Brooklyn Brewery Variety Pack

Brookly lager was the first beer I wrote about here. This time I bought the Brooklyn Brewery Variety pack, which contains 4x Brooklyn Lager, 4x Brooklyn Pennant Ale '55, 2x Brooklyn East IPA, 2x Brooklyn Brown Ale. Well, what to say: I still really like Brookly Lager, the rest is so so, nothing to really write home about... Let's stick to Brooklyn Lager from this brewery, the only one really worth a mention.

André Gide: Ponarejevalci denarja

Ponarejevalci denarja so knjiga, ki sem jo žvečil celo večnost. Par mesecev, čeprav je relativno kratka. Zgolj, da ne bom čez tri mesece pozabil, da sem jo bral, so tukaj ključni podatki: izjemno kompleksna zgodba z malim miljonom karakterjev, umetniki, ki "ne mogu da gledaju ljude", vsi heteroseksualni odnosi so napisani pavšalno, res se dogaja zgolj homoseksualcem in te dogodivščine so napisane s takim žarom, da se človeku kar milo stori pri srcu. Naslov izhaja iz dvojnosti, original in kopija originala, tako na ravni umetnosti, kot na ravni medosebnih odnošajev.

Apollo Olive Oil: Mistral Olive Oil

I tend not to rave about things like oil, but this olive oil really deserves attention. We bough it in the local whole foods and when I saw Maya speaking to the dude I was immediately suspicious since in California people usually put more emphasis on bullshit and organic credentials of ingredients rather than the quality itself. But this guy was different, he was spelling out the various varieties of olives that went into different versions of their oil (I didn't recognise any) rather than go on about tradition, environment, etc. And indeed, these dudes use an advanced vacuum milling technology (allegedly only one of five in the world) and the results are worth talking about. For the first time I am looking forward to taste olive oil in salad rather than just assume it is going to provide some neutral background to the salad itself. Warmly recommended.

Fantôme de Noel

I've decided to splurge on beer this Thursday and spent $15 on Fantôme de Noel. Fantôme makes expensive beers in a small craft brewery in the French speaking area of Belgium. Well, I got home, opened the beer and it exploded, making a small fountain in my living room and kitchen that took 20 mins to clean up. Now, I was paying $15 for half a bottle of beer. Huh.
But it was good, real good. With wines, price never correlates with taste that much, at least not to my buds, but with beer you can never do wrong with buying an expensive one...

Deschutes: Red Chair IPA

I am simply too busy at the moment to write much about cool beers I am drinking. However, this one is really quite interesting. Inidian pale ale (IPA) is one of my favourite styles and American microbreweries created their own stream of IPAs characterised by excessive hoppines, bitternes and high alcohol content. This one keeps the hoppines and high alcohol content, but manages to remove bitterness. The result is quite intruiging and novel in addition to be a very drinkable, citrusy beer. Well done, Deschutes!

Lagunitas: Hop Stoopid

Lagunitas is one my favourite west coast breweries. They are the ones that did the Zappa series (I wrote about the first two and also drank the third). The bottle of this beer shows a wooden farmhouse of some kind, a bizarre tall building (I think it was stretched vertically using photoshop) and you can just imagine a stoopid hillbilly coming out... And the beer lives up to its name, it is stoopidly hopped. It makes me see green. Green, green, here I come.

Magic Hat Brewing: Magic Hat 9

I've drunk this beer in a dodgy greek restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, yesterday. I must admit that this beer intrigued me somewhat, it smells of honey and fruit, but it actually doesn't taste of honey. It is a bitter, lemony taste with a sweet after taste; it seems that the progression of tastes goes follows an unusual progression. I wouldn't call it a great beer, it didn't seem like a very well balanced taste and nothing amazing in the grand scheme of things. It is, however, an intriguing beer, well worth trying...

Ivo Andrić: Most na Drini

Do te knjige sem bil precej skeptičen, ker sem si v svoji nevednosti megleno predstavljal, da gre za partizansko zgodbo v kateri partizani na koncu most razstrelijo. Kar je precej idiotsko, saj je gospod knjigo dokončal leta 1943, sicer pa zgodba poteka v obliki povezanih kratkih zgodb, osnovanih na resničnih dogodkih, od grandnje mostu v 16. stoletju pa do začeta 1. svetovne vojne.
Zgodba je resnično fascinantna: Mehmed Paša Sokolović, ki so ga Turki kot otroka ukradli iz neke Bosanske vasi se v Turčiji politično povzpe do prvega vizirja, ki praktično vodi državo in da v svoj rojstni kraj postaviti svoji veličini primerni most. Tako Višegrad, rupa najjača, dobi neskončno lep most, ki je trenutno zaščiten s strani UNESCA. Zgodba potem sledi tem ljudem, kako živijo svoje življenje na prepihu zgodovine, malo pod Turki, malo pod Avstro-Ogrskim imperijem in malo pod Srbi naslednjih 400 let. Knjiga po mojem sicer ne zasluži Nobelove nagrade (ki jo je Andrić dobil), stilistično je malo repetitivna in prevod Toneta Potokarja je slab, da o v pički skeniranju v Delovi ediciji niti ne razpravljam. V vsakem primeru je knjiga definitivno vpisala Višegrad na spisek destinaciji, ki jih je treba obiskati pred smrtjo.
Roman je dandanes zanimiv predvsem iz dveh razlogov. Prvič, napisan je je bil pred moderno fantazmo boja ver in strahom pred muslimani; v Višegradu živijo muslimani, pravoslavci in nekaj Židov in sicer se precej štocajo, ampak neke odkrite hostilnosti ni, če pa že je, je predvsem na osnovi narodnosti. Drugič, knjiga se zaključi z razbitjem mostu leta 1914 (3 od 11 stebrov so bili podrti, danes obnovljeni) in umiranju ljudi vseh narodnosti v vojni med Srbijo in Avstro-Ogrsko, kar na pronicljiv napoveduje Višegrajski masaker 1992, v katerem je bilo ubitih 60-200 ljudi in 10,000 izgnanih.

Peroni: Nastro Azzurro

This is my third week in Italy and while trying to avoid beer so far, opting for wine instead, I've nevertheless drank one of the local mass produced beers, Nastro Azzurro, which can be roughly translated into "blue ribbon". And yes, white I love Italian cousine, this is simply not a good beer. And the mass-production is not an excuse as the Italian mass-produced espresso is often fantastic.

However, it has to be admitted that Italians drink beer in small doses, typically only 2 or 3 dcl and they have a somewhat different perception of the thing. So, while Nastro is nothing more than a somewhat smooth lager, it does go well with Italian fashion and food. Italy is no country for a heavy stout... It still somehow managed to fall behind Union and Lasko on ratebeer.com. Haha!

Harry Markopolos: The World Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud

Harr Markopolos wrote a 19 page document to SEC discussing why he believes that Bernie Madoff is a fraudster. It can be found here.

It is a really interesting read. Basically, it is quite hard to believe that SEC didn't buy this. He puts out a plethora of arguments, some interesting, some obvious (even to me!) about why Madoff's fund is a fishy. Basically, Madoff claimed to have been using the so called split-strike conversion. This is a simple strategy, where you buy a portfolio of stocks and prevent losses associated with downward motion of these stocks by buying out of money put options on some index correlated with your stocks. You pay this protection by selling out of money call options. In other words, if nothing happens you get the profit on the mean growth and you protect yourself against large losses by forfeiting large gains. So, why is Madoff a fraudster?
Harry puts out many, many reasons, but most interesting are:

• The size of the entire market for these options on regulated markets is not enough to cover hist investments, neither for call, nor for put. Why would he be buying such vanilla options over the counter and pay extra for them?
  
• He had virtually not losses over 20 years. Now, to avoid this, he would have to been buying at the money options, rather than out of the money options and the sums don't add up - there is no way he could keep such profits while still paying for these super-expensive options.
• Nobody else following this strategy was able to do much better than treasury bills + 1 percent or so.
• There was absolutelly no correlation between market movements and Madoff's returns. Since he is buying a real portfolio of stocks, but insuring only on indices, this is mathematically impossible!
  
• Taking private money and returning it with 12% interest to run his strategy is stupid. Why wouldn't he borrow at LIBOR+something rates?
• He unwinds all his investment always at the right time, just before market crashes.

There are many less technical resons to do with secrecy, avoidance of anythign regulatory, etc. But the best bit is Harry's style. He writes as if SEC and himself were good friends, chatting about Madoff over a beer. Sentences like "Leon is a free spirit and if you ask him he'll tell you but you'd understand better if you meet him in a private room...". A really fascinating read!

Anthony Trollope: The Way We Live Now

At over 750 pages, this is Trollope's longest work. I nevertheless managed to read it in less than 10 days due to my sprained ankle and the victorian soap-operaness that pervades this book. There are many sub-plots, all revolving around Melmotte, the great financial scoundrel that shines like a comet in London for a year. A really infectous read, perfect for christmas holidays next to a fireplace, but not sure if I do like it after all; it has a somewhat overly sweet ending and language-wise Jane Austen wins hands down.