tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60491262817700436802024-03-13T10:10:24.144-07:00About Ideas, Innovation, TED Talks, Books, Documentaries, and TravelThis blog talks about ideas that catch my fancy: TED talks, books (including TED Book Club selections), movies (especially Hot Docs documentaries), travel, and other interesting things I read or hear about. Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.comBlogger587125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-39497095561342090552019-08-19T10:08:00.000-07:002019-08-19T10:09:40.651-07:00Women and Resilience<br />
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Both were inspiring stories of strong, intelligent women who had suffered simply awful childhoods, one through physical and psychological abuse by her family and the other through neglect and abandonment. These women succeeded in rising above their horrific early years to build a successful life and make solid contributions to society. Their stories were totally engaging; they were the kind of books you wanted to read in one sitting because you couldn't bear to put them down.</div>
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Both books spent long periods on best seller lists, so I am not the only one who found them so captivating. Fascinating that they were both published in the same year. I wonder if, if these dystopian times, there is a heightened appetite for uplifting tales.</div>
Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-75958848129896237082019-08-03T09:15:00.001-07:002019-08-03T09:34:20.078-07:00Where the Crawdads Sing<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9BXGHHjyu9U/XUWaidjf2hI/AAAAAAAAN7E/s1HnH-RUVMwoiNECOeDc8LAtrtPr3Lh4wCLcBGAs/s1600/Where%2Bthe%2BCrawdads%2BSing.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="824" data-original-width="523" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9BXGHHjyu9U/XUWaidjf2hI/AAAAAAAAN7E/s1HnH-RUVMwoiNECOeDc8LAtrtPr3Lh4wCLcBGAs/s320/Where%2Bthe%2BCrawdads%2BSing.png" width="203" /></a>This book has endured almost a year on the best seller list but somehow the title and the description didn't resonate with me. I finally succumbed and read it. And loved it.<br />
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The book could be described as being about loneliness, and indeed that is a central theme, But, for me, it was more about the strength and resilience of Kya Clark who builds herself a life after, one by one, her family abandons her at a young age to make her way alone in the depths of North Carolina's swampland. She lives alone in her isolated shack, evading the efforts of truant officers and interacting minimally with nearby townspeople with their deep disdain and distrust of the ' girl'.<br />
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With the inventiveness of a Robinson Crusoe, Kya creates a self-sustaining life with the loyal support of a black storekeeper deep in the swamp for the necessities of the body and the young boy who teaches her to read for the necessities of the spirit. There is a fascinating plot turn later in the book but for me the pivot point of the book comes early, when a young boy teaches Kya to read. So begins her incredible self-education and remarkable chronicling of the creatures of the swamp. The later plot seems secondary.<br />
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The swamp itself is a central character, laying its soft, languorous mantle over a story that unfolds gently over her years of discovery of the mysteries of the swamp and its creatures, the joy and treachery of love, and the satisfaction of self-education and research.<br />
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Other Book Reviews <a href="https://libs-spot.blogspot.com/2015/12/book-reviews.html">here</a>Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-1913798788947454652019-03-03T06:53:00.000-08:002019-03-06T08:16:48.366-08:00The Book Club and the Book: Life on the Ground Floor<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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After years (maybe even decades) of yearning to belong to a book club, I attended my first meeting this week. What a great evening! Interesting book, congenial people, fascinating discussion (about the book and other topics), not to mention tasty munchies and a cosy fireplace on a very cold and icy evening. Life is good.<br />
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The evening's book was <i>Life on the Ground Floor: Letters from the Edge of Emergency Medicine</i> by James Maskalyk. The 'presenter' led off a well-organized and articulate introduction, with background on Maskalyk, a summary of his previous book <i>Six Months in Sudan</i>, some excerpts from book reviews, and an audio clip of an interview with Maskalyk on CBC's The Current. Then the floor was opened to general discussion.<br />
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Masalyk divides his time between the emergency department of St. Mike's an inner-city hospital in Toronto and a program at Addis Ababa University to train emergency physicians in Ethiopia. The book interweaves vignettes from these two settings, interspersed with sketches of visits to his grandfather in Northern Alberta. The structure of the book follows the letters of the alphabet, with musings on a topic for each letter: A was for airways, B for Breathing, C is for Circulation, and so on. This might sound plodding, but Maskalyk writes with such verve and the ability to put you right in the situation he's describing that the artificiality of the structure soon melts away. Medical information is brought to life with anecdotes about the patients he's taken care of and some of his descriptions wander into the poetic.<br />
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The contrast between the conditions in Toronto and Addis Ababa is incisive and thought-provoking. Medicine in Toronto is dispensed without any concern about potential costs, whereas in Ethiopia everything is in short supply from the blood that must be rationed among patients who all need it and the payments that are 'pulled creased and tattered from some worried mother's pocket'. Equally clear are the similarities. Whether in Toronto or Addis Ababa, Maskalyk loves the the clarity of the ER - the sickest, most urgent first and the rest must wait. Emotions and biases must not distort those choices. Decisions must be completely independent of whether the patient is rich or poor, white or black, male or female.<br />
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For some in the book club, the sections where Maskalyk visits his grandfather showed the most humanity; they just didn't resonate as well with me and the opening section with his grandfather might have discouraged me from continuing if it hadn't been a book club selection. Once I got past that, I really loved the book and whizzed right along reading it. I definitely recommend this memoir.<br />
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More book reviews <a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.com/2015/12/book-reviews.html">here</a>.<br />
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<br />Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-4088029763222595962019-02-23T09:59:00.002-08:002019-02-23T09:59:55.344-08:00What's in a Word? PoubellePoubelle is the French word for trash can. Who knew that word is named after Eugène Poubelle, who introduced trash cans to Paris in 1884. Building owners were mandated to provide these trash cans, much to their chagrin at the extra expense. Even more surprisingly, three types had to be provided, for compostable items, for paper and cloth, and for crockery and shells. Recycling back in the 19th C.<br />
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As an aside, ten years later, after a resurgence of cholera, Poubelle decreed that all buildings had to be connected to sewers. Again, at the expense of the building owner.<br />
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What an interesting man.<br />
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By the way, I first became of Poubelle in a caption at the Art Gallery of Ontario's current exhibit, Impressionism in the Industrial Age, which focuses on the depiction of industry in the paintings of the impressionists. Interspersed are photos from the era as well. Lots of interesting historical facts sprinkled throughout the exhibition. Like the fact that 300,000 people were displaced by the expropriations for the grand boulevards, wide streets and vistas of Haussmann's design for Paris that we so revel in today.<br />
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Other 'word' posts:<br />
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Other posts on words:<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.com/search?q=crapsule">Crapsule</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2015/04/whats-in-word-thugocracy.html">Thugocracy</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2016/06/whats-in-phrase-post-truth-politics.html">Post-truth politics</a></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2015/02/whats-in-description-apple.html"><span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Apple</span></a></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2015/01/whats-in-word-handy.html"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Handy</span></a></div>
