On the road, here’s my self-portrait. That’s an empty section of road, and I’m somewhere in the shadow.
Dissertation meeting today. Spent a few hours with my adviser, talking about my literature and what else needs to go in it. “Add this, don’t forget that, have you considered this other thing?” And then there’s the method. Always there is the method.
My adviser is very good, and very sharp. If you looked just at his vita you’d wonder how he does all of the things he does. And then when you speak with him a few times you see how. It is possible that he is thinking of two or three hefty things at one time.
So that was the morning. And then I held class in the afternoon. The students were finishing up the last of their presentations. These were their presentations on a media outlet they’ve chosen to follow and write about all semester. Their talks have been very good.
After class I had a meeting with next year’s ad manager. She’s very enthusiastic. Also I met for a few minutes with next year’s editor-in-chief. These early conversations with the new students every year are always a lot of fun. There’s always a lot of energy and ideas, and it is neat to see them grow into the jobs.
The Yankee and our friend Melissa at last weekend’s conference.
I like lamp. From Famous Dave’s.
The candle of truth, lighting the way and solving petty disputes. Whomever can stand the heat longest wins the point.
Who’s there? Through the peephole.
Flamingos dotted the Samford campus on April Fool’s Day.
The meteorological ceiling on the drive home.
The flowering dogwood in our yard.
Plainsman Park panorama, using the free app on my iPhone. The panorama isn’t perfect, but it shows the beautiful weather we had at the baseball game this afternoon. The important part is that this was shot and stitched together on my phone. The important part was not that Auburn fell to number one Vanderbilt 6-2 and was swept in-conference on consecutive weekends for the first time since 2007. We had beautiful weather for a day at the park, though. Click to embiggen the panorama.
photo / Samford / site / Thursday — Comments Off on “The hedge fund you’re looking for isn’t here anymore” 31 Mar 11
The newest slender section of the site is going to look that that. I’m tinkering with the design now, so I thought I’d throw the picture up here. Of course I’ll tell you all about it when the page is ready to go.
Class today, reading today. Also, the sun came out. I’d have to check the meteorological records for three or four cities, but I believe this was the first time I’d seen that big ball of fusion in more than a week.
Those were the highlights of the day.
And I also re-discovered Golden Smog:
You know your supergroup is on an extended hiatus when the record label links to the official site which has been taken over by a hedge fund:
The (economic) crisis also demonstrated flaws in large financial firms. These start with the too-big-to-fail problem. Large banks cannot be allowed to go down; knowing that, their creditors lend without monitoring their risks; as a result, their risk-taking is undisciplined. At the same time, each trading desk within a large banking supermarket has strong reason to load up on risk. If its bets come good, huge bonuses will ensue. If they go bad, the losses will be spread across the whole institution.
[…]
The question for policy-makers is what kind of financial institution will absorb risk most efficiently—and do so without a backstop from taxpayers. The answer awaits discovery in the story of A.W. Jones and his descendants. The future of finance lies in the history of hedge funds.
The page on starting a hedge fund redirects to a 404.
Now if it only felt like spring. It is cold, and this is no fun. The high was 58 and it dipped into the 40s, but this was the cold version of the low 40s.
Busy day today, class, the newspaper, radiation. Don’t panic. Your microwave, when it is cooking your television wrapped in aluminum foil, emits more bad stuff. Just don’t go outside and lick caterpillars and you should be fine.
I blame this guy, ousted state supreme court justice Roy Moore. He’s more radioactive than anything else in the air around here. Drummed off the bench because he misread the times in defying a court order, badly defeated twice for the GOP nomination for governor and now he’s considering running for president.
In one of my recent comps questions I was asked to design experiments that would help a potential candidate determine a.) if she should run and b.) how she should run. The only solution I did not include was “Float a trial balloon and read the comments.”
Here’s my favorite from that story, the easy majority of which are adamantly against our old friend Roy Moore running for president.
“Roy Moore will become the Shorty Price of presidential elections.”
Here’s longtime political reporter Bob Ingram, many years back now, reminding people of Shorty Price.
There’s a restaurant I occasion with a picture of Shorty Price hanging in the restroom. The guy was such a character that he probably would have appreciated that gesture.
Roy Moore is no Shorty Price, though.
In class today we heard a presentation on social media tools, which was nicely done by the students. I’m working on this and that, elsewhere. Trying to get my act together for the dissertation. I started recycling a bunch of old newsprint today, too. ANd the student-journalists are hard at work putting together their paper for the week. Hard to believe their year is almost over, they’ll only have four more issues after this paper.
Took part in a teleconference tonight with Public Square an online organization with the goal of fostering debate on political, legal and social issues. I mention this because I get to serve on the board of directors there. They are thoughtful people doing interesting work with big ideas. Also, the call was in high definition. I hadn’t realized that had become a necessary function of the conference calling business, but there it was, in beautiful bit rate. The sound effects are still pretty basic, though.
And then there’s this. I’m guessing it will be ugly for two days and then disappear for a long while. Then it will come back again with more ground-shaking, but plausibly odd assertions, which is all you need as evidence in the sporting world these days. We’ve seen these things before, you see.
Yesterday … yesterday was a day. It. Would. Not. End.
Which sounds negative, but let me tell you why it was not. I woke up in the 501 area code. I had a late breakfast with my lovely bride. I took her to The Old Mill:
(A little more on this place soon.)
And then we drove. After a few hours we made Memphis. Then we started trekking through Mississippi, taking the scenic route. Pine trees. We saw pine trees. We raced the rain the whole way.
And then back into Alabama, where we saw pine trees — these growing taller and straighter. We hit Birmingham just in time for dinner and made a literal mid-intersection choice to visit Dreamland. And then we drove home. This took the whole day. The trip got so long that she found herself dancing along to Miley Cyrus song. I did not dance, I merely nodded my head like “Yeah.”
When I lived in Little Rock years ago (this is the last time I’ll mention it) I made the trip from central Arkansas to Birmingham quite frequently. The trip feels a lot longer now. I’m older. Also I drive a little slower.
So we made it home, petted the cat and I loaded up the laundry. Sat down on the sofa and almost fell asleep there before the spin cycle ended.
Today it was back at it. The library, back on campus, back in class and having a grand time.
One of my colleagues asked me to guest lecture for her. Knowing that she has a very high-energy style I resolved to be very enthusiastic myself for the day. Did anyone ever mention it is hard to be an informative comedian while talking about building web pages?
Most of my off-the-cuff jokes worked just fine. I had to wing part of the presentation because my printer jammed and the server knew it was Monday, but things went fairly well.
And then there was reading to do, and that’s been the rest of this day, which has just drifted into haphazardly drifted into yesterday and promises to lazily stretch into mid-afternoon tomorrow.
Several updates to the LOMO blog today. Twitter always, and other stuff later this week when I can get to it.
