Quite of few of my emails have ended up in the Spam folder so if you sent something and didn’t hear a response please fire another one over.
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I love going home to my father’s house in CO as he has a whole library of books I left behind. Flipping through the old Bill Gross book “Everything You’ve Heard About Investing Is Wrong! : How to Profit in the Coming Post-Bull Markets”
In a related take on the “New Normal”, Montier’s new must read: “In Defense of the Old Always“.
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A Contrarian’s Guide to Football Betting (WSJ).
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Top hedge fund stories 2010 (AR)
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Another must read, Howard Mark’s “All That Glitters“:
In 1952, Noah S. “Soggy” Sweat, Jr., a member of the Texas House of Representatives, was asked about his position on whiskey. Here’s how he answered:
“If you mean whiskey, the devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean that evil drink that topples Christian men and women from the pinnacles of righteous and gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, shame, despair, helplessness, and hopelessness, then, my friend, I am opposed to it with every fiber of my being.
However, if by whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the elixir of life, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer, the stimulating sip that puts a little spring in the step of an elderly gentleman on a frosty morning; if you mean that drink that enables man to magnify his joy, and to forget life’s great tragedies and heartbreaks and sorrow; if you mean that drink the sale of which pours into Texas treasuries untold millions of dollars each year, that provides tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitifully aged and infirm, to build the finest highways, hospitals, universities, and community colleges in this nation, then my friend, I am absolutely, unequivocally in favor of it.
This is my position, and as always, I refuse to compromise on matters of principle.”
Sweat’s response shows, depending on how you look at it, either how views can diverge on a given subject or how differently a tale can be spun. Thus it serves well to introduce the topic of this memo: gold.
DIVERSIONS
Chances are that you’ve been to a restaurant and had your food cooked by the sous vide method of cooking. Since Cuisinart hasn’t put out a cheap model yet (and the SousVide Supreme is still about $300) I tried some steak and chicken through the budget “beer cooler and thermometer method“. Great results! Even Thomas Keller has a cookbook dedicated to the subject – Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide.
Although that pales in comparison to former MSFT CIO (CTO?) Myhrvold’s 2400 page, $500 (and $1mm production cost) Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking.
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While I have yet to book a hotel on Jetsetter, it is a weekly drop by for some killer deals on some of the top hotels in the world.
