WSJ: "the book on bank bailouts"

Some recent-historical context for what we're heading into with the US banking system: this is a short WSJ article describing banking crises and subsequent governemnt bailouts in a handful of countries over the past couple decades: Japan, Thailand, South Korea, and Sweden.

The punchline: "This history shows it is almost always a painful process, typically costly to taxpayers and best done quickly."

Japan and Thailand/South Korea episodes I knew something about: Japan with it's "lost decade", as Japan's government/regulatory system got serious only after "allowing troubled banks to limp along and accumulate more bad loans for several years." That followed an asset bubble in Japanese real estate and equities (sound familiar?) .

That wikipedia link is the 1st hit if you google "japan lost decade." 6th hit is this Mpls Fed research paper, which I'd actually downloaded at some point over the past year, but still haven't gotten around to reading. That paper, incidentally, is co-authored by Ed Prescott, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1994.

The banking crisis in Thailand and South Korea followed the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, which is something I need to learn more about.

I didn't know, however, that Sweden experienced a banking crisis in the early '90s--also due to the collapse of a real estate bubble!

Sweden's experience in the early '90s is often cited as an example of a decisive approach. After a real-estate bubble popped and bankruptcies soared, the government said it would protect all depositors and creditors in its floundering banking system.

It did this by creating government-organized 'bad' banks specifically to manage troubled assets, and set tough conditions in order for banks to get new capital from the government for the surviving banks.

In the end, the government handed over $11 billion to the banks, and the crisis wrung 4% out of Sweden's gross domestic product, according to the World Bank. (For more information, see the World Bank database of banking crises.)

The worry during every bailout is that the act of fixing bank problems will make bank managers complacent in the future, believing they'll be saved when they make mistakes.

One way of limiting this "moral hazard," said Urban Backstrom, former governor of the Swedish central bank, in a later speech, was "to engage in tough negotiations with banks... and enforce the principle that losses were to be covered in the first place with the capital provided by shareholders."

some IndyMac numbers

Some numbers on IndyMac's asset & liability portfolios that were in a WSJ article I was just reading:

IndyMac had $19bn of deposits, of which $1bn was uninsured, held by ~10,000 different people (for an average of $100,000 per person). The article reports that IndyMac will make 50% of uninsured deposits available immediately..so it sounds like eventually everyone will get their money back. Maybe once the FDIC breaks it up and sells off different pieces to other banks. so it's not a question of people losing their money, but of liquidity--some of those depositors won't be able to get all their money right away.

Also, they have $15bn of outstanding loans, of which ~$1.7bn are "nonperforming"(meaning, it seems, either 30 or 90 days past due: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_Performing_Asset)

The next thing I want to learn about is the SIPC (Securities Investor Protection Corporation), whose mission is "Restoring funds to investors with assets in the hands of bankrupt and otherwise financially troubled brokerage firms."

Afro-Punk

I missed last year's Afro-punk festival altogether--I distinctly remember planning to to make it over to Brooklyn for at least the block party, but couldn't fit it in to that Sunday's schedule. As I wrote to some cats last July, I claimed to be "too beat from the last couple days, and got to chill/get some errands done before the work weeks starts up again." (I see from the e-mail thread that the previous couple of days had included seeing Pharoahe Monch at the Highline Friday night, and "Radio Golf" on Broadway Saturday night, and I had a soccer game Sunday afternoon, so it's understandable I didn't trek from Chelsea deep into Clinton Hill for the block party.)

I also missed about half of this year's festival, which has been running July 4-13, as we were out of town over the long 4th weekend. But upon returning to Fort Greene on Sunday, I've gotten a good taste of the happenings: stopped by the skate park Monday and Tuesday afternoons (I'd even volunteered though my.barakobama.com to do some voter registration, but didn't end up hooking up with those people); and I got us tickets to see the "flagship"/title movie of the festival Wednesday night, with James Spooner introducing it. We'll see if I can squeeze in a visit to the concert in Fort Greene Park tomorrow (in between a possible trip to the Brklyn Botanic Gardens in the morning, some sneaker shopping Anj wants to get in on Flatbush, and the Brooklyn Hip Hop festival, which starts at 4pm (flyer here), and the festival afterparty ("Detroit Comes to Brooklyn"!)--I'll have to do a separate post on those, assuming we make it.)

