Angelic Sex, Revisited

About three years ago I wrote a post about a passage of John Milton's concerning sex in Paradise.

I was delighted yesterday to discover that this post has been the portal through which someone calling himself Drummoyne Tram discovered that Miltonic answer to a question that seems to have bugged him, too.

Welcome, Mr. Tram. Drop in any time.

Emerson on Nature

Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous essay on nature begins thus:

"Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes . Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.

Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth. In like manner, nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design. Let us interrogate the great apparition, that shines so peacefully around us. Let us inquire, to what end is nature?"

You can read the whole text here.

There is a paradox in quoting those famous words at this distance. If I take them to heart, if I ask you to take them to heart, then I am violating the counsel they offer. For why is Emerson not to be regarded by now as one of those sepulchred fathers he was telling us to ignore?

Still, the flow of thought is lovely, and the confidence is inspiring. "Undoubtedly, we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable." Who is it who does not at times doubt that undoubtable point?

The passage reminds me that Emerson was a frequent guest in the James home when William and Henry were boys there. Indeed, Emerson was William James' godfather. If we are going to see that connection as philosophically significant, we might look to these words: The everyman "acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth."

Bankruptcy and Transparency

A controversy about the rules of bankruptcy procedure, specifically rule 2019, has bubbled along for three years now and may be about to make a big change in the way corporate bankruptcies are handled in the U.S.

It all began in February 2007 with a "seemingly innocuous opinion" by Judge Gropper of the Manhattan bankruptcy court in the Northwest Airlines case.

Gropper held that under rule 2019, hedge funds that were a member of one of the ad hoc groups that form for the purposes of negotiating/arguing out the terms of a debtor company's reorganization have to turn over to their court information that hedge funds as such like to keep close to their vests -- information amount about interest held and the price at which that interest was purchased.

The funds tried to mitigate the harm to their traditional trading strategies that this threatened, by asking for permission to provide this information under seal. But Gropper, a few days later, shot that down, too.

Several other bankruptcy courts have considered the matter since then. No consensus has developed among them as to what 2019 means.

In August 2009, the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure (Advisory Committee) proposed a significant revision of the rule In part, this came about because of the need for legal certainty. As important, though, it came about because many well-placed people think Gropper was right on policy grounds, and that it would be good to have a rule that is very clear about that.

The proposed rule revision would change the bankruptcy investing game in three principal ways: (1) it would widen the scope of who must disclose under Rule 2019; (2) it would widen the scope of what must be disclosed; and (3) it would give bankruptcy courts wider discretion to relieve or abridge disclosure obligations, especially disclosure regarding the prices of assets purchased in secondary market trading. This article discusses the proposed revision in depth, focusing on the potential consequences for hedge funds that invest in and around bankruptcies.

There is now a widespread expectation that there will be reform, that it will be in place by the end of 2011, and that the results will demand more transparency than anyone would have expected before Gropper put this ball in play.

For the possible significance of this, I refer you back to my explanation at the time of Gropper's stance.

Documentaries

A wave of documentaries seems to be hitting theatres, each with more hype than all documentaries together used to get.

In October, you'll be able to see Charles Ferguson's film, "Inside Job," which purports to "expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008." Matt Damon, no one lesser, narrates!

There's also a forthcoming documentary on US public education Waiting for Superman, which (according to the Daily Beast), "tracks the desperate efforts of five families around the country to save their kids from bad public schools, which will ill-equip them for successful lives and careers, and instead enroll them in excellent charter and magnet schools that will give them a fighting chance. In the end they are at the mercy of a lottery that parcels out precious places according to the cruel impartiality of the casino."

I'm still here," the documentary, or spoof documentary, or something, about the re-invention efforts of Joaquin Phoenix, seems to have run its course and served whatever purpose was intended.

And for those who love NASCAR, "Petty Blue" is now available as a DVD.

Is this all a Michael Moore inspired fad?

