American Madness

The Post reports that an angry gym goer (broker) attacked a fellow spin class member (hedge fund manager) when the hedgie wouldn’t shut up.

Although people assume hedge fund managers are bastards, I’ve found most of them to be nice people, if a little (perhaps justifiably) conceited. But stories like this tend to give the industry a herniated disk, image-wise.

The hedge fund manager’s attorney is dubbing the alleged assult “spin rage.”

“It is the loss of all self control by someone who is just sharing not a road in this case but sharing a stationary bike facility,” attorney Samuel Davis said.

How long before we have cubicle rage?

If you ever go to Tokyo, make sure you go to the Sapporo Museum (and yeah, there were only 2 of us).

Well, three days have passed and there are no reports on Castro’s demise. We’ll save the obituary for when he actually passes.

As you may have guessed from the title of this post I am not blogging from my usual NY outpost but rather from the other side of the world.

I landed in Tokyo yesterday and having been spending the day wandering the streets and trying to take it all in, and boy is it a lot to take in! Fortunately, I have a couple of guidebooks like Time Out: Tokyo, Rough Guide: Tokyo and Lonely Planet Encounters: Tokyo. That last one (which is not yet in stores) I will be reviewing at the end of the trip, or at least at the end of my stay in Tokyo.

What is always odd for me, especially when I am traveling in a foreign country, is being so out of touch with the world. At home I usually get a blast of morning news and my computer at work opens up to the front page of the NY Times. The local paper (in English) delivers a nice burst of world news and fortunately, the one English channel I get is CNN. Of course turning it on now I find out that Greece is burning to the ground, probably by arson (which is below the “fold” on the NY Times Online), Dubai is also burning, well at least the ports are, the US has massive flooding and tornadoes and housing prices are dropping everywhere in the US except of course in NYC.

Oh and my favorite: Al Qaeda is apparently trying to recruit Muslim African-Americans. The morning news is just depressing. I guess this is why I don’t actually watch the news that often, it keeps me with my cheery attitude towards the world. Anyway, I’m off to dinner now, I recommend skipping the news today or only check out the fluff pieces. It keeps you happier, trust me.

Looks like Fidel Castro may have died. It is rumored that the Cuban government will be announcing the passing of their (mostly) beloved leader this afternoon.

The possible delay of the announcement may be to wait for the pass of rush hour traffic in Miami.

Though it was reported yesterday that he was doing well and recovering from his most recent surgery, there are some rumors spreading that he has died and that he announcement is just being held. I guess we will all know by this evening.

And remember, we had it before any of the major news outlets released anything… If an announcement is made I’m sure I’ll post some sort of obit tonight or early next week.

I read a few days ago that Michael Bay was taking a stand against media-giant Paramount and their recent decision not to release any of their films on Blu-Ray, but solely on HD-DVD.

Michael Bay basically said that he directed movies for people to see and that he wanted the most people to be able to see them, not have them limited by the format of their video watching device and that if Paramount wasn’t going to release movies on Blu-Ray he wasn’t going to make Transformers 2. This seemed to be a major stand from a major director against the actions a major corporation was taking in the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD formatting wars (which in the end may pan out to be more like the Laser Disc battle… Pointless).

But then, shortly after all the to-do and fuss was made someone from Paramount must have contacted Michael bay and probably told him either how much money he would not be making by passing on Transformers 2 or that it didn’t really make a difference if he was involved or not because they were going to make the movie anyway. Either way, Michael Bay posted a retraction on his blog with some ramblings but essentially saying that ” I drank the kool aid hook line and sinker… I over reacted.”

Just goes to show how oodles of money can change anyones mind. Too bad, may have set a precedence for other directors, instead it just lets the studios know that they really do have all the power.

Too often folks who inject lots of drugs are written off completely. Sharing needles is a massive problems that leads to all sorts of diseases being passed including AIDS. This brings us to Exchange Supplies:

Exchange Supplies is a social enterprise set up by drug workers to supply drug services and needle exchanges with quality products, publications, and conferences and to provide employment and training opportunities for drug users.
We are at the forefront of the harm reduction response to illicit drug use, and are committed to preventing blood-borne virus transmission, drug related deaths, and improving the health of drug users.

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Sorry for the lack of posts recently, when I have a cold all I want to do is crawl up in bed and sleep. For the most part that is what I did all day yesterday, but now I am back, well for the day at least, next week I will be in Tokyo for the first half of the week and then a beach town 2 hours outside of Tokyo for the second half of the week. The reason for my trip to Japan is the International Lifesaving Cup.

The 2007 Sanyo-Bussan International Lifesaving Cup will be held next week on Aug. 31st and Sept. 1st. Basically it is a life guard competition between the US, Japan, South Africa, Great Britain and Australia. Each country enters a team of 10 (5 men and 5 women) to participate, actually, Japan has 2 teams, I guess as the host nation they get to do things like that.

