John League

The Golden Ratio

2012-02-10T14:05:00.002-05:00

Michael Chabon's THE FINAL SOLUTION is an exquisite sliver of a book, homage, mystery and something more all rolled together. It is also hard to read.

Which is odd, because Chabon writes so beautifully, but I find myself tripping over his turgid sentences and their serpentine coils of clause, elaboration and aside. Now, here is a book that no doubt benefits from hearing. All of that goes down much easier if one is told, rather than if one reads. You can voice a far longer sentence, with the benefits of pacing and inflection, than you can write with expectation that someone will read it. Compound this over a far longer book and few will see it to the end. See Faulkner, William, reader frustration with.

Chabon also gets away with this because THE FINAL SOLUTION is so fleeting. By the time you really get into it, you're done. He also gets away with it because his story has propulsive plot. The reader can discern what will constitute an end to this puzzle of a book, and not simply that he is at the last page. This question will drive both the reader and the writing toward an ultimately rewarding conclusion. This questing is not always the case among those whose writing tends toward the beautiful and turgid, folks like Banville and Bellow, to cite only two.

This is the golden ratio, an undefined quantity of "story" that leavens dense prose so it is suitable for any length of reading.

54.29%

2012-01-26T16:13:00.002-05:00

Today is the 121st consecutive day I've written at least 250 words of fiction. Since the beginning of the year, my minimum has been 337 words (the daily average of the first 95 days in this streak), and I've averaged 460 over that time. This puts me nearly 55% of the way toward one million words.

I like statistics. I like liking what I write more. The latter has prevailed recently, as I have finally found a voice for this character I've been writing off and on for five years. For that breakthrough, I owe both the consistency of work over the past four months and Graham Greene.

Everyone says that THE POWER AND THE GLORY is Greene's masterpiece. Perhaps it is, having read precious little other of Greene's work, I can't judge. I can say that I don't really care for THE POWER AND THE GLORY. It isn't that Greene doesn't write beautifully, or that his characters don't work, or that his effort fails in any meaningful way. I simply don't enjoy reading from the perspective that Greene employs, a sort of limited omniscience (?) that explains to the reader things that the characters on the page would not necessarily know or think.

This is not what I like to read, and it's not how I write. My good work has tended to have close perspective, and genuine voice because of that. I don't have to write to a rule or a style. I have to write to that close perspective on a character only I can know. This is exciting.

Thoughts on A LIFE IN SECRETS

2012-01-25T07:12:00.001-05:00

Sarah Helm's A LIFE IN SECRETS reads like the backstory of an Alan Furst novel. It details the life and work of Vera Atkins, whose fame stems from her WW2 work with spies and saboteurs sent from Britain to France and her tenacious search to find information about what happened to them once they were captured. Vera's personal story makes this Furstian, and the book itself is a layered tale of puzzles across six decades.

In studying Vera, Helm's exhaustive search led her both to vindicate Vera and to reveal secrets that Vera sheltered all her life. The book delves into Vera's work during the war, her efforts to locate her agents (particularly the women), her sprawling investigation into what exactly happened to them in concentration camps. That's a whole book right there, but Helm goes further, examining Vera's family history (she was born Jewish in Romania to a German father and an Englishwoman brought up in South Africa), the secrecy in which Vera shrouded it all her life and how that affected her efforts to sanitize her own background and her work during the war.

The book is as much a celebration of the work undertaken by less than ideal agents during WW2 as it is an indictment of gross negligence and incompetence of the intelligence community, often run by less than ideal officers.

I've not given much in the way of specifics about the book, because Vera's story is told so well here that I don't want to spoil it should you decide to read it. It amazes me sometimes that the Allies won the war at all, and it is shameful that we are forgetting more and more about the war in general as time passes.

N.B. This book deals in parts with the horrors of concentration camps. It is necessary to acknowledge these horrors, but it is not easy.

There is now a Level Zero

2012-01-11T21:02:00.001-05:00

I have struggled to do my work recently. I would much rather read. Or watch a movie. Or play cards. Or board games. Or Wii Bowling. Or fold laundry.

Yes, fold laundry. It's that bad.

Even when I know I should work, I look at the task at hand and think that it's gonna take SOOOO long or I have to upstairs to do that or something similarly pathetic. Which invokes a round of self-loathing--but ironically, that's not enough to get me to work, either.

I have chosen to tackle the misperception about time. And it works. I simply set aside a short time to do work. Depending on the task, it can range from five to twenty minutes. If I'm having trouble starting an article, I force myself to work for five minutes. Usually by the end of five minutes I'm into it and willing to keep going. For studying, I do twenty minutes. Wherever I am at the end of twenty minutes, I stop. That is my reward for doing the twenty minutes.

Doing this repeatedly over the course of a day nets an impressive amount of work. Today I studied for an hour and forty minutes: five twenty-minute shifts. I also finished an article I was working on in two five minute shifts that both turned into twenty-to-thirty minute shifts.

This tells me that the way I perceive the time necessary to complete a task and the opportunity cost of going ahead and working right now are, shall we say, inadequate. That's being kind. Really, they're destructive.

I have to stop. I only allotted five minutes for this.

The death of youth

2012-01-09T20:40:00.002-05:00

My favorite baseball player growing up is now in the Hall of Fame. I am officially old.

Congratulations, Barry Larkin.

Thing 1 saves the game

2012-01-06T07:02:00.002-05:00

We have a Wii. My son would spend most of everyday playing on the Wii, if possible. As such, ever since we got the Wii--and more so now that he also has an iPod touch and all of the games thereon--we have made a deliberate effort to emphasize games that we can all play together (on the Wii and otherwise) and games that we can not play on the Wii.

Like most things, we go through phases of interest. For a while we were playing Sorry all the time. Then we were on to Lego board games. By the cosmic accident of an Amazon.com recommendation, I discovered Castle Keep, which led indirectly to a recommendation from someone in a toy shop in Saratoga Springs, New York, that we should play Spot It. We played Castle Keep and Spot It to death last year, adding Sleeping Queens and Loot from Castle Keep maker Gamewright.

Now board games are best taught in the playing. Few games of any kind have so elegant a set of rules that you can explain the flow of play beforehand. (Checkers, maybe? War, but that's a card game.) In teaching new games to kids, you notice that they grasp the goals and mechanics of new games far better in the playing--so much so that one wonders why you don't start like that in the first place.

So we have tended to play games first and ask questions later. Typically, an adult reads the game directions to get a general sense of what's going on and then we dive in, referring to the rules as necessary. In this spirit, I gave a cursory examination to the rules of Duck Duck Bruce, an interesting card game from Gamewright that was a Christmas present to my kids. We played with my parents and my kids, six of us, all playing for the first time. It was a neat game, but one that I lost miserably because I couldn't keep any cards for points. Oh, well. You win some, you lose some, right?

The next day, Lera and I went to see a movie, leaving my kids and parents to their own devices. They decided to play games, including Hedbanz, a guessing game that they also got for Christmas, and Yahtzee. They also played Duck Duck Bruce. My son, the compulsive reader, snatched up the game instructions to pass the long moments between things that entertain him, and discovered that I had taught them the game incorrectly. In my haste to get going, I had misinterpreted one of the directions, the one that saw me lose so many cards and points. The correct rule makes the game much more enjoyable and makes all of the other game features easier to execute.

This tells me many things, foremost among them pay attention to the instructions. Or, beware children who can read. It also suggests that we may be ready for more complicated games. Probably not Axis & Allies, but maybe Ticket to Ride or Scotland Yard.

Non-Fiction in 2011

2012-01-05T12:17:00.000-05:00

I read almost as much non-fiction as fiction last year, and that doesn't include all of the study material I read for the CFA Level 2 exam. And in all honesty I read some pretty crappy books. However, these stand out.

About this time last year I wrote about OUTLIERS. Truly remarkable. It doesn't need my commendation but it earned it nonetheless. I'll not talk any more about this except to say that it was so good I'm going to read it again this year.

THE LITTLE BOOK OF BEHAVIORAL INVESTING is from the Little Book series of investment and finance books, each written by a subject-matter expert. Or at least someone who has a reasonably impressive resume and a 'method' that can be distilled into a book. Some of them are great. Christopher Browne's one on value investing is fantastic, as if Jonathan Clements' on more generally getting your financial house in order. Pat Dorsey wrote one that boils down what is basically Morningstar's equity valuation heuristic into a third of the book he wrote on the same subject for Morningstar. Three years ago, I shot some holes in Peter Schiff's Little Book on how not to get smacked around by a bear market, which is now in another edition but probably isn't much better. (Hey, Peter. You were right about decoupling. Too bad it looks like the U.S. isn't the caboose.)

James Montier's take on behavioral investing is concise and to the point. If there is a book folks ought to read before they invest, it shouldn't be something by Ben Graham or Philip Fisher or the Motley Fool. It ought to be THE LITTLE BOOK OF BEHAVIORAL INVESTING. Know thyself, and beware. This book can help you in that direction.

(A more in depth dissection of this subject is YOUR MONEY AND YOUR BRAIN, by Jason Zweig. It too is a fine book, but about four times as long as Montier's Little Book.)

RICHARD THE LIONHEART appealed to me for several reasons. One, the subject. Two, the effort that author Antony Bridge makes to place Richard's actions and perceptions of them in the context of Richard's own time. Too much of what we read and think nowadays is influenced by our modern takes on the Crusades and eight centuries of creative speculation, a la Robin Hood and THE LION IN WINTER. Three, Antony Bridge is a polymath, the author of a brilliant biography here, an accomplished artist in his youth, an officer in military intelligence during WWII and later a priest--and a dynamic preacher. I like that.

The most interesting thing about Richard that Bridge reveals in his efforts to strip away centuries of myth and malice built up around him is that he really was the archetypical knight-king of the Age of Chivalry. Tireless and just like his father, artistic and emotional like his mother, unbeaten in battle, brave to a fault, negligently forgiving, ruthlessly cunning, the only thing Richard lacked was a son.

Thoughts on THE AX

2012-01-04T10:51:00.003-05:00

I first read THE AX just after it came out in 1997. I heard an interview with Donald Westlake on NPR, and the premise intrigued me: a man who loses his job to industry-wide offshoring sets out to serially eliminate the remaining competition for the handful of jobs that remain. That's right. The hero of THE AX is a serial killer.

I re-read THE AX in 2011 and was absolutely floored. It was one of the very best books I read last year.

The plotting is intricate, and Westlake girds the book with strong technique. For example, he shifts verb tense in the book so he doesn't have to lay out the story in a straight line. That allows him to start just before the first killing and fill in backstory along the way, letting you know where you are by what tense he's writing in. A nice touch.

The characterization is what sells the unusual story. Burke Devore, serial killer, is troubled, somewhat psychotic, but mostly angry. This could be just a tale of misplaced revenge, but Westlake does two interesting things. He makes Devore see his victims and individuals, with their habits and histories, makes him hate some and regret killing others. He struggles with volition and execution of his plans. It's not easy, but he presses on, alternating between desperation and determination. Then, Devore hones his anger into a force that actually saves his family an unforeseen nightmare. I'll not reveal it, but it is striking how genuine Devore seems and how easily the reader is drawn in, despite his monstrosity.

The story has new immediacy after several years of weak employment prospects in this country. The pent up rage Devore feels for the faceless corporate manipulators who cost him his job is akin to what many feel for similar corporate manipulators who wrecked banks, loans and jobs in 2008 and 2009. And many real-life situations beg the same question Devore faces: how far will you go to hold on to what you have?

2011 Review: Me

2011-12-31T13:58:00.000-05:00

2011 was quietly a banner year for me, at least on the goal achievement front.

I passed the CFA Level 2 exam.
I wrote 123,174 words of fiction, including at least 250 words every day for the last 95 days of the year.
I read 88 books, topping my lofty goal of 75.

This year I want to pass the Level 3 exam, write another 100,000 words (on my way to one million at some point in the future), and I want to read at least as many books as I did this year. I also want to use this blog to record my progress in this direction, but I'd like to figure out a way to do that so that someone other than me would want to read it. Not sure that's possible, but I'm thinking about it.

I have several other goals for myself, but I'm more interested in how I move toward them than checking them off. Motivation has always been of keen interest to me, starting when I had private music students who would or wouldn't practice, seemingly on a random basis. I've read a lot, and very little of it is useful. This is where I'll probably spend most of my time writing here.

Excelsior.

I'm awake: let's eat (or go to Kohl's)

2011-12-02T14:00:00.001-05:00

I went away again there, like drifting off unexpectedly at your desk or (worse) in the car. Some warning deep in your brain (amygdala? hippocampus? I could look it up, but I like it kinda vague) sounds, a klaxon jerks your spine straight and throws the emergency release on your eyelids. Your head is flooded with light and information, you know you must ACT NOW... but you have absolutely no idea where you are or how you got there.

So that's what's going on today. I wake up and I ignored the blog for another two weeks. I could do another catch up post like I did prior to this one, but I really did significant amounts of only two things. I ate, and I shopped.

Say what you want about our family, including both our four-person nucleus and our extended families in both directions. We're scattered, we worry too much, we don't worry enough, we know various flavors and varieties of guilt like a sommelier knows tributaries of the Rhone. All true at various times to varying degrees. But, man, do we know how to eat.

And between Lera and I, we make the ultimate shopper. She scours ads for deals, fights the crowds; I stand in lines so she can shop, and I spend way too much time at Amazon.com. Together, we conquer. Apart, we're inefficient.

The shopping is nearly done until about this time next year. The eating will continue into the new year. By then we'll have to concentrate in new directions, which should include exercise but likely includes playing the video games our son got for Christmas.

One-minute Wednesday

2011-11-16T11:01:00.002-05:00

Where did I go?

I stood in the rain, 35 degrees out, put my coat around my nine-year-old defensive tackle and tried to warm him up before he had to go back out on the field so the fastest 75-lb football team I've ever seen could smear him and all his frozen friends on the turf.

That same day I watched as snow fell from the sky and green leaves fell from trees.

I wrote my 500,000th word since 2003, and 100,000th this year.

I read: EATERS OF THE DEAD, Michael Crichton; DARK MIRROR, Barry Maitland; A FIRING OFFENSE, George Pelecanos; THE 4-HOUR WORK WEEK, Timothy Ferriss; CHANGE ANYTHING, Kerry Patterson, et al.