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<a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2014/11/whats-in-word-genocide.html"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Genocide</span></a><br />
<a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2014/11/whats-in-word-digitalization.html"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Digitalization</span></a><br />
<span style="text-decoration-line: none;"><a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2014/12/whats-in-word-digitale-schleimspur.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Digital Slime</span></a></span></div>
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<a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2015/12/whats-in-word-beware-theyll-soon-be-gone.html"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Beware They'll Soon be Gone</span></a></div>
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Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-86555642339550804732018-10-05T12:29:00.005-07:002018-10-05T13:00:26.657-07:00Donna Strickland: Amazing Physicist, Amazing Canadian, Amazing Woman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Canadians, and women, have revelled in the accomplishment of the self-effacing Donna Strickland, who recently won the Nobel Prize for Physics. She is only the third woman to win the Physics prize in over a century and only the fifth Canadian ever.<br />
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Bravo Strickland!<br />
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Shame on University of Waterloo!<br />
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In the 21 years Strickland has worked there, the university has not seen fit to promote this Nobel-calibre physicist to full professor. Hmm. Could it be because she's female?Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-40044672479916628122018-09-29T10:58:00.000-07:002018-09-29T10:58:36.082-07:00Information Sparkles with McCall's InfographicsTommy McCall makes information come alive. He doesn't just present existing information - his graphics deliver new insights. He illustrates how you can take data and turn it into information, and then make it visually captivating and thought-provoking. His immense creativity gets to the nub of what's important and figures out a way to convey that - succinctly and powerfully.<br />
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His recent brief TED talk shows some wonderful examples of his own and other infographics through history, including some perspective on Florence Nightingale's use of infographics to animate her argument about military deaths from poor care. Watch McCall <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/tommy_mccall_the_simple_genius_of_a_good_graphic">here</a>.<br />
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I wrote about Tommy in my <a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.com/2009/02/tommy-mccall-and-his-amazing.html">blog </a> once before, when I first met him on a bus on the way to TED, and I've been following his wonderful work ever since. You will be fascinating delving into the trove of great graphics in his portfolio <a href="http://infographics.com/portfolio.php">here</a>. Bravo Tommy.Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-34253506044411896572018-09-04T13:59:00.000-07:002019-03-06T08:16:08.996-08:00The October List<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There are several fiction authors, including Jeffrey Deaver, that I turn to when I want an engaging plot but don't care about elegant prose, nuanced characters, or deep philosophical insight. I don't usually write reviews of books by these authors - they're simply too light-weight.<br />
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I'm making an exception in reviewing The October List, because of its cunning construction. The story unfolds completely backwards. Not in a series of flashbacks, but completely backwards. Each chapter occurs before the previous one. There were many plot twists to keep me interested and guessing, and I couldn't help but be fascinated by the technique.<br />
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I won't tell you any more of the story, but it's a cute book to read.<br />
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More book reviews <a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.com/2015/12/book-reviews.html">here</a>.Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-670520107595233602018-08-27T21:06:00.000-07:002018-08-27T21:06:18.385-07:00The Heirs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Rupert Falkes is a British orphan who arrives virtually penniless in the US. He's immensely successful and married to an upper-crust wife. This is the top 1%, if not the .1%.<br />
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Falkes has just died and is mourned by his wife and five sons, each highly successful in diverse fields. Wait a minute. Maybe that's 7 sons. A letter lands like a bomb, claiming he had two other sons and setting off all kinds of family dynamics. Did he father two other sons, or didn't he?<br />
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The novel circles around this question like water swirling at the drain in the bathtub, converging on the answer. Along the way, we're treated to a series of short stories about the lives of the Falkes family. Each of these narratives moves the big story forward step by step, engaging you in the complex family dynamics and providing tantalizing clues about the big question - did Falkes father two other sons or not.<br />
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This novel is beautifully written, and totally absorbing. I highly recommend it.<br />
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For other book reviews, click <a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.com/2015/12/book-reviews.html">here</a>.<br />
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<br />Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-21980255955451319162018-08-22T10:37:00.001-07:002018-08-22T10:37:20.509-07:00Problems and Solutions<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Just because there's a problem it doesn't mean there's a solution. Just because there's no perfect solution it doesn't mean there isn't a problem. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12.8px;"><i>Unknown source</i></span></span>Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-29182511030763314572018-08-20T10:28:00.001-07:002018-08-20T10:33:03.056-07:00A Gentleman in Moscow<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This book should be titled A Gentle Man in Moscow. Count Rostov is the gentleman in the title, and he's also a gentle man. An elegant man. A cultured man. A graceful and gracious man. A man you wish you had known.<br />
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Born to the Russian aristocracy, Rostov is living in luxury in a suite at Moscow's opulent Metropole Hotel when he is sentenced to house arrest there for writing an unacceptable poem.<br />
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From luxury suite to cramped garret, the adaptable Rostov accepts his fate with equanimity. He's always been a student of people and their interactions - shrewdly designing table placements for his grandmother's dinner parties at a young age. As his physical horizons shrink, his interest in people does not. His taste is catholic. The constants are his closest friends who work in the hotel - seamstress, barber, bartender, chef, maître d. Outsiders drift in and out of the hotel, and the story, exposing what is happening in this tumultuous period in Russian history - Soviet aparatchik, Russian dissident, actress, American journalist. Rostov befriends them all, but especially the young inquisitive girl Nina, who reveals the inner secrets of the hotel with her magical passkey. She opens not only the secrets of the hotel, but ultimately opens up his life.<br />
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Throughout all this, Rostov retains the manners and grace of his privileged youth, treats everyone with respect and deploys tact and not a little manipulation to address thorny issues and nasty people. Throughout his gradual decline in material circumstances, he retains his dignity, his sense of humour and his wit.<br />
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I didn't remember Amor Towles' name until friend Judith pointed out he'd also written <i>Rules of Civility</i>, a book I rhapsodically reviewed <a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.com/2012/03/rules-of-civility.html"><span style="color: #a64d79;">here</span></a>. In that review, I said the book felt like a chiffon scarf floating artlessly on my neck. My prevailing image for <i>A Gentleman in Moscow</i> is an autumn leaf gently wafting downwards, gracefully floating back and forth in the wind, but always heading down. Beauty in decline. And just like <i>Rules of Civility</i>, I felt the urge to reread <i>A Gentleman in Moscow</i> as soon as I'd finished it. I guess I really like Amor Towles' writing. I highly recommend this book.<br />
