Winner's Talk

Well, on Friday the 17th of November of 2014, and again on Friday the 13th of February 2015, I posted about an Australian racehorse called 'Chautauqua.'

This afternoon, Chautauqua beat the best sprinting racehorses in the world over 1200 metres and collected the main prize money for the TJ Smith Stakes - the top sprint race in Australasia -  a race worth 2.5 million dollars in total prize money and held at Randwick Racecourse in Sydney.

Chautauqua wins $2.5 million TJ Smith Stakes

It won, coming from last at the turn, and it won by what looked to me pretty much like a nostril - but it was a clear nostril.

It was not the favourite by any means at all and paid a very healthy dividend to those who backed the horse - about 5/1, and even 8/1 on track at moments.

So what makes it possible for someone like me to 'know' beforehand? 

It's easy for critics to say, oh well you could tip a lot of horses and then bang on when one of them wins.

But as those of you know who have been reading at this place for awhile, I don't do that kind of thing; Chautauqua was one of only two or three I have ever mentioned - and as you will know, all of them have won, and big money races too.

So what makes it possible? And are the techniques similar to or the same as what you will have to use to make more standard 'investments' in financial markets.

Race horse betting markets are financial markets. They just occur over a highly compacted time-frame on the day of the given race, or any given race, in question.

And what horses like Chautauqua prove time and time again, is that the 'market' and the apparent, and publicly-known professionals are regularly quite incorrect in their assessments and analysis.

Seafood cassolette,
good riverboat fare... 

I remember talking to a great Western Australian bookmaker a long time ago - Eddie McAppion - who asked me once: 'this race is impossible to sort out, no one knows what will win this one - if only I knew which horses to lay... What do you think?' (To lay means to attract more money for some horses as the bookmaker, in the belief those will lose the race, and thus win the bookmaker extra money).

And I told him that I thought the mare Bungling would win and moreover, she would win in a photo finish by a nose - the shortest possible official margin.

'Ridiculous!' He said. 'No one knows that kind of thing.'

Anyway, as you will have guessed Bungling did in fact win in a photo coming through along the inside rail and literally by a nose in a photo finish.

Afterwards, he questioned me as to whether this was luck or something else, and I said an experienced trainer had once told some kids arguing about the relevance of a 'parrot nose' on a racehorse, whether this had something to do with the line of breeding and indicated some bloodline - he'd said to them: 'no, but an extended front lip could help you in a photo finish.'

Now this all sounds completely ridiculous but I'll draw your attention to an old movie starring Cameron Diaz and Al Pacino 'On Any Given Sunday.' D'you remember the coach's speech about the difference between winning and losing being a matter of inches? But that the inches were all around you... In front of your face, between your fingers, at the ends of your arms, where your eyes were looking, everywhere.

Black Russian cocktails - after you win,
never before.

Eddie was so irritated at me, that even in the photo, where bookies were offering odds on which horse got up, he bet against me. And of course lost. And was irritated all the more.

I like to position myself in investing, in the role of the gambler, and not the 'house.' And I'll tell you why. Being the house is about an oligarchy. And oligarchies create fat, slow, envious, lazy, angry people at the tops of those systems. Their capacities to enjoy themselves is extremely constrained, and a lot of what they do is underscored with fear and jealousy and even a kind of rage. And often, they resort to cheating to 'win.'

And that's the best thing you can ever hope to have, as an investor, because it is when the so-called supremely powerful fuck up, and they do it big time.

I could tell you how it is possible to pick winning race horses from such a long way out. But seriously, that would involve some real serious talk!






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Black Velvets

Patrick Macnee of John Steed/The Avengers fame introduced the idea that the Chelsea Boot was 'the thing' for a well-dressed man.

And, I see Daniel Craig in a pair the other day in one of the shoots in Rome. Not sure Fleming ever considered the Chelsea Boot for Bond but hey, so what, this is 2015.

I mean for god's sake, who even knows what being a real bon vivant is, anyway?!

A 'Black Velvet' cocktail

One may read that Bond ate 'dressed crab' and downed 'Black Velvets' but has anyone you know eaten dressed crab recently? Apparently, even Maryland crab dishes served in Maryland hardly ever have actual Maryland crab in them now. It's more likely to have seafood filler made in a factory owned by Goldman Sachs or Warren Buffett in Vietnam. 

And so, if it comes to fantasy Bond - which it all pretty much is these days - or fantasy bon vivants, I think frankly we can kick a few asses here.

Of course, I'm sure you all know that this current adventure in Yemen is entirely, and I do mean entirely a scam to sell weapons to a few of the ME countries. Do you know how many actual armed fighters the Ansar Al Zaidi army has? We're talking easily over a million. And so 500 dead in the air bombing by the House of Saud against the 'House of Houth' (which the media is calling the voting public of all of Yemen) is a touch silly to be brutally honest. But that hasn't stopped a massive build-up of naval warships from a dozen Western countries zoning in on the Gulf of Aden. If there were a real Bond and he had on a Chelsea Boot it could do no better than being sent rapidly up the backside of Salamander, King of Saudi Arabia. Won't happen of course.

