links of the day

A Violin Once Owned by Goebbels Keeps Its Secrets

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The setting was Berlin; the gift an 18th-century instrument said to be from the hands of a master luthier whose works mark the apex of three centuries of violin making. The ceremony a chance to cement an alliance and to thank the violinist for playing for Germans wounded in World War II.

Much is documented — if little remembered — about Goebbels’s gift on Feb. 22, 1943. But the origins of the violin itself remain a mystery. Was it confiscated property, one of thousands of musical instruments plundered by the Nazis, or otherwise obtained under duress from those persecuted during the Nazi era?

When Ms. Suwa and her violin returned to Japan, the whispers followed. They have trailed the instrument for nearly 70 years.

That’s from this fascinating piece in The New York Times, penned by Carla Shapreau, a violin maker and lawyer, who writes that she is:

conducting a project on musical losses, file by file, name by name. The analysis of authenticity and the history of ownership and possession, the provenance, are essential to the mission. 

The lady that’s the subject of the piece is Nejiko Suwa. Born in 1920, she was a prodigy by 10 and studying with the Russian violinist Anna Bubnova-Ono, Yoko Ono’s aunt by marriage. She risked her life to protect the Stradivarius violin, eventually making it back to Japan.

Mark Cuban on the Business of Wall Street

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Mark Cuban dishes out a lot of questions in his latest blog post:

The important issue is recognizing that Wall Street is no longer serving the purpose  what it was designed to. Wall Street was designed to be a market to which companies provide securities (stocks/bonds), from which they received capital that would help them start/grow/sell businesses. Investors made their money by recognizing value where others did not, or by simply committing to a company and growing with it as a shareholder, receiving dividends or appreciation in their holdings.  What percentage of the market is driven by investors these days ?

I started actively trading stocks in 1992. I traded a lot. Over the years I’ve written quite a bit about the market. I have always thought I had a good handle on the market. Until recently.

Over just the past 5 years, the market has changed. It is getting increasingly difficult to just invest in companies you believe in. Discussion in the market place is not about the performance of specific companies and their returns. Discussion is about macro issues that impact all stocks. And those macro issues impact automated trading decisions, which impact any and every stock that is part of any and every index or ETF.  Combine that with the leverage of derivatives tracking companies,  indexes and other packages or the leveraged ETFs, and individual stocks become pawns in a much bigger game than I feel increasingly less  comfortable playing. It is a game fraught with ever increasing risk.

This was the most important reasoning from Cuban, I thought:

My 2 cents is that it is important for this country to push Wall Street back to the business of creating capital for business.  Whether its through a use of taxes on trades (hit every trade on a stock held less than 1 hour with a 10c tax and all these problems go away), or changing the capital gains tax structure so that there is no capital gains tax on any shares of stock (private or public company) held for 1 year or more, and no tax on dividends paid to shareholders who have held stock in the company for more than 5 years. 

Full post here.

Hacking the Voters’ Brains

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With the U.S. presidential election less than two months away, we are exposed to more and more political coverage day by day. Sasha Issenberg (author of The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns), reporting for The Wall Street Journal, pens an interesting post about hacking the voters’ brains:

4. Get them to confess (indirectly) to bias.

Throughout 2008, Barack Obama’s advisers never entirely trusted polls that showed their candidate to be ahead. There was, after all, a long history of white voters misleading pollsters about their willingness to vote for a black candidate. The phenomenon was known as “the Bradley effect,” after Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who did far worse at the polls in his 1982 gubernatorial race than polls had predicted. Obama’s advisers didn’t want to risk such an election-night surprise and used their statistical-modeling prowess to hedge against one.

The challenge was separating voters who were resisting Obama (or remained undecided) because of his race from those who were drawn toward John McCain for other reasons. Obama’s top microtargeting consultant, Ken Strasma, focused on a small group of white voters who reported themselves to be supporting John McCain at a much higher rate than the campaign’s scores predicted they should. Mr. Strasma looked for variables that defined this group and found one when he tried a new question in his surveys: “Do you think your neighbors would be willing to vote for an African-American for president?”

People who answered “no” were likely to be Mr. Strasma’s problem voters. Everything his databases signaled about their political attitudes—based on their partisanship, age or socioeconomic status—suggested they would be likely to support Mr. Obama, but they said they planned to vote for Mr. McCain. So Mr. Strasma created a new category in his microtargeting: a so-called “openness score,” measuring the likelihood that someone was open to voting for a black candidate.

The campaign could isolate those with low scores and deal with them in one of two ways. They could be ignored or, if they looked like habitual voters who were likely to turn out, the campaign could approach them with targeted communications that focused on urgent economic themes rather than on Obama’s charisma (“hope and change”) and the historic nature of his candidacy.

5. Let them know (gently) that they are being watched. Few campaigns want to be associated with tactics like Mark Grebner’s threat to expose nonvoters to their neighbors, because it looks a lot like blackmail. But campaigns have figured out how to soften such approaches. One version widely used today tells a voter “our records indicate that you voted in the 2008 election” and says that the sender hopes to be able to thank the recipient again after this election day for his or her “good citizenship.”It may fail to meet Mr. Grebner’s goal of shaming those who don’t go to the polls, but it still works. It’s been tested.

