Quants and Qualts

Brant and Walt are discussing, simplistically, the causes of current economic woes.

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Brant: Finance is run by quants, people from a maths-physics background.

Walt: Like you.

Brant: That’s my point. It’s time to be humble. We thought we could apply the laws of physics to markets and expect them to behave. Produce predictable outcomes.

Walt: But economics isn’t just about resources. The world is full of people. Trying to use maths to predict human behavior will end in tears.

Brant: Human confidence, human fear, that’s what took us up and took us down. We need models, but we need to include the qualitative as well as the quantitative.

Walt: A role for quants and, dare I say it, qualts, as well?

_______________

Voice-over

Quants, those who follow a numbers approach. Qualts? Someone trained in the human sciences?

 

Some quants, like Emanuel Derman, are beginning to suggest both approaches are needed.

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Harold Pinter Conversations

Mick and Ruth discuss the conversations in Harold Pinter plays.

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Mick: Where did he get them from, those conversations, someone said, “packed with menace”?

Ruth: So banal yet so menacing. Years ago, an English lecturer I had I think, said Pinter jotted down what he heard while riding on buses. How about that! A Nobel prize for conversations overheard on buses.

Mick: It’s not what’s said. It’s how he put them together. The context: the characters, their relationships, their interactions, the silences. Oh yes, the silences. The gaps before and after what they said. “What have you done with the scissors?”

Ruth: So when you say you admire the reality of Pinter’s conversations, is it the menace or the banality?

Mick: Oh the menace, the menace.

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Voice-over

"Silence. A drip sounds in the bucket.. They all look up. 

Mick: You still got that leak. 

Aston: Yes.

Pause."

Bronze is a common metallic compound, yet sculptures of Henry Moore or Barbara Hepworth transcend the medium.

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Starfish story

Father O’Hara is going into parable mode with Elizabeth, an economics student.

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Father O’Hara: Do you know the starfish story, then?

Elizabeth: Aah… it’s got to be one with a metaphor or a moral to it, it’s probably a PARABLE, or you wouldn’t be setting out to tell me, right?

Father O’Hara: Just listen. There’s a boy walking along the beach and he sees thousands of starfish washed up by the tide. They’re stranded, see, and then the boy sees this man who’s throwing the starfish one by one back into the sea. And the boy asks, why you doing that, it won’t help, there are thousands of them stranded here. And the man picks up another starfish and throws it into the water, and says, “Well, it helped THAT one.”

Elizabeth: Something like what Zig Ziglar meant when he said, “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.”

 Father O’Hara: Not quite the same. What the man did in the starfish story was altruistic. What’s implicit in the Ziglar observaton is the idea that some people who you have helped might help you in the future.

Elizabeth: Possibly, possibly.

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Voice-over

There are more than 50 parables in the New Testament alone. That probably means there are thousands of parables from other reefs scattered along the Beach of Theology.

Parable: a story whose sum is greater than that of its parts?

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Energy of Shanghai

Two overseas Chinese discuss moving back to mainland China.

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Tsai: What’s your favorite city?

Mao: City, uh? For living or visiting?

Tsai: Both. Place where you might visit and like so much that you are tempted to fantasize about quitting your job, and relocating there.

Mao: Reinvent myself, reschedule my life?

Tsai: Place where you live and work is the anchor to your life, it defines how you think and behave.

Mao: How about Shanghai? Tell you why. It’s got a colorful history, it’s always changing, there’s variety in the culture, it’s got energy. It embraces technology, it has a green consciousness. It’s got a future.

Voice-over

Making a decision as important as where to live comes down to the questions you must ask yourself. What are you looking for? Is it the traditions, or the future? Is it the ambience or the drive? Safety or intrigue? The nature, the culture? The sights, the sounds, the tastes, the smells?

How does the metropolitan character mesh with personal identity?

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Maglev

Some Chinese are beginning their new year optimistically. Chen revisits Shanghai after some years in the U.S.

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Chen: By Monday all the problems of the Year of the RAT will be gone and we can start the Year of the BULL firmly excited.

 Tzu: Firmly excited?

 Chen: Things are going well and I am looking up. You know, at Pudong Airport, the immigration desk has four buttons; and when your passport is stamped you are asked to press one of the following: (1) Greatly satisfied with immigration service, (2) Satisfied, (3) So-so, and (4) Disappointed.

 Tzu: You pressed (1), because you like to encourage employees, right?

 Chen: I pressed (1), because it was very nice service, polite, smiling, no waiting.

 Tzu: Better than America, eh?

 Chen: Then I took the Maglev train into town. I asked how long it would take and the ticket seller said 80 minutes and I thought well that's not much faster than the bus, but better try this new train.

 Tzu: It’s not 80 minutes, it’s 8 minutes.

