Gold Breaks $1400/toz

This is getting kind of ridiculous. (WSJ)

Weekend Update

Matt Veal flew in from Atlanta to visit for the weekend. It was good to see everyone's favorite overachieving investment banker again for the first time in over a year. Friday night included plenty of tequila and some pseudo-Mexican food, but no 'special London chants' from the visitor.

Saturday started with a visit to Borough Market and introducing Veal to a little bit of CrossFit. Then we setup on the couches with great beer and alot of meat and watched some great college football and played some video games. Highly reminiscent of our time spent senior year at Wake. LSU-Bama was a fantastic game, even to the point of taking the edge of my otherwise shutout weekend: Wake lost to BC, Texas lost to Kansas State (???), Stars lost, Mavs lost and Cowboys got embarrassed. Moral of the story: don't let me root for you in any way, shape or form.

We also watched the first two parts of The Pacific. Awesome.

Veal left early Sunday morning for his journey home, so I did my normal Sunday routine.

Quick Friday Thoughts

This week's sign of the apocalypse: J. Crew, Gucci and the like are designing manlier clothes... and some people are considering it manly. WTF?

Rather be lucky than good: business made a huge snap-back today on two fronts:
1. Diwali (I have lots of Indian counterparties)
2. Gold all-time high.

Veal is here. I am under specific instructions from his wife to get him hammered and steal his international-investment-banker blackberry. Tequila? Tequila.

NorCal Margaritas = paleo and better drinking through science (thanks Robb Wolf):
Two shots of gold tequila
Rocks - cold = good
Juice and pulp from one whole lime --> neutralizes the insulin spiking effect of the tequila
splash of club soda --> carbonation makes the booze go through quicker

What I'm listening to now: Gov't Mule. Check out "Soulshine" and "Slackjaw Jezebel"

Good enough for government work

I had a nice long walk to the office this morning (an hour or so) courtesy of the London Underground workers union = no trains running on the tube this morning. Stew and I are wondering if this is a monthly occurrence that long-term Londoners are getting used to as it seems to happen with some regularity. It's almost worth getting one of those razor scooters.

The interesting part is that they don't seem to picket or rally, they just give about 12-24 hours notice and then don't show up for work. Europe is funny.

Voting is Irrational

I have long made this argument, glad to see it in the mainstream media (NYT: Why Vote?). Of course, this violates my incentive to keep those around me voting, but the marginal benefit I get in sharing this information outweighs this cost. Here's an excerpt:

Still, people do continue to vote, in the millions. Why? Here are three possibilities:

1. Perhaps we are just not very bright and therefore wrongly believe that our votes will affect the outcome.

2. Perhaps we vote in the same spirit in which we buy lottery tickets. After all, your chances of winning a lottery and of affecting an election are pretty similar. From a financial perspective, playing the lottery is a bad investment. But it's fun and relatively cheap: for the price of a ticket, you buy the right to fantasize how you'd spend the winnings - much as you get to fantasize that your vote will have some impact on policy.

3. Perhaps we have been socialized into the voting-as-civic-duty idea, believing that it's a good thing for society if people vote, even if it's not particularly good for the individual. And thus we feel guilty for not voting.

But wait a minute, you say. If everyone thought about voting the way economists do, we might have no elections at all. No voter goes to the polls actually believing that her single vote will affect the outcome, does she? And isn't it cruel to even suggest that her vote is not worth casting?

This is indeed a slippery slope - the seemingly meaningless behavior of an individual, which, in aggregate, becomes quite meaningful. 

Waves are cool

Neat little 5 minute film about a parapalegic surf-kayaker and the lengths he goes to just to catch some waves.

BIRTHRIGHT from Sean Mullens on Vimeo.

Weekend Update: Live Band Karaoke and Attempted Skydiving

Friday night, Stew and I met up with a few other guys for SoulBrew Live Band Karaoke. Its a live soul band that plays once a month at a bar near Liverpool street. It was a lot of fun and we managed to only cause minor problems.

After about 3 hours of sleep, I woke up to catch an early train to Netheravon Parachute Center (near Stonehenge, I'll go next time). Its a military base (open to civilians on the weekends) in southwestern England. Train took about an hour and a half to get there. When you want to go skydiving, you have three options:
1. Static line - much like you see in WWII footage. You jump out of the plane at about 3500 feet and your chute is automatically deployed. Get to guide yourself into the drop zone under canopy.
2. Tandem - you are strapped into a harness with a qualified instructor and are basically along for the ride. Jump out between thirteen and fifteen thousand feet, freefall to six thousand and then the instructor pulls the chute and controls the ride home.
3. Accelerated FreeFall Level 1 - You get to jump from around 15,000 feet unattached to anyone or anything and freefall to 6000. There are two instructors that jump right next to you to help guide and protect against disaster. This requires about 6 hours of pre-flight instruction as you are ultimately responsible for doing everything on your own. There are 8 different levels en route to full skydiving certification.

I, of course, opted for the third choice. Spent all day going around the parachute center and practicing different scenarios, took multiple verbal and one written exam and got all suited up. We were placed on a weather delay for a few hours and were told we likely wouldn't be able to jump. Then, at the very end of the daylight hours (literally 5 pm here), the wind let up and the clouds parted. We were going to jump! There were three other AFF level one students looking to get their first jump.

Somehow, I ended up being the first student selected to jump. The others might not make it in time because fo daylight restrictions for novice jumpers. I rushed onto a plane with my two instructors and about 6 static line jumpers. We were going to climb to 3500, drop the static line guys and then continue to 15,000 and I would be able to jump. I was surprisingly calm given how may times over the course of the day it had been put off then back on an off again.

We got to 3000 feet and received word from jump control on the ground that it had gotten too dark and we were not going to be able to jump. I was visibly annoyed. I tried to be polite, but my disappointment was obvious. I could either setup my sleeping bag in a bunkhouse and try again in the morning or go home to London. The forecast for Sunday looked crappy and I wanted to do my Sunday routine, so I hitched a ride to the train station and caught a train home.

At least I had seen some sunshine and spent most of the day outdoors. That part of the English countryside was a nice change of pace from The Big Smoke. Lots of trees changing color and rolling hills. I bet it would look even better while falling at 120mph...

I watched the new Russell Crowe version of Robin Hood on the way home. Long but entertaining. Not an inside favorite for any Oscars though.

Sunday was relatively uneventful. Church, gym, errands, video games, reading and cooking. Matt Veal comes in town next weekend from Atlanta. Should be fun. I'll try to get my first jump in the weekend after that. Luckily, I won't have to repeat all the instruction portion.