With Lera, I caught up on BONES. The last episode we saw was the one BEFORE the Valentine's Day episode. So we watched the ones at the end of last season and saw the first two of this season. My favorite was the second-to-last of last season, where SPOILER!!!!!!! Brodsky killed Mr. Nigel-Murray. We cried. Over a TV show. It was that good.

We discovered Arlington Cinema & Drafthouse, where family movies late Monday afternoon are $1 and they have good beer in pitchers. (Sadly, no dollar pitchers.)

I bought books (Tom Angleberger's THE STRANGE CASE OF ORGAMI YODA and DARTH PAPER STRIKES BACK) and CDs (soundtracks to MAMMA MIA and WICKED) for my kids' Christmas stockings.

I shopped online and went to handle DSLR cameras. We're ready to graduate from our P&S Canon. Lera and I both want to learn how to use this, so I haven't simply bought the one I want.

I started lifting heavy twice a week. I'd like to do three times, but I we're still raking leaves (80 bags already and leaves are still falling). Raking and bagging makes me more sore than deadlifting or squatting.

So now you're up to speed. Tomorrow, I'll have a three minute rant and get back to regular blogviation.

Demography shrugged

2011-10-26T11:04:00.003-04:00

From the very moment I began working in an investment-related field eight years ago, the burgeoning economic might of the developing world, and specifically China, dominated any sort of macroeconomic discussion. Well, duh. More people, more young people, vast natural resources (though China remains a net importer of most everything, which is often ignored), more headroom for increased efficiency, education and longevity. Peter Schiff wrote a very nearly timely book that laid out decoupling (which is not, as it turns out, a euphemism for coitus interruptus) as the investment order of the day: the emerging world and commodity-exporting developed nations would leave the U.S. behind economically and, therefore, become superior destinations for investors' capital.

This is so baldly obvious that it is rarely questioned. The demographic forces at work here are compelling, whether you think China's economic miracle is smoke and mirrors or not.

However, now that everyone knows this, I wonder if it is possible to generate outsized profits from it. The contrarian in me was interested to see these pieces today, and the fact that they come from wholly divergent sources seems to underline their significance.

The first is passed on from Andrew Sullivan, and shows estimated labor force growth in the U.S. and other regions/nations. The U.S. rapidly outpaces China, Europe, Korea and Japan, which, at least in this projection, never slow the recession in labor force growth out to 2050.

The second comes buried at the very end of Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's Telegraph column on how China and the EU are sapping their relative industrial advantages over the U.S. through their monetary policies. He points to the same emerging population trend, though he couches it in slightly different statistics.

If demographics are compelling, they are compelling anywhere they suggest strong trends for growth and productivity, not just in obvious places.

Work the plan

2011-10-21T20:42:00.002-04:00

The CFA readings at this level are unlike what I have worked on before. The challenge of the CFA exam is that the curriculum is a mile wide and half a mile deep, as opposed to, say, the CPA exam, which is about a tenth of a mile wide and a mile deep. The things I've read so far for Level 3 are very broad, almost scattered. This is worrisome, in that they could test any one of these things in its entirety. Yikes.

Exercise? What's that? The problems at the end of the chapter in a math book?

497,275 words. I am on my seventh draft of this novel. That's just information, not judgment or complaint.

Reading: RIDING THE RAP, Elmore Leonard.

Adapt vs. modify

2011-10-11T14:43:00.002-04:00

Much of the CFA curriculum on behavioral investing centers on how to build portfolios that either adapt to a client's biases or are modified based on those biases. (Adaptations are typically greater allowances for client bias in a portfolio, while modifications tend toward more modest changes.) The presentation of goals-based and client-behavior portfolios is interesting, topical, appropriate and somehow only NOW presented at Level 3.

MUST. RUN. SOON.

487,584 words.

Reading: FLETCH, Gregory McDonald

Is that all you blighters can do?

2011-10-05T17:55:00.002-04:00

Behavioral finance is covered in the Level III exam. What I've read so far is a shotgun spread sampling of various elements of behavioral finance, and nothing really about application, which is disappointing. Perhaps there will be something as move on through this section, but I am not hopeful.

The best books about this are Jason Zweig's Your Money and Your Brain and James Montier's The Little Book of Behavioral Investing.

482,382 words. The more you write and read, the more you want to write and read. Hopefully the same is true about exercise.

Reading: Statistics: A Very Short Introduction, David J. Hand

Our ability to accessorize

2011-10-04T13:10:00.002-04:00

Finishing the ethics readings today. Meant to start math this week, but, well, I was lazy. Surprise, surprise. I have started this early to mitigate my tendency toward laziness.

As many chinups as I can stand. There are few bodyweight exercises that are harder or do more when done correctly. No kipping.

480,917 words as of 1:15 today.

Reading George Pelecanos' The Cut. I've not read Pelecanos before. I'm not sure what it is, but his writing here is very sure. Yes, it's economical, but it's not spare. Yes, his characterization is spot on, but it's not evocative. Not sure. I guess that's why Pelecanos has all those awards.

I ask Jobu to come, take fear from bats

2011-09-30T13:55:00.002-04:00

CFA. Working still to finish review of Standards. I'd really like to get to the next topic on Monday.

Exercise. Rather than run for distance yesterday, which is what I'd been doing for two weeks, I sprinted. A great workout. Now I hurt.

477,392 words.

Reading The Most Important Thing, Howard Marks. I haven't disagreed with a single thing in it. That probably means I should find a book to argue with to read next.

Return to record, Part 2

2011-09-29T11:34:00.002-04:00

This blog has limited utility. Used to be I put everything here. With the network effect of Facebook, I post over there if I find something cool on the Internet or one of my kids says something funny.

However, I wrote a lot here in May as I prepared for the CFA exam, most of which no one read, but it did help me to record my progress. Well, I passed that exam, but I am studying even now for another in June 2012. So I'm back to start recording what I'm doing there, what I'm reading, what exercise I'm going, and how close I am getting to my goal of 1,000,000 words.

So.

CFA. I started with ethics. It's the part that changes the least, it's the only part that's on all three exams, and it's the least taxing as far as memorization goes. I'm trying to finish the actual exegesis of the Standards before the end of the month, and then I'll look at the practical examples the first week of October. Then onto some math.

Exercise. I ran the Navy Five Miler over the weekend in 54 minutes and something. That was about even with last year's time, but I didn't want to die at any point in the run, which is a marked difference from last year. I ran and walked 2.5 miles on Tuesday, finishing fast over the last half mile. I'd like to make fast finishes my M.O. and make them progressively longer. Today is another day to run, so I'll aim for three miles and a strong finish.

476,934 words. I'd like to get to 500,000 words by year end. That would put me halfway to my goal, which is both a number and gateway to achievement.

Preparing to get ready

2011-08-15T17:34:00.002-04:00

The Navy 5 Miler is in about six weeks. I started getting ready today with a 6:30 run. 1.5ish miles. I am absolutely disinterested in time on this run; I want only to get through the whole five miles without stopping to walk or die.

I'm reading SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, would you believe for the first time? There's a lot going on here, and not so much at the same time. Bradbury has a way with metaphor that is very underrated: he gets a lot of credit for his ideas, but much less for his language.

Next up, I'm going to start doing a critical read like Mrs. Bowker taught us in AP English in high school: with a notebook handy to record ideas, phrases of interest and observations. No highlighter, though. Can't bring myself to write in a book. First up, THE AX, Donald Westlake. I spend so much of my time reading for pleasure and reading to know, but I have spent precious little reading for craft. I hope to change that here. My plan is to read novels that I have read at least once already, so that I'm not hung up getting to the end and seeing how it ends. Rather, I can move at a more leisurely pace and soak up the sights and sounds. THE AX is the novel on my short list that I read longest ago (1997). The most recent read is CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER, which I enjoyed earlier this year.

Onward

2011-07-29T06:45:00.001-04:00

We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity. It's the other way around. --Malcolm Gladwell

Exercise (7/28). Press 105 x 3 x 5. Push press 105 x 1 x 5. (Weight x sets x reps.)

Rationality

2011-07-27T21:00:00.002-04:00

Dear economists,

Individuals are not rational. They do not, whatever they think they are doing, act in their own self-interest, economic or otherwise. Thus markets are only efficient in the very long run. It also explains much of politics, which is ostensibly about making life better for one's citizens. Using the political process to achieve this end is like using the toilet plunger to open a carton of milk. The aim is true, but the method ruins the whole lot.

The individual economic actor's motivations are as many, varied and misguided as the politicians. Over long time horizons, they have tended to average out to something like efficiency and collective wisdom. Listening to the market or politicians in any shorter time span seems a fool's errand.

Best regards,
John

Exercise. Squat 205 x 3 x 5

Passed

2011-07-26T21:44:00.003-04:00

I passed the Level 2 exam.

The most interesting thing about this: I was ready to accept either outcome. No, really. I know this because when the email came that said I had passed, I just said, 'Oh,' and Lera threw her arms around me and burst into tears.

It was a nice moment that I will remember always.

The difference between this success and previous failures was the depth of my preparation. Granted, when one has had a run at the test before, the learning curve is not quite as steep. However, much of the material had changed, and never before had I delved so deeply into making certain that I had actual, honest-to-God command of mortarforking topics like inventory valuation and derivative pricing. There is a lesson here, and it goes along nicely with something I read in a Malcolm Gladwell article in The New Yorker.

"We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity. It's the other way around."

Having read that, and read Gladwell's examples, both in this article and in Outliers, and now seen it for myself in this testing process over the past year, I am humbled by it and completely embarrassed that I have put forth such little effort in so many endeavors. As I remind myself often about my own children, if they didn't mess up they'd never learn anything.

Exercise. I also deadlifted today. 255 x 1 x 5

Tomorrow

2011-07-25T11:58:00.002-04:00

Sometime tomorrow morning, the CFA Institute will send an email to tell me if I passed the Level 2 exam and get to spend the next 10 months on investment esoterica. Alternately, I have failed and get to do something else with all that time. After all the studying and time and confusion and what all, either option seems pretty good to me.

Reading. Since I took the test at the beginning of June, I have read quite a bit. Honestly, much of it is not BIG reading: no McEwan or Faulkner or even doorstop fantasies like GRRM. Most of it has been crime fiction, which in retrospect has all been in a similar vein: Elmore Leonard, Robert B. Parker and James Sallis. Sallis' Drive is fantastic: Duane Swierczynski meets Valdez Is Coming.

And actually, the Parker I've been reading has been his latest Westerns, of which I have now read all four and am so very sad that there won't be any more. If you can, try to read all four in row. There is plenty of action in this apotheosis of lean prose, but there is also musing about love and law and the West threaded through all four novels that makes much more sense when you see them all in a row. Start with Appaloosa.

I tried my hand at John Banville, but I prefer Benjamin Black.

GOOD TO GREAT, Baseball edition

2011-06-24T13:02:00.003-04:00

In The Extra 2%, Jonah Keri writes about how the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, miserable bottom feeders of MLB, became the Tampa Bay Rays, perennial contenders in the murderous AL East. The subtitle of the book, which Keri probably had little to do with, is "How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First." What strategies are these? Keri points to arbitrage, simultaneously buying and selling pairs of assets so as to profit from the spread between their prices. And that is certainly important to how the Rays front office thinks about its work. But it's not the most important aspect of the transformation.

The real point is that the Rays employed almost all of the factors described in Jim Collins' Good to Great to build a strong team and resilient organization. Consider Collins' fundamental behaviors to move from good (or in the Rays case, abject) to great:

1. Level 5 leadership. Especially compared to the disaster that was the Rays first owner, Vince Naimoli, the Rays current owner (Stuart Sternberg) and his handpicked lieutenants (Matt Silverman and Andrew Friedman) exhibit leadership that puts the organization ahead of themselves.

2. First Who, Then What. Throughout the book, Silverman and Friedman emphasize who. The most important who is their hire as manager, Joe Maddon, absolutely the perfect person for their system. They similarly install the right people in the front office, and they are always making moves on the team roster, often small moves that aggregate to significant returns.

3. Confront the brutal facts. Keri emphasizes that the Rays made minimal efforts to improve the 2007 team at the margins. They accepted that at best they could get 70 or maybe 75 wins out of the set of players available. So they didn't try to maximize wins in a losing season. They were patient, conserved resources and made a big trade in the postseason to get ready for 2008.

4. The Hedgehog Concept. This one is less clear, but I think it comes from being a small market team with an information advantage. They measure everything. If they have a 'profit per x' or 'win per x' paradigm as in the Good to Great framework, I doubt they'd reveal it so as to preserve their information advantage.

5. Culture of Discipline. This goes hand in hand with getting the right who. They could not draft, spend, trade and play like they do if they did not have an organizational discipline.

6. The Flywheel. Each time they do something right, it makes the next time that much easier. They haven't lost in arbitration with a player, which makes it less likely that they'll have to go to arbitration with players in the future. That kind of thing.

And they move on to ideas from BUILT TO LAST, like Clockbuilding instead of Time Telling, and Preserve the Core/Stimulate Progress. It's very impressive.

This is not to say that Keri's work is derivative, but rather to show that Collins' work is not just about making Walgreens better. These factors are absolutely essential for any organization or person wanting to move from good to great. It also underscores how challenging it is to affect real change, especially when competitors are well-heeled (Yankees) and competition is deathly.

Old and new

2011-06-19T17:40:00.002-04:00

Old. If you like mysteries and you've not yet read Barry Maitland, then you must not love mysteries as much as you think. No Trace is still the best, but its successor Spider Trap is complicated in new and altogether revolting political ways. I have the latest, Dark Mirror, on my desk.

Loved hearing Vin Scully call the Reds-Dodgers games on TV this week. Articulate, erudite and professional: his play-by-play sounds like he's already watched the game and he had time to prepare a script.

New. Sloane Crosley. She's younger than I am, damn it. Her essays get a lot of attention because they are laugh-out-loud funny, but she has the rare gifts of seeing herself outside of herself and being able to write about it clearly and in her own voice. Her first book is I Was Told There'd Be Cake.

The first episodes of Justified will be here tomorrow via Netflix, and I see that in 2012 A&E will have a series based on Craig Johnson's Walt Longmire novels. And there was great rejoicing.