And definitely want to swing by this year's block party Sunday afternoon..it'll be much easier to do so this year, as it's been easy to stop by the skate park and make it to at least one movie, as we live in the neighborhood.

A couple resulting thoughts: I won't pretend that I'm not quite completely an outsider to this culture--quite obvious that, since I'm neither afro nor punk (neither in lifestyle nor listening, as the movie in particular drove home), nor do I don't skate (apart from taking out Anj's long board a couple times a few weeks ago--the last time ended ignominously, on the pavement of Fort Greene Park).

All that made me think again about whether (or, to what extent) I remain an outsider to the culture of hip hop that I do identify with. Moments like that, I remind myself of Mos's verses on "Fear Not of Man":

people be askin me all the time,
"Yo Mos, what's gettin ready to happen with Hip-Hop?"
I tell em, "You know what's gonna happen with Hip-Hop?
Whatever's happening with us"
If we smoked out, Hip-Hop is gonna be smoked out
If we doin alright, Hip-Hop is gonna be doin alright
People talk about Hip-Hop like it's some giant livin in the hillside
comin down to visit the townspeople
We are Hip-Hop Me, you, everybody, we are Hip-Hop
So Hip-Hop is goin where we goin
So the next time you ask yourself where Hip-Hop is goin
ask yourself.. where am I goin? How am I doin?

Got to love that line about hip hop being like some giant living in the hillside, coming down to to visit the townspeople!

No coincidence that there's a 4CD(!) Mos box set titled "We Are Hip Hop, Me, You Everybody". I think I saw this in the record shop on Ann Arbor, but passed on it at the time...

Looking fwd to this weekend's final Afro-punk events, and to being in Fort Greene through next year's installment--and maybe hosting some friends for it.

the resurrection - summer in the city

A resurrection of the blog, yes, but also of the self...

It's been free 3 weeks already that I've been free. Thought I'd start chronicling some activities and thoughts here.

The last two days have been good ones in the city--how life in the city should be. Went into Manhattan yesterday, late morning, to play some pickup soccer, on the Sara Roosevelt fields in the Lower East Side. The same fields where I play in the NYCoedSoccer league, and where Steve Nash had his "Showdown in Chinatown" "pickup" soccer game, featuring himself, Baron Davis, Jason Kidd, Claudio Reyna, and Thierry Henry. We swung by to try to watch some of it--I went straight from watching Germany beat Turkey in the Euro semis--but there were too many people around and on the fences to really see any of the action.

After soccer, walked back to Union Square and finished the first chapter of "Death and Life of Great American Cities." Just started it that morning, on the train going into the city. Figured it would be a good companion piece to "The Power Broker," which I started last week.

Coming back to Brooklyn from Union Square, stopped by the skatepark set up in the BAM parking lot, as part of the Afro Punk festival. Going back there this afternoon, for my first volunteer activity--holding it down at a voter registration booth for a few hrs.

Even then the day wasn't over. Anj had some softball games scheduled to be played in Randall's Island, so I headed back into the city and all the way uptown on the 4, to 125th and Lexington. But before a bus could come to take me across to the island, got word that the games were just scrimmages, and might not last long. So instead I wandered back west along 125th St, and down through Marcus Garvey Park and 5th Ave to 116th, and caught a crosstown bus across 116th to 3rd Ave, where I'd looked up some Mexican spots to check out.

Noticed already the resonances of reading Jane Jacobs, of observing the urban environment(s): 125th was vibrant, raucous, whereas 5th Ave south of Marcus Garvey was pretty desolate. Fine in the late afternoon, but prob not inviting at night.

I'll have to make it over to Randall's Island at some point while reading "The Power Broker." Everyone, at least everyone who lives in, or is interested in, New York City, should read at least the introduction to that book. The climax of Caro's introduction is his description of Moses's "autonomous sovereign state", whose seat of power was the Triborough Bridge Authority's offices on Randall's Island.

Enjoyed the trip to 116th St: found a couple nice spots to eat and drink, and checked out a small soccer shop.

Today has been all in Brooklyn, but did get out of the neighborhood. Took the B25 up Fulton, which with its detour to Atlantic drops me conveniently on the edge of Prospect Heights. Walked down Washington and dropped in to say hello at Shambhala, then continued down to the Brooklyn Museum. I'd planned to buy tickets for the Murakami exhibit later this week, but discovered the museum is closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Contemplated taking the bus out on Eastern Parkway, to hang out and read a bit around the Eastern Parkway & Kingston area that I'd driven past last week.