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For a list of more book reviews, click <a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.com/2015/12/book-reviews.html">here</a>.<br />
<br />Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-19231920135736481642018-03-01T13:58:00.003-08:002018-03-01T13:58:50.644-08:00Sunstein's Colorado Experiment<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A Harvard lawyer, Sunstein is also deeply steeped in behavioural economics and has applied those theories to law and politics. In a delightful talk at Rotman, both instructive and entertaining, Sustein described some of his latest research studies that put a theoretical foundation to the understanding of the growing political polarization in the US.<br />
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Sunstein started by laying out the results of a 'Colorado experiment'. Here's how it went. Boulder is a left-leaning community in Colorado while Colorado Springs is right-leaning. Groups were pulled together from these two separate communities to talk about climate change, affirmative action and same sex marriage. Their views on these topics were measured before the discussion. In private, many people tended to be uncertain and tentative about their opinions. Then Boulder people had a short discussion about this topics with other Boulder people while the Colorado Springs people talked to others from Colorado Springs. After these discussions with like-minded people, they become more confident, more unified and more extreme. As Sunstein said, this was not all that surprising, but it was useful to verify the process of people being influenced by others in a group experimentally rather than relying on intuition.<br />
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Sunstein went on to describe the effects of mixed and homogeneous composition of judicial panels. A laborious analysis of the decisions of three-person judiciary panels, comparing homogeneous (as to who was the President when they were appointed) and mixed (people appointed by different presidents of different parties) panels showed a rather surprising result. The best predictor of their decisions was not their own political leaning but the leaning of the others on the panel.<br />
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He gave many examples of people's resistance to new data, when they have firm opinions already. Add to that the fact that most Americans get their news from Facebook, which filters news to suit their tastes - this generates more clicks and more opportunity to sell advertising. He showed us a quote from an earlier FB statement of how their NewsFeed works:<br />
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<i>Our success is getting people the stories that matter to them most. If you look through thousands of stories every day and choose the 100 that were most important to you, which would they be? The answer would be your News Feed. It is subjective, personal and unique - and defines the spirit we hope to achieve.</i></div>
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It's easy to see how this approach would solidify extreme positions and lead to polarization. Facebook is now making moves to modify how News Feed works, under considerable public pressure. Sunstein made a strong point that we shouldn't be algorithmed into being extreme, which the original Facebook algorithm certainly did. He got a good laugh when he said we needed to made algorithm a verb, but we needed a shorter word. Unfortunately algored wouldn't really work.</div>
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Sunstein was discussing topics from his latest book <i>#Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media.</i> I'm looking forward to reading the book and hearing more about his research, because I'm sure I haven't done justice to what he talked about. </div>
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After the talk I made a suggestion to Sunstein. The New York Times often runs a section entitled What the Conservative Media that it might be interesting to see the relative click rate on The New York Times' section called What the Conservative Media are Saying (or some such title). Compared to the laborious research on the judiciary panels, this would provide simple quantitative results. I know what I'd be betting. But Sunstein was scrupulous in not claiming positions for which he didn't yet have experimental verification. His book should be a good read.</div>
Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-58683076181227370092018-01-29T09:04:00.000-08:002018-01-29T09:04:26.602-08:00This Movie Could Make You Weep<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5tCA2aT1XYM/Wm9PTlKowBI/AAAAAAAANOY/M1tUBu8DKeweuV7eGKQWhttm2oh93tc8QCLcBGAs/s1600/The%2BFinal%2BYear%2Bcharacters.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="202" data-original-width="398" height="202" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5tCA2aT1XYM/Wm9PTlKowBI/AAAAAAAANOY/M1tUBu8DKeweuV7eGKQWhttm2oh93tc8QCLcBGAs/s400/The%2BFinal%2BYear%2Bcharacters.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ben Rhodes, Samantha Powers, John Kerry, and Barak Obama</td></tr>
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<i>The Final Year </i>delivers an overview of the final year of Obama's second term, and how he and his team carried on foreign policy. As well as Obama himself, the story focuses on three people nearest the President: the passionate, idealistic, committed Samantha Power, Ambassador to the United Nations, the experienced and dedicated John Kerry, Secretary of State, and blunt-spoken behind-the-scenes Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications.<br />
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The segments cover activities in Syria, Laos, Viet Nam, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Cuba and the UN, dramatizing the scope of US concerns around the world. We see Kerry's dogged persistence in seeking a deal in Iran. We see Obama interacting with young people wherever he goes. We see Power barely holding back the tears when meeting mother of the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram. We see Rhodes mind-morphing with Obama to craft drafts of his speeches.<br />
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It's heart-wrenching to compare the high ideals and global empathy of this cast of characters with the venality and self-interest of the current US president. Power's women's party to celebrate Clinton's expected victory deflates like a sad balloon. Rhodes, the wordsmith, cannot find words to express his desolation on the night Trump is elected.<br />
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The movie ends with the ultimate irony: <i>The Times They Are a Changin', </i>once a chant of hope and progress, is a dirge for the death of principled US diplomacy. Or if you feel hopeful, it's just a blip in human progress.<br />
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I highly recommend* this movie, but take a tissue. It'll make you cry.<br />
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* The movie gets a low rating on rottentomatoes. I can only believe the ratings were stacked by Trump supporters. It's a great movie.<br />
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<br />Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-46541939900735419662018-01-13T16:48:00.001-08:002018-01-13T16:49:24.437-08:00Making Pencils<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ec5ngDlqGIU/WlqofuYdexI/AAAAAAAANNY/UHbCKNw17mcU-C7LIOwjrOSFzQUungEcwCLcBGAs/s1600/pencils.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="685" data-original-width="1339" height="324" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ec5ngDlqGIU/WlqofuYdexI/AAAAAAAANNY/UHbCKNw17mcU-C7LIOwjrOSFzQUungEcwCLcBGAs/s640/pencils.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Manufacturing pencils must be a dying industry.<br />
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New York Times memorializes it with a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/magazine/inside-one-of-americas-last-pencil-factories.html"><span style="color: #a64d79;">beautiful photo essay</span> </a>of the processes involved. It's worth a look.Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-3325885343998715222018-01-03T19:56:00.000-08:002018-01-04T17:29:41.114-08:00The Vietnam War<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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If you have a chance to watch Ken Burns' and Lynn Novick's 17 1/2 hour documentary about the folly of the Vietnam War, take it. I never thought I would watch that much footage about Vietnam, but my husband and I were riveted as we binge-watched the entire series. It was incredible to see the hubris, the ineptitude, the political self-interest and sheer lunacy of the war unfold in one vast sweep. We were educated, horrified and moved.<br />