Writing fiction isn't

2011-06-17T14:05:00.003-04:00

Writing fiction isn't seeing your name on the shelf at the bookstore. It's not getting fan mail from actual famous people. It's not being witty on a blog, or getting to write your name in other people's books.

Writing fiction isn't even sighing with hard-earned satisfaction when you finish, or when you breakthrough, or when you come up with a stay-up-and-write-all-night idea.

Writing fiction is two things. Both are hard. 1. It's wondering what if, and how, and why. 2. It's thinking so hard about your favorite what if that you abuse it every single day, frown at it, kill its people, chop its prose, plot and replot its story, threaten its very existence until you have a what if so compelling that other people believe your it, even though they (necessarily) live outside your head and don't know about the threats and torture.

All that stuff in the first paragraph is marketing. If you just want the marketing, there are easier paths to marketing glory than writing a book. Like politics.

Why John Banville is a genius

2011-06-09T10:23:00.002-04:00

It's not his prose styling. It's not his turgid expositions on human nature. It's not his compulsively alluring anti-heroes. It's that he does all this between frequent page breaks so the reader is not overwhelmed before the end of the first chapter. (I'm looking at you, William Faulkner.)

Exercise: Press 107x3x5. Deadlift 245x1x5.

The path to riches

2011-06-07T11:00:00.003-04:00

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone. --Thoreau

I would be extremely wealthy if I could leave politics alone, if I could stop reading the asinine and deliberately deceptive things that politicians say about each other, about business, taxes, money, morals and me (and by me, I mean you, and you, and everyone). It's all nonsense, as there is no single answer to problems that have multitudinous causes. All politics has boiled down to shifting responsibility for anything away from me (whether me is actually me or corporations or people who work or Americans or the wealthy) in proportion to the benefits that are shifted toward me (whether they are taxes or incentives or breaks or righteousness).

Pick an issue, and this is how it falls out. We want Medicare and Social Security, but we don't want to have to pay more or work longer for it. Banks don't want interference on derivatives or higher capital standards, but they want government lifelines, either explicit ones like bailouts or indirect ones like negative real interest rates. We want lower taxes, but we want the necessary functions of government limited to things we don't mind (the military) and to hell with the things we don't understand or really know anything about (the FDA, EPA, Bureau of Land Management, military bands). We want the government to leave our money alone, but we don't mind that they can read our e-mail or listen to our phone conversations, and many want the government actively telling us who we can and can't marry, and to whom and how we should pray.

The thing that continually draws me back in is how easy it is. The contradictions are so obvious. The need to call them out is enormous AND NO ONE IS DOING IT.

But I'm not going to get rich shouting at the rain. Thoreau was on to something. I'm just not sure it works for me.

Ferb, I know what we're going to do today

2011-06-06T20:26:00.002-04:00

Exercise: Ran about two miles today. Not a very hard pace, but lots of leg cramps. I think I need to drink more water.

Story: The very best show on television is Phineas and Ferb. Yes, I just said that the best show on TV in on the Disney Channel, and is also my kids' favorite show. It is that funny.

Started writing today, and was surprised at all the objections that sprang to mind. It's too short. It's not good. It has too many things wrong with it to be able to fix them. You need to change this one thing, and that's going to change all these other things. Fortunately, as with the exercises I read yesterday, I found some unexpectedly wonderful and unremembered things I had written in here that make me want to keep writing the thing.

I am the captain of my soul

2011-06-05T21:17:00.002-04:00

CFA exam: Still done.

Had to do it.

Story: I start writing tomorrow. Today, I did some work, but I also read over some of the work I'd been doing out of The 3 A.M. Epiphany, an interesting book of writing prompts. Some of this writing is very good. Surprisingly good, and I say that having read a lot of the work without remembering the prompt, so it was like someone else had written it. I can't use hardly any of it right now with what I'm going to work on, but it was encouraging to read that today.

Gave up on The Mourner. But I'm going right back in with the following Stark/Parker novel, The Score. All of which is prelude to Hell Is Empty, which should be in the mail tomorrow, and Spider Trap, the next Barry Maitland that I haven't read.

Is there a modern translation of Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris that anyone particularly likes, and is it worth my time to try and find it anyway? The Hapgood translation is available for free on Project Gutenberg, but it's almost as old (1888) as the novel (1831). And I wonder how the thing reads in general. Please don't tell me it's better in French. I would hope that it is.

I am the master of my fate

2011-06-04T19:02:00.002-04:00

CFA exam: Done.

I have absolutely no idea how I did. As is my way, I remember most vividly only the questions I did not know. If I knew the answer, I answered and put it from my mind. So my recollection is probably biased toward what I struggled with. That said, there was A LOT LESS guessing than in previous years. That's a good sign. We'll see.

Serious respect for the two pregnant women who were taking the CFA exam today. Damn.

Now, I get to mow the yard, read books, watch movies, go to baseball games, mow the yard, exercise and leave my office.

(The last few days of post titles come from William Ernest Henley's poem, "Invictus." There's one more tomorrow.)

How charged with punishments the scroll

2011-06-03T15:05:00.004-04:00

CFA exam: Tomorrow. Took it easy yesterday and today. Not trying to fry my brain with last minute cramming. At this point, I don't think it would do me much good anyway. I'm as ready as I'm going to be.

Exercise: Just walking around today. Was going to go to the gym, but didn't really want to be sore tomorrow while I sit at a table all day and answer questions. Next week it's back to the mines, though.

Story: I have been reading The Mourner off and on for a couple of weeks and I really don't like it. Maybe it's because I've taken a couple of weeks, when really you could be done with it in a day. I'll give it another go after the test and see if I can push through.

Mark Hughes did leave Fulham. Aston Villa don't want him. Oops. See: he should have listened to me.

How strait the gate

2011-06-02T10:39:00.002-04:00

CFA exam: 2 days. Lots of review yesterday on the arcana that I just don't quite have down. Well, didn't. Now, hopefully, I understand how to derive partial and full goodwill, and calculate after-tax equity reversion on real estate sales. Yes, it does scare me that I know what all that means. Why do you ask?

Exercise: I was going to lift today, but I decided instead to run. The weather finally turned last night after a very brief thunderstorm. That's good for the kids, because they have their field day at school today. It's also good for me, because the temperature is mild and there's a nice breeze. Still a bit humid, but I'll take weather like this all summer, please, hold the drought.

Story: Going to get Craig Johnson's Hell Is Empty today. I have a huge pile of reading that I get to assault starting Sunday. I am very excited.

Note on sport: Baker hit Votto and Bruce back-to-back last night, and the Reds won on home runs from Votto and Bruce. Hmmmmm. Now if he'd just get Stubbs and his strikeouts out of BP's way, we'd be off to the races.

Also, why would Mark Hughes want to go to Aston Villa? I rather think he does, but I don't understand why. What he needs to do is stay at Fulham, finish in the top half of the table again and win the Europa Cup. Villa are no closer to winning major silverware than Fulham, however much money Randy Lerner spends. I don't think he'll spend much at all, and Fulham have better players already.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

2011-06-01T10:35:00.002-04:00

CFA exam: 3 days. I have reached the point where the stuff I keep missing in questions seems, at least to me, very obtuse or arcane. I am not sure that it helps me to try to understand all of the exceptions. I realize it may help me to try to work backwards from the answers, assuming I can eliminate at least one.

Exercise: I'm going to run a little today, but probably just a few short sprints. It's hot. Damn hot. Real hot. It's so hot I saw these little guys in orange robes burst into flames. It's that hot, you know what I talkin' about.

Story: My piles of story and writing are ready. Four days for them. Then I'm going to crawl inside a book with a pencil and not come out until I'm a beautiful butterfly. Or until I'm hungry.

What is research?

2011-05-31T16:56:00.003-04:00

CFA exam: 4 days. Questions. Review mistakes. More questions. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Exercise: Squat 8-5-3-2-1; 45-95-135-185-205. A little fun with Fibonacci. Press 105x3x5. Hang power clean 95x3, 105x3, 115x3.

Story: Had an idea for the novel I finished a couple of months ago. This idea involves rearranging certain elements of the narrative. In one way, it works, in another way, not. I don't hate the idea, which is too bad because if I really hated it that would mean it was the way to go for sure.

Sports: I dislike Tony LaRussa. But a LaRussafied batting order in Cincinnati would be the bomb. Phillips-Votto-Bruce-Rolen-LF-C-SS-P-Stubbs. You still get Stubbs' speed in front of the big bats every time through the order, but you get to start the game with the big three backed by Rolen.

Also, a brief note on Cardiff City FC. They've been perennial contenders for promotion to the Premier League. They went to the FA Cup Final in 2008. After six years and three consecutive playoff misses, though, Cardiff have cut ties with their manager. They intend to hire Craig Bellamy. His qualifications consist of: he's Welsh. I will lay ANY odds you want that Cardiff will be fighting a battle at the other end of the table next year.

Critical velocity

2011-05-30T12:12:00.002-04:00

CFA exam: 5 days. The home stretch. I need only now to keep doing as many questions as I can stand to do, and then do some more. That's how these things are won and lost. Still a lot I'm not sure about, but at least I know what those things are.

Exercise: Ran today in the hot because Lera took off in the van with my gym bag and weightlifting shoes. Did I mention it was hot? And I was running in the hot? Also, I am dumb.

Story: Dear Authors, If you are considering jumping around in time as your narrative progresses, please don't. Anything that makes it harder for me to understand what is going on is BAD for your story and BAD for you. ... You're going to do it anyway, aren't you? Okay, then let's set some boundaries. First, give us a reward every time you jump back and forth. Don't just dump information/backstory/exposition on us. Make these time elisions worth something NOW, not just as a payoff at the end. Second, consider Ethan Frome and Catch-22. Are your shifts in time (either via frame, a la Wharton, or via crazy, a la Heller) this effective? If not, please abstain. Best regards, John

The thingamabob that does the job

2011-05-28T20:53:00.003-04:00

CFA exam: 7 days. One fricking week. I find that reviewing the flashcards is helpful to really drill in the different effects of the multitude of variables in financial modeling and reporting, but this is certainly not the way to pass this exam. It worked on Level I because there was so much material: they couldn't go as deep with the subject matter and there really was that much computation. Now, I find that it is lots easier to understand, express and recall ideas like valuing interest rate swaps by comprehending the actual concept instead of memorizing an overwrought formula.

Exercise: I picked up Thing 2 from the top row of bleachers at the baseball game today.

The one you're carrying inside your rusty innards

2011-05-27T20:52:00.004-04:00

CFA exam: 8 days. Took another test, which went well except for the questions that are designed to trick you. It's frustrating but part of the ordeal. Have to pay attention so as not to give away easy points. I'll be doing work mostly for the next couple of days, but I am doing a general review, working my way through all of my lecture notes. I'll take another test Monday or Tuesday.

Exercise: I walked down the bus stop with the kids. Twice.

Story: The first Bones with the Gravedigger is still one of the very best episodes, and a truly great story. They completely blew it on sustaining the storyline, though. Writers who write episodically have that problem it seems. On Bones, they screwed up both Gormagon and the Gravedigger. On Alias they were too busy confusing you to have a coherent front of enemies. NCIS actually did that pretty well with Ari, and then again with Michael. Remington Steele only did battle with Norman Keyes three times, but Major Descoyne's daughter never did come back for revenge after they tangled the second time.

Heavy lifting

2011-05-26T15:19:00.003-04:00

CFA exam: 9 days remain. Spent today on two areas that needed attention, one just to make sure that I knew what it is they wanted and another just to make sure I knew what I was doing. Practice exam tomorrow, and then another early next week. I've added about five dozen flash cards in the past week, so I really need to hit that hard again, too.

Exercise: Nope. Shoulda. Coulda. Didna.

Happy birthday, Dad.

Sisyphus

2011-05-25T10:30:00.002-04:00

CFA exam: 10 days remain. Yesterday was given to a frustrating practice test. I didn't do all that badly, really, but the questions here were both obtuse and demanding of a very granular recall of subject matter. Besides penalizing you for doing the geometric calculations instead of the linear approximation. Grrrrrr. Today is review of the areas that challenged me particularly yesterday. Tomorrow will be another practice test.

Exercise: Ran 2.5 miles in what was probably my fastest time ever. I don't know exactly, because I didn't time it, but I finished thinking "That went fast." Running in the middle of the day when the temperature gets above 85 is a mistake.

Keep moving, nothing to see here

2011-05-23T13:59:00.002-04:00

CFA exam: 12 days remaining. Spent this morning looking at what the curriculum says one must know specifically about the most obtuse subjects (foreign currency exposure, the Black-Scholes-Merton option-pricing model, the Treynor-Black portfolio-management model). Looked over flashcards a couple of times, and I'll do it again later tonight. Another practice test tomorrow.

Exercise: Back squat and press. Tomorrow, 3 mile run.

Stories: The Mourner. Reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with Thing 1.

Sunday hath no rest

2011-05-22T19:57:00.002-04:00

CFA exam: 13 days remain. Today was an all-purpose review day, touching on the things that I know I don't know well enough yet. I'll try to handle these things (covered interest arbitrage, swap pricing and valuation, cap/floor valuation with a binomial tree, balance of payments accounting) some every day in addition to my periodic practice tests and flash card extravaganza. I doubt there is a CFA charterholder in the world who actually calculates swap valuation with just a pencil and calculator.

Exercise: Another rest day. Tomorrow I'll be in the gym to lift and row. (That's row, the verb related to motion, not the verb related to argument.)

Stories: After talking to Andy last night, I'm adding The Plot Against America and The Cement Garden to my near-term reading list.

Flash Cardon

2011-05-21T15:56:00.002-04:00

CFA exam: 14 days. Flash cards, flash cards everywhere, and not a drop to drink. Or, flash cards, flash cards, my kingdom for a flash card. That's all we got today. Probably going to take another practice exam tomorrow.

Exercise: Recovery day, which is being spent sitting. This is a poor idea. My hips are so stiff. Have to get up and move around some more.

Stories: I'll read another bit of The Mourner later. Slowly but surely. I really want to read Wicked when I get into my reading spree after the exam, but I need some time to recalibrate my expectations. It will most certainly not be like the musical.

The miracle of compounding

2011-05-20T17:05:00.002-04:00

CFA exam: 15 days. Took first practice exam, got 82% of the questions correct. 82% would pass in most any year. This is a huge relief. It also something to do with luck, since there weren't any really nasty derivatives questions on this one and nothing on deriving free-cash flow from financial statements.

