An Education

Caveat: My children are surfing the Internet playing with virtual fish as I write this.

Just finished reading Nick Hornby’s screenplay for “An Education”. As an aspiring playwright, I especially enjoyed the introductory section where Hornby tells the story of making this movie based on Lynn Barber’s autobiographical essay about her affair with a shady older man at the beginning of the 1960s.

Hornby points out the challenge in rewriting a memoir where a woman in her sixties writes about her sixteen year-old self. The point of a memoir is to be as smart as possible about one’s younger self. Meanwhile, “in a screenplay, you have to deny the character that insight otherwise there’s no drama, just a character understanding herself and avoiding mistakes.”

This made me think about episodes in my life that contributed to my “Education,” and the distance between the woman I am today and the naïve girl I was when I graduated from college. As I raise my own children, I wonder how to impart some of this acquired knowledge to them, so they can avoid the painful mistakes I made.

Children Interrupt: “Mommy can I make my bed and fold my pajamas for the rest of the year so I can earn $29 to buy some virtual fish and pearls?

Me: “No, but what you can do is think about ways to get a bunch of children around the world to ask their parents for money to buy things that don’t even exist. That’s a smart person who came up with that idea.”

Situation upon graduating from college
Graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude from Wellesley with honors degree in English literature.

Applicability and use of this degree in finding real world employment (in my particular case): None.

Sales and Trading job in Global Derivatives:
Failed this recruiting interview at a major international bank based on not being able to tell the department head a convincing story about how “street smart” I was. Not knowing what a derivative was probably didn’t help either, especially after lying about how “motivated I was” to get the job/find gainful employment/not go back home and live with my parents. Apparently I wasn’t the only person who didn’t know what a derivative was…

Thereafter, became extremely preoccupied with how to remedy the street smart situation, or more practically, convince other people I had remedied it.

Fundraising consultant/geisha:
Had to rely on family connections to get this job…was fired after 3 months for, among other failings: “talking while stuffing envelopes” and “forgetting the Xerox color-coding scheme for hand-outs.” The ambiance was straight out of the 1960s Mad Men secretarial pool, staffed by young girls from good families biding their time before marriage and housewives bored with the Junior League. Legendary was the Milf who dressed to emphasize her legs and décolletage as she leaned towards male chief executives at the moment of the crucial ask, imploring them to “think of the children.”

Most useful piece of information learned there—“always send hand-written envelopes with real stamps, girls, when you want to look classy and have strangers read your mail.” Whilst your vulgar (or more honest) operator might actually sleep with the client, a society lady, with well-honed skills, plays on your narcissism, vanity and social ambitions to clean you out. Hopefully it’s for a good cause. Least useful piece of information learned there: listening to The Head talk about all the fun things she did with her friend, The Billionaire. “The very rich are very different.”

Even then, I knew: no they’re not. They just don’t give a shit. Lots of very poor people don’t give a shit either and are “very different” too. The middle class, however, are most definitely not “very different” because they’re typically obsessed with what people think of them and studying the mores of their superiors in hopes of moving up the social ladder.

Temp:
After disastrous fund-raising geisha experience, temped as actual replacement secretary for partners at (what was then) Big Six Accounting and Consulting. Was a big hit because I did not talk to my boyfriend on the phone, smack gum or put my feet on the desk. One Managing Partner of Tax was particularly impressed with me because I came up with the brilliant idea of sorting his mail. Also had to listen to him ask me if “my parents could spell” because my name had an “h” in it. Did not feel it was worth my time to explain that my maternal grandparents grew up in France or that other languages and cultures have other ways of spelling things.

What I learned: If I ever wanted to find out the real dirt on what is going on at a company or what certain people are like, I would definitely ask the secretaries.

Mutual Fund Report Writer:
First real job I got was as a writer for a financial company, editing the annual reports for their mutual funds. The department head who hired me was straight out of Mad Men/had been the head of creative for a major SF ad agency at an earlier point in his life. He hired me because I could write, read books, liked to discuss literature and because he had fond memories of dating Wellesley girls when he got his (never-to-be-used) degree at Harvard Law.