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Ten years in the making, boiled down from interviews with hundreds of people - both Americans and Vietnamese - 24,000 photos, and 1500 videos. Through a feat of phenomenal editing, the series flowed smoothly, weaving together political machinations in Washington, battle scenes, deftly chosen music from the era, and interviews with combatants, advisors, diplomats, protestors, journalists and family from all four factions (Americans, South Vietnamese, Viet Cong, and North Vietnamese. Sometimes documentaries can be too clinical, and you don't even glimpse the human side. Others swamp you with mawkish individual stories without giving a sense of the big picture. This film was perfectly balanced between the two approaches, and they all blended harmoniously. It was a tour de force.<br />
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Vietnam was an ignominious war from the beginning, and this was highlighted in the ignoble flights of helicopters rescuing marines from the roof of the US embassy in Saigon. The end would not have been so shabby if it weren't for the obduracy of the ambassador who refused to accept the inevitable fall of Saigon and prepare for it. And so the end came as the war had begun and proceeded.<br />
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I thought the film would end with the pathos of the Vietnam memorial with the strains of <i>Bridge over Troubled Water </i>playing in the background. But it went on to show American vets reconciling with Vietnam vets back in Vietnam, this time with <i>Let It Be </i>as background. It's hard to hold on to that feeling of hope, as we watch the American political scene. Did you know that Nixon influenced the 1968 election by doing a back-room deal to get the Vietnamese to refuse to attend the Paris peace talks until after the election, promising they'd do better with Nixon as president? Plus ça change. . .<br />
<br />Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-20851180694901903052017-11-09T12:28:00.001-08:002017-11-09T12:28:19.344-08:00What's in a Word? Crapsule<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #783f04; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">CRAPSULE</span></div>
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It's possible that the microbiome, that collection of bacteria that live in our bodies (mostly the gut), may have as much influence on our health as our genetic makeup. After all, there are more than 150 times as many genes in those organisms as there are in our own genome. An imbalance in the microbiome, known as disbiosis, has been linked to many conditions, ranging from inflammatory bowel disease to autism, to patients' responses to certain cancer treatments. <div>
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The first successful treatment relating to the microbiome was the use of faecal microbial transplants to treat C. difficile (brought on by overuse of antibiotics). FMT, as it is known, is <i>exactly</i> what it sounds like. And when you encapsulate those FMTs, they're called crapsules. And there's your word of the day. Read <a href="https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21731109-no-guts-no-glory-enhanced-understanding-microbiome-helping-medicine?cid1=cust/ednew/n/bl/n/2017119n/owned/n/n/nwl/n/n/NA/79430/n">The Economist</a> for more information.</div>
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Other Posts on Words</div>
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<a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2017/08/whats-in-word-caregiver-and-pertinent.html"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Caregiver</span></a></div>
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<a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2017/08/whats-in-word-caregiver-and-pertinent.html"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Pertinent</span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2015/04/whats-in-word-thugocracy.html" style="color: #888888; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Thugocracy</span></a></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms", trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21.56px;">
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2016/06/whats-in-phrase-post-truth-politics.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Post-truth politics</span></a></span><br /><span style="color: #666666; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2015/02/whats-in-description-apple.html" style="color: #888888; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Apple</span></a></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2015/01/whats-in-word-handy.html" style="color: #888888; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Handy</span></a></div>
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<a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2014/11/whats-in-word-genocide.html" style="color: #888888; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Genocide</span></a><br /><a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2014/11/whats-in-word-digitalization.html" style="color: #888888; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Digitalization</span></a><br /><a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2014/12/whats-in-word-digitale-schleimspur.html" style="color: #888888; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Digital Slime</span></a></div>
<div style="line-height: 21.56px;">
<a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2015/12/whats-in-word-beware-theyll-soon-be-gone.html" style="color: #888888; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Beware They'll Soon be Gone</span></a></div>
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Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-3062292798488721742017-08-28T09:07:00.003-07:002017-08-28T09:07:53.370-07:00Harvey: Once-in-500-years-stormIn my <a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2017/07/letting-go-of-what-you-know.html">recent post </a>about the Dutch approach to preparing for storms and floods, I mentioned that their goal was to be ready for a once-in-a-thousand-years storm. We were told on a tour that America's goal is to be ready for a once-in-a-hundred-years storm. Since Harvey is being described as a once-in-500-years storm, it's not surprising Houston wasn't ready for it. I wonder if the Dutch would have coped?Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-3045097512181484792017-08-15T12:57:00.002-07:002017-08-15T12:57:55.114-07:00The E-mail Larry Page Should Have Written to James DamoreJames Damore's infamous memo objecting to Google's attempts to recruit women - and thus discriminating against men, he claims - has generated a tsunami of response. It's the latest skirmish in the recent publicity around the discrimination and harassment women face in the tech industry.<br />
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The Economist took it upon themselves to pen the response to Damore's memo that Larry Page <i>should </i>have written rather than firing him. I liked it. Read it <a href="https://www.economist.com/news/21726276-last-week-paper-said-alphabets-boss-should-write-detailed-ringing-rebuttal?cid1=cust/ddnew/n/n/n/20170815n/owned/n/n/nwl/n/n/na/Daily_Dispatch/email&etear=dailydispatch">here</a>.<br />
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This hit home for me, since I recently wrote a post about the negative stereotyping of women in tech. Read that post <a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2017/06/the-mom-test.html">here</a>.<br />
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<br />Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-14385169655303700572017-08-08T12:27:00.002-07:002017-08-08T12:27:38.562-07:00What's in a Word? Caregiver and PertinentWhy isn't caretaker the opposite of caregiver?<br />
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Why isn't impertinent the opposite of pertinent?<br />
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Other posts on words:<br />
<div style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21.56px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2015/04/whats-in-word-thugocracy.html" style="color: #888888; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Thugocracy</span></a></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms", trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21.56px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2016/06/whats-in-phrase-post-truth-politics.html">Post-truth politics</a></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2015/02/whats-in-description-apple.html" style="color: #888888; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Apple</span></a></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2015/01/whats-in-word-handy.html" style="color: #888888; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Handy</span></a></div>
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<a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2014/11/whats-in-word-genocide.html" style="color: #888888; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Genocide</span></a><br />
<a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2014/11/whats-in-word-digitalization.html" style="color: #888888; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Digitalization</span></a><br />
<span style="text-decoration-line: none;"><a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2014/12/whats-in-word-digitale-schleimspur.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Digital Slime</span></a></span></div>
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<a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2015/12/whats-in-word-beware-theyll-soon-be-gone.html"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Beware They'll Soon be Gone</span></a></div>
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Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-39389271184898594212017-07-31T11:30:00.001-07:002017-08-28T20:34:15.849-07:00Letting Go of What You Know To Prepare for a Once-in-a-Thousand-Years Storm<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lvr2tB95wPc/WW5QdZX48_I/AAAAAAAANCI/xoyQ77ncNxMiq6UTZEdFm14YjxN97JY1wCLcBGAs/s1600/Mark%2BTwain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="379" data-original-width="702" height="172" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lvr2tB95wPc/WW5QdZX48_I/AAAAAAAANCI/xoyQ77ncNxMiq6UTZEdFm14YjxN97JY1wCLcBGAs/s320/Mark%2BTwain.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Trust Mark Twain to hit the nail on the head in his inimitably folksy way. Sometimes what you <i>know</i> never was true; sometimes it used to be true but conditions have changed and it's no longer true. But confirmation bias keeps us clinging to those beliefs even in the face of new information. We pay attention to any signals or data that support our belief and firmly disregard anything that challenges those beliefs. Furthermore, as Kathryn Schulz puts it in her book <i>Being Wrong,</i> "But the point is not that we are bad at saying "I don't know" (<i>a fact she has just spent some pages illustrating). </i>The point is that we are bad at knowing we don't know."<br />
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We can see this unwillingness to let go in emotionally-laden politics. We can see it in companies that persevere with business models that are clearly no longer tenable. You might think of Kodak, where digital photography was invented, refusing to acknowledge the assault on their film-based business model. <br />
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Then, there's the Netherlands. As far back as the Iron Age, people in the Netherlands have been building dikes of ever increasing sophistication. This is not surprising in a country with a quarter of its land below sea level and fully one half is less than one meter above sea level. Building dikes to keep out the water or to reclaim land is part of their national DNA. Yet the Dutch have abandoned dike building as their main defence against devastating storms and floods and generally rising sea levels. They've let go of what they know - at least as the only solution.<br />
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A 1953 flood, when a major storm coincided with a high spring tide in the middle of the night, resulted in the loss of 1,836 people mostly over the space of a few hours (Katrina's death toll was 1833). This was their wake-up call. They initiated Delta Works, a project to protect the Netherlands against a once-in-a-1,000-years storm. (As a reference point, Katrina was a once-in-hundred-years-storm and Hurricane Harvey has been described as a once-in-a-500-years storm.)<br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">1</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 14.6667px;"> As a reference point, here is a photo of traditional dikes along a river and lower lying land from a recent trip to the Netherlands. (Also worth nothing is the fact that there are two bike lanes but only one lane for cars).</span><br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-N1hjWozbQ4c/WWFAGUqxPlI/AAAAAAAANBc/F4RmSb0lnv8kXeEUOgjVcZYoGyEw3somwCLcBGAs/s1600/Driving%2Balong%2Ba%2Bdike.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #970101; cursor: pointer; display: inline-block; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration-line: none;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1047" data-original-width="1600" height="209" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-N1hjWozbQ4c/WWFAGUqxPlI/AAAAAAAANBc/F4RmSb0lnv8kXeEUOgjVcZYoGyEw3somwCLcBGAs/s320/Driving%2Balong%2Ba%2Bdike.JPG" style="border: 0px; height: auto; max-width: 100%;" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 14.6667px;">After the 1953 storm, the Dutch concluded that they just couldn't build the river dikes high enough for full protection. And besides it would be much too expensive. They had to stop the water before it reached the rivers. They still use sand dunes as a natural barrier along the sea shore. These large dunes needed to be reinforced annually, a significant task to dump the sand all kilometres of coastline. But the Dutch are so clever. They observed where sand was distributed naturally by tides and currents and concluded they could simply dump sand in a few strategic places and let nature distribute it where needed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 14.6667px;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">2 </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 11pt;">To protect further against the sea, they first built two dams south of Rotterdam. But this approach was problematic. </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 11pt;">Where once there had been a gradual change from salt water to fresh water, now there are two totally separated ecosystems on either side of the dam. The types of fish the fishermen used to fish disappeared. Solid dams were clearly not the answer.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">3</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 11pt;"> Further south, at Oosterschelde, a different </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 11pt;">approach was taken in the 70s: to build gates that </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 11pt;">stay in a raised position normally but would be lowered during a storm. This allows the </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 14.6667px;">fish - and their predators the fishermen - to pass through freely. </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 11pt;">An excellent movie at the visitors' centre at Ooseterschelde describes how h</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 11pt;">uge piers were placed on the ocean floor, sitting on ‘mattresses’ made of material filled with rocks to form a firm foundation. The mattresses were laid by being uncoiled off huge rollers on the back of special boats. The piers were built on shore on a huge dry dock, then towed out to sea after the dry dock was submerged. Then each pier was lifted off the dock and precisely placed on the mattress floor between the piers. Lastly, a road was laid on top.</span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gIrRal9AfJc/WWFB1lowf5I/AAAAAAAANBk/5uhz_oGdOe0RQ1o6alZ9xoS7aZP00VbcQCLcBGAs/s1600/Lib%2Bat%2BMaeslantkering%2Bstorm%2Bsurge%2Bbarrier.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; clear: left; color: #970101; cursor: pointer; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration-line: none;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gIrRal9AfJc/WWFB1lowf5I/AAAAAAAANBk/5uhz_oGdOe0RQ1o6alZ9xoS7aZP00VbcQCLcBGAs/s320/Lib%2Bat%2BMaeslantkering%2Bstorm%2Bsurge%2Bbarrier.JPG" style="border: 0px; height: auto; max-width: 100%;" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">The problem of protecting Rotterdam from the sea was difficult. Proposals were invited for techniques to close off the mouth of the river as required in the case of big storms, but leave it open for shipping. The winning proposal involved two huge arms (the size and twice the weight of two Eiffel Towers) which are swung in from either side of the estuary to close it off completely if there is a risk of the water level rising 3 metres in Rotterdam. It's designed to protect Rotterdam in the case of seas rising five meters above normal! You can see the scale of the arms that support the barrier from the picture of me standing by them.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">These massive blocks of concrete are swung in by equally massive ball bearings, which can move in several directions, like shoulder joints. They have to move sideways to swing the barrier across the channel, an exercise which takes half an hour. Then the ball bearings have to be able to move up and down, as the concrete wall is filled with water and descends to fit on the concrete block on the bottom over an hour and a half. Here's a diagram from the New York Times article showing how everything fits together.</span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9aRrdGr5Djc/WWFDoZdqG0I/AAAAAAAANBs/NLP5D72osy0tFEQIU8ximVFdN2VuJRGQQCLcBGAs/s1600/NYT%2Bshot%2Bof%2BMaeslant.png" imageanchor="1" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #970101; cursor: pointer; display: inline-block; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration-line: none;"><img border="0" data-original-height="594" data-original-width="897" height="265" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9aRrdGr5Djc/WWFDoZdqG0I/AAAAAAAANBs/NLP5D72osy0tFEQIU8ximVFdN2VuJRGQQCLcBGAs/s400/NYT%2Bshot%2Bof%2BMaeslant.png" style="border: 0px; height: auto; max-width: 100%;" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">The system is tested once a year, and various disaster scenarios each year. This bottom block gathers a metre of sediment every year. As the barrier slowly descends, the water is compressed and gathers speed and washes away the sediment. This is the reason for the slow descent. Brilliant.