Exercise: Intended to go to the gym, but ran three miles with Lera instead. First back-to-back running days in I-don't-know-how-long. Had to ice my right knee when I got home.

Story: Read a chapter of The Mourner. Last night I watched the last two episodes of this season's NCIS. Man, did they completely whiff on Ziva in Swan Song. Wasn't she supposed to be a super-spy, jaded, dance-with-death type? I liked how they pulled the team together to mourn, but I'm really tired of stories about Vance. My biggest complaint with NCIS though is that they treat these guys like they're spies instead of cops. NCIS: Los Angeles is about 1,000 times worse at that. I like cop shows. Spy shows tend to strain the bounds of credulity simply by existing.

Kick the can

2011-05-19T15:32:00.002-04:00

CFA exam: 16 days. Slashing and burning through the Portfolio Management questions, but I got stuck on some stuff I simply did not understand. I am investing the time this afternoon and tonight to get it figured out so I don't have to punt on the test. I did get all the way through my flashcards once already today, pulling out the ones I missed and the ones I think are wrong. Oops.

Exercise: Ran intervals today over three miles. Back to the gym tomorrow to lift.

I also worked (shock!) and did laundry.

Return to record

2011-05-18T16:18:00.003-04:00

I'm here to confess what I'm doing. That is, I have a lot on my plate, and I intend to use this to record my progress--and submit myself for public ridicule for not actually getting anything done. Yes, public ridicule from a crowd of two is not particularly intense, but I'll take what I can get.

Without further ado.

CFA exam prep: 17 days remain. I'm halfway through Portfolio Management questions. I've picked off all the low hanging fruit and will now have to do the ones with calculations. Went through all flash cards, and I've started writing down the answers that are involved or require a big formula to be sure that I get the answer right, and because I think it helps me recall and retain. I want to get through the rest of these tonight and take subject quizzes tomorrow.

Exercise: Went to the gym and did some light progressions on squat, press and deadlift (8-5-3-2-1). I'll run intervals outside tomorrow, weather permitting.

Reading: As a reward to myself for getting through all of this, I will allow some recreational reading. I've chosen something easily digestible but very interesting: The Mourner, Richard Stark. This is the fourth Parker novel. I have the fifth, The Score waiting in the wings.

I'm also supervising violin practice for the monsters this afternoon, and I'm making dinner. A full, rich day.

Chant

2011-03-08T09:20:00.002-05:00

Yes, the monk kind. The monks of Santo Domingo de Silos were all the rage about 15 years ago (the actual recording is more than twice as old), and they're not even that good. I'm listening to their first recording this morning and find it quite soothing. They might find it soothing also, but probably for the spiritual reasons that their plainsong supports rather than the sonic reasons that I like. I enjoy the elegance of their sound, the single line of massed voices on a modal tune.

They don't make them like they used to.

Not finished

2011-03-01T21:34:00.003-05:00

I completed the first draft of a novel today.

This has happened three times before, on different books. Each time was a moment of celebration. This one I almost didn't mark here. Not because I am unhappy with the product. Rather it has not been the rush of work and striving that the others had. This has been a steady effort, successive turns on a mile-wide flywheel that built momentum 250 words at at time over off and on over the past three years.

When I finished I was disappointed that I was done. I confess, that is a strange feeling. And its strangeness is compounded by a lingering sense that this novel is actually far from done. I know it isn't long enough, but more than that I have only now the slightest inkling what the book is actually about, and who the characters are, and how they grate on each other.

I often think of novelists as tireless and possessed of long sight, folks who can labor interminably over their words and characters. But today I also wrote about a dozen or so new exchange-traded funds and notes, read Jim Collins' latest book about organizational failure (success), took my kids to their violin lessons, read articles for work, answered questions about terminal-year non-operating cash flow of capital projects and watched an episode of NCIS with my wife. The fact that all of these things happened on the same day that I logged the last session on round one of a novel says something, but I'm not entirely sure what.

Perhaps simply that it's a long process. It in this case meaning everything. And that's okay with me. For now. I have one more notch against Resistance to my credit, and that is something indeed.

Violent application of the plan

2011-02-15T14:49:00.003-05:00

The core of Getting Things Done is two important steps: collecting everything that's on your mind, and breaking all of it down into actionable steps. You have to review occasionally, and there's lots in David Allen's books about perspective. Not everyone incorporates GTD religiously, but most of the folks who find something of use there point to some form of both of those key elements.

Here's an interesting corollary to this: when I'm actually doing that--collecting and taking action--the crap that tends to distract me (the Internet, politics, random musical/sports/book obsessions) disappears. I usually don't know it has disappeared, because I'm collecting and taking action. I'm on task and don't notice the stuff that gets me off task.

And it doesn't matter how I achieve that. I've planned out the day hour-by-hour (only works on days I can be certain of lots of time and few interruptions), blocked out whole days for one activity (usually long periods of work, study or writing), rotated between everything I have on my plate, or whatever. Everything works. As Dan John--coach, weightlifter, thrower, author and teacher--says, "Details matter less than violent application of the plan."

That's part of the reason I haven't been writing much about what I'm going to do. I wonder if it isn't possible to do whatever you want to do, as long as you have a plan and apply it violently. Part of that violence has to be a willingness to shred the plan if it doesn't work. And I don't think you even necessarily need a good plan, just a plan--which is something that organizations and corporations with long-term success seem to embrace wholeheartedly. (Yes, I'm reading Built to Last, Jim Collins' first book on 'visionary' companies.)

So, I'm off to commit violence against my plans.

Reading: Built to Last; A Bad Day for Pretty, Sophie Littlefield
Listening: It Might As Well Be Swing, Frank Sinatra with Count Basie

The sound of me working, January edition

2011-02-03T12:38:00.002-05:00

I've been spending A LOT of time at my desk recently, working, studying and writing. I have tended to do so in silence, but I have been exploring Pandora and finding some new things to hear. That said, this is the list of what iTunes tells me I've heard most in the past few weeks.

"Crazy," both the Gnarls Barkley original and the Don Ross cover

Led Zeppelin IV

"Shankill Butchers," Sarah Jarosz, which is interesting to me because I didn't even know about Sarah Jarosz until last week.

"You Know My Name," Chris Cornell, which has popped up first on a universal shuffle three times in the past week

"I'm Gonna Be," The Proclaimers, which is just fun

"The Only One," The Black Keys

"Day Tripper," The Beatles

I'm actually rather proud of this list because it includes some music that isn't more than 15 years old. Now that we have iTunes and XM and Pandora, we don't ever have be exposed to anything new. I mean, I love Clifford Brown as much as anyone, but sometimes you get tired of the trumpet and big clanging ride cymbal. Same with my classic rock standbys. It shocks me that "Day Tripper" is nearly 50 years old, Led Zeppelin IV is 40 this year, and "I'm Gonna Be" is at least 20. I really should listen to something that is younger than my children.

Music so good I can't listen to it

2011-01-28T13:35:00.003-05:00

Sarah Jarosz.

I make myself do chores and work and study and exercise and clean off my desk before I listen to this music. This is for two reasons. One, I will actually do all of those things to earn a listen to Sarah Jarosz. Two, if I didn't put a limit on it I would have been listening to "Shankill Butchers" in a constant loop for two days.

She's coming to Reston in April. We're going.

Outliers and "Michelle"

2011-01-20T10:01:00.007-05:00

The first book I read this year is Malcolm Gladwell's OUTLIERS. In it, he dismantles commonly held notions of success: the rugged pull-himself-up-by-his-bootstraps individualist who rises to fortune on his own insight, effort and moxie. Gladwell contends that success--and consequently, failure--is systemic. That is, success is as much a function of the mores and accidents of culture and context as they are the hard work that is required to achieve.

He hammers on the 10,000 hour rule: it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in most any field. His point about culture and circumstance is that the capacity to get 10,000 hours is dependent on factors over which we have no control. Bill Gates got his 10,000 hours programming through a long chain of fortuitous accidents including the wealthy private school he attended and the money/connections that this school allowed him. He might have worked hard to get his 10,000 hours, but he wouldn't have been able to get them as early in life as he did if not for the systemic factors that worked in his favor without any volition from Gates.

His other example is the Beatles. Much of their success is attributed to the year they spent playing in Hamburg's red light district for EIGHT HOURS a night. Unlike the new popular music acts that are foisted on us today through the wonders of overproduction and AutoTune, by the time the Beatles got their first recording contract, they'd already put in their 10,000 hours. They were far more polished and ready to breakout than they'd have been otherwise.

Today I want to point out tangible evidence of what this 10,000-hour apprenticeship really affords those who push through it. Yes, we all know about the seminal and transformative impact the Beatles had on popular music. But I'm talking something very specific about the creative process: "Michelle."

Everybody knows this, the Beatles' only song with French lyrics. According to Steve Turner's A HARD DAY'S WRITE: THE STORIES BEHIND EVERY BEATLES SONG, "Michelle" was a combination of Paul McCartney's infatuation with Chet Atkins' fingerstyle playing and his derision of Liverpool art students he had known who sang girls songs in Mersey-flecked French. In the original version that McCartney would play for friends, he didn't actually sing any French words: he just groaned in his best Left Bank nasal accent. Apparently, John Lennon actually liked the song, so McCartney retooled it for Rubber Soul.

My point here is that one of the Beatles' most famous ballads was a joke. McCartney couldn't play fingerstyle, and he couldn't even speak French. But when he wanted to get something that sounded kind of like Chet Atkins, and when he wanted to make fun of Liverpudlian poseurs, what he wrote was a pop music classic.

That's why you should want 10,000 hours. It's not a prison sentence. It's an opportunity to turn afterthoughts into excellence.

Once more, but with less stupid

2011-01-13T15:21:00.002-05:00

Barry Larkin is again denied the Hall of Fame. Prognosticators predict that his increase in votes this year over last year bodes well for him next year, the last before the slates of sure-fire candidates becomes eligible.

One problem with that: Barry Larkin IS a sure-fire candidate. And in addition to last year's several posts, I have further proof. Thanks to the fine folks at FanGraphs, behold: Wins Above Replacement for all shortstops in the past 30 seasons. You can see here that our hero is at least as good as Derek Jeter over this time. He's behind only Cal Ripken and Alex Rodriguez (whose values are likely at least a little wonky because of the time they've both spend at third base). He's ahead of Ozzie Smith AND Robin Yount (who'd have had a higher WAR if he'd remained a shortstop).

You can also confine this graph to smaller time periods. In our hero's 19-year career, there are ten rolling 10-year periods. He is never lower than the fourth best shortstop. In seven of those 10-year periods, he is the best (as measured by WAR) or second-best. There are 15 five-year rolling periods, and he's #1 or #2 in eight of those.

You can also measure by team. The only two Reds in the history of the oldest professional baseball team in the world with more WAR as a Red than our hero: two hacks named Rose and Bench.

So my question: if you can't/won't/don't vote for Barry Larkin to the Hall of Fame, do you even like baseball?

Two-minute Tuesday, 1/11/2011

2011-01-11T10:36:00.002-05:00

The first blog post of the year. Usually this is where I talk about what my goals are for this year. Resolutions, I think they're called. I've had mixed success at this endeavor. Some years my goals are concrete and well thought out, measurable and actionable. This has led to success: in 2006 I committed to write 500 words a day and wound up with more than 200,000 for the year. Some years my goals are sort of spur-of-the-moment deals where I say what I'd like to achieve but don't really articulate a plan for it. This has led to success--in 2007 I rather rashly said I'd like to write two novels, and I did--and failure--in 2009 I had a host of goals that at best were reshaped and at worst ignored.

There are several things I'd like to do this year, like pass Level II of the CFA exam (hey, third time's a charm, right?). But I'd also like to focus more on process than outcome. Specific goals drive the work, but I'd like make more of the work itself. For several years now I've wanted to get through the dozens of books I own but haven't yet read. Too often the emphasis becomes getting through the books instead of getting something out of them. I think some of my failures with the CFA program have been an emphasis on getting through the volumes of material rather than actually getting a grip on the material.

I have absolutely no idea how to measure this. But I am trying to cultivate an in-the-moment awareness of why I am doing whatever it is I'm doing. This is the key to The Inner Game of Tennis, which is not a process of application but a process of discernment and observation. Why am I writing this blog post? Well, mostly it's to help me articulate my own thoughts, and to do so publicly so that I can find these words again if I want to and so that I have to communicate them clearly enough that folks who don't live inside my head can understand them. That's the kind of awareness I need when I'm working on the CFA material (why do I need to understand autoregressive conditional heteroskedacity?), or writing fiction, or reading Outliers or going to the gym. What am I doing and how can I get the more out of the doing, regardless of the finishing?

That's a bit more than two minutes, but it's about what I wanted to say.

2010 Review: Fiction

2010-12-31T14:58:00.002-05:00

I read more fiction this year than ever. Of course, I read more books this year then ever before so I guess that's not really a trend. Lots of mysteries this year, or mystery-themed books. Again, present roughly in the order in which I read them:

GUN, WITH OCCASIONAL MUSIC, Jonathan Lethem. Absolutely beyond weird, but grounded in a Chandleresque noir that gives you something to hold onto when the tough-talking kangaroo tries to beat the crap out of the hero. Yes. There's also more than just weird future and noir future here, and a lot about identity.

ONE FOR THE MONEY and HIGH FIVE, Janet Evanovich. During The Snow in February, I read one through seven of Evanovich's Stephanie Plum oeuvre. That's about as far as you can get before they all start to read the same. But ONE is truly, truly funny and completely different from most everything out there (except Evanovich's imitators), and FIVE was a book on a different level. She worked in a higher gear on this one.

MOTOR CITY BLUE, Loren Estleman. The first Amos Walker mystery. The nice writerly thing about this one is how well Estleman frames the story in the context of who Amos Walker is. In the novel we seem get to be his best heroic and hardheaded self, but the frame around that story shows us Walker as the workaday investigator he is. A nice trick. I was not as taken with the sequel, ANGEL EYES, but I like Estleman and Walker enough to keep reading.