Actual MI6 are more interested in participating in the flow of gravy from the new, open Cuba, and the anxious King Salamander and his minions purchasing extravagant amounts of special, intelligent, pin-point targeting weapons - now that Yemen, like Egypt actually had democratic elections for once. Jesus, we can't be having that around here!

Anyway... 

Baked, Stuffed Crab - excellent!

Personally I prefer baked crab to dressed crab, and although you will not easily find it on the internet, deviled baked crab is the most amazing thing. Baked crab is difficult to prepare and execute well; time-consuming to present  - and you see that by flipping through pics on the net of it. It seldom looks any good in these photos... But, it is simply one of the most amazing dishes if you ever have the chance to get a good version of it. 

Yes, a Black Velvet cocktail - champagne and Guinness stout - is perfect with virtually any crab dish, and certainly with oysters and caviar too. But I think we can go a bit further and try what is known as a Riga Black Balsam with our baked crab.

And our strictly fantasy bon vivant may prefer a pair of Gaziano & Girling benchmades.

Gaziano & Girling's

All of these little things will, I'm quite certain, be appreciated by Admiral Mike Rogers, current head of the NSA, who has a sense of humour, and, as I believe, has even got himself a little disinformation section who go around nightclubs in Dubai spreading rumours about alien landings off Yemen. I kid you not.

Our Bond is of course, unemployed by - unemployable - by any of your usual Western governments. 

Admiral Mike Rogers favourite dinner dish is... yes, you guessed it, baked crab.

Check your cooks, Mike; check your lowly, lowly, cooks. Get some food tasters. Even buy some of those chemical detector units from Germany (I think C. Melchers can source that for you). Better buy them from Germany too, and not from Israel, who don't like you.

Good Production Design v. Script

I'm sure a few of you have seen by now, the early release teasers for the latest Bond movie 'Spectre.' Spectre was originally created by Kevin McClory not Ian Fleming, but we shan't hold that against anybody.

I have to say that from what I have seen this is the first time in the new era of Bond that I have seen excellent production design qualities in one of the newer iterations of the Bond story in film.

Craig finally looks right

And, the action sequences involving Daniel Craig are much more advanced, complex and sophisticated than all of that silly train-top running and just general running that seemed to be the vogue at the time for all of the action stars from Cruise to Matt Damon and everyone in between including Jackie Chan!

But that doesn't mean to say they aren't going to once again completely stuff up the film due to a dreadful script and story-line. However, it is a good sign that the early production design is so good. For once at last in these recent years, Bond appears in a certain glimmer-shadow of elegance, wearing clothes that actually fit the actor and not the actor attempting to fit some fixated concept and image of 'James Bond.'

As far as remaining faithful to books, if you put a stopwatch on the amount of time the Bentley Continental was actually seen in Casino Royale I don't think you'd get more than a few seconds, not even. And yet, for all the claims that the recent directors are sticking to the books, they jump-cut the Bentley into this same old flash-flash pseudo-drama visual scam that modern directors appear to believe will pass for excitement and thrill.

'Spectre' is not exactly any Ian Fleming story or book as such, although it featured as the main 'villainous thing' in a short story and a number of books.

What will it - the movie - turn out to be in the end?

Fleming's idea of dinner

You have some great actors there - Bellucci, Craig... And some average ones and some complete unknowns for the present. A vast budget. Really great production design, from all indications. 

But these people behind the production have never shown any respect for writers at any time in the past, everyone knows real writers get paid nothing - even Eszterhas had to use camera angle tricks to get a professional money-earning reputation!

A real fictional villain - smash his face, James,
take his watch off him! Shoot his ass with your Walther PPK.

We were all lucky that Fleming's wife came from the literary family who owned the London Daily Mail. Fleming was not a good writer but he still was one.

Make me a believer, Sam Mendez. I'm giving you a big chance. But don't think you're a writer, because you aren't one. Get one. The production design deserves it.

Writers, real writers are more powerful and mysterious than you know... Think the Bhagavad-gita, Ulysses, the Gospels, the fucking Koran for godsakes! Buy a writer, Sam. It will be worth it.

The Substance Of Ideology

An ideology is a system of ideas. A system.

There is often a misconception or confusion that ideas in the hands of people - especially well-known or respected people - are necessarily logical or derived from correct observation and analysis. In fact, usually, they are ideologies and not simply ideas - based on a particular characteristic system that is recommended by the individual. And it is the system, thus, which is paramount; not 'ideas' as such.

I think this is a scene of human ideas at their best.