Memorable moment in job: telling billion dollar fund manager that Humpty Dumpty was perhaps not the best metaphor for the currently depressed stock that he expected to rebound because “All the King’s horses and all the King’s men never could put Humpty back together again.”

Grateful for: fun colleagues and wonderful second boss, former school teacher and published poet who showed me that women don't have to undermine each other in the workplace, and that you can be an effective boss without being a total hardass.

Realization: Unless you’re J.K Rowling, writing ability and familiarity with children’s stories are relatively low paying skills. On the other hand, managing OPM (other people’s money) is a great paying job, but only a fool would pay me to do that.

JBoss Years

1998: Possibility: Marc would probably have happily built JBoss at Sun Microsystems for a 40% increase in his Pre-Sales Engineer salary and conferral of “Distinguished Engineer” title. Reality: It was impossible to build JBoss at Sun at that time, even more so for a low-level employee with non-established credentials.

Marc meets founders of WebLogic at JavaOne. They ask him if Sun is still the same fucked up company it used to be. He interviews for job at WebLogic, but this goes nowhere because they are bought by BEA and their hiring is frozen.

Our discussion about Marc leaving his job to become an entrepreneur:

“You’re going to leave a secure job with health care and benefits to write free software? If you are going to put all those hours into something, why not something that will enhance our future and pay for the baby’s college education?”

Ultimately, it was quit his job or go to therapy and pay somebody else to listen to how much he hated his job.

Realization: You have to really suck to not be able to find an equivalent, non-fulfilling job a year later if things don’t work out. In that case, you’re no worse off than you were before, but at least you’ve gotten the “coulda, woulda, shoulda” thing out of your system.

1999: Marc leaves to work on JBoss and receives a 300% salary increase for non-JBoss related software consulting in that period. Comment from a friend and former colleague about his desire to work as a software developer: “You’re moving down the food chain.”


2000: “This is not just a bad business plan, this is a horrible business plan:” Doug Leone, Sequoia Capital.

2001: Marc’s first start-up attempting to commercialize JBoss fails. My husband and I, along with our child and dog, move in with my parents. Marc comments to our lawyer at the time: “We’re the original garage company.” Lawyer replies: No you’re not. You’re the original in-law’s garage company.”

I decide to help him until he gets his feet off the ground, but wind up staying because the momentum really picks up.

2002: Twins are born, home office gets small. We look for office space as part of Georgia Tech’s ATDC Incubator program. ATDC’s response: “JBoss is a consulting company. VC’s don’t invest in consulting companies’ ergo a VC will never invest in you, so you’re not a fit for us.” We get outside office space elsewhere.

2004: We’re still not sure we want them, but top VC firms, attracted by JBoss’s user community and growing business, compete to invest in us. No VC would touch us with a 10-foot pole in 2000 when we had an early stage product and a company that was bleeding overhead. If they had, they would have bought us for pennies on the dollar and we ultimately would have gotten very little equity.

We built JBoss on our own because we have no other option and because it’s “fun to blow shit up” and beat down a billion dollar industry, especially if you can figure out how to get people to pay you to do this and make money that is good for you, whilst laughably small for your fat, established competitors.

Lesson learned: “banks only lend to the rich. Them that has ‘gits.”


Education

David Mamet’s definition of street smart (referring to his Hollywood screenwriting work): “the moment when you’ve been seduced and abandoned sufficiently to tire of it.”

Am I more street smart now? Yes, this is because I’m older and I’ve actually been on the metaphorical “street”.

It occurs to me that the only people who are sufficiently sharp to be street smart without painful experiences are the motherfuckers who are always dreaming up ways to screw over other people first, so they’re super savvy at anticipating how other people plan to screw them.

When you are nobody, with no money and no connections and want to break into an established industry and do things differently you can expect to hear two things: “Who the fuck do you think you are. Piss off.”