 Chen: I know, I guessed when I saw the speed: 301 kilometers per hour. Great train. 8 minutes from airport to downtown Metro link. Wow. China’s going places.

 

Voice-over

Chinese restaurants often have round tables for at least a dozen people. The chatter resembles firecrackers, the food is often red, and the tone is often cheerful. It’s as if negativity must be brushed under the rug. Could Chinese cheer and confidence augment Obama’s “We can do it” in the new year?

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WD 40, vice grips and duct tape

Thao is in awe of all the tools in Walt’s shed.

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Thao: Man, where’d you get all this stuff?

Walt: Well, it may come as a surprise to a thief. But I bought this stuff, everything in here, with my own money.

Thao: Yeah, that’s not what I meant. I mean there’s just so much stuff packed in here.

Walt: Yeah, well every tool has a purpose. Everything has a job to do. They’re all useful and necessary.

Thao: OK, so what’s that?

Walt: Post-hole digger.

Thao: That?

Walt: Vice grips. Wire cutters. That’s a trowel. Come on. Those are shears and that’s a saw. That's a tack hammer. You can’t fool me kid. All right, what’s on your mind?

Thao: It’s just… I can’t afford to buy all this stuff.

Walt: Well I guess even a bonehead like you could understand that a man acquires this over a period of 50 years.

Thao: Yeah, but…

Walt: All right, here. These three items right here. WD40. Vice grips. And…. Some duct tape. Any man worth his salt can do half the household chores with just those three things. Anything else you need, you just borrow it.

__________

Voice-over

Gran Torino again. Some men regard their shed as sacred. Others maintain a shed as their raison d’étre. In his shed, Walt finds his role as benefactor, even as teacher. And can we substitute CRC for WD40? Pliers for vice-grips? Uh-oh, DUCT TAPE? That is unique. No wonder Clint cracks a grin as he drops this in. There may or may not be a museum of duct tape, but MacGyver often made do with a roll of it.

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If you Google Apple

Tim and Larry discuss the health of Steve Jobs vs Sergey Brin.

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Tim: We just don’t know. He’s an extrovert on stage, a performer, but when it comes to private issues like health, he plays his cards very close to his chest.

Larry: The worse it gets, the less he says?

Tim? Maybe. Maybe so.

Larry: Not in denial?

Tim: Who knows? Could be that. Could be his doctors don’t even know. Could be…

Larry: Unlike Sergey: Quiet guy. Says very little but then finds he might, might, I stress, have a gene predisposing him to Parkinson’s Disease. So what does he do? Comes out with it right there on his blog. Says it straight off.

Tim: Difference is, Steve’s unwell, and Sergey’s in great shape. Steve faces problems right now. Sergey may have years.

_________________

Voice-over

Disclosure of information. Two different approaches. Steve’s approach is to control it, keep it under wraps until it can’t be contained any longer. Sergey’s approach is to come right out and say it.

Though, as Tim suggests, you may react to a present crisis differently to a future hypothetical scenario.

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Gran Torino barber shop exchange

Barber Shop: Martin has just finished cutting Walt’s hair.

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Martin: There, you finally look like a human being again. You shouldn’t wait so long between haircuts, you cheap son of a bitch.

Walt: Yeah, I’m surprised you’re still around. I was always hoping you’d die off and they’d get somebody in here who knew what he was doing instead of the do-up dago you are.

Martin: That’ll be ten bucks, Walt.

Walt: 10 bucks? Jesus Christ! What are you, half Jew or something? You keep raising the prices.

Martin: It’s been 10 bucks the last 5 years, you hard-nosed, cheap, Polack son of a bitch.

Walt: Keep the change.

Martin: See you in 3 weeks, prick.

Walt: Not if I see you first, dipstick.

Voice-over

Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino? Great movie!

The intercultural issues of a minority (the girls go to college, the boys go to jail). 

And the dialogue?

Wonder if a sociolinguist was sitting around jotting down exchanges to catch examples of male pattern trading in insults.

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Big Fish Small Fish

Harold, from L.A., visits Roy, who lives in Shumway.

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Harold: You like it here?

Roy: It’s a small place. No hustle and bustle. You get used to it.

Harold: Big fish, small pond?

Roy: So you like it the other way?

Harold: Small fish, big pond? Guess that’s my preference. Meet a lot of interesting people. Get to play tennis with players better than yourself.

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Beaut day Trev

Over the back fence…

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Fred: Beaut day Trev!

Trev: Sorlright. Happy New Year. Been away?

Fred: Down south a bit. Obligatory new year parental drop-in.

Trev: Aah. Make any new year rezzies?

Fred: The usual. Eat less, walk more.

Trev: Ha! Any chance of that happening?

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