is back. Hells yeah!

*^4 Remind me to get my camera out. I go on Flickr and see such brilliant photos. I like taking photos! I need to take some! One underestimates how hard it is to capture the perfect moment. Once you have it, it all looks so obvious. Hindsight is 20/20.

On Ballerness

A couple of years back, a Professor from Princeton wrote a book called "On Bullshit", a fine commentary on the chronic human tendency to mis-represent information i.e. lie. That prompted me to name my piece "On Ballerness". It deeply investigates and explores the subject of ballerness.

Historically, balls have always been linked to strength and capacity, though some theorists assert that no real statistically significant link exists between the size of balls and the ability to swing from tree to tree (an obvious manifestation of strength and capacity). There are a number of problems that prevent an establishment of this link, reliable data points being one. However, as we have seen time and again, scientific accuracy has scarcely held back the establishment of beliefs, and this is no exception (Creationism for example).

With the passage of time, the variety of usage of this (spurious?) connection grew. There came to be many word forms.

"Balls to you!" - Which means, you don't possess the article.

"Balls!" - Which means, I posses the article. The article is big and strong, and is a noun, and not a verb. I can swing from tree to tree. If you bullshit me, I will wring your neck and chuck you down from the nearest Banyan.

Soon, this word transmogrified into a verb.

"Ballin" - It is an assertion of the ability to swing from tree to tree. It no longer refers to the possesion of the article that enables the act, but an actual reference to the act that results from the possesion of the article.

"Baller/Ballerz" - It refers to the person who posses large and copious amounts of balls.

The word that greatly interests us right now is the word "Baller". We have all agreed that it refers to this supersonic person who has the ability to swing from tree to tree with reckless abandon. However, as swinging from tree to tree is a dangerous activity, alternate forms of expression of the same primeval ability emerged. Also, the introduction of clothing could be interpreted as necissitating a proxy for the size, stregth and luminosty of the aforementioned article. Thus, different ballers are characterized by the kind of proxy they use. A natural heirarcy surfaces.

In ancient Nubia, your ballerosity was mentioned by the number of random people you could slaughter every day and get away with. The non-baller was the person who got slaughtered.

In ancient Arabia, your ballerosity was measured by the size of your harem. The uber baller had an harem, where each member of the harem had their own harem. Ballerosity was also measured by the number of humps on your camel.

In 1600's England ballerosity was measured by the tightness of the clothes you could get your companion to wear. The super-ballers got their wives to wear corsets. The non-ballers wore looser (and more comfortable clothes). It was also measured by the number of extra-marital affairs that could be had whilst escaping the guillotine.

Moving on to more modern times, the traditional homie homeboy type of mega baller, is measured by the amount bling, ka-ching, cribs, bi-syllabic vocabulary and hoes possessed. The lack of blink or ka-ching or cribs or hoes or a bi-syllabic vocabulary leads to lower ballerosity.

The ph d. toting research megaballer has a research area that is completely un-decipherable. For example, "Strings in AdS(3) and the SL(2,R) WZW model. Part 3. Correlation functions." is more baller than "A study of monkeys doing strange things in the jungle".

The high tech megaballer knows "XML and CORBA/RMI/XML-RPC based MOM (message oriented middleware) for Java/C/C++/Perl/Tcl/Python" while the not so baller can "Code a bit in Java".

In the investment banking industry, ballerosity is measured by the number of monitors the individual sits in front of. Information Techology (IT) slaves sit with 1. Analyst crum sit with 2. IT slave drivers sit with 4. Trader megaballers sit with 8. Relative ratio of money accumulated (quantified ballerosity) is given by 2^(# of monitors).

Thus, through this study we learn about the classical conservational property of balls. Balls cannot be created or destroyed, but can only go from one form to another.

PS: As you might have guessed it is random crap. No intent to offend anyone! It started of with an obervation of how people in my firm (especially the junior ones) measured their importance by the number of monitors they sat in front of. That kind of led into how people like to display how successful they are. Then, I couldn't make it a pedantic monologue. Hence, some dubious analogies. There!

Some people are attributing this fine piece of prose to insanity caused by excessive work. That would be open to interpretation. What is the definition of sanity?