Interested in being an entrepreneur? Re-read, the children’s story: The Little Red Hen. The only point anybody wants to “help” you is when it’s time to eat the bread.

Painful Learning Experience: The first partnership contract we signed at JBoss paid us on the basis of production sales of the partners’ software with clients of theirs who also ran JBoss. After several months without getting a check, we looked up their sales structure and realized this particular company didn’t sell production licenses; they sold development licenses.

Realization: Otherwise smart people are particularly prone to falling for low-level cons because it never occurs them that people would take advantage of them in such an obvious way. To this day, I still wonder what advantage these people thought they would obtain by pretending to pay us something as opposed to the ill-will they were going to generate when we figured out what they were up to. The irony: we weren’t even expecting money at that point, we were just were happy to be seen with them…

Growing up/getting more savvy: Being excluded from giving talks at JavaOne, realizing Sun had locked down all the conference space in San Francisco that week, realizing that it never occurred/was not feasible for them to lock down the bar across the street and holding our first alternative JBoss One conference at the Thirsty Bear. Handing out flyers for our conference at Moscone center and being treated like unwanted panhandlers/agitators by Sun’s Key 3 Media lackeys.

Realizing that a normal pass to get into JavaOne cost $1000, but press passes are free: Finding sympathetic editors and becoming the “boat people” of J2EE article publishing the three months before the conference—with multiple authors per article.

Possible advice to children? Per Neal Stephenson’s marine-raider and all-round badass Bobby Shaftoe in Cryptonomicon: “Display Adaptability.”

Ability to effectively transmit the benefits of my experiences to children without them actually experiencing any of this for themselves? Unresolved.

Advice My Mother Gave Me

Most useless advice (transmitted from her mother's memories of house parties in the French countryside in the post-war years): "When you stay at other people's houses make sure you scrub out the bathtub, sink and toilet after you have used them. Don't assume the servants are there to do this for you. They will be reporting any negligence in your personal hygiene back to Madame. Oh, and always tip the servants.

Advice I use most frequently: (my mother worked for many years as a chef and restaurant manager): Always angle your knuckles, on the hand that you are holding the food with, away from the knife when you're slicing. Always serve things that you can re-heat at the last minute when you have large numbers of guests.

Advice my mother gave me that I'm still trying to figure out: An object should either be beautiful or useful.

TF22: Refried Beans 2009

Sometimes I like to cook something with what is left in the fridge. And sometimes it is even yummy. This time I do it with 2009 music, music I have been listening continuously in a loop on my ipod but haven't mixed in yet. Hence "refried beans".

TF22- Refried beans 09 by marc fleury

I keep my ear close to the speaker for good music, or rather "music I like". I have a lot of time, so there is a lot of it. Not everything is brand spanking new in there, in fact some stuff in there is downright old, early 80's and such. But everything has caught my ear in one way. The melody, the pads, the drums, the mood, the pace, the bass, the vocals, the memories, whatever.

The resulting mood is ironically down-tempo (ironical because I don't particularly like down-tempo) it starts at a sluggish 100BPM and lazily climbs up to 120ish... and it is definitely melancholic, in the off-tones. It has hip-hop, house, electronic, techno, some rock (gasp!). Like I said, it plays like an ipod shuffle on a partied out sunday morning.

Tracklist:

1/ Find me in the World, DSL, Ed Banger.
Most excellent french hip-hop... this track actually has some pedigree in it, the manager of the head banger label, Pedro Winter, has been a stable fixture of the parisian electro night. I also think he was the manager of the Daft Punk for a long time. The lyrics are great, I like the way the french rapping sounds.

"Te faire ramasser par le samu social, c'a te rend bestial,
je te dis ca avec passion mais je me peterai pas une corde vocale,
je dis pas ca mais je rhyme que sur ma boite vocale".

"Being picked up by the homeless service turns you into a beast."
You just can't make up stuff like that, very french in its social angst about money and people.



2/ Footprints, Stratus.
I like the pad line at the end, the swirling melody and synth pad sound that seems to spiral out of control in slow mo. I like the continuous transform whaaa-whaaa sound. It is a good light track very chill and space in a way.