But decided against that--plan to bike out and through there sometime anyways--and since it's Tuesday, figured a better use of time would be to visit the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Walked through, from the Eastern Parkway entrance south to the Flatbush Ave gate. Sat in the Cherry Esplanade and finished a chapter of "The Power Broker", and thought parts of the Garden looked familiar from "Brooklyn Babylon". Got to watch that one again.

Emerged on Flatbush, and figured I'd try to find NYC Swag, so walked all the way down to Parkside, stopping on the way to get some lunch at the branch of Ali's Roti Shop. Decided against a full roti, and instead got a double and some phoulourie. Eventually found the storefront for NYC Swag, but it wasn't open, so hopped back on the B41, stopped at Pintchik's for some home and garden supplies, and then caught the 2-3 back home.

Obama & behavorial economics

After a friend mentioned that Obama may be too leftist/liberal on economics for him, thought I'd look up some info.

Seems like he's been pushed to talk a more protectionist line b/c of the democratic primary process/special interests (witness the flak he's getting from some unions just b/c he's taking on a director of economic policy associated w/ Rubin and his Hamilton project:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/business/12econ.html )

There was one article I'd seen earlier on Bloomberg earlier this year about Obama's team of economics advisors:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&refer=politics&sid=a7Zdp3HDltW4

The main guy I keep hearing about is Goolsbee, a UChicago prof. Seems like he's pushed Obama to include some ideas from behavioral economics into his plans. This article has more about that:

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=4d40a39e-8f57-4054-bd99-94bc9d19be1a

A google search also turned up these links:
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2008/02/04/economics_of_barack_obama/
which is really just a summary of this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jan/09/substancenotstyle

The Salon link quotes the conclusion:

"Obama and Goolsbee propose something entirely different - not a triangulation, but a basis for crafting public policy orthogonal to the traditional liberal-conservative axis.

If this approach needs a name, call it left-libertarianism. Advancements in behavioural economics, public and rational choice theory, and game theory provide us with an opportunity to attend to inequality without crippling the economy, enhancing the coercive power of the state, or infringing on personal liberty."

The Guardian piece is long, but looks like it's worth skimming.

Another long piece but more recent piece on how the UofC school of behavioral economics is finding its way into Obama's policies:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21491

that one is about Obama, but is also a review of Thaler and Sunstein's new book about behavioral economics--Thaler being the dean of that UofC school of thought, and Sunstein a longtime law prof at the UofC (though wikipedia says he's moving to Harvard:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cass_R._Sunstein
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Thaler

for a quick summary of that long nyrb piece, google actually turned up this, which links to the nyrb piece:
http://www.cfo.com/blogs/index.cfm/11535002

hip hop honors

more e-mails that I'm converting to blog posts. this one is from early Oct '07:

bit of music spam..also a bit late, as this was on vh-1 earlier this
evening:
http://www.vh1.com/shows/events/hip_hop_honors/_2007//index.jhtml

but it's not like vh-1 has that much programming ('i love new york'!)--looks like they're replaying it plenty this week. you might want to set your tivo, dvr, vcr, etc. as you'll see on the site, honorees are tribe, whodini, snoop, missy, new jack swing (genre), and wild style (film).

the website has a decent little video jukebox for each.

unfort didn't motivate myself over to bklyn saturday for some panels
and book signings that were taking place in conjunction with this:
http://powerhousearena.com/wildstyleVH1/calendar.html

(ny people, i.e., joel, aaron and dax: let me know if you'd like to
make it over there sometime this month to see the photo exhibits
there:
http://powerhousearena.com/JamelShabazz
http://powerhousearena.com/LeonardFreed/

)

nor did I motivate to get us tix for the shows in times square fri
night (roots w/ big daddy kane) or sunday (common w/ q-tip)! got to
movtivate..

enjoy,
Suman

Obama changing the game

like the previous post, this is something I slapped together a few weeks ago and e-mailed to myself:

Fascinating article from the WSJ about how Obama's SC strategy may change the game: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120105705756408791.html

Echoes some themes from a previous WSJ article (front pager on Tuesday Jan 22) about how Obama's candidacy maps to class and generational divisions within the black community:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120067436785100873.html

Also resonates w/ the repeated mentions of "the ministers" in "The Wire"--in typica Wire fashion, it's never explicitly laid out, but it's clear they hold a lot of political power. Go back to Carcetti's campaign, Herc's dismissal, and in the current season, the politics of replacing Burrell--all of it goes through the ministers.