THE CHALON HEADS, SILVERMEADOW and BABEL, Barry Maitland. As I have said often, Maitland writes better as he goes along, but THE CHALON HEADS was a truly satisfying mystery. Grisly, as SILVERMEADOW was not, but both were not shy about the coldblooded truths of people who will kill to get their way. Kathy Kolla is a developing character, and SILVERMEADOW builds on that steadily into BABEL, which featured three fascinating twists, one which I saw coming but two I didn't. You really must read them in order. Go get THE MARX SISTERS. I'll wait.

THE SWORD-EDGED BLONDE, Alex Bledsoe. I'm not entirely sure I buy the premise: medieval Sam Spade. But Bledsoe displays some fabulous ideas about magic and some serious character-building chops that makes this slender volume an easy hit.

THE COLD DISH, Craig Johnson. I've read all six now, and can't wait for the seventh, HELL IS EMPTY, in May. But THE COLD DISH, the first one, is still the best. Johnson conveys a true sense of wonder and a keen awareness of human fallibility that has few peers. If there is one book on this list you read, make it this one.

Or this one: THE BROKEN TEAGLASS, Emily Arsenault. It's a mystery, but it's not. It's about growing up, and it's about being young. It's about dictionaries, and it's about how we make choices. I can't say much more without giving the thing away, but if you want to read something truly different, this is what you want.

2010 Review: Non-fiction

2010-12-15T13:36:00.004-05:00

I read a ton of non-fiction this year. A lot of it was in the period right after my CFA exam, mainly mainstream investing books to see if there was any overlap or practicality between what I was studying and what authors (both real investing talents who write books on the side and charlatans who make most of their money writing about esoteric strategies) had to say. Most of these books did not make this list.

In roughly the chronological order in which I read them:

THE INNER GAME OF TENNIS, W. Timothy Gallwey. This book had a huge impact on how I practice music, and its subtle points about attention versus command are applicable to any number of endeavors. I reread it this year and found it just as remarkable. From related reading, I can also recommend The Inner Game of Golf, but not The Inner Game of Music.

THE BLUE SWEATER, Jacqueline Novogratz. If you have any interest in social entrepreneurs or foreign aid or Rwanda, you must read this. Novogratz's title comes from the tale of her own beloved blue sweater, depicting a mountain scene, that she donated to a local charity in northern Virginia in her tween years. A decade later, she saw a child in Kenya wearing this same sweater, and found her initials on the tag.

THE VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE, Nicholas Meyer. He made the best Star Trek movie out of whole cloth, cobbling together disparate versions of a script into the outstanding Star Trek II. (And he got no writing credit for it, which is damnable.) He presents the story of his creative life, from the Around the World in 80 Days he filmed with his friends, father and a Super 8 camera, up through Star Trek and on to his recent efforts. The Star Trek bits are juicy and insightful (including the fluent performance of Ricardo Montalban and Meyer's fallings out with Gene Roddenberry and Leonard Nimoy). The other parts are just as fascinating: for instance, Meyer was the studio publicist for Love Story.

I've already sung the praises of Michael Lewis, but LIAR'S POKER and THE BIG SHORT make my list of all-time favorite books.

THINK TWICE, Michael Mauboussin. This book is what Predictably Irrational would have been if it wasn't trying to be so damn cute all the time. Mauboussin's vocational interests are in investing, but the applications of his insights in this book about how we make poor choices in matters both common and extraordinary are broadly applicable. Worth another read in 2011.

THE CHECKLIST MANIFESTO, Atul Gawande. Like Mauboussin, Gawande is concerned with how we make mistakes. He points out that the increasing complexity of tasks and specialization of skills and learning have not helped prevent mistakes and may indeed foster them. His solution: a simple checklist, not more money, training or experience. He follows the development of surgical safety checklists firsthand, and includes his own study of checklists of airline pilots and construction management. He touches briefly on the use of checklists in an investment context, but his point is that a simply checklist, focused on "killer items," can make the difference between success and failure, which in his profession (a surgeon) is the difference between life and death.

Fantastic technology

2010-12-13T09:18:00.002-05:00

Otherwise titled: Why my DroidX makes me frustrated with Robert Jordan

Northern Virginia's electricity supply is at the mercy of temperamental transmission system. That is, when the wind blows hard, the power goes away. According to folks who've lived here longer than I have, this is not a new development. In my experience, this happens most typically on days when electricity is particularly needful, like days I'm on deadline.

Enter the 3G DroidX. Two months in a row this autumn, electricity abandoned my house on my deadline day. However, having my new phone I was able to access the Internet and my e-mail, and I did my part to bring work to a timely close. I could have done this just as well from Starbucks or Daytona Beach as I did from my house.

This kind of instant access to information and to other people is already taken for granted. I've only had this connection for a few months, and I find myself relying on it, demanding it even. This time last year I would not have contemplated such access--or believed I could afford it. My children are growing up in a world where they will never have actually dialed a phone, or had to rewind a movie. Phones have buttons, and movies are on discs. Instant access to information, people and media is just the way things have always been for them.

As such, I wonder how they will react to speculative fiction.

Take Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, now one book away from completion. The series begins in your basic medieval/post-feudal/non-serf society, with advancing but not robust technology. So much of the plot complication in the book stems from the idea that the protagonists (and even the antagonists) can't locate each other, much less communicate with each other, instantaneously. Hell, they can't even leave messages for each other.

This is also a big problem in The Lord of The Rings, but Tolkien gets a pass here for the simple reason that his "magic" is small. Frodo doesn't get to save the world because he's the most powerful; he does it because he is willing. He has no "superpowers" of his own at all. He has some magical items at his disposal, but they are few and limited in use. If the characters can't call for aid or tell each other what's up, well, that's a function of their limited magic. And since sufficiently advanced technology = magic, and I would argue, vice versa, we can believe that Tolkien's fellows can't do what we can do with our advanced technology because their magic is not similarly advanced.

Not so for Robert Jordan, whose One Power is put to increasingly spectacular uses throughout the series. In the last book we watched Rand annihilate an entire legion of Trollocs with an incredible spree of magic and power. He can travel wherever he wants to in the world, either by Traveling or Skimming, yet he can't just dial up Perrin or Mat or Egwene and say "what's up with you?" Granted, Jordan conceived of this series in the '80s when such technologies were on the still distant horizon, but I can't help but sense a failure of imagination that people possessed of virtually limitless power wouldn't immediately seek to deploy that power toward faster communication over distance. And no, Egwene shouting into people's dreams is not exactly what I would call faster communication over distance.

This is a small thing in the greater context of what Robert Jordan is doing here. But I wonder if such apparent "holes" in the story, however small to me, will loom larger to my children and their friends as they take up these stories. How will the rising generation of speculative fiction authors--both fantasy and science fiction*--deal with readers' expectations in this regard?

*I say science fiction also because this inability to communicate will undermine the credibility of science fiction authors even more than fantasy authors. A society that is capable of faster-than-light travel would surely be able to communicate effectively at distance in something close to real time. No?

I wonder.

A brief political comment

2010-12-08T10:14:00.003-05:00

When my children argue and force me to intervene, I know I've probably done something right in moving toward real compromise, however uncomfortable, if I have made both children angry at me.

So it is with President Obama. If he can have Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow calling for his head while Jim DeMint and the Club for Growth lambaste him over the same policies, he MUST be doing something right.

Two-minute Tuesday, 12/7/2010

2010-12-07T17:24:00.004-05:00

So I'm listening to Don Ross cover Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" on fingerstyle guitar. Yes, I know. But it's AWESOME. Here's the video.

2010 Review: Michael Lewis

2010-12-06T20:58:00.003-05:00

If you're a baseball fan and you haven't read Moneyball, um, are you sure you wouldn't rather be watching football? The thing that got me about Moneyball was the perspective. Michael Lewis wanted to write about why the Athletics punched above their weight, and what he wound up chronicling was Billy Beane's struggle with why five-tool prospects (like Billy Beane) so rarely pan out like they "should." Now, apparently, this embarrassed Billy Beane beyond all measure, but it points to a deficiency in our expectation-making processes, not just as they relate to baseball.

So it was with no small anticipation that I read Michael Lewis' first book this year. Liar's Poker is almost quaint nowadays, with his worry over his first-year Wall Street bond salesman's bonus of $96,000. Which is what sales floors spend on lunch nowadays. But the perspective is fascinating, in that Lewis was able to give you a first-person account of the first exponential explosion of money on the new Wall Street of the '80s, and at the same time step outside himself and see insanity of what was going on around him, how expectations were changing, buckling and forging anew. Liar's Poker made Michael Lewis, but his keen grasp of perspective is what has made him both incredibly necessary and fabulously wealthy.

He reprises his tale of Wall Street run amok (though twenty years later and with money greater by several orders of magnitude that can be expressed only in scientific notation) in The Big Short, focusing on the handful of folks who bet against the American infatuation with easy credit, risible mortgages and willful ignorance. This book is a gem, even though its "heroes" have been reviled by most everyone as profiteers. Lewis goes to great lengths to point out that though these investors saw windfall profits when the defecation struck the rotary oscillator in 2008, the whole crisis might have been avoided, or abated, or limited, if ANYONE had paid attention to them in any of the six preceding years. The "big short" of the title was not something that any of them glommed on to in 2008: by that point if you weren't already short it was too late. The first of them saw this coming nearly six years beforehand, and they were just looking for a reasonable trade to bet against. They didn't expect their profit to come in the midst of a generational collapse of financial markets.

If you are interested in what happened two years ago, or if you've never really understood what happened in the first place, read The Big Short. You'll laugh, shake your head, hate Wall Street anew, and be sure to look for Michael Lewis' next book as soon as it hits the shelves.

2010 Review: Best Book I Didn't Know About Before

2010-12-03T10:23:00.003-05:00

There are so very many books out there I've never heard of, great authors about whom I am ignorant. Yet there are so many books I've had recommended to me, or heard about or even purchased that I haven't read, that sometimes I forget that there is ALWAYS something new out there.

This year, my favorite discovery has been Craig Johnson's mysteries about Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire. They are laugh-out-loud funny at times, a characteristic that compounds as you get deeper in the series and the back-and-forth between the characters has added layers if you've read the other books. The setting is unique and peopled with an idiosyncratic cast that is fresh but authentic: he's not writing stories about crazies in small Western towns, he's writing stories about the crazies in every small community, whether one a single block in New York or a county the size of Massachusetts in Wyoming.

I knew I was on to something good as I got toward the end of the first book, The Cold Dish, and started to feel bad that I was going to be done with it. I wanted it to keep going. I've now read five of these, and there's only one left. Johnson goes on my "Buy It As Soon As It Comes Out" list along with Alan Furst and Barry Maitland.

Two-minute Tuesday, 11/23/2010

2010-11-23T13:24:00.002-05:00

For your consideration:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 is the surest, best-paced Harry Potter movie. It is, sadly, only half a movie. And the very best part was the animation for the story of the Deathly Hallows.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the book, has some considerable flaws, not least among them being its girth and the necessity of winding up all the loose plot threads. However, the chapter at the end with Harry and Dumbledore is astounding.

I have given in and begun listening to Christmas music.

The Broken Teaglass is one of the best books I've read this year. It is not what I expected at all, and perhaps that's part of its appeal. More on this later, perhaps.

If the movie theater insists that I can't bring my coffee in, then they need to sell coffee. Which they don't. Which, really, is probably better for all concerned. But still. I wanted to drink that coffee.

Thoughts on The Hangman's Daughter

2010-11-19T09:52:00.003-05:00

I received this as an ARC from the Amazon Vine early review program. It's available through Amazon on December 7. It's from their AmazonCrossing imprint, which uses Amazon's foreign sites to identify books for translation and sale in the U.S.

This novel has the distinction of both completely new and unfamiliar setting and authentic characters and story. The unlikely heroes, an executioner and a doctor's son, give the reader access to many sides of the crude conditions and bloody mindedness of the mid-17th century, while also conveying the emerging sense of reason and science. Their small Bavarian town is populated with all manner and class of folk, from wealthy burghers, to not-so-wealthy burghers, to tradesmen and wagon drivers and soldiers and orphans. This is not the standard milieu of the thriller or the mystery.

But all that would be for naught if Potzsch didn't also clothe these characters with genuine personalities. They are by turns beautiful, taciturn, violent, vain, noble, vulnerable, quarrelsome, vengeful and petty. Just like real folks. And the story is, for those who demand a measure of verisimilitude, not of all rainbows and happy endings. The saddest and truest part of the plot is when Fronwieser realizes that none of the killing and torture and gossip needed have happened at all, save for a series of honest mistakes and decisions made from fear.

I can only hope that AmazonCrossing or another US publisher will bring the rest of Potzsch's Kuisl books to us, else I'll have to learn German and read them myself.

Two-minute Tuesday, 11/16/2010

2010-11-16T15:47:00.002-05:00

Oh, nothing much. Just reading, mostly. How about you? That's good. Well, let's see. Right now I'm reading an ARC of The Hangman's Daughter, by Oliver Potzsch, translated from the German. Very interesting. A historical thriller. And next is probably something more substantial. I'm thinking Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Yeah, I know. "Kind of a downer" doesn't quite do it justice.

I'm still really enjoying Craig Johnson's novels. The third one, which I just read, takes place in Philadelphia. I didn't buy the whole "pick up our Wyoming cast and drop them in the big city" shtick, but it works very well. There are so few novels in which I laugh out loud, and Johnson's books always do. Oh, it's called Kindness Goes Unpunished.

What happened to Tuesday?

2010-11-03T09:44:00.002-04:00

When my kids are out of school on a weekday, it completely throws off my sense of time, both in the minute-to-minute sense and in the day-of-the-week sense. Apparently, today is Wednesday.

Today is also not a lot of things:

It is not the day I go out and rake leaves, because it's cold and I'm lazy.

It is not the day I'll get the kids and play and watch TV with them because Reed has football practice for another week.

It is not the day that the Democratic Party disintegrates.

It is not the day that the Republican Party begins a new thousand-year rule.

It is not the day that the Tea Party is vindicated, since it's far easier to win an election than it is to govern (see: Obama, Barack).

It is not the day that I get my copy of Towers of Midnight in the mail (thanks to Amazon's Free Super Slower Shipping).

It is not the day that I finish The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, probably, because that book is LLLOOONNNGGG, however charming.

It is not the day that I finally give up on blogging.

