I was in the reception area of a local hotel yesterday, waiting to meet an elderly couple of my aquaintence, and I saw a discreet door marked library. I stepped inside to find that the room had one bookshelf, taking up rather less than half a wall, and even this was very far from full. These were its contents:
A complete edition of the Waverly novels
About 35 percent of an editions of Dickens
A number of leather bound works by Burgess and Maclean (dissapointingly I'm talking about Alan Burgess and Alastair Maclean)
Two copies of Home Doctor
A work designed to help those seeking to defend themselves in court
An illustrated atlas of the British Empire
A handfull of travel guides

Clearly nobody will ever read any of these books, apart from possbly the travel guides, although I do like the idea of taking a holiday in order to spend long hours by the fire identifying symptoms in the Home Doctor or planning subtle legal defences to get you off your latests public decency charges. I think it is clear that the patrons of this hotel, like so many students of my aquaintence, find an area called 'Library' a congenial place to shout loudly down their mobile phones and drink carbonated beverages.

Afterwards we took a turn round a nearby cathedral, and I read a number of charming epitaphs and inscriptions, including the grave of a young chap killed by greek brigands and a monument to the coal miners of the area. This cheered me up considerably. Remember, there is always someone worse off than yourself, and that person is very often a miner.

Pro patria mori

I do not favour the fence; but I think in the case of Kosovan secession from Serbia, it is dangerous, at least at this early stage, to relocate. While the Albanian cause may be worthy, their majority unquestionable and their solution practical (and certainly, with regard to their mud-slinging, violence and in-some-cases combative supremacism, they give no worse than they get), two things bother me about Kosovan independence: 1) The use of international muscle to facilitate Kosovo's secession in spite of the wishes of democratic Serbia, a country that is still trying to find its feet after several decades of absolutist rule, bloodshed and unpredictable political geography, seems only to have consolidated the USA's already damning reputation for flouting UN consensus - one cannot help feeling that Russia's legally-grounded objections are more than reasonable; 2) What of the not-inconsiderable Serbian population of the new Kosovo? 10%, at a glance, which is actually more than I originally thought. It seems only fair that as most of this number is concentrated in the northern part of the country, they should be allowed, if they wish, to secede and/or be reunited with Serbia. After all, why sympathise with one manifestation of nationalist idiocy and not another?

I am, as I say, on the fence, waiting for rain. On a lighter note, I enjoyed this stock limerick:

There once was a [person] from [place]
Whose [body part] was [special case].
When [event] would occur,
It would cause [him or her]
To violate [law of time/space].

Isaac Hamilton's Curiosities of Literature

- An Almanace fore the Unwarie

On this day in 1994 V.S. Naipul loaded a leatherette bound collector's edition of A Dance to the Music of Time into the great Western Cannon, and aimed it at Paul Theroux. Fortunately a quick-witted Derek Walcott distracted him with a well timed display of avarice and sloth, giving just enough time for Chinua Achebe to aproach the great novelist in a canoe, and throw a spear at him. A fine day for postcolonialism!

Word of the week - Ernsugir: (n) eagle-sucking; the noise made by an eagle's wings in flight. Derived from, and confined to, Old Iclandic.

Internal Memo of the Week: The Visum et Repartum, an early eighteenth century governmental report on the exhumation and disection of a graveyard of Serbian Vampires.

Place Your Bets.

Apparently comparisons can be made between the rogue trader, Jerome Kerviel and Kurtz from Heart of Darkness, according to an interesting article at marketpsych.com.

It also demonstrates the similarities between "rogue" traders and trading geniuses. If the only difference between the crazies and the geniuses is success, then our view of success at least in the professions of chance is flawed. Using the often fallacious proof by abduction we interpret success that could have been random as the result of skill.

My point is, Jerome Kerviel may make a fantastic story and skapegoat, the root problem is how we view and reward success(and therefore incentivise behaivour) in environments such as the markets.

This post borrows heavily from Taleb's Fooled by Randomness- a very good book.