There are a plethora of events: water rescue, running relays, some of the events probably even have something to do with water I’d assume. The event that I am going to check out though doesn’t. Women’s Beach Flags, from what I have heard, is a bit like musical chairs. The object of beach flags is to race from one line to another and grab a “flag,” there is one fewer flags then there are participants, the contest continues until there is just 1 flag left and it is grabbed by one of the last two competitors.

As it has been explained to me the competitors start laying on their stomachs with their backs to the flags. When they get the signal they get up, sprint to the flags and try to grab one (or rip it out of another competitor’s hand). To get invited to the International competition you need to place 1st or 2nd in the National Competition from the previous year (as the 1st place competitor from alst year could not make it the 3rd place competitor was invited in her place).

As a New Yorker I am happy to see that there are 4 New Yorkers representing the United States Lifesaving Association on the team (the other 6 are made up of 4 Californians, a Floridian and a Delawarian. But the real star (as far as I am concerned) is my sister Analisa Cipriano. She placed 2nd in both the local competition and the USLA National competition last year in Beach Flags earning her an invite to the international competition. Her team-mate Emily Ward (also from NY) had beaten her in the local competition, but came in third at Nationals last year. According to an article from the East Hampton Star (because the one from the East Hampton Press still hasn’t come out) Ward has “‘been training — doing a lot of sprint exercises and practicing my get-up.’” In typical Cipriano fashion, Analisa on the other hand said “‘Generally with track I’m pretty competitive… With this, not so much. I try not to pay too much attention to the people next to me. I’m not that good at the get-up or the dive, but I make up for it with my sprinting.’”

I can attest to this, Analisa has done very little prep for the event, she even decided to bypass this years National Competition (though she placed 1st in the local competition). The Sanyo-Bussan Competition will mark her 4th time ever doing the Beach Flags Event, but with the track record she current has and her nonchalance attitude towards the event she probably has a pretty good chance of winning.

I’ll be writing next week (if I get to a computer) from Japan and reporting on the competition as well as Tokyo, I even have Lonely Planet Encounters: Tokyo which I will be reviewing while I am there, so keep an eye out for my Tokyo posts and I’ll keep you well informed about the tastiest sakes I have had.

My friend and colleague Eric Baum is one of the few ambitiously moral people in this universe. Where for others caveat emptor is the watchword, Baum here notes that Wall Street’s recent failure to embrace the categorical imperative has meant inflicting an unforseen wound on itself.

Blowback
By Eric Baum

The Central Intelligence Agency has a term called ‘blowback’ to describe the unintended consequences of hostile actions. In financial jargon there is no term to describe such quid-pro-quo sequences, but the subprime debacle may prompt financial analysts to coin one (ed: payback?).

Hedge funds and other money managers that cater to institutional investors are running for cover amidst a credit meltdown that is now demolishing equity prices. Financial insiders know the sequence of events that produced multi-billion-dollar losses at hedge funds managed by Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs. These insiders now expect more damage in the weeks to come.

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Apparently, at the beginning of the month the NY Times ran an article. It appears to have run in the magazine section, and I am going to guess it was on vacation time and, quite possibly, work habits of folks from various countries. Unfortunately I didn’t see it and don’t really know.

What I did see was a graph that was associated with the article. It kind of depressed me. The graph is a chart of “Legally Required Paid Annual Leave Around the World.” That means, according to the chart, if you live in France you are legally required to take at least 30 days off this year. France is followed by Sweden (25), Spain (22), Australia, Germany and the UK (all 3 at 20). Even Japan (thought to be the most productive culture) they get 10, same as or friendly neighbors to the North, the Canadians.

What about us? We get a whopping 0. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining about not having enough vacation days, I get almost a months worth of vacation a year, plus on top of that I have a bit of stored vacation (to make sure I don’t lose any vacation day between now and next year I will need to take 5 1/2 weeks of vacation… I think I am up to the challenge) but to get to this point there were years that I only took 3 vacation days.

Now, I am guessing, the article probably took this data and compared it to productivity and, again I am guessing here, found that we still ranked at the bottom. Of course that would be the benefit of actually having the article, to know what the purpose of this data was. It is still an interesting point that us Americans are entitled to 0 legally required paid leave. I have linked to the graph here and, yes, that is it in the upper left corner.

I found this site with some really fun photos on it combining food and little miniature people. I feel like I have come across these photos before and really liked them. The only reason I am hesitant to post this now is that I am pretty sure the first time around when I saw these they were on a different site. Maybe even the site of the photographer who took the pictures.

While I would love to give proper credit here unfortunately I can’t find the original site and there is no credit given for where ever the originals came from. So for now enjoy the pilfered work that Fresh 99 is showing. Definitely worth a peak. *UPDATE* A bit more researching allowed me to track it down. The original work is by Minimian. A similar artist is also Audrey Heller, both have lots of fun images up worth checking out.

In honor of Beach Week I went with the photo of the guy at the beach