They do one thing well, at least

2010-10-28T11:59:00.004-04:00

However bad the last three Star Wars movies were (and we won't go there just now), the Lucas folks demonstrated a keen grasp of trailers. They managed to cherry-pick the very best lines and the most captivating yet unrevealing images to pique interest of both the whacked out fanboy and the casual filmgoer.

(I fall toward the whacked-out fanboy end. I never dressed up as a Star Wars character until my son wanted us to do an all-Star Wars Halloween, but I did consumer all Star Wars related media at a terrifying pace. In 1998, I read all of the Star Wars novels in the span of about two weeks. Yes, that's two weeks of my life I'm never getting back, but I have sent George Lucas a bill.)

Needless to say, I am pretty jaded about Star Wars and George Lucas these days. We don't even own Episode III. That said, this is absolutely beyond cool.

Very something

2010-10-27T13:59:00.004-04:00

Another link to Barry Ritholtz's The Big Picture: however much they blather, these Very Serious People have been, are and seem likely to continue to be Very Wrong People.

Reading: Angel Eyes, Loren Estleman
Listening: "Caravan," Rush

Two-minute Tuesday, 10/26/2010

2010-10-26T10:55:00.003-04:00

When I was in college, my trombone professor, the inimitable Dick Cryder, encouraged us to lower our standards. Not what you tend to think of from a teacher, but the old man was on to something that we too often ignore. If we reached something we couldn't play, he wanted us to make it easier. Instead of playing the whole phrase, play half of it. If you couldn't do that, play two notes. If you couldn't get two notes, get one. Whatever you're doing, start with what you can do without failing. He said to make your standards so low that you trip on them.

You had to understand that you were supposed to play that one, low-standard, so-easy-you-can't-miss not as perfectly as possible. But all you had to start with was one note.

Type A Overachievers (too bad I don't know anyone like that) don't work that way. Typically. Most of my struggles with motivation stem from this. I want to be moving on always to something more advanced, something more challenging. A heavier weight, a better market, a longer story, a shorter story (!), a more intricate plot, Michael Chabon's language, etc.

It's very hard to have low standards.

Essential reading: Barry Ritholtz

2010-10-21T08:47:00.004-04:00

Barry Ritholtz runs one of the most popular financial blogs, The Big Picture. He's also a savvy investor and a healthy skeptic. When Bloomberg's Tom Kean tried to get him to commit to a preferred political orientation, he replied with sagacity: "I'm not a Democrat because I have no idea what their economic policies are, and I 'm not a Republican because I know precisely what their economic policies are."

He has been beating the drum longer and more faithfully than anyone over the falsified foreclosure mess, and continues to call out prominent executives and government officials who insist that nothing is wrong, citing documents, testimony and investigative reports to undermine their whitewash.

Today he is taking on both the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and The Wall Street Journal. It seems that the WSJ has indeed gone the way of News Corp.-owned Times of London.

The sound of you working

2010-10-20T07:13:00.002-04:00

In the midst of my studying back in April and May, I had to ditch the online stopwatch I was using to time my sessions. I like the pomodoro technique, but I hate the timers. Hate the ticking of a real timer, hate leaving a browser screen open for an online one, hate having to remember to actually start it after I set it.

So I started using iTunes. I simply made a couple of playlists that were about 13 minutes long and would bounce back and forth between them ad nauseum. Every 13 minutes I had to get up or go to something else for a moment. Getting back after that moment got to be easier once I got used to it. But the 13 minutes flew by when I was accompanied by music.

Recently, I've found it hard to concentrate on what I'm writing if the music has words. So I've been keeping to classical music, and will stay there until I get sick of it and want to have something else. This week the sound of me working has been Mozart's Symphonies 25 and 29. And, you know, it's kind of cool to think that the sound of me working is written by a master.

Two-minute Tuesday, 10/19/2010

2010-10-19T09:44:00.003-04:00

Craig Johnson. Go on. Your library has The Cold Dish. And if it doesn't, you should inquire as to how your tax dollars are being spent. Johnson doesn't need me to sing his praises: Robert Parker blurbed his first novel, Tony Hillerman his second. And with good reason. The Cold Dish is everything you want in a mystery: compelling characters, unique setting, terrible crimes, high stakes, smart alecky sidekicks. It is the best book I've read this year, which is saying something, because I also read Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker and The Big Short--and Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination. So, yeah, good read.

Two-minute Tuesday, 10/12/2010

2010-10-12T14:11:00.002-04:00

I love a mystery.

Part of what drew me to George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, and what I think the other books have lacked somewhat, was the puzzle that drove the story: why was Jon Arryn murdered? That mystery drove a good bit of the action, including the seminal act that sparked rebellion in the Seven Kingdoms. There remain mysteries to be puzzled out (like why the baby that went with Sam across the sea cried all the damn time, and, lest we forget, the Others and wherever the hell Bran went), but they do not drive the books. The exploration of the world and overt political machinations drive the story in a book this big.

Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson are beginning to draw me back in with various reveals of long-standing Wheel of Time mysteries, but books 7 through 11 were woefully lacking in this: a question to answer beyond will the good guys win?

Even books about thieves, nasty ones, like Parker, have an element of mystery: how will Parker figure out the other nasty thieves? Alan Furst does this well with espionage and politics, even though you know how it's going to turn out.

My two minutes are up, but this is a theme that has me engaged, so I'll probably revisit it soon.

Two-minute Tuesday, 10/5/2010

2010-10-05T09:55:00.002-04:00

So I have to know what happens in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I started reading the damn thing 12 years ago, and I have waited with varying degrees of patience for the series to reach its climax. My patience over the past year has been considerable, as evidenced by the fact that I bought book 12 when it came out last November and only just read it over the weekend.

I have to concede it was impressive, and actually did not suffer from many of the problems I had with books 7 through 11. Whether this is because Robert Jordan's unfortunate death handed the writing to Brandon Sanderson, or whether Sanderson is getting to write the good bits at the end, I'm not sure. Probably a bit of both.

Whatever the reasons for the way this book works, and whatever the reasons for the ways the previous five books just didn't, I am now officially excited to read these again. I have dissed Jordan repeatedly--and his genre subverting evil twin, George R. R. Martin--but I must confess that I love these stories. The books, somewhat less, but the stories are incredible modern mythmaking and I can't wait to get my hands on the next ones.

This one belongs to the Reds

2010-09-29T10:11:00.002-04:00

When the Reds last won the NL Central, Tuesday's hero Jay Bruce was seven years old.

Most sports fans spend a lot of time complaining, about both their team and the other teams. I have done my fair share of both, typically bemoaning the blazing incompetence of Reds management, on field and off. This summer I have had little reason to complain. The Reds tried to derail my study efforts for the CFA exam by putting up the best record in baseball in May. They coasted through July and just when it looked like the Cardinals would deliver the knock out punch in early August, the Reds snapped back and seized a commanding lead in the division that they never gave up.

I am very nearly at a loss for words.

But not completely, so I'll say this. This team is not special. It is just like every other winning team in baseball: starting pitchers go deep in games and limit baserunners, hitters get on base, runners take the extra base, defense is solid and the bullpen has been, on balance, tight. It is not a mystery that this team won. Neither is it a mystery that the no-hit Cardinals will not make the playoffs.

Schadenfreude may be fattening, but it tastes so damn good.

Two-minute Tuesday, 9/28/2010

2010-09-28T10:07:00.002-04:00

I have a lot on my mind today, but little of it is of interest to you. So, a list: The Best Books I've Read This Year, In No Particular Order.

Gun, with Occasional Music, Jonathan Lethem
One for the Money, Janet Evanovich
Motor City Blue, Loren Estleman
The Chalon Heads, Barry Maitland
Forfeit, Dick Francis
China Trade, S.J. Rozan
The Hunter, Richard Stark
Watchmen, Alan Moore
Appaloosa, Robert Parker
Babel, Barry Maitland
The Inner Game of Tennis, W. Timothy Gallwey
The Blue Sweater, Jacqueline Novogratz
ScreamFree Parenting, Hal Edward Runkel
The View from the Bridge, Nicholas Meyer
The Complete Turtle Trader, Michael Covel
Liar's Poker, Michael Lewis
Think Twice, Michael Mauboussin
The Big Short, Michael Lewis

So far this year I've read 69 books, which is about 50% more than I read in all of last year. I find that I write far better, and want to write far more, when I am reading regularly. And, I simply feel better when I have been reading a lot than when I have read very little. I don't know how to credit that, but there it is.

Return of Two-Minute Tuesday, 9/21/2010

2010-09-21T13:57:00.002-04:00

Been a long time, but I decided I liked this little feature enough to pick it up again. Besides, it only takes two minutes.

Let's talk about something I know is itching at everyone: paint. We've been undertaking a massive remodeling here that at one point had us down to one toilet, two sinks, two bedrooms and the kitchen. Everything has worked out great, but now we're painting. TRUTH: No paint covers in one coat. NONE. Anyone who says otherwise is lying and should be fined by the FTC.

Posnanski on Kenny Williams

2010-09-17T13:17:00.001-04:00

Another reason why Joe Posnanski is not the best sportswriter in the U.S.: he's one of the best writers, period. Enough said.

Read his take on White Sox GM Williams.

Coming attractions

2010-07-20T14:44:00.004-04:00

After weeks of no blogging, I am preparing to return to activity here with a series on my August reading list: my collection of owned-&-unread books. I know: how did you get so lucky that I would share this with you? Honestly, I confess this here because I need some motivation to write about these books that I have ignored for so long. Well, some of them I've only just gotten, but they're still mine and still haven't read them yet, so they count.

Seriously, though, how many books do you own that you haven't read? (Andy, you don't have to answer if you can't get it down to a number that doesn't require scientific notation.) We have another problem: movies that we own that we haven't watched. Usually we see them in theaters, get them on DVD and never watch them again.

I have nearly 80 owned-&-unread books. I'm aiming to get through 20% of them (16) in August. I've divided the pile almost evenly between fiction and nonfiction. First up is Charles Fort's The Book of the Damned, which I have resisted cracking since Andy gave it to me because I knew I wouldn't be able to stop reading it. On the fiction side (yes, Fort counts as non-fiction), I'm going to start with the newest Alan Furst novel, Spies of the Balkans.

On a related note: I'm almost to the point where I need another bookshelf.

Highlights

2010-06-08T09:05:00.002-04:00

As previously mentioned, I am not dead. Yet.

I'll get started back up here with some more frequent posts, but for not I'm just going to clear the decks and ramble a bit.

1. To celebrate the end of my studying, Lera and I went to a couple of Reds-Nationals game. On Saturday, we sat about 16 rows behind the Reds dugout and watched Brandon Phillips get his football on against Wil Nieves. The two most impressive things we saw though were rookie Mike Leake (who can HIT) and Jay Bruce's 15-pitch at-bat against Luis Atilano. Atilano got the strikeout eventually, but Bruce knocked Atilano out of the game.

2. Between that game and the one we took the kids to on Sunday, we saw a bit of everything. We saw Phillips run over the catcher to score a run. We saw small ball from both teams. We saw the Reds come back twice to win, including a ninth-inning home run from Scott Rolen. We saw Mike Leake, Atilano, Arroyo and Stammen pitch very well, and we saw both teams blow leads. We saw extra innings, a double steal, a wild pitch, a hit-by-pitch retaliation, a pitcher and manager ejected, a fielder's interference call and two caught stealing.

3. The World Cup starts this week, but before that I'm going to catch up on another sport Americans don't know well: rugby. NBC televised the Collegiate Rugby Sevens Championship, and I recorded all eight hours in HD.

4. Those hanging upside-down tomato planters work spectacularly.

5. A shout out to a people who seem to understand how government should work: Chile. They derive most of their tax revenue from copper production. When the price of copper is high, they have a revenue surplus, which they save and invest. They don't indulge anti-tax zealots who say that the government should refund that money, because Chileans understand that the price of copper will not always be high. Eventually it goes down, which is bad for government tax revenues and the economy as a whole. When this happens, the Chilean government spends what it saved on stimulus and government works programs to keep the economy going until the copper price rises again.

I mention this because I am frustrated at the curtailment of the Fairfax County Library's hours and increasingly obvious cuts to staff and volunteers. Hell, they can't even accept any volunteers because they don't have any staff to coordinate the volunteers. Which is appalling, but is also absolutely idiotic: library use has likely INCREASED since the economy hit the skids, but since the economy hit the skids the county can't fully fund the library. The Chileans could deal with this, easy.

There's a rant here about how Grover Norquist has stolen the soul of true conservatism from the Republican Party by insisting that low taxes are more important than anything, including fiscal responsibility, but I just don't have it in me.

6. Alan Furst's new novel comes out next Tuesday. I'm ready.

7. The problem with Wall Street firms is not that they take significant risk in packaging and/or trading derivatives. The problem is that when they do that and melt down, we won't let them die for it.

8. Off-the-field uniforms for the World Cup. LOVE the three-piece Three Lions suits, LOVE the angled pockets, wide ties and wide collars of the Japanese. Obviously, the U.S. is a little behind the curve here.

9. As if we needed any more proof, but here is a ranking of best shortstops of the '90s ranked by Wins Above Replacement (WAR)--that is, how many wins derive from the actions of a player above what could be expected from a AAA replacement.

10. Geography is overrated.

I'm not dead yet

2010-05-26T12:05:00.002-04:00

I think I'll go for a walk. I feel happy! I feel happy!

No. Not really. But I'll be done studying in just ten days.

Wondering

2010-04-21T06:44:00.002-04:00

Has anyone read The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn? Let me know what you thought about it.

We did finally see Watchmen, so I found a copy of the book at the library and reread it. I had forgotten--or simply did not appreciate on my first reading--how elegantly complex the book was, something that the movie was necessarily lacking. I like the movie, unlike some of the books partisans, but the book is something else again, besides being one of the few credible takes on superheroes in a real world, you know, with consequences and all.

My test fast approaches, so I have forsworn further fiction forays until after the test and am instead salving my aching brain with poetry. Right now, I'm into the big Seamus Heaney collection, Opened Ground.

Playing: Grieg, Piano Sonata; Leif Ove Andsnes

Howay the lads

2010-04-07T16:35:00.003-04:00

As much as I have bitched about them over the past three and a half years, I would be remiss if I didn't even mention Newcastle United's return to the Premier League. I would also be lying if I claimed that not getting to see them on TV has not actually increased my visits to NUFC.com. I could not report on the whole affair any better than Biffa, so if you are so inclined, read what he has to say here.