Ashfield Film Festival

The Ashfield Film Festival is nearly upon us.

This is an annual event, organized by these people on behalf of a town best known as the birthplace of the Hollywood legend, Cecil B. DeMille. (The trophy lent to the Grand Prize winner for the year is a playfully conceived bust of "baby Cecil.")

The deadline for submission of your masterpiece was August 23 -- the gala screening is September 25, i.e. Saturday, in Ashfield, Massachusetts.

So where the heck is Ashfield? Jeez, don't you people have google earth? Ashfield is in northwestern Massachusetts, a little to the south and west of Greenfield, a little to the north and west of Deerfield.

Directions? See tags below.

The Last of the Eight Days

As I'm sure my readers are aware, because one would have to have spent the past few days in a cave not to be aware of it -- this month marks the two-year anniversary of the most dramatic financial crisis in a couple of generations.

Last year at this time The New Yorker ran a tick-tock piece by James Stewart, called simply "Eight Days," with reference to the period from September 12 to and including September 19th of 2008. So we are now at the two year anniversary of the final of those days.

As my own way, then, of commemorating the insanity of another September, allow me simply to repost something I wrote at the time.

--------------

19 September 2008
Insanity
The relevant regulators in the US and the UK have both now indulged themselves in the ultimate in knee-jerk reactions.

They've banned short selling in a wide range of stocks. Just to be clear: they haven't banned "naked" short selling, or "abusive" short selling, or closed any loopholes on the existing regulations that govern the practive.

They've banned short selling. Full stop. This is the logical equivalent of prohibiting pessimism.

Here's the SEC's press release.

And here's the counterpart from the other side of the Pond.

I have long believed that the history of the United States breaks down into a series of distinct equilibria. Leaving the colonial and revolutionary eras out of account, there have been three republics.

The first began in 1787 and lasted a little more than 70 years, then collapsed into a period of turmoil and civil war.

The second began in 1868, with the enactment of sweeping new amendments that made in effect for a new Constitution. This second republic lasted about 60 years. It, too, collapsed dramatically.

The third republic was up and running as of 1937, when Roosevelt's court-packing plan induced the Justices to acknowledge sweeping new interpretations for the Constitution. It is this third republic that is now crashing in upon us, and the ban on short selling is a sign of that.

You WILL BE CHEERFUL about stock prices. Washington (and London) command it!

The next logical step is a ban on any trade whatsoever at a price lower than the preceding trade on that asset. Unless, maybe, the asset in question is made out of hydrocarbons, in which case that might be reversed.

A hypothetical television commercial comes to mind.

"Crazy country. We'll sell you appliances. We'll make up prices. We'll order ourselves about like we're in a Three Stooges short. Crazy country. Our rules are ... INSAAAAANE!"

Quantum Computing

Now THAT is a blog entry headline bound to drive away everyone whose life doesn't serve as a model for The Big Bang Theory. But quantum computing is in the news. It was on the front page of yesterday's Financial Times, for goodness' sake.

The key, say the scientists involved in the latest push, is a new "photonic chip" that works on light instead of electricity.

This plays out in compare-contrast mode with views expressed by the physicist/mathematician Roger Penrose years ago, in books like this and this.

Penrose's point was that the human mind is itself a quantum computer. He was saying that the ideas of "strong AI" proponents like Alan Turing are wrong, because strong AI advocates believe you can produce consciousness and intelligence with digital computers, which work through a lot of on/off switches.

You need to harnass quantum indeterminacy to get to consciousness, said Penrose, which is what the human brain uniquely does.

It would be a hoot if he turns out to be right vis-a-vis the digital computer, but to be proved right by the creation of a new kind of computer, and AI, to which his objection did not apply.

Penrose is a great mathematicians and physicist, a former close collaborator of Stephen Hawking who fell out with SH over, so far as an idiot like yours truly can understand ... the nature of reality. Heck of a thing to ruin a friendship over.