3/ Same Sun, Bazoo Bajoo, Prins Thomas Diskomiks
I really like what the nordic disco invasion guys are doing. These have been putting out killer track after killer track and they do it with style. They DJ'ing also superb. I recommend Todd Terje and Prins Thomas, they crack me up every time. A certain insouciance about it all and a dead-on ear. It apparently started as an teenage underground love affair with space-disco and turned into this most excellent style. Again a dubbed out, chill, slow and downtempo track. It has some heaviness, in the step drums, to it. Be patient with this track and it will grow on you. I like the break, the hypnotic voice and the drum re-uptake, the electronic finish.

4/ The Swamp waltz, Steve Moore remix, Arnaud Rebotini
Another Parisian artist. Arnaud Rebotini was unknown to me until I heard this track on a Joe Goddard Resident Advisor mix a couple of month ago. It was an instant ear catcher for me. The original is quite good. I also listened to all the other remixes of the swamp waltz and, well, I really find this one stands out. Steve moore has produced an inspired remix, check out his production on soundcloud, the guy has talent. I love everything about this track. The progression, the pad line (from the original) very spooky, the 808 clear bell, and the melody, the way it builds up, the messiness. This one is extremely slow, for a modern track, clocking at 112BMP, when it fact it is quite rich in texture. And it feels that way, it stands out in modern production. And here I thought clubs couldn't clock below 130bips due to the widespread chemical abuse? There is nothing laid back about the track, it in fact manages to be quite overwhelming...

5/ The bottle, C.O.D
Ok, I cheat here. For those that have listened to the Goddard RA podcast, the waltz is song number 4, and this is number 3, in other words I play them in reverse order he does. Pity is that I couldn't find the same exact original on itunes. Goddard must have the original vinyls....You can hear the limits of sound production in the 80's... The stuff still sounds good but the sound production quality is frankly sub-par in this particular cut. Whatever, the melody on this one is so good. One of those catchy urban tunes. It brinks back memories. I even drop the mix at "here is another one" like Goddard does :). I am such a copy-cat.

6/ Single girl, Knight Action.
Another song from another RA compilation. Resident advisor has been a steady source of tunes for me. I can't remember which one, just that instantly liked the first line of lyrics on first hearing and went and bought it. It is funny to think that this one was a big chicago club hit in 1984, possibly a floor filler of the day, today it sounds very down-tempo at 110 BPM. You can see on the wave form how that 80's production is essentially maxed out at least on the itunes version :) and the sound levels are off. I like the off-key melody and the key change, I also like the lyrics even with all the cheese. I also love this picture of the author Duanne Hamm.



7/ Torch, Margot, Extrawelt remix.
I must admit that the entry of the modern production sound with the woosh and waaaash is soothing to my ears after the harshness of the 80's production. It is a relief to go back to modern sound texture, it is fuller, calming. For me the processed voice does this track. I like this warped sound, very spacey. I like the fact that I can't understand a SINGLE word of what they are saying. You must understand that growing up in france, to us, ALL songs sounded like this "whaaa hahahaha", so maybe I like the throwback to a simpler time when I could focus on electronic sound and melody and not what they were saying... of course if you like country music for the lyrics and the stories they tell (like my in-laws from Georgia) then your experience was vastly different. I sort of feel sorry for "native americans", understanding the lyrics in songs must have been a distracting curse. he he.

8/ In and out of my life, Adeva, Pridz remix.
The original was a late 80's hit. I remember buying the album with adeva face on it and thinking the vocals were floating far above the record and begging to be sampled out of what was a mediocre surrounding and remixed. I close my mind's eye and ear, wait 20 years and voila! and a Pridz remix at that, no less!
I love the original singing by Adeva, just powerful diva delivery. The remix is inspired. The bassline is just what the doctor recommended for that sampling. A very classic line gets a princely modern treatment. Definitely more "big-room" than the rest of the mix.