The whole thing is actually quite an anti-climax. The scariest part for me--and apparently for the players--was a 6-1 dismantling at the hands of lowly Leyton Orient in pre-season. Since then it's all been something of an anti-climax. Clearly, Newcastle is a cut above Championship competition. However, so too are West Bromwich Albion, and they've bounced back and forth between Championship and Premier League for four consecutive seasons. So will Newcastle turn out to be West Brom, or more along the lines of Wolves, who will likely stay up with some room to spare?

I don't know, and much as their new transfer policy is fiscally responsible and common-sensical (only sign players under 26 who can be sold on at a profit if desired), it's not anything that other clubs wouldn't be trying to do intuitively. I think Newcastle's quality is just as likely to be determined by the players they don't sign in the close season as those they do.

There are two areas they can really improve: central defense and speed out wide. But who can't use that? Besides Blackburn. Some combination of Carroll, Lovenkrands and Ameobi are serviceable if not revelatory up front in the Premier League, and there remain a glut of central midfielders on the roster. There are worse problems to have.

For now it is enough that I'll see these lads on TV in August. Worrying that I might not see them win is borrowing trouble.

If a blog falls in a forest...

2010-04-01T14:03:00.004-04:00

Three weeks must be my longest hiatus from the blog in four and a half years. This is telling. I think the impetus for most blogs has been subsumed by Facebook and, for those so inclined, Twitter. The kind of sharing among friends that used to require a long blogroll now requires only a check of Facebook, and as more folks connect there the network effect makes it that much more useful for that task.

Which is not to say that I will abandon this space. I like a lot of what I have written here, and it is an excellent way to check back and see what I thought about x book or what we were doing on y day. I will repurpose the blog somewhat. You may not see a difference, gentle reader, but the distinction will help me get here to write with a clearer purpose.

I will continue to update here on things like resolution status, as I've discovered that distilling my efforts into something communicable in a few paragraphs helps me to understand what I've been doing (or not doing), whether or not it is of particular interest to the universe. I'll also likely report on the good books, music, movies and TV that I encounter, and any related themes or ideas that show up.

Also, I'd like to flesh out some of my thinking into longer essay-like pieces. Most of my writing here has been off the cuff, though some of it has been thought out ahead of time. It is the pieces that I actually put some preparative effort into that I remember best and value most highly. Posts will be more frequent than every third week, but I doubt I'll ever get back up to blogging twice a day or more as I did back in both yore and yesteryear.

Playing: Rachmaninoff, Symphony No. 2; Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Paavo Jarvi. I really want to like this more than I do, but Jarvi's tempi are too stately for my taste. The sonics are resplendent and the playing is peerless. I still prefer the out-of-print Orchestre de Paris/Bychkov recording on Phillips from the early '90s. We're going to hear the Baltimore Symphony play this at the end of April.
Reading: Concourse, S.J. Rozan
Watching: Watchmen. We only got through about an hour of it the other night because the disc from Netflix was messed up. Hopefully we'll get through this tonight.
Studying: 'Explain the potential problems associated with using IRR as a measurement tool in real estate investments.'

Stark visions

2010-03-11T11:36:00.002-05:00

If you have any interest in fiction at all, read Richard Stark's The Hunter.

If you have any interest in graphic novels, read Darwyn Cooke's adaptation of The Hunter.

Just don't expect them to be congruent.

As to the first bit there, The Hunter has a textbook case of anti-hero. Parker is violent, ruthless and really pretty nasty, his only redeeming trait being that he is so damn good at violent, ruthless and really pretty nasty. And Stark's writing is, well, stark. Donald Westlake had about a dozen pen names, this one the most famous. His writing is lean and hard, and it works so well because it is Parker.

As to Darwyn Cooke, his adaptation is the same. Lean, spare, hard. There's a line in The Hunter when Parker is watching television late at night: Stark writes about the blue-white light of the black-and-white TV. It is indicative of the book's age (it came out in 1962), but Cooke does a great job capturing just that flavor with a light-blue color usually being the only break from black and white on the page.

Cooke has done a far more faithful job with the story than Mel Gibson did in Payback (ugh, what a mess). But he leaves out, for justifiable reasons of economy, what I think is THE turning point in the plot. I will not spoil the end if you've not read the story, but let's just say that Stark didn't finish when Parker had his money back from the mob. There's more to the story, and that is what makes The Hunter great, not just seminal, good or groundbreaking. It is truly a great book.

Chronic anglophilia

2010-03-02T12:17:00.004-05:00

A helpless case, truly. And so can you!

Here's a link to episodes of Law & Order UK. (That's United Kingdom, Big Blue fans.) If you're also a long-time fan of the original Law & Order, you'll know how many of these cases turn out because the first season was just lifted from old episodes from the U.S., reworked for the British justice system and advances in technology. The first episode, 'Care,' was excellent, but took a softer line than I remember with Michael Moriarty. Maybe that was just the way he played Ben Stone. These have been great so far. I'm halfway through the first season.

And here's your guide to reading Barry Maitland. He's not gotten the attention he deserves, partly because he has been published, well, inconsistently in the U.S. He lives in Australia. It doesn't appear that any one publisher owns the rights to all his books in the U.S., which I would assume makes them somewhat harder to promote.

It may also be that Maitland is just now getting noticed because his books, as I've I said before, get better as he goes along. So, start with No Trace. That one should be at B&N, and you can get it quickly from Amazon. It's got a long, twisty plot that turns back on itself many times, killing most of the suspects along the way. Oh, by the by, these are not slasher thrillers like Karin Slaughter or Tami Hoag, but the crimes are gruesome. Just fair warning.

After No Trace, read them in order. This will not be that difficult, as all the B&Ns (at least around here) have The Marx Sisters, the first novel, in stock in trade paperback. This one takes its time getting started but its plot is a good bit more linear than some of its successors.

The next novel, The Malcontenta, could be a challenge, but it has been a mass-market paperback in the U.S. I found this at the library. Its successor, All My Enemies, is available as a trade paperback in the U.S. Good luck with The Chalon Heads, and those that follow until you get caught up with No Trace. Try the library or buy used on Amazon because they just get better. The Chalon Heads was 'unputdownable.'

Playing: 'Saturday Night Special,' Lynyrd Skynyrd
Reading: A Great Deliverance, Elizabeth George
Studying: 'Critique the statement: no equity investor needs to understand valuation models because real-time market prices for equities are easy to obtain online.'

15%

2010-02-24T11:05:00.002-05:00

Just 310 days left in 2010.

I don't feel like I'm hitting my stride. However, I am more comfortable identifying what I should be doing and allocating resources to do it. Not that I'm good at that. Just that I'm getting better. Which was one of my priorities: make better mistakes. I feel like I'm doing that.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

I think that (or something very like it) is Thoreau. (Emerson? I get them confused and I'm not taking time to look it up right now). That is one of the biggest things. Figuring out where the time sinks are and evaluating whether they're actually useful or not. Television is generally not. By the same token, much of the time I spend on the Internet is not.

To help with that, I am physically writing down on a sheet of paper what I intend to look up, read or investigate on the Internet before I click on the Firefox icon. When I get to the end of the list, I stop. If I am pointed at something else that's interesting, I bookmark the page in a 'Read Later' folder and come back to it at another time. That seems to be working fairly well so far.

As for my other priority, making linear, incremental progress every day, that's a mixed bag. I am reading, writing and studying every day. Now that I've chopped most TV watching out of the day, I find that I have all this extra time to read. What a concept. I feel like I could use this time to write more, but I like that my expectations (250 words per day) are comfortably low. I don't have to feel bad about not hitting a higher target. Studying could go faster, and part of that is identifying exactly what needs to be done every time I come to the books. It's too easy to be overwhelmed by the volume of material whilst and at the same time failing to practice and review the stuff you know you don't know.

So the big lesson in the first 15% of the year is that identifying your needs is the first step in being productive. That said, I need to get my butt back to the gym. The mountains of snow conspired to keep me out of the gym for a couple of weeks. Now I'm out of the habit.

Reading: Hot Six, Janet Evanovich; China Trade, S.J. Rozan
Playing: 'Long Train Runnin',' Doobie Brothers
Studying: 'Define a justified price multiple.'

Shovel. Read. Repeat as necessary.

2010-02-18T15:30:00.000-05:00

Rearranging snow and reading books. That's about all I've done for two weeks.

So, the list of books, dominated by Janet Evanovich's unique brand of brain candy:

One for the Money, Janet Evanovich
Motor City Blue, Loren Estleman
Two for the Dough, Janet Evanovich
Three to Get Deadly, Janet Evanovich
The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza, Lawrence Block
Four to Score, Janet Evanovich
Writing the Popular Novel, Loren Estelman
Eat This Not That, Zizcenko and Goulding
High Five, Janet Evanovich

Here's the thing about reading, especially reading that we do to escape: we want our heroes to do the stuff we can't or won't do. We like private detectives who crack wise even as they're having the crap beaten out of them or a gun held to their heads because that's what we'd want to be doing, instead of wetting ourselves. We would love to use a stun gun on a particularly vile co-worker, as Lula does no fewer than three times in Four to Score. We cheer that Bernie Rhodenbarr plants evidence on guilty parties to make them look sufficiently guilty before the law because part of us feels right knowing that justice is done, albeit dubiously. And we like Stephanie Plum because she is like us (generally clueless and overmatched against a host of adversaries) and she is not (tenacious and loyal with a blind fervor that is as amusing as it is unlikely).

This is worth remembering, both in how I evaluate what I'm reading and how I plan what I'm writing.

Playing: "Your Cent," Ninth & Lincoln
Reading: The Chalon Heads, Barry Maitland
Studying: 'Explain how to estimate a required return based on any dividend-discount model, and calculate that return using the Gordon growth model and the H-model.'

As predicted

2010-02-02T12:55:00.004-05:00

Expanding Academy Award nominations for Best Picture is good, right, decent and true: Up gets a nomination. Of course, so did The Blind Side. Again, we uplift the marginal in this system so as to also draw attention to the ghettoized. So long as Avatar (technical brilliance, plot adequacy) or The Hurt Locker (which I haven't seen yet but oh yes I will) win over Up, I have no problems.

Two-rant Tuesday, 2/2/2010

2010-02-02T12:21:00.002-05:00

How is it that Beyonce wins so many awards when she never sings more than five notes? I mean, besides the fact that she's gorgeous and her music videos cost more money than I've ever made in my entire life.

You know, I'm never going to buy a Kindle or an iPad, so can Amazon please leave out the petulant teenager act and put Macmillan books (at least dead-tree editions) back up on its website? As John Scalzi points out, this is not going to hurt Macmillan or Amazon near as much as it's going to hurt authors, especially those midlist folks who need these sales to justify another contract.

Playing: Rachmaninoff, Concerto No. 3; Arcadi Volodos, Berlin Philharmonic and James Levine.
Reading: The Burning Land, Bernard Cornwell.
Studying: 'Explain the limitations to correlation analysis, including outliers and spurious correlation.'

8.493%

2010-01-31T16:09:00.003-05:00

31 days of 365 spent. My return on those days: pretty good. I've gotten a good bit read and I am pleased with my progress studying. I have done poorly with my 250 words every day on the writing front, but that is much improved over the past few days and I'm hitting February with some momentum.

The biggest challenge: committing to 25 minutes of work. It doesn't seem like it should be that hard, but when there's study subjects that I dislike or work that I could really put off, it is very easy to waste time on Facebook. Which is ridiculous, because I am always amazed at both how quickly the 25-minute periods go by and how much I can get done. Often, I want to keep working at the end. So this is a discipline thing. Anybody know where I can get me some of that?

On the Wii: Mario SuperSluggers.
Watched and now I want to read the source material: Meet the Robinsons and Jumper.
Studying: 'Critique company policies and practices related to research objectivity and distinguish between changes required and changes recommended for compliance with Research Objectivity Standards.'

Context

2010-01-28T14:45:00.002-05:00

If Alan Parsons' 'Eye in the Sky' had been recorded five years later it would have been an all-out power ballad. Think about it.

Playing: 'Fire on High,' ELO
Reading: Gun, with Occasional Music grows on me. So much so that I think I'm going to reread As She Climbed Across the Table.
Studying: 'Justify an estimate of continuing residual income at the forecast horizon, given company and industry prospects.'

No-rant Tuesday, 1/26/2010

2010-01-26T12:00:00.004-05:00

I've got nothing. Really. I'm aggravated that the power outage we suffered yesterday seems to have fried the floor lamp in my office, but that just means that now I can go get a lamp I actually like.

And, you know, I'm really, really glad that the Vikings lost that game BECAUSE FAVRE SCREWED UP. Joe Posnanski put his finger on it: deep down, Favre doesn't want a defensive lineman to make him a purple streak on the field. And that's too bad, both because fans and media have concocted this image of Favre as a 'gamer' and a tough guy--but more importantly because if Favre runs five more yards and lets the defenders take him down Minnesota kicks a field goal and goes to the Super Bowl. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha...

Schadenfreude tastes so damn good.

Come back next Tuesday. I promise to be extremely pissed at something by then.

Playing: 'Long Train Runnin',' The Doobie Brothers
Reading: Still Gun, with Occasional Music. This is the first book I've read this year that I'm going to have to make a determined push to get through, because it's not doing it for me. There's just a lot of weird for weird's sake here. And I only get into that in completely off-the-wall, House of Leaves type things.
Studying: 'Indicate why elminating rivals is a risky strategy.'

One-rant Wednesday

2010-01-20T11:08:00.002-05:00

Just one slice of deep-fried invective today, friends. I'm flogging a new time-management idea from Wayne Cotton, and I've only a moment. But I wanted to share this.

When I was growing up (oh, you know it's good if it starts out like this), newspapers were better. They were necessary then, unlike now, but they were also useful. They also had great comics.

Every fricking day, we got new stories from Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, Doonesbury and Bloom County. (This was back when Doonesbury was still funny and not just alternating between satire and barely contained rage.) There is not a single comic on the page in today's Washington Post that compares to one of these on its worst day.

In this spirit, I give you two lists of strips that should be executed.

Playing: "I Love You," Anita O'Day. BONUS RANT: The new Michael Buble album sounds like it was made by someone trying to sound like Michael Buble, not the actual guy. Very disappointing.
Reading: Gun, With Occasional Music, Jonathan Lethem
Studying: 'Explain the target capital structure and why actual capital structure may fluctuate around the target.'