You should read items 1 to 3 here.

John Gruber’s iPhone 5 Review

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I am very happy with my iPhone 4S, so I don’t think I will be upgrading to the new iPhone 5. Still, I enjoyed this thorough review of the iPhone 5 from John Gruber. Bottom line? The phone is nice:

iPhone 5 in my hand, this talk of micron-precision, fine watch craftsmanship, and the computerized selection of best-match inlays sounds not the least bit bullshitty or blustery. It simply sounds like an explanation of the level of obsession that it takes to create a mass-produced device that feels this, well, nice. It even feels as though they’ve put some serious work into the iPhone’s one historical weak spot: the home button.

The iPhone remains the flagship of Apple’s entire product line. It exhibits not merely the highest degree of fit and finish of any smartphone, but the highest degree of fit and finish for anything Apple has ever made. When first you hold it — where by you I mean “you, who, like me, is intimately familiar with the feel and heft of an iPhone 4 or 4S” — you will be struck by how light it feels, yet in a premium, not chintzy way. Within a week, it will feel normal, and your old iPhone 4/4S will feel like a brick.

On Apple choosing to offer only one version (in terms of screen size) of the iPhone:

In an ideal world, perhaps Apple would offer two iPhone sizes — like they do with products such as MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, and iMacs. A smaller one with the classic 3.5-inch display, and a larger (say, 4.5-inch?) one for people who want that. On the logistics side, this doesn’t align with Apple’s interests — economies of scale and the marketing simplicity of just one new iPhone per year.

But there’s another factor. I believe many people would choose poorly. Bigger looks better. It’s like the old chestnut about TV sets in big box stores — side-by-side, standing in the store, people tend to choose TVs that are oversaturated, the ones with the boldest colors, rather than the ones with the better, more accurate colors. I can’t help but think that many people would choose the big-ass iPhone in my hypothetical two-sizes scenario, and later regret it with tired thumbs sore from stretching. (My thumbs feel sore just by looking at photos like this one of the LG Optimus G.) Design is making decisions, and Apple has always decided what the best size is for an iPhone display.

If you can afford the iPhone 5, John concludes, you should buy it.

Why Do So Many People Die Trying to Summit Mount Everest?

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Grayson Schaffer’s “Take a Number” is an excellent piece in Outside Magazine, profiling the challenges climbers face in ascending Mount Everest in the modern era. As he notes, scores of people die attempting to climb the world’s highest peak not because of weather conditions, but due to other elements (overcrowding, for-profit-companies that won’t refuse the cash, etc.):

What I saw was a situation that resembled ’96 in some respects but in most ways did not. As happened back then, some of the 2012 teams lost precious time waiting in long lines in the Death Zone, above 26,000 feet, and summited too late in the day. But 2012’s victims weren’t caught by a freak, fast-moving storm. Their deaths were the result of exhaustion, climbing too slowly, ignoring serious altitude sickness, and refusing to turn around—which is to say, the steady toll of human error. Nobody was killed by the mountain’s roulette wheel of hazards such as rockfall, avalanches, and blizzards.

This matters because it points to a new status quo on Everest: the routinization of high-altitude death. By and large, the people running the show these days on the south side of Everest—the professional guides, climbing Sherpas, and Nepali officials who control permits—do an excellent job of getting climbers to the top and down again. Indeed, a week after this year’s blowup, another hundred people summited on a single bluebird day, without a single death or serious injury.

But that doesn’t mean Everest is being run rationally. There are no prerequisites for how much experience would-be climbers must have and no rules to say who can be an outfitter. Many of the best alpinists in the world still show up in Base Camp every spring. But, increasingly, so do untrained, unfit people who’ve decided to try their hand at climbing and believe that Everest is the most exciting place to start. And while some of the more established outfitters might turn them away, novices are actively courted by cut-rate start-up companies that aren’t about to refuse the cash.

Worth reading in its entirety. And if you’ve never read Jon Krakaeur’s Into Thin Air, you must put it on your reading list.

Google’s Acquisition of Nik Software

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Yesterday, Google made a huge acquisition in the photography space by purchasing Nik Software. However, many news outlets got it wrong, focusing on the SnapSeed app rather than Nik’s more feature-worthy products (such as Color Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro, which I use in my post-processing).

Here is Trey Ratcliff on Google’s acquisition, a power user of Nik Software:

This is an exciting move from Google, and another indication that Google takes photography very seriously. Most of the silicon-valley-bubble-press probably does not know much about Nik Software, and doesn’t realize that this is a company built by and for professional photographers. Even though their software is designed for “pros”, I’m confident in saying that 90% of their customers are amateurs who are using these same tools to make them look like pros! Nik makes amazing tools, and I am really looking forward to seeing them bleed into my daily life of using Google+.

Now, the significance of this acquisition should not be overlooked. This is not like, say, the United States acquiring Puerto Rico (think FB and Instagram – where Facebook is a social-network of people acquiring a smaller social-network of people) but instead, this is like the United States buying Lockheed Martin.

It will be interesting to see what Google does with this acquisition. Nik’s software isn’t cheap (i.e., comparable to prices offered for stand-alone products such as Adobe’s Lightroom), and I am looking to see whether the products will become more affordable in the future.

Reddit’s Mind Blowing Sentences

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This is a great thread on Reddit: “What is the most mind-blowing sentence you can think of?”

To start things off:

No one is going to remember your memories.

This one is my favorite:

The difference between billion and trillion is equivalent to the difference between your lifetime and the entirety of human history.

This rings close to home:

“When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.”

On exploration:

We know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the ocean floor.

I like this explanation of pi:

Pi is an infinite, nonrepeating decimal – meaning that every possible number combination exists somewhere in pi. Converted into ASCII text, somewhere in that infinite string of digits is thename of every person you will ever love, the date, time, and manner of your death, and the answers to all the great questions of the universe.

What would be your mind-blowing sentence?

###

(via SciencePopularis)

Everything You Think You Know About China Is Wrong

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The byline for this Foreign Policy piece reads: “”Are we obsessing about its rise when we should be worried about its fall?” So, it gained my attention for a quick read:

The disconnect between the brewing troubles in China and the seemingly unshakable perception of Chinese strength persists even though the U.S. media accurately cover China, in particular the country’s inner fragilities. One explanation for this disconnect is that elites and ordinary Americans remain poorly informed about China and the nature of its economic challenges in the coming decades. The current economic slowdown in Beijing is neither cyclical nor the result of weak external demand for Chinese goods. China’s economic ills are far more deeply rooted: an overbearing state squandering capital and squeezing out the private sector, systemic inefficiency and lack of innovation, a rapacious ruling elite interested solely in self-enrichment and the perpetuation of its privileges, a woefully underdeveloped financial sector, and mounting ecological and demographic pressures. Yet even for those who follow China, the prevailing wisdom is that though China has entered a rough patch, its fundamentals remain strong.

Americans’ domestic perceptions influence how they see their rivals. It is no coincidence that the period in the 1970s and late 1980s when Americans missed signs of rivals’ decline corresponded with intense dissatisfaction with U.S. performance (President Jimmy Carter’s 1979 “malaise speech,” for example). Today, a China whose growth rate is falling from 10 to 8 percent a year (for now) looks pretty good in comparison with an America where annual growth languishes at below 2 percent and unemployment stays above 8 percent. In the eyes of many Americans, things may be bad over there, but they are much worse here.

The rest of the piece here.

On Looking at Yourself Objectively

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Beginning with a (great) history lesson on Ignaz Semmelweis, Aaron Swartz crafts an excellent blog post with some tips on looking at yourself objectively:

Looking at ourselves objectively isn’t easy. But it’s essential if we ever want to get better. And if we don’t do it, we leave ourselves open to con artists and ethical compromisers who prey on our desire to believe we’re perfect. There’s no one solution, but here are some tricks I use to get a more accurate sense of myself:

Embrace your failings. Be willing to believe the worst about yourself. Remember: it’s much better to accept that you’re a selfish, racist moron and try to improve, than to continue sleepwalking through life that way as the only one who doesn’t know it.

Studiously avoid euphemism. People try and sugarcoat the tough facts about themselves by putting them in the best light possible. They say “Well, I was going to get to it, but then there was that big news story today” and not “Yeah, I was procrastinating on it and started reading the news instead.” Stating things plainly makes it easier to confront the truth.

Reverse your projections. Every time you see yourself complaining about other groups or other people, stop yourself and think: “is it possible, is there any way, that someone out there might be making the same complaints about me?”

Look up, not down. It’s always easy to make yourself look good by finding people even worse than you. Yes, we agree, you’re not the worst person in the world. That’s not the question. The question is whether you can get better — and to do that you need to look at the people who are even better than you.

Criticize yourself. The main reason people don’t tell you what they really think of you is they’re afraid of your reaction. (If they’re right to be afraid, then you need to start by working on that.) But people will feel more comfortable telling you the truth if you start by criticizing yourself, showing them that it’s OK.

Find honest friends. There are some people who are just congenitally honest. For others, it’s possible to build a relationship of honesty over time. Either way, it’s important to find friends who you can trust to tell to tell you the harsh truths about yourself. This is really hard — most people don’t like telling harsh truths. Some people have had success providing an anonymous feedback form for people to submit their candid reactions.

Listen to the criticism. Since it’s so rare to find friends who will honestly criticize you, you need to listen extra-carefully when they do. It’s tempting to check what they say against your other friends. For example, if one friend says the short story you wrote isn’t very good, you might show it to some other friends and ask them what they think. Wow, they all think it’s great! Guess that one friend was just an outlier. But the fact is that most of your friends are going to say it’s great because they’re your friend; by just taking their word for it, you end up ignoring the one person who’s actually being honest with you.

At this stage in my life, it’s hard to find friends, let alone honest friends…

I am trying to look up, not down in one area of my life at the moment: fitness.