9/ Spaghetti Circus, Still Going.
Still in the vocal house vein. I love the "deep south" soul sounding vocal in the beginning. I love the piano line over the guitar, very housey in a sense. Then the spacey guitar is quite good, I like that sound, the reverb treatment makes it landscapish. This is an all around barn burner. I dovetail back into in and out just for the mixing fun of it and the fact that I couldn't get Manila to stick on the Spaghetti stuff :).

10/ Manila, Seelenluft, Ewan Parson mix.
This is a CATCHY tune. Period. It is one of those songs where you hear it once and you think you have known this track for ever. I like the lyrics, "then my seat started rattling, sure that wasn't part of the show, so I started to dance, without wearing no seat belt, so I started to dance without wearing no life vest". The little bleepy melody. It also has an innocence in the sound, probably the voice of the kid. Whatever it is, I like it.
It also has an interesting property, it works and goes with everything in mix... few tunes show this chameleon ability (I call it musical chicken, everything tastes like it) I think it is something about the harmonics they adopt and how they decompose.

11/ Any Day Now, Scott Ferguson, ElectroVox remix.
I love the deep south soul vocal and feel in this house gem. It is otherwise a down-tempo house track but it has this soul vibe. I am also quite happy with how this mixes with manila. I stretch the vocals to the max. I only use the first part because that is the part I like. The second one frankly sucks balls. Never seen a track so asymetric. A for the first part, F for the second. Go figure.

12/ 7 nites, 7 days, Jori Hulkonnen, Muzique Tropique's Love the Bass Remix
Jori Hulkonnen is a finnish genius. Period. Ever since he published "when we was attached" (was it 8 years ago already) on F communication, Garnier's french electro label, I have been a follower of his production. I think him a complete musical genius. His ALBUMS are totally worth it btw. On this track, I love the deep south voice, this is not the first time he uses the soul voice, and it totally works for me. As I continue my love affair with Jori H...

13/ Cereal Killaz, 3773, A23P's distension mix
Speaking of geniuses... I have gotten to know Al Nesby a.k.a A23P a bit through facebook and a common friend. This particular track, a remix of his, is a gem. I am not sure he himself realizes it. It hits all the right notes for me on drums, sound production, the originality of the result and the hard driving pattern. In find the drum pattern after the break to be epic. Very driven. IN fact I like it so much that I kind of extend it here from the skimpy minute Al gives us to about 3 minutes. For some reason the track made me think of a film score for a matrix style sci-fi movie, a chase scene to be precise... after thinking about it I think it is one of the first scenes in the club where trinity talks to neo for the first time... this is unreleased material directly from Al. Just superior electronic music.

14/ Found a place, Tony Lionni.
Finally some techno. Of course the vocals work here and are the only ones I could really super-impose on the sonic chaos that al summons up for us. You will notice that I keep it to the bare minimum. This track is a great techno sounding minimal inspired production. It appears on a Berghain club compilation (the mythical hard minimal techno Berlin club). Vocals, piano, cool sound production. The extent of the loop must be 2 bars, but who cares when you are blown out of your mind?

15/ One moment, Cari Lekebusch.
So let's take the same formula and repeat. Take a loop (the vocals in this case) a nasty high-hat drums pattern, a simple base, sprinkle a few pad notes here and there, tweak the hell out of the sound and VOILA another mind-blowing killer techno track. The last two tracks are about as close as I get to minimal, more minimal and I fall asleep :) they sound full. It does wash, rinse and clears your mind doesn't it?

16/ Obsession for the disco freaks, Robotnick, Rory phillips.
I love Robotnick. Robotnick is an italian old-timer. He is a superb electro producer and DJ. To see him DJ is a trip. He must be 50, smokes like a chimney, dances to his own dope, and drops killer tune after killer tune. All with an edgy and underground vibe. Speaking of tune this one is a beauty. In 3 solid parts, "obsession" sports an alien sound in the middle. The first time I listened to this I wondered how the hell he made that transition... just superb sound and a great melody. Excellent electro track.



17/ Dead Souls, Mlle Caro and Franck Garcia, Long distance remix.
Another parisian track. This one is a marathon WMC remix of a track, coming in at 11 minutes long. It takes for ever to build so I just key in on the melody and vocals. I immediately liked the french sounding voice "what a greeeaaat live, melanchoooly is my wife" of mademoiselle caroline garcia, just so cool. Then the second part with the spacey guitar has a very hypnotic quality to it. Maybe it is the 10 minutes of bleep bleep that does it. However, while remixing this I went online and check them out and then...

18/ Dead Souls, Mlle Caro and Franck Garcia. Original mix.
I found this video of them singing dead souls in the Rex club in Paris. I first thought it was a new version and then realized it was the original. I find the original a thousand times better than the WMC remix. I think this song is fantastic. The video has a joy division feel to it. The lyrics and melody are just great. The vocals are superb and the french accent really adds to it. Also the delivery is different than the remix. You have to watch the video and see Caro dance while she sings, I love it. She defines geek cool.



I hope you enjoy these songs as much as I have.

Save MySQL?

There is a call to "save MySQL". Here is the gist of the "worry"

If Oracle buys MySQL as part of Sun, database customers will pay the bill.

In April 2009, Oracle announced that it had agreed to acquire Sun. Since Sun had acquired MySQL the previous year, this would mean that Oracle, the market leader for closed source databases, would get to own MySQL, the most popular open source database.

If Oracle acquired MySQL on that basis, it would have as much control over MySQL as money can possibly buy over an open source project. In fact, for most open source projects (such as Linux or Apache) there isn't any comparable way for a competitor to buy even one tenth as much influence. But MySQL's success has always depended on the company behind it that develops, sells and promotes it. That company (initially MySQL AB, then Sun) has always owned the important intellectual property rights (IPRs), most notably the trademark, copyright and (so far only for defensive purposes) patents. It has used the IPRs to produce income and has reinvested a large part of those revenues in development, getting not only bigger but also better with time.

If those IPRs fall into the hands of MySQL's primary competitor, then MySQL immediately ceases to be an alternative to Oracle's own high-priced products. So far, customers had the choice to use MySQL in new projects instead of Oracle's products. Some large companies even migrated (switched) from Oracle to MySQL for existing software solutions. And every one could credibly threaten Oracle's salespeople with using MySQL unless a major discount was granted. If Oracle owns MySQL, it will only laugh when customers try this. Getting rid of this problem is easily worth one billion dollars a year to Oracle, if not more.

This call is made by Monty, one of the founders of MySQL. I got to say that the boys at MySQL have made a huge hash of things. After selling $1B to SUN, they want their cake and eat it too. So they leave, fork and otherwise raise a huge stink.

The only schadenfraude I have in this is with Ponytail boy a.k.a Jonathan Scwhartz, he went very publicly in PR saying that there was no way MySQL would do a JBoss because "the personalities were very different". It was a direct put-down of yours truly. Irony... JBoss looks like a boy-scout integration in comparison. Good job, Jonathan, just genius.

As for me, the bottom line is kind of straight forward, I don't get Monty. Or rather, I "get him" but completely disagree. MYSQL WAS SOLD FOR $1B FOR GADSAKES!!! IT WAS SOLD! IT'S OVER! At least for the corporate part. Of course, Monty is free to fork mySQL and rename it. If he is unhappy he should. But boy! doing a public campaign trying to block the acquisition, will only add to the public fire of EU scrutiny, possibly shutting down the acquisition and will only hurt SUN and SUN employees.

But here is the part that really bothers me: this is making OSS acquisitions look very dangerous and dicey. JBoss is finally making a ton of money for RedHat (>100MUSD/yr) but after 3 years, a few false starts and fumbles. It was a steep learning curve on both sides. But, so far the MySQL situation is a disgrace and just looks like a huge mistake. Hopefully the VMWare crew does a better and more discreet job of successfully integrating an OSS company.

Conversations Between My Boys

Tw1: I do "this"...

Tw2: Oh no you can't, because my tanks have nano protection...

Tw1: But then my guards come and they have a neutralizer for nano-protection and they arrest you...

Tw2: Yes, but then my samurais have a weapon against your box and they free me...

Tw1: Ok, my tanks, the best of the world come, and they kill you...

Tw2: Well, then my planes come and they kill your tanks...

Tw1: That's not fair, you can't do that!

Tw2: Sure I can, and I kill you!...

Tw1: Whatever...

Author's Note: Twin 1 and Twin 2 are 7-yr old boys

Bankruptcy could be good for america?

Wow, that ought to spook a bunch of people including myself. The FT is rallying the excitable fringe with a well written piece on the virtue of sovereign default.

In Winnie-the-Pooh, there is a significant moment when the bear is asked whether he wants honey or condensed milk with his bread. He replies “both”. You can get away with this sort of thing if you are a much loved character in children’s literature. But it is more problematic when great nations start behaving in a childish fashion. When Americans are asked what they want – lower taxes, more lavish social spending or the world’s best-funded military machine – their collective answer tends to be “all of the above”.

The result is that the US is piling up debt. A budget deficit of about 12 per cent of gross domestic product is understandable as a short-term reaction to a huge financial crisis. What should worry Americans is that, with entitlement spending set to surge, there is no credible plan to bring the budget deficit under control over the medium term.

The US has formidable strengths that will allow its government to be profligate for far longer than other nations could get away with. But if the US keeps running huge deficits, sooner or later the country will start flirting with bankruptcy. Oddly, it might be best if the crisis came sooner rather than later. For a surprising number of countries, running out of money has been the prelude to national renewal.

At a moral and individual level, I agree with the sentiment expressed in the article, namely that deleveraging is a good thing, don't buy more than you can afford is the basic tenet of sound personal finance. It is already under way.

However, in analyzing this passage, one must remember that when it comes to balancing a budget, what applies to individuals does not apply to the world economy. Basically a government that issues debt in its own currency can print money. Most of the examples Gideon gives in his article are about countries that emit debt in foreign currency. They will default if they can't meet payments in that foreign currency. This is not the case of the US. The US IS printing massive amounts of money.

The USD is still the currency of choice for world trade. It is also the reserve currency for the world. This is unlikely to change in the short term. China is printing tit for tat to peg its currency to the USD and the EU will have no choice but to follow suit if it wants to stay competitive. This all means we are in the midst of a massive world experiment in quantitative easing. Everyone is printing money.

Now, printing money is an inflationary force but when it is countering large deflationary forces like the current post-crisis deleveraging, you sum it all up and the sum is still negative or deflationary. This is what is happening in the US and what has happened for the past 2 decades in Japan.

China can force a default by nuking the dollar. It can do so (hypothetical) by doing a "pearl harbor" on ITS OWN reserves. A serious case of cutting your nose to spite your face. What they would do is first they would buy up all HARD ASSETS (commodity raid) in USD and then stop accepting USD as payment for exports. This will sink the USD and their own exports. And the net result of that is anyone's guess. It would be the first global economic war. I don't buy it. But then I am an optimist.

"This time it is different"
-- famous last words

The Reluctant Skiier

Skiing, like golf, was not one of those activities that strengthened the marital bond. Nothing like being tricked onto a descent that is beyond one’s ability, concentrating desperately on making it to the next turn, while spouse cheerfully schusses down slope offering annoying advice, or worse still abandoning you to catapult down and land face forward, backside and legs up…like a sprawling cockroach. Might have screamed from top of slope with vocabulary that would shame a fishwife.

Advice from random man in the gondola: “It’s better to look good than be good.”

Children: the three that are old enough to ski or snowboard are all better than me now. They’re not even teenagers and already patronizing. Every dollar spent on ski or snowboard school is well worth it. Can I keep them in those programs until they are 18?

This feeling was compounded by experience riding in lifts with Other People’s Children, especially their surly teenagers. One sixteen year old girl whined: “Mo’om, I can’t believe you got me this grody sunscreen,” before flicking it off in disgust towards her father. My sister and I had couldn’t resist having fun with this one.

“It’s so hard to be your age, isn’t it?”
“Believe me, you don’t want to get to our age with fair skin like that and no sunscreen. Sun damage! All those unsightly wrinkles.”
“Not to mention the cost of laser treatment to get rid of those liver spots.”

Might be a bad mother: on another gondola ride, proudly explained to a woman that my advanced snowboarder daughter is still in classes so she can do things like the terrain park, where she needs more professional instruction. She replies: “Oh, in the local ER where I work, we call that the trauma park.”

Vocabulary: Seriously cannot imagine myself picking up the jargon. Am I the only one who thinks “Got a face shot in Pow!” sounds like manga porn? On the other hand, did find myself learning useful words like “white out”, for skiing in extreme low visibility and “graupel”, for the precipitation that’s somewhere between freezing rain and snow, and generally flays your face.

Skiing powder: Um…vastly overrated for people of my ability. More like sliding over ice patches and into snow drifts. Hubby’s advice: “Just go faster and you’ll glide over it” not particularly easy to apply when you’re already scared out of your mind.

Must be lacking in adrenaline response because don’t feel need for speed. Can’t get image of people who ski better than me and come home from vacation in various casts out of my mind. It’s hard keeping up with four children as it is; can’t imagine what that would be like if I were in need of massive physical rehabilitation.

Ski boots are: an instrument of torture.

Ski equipment is: a pain to keep up with when you have four children--all those face masks, goggles, mittens, helmets, boots, poles, skis. Not to mention complications when child utters most dreaded word in skiing vocabulary: “I need to pee.”

Ski food: $60 to feed family of five on junk food at the top of the mountain, anybody?

Best part of skiing: kids are fully occupied, ditching afternoon skiing (am tired by then anyway) to sip hot chocolate by the fire and read a book or bake Nestle Toll House cookies and watch the classic movie channel!

The "entrecote" sauce is revealed-- english translation

This must be one of the best kept culinary secrets in France. "L'entrecote" is known internationally for its one dish: "steak frites" with a fantastic sauce. My family has been going there for 20 years, twice a week when in paris. My parents know the waiters and show them grand kid pictures and we have collectively tried to find out the secret of the sauce.

The restaurant is situated in the west "porte" of Paris, the Porte Maillot. I grew up in the neighborhoods next to it, both "Neuilly sur Seine" and the more "prolo" "Courbevoie/La defense" when I was a kid. The restaurant has opened branches in London, Geneva, and I read in the Le monde article, in Barcelona.

A family feud between the sisters running the shop has led to new restaurants in Paris, one in the 16th arrondissement and one in montparnasse. Today the french magazine "Le monde" is running is piece divulging the secret sauce. I have no idea how they got it but I sure hope it is kosher...

So, here it is in french and then in english

Ses ingrédients sont le foie de volaille, le thym frais et la fleur de thym, la crème fleurette, la moutarde blanche, le beurre et l'eau, le sel, le poivre. Ustensiles : une casserole, un mixer, un chinois.

En voici la progression. D'une part, faire blondir doucement les foies de volaille avec du thym frais et les faire légèrement colorer. D'autre part, faire réduire à feu doux la crème liquide (fleurette) avec la moutarde blanche de Dijon et parfumer à la fleur de thym fraîche. Mixer finement les foies de volaille, puis les passer au chinois dans la crème réduite. Attention à l'évolution de la sauce : lorsqu'elle épaissit, incorporer le beurre ferme et un peu d'eau. Rectifier, sel et poivre du moulin. Rien de plus simple, en apparence. Cette recette exige cependant un certain tour de main, c'est-à-dire plus d'application que d'inspiration. Elle doit moins au génie d'un grand cuisinier qu'aux mille inconnus modestes qui, depuis des générations, ont tourné la spatule de bois dans la casserole.

In english it means

The ingredients are: poultry liver, fresh thyme, thyme flower, whip