Two-rant Tuesday, 1/13/2010

2010-01-13T17:07:00.003-05:00

Dear fellow who was jogging last night in my neighborhood just after dark,

It's January here in the Northern Hemisphere and Daylight Savings Time in northern Virginia, which means it's fully dark by 6. Sorry. It sucks, I know. But it's still dark. So running in the street = not very good idea. Also, your red sweatsuit, however bright, still looks black unless my headlights are right on you. Because, you know, it's dark.

Thanks and best,
John

I seem to have agreed to run in the George Washington Parkway Classic 10 Miler in April. That's a lot of running. Not quite sure what I was thinking there. I blame it on the pretty girl who asked me. Not much of rant, except to say that I'm dismayed at this distance.

Playing: "Let's Go," The Cars
Reading: Evil Under the Sun, Agatha Christie
Studying: 'The candidate should be able to calculate the book value effect of a share repurchase when the market value of a share is greater (less) than book value per share.'

And now for something completely qualitative

2010-01-08T09:55:00.004-05:00

Thank God I have done my duty. --Vice Admiral Horatio, Lord Nelson

I often disagree with Paul Daugherty, sports columnist for the Cincinnati Enquirer. He dislikes SABR stuff in baseball, and like many long-tenured columnists sometimes opines from orifices other than his mouth.

However, he makes a compelling (albeit quantitatively unverifiable) apology for Barry Larkin's above-average but not absolutely sterling counting stats:

If the Reds needed him to hit leadoff and steal, he did that. If they needed him to hit homers and bat 3rd, he did that. If they needed a runner moved from 2nd to 3rd, Larkin would shorten his stroke and hit the ball to the right side. When almost no one else was in the clubhouse after a loss, Larkin was, answering every question.

In other words, he did his duty, whatever it was--AND he was a sufficiently skilled all-around player to actually achieve that duty. In 1995 Larkin won the MVP without having the best counting stats. The writers rewarded him for the obvious way in which he picked that team up and carried it into the playoffs, much like Jimmy Rollins did with the Phillies in 2007. In 1996, the Reds lacked the power bat that had backed Larkin the previous year, so he became that bat. In so doing, he was the first 30-30 shortstop.

And really want to know if any of the clowns who had the cheek to vote for Eric Karros, Ellis Burks and David Segui (DAVID SEGUI?!!!11!) failed to vote for Larkin.

Barry Larkin and Win Shares

2010-01-07T10:10:00.006-05:00

Because I know you can't get enough of my spittle-flecked invective about this.

The arguments against Andre Dawson are largely from sabremetrically inclined folks--that is, people who tend to think that on-base percentage is a better measure of production than batting average or runs batted in, and that there are more accurate statistical ways to represent value than counting stats like hits, errors and ERA. Folks who dislike 'nerds' who 'take the joy out of the game' with their calculators are in effect saying that position players who don't help the team by striking the ball are not actually contributing. They're 'clogging the bases' with walks or making 'unproductive outs' with strikeouts instead of sacrifice bunts.

This is, of course, ludicrous. The point of the game is to score, and the only way to score is get on base. Walks get you on base. Sacrifice bunts do not. Sacrifice bunts are not an attempt to get on base. Strikeouts are--a failed attempt, true, but an attempt. Besides, does a light-hitting center fielder who covers the gaps and doesn't let a ball get past him really not contribute to the team?

Which is a long way to go to get to Win Shares. Basically, Win Shares considers a player's contributions on offense and defense in the context of his team performance, adjusted for several variables like the difference between hitting in Coors Field and Dodger Stadium. Its main purpose is to distill a player in context and compare him to any other player, regardless of position. (Many sabremetric folks have some issues with Win Shares, but the basic idea is widely accepted.)

The great thing about Win Shares is that its use highlights how truly great the best players were. Only rarely does it point to players who were underrated in their time, as Joe Posnanski discovered with Ken Singleton. But Posnanski also uses Win Shares to demonstrate how truly dominant Joe Morgan, Mike Schmidt, Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols were/are in their respective times. No 'nerd' hater could disagree with a claim that those four players are among baseball's all-time elite.

So.

Via Cardinal Nation, of the folks on this year's Hall of Fame ballot, Barry Larkin has more Win Shares than only two: Tim Raines (who should get in but probably won't) and Robert Alomar (who will get in next year, and would have this year if he hadn't spit on that umpire). Furthermore:

-Barry Larkin (347) has more Win Shares than Andre Dawson (340).
-Hell, Larkin has more Win Shares than Mark McGwire (342).
-He has nearly 10% more than Alan Trammell (318), even more than that over sabremetrician-favorite Edgar Martinez (305) and a yawning gap over Kirby Puckett (281).
-He has more Win Shares than eight of the last 15 inductees to the Hall of Fame, including the only middle infielders, Ozzie Smith (325) and Ryne Sandberg (346, excluding Ripken because of the years he played third base).

The only legitimate knock on Larkin is that he was oft-injured. That's it. In spite of that he still managed to generate superior performance relative to his peers over five-year stretches spanning 16 seasons. His counting stats aren't mind-boggling, which hurts him with folks like Howard Bryant. But that also means that his fielding must have been beyond exceptional to amass that many Win Shares.

Voting for Dawson is largely a function of ignoring his more complex stats (like OBP) and wallowing in his counting stats (HR, mainly) and intangibles: MVP, Gold Glove, 'fear' and 'intensity.' Not voting for Larkin is ignoring his positive intangibles (same team for 19 seasons, leader, World Series ring, MVP, Gold Gloves that would have gone to Ozzie Smith) AND his complex stats (OPS+, Win Shares) while focusing on his single negative intangible (injury) and his counting stats (which are still better than peers and predecessors at his position).

The more I dig into this the more incredulous I am at the BBWAA. I thought Larkin had a borderline case to make the Hall of Fame, but I am now convinced that this is an absolute no-brainer. Unfortunately for Larkin, 48.4% of baseball writers have exactly that: no brains.

Survey says 48.4%

2010-01-06T14:19:00.004-05:00

So apparently 48.4% of the Baseball Writers' Association of America are idiots. I was right, in that Larkin got at least 50%. But the problem is that the writers who voted against Larkin (and deserving others like Edgar Martinez) have either no strategy for making their decision or have one that, however well articulated, is absurdly myopic and obviously ignorant of Baseball Reference.

Consider Howard Bryant of ESPN. In his report on his vote, he gives six criteria for that he thinks make a player hall-worthy. None of them are bad, and you could base your vote on any single one to demonstrate that you actually gave the matter some thought. Unfortunately for Bryant, two of his criteria BLATANTLY CONTRADICT EACH OTHER. Witness:

2. Dominance over longevity
3. Lengthy period of top-level production

Uh huh. Further, in his explanation of #2 there, he wonders 'During a five- to seven-year period, was this player the most dangerous, dominant SOB in his league?' Which is the wrong question to ask, else THERE WOULD NEVER BE A SHORTSTOP IN THE HALL OF FAME (except Ripken, who gets in as much for being a stand-up human and the Streak as anything else).

When he gets down into #3 he's really grasping at straws, throwing up Dave Stewart and Albert Belle as examples of meteoric superiority that didn't last long enough. Let's take these one at a time. He complains that Stewart's four 20-win seasons were sandwiched by long periods of mediocrity. Now wins are an overrated stat, but since that's what Bryant is dealing in, let's talk about losses: in THREE of his four 20-win seasons, Stewart lost at least 11 games. His ERA+ for his entire 16-year career is 100. That means that he was precisely average over the course of his career. He had a seasonal ERA+ greater than 118 just three times, and one of those was in his first season when he pitched only 43 innings. My point is that Dave Stewart isn't in Hall of Fame because he wasn't all that remarkable in the first place.

Albert Belle, on the other hand, was first, second or third in Runs Created three times, and in the top 10 six times (which would fit under Bryant's five-to-seven year window for #2). In 10 seasons as a full-time player he averaged 37 home runs and 100 RBI PER YEAR. If you don't like Albert Belle, which is fine because I don't like Barry Bonds, that's fine. But saying that Albert Belle didn't produce beyond a five-year window or that he wasn't a dangerous SOB is altering history to fit your version of it.

Barry Larkin was among the top five shortstops in Runs Created in every five-year span starting in 1987 and going through 2002. That's sixteen seasons and 12 five-year spans. That period exposes him to both the low-scoring late '80s and the steroid-fueled late 1990s, and compares him at various points in his career to Ozzie Smith, Cal Ripken, Alan Trammell, Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter and Nomar Garciaparra. No player who, like Larkin, was elected to 12 All-Star teams isn't in the Hall of Fame.

You wanna be subjective? OK. Was he ever the most feared SOB in the league? No. Did pitchers worry if he came up late in the game with a runner on? Um, yeah. Top 10 in AB/SO six times. He took three Gold Gloves away from OZZIE SMITH, who is only in the Hall of Fame because of his career as a vacuum cleaner for the Cardinals.

I could go on, and I likely will when I read more ridiculous assertions about how out machines like Andre Dawson were 'feared.' Suffice to say for now that 51.3% probably means that Larkin goes in next year with Blyleven and Alomar or the year after. That doesn't mean the writers know what they're doing, though.

I miss FireJoeMorgan.

Reckoning day

2010-01-06T10:47:00.004-05:00

In a little more than three hours, we'll know without a doubt whether the baseball writers of America are collectively idiotic--even what percentage of them tried to spare such an ignoble fortune. It all boils down to one question.

Is this man going into the Hall of Fame?

I just don't see how you argue against him. He was better than his peers at his position, better than predecessors at his position, and better than other players at his position who are already in the Hall of Fame. The notion that some players are deserving of 'first-ballot' entry into the Hall of Fame and others are not is a notion that some baseball writers have concocted to stratify the unbelievably great players (Ruth, Mays, Aaron, Williams, DiMaggio, Morgan, Brett, Schimdt, Bench, Henderson, etc.) from simply great players, and in the process puff up the writers' status as arbiters of greatness. The Hall of Fame itself makes no such distinction--there is not a special room for the guys who get in the first time up--and unlike football polls there is no extra voting for a first-place player.

I think Larkin gets at least 50%, which bodes well for future induction, probably next year. I also think the BBWAA is myopic and generally full of crap.

N.B. The baseball card above is from the 2000 Topps HD set, the last set of baseball cards I ever hand collated. It was a beautiful set on heavy card stock with high-resolution photos front and back and a high-gloss finish. They made one more set the next year and then discontinued it. This is my favorite Larkin card.

Two-rant Tuesday, 1/5/2010

2010-01-05T09:28:00.003-05:00

SPORTS: Let's be clear. TCU and Boise State played a truly godawful game last night, but the BCS still sucks. The only way to fix this is with a playoff, and that still would suck because of how teams like Texas always fare in polls. But ANY kind of playoff is better than what we have now.

BOOKS: This is old, but it has bothered me for quite a while. Can anyone explain to me why James Patterson needs TV commercials to sell his books? They say, very plainly, James Patterson on the front, and that in and of itself and all by its lonesome seems like a license to print money. Why, why, why would the publisher shell out for primetime commercials for a book that's going to sell anyway? Why not funnel some of that promotion money into lesser known authors? Well, because we don't know if people will buy them like they do Patterson. Better to pay to advertise something we know will sell and not take any chances with this much of the promotion budget. IS IT ANY WONDER PUBLISHERS DON'T UNDERSTAND E-BOOKS? They can't even figure out how to waste money right.

BONUS RANT: Dear Bowl-game TV Producers, Thank you for showing clips of every marching band at a BCS bowl. No, really, that's awesome. Please understand, though, that when you put a microphone next to a marching baritone, all we'll be able to hear is the baritone. Same for putting a microphone next to a bass drum, piccolo or cowbell. Just so you know.

2010 (not the Arthur C. Clarke one, I hope)

2010-01-02T13:37:00.005-05:00

I have only two resolutions this year. I have made them into broad guidelines rather than concrete and prescriptive because, honestly, I usually suck at that kind. (See 2009). I also wanted any resolution I made this year to be appallingly easy to achieve. So here they are.

1. Make better mistakes every day.
2. Make minute, incremental, linear progress every day.

I think the two are likely related. We'll see how much.

The first is an acknowledgment that I will manage to fuck up this year. It is also a guide to actually LEARN from such shortcomings rather than wallow in misery about them. Sadly, I am so much better at wallowing than I am at learning.

The second is a falling-off-a-log method for actually moving myself closer to what I want to achieve. Usually in this resolution space I list five to ten major life goals that I want to reach. I strive to move in that direction, but between what I do and what I want falls the shadow, as Eliot would say.

So this year, I am making it easy--and flogging the whole pomodoro method to death. For the CFA exam, all I require of myself is that I study for 25 minutes at a time. I'll want to do this four to six times a day, but I only have to do it for 25 minutes. You can tolerate almost anything for 25 minutes, and I don't have to feel like I must get through x number of chapters or questions in a single sitting. Just 25 minutes.

For reading, I intend to read something unrelated to the exam for 25 minutes every day. No book counts, no specific things to have read by the end of the year, just 25 minutes. Even I can find time for that. For writing, I'm making it even easier, wanting only 250 words every day. That takes me less than 10 minutes, usually, but aggregated over the whole year will be more than 90,000 words. That's a novel.

As for exercise, I intend to follow a simple linear progression of weightlifting and running every other day (lift MWF, run TRS, or some such). All I have to do is show up and do it. I have set no goals beyond showing up every day to do the work. I am intrigued by the Tactical Strength Challenge, and I'll assess whether I'll be able to do one AFTER I take the CFA exam. But for now, all I have to do is show up.

And finally, I want to spend at least 25 minutes per week working on all of the home improvement projects that we've started and never finished. Right now that means the window in the downstairs bathroom and quarterround in our bedroom. It may take several weeks, nay months at that rate, but it is a pace I am certain I can maintain.

If I should gather to myself more projects and goals for the year, then they too will be subject to minute, incremental and linear progress. If you see me out somewhere, or you're just bored at your computer one day, ask me or send me an e-mail demanding to know how I'm doing. I'd appreciate the added accountability--or at least fear the potential embarrassment.

Playing: Mahler, Symphony No. 5; Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti.