Posts

Fantastic obituary to make anyone think their life is pretty boring - Count Robert de La Rochefocauld, former Resistance fighter in WWII: Cycling to Bordeaux to meet a contact who was to arrange his return to England, however, he ran into a roadblock, taken prisoner, and imprisoned at the 16th-century Fort du Hâ. His explanations that he had been out after dark on a romantic assignation were not believed and, in his cell, La Rochefoucauld considered swallowing the cyanide pill concealed in the heel of his shoe. ...

I’m sure this is going to get this little website banned in China, but yesterday the censorship of the internet there went through the looking glass: In an unlikely coincidence certainly unwelcome to China’s communist rulers, the stock benchmark fell 64.89 points on Monday, matching the numbers of the June 4, 1989 crackdown in the heart of Beijing. On the popular Sina microblog site, searches using ‘June 4’, ‘64.89’, ‘stock market’, and ‘benchmark Shanghai Composite Index’ were all blocked. ...

Bronte Capital on the ‘Failbook’ IPO: The Wall Street Journal… derides Michael Grimes (the Morgan Stanley Banker) for not standing up to David Ebersman (Facebook’s CFO) and allowing Facebook to sell too many shares at too high a price. This is tits-up-backward. David Ebersman in this context is the client. He paid the fees. Michael Grimes had a duty to act in Ebersman’s interest. Ebersman wanted to sell more shares at a higher price. Michael Grimes and Morgan Stanley obliged even at the cost to their own franchise. ...

Aaron Sorkin delivered a commencement speech at Syracuse University last week, ranging over a wide field of topics as is usual for Sorkin. Two things I found were incredibly poignant and to the point on relationships: There’s a story about a man and a woman who have been married for 40 years. One evening at dinner the woman turns to her husband and says, “You know, 40 years ago on our wedding day you told me that you loved me and you haven’t said those words since.” They sit in silence for a long moment before the husband says “If I change my mind, I’ll let you know.” ...

If you can recall, a couple of years ago Air France flight 447 crashed in the Atlantic off the coast of South America. The follow-up investigation is returning a report finally, and the conclusion is a bit grim: It seems surprising that Airbus has conceived a system preventing one pilot from easily assessing the actions of the colleague beside him. And yet that is how their latest generations of aircraft are designed. The reason is that, for the vast majority of the time, side sticks are superb. “People are aware that they don’t know what is being done on the other side stick, but most of the time the crews fly in full automation; they are not even touching the stick,” says Captain King. “We hand-fly the aeroplane ever less now because automation is reliable and efficient, and because fatigue is an issue. [The side stick] is not an issue that comes up – very rarely does the other pilot’s input cause you concern.” ...