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.

Thomas De Quincey: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

It took me a long time to actually go through and read this book. It's a truly bizarre literary contraption. It reads as an unedited ramblings of an intelligent and witty, but otherwise stubborn English aristocratic fart. It is an autobiographical account of opium addict from the times, when the addictive properties of opium were not fully understood and you could buy stuff in a drug store. Essentially the dude got a toothache, which he attributed to not washing his face with cold water every morning (?!) so he did water his entire head one evening and ending up having a terrible cold. And so a friend recommends opium as relief (?!). As simple as that.

The best part of the book is the insight you get into the customs and thinking of the time; there is really nothing transcendental about this book, it is as deeply rooted in its time as it gets, together with all class, gender and racial prejudice. And then there is the great English wit. Witness this:

"Neither Coleridge nor Southey is a good reader of verse. Southey is admirable almost in all things, but not in this. Both he and Coleridge read as if crying, or at least wailing lugubriously."

"Positively, in one line of communication to the south of Holborn, for foot passengers (known, I doubt not, to many of my London readers), the road lay through a man's kitchen; and, as it was a small kitchen, you need to steer cautiously, or else you might run foul of the dripping pan."

"Turkish opium eaters, it seems, are absurd enough to sit, like so many equestrian statues, on logs of wood as stupid as themselves. But, that the reader may judge the degree in which opium is likely to stupefy the faculties of an Englishman, I shall (by way of treating the question illustratively rather than argumentatively) describe the way in which I myself often passed on opium evening in London during the period between 1804 and 1812."

And so on and on... Really fascinating stuff.

Fraoch Heather Ale

This is a terrible photo stolen from flickr, and I like it because the glass is exactly wrong kind of glass for this kind of beer. Anyway, this is one of those beers that you mindlessly put into your basket only to discover it is damn expensive at the checkout (at least in Whole Check Foods, where things are even more expensive than usual). Either way, the beer is quite good, it has a distinctly British character and it is a nice refreshment from the hoppy madness of local American beers. I got an unexpected proustian flashback of my times in England. A very mellow, somewhat sweet taste, balanced to the level you don't really notice anything in particular, a slighly bitter taste and a then an easy Sunday afternoon tipsiness.

UPDATE:
Ok, the owner of the photo has contacted me and is upset about me stealing the pic and saying it is terrible! I now linked the pic to the original source and want to stress that comments were not meant to be derisive but rather playful: I do like the photo! Really!