Finally, a tangentially related link--a very interesting article about Charlie Rangel and his endorsement of Hilary Clinton, and how that maps to the structure of black political power in NYC:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/us/politics/22rangel.html

Google Books

this is something I wrote a few weeks ago, in mid-Jan, originally as an e-mail to a friend who works in publishing. but figured it worked better as a blog post:

I just had my 1st real experience w/ Google Books. It's pretty amazing, really. Here's how it came about:

On a Wed afternoon, NYTimes.com was prominently featuring preview from the upcoming Sunday Magazine--a profile of Ben Bernanke, written by Roger Lowenstein.

Lowenstein sounded familiar, b/c he'd written the big book on Long Term Capital Management, "When Genius Failed." That plus a couple other titles turned up as book search results when I did a (regular) google search on him:

http://books.google.com/books?as_auth=Roger+Lowenstein

I followed the link to another one of his books, "The Origins of the Crash: The Great Bubble and Its Undoing." That caught my eye b/c the title seems timely, even though it was published in '04--it's about the great equity (stock market) bubble of the '90s.

(Which really was remarkable run--earlier in the day I happened to be looking at some graphs of the S&P500..unfort finance.google.com only goes back to 2001, but here's a chart from Yahoo Finance:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=%5EGSPC&t=my
Though that chart is not as striking b/c it's on some sort of log scale)

So I started reading the 1st chapter off of Google, which was pretty cool. Some pages were omitted here and there, so you can't read the whole thing, but still..

(Another tangential thought that all this reminded me of: someone should publish a book on the origins of this crash, i.e., in the housing and credit markets, which encompass the history (and future) of securitization). The ideal guy to write it would prob be Michael Lewis..)

But that got me thinking about another finance book I've been wanting to read. I found that you can you not only read the whole book on Google--the pdf is available for download:

"Lombard St: A Description of a Money Market" by Walter Bagehot
http://books.google.com/books?id=XhYVAAAAMAAJ

Bagehot was one of the first editors of The Economist, 1860-1877; he published "Lombard St" in 1873. The version you can read or download from Google is a scan of a 1896 edition that's in the Univ of Michigan library.

Grant's interest rate observer

I came across a reference to the financial writer James
Grant in some article I was reading
a few weeks ago..searched around, and came to the web site of a
newsletter he publishes:

http://www.grantspub.com

It's for subscribers only, and I can see why..but there are a few
samples available for d/l:

http://www.grantspub.com/issues/samples.php

Take a look..I just read the "Inside Ace Securities' Hel Trust, Series
2005-HE5" article last week. It's really worth reading--it talks about
subprime-backed CDOs in general, starting from basics, and then
dissects a one particular CDO, going through it with a guy who shorted it. And
all this was published back in Sept..2006!

I just noticed he's got this up on the website too.."what Grant's had
to say on three burning issues in credit, before the match was lit"

http://www.grantspub.com/extra/BurningCredit.pdf

print those out and read them sometime..

I was reminded of all this tonight b/c I just saw that he
had an op-ed in the NYT a couple weeks ago. they had a whole page
devoted to the question of whether we're already in a recession..Grant's
answer was 'nobody knows', but his main point is a bust is necessary
after a boom, in particular in credit..and that we haven't gotten to the
bust yet:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/opinion/16grant.html

actually that seems to be his main interest, booms and busts. after I
came across his newsletter, I went on amazon and ordered on his books:
"The Trouble With Prosperity: A Contrarian's Tale of Boom, Bust, and
Speculation"

http://www.amazon.com/Trouble-Prosperity-Contrarians-Tale-Speculation/dp/0812929918/ref=pd_sim_b_title_5

I'll have to get around to reading it sooner or later..another on the
reading list/pile. he's got another one too, titled "Money of the Mind:
Borrowing and Lending in America from the Civil War to Michael Milken." he's also got a biography of Bernard Baruch, which them reminded me of
Niall Ferguson, , b/c
he's got a 2-volume history of the Rothschilds..but I'll save the
Ferguson links for a future post. that would just be a few more to add the
to list/pile.

new mission theater

new mission theater
Originally uploaded by Aindrila

Another flickr blog, but this one not of a photo that I took, but rather of a sketch that a friend made.