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">This amazing piece of engineering was completed in 1997 after 6 years of construction, on time and on budget. Equally amazing. All the pieces were build in Holland, except for the massive ball bearings, which were made by Skoda in Czech Republic. The Canadian software firm CGI provided the software to control the barrier (a CGI employee told me this, but I have not independently verified).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">The risk of flooding is assessed every ten minutes to check water levels and the risk of a big storm. When the software was designed in 1997, it took ten minutes to complete the calculations! Today the calculations complete in seconds, but the Dutch have not felt the need to do the calculation more often. When there is a risk, a warning is sent out to all ships with four hours notice so that they can determine if they have time to get past the barrier before closing. (Tug boats are on standby to haul ships away if there is a risk they’ll get caught as the barrier closes). At two hours, the decision to close becomes irrevocable and the countdown starts.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #3e3f3c; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">5 </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #3e3f3c; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 11pt;">Having completed all these projects, the Dutch still didn't feel they had enough protection against flooding in an era of climate change and the inexorable rise in sea levels. So they had to overturn all their past thinking again. If you can't keep the water out, then you have to learn to live with it. So you start projects with another approach to the problem and brand them Room for the River. That's another radical change in thinking. They are building catchment areas for <i>when, </i>not if, there is flooding. Some of these catchment areas are lakes designed to overflow, some are used as recreational areas, some even as parking lots. It's another stage in the remarkable evolution of their thinking.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3e3f3c; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #3e3f3c; font-size: 20px;"></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #3e3f3c; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Dutch have turned their preoccupation with water into an exportable expertise.The Dutch have consulted on water management for a long time; in fact, long ago, they helped the English drain the fens. And they are consulting around the world about this approach today (as described in this wonderful <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/15/world/europe/climate-change-rotterdam.html?_r=0" style="background: transparent; color: #970101; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">New York Times article</a>). Toronto has also adopted the Dutch 'Live with the Water' approach in dealing with the threat of flooding of the Don River, as described <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/home-and-garden/architecture/urban-design-in-the-time-of-climate-change-making-a-friend-offloods/article35601452/?utm_source=Shared+Article+Sent+to+User&utm_medium=E-mail:+Newsletters+/+E-Blasts+/+etc.&utm_campaign=Shared+Web+Article+Links" style="background: transparent; color: #970101; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">here</a>. Let's hope their expertise helps save many shores threatened by rising sea levels.</span></span></div>
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Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-56871078441689734172017-07-28T11:58:00.000-07:002017-07-28T11:58:13.887-07:00Who Killed the Ridiculous Senate Healthcare Bill - McCain or Women?Three Republicans broke ranks to kill the Republican Healthcare bill very early this morning. McCain is being acclaimed as a hero, as indeed he is. Bravo for him.<br />
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Let's not forget the women who withstood intense pressure and threats and voted their conscience. And they came out against the bill early so they drew a lot of fire. Bravo for the women.<br />
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<li>Two out of five Republican women voted against the bill. That's 40%.</li>
<li>One man out of 47 Republican men voted against the bill. That's 2%.</li>
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Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-12047420979867560642017-06-22T16:20:00.004-07:002017-06-22T16:20:51.396-07:00Netherlands June 2017<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_hQedLLEtmQ/WUxQrrSwQtI/AAAAAAAAM3E/nY7UnG1GR8IE-5K9TgH5agvW4saQDMmZQCLcBGAs/s1600/Netherlands%2Bwindmills.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="174" data-original-width="264" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_hQedLLEtmQ/WUxQrrSwQtI/AAAAAAAAM3E/nY7UnG1GR8IE-5K9TgH5agvW4saQDMmZQCLcBGAs/s1600/Netherlands%2Bwindmills.png" /></a></div>
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I usually keep a travel diary for trips. The one for our upcoming trip to the Netherlands can be found <a href="http://netherlandsjune2017.blogspot.ca/">here</a>. Short trip - should be short diary.Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-68288191751206668452017-06-14T13:08:00.002-07:002017-06-15T07:15:50.306-07:00The 'Mom Test'<div class="gmail_default" style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
Coinbase allows people to buy and sell digital currencies and exchange them with fiat currency. For most people, digital currency can be confusing and intimidating. Coinbase is out to change that and make it simple. On Bloomberg TV yesterday, Adam White of Coinbase, to explain how simple their system is, described it as having passed the 'Mom test.'</div>
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How many times have I heard male technology executives describe their software as 'so easy even my Mom could use it'? Too many to count. You get a twofer with such a remark, offending both women and older people. This time, something snapped. So I wrote an irate email to Coinbase. </div>
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<i>I'm writing about Adam White's recent appearance on Bloomberg TV. He referred to the 'Mom Test'. This expression is totally offensive. Mr. White should be ashamed of himself.</i></div>
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<i>Tech executives (almost always men) typically describe an application as so easy to use 'that even my mom could use it'. No one could get away with saying something was so easy to use that 'even a black person could use it', or 'even a gay person could use it'. What makes men think it's acceptable to make such a derogatory statement about women? There are countless households (including mine) where the resident tech is the female in the house. </i></div>
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<i>Statements such as Mr. White's also fly in the face of sincere and concerted efforts to attract girls and women to STEM, where there is a shortage of talent. What young girl would think she's capable of a successful career in STEM when such comments float around the ether (pun intended).</i></div>
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<span class="HOEnZb adL" style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><span style="color: #888888;"><i>Lib Gibson</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="HOEnZb adL" style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><span style="color: #888888;"><i>a tech pioneer who has been using email since 1970, who led global networked application development in the 80s, who was CEO of a mobile data company in the 80's, who launched Canada's largest ISP in the 90s, who ran Canada's largest Internet company in the 90's and 00's and who currently serves on various high tech boards of directors</i></span></span></div>
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(Pardon those last phrases. I was pretty sensitive about being labelled as a dumb old woman!)</div>
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To my amazement, almost immediately I received an email from Adam, followed by a phone call today. Adam is a very pleasant young man and he was most apologetic about his words. I started out upset with him and ended up an admirer.<br />
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Adam said Coinbase was very dedicated to diversity in their work place, pointed out that his own mother, an engineer, was the techie in his own home, and explained that he meant no offence. Basically he seemed puzzled about what made him use this phrase - he usually describes the Dad Test. (That's only a onefer as you only insult older people.)</div>
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Adam acknowledged that his careless statement was wrong, and that it contributed to the stereotyping of women as non-technical - not to mention older people. He said he was grateful to have it pointed out and would change his language in the future. It just shows how deeply the stereotype is embedded, if a well-meaning young man like Adam can use an offensive phrase so nonchalantly. I've challenged this kind of language often, but never received such a fulsome apology and commitment to behaving differently. We women should make sure we never let such remarks pass without commenting on them.</div>