Ideas, are particular discrete (as in, consistent describable or categorize-able) conceptions that the human mind has inside of the instruments and chemical and neural structures of the human's brain and extended 'brain-space' you might call it (or 'mind,' in this vague label we have to use). When a person is said to be 'of sound mind,' typically, one expects these 'conceptions' to come from some process of relational logic - and if dependent on the data and its quality, sometimes we say the process is only rational and not guaranteed to be always deriving a correct conclusion in the absolute sense.

An insane person may still have 'ideas,' yet they will potentially have disconnections from function, from actuality, and from true logic based on quality data and the necessary relational connections that make them 'sane' ideas. But once a system has been formed in the mind of the crazy person, that person becomes ideological.

Many ideologies are functionally useful, even though they rely on definitions that are extremely vague. Mathematics, or perhaps modern mathematics is one of these systems of ideas with vague but necessary definitions.

For example, all real integers have square roots... except (now here's the 'definition' and exception because of the 'definition:') for 1 (one), and 2 (two) the latter of which is an 'irrational' number and the former of which is, is, is... well they don't say, but it is an 'exception' to the rule about ALL REAL INTEGERS.

Oh and of course '0' (zero). And there is some other fanciful 'definition' that 'explains' what the problem is with 'zero;' it's not a number, or not a real number, or not er er er er, et cetera.

The true 'problem' with the ideology of modern systems of mathspeak is that it deliberately or maybe even just accidentally by habit, doesn't understand the definition of 'boundary.' A thing is not some other thing, because of the boundary concept.

Michelin 3-Stars is a system,
Robert Parker's wine rating is a system,
but genuine self-assurance is cultural and functional.

Sure there is some lip-service paid to boundaries in physics and Riemann space and things like that - but this already is in the upper reaches of weirdo (or at very least nerd!) maths and physics and not the commonplace maths taught in most schools.

You see the problem of the current financial and banking world and the economics obtaining there, is that 'definition' maths is iterative, and not generative; it relies on someone else having previously created something new and valuable, and then copying this endlessly using a process and a systematic plan of undermining inputs including time even to the extent of producing a counterfeit or substitute product and accepting that.

'Idea' maths - or logical idea maths, uses function as the means of ultimate proof, and defines difference through another, separate, discrete idea, namely - 'boundary' or 'boundaries.'

When difference is defined too vaguely, you can get into 'systems' becoming the substitute for logic - and then you have the presence of 'ideologues' in your midst.

And then you get this modern cult-ish nonsense of litanies (text books/'bibles'/platforms/ manifestos/manuals/extensive lists) of iterative slight changes with technical terms like you would find in the vocabulary of a separate language - but that are meant to cover 'everything' so that the 'system' becomes the universal; able to enclose all things.

Unlike a functional cultural memory of things that happened, this 'language' is theoretical but it's also like a fanatical religion. It doesn't work or function but one cannot argue against it or try to contradict the priests of the system.

But the main point is, it doesn't work.

The Invisible Slippers

Unless you have actually ever been to and lived in, one of the truly exotic places of the world, you will remain convinced that a modern academic codifying of ancient myths and legends is sufficient to understand how the world of human society works.

Today, Disney will tell us about 'Cinderella' and her glass slippers.

A magical boat, to the magical castle

Aarne-Thompson will tell us that this story falls under that category of the academic codex of world myths to do with the 'oppressed heroine.' Disney bills the story as the fabled lesson of 'the purest heart in a cruel world.'

I can hardly do justice to any of the things I learned growing up among Tamilians from South India... I might be able if you had a digital printer that was able to re-molecularize for you a tamarind soup and a fish murgh-thani.

The ancient Greeks had a story about some beautiful Thracian courtesan actually living at the time of Sappho, whose brother (IE. Sappho's) in fact, ransomed her from some tyrant or other.

And the Italians had a fairy tale about a certain 'Angelica, Pagan Princess of Cathay,' which is the same basic story - lost footwear, beautiful, pure-hearted and so on, falls in love with a prince... And there's plenty of magic in this version - magic fountains from which one can drink and immediately fall in love.

The modern Cinderella story has the heroine wearing glass slippers.

At night, the magic is in full force

If the heroine were a princess of Cathay - which would have meant India as well, at the time - and were she an Indian princess, she might easily have been wearing 'invisible' slippers!

There are many rationalists who like to dismiss Eastern and otherwise certainly quite ancient accounts of the effects and consequences of magical forces, or the employment of magical forces, to create kingdoms, amass wealth, gain an enchanted power over ordinary people's minds - usually, they like to explain things in terms of modern psychology. 

In the end, the carriage turns back into a pumpkin, and the brave chargers into mice.

Here endeth today's lesson on the magical kingdom... Do you know or have you heard of any magical kingdoms? Created from out of some dismal, and worthless swamp perhaps?