Miss the Mission..

I know I took a photo of this, but not finding it in my flickr photostream. I must not have uploaded it. Will have to do so.

NYC photos

dumbo - action shot
Originally uploaded by shooGu

I've taken relatively few photos this spring/summer/fall in NYC--and from a quick look at my iPhoto library, none in the last couple months.

And of those few photos, only a couple have been graffiti shots--something I was doing more of in SF, and something that connected me to the surrounding environment of the city, I found.

Here is one of the few--an action shot, no less, taken in Dumbo in early August, as we were walking down from the F stop to the Empire-Fulton park down by the river, for that Zune live @ the bbq show.

There are some photos from that show in my flickr photostream--make your way to the 'Living for the City' set, which is where I'll continue to post what NYC shots I do take. I'll have to pick up the pace there..

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

August Wilson retrospective

I caught this small item in a NYT arts section from a couple Sundays ago, which I was finally skimming on the train this morning:

The 10 plays in AUGUST WILSON's portrait of 20th-century African-American life were written out of order. First came ''Jitney,'' set in 1977, after which Wilson bounced through the '20s, the '50s, the '10s, the '30s, the '60s, the '40s, the '80s and the '00s before ending, with ''Radio Golf,'' in the '90s.

As theatergoers who caught even a few of the plays when they were first produced quickly learned, phrases and characters echo or even recur throughout; at times it might have enhanced the understanding of Wilson's design (if not of the stories themselves, which needed no enhancement) to find, in the Playbill, genealogical tables of the sort sometimes provided in editions of sprawling fantasy novels or Greek drama.

Wilson's plays, with their magic realism and full-throated tragedy, are a bit of both. In the general introduction the 10-volume edition of ''The August Wilson Century Cycle,'' published by Theater Communications Group, John Lahr compares Wilson's aim and achievement favorably to those of Eugene O'Neill, who completed only a fraction of his intended Greek-style cycle. Wilson finished his own, just before dying in 2005, and though he suggested that his plays were primarily intended as black stories for black audiences, their presentation in this new, handsome $200 slip-cased collection -- in cold print and in their proper order -- unavoidably wrests them from that context. For all their specificity, the characters become archetypal when disembodied on the page, and thus become everyone's, to the point that Aunt Ester, King Hedley and Ma Rainey seem as fixed and eternal as Clytemnestra and her clan.

I don't know much about theater, but somehow I've been following August Wilson. Actually, I do know how--I read a profile of him in the Star Tribune. It must have been in the late 80s, when he was still living and working in St Paul.

I didn't see any of his plays til ~'96, when I saw '7 Guitars'--on Broadway, actually. Since then, I've seen 5 more--'Ma Rainey' in Dearborn, 'Joe Turner' and 'Gem of the Ocean' in SF, 'Two Trains Running' and 'Radio Golf' over the past year here in NYC. (While I'm at it, let me try to drive a bit of traffic to The HNIC Report, which had this review of the staging of Radio Golf that we went to see over the summer. More about the HNIC Report in a later post.)

'Ma Rainey' is the only I've read--I found a copy in the Ann Arbor public library, and Anj and I read through it before going to see the play. I think reading was valuable--prob no coincidence that 'Ma Rainey' is the play I've liked the best.

I also bought a copy of "Fences" from a bookseller in the East Village last winter, but haven't read it. But now it's possible to get the whole boxed set. It'd be a nice thing to have before March, when there will the chance to see all 10 within the span of a couple months! The continuation of the quote above:

Like them, too, Wilson's people will be brought back to full, dreadful life as long as humans put on plays. Catch them in March, when the Kennedy Center will offer staged readings of the whole cycle, in repertory and in order.

Don't know if I'll be able to find the time and the money to take in more than a couple of the 10 at the Kennedy Center. Here is a WP Post article about it, and here is the Kennedy Center's theater calendar--scroll down for the "August Wilson's 20th Century" listings.

living for the city

So the pace of posts hasn't picked up since arriving in the city. I'll try for at least quick and short updates.

Weekends have been busy, but in a good way.