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Adam and I had a discussion about what phrase he could use instead of Mom Test, and the best we could think of was "it's so easy that anyone can use it". Not as good a sound bite as the Mom Test. Any ideas out there for a better catch-phrase?</div>
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Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-5318675535937805022017-04-27T19:09:00.002-07:002017-04-27T19:09:53.441-07:00The Last Men in Aleppo<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A city under attack. Devastation everywhere. People struggling to live in the brutality of war. Eyes looking ever upward in fear of the next attack. Courageous volunteer Syrian White Hats working to free survivors from the rubble. A charismatic central character, Khaled, a big burly guy with a big burly personality. World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. No wonder I expected a lot of this Hot Docs movie.<br />
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<i>The Last Men in Aleppo</i> was moving - and horrifying. For an hour and 40 minutes, one felt as if one were living in the ravaged city of Aleppo, worse than the words of news reports can convey, as people struggle to live in bombed-out buildings, and fear to take their children to a playground.<br />
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Yet, as a movie, it was rather unsatisfying. Essentially, the sequence was: Russian planes arrive. Bombs drop. The White Hat team rushes headlong into danger as fast as their rattletrap truck will go. They work with excavators, shovels, pickaxes and hands to rescue people. Sometimes they find a survivor. More often they find dead bodies, or dead body parts. Not enough body bags to handle the dead. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.<br />
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The repetition of the same scenario dulled its impact. What elicited gasps in the audience at the start drew only silence as the movie progressed. Granted, the scenario was interspersed with a few scenes of the men discussing again and again the eternal question, whether to leave Aleppo or not. But it's their city, and the camps in Turkey are not a very pleasant alternative. So they stay. The eternal discussion underlined the trap they were in and the hopelessness of their situation. The movie is leavened by some charming scenes of Khaled with his captivating little daughter (the only time we see a female in the movie, except in one crowd scene), and his quixotic purchase of some tropical fish for his rebuilt fountain and pond. But essentially it was rather repetitive.<br />
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The movie ends with a horrific body blow, as we see Khaled's body laid out on a plank. The shovels and pick axes are put to work digging his grave. A brave man who lost his life while he worked as a White Hat.<br />
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<br />Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-48658760318066487032016-11-19T08:49:00.003-08:002016-11-26T14:15:58.171-08:00Katsuyama and Flash Boys<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MZtlVi7uNUo/WCJlXDrA_OI/AAAAAAAAMps/1tyq-yINrvk9vt0QCoUhAnzpTgGCQ2F-ACLcB/s1600/Brad%2BKatsuyama%2Btalk.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="100" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MZtlVi7uNUo/WCJlXDrA_OI/AAAAAAAAMps/1tyq-yINrvk9vt0QCoUhAnzpTgGCQ2F-ACLcB/s200/Brad%2BKatsuyama%2Btalk.png" width="200" /></a></div>
The ebullient Brad Katsuyama recently spoke at University of Toronto. It was a wonderful talk, and here are some reflections on what I learned. (Any errors are of course due to my own misunderstanding.)<br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Why Stock Exchanges Weren't Fair</span></span><br />
Brad Katsuyama became my hero when I read Michael Lewis' riveting book <i>Flash Boys</i>.The book describes how Katsuyama, a Canadian working for RBC in New York, discerned how stock exchanges are not unbiased referees in the markets. He would observe the price of a stock, place an order, and, consistently, the fill price would be higher. It was only a small increase, but still, it shouldn't have been there.<br />
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Katsuyama initiated a detective hunt to figure out why this was happening. He pieced together that the exchanges had huge conflicts of interest: their profits at stake motivate them to tilt the odds in favour of their best customers, the high frequency traders.<br />
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Traders have many choices of where to places their trades, putting the exchanges in competition with each other. Exchanges entice brokers to place trades with them by giving the brokers rebates. These rebates stayed in the pockets of the traders not the customers on whose behalf they were trading. In order to force traders to choose the best price, not the exchange which offers the best rebate, new regulations were introduced. These regulations required a trader to take up the cheapest offer price when placing an order for shares.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The Law of Unintended Consequences</span><br />
The regulation had a totally unintended consequence. Suppose you're a trader wanting to buy 100,000 shares of Microsoft. Large buys like this get filled with purchases on many different exchanges. Before placing your order, you determine the price on your trading terminal - say it's X. But high frequency traders have laid a trap for you - on one exchange they offer to sell 5,000 shares at, say, 'X minus a tiny little bit'. As a buyer, you buy those shares because they're the cheapest available and because regulations require you to buy at the cheapest price for your customer. But you still have most of your order left to fill - 95,000 shares.<br />
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The high frequency traders, knowing about this demand, rush around to other exchanges to buy shares at the quote price X. This demand pushes up the price of Microsoft. By the time you arrive to complete your purchase of 95,000 shares, the price has risen to 'X plus a little bit'. The high frequency trader has bought at X and sold at 'X plus a little bit', a tactic called front running. Thus he's made 95,000 times 'a little bit' in profit. For the original baiting trade, it only cost him 5,000 times 'a tiny little bit' to set this up.<br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">We're Talking Billionths of a Second</span><br />
You might ask how these high frequency traders beat the buyer to those other exchanges. Well, the laws of physics are at work. Distance travelled equals time. The closer you are to the exchange, the faster your messages get there. <i>Flash Boys</i> opens with a description of cable being laid in an obsessively straight line to minimize transmission time from Chicago to New York. It's a stealth operation so that the land rights sellers don't realize just how valuable their particular piece of land is. Builders don't want the cable to deviate even a foot from the optimum route.<br />
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Of course, the best place to be is right in the computer room of the stock exchange. So stock exchanges charge big bucks for you to co-located your computers within their computer room. It takes a billionth of a second to travel over 11.8 inches of cable. So the closer you get to the exchange's computer, the faster you can trade. In order to be able to sell space to many different players, the exchanges introduce the exact amount of coiled cable between a customer and their computer so that all the customers buying space in the room have exactly the same arrival time at the exchange's computers.<br />
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The business of selling computer room real estate is hugely profitable for the exchanges, and accounts for their conflict of interest. It behooves them to cater to the high frequency traders - the flash boys - who account for the majority of their profit. The exchanges also make a lot of money selling data, with the high frequency traders again being their best customers.<br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Feeling the Pain - First Step in Addressing A Problem</span><br />
Katsuyama says he would never have tackled this problem if he himself hadn't experienced the pain of getting dinged on his own trades. When he first arrived in New York in 2006, he could get his whole order of 100,000 shares filled at the quote price X. Every year, the proportion of the order filled at the quoted price X kept dropping. By 2009, he observed that he could only get about 60,000 of his desired 100,000 filled at the original price X. (Note that I exaggerated the proportions in my example above to emphasize the point.)<br />