Last weekend, the long weekend was lots of walking, and eating, with A&C: around our area--stops at Murray's, Cookshop, Empire Diner; walks to the W Village, Union Square; around MoMA (and further up to Pierre Marclolini, and back down to Bryant Park); down lower LES for a very good dinner, then up to Ave C for Speakeasy; Wall St, Battery Park, WTC site, City Hall, and up B'way to Soho; Korean BBQ, drinks in meatpacking, Chelsea Square diner late-night; and dosai for brunch...

And the night before all that started, Anj and I took the 7 out to Flushing Meadows for a night at the US Open. Arthur Ashe was not a great experience--but seeing Calleri beat Hewitt in Louis Armstrong was.

This weekend, which really started Thurs night: I caught the last couple minutes of Junot Diaz's reading at the Union Sq B&N, then went over to Revival for a drink, back to U Sq to meet Anj, then up to Bipa for an unplanned random meal. Fri night out with Billy, first to Maritime, then down to LES. A long night which ended with a kebab on Houston St. Saturday and Sunday both started with studying on the roof, then some tennis-watching in the afternoon. Finally convinced Anj to motivate over to Ft Greene--just in time to catch the end of Kweli's set. Half-watched the women's final at Mullane's--first time back there since moving to the city! Then strolls back and forth to Atlantic-Pacific, and finally down Flatbush for a house party. Waited a while for the 2, 3, 4 or 5 at A-P--finally a 2 came which brought us all the way back to our area.

on the road

It's been just over 5 weeks that we've been in NYC. Arrived on the island April 26, crossing the G Washington Bridge, ending a road trip that had started 4 1/2 days earlier--when we crossed the Bay Bridge, leaving SF. I-80 all the way--across California and the Sierras; across the barren landscapes of Nevada and Utah, with a stop in Salt Lake City to see my cousin at the Univ of Utah; into the plains--Nebraska, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio--with plenty of rain on those plains; finally into the East--Pennsylvania, NJ, and finally Manhattan.

I had thought of bringing "On the Road" to read on the trip. Wish I had.

My radio

Another 6 months of blog rot. What broke me out of it this time. Music again--noticed on last.fm that they've now got a widget to embed your personal radio station--hence, see to the right.

5 weeks in NYC already. More on that in coming weeks.

The Bridge is On

There's some blog-rot for you--nearly 6 months since the last post.

NYC has been interesting. One thing that has been lacking is a sense of the city's hip hop culture. I did buy a couple mixes from a little stall on 14th St--one was a good mix of Nas's new and old stuff. And you see kids (and men) breakin' for cash in the subways..or in Columbus Circle. But you don't see graff in Manhattan. Got to get to the outer boroughs for that.

I did buy Soundwalk's Bronx series, and I'm looking forward to taking the 4/5/6 up there to do the graff and hip hop walks. (I actually bought the physical CD from Amazon instead of merely the mp3s through their website, since that gives you all 3 Bronx tours in nice packing, for the price of 2 via their website.)

But I'm running out of time..just a few weekends left here in the city.

Tonight, I was about to get to bed, flipping through our limited selection of channels, when I came across someone interviewing Q-Tip. Turned out to be an episode of "The Bridge"
which is all about showing classic NYC hip hop videos. Really regret not finding this earlier--just over the past few weeks I missed episodes about Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island--check the link above and just take a look at the playlists of videos!

But glad I caught this episode, which was dedicated to Dilla. A number of great videos for Dilla-produced tracks--a couple of Tribe's ("1nce Again", "Find a Way"); a couple off Q-Tip's "Amplified" ("Breathe & Stop", "Vivrant Thing"); plus Common's "The Light"; and brief interviews w/ not only Q-Tip, but also Waajeed and Geology.

Here's something weird--I randomly talked to Geology when he, Waajeed, Rich Medina, and Theo came through Mighty in September.

In grabbing the link for Rich Medina's site, discovered he's got this monthly at SOB's dedicated to Fela & Afro-beat...another thing that has been lacking from my NYC stay has been any going out to listen to music.

I have had some good and interesting times in the city--a la Fela, the best day was prob the Saturday afternoon evening that I hit a Romare Bearden exhibition at a gallery in Midtown, then scampered down to Grand Central and took the 7 out to LIC; with Joel took the G to BAM, just in time to catch a screening of "Fela! Fresh From Africa"; talked to the filmmakers and the artist Ghariokwu Lemi, who did a lot of Fela's album covers (got to try to make it out to Williamsburg this weekend to catch his show, "Political Cartoons from Nigeria"--I gave him my e-mail address, and he forwarded me not only the flyer for his show, but also this NYT article that mentions him); from there back on the subway, out to the Brooklyn Museum, for their fantastic free 1st Saturday--caught the Annie Leibowitz and "Tigers of Wrath" exhibits, but didn't have time for a couple other exhibits, which I'll have to try to make it back for. We closed the museum, but our night wasn't over--went back in to Fort Greene, and after considering going into "Stonehome Wine Bar" and then Moe's, we ended up down the block at a shiny relatively new bar called Mullane's--which turned out to be fun b/c we talked to the colorful Irish proprietor for a while.

Come to think of it, that wasn't even the end of the night, b/c we'd neglected to eat dinner, so after getting dropped off back in the East Village, I got a tasty gyro at Cinderella's on 2nd Ave (after stopping and talking to Justin, the Quebecois guy setting up his Xmas tree operation in front of St. Mark's), and then met Matteo at Lit Lounge, which we closed down.

I need some more nyc nights like that one..

Stevie on Sesame St.

In between doing some fixed income homework, I checked out Soul Sides. I was happily surprised to see this Soul Sides/Mark Anthony Neal collaboration--a M.A.N. blog entry about Billy Preston, whose obit I'd read in the NYT a couple weeks ago (which Adam I talked about while hanging out last weekend).

That Soul Sides entry took me to another audioblog tribute to Billy Preston. Poking around that blog, I found this entry about YouTube, which gives links for a bunch of soul performances you can watch there. E.g., here is Stevie doing "Superstition" on Sesame Street.

last.fm top 10 charts

The mechanics of stochastic calculus are finally making sense...at this late date. Should've figured this out weeks ago. I eventually need/want to learn more of the mathematics. But unfort there's just not time right now.

Listening to some jazz through iTunes, and as always uploading the track info last.fm. I've already pasted into my template the html badge for showing recently played tracks--it's there on the RHS, along with badges showing recent content from my flickr and upcoming.org account (neither of which I've had time to add content to lately), and also my del.icio.us account (which I have somewhat).

But I just discovered that last.fm provides a snippet of html code for including my most played artists overall. The entire list of 277 artists makes for an interesting "long-tailed" distribution. But here's the top 10:



A few anomalies there: I think Derrick May is so high b/c I just shuffled through his tracks one day. Plantlife we listened to heavy for a few weeks after first picking it up last summer, but haven't gotten back to it much. Interesting that Caetano Veloso is there. Prince should move up b/c I shuffled through his tracks all last weekend.

Might as well include top 10 tracks too:




Didn't realize the Big Pun and Greyboy tracks had gotten so many spins. The others def I play often. Here is where I got the Coke Escovedo track...what a burner. I really should get out and buy some Coke Escovedo. And also I should get the new Soul Sides comp--considering how much music and knowledge that site has dropped on me. (And look at that, he included William Bell's "I Forgot to be a Lover"! If he posted that on Soul Sides, I missed it. I bought it through the iTunes music store a couple months ago after reading a NYT review of a Jaheim concert which noted as an aside that his "Put that Woman First" is a reworking of the Bell track (which itself has some echoes of Van Morrison in places).

Now that I think of it, it's odd that "Put that Woman First" isn't among the top 10 above. I play the hell out of that track.

Actually, now that I check my last.fm page again, it's tied for #10 with the Luther track (which has it's own story behind it)...and oddly the William Bell is up there at #10 already as well.

the death & life of Jane Jacobs

The blogging has been much less steady since my schedule got a lot busier about 6.5 weeks ago. E.g., I should be reading for a quiz that I have to take in about 7 hours: CAPM, APT
--both of which fall under the general category of factor models. That's a nice collection of links there that Google turned up for those 3 topics; e.g., the latter one is from Sharpe himself, who developed CAPM (for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1990).

But this post was meant to be about Jane Jacobs. However, given that I have other more pressing things to do, I just wanted to post the NYT obit, as well as a Slate obit by Witold Rybczynski. I still haven't read The Death and Life of Great American Cities. It's been on my to-read list for a long time.