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Katsuyama didn't initially understand this. But he was a humble and indefatigable searcher for truth. He was willing to admit his own ignorance and doggedly talked to many people who did understand these things until he figured out what was going on. He had taken the job as Manager of the Algorithmic Programming Team based on the assurance from RBC that he would have a free hand in hiring the best people. He doesn't think he'd have had the persistence for his painstaking research if he hadn't felt the pain himself. He didn't say this, but I think he was also motivated by his innate sense of fairness which was offended by the way the market was working.<br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Thinking Differently</span><br />
Once he understood what was going on, Katsuyama concluded that there was no way RBC could win in this rigged market. Because RBC was trading on behalf of customers, there were checks and balances in the system that would <i>always </i>make them slower than the flash boys. RBC took about 2 milliseconds, whereas the HFT guys were taking 476 microseconds: they'd always be four times faster than RBC.<br />
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He'd read Michael Lewis' previous book, <i>Moneyball</i>, which described Billy Bean's unorthodox approach to making the Oakland As a successful team despite the disparity in their budget. It all came down to thinking differently. He decided to apply this lesson to the financial markets.<br />
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Katsuyama concluded that the key for RBC was to get <i>slower. </i>Introduce delays in your messages to all the different exchanges so that your offers arrive at the same time and the flash boys can't front run you. In my innovation courses, I call this <i>Letting Go Of What You Know</i>. If the industry 'knows' that the way to succeed is to get ever faster, let's get slower! Selectively slower. Insert a delay into the orders to the closest exchanges so that <i>all </i>your orders arrive simultaneously at all exchanges. Suddenly, you're seeing 100% of your trades getting executed at the original offer price X. A diagram in Wikipedia explains it very simply:<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--1NubWHbQjE/WDBnrrjVMrI/AAAAAAAAMq4/3Rlb8Fz1Yq4KmKZU4HVBmNNGO48rwLRfQCLcB/s1600/IEX%2Bdiagram.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--1NubWHbQjE/WDBnrrjVMrI/AAAAAAAAMq4/3Rlb8Fz1Yq4KmKZU4HVBmNNGO48rwLRfQCLcB/s640/IEX%2Bdiagram.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Start trading this way, tell your customers about it, and in one year RBC moves in the trading rankings from #19 to #1.</div>
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">So what do you do about it? IEX</span><br />
Now that Katsuyama has untangled the secret of the market, he faces several fundamental choices: stay at RBC and help their customers get fair trades, get very rich by becoming a flash boy himself or reform the entire market by publicizing what he's learned. <span style="background-color: white;"> </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">Katsuyama choose the third option and decided to create a new exchange. He has to leave RBC to do this, and the great people he's hired there follow him. They call it the Investors Exchange and it is designed to be fair, simple and transparent. No co-location. No fees for trading data. An even playing field for everybody.</span><br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-or0Vvd2sI10/WDB23e3BVeI/AAAAAAAAMrI/upzR5i4XXmsQlu80Q-_67UgDSsgphy_EACEw/s1600/IEX%2Blogo.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-or0Vvd2sI10/WDB23e3BVeI/AAAAAAAAMrI/upzR5i4XXmsQlu80Q-_67UgDSsgphy_EACEw/s1600/IEX%2Blogo.png" /></a><span style="background-color: white;">IEX started as an 'alternative stock exchange' but soon reached volumes that required it to get approved by the SEC as a full exchange. Naturally there was lots of opposition from the incumbents, the exchanges and the high frequency traders; IEX was attacking their livelihood. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">Katsuyama described this as Diffuse Harm, Concentrated Benefit. For the exchanges and high frequency traders, there was a lot at stake and they were prepared to fight hard; for the ordinary traders, it was just about fractions of a cent, and there were more important issues for them to worry about. Nevertheless, mostly because of the <i>Flash Boys </i>book, the SEC received more input supporting IEX's application than in their total history before. In the end, the exchanges' insertion of cable in their own computer rooms (to equalizes things for all those who'd bought colocation) set a precedent for the equalization that IEX was imposing and so IEX won the day.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Did Being Canadian Make A Difference?</span><br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5gP-rm6lRCI/WDCBkTSWg2I/AAAAAAAAMrY/-ZmAZ5PqJKUPtVlNHGdKo13gGx9Ntgg1QCLcB/s1600/Canada%2Bfront%2Bcover%2Beconomist.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5gP-rm6lRCI/WDCBkTSWg2I/AAAAAAAAMrY/-ZmAZ5PqJKUPtVlNHGdKo13gGx9Ntgg1QCLcB/s200/Canada%2Bfront%2Bcover%2Beconomist.png" width="200" /></a></div>
At the presentation, I asked a question of Katsuyama. I started by saying that, when reading <i>Flash Boys</i>, I'd been incredibly proud that he was Canadian. The audience - a completely packed room - burst into spontaneous, exuberant applause. (The Economist had just put Canada on the front cover as an example to the world. It was US election day and the extent of Trumptastrophe was not yet known.)<br />
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Katsuyama, with typical modesty, said he didn't spend much time thinking about himself, but Michael Lewis did feel that only a Canadian would have reacted the way he did - seeking to make the world a better place by creating a level playing field, rather than seeking personal profit. You could almost feel a maple leaf tattoo mystically appearing on everyone's forehead!<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xE58km6cXQg/WC5hz8-V4ZI/AAAAAAAAMqY/BQChx2eGjIAE8aaKDQQTlmI27VvqUa0VwCLcB/s1600/Flash%2BBoys.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xE58km6cXQg/WC5hz8-V4ZI/AAAAAAAAMqY/BQChx2eGjIAE8aaKDQQTlmI27VvqUa0VwCLcB/s200/Flash%2BBoys.png" width="138" /></a><span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;"><i>Flash Boys </i>the book</span><br />
I would put this book on your must-read list. It reads like a suspense novel, with high frequency traders as sinister predators and the boyish, charismatic, unassuming Katsuyama as the hero. Lewis explains the technical and financial details clearly. He brings the characters to life. It's just an enjoyable read in every way.<br />
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<i>For my other book reviews, click <a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2015/12/book-reviews.html">here</a>.</i> <br />
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<br />Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6049126281770043680.post-84802582142165820182016-11-09T05:50:00.001-08:002016-11-10T15:40:47.461-08:00What's in a Word: Describing a PresidentAbhorent. Appalling. Arrogant. Belligerent. Bigoted. Blowhard. Blustering. Braggart. Brash. Buffoon. Bully. Cheating. Deceitful. Delusional. Demagogue. Despicable. Egomaniac. Fascist. Fearmongering. Grotesque. Hyperbolist. Hypersensitive. Ignorant. Immoral. Impulsive. Irrational. Jerk. Lascivious. Lacking in judgement. Lying. Megalomaniac. Misinformed. Misogynist. Morally bankrupt. Narcissistic. Obnoxious. Racist. Reckless. Scary. Scumbag. Sleazeball. Temperamental. Terrifying. Thuggish. Unqualified. Unreliable. Unsuitable. Untrustworthy. Vengeful. Vulgar. Wicked. Windbag. Xenophobic. Just plain awful.<br />
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Unelectable. Not so much.<br />
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Other 'What's in a Word' Posts:<br />
<a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2015/04/whats-in-word-thugocracy.html"><span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Thugocracy</span></a><br />
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21.56px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2015/02/whats-in-description-apple.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Apple</span></a></span></div>
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<a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2015/01/whats-in-word-handy.html" style="color: #888888; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Handy</span></a></div>
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<a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2014/11/whats-in-word-genocide.html" style="color: #888888; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Genocide</span></a><br />
<a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2014/11/whats-in-word-digitalization.html" style="color: #888888; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Digitalization</span></a><br />
<a href="http://libs-spot.blogspot.ca/2014/12/whats-in-word-digitale-schleimspur.html" style="color: #888888; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Digital Slime</span></a></div>
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Lib Gibsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05773365001042258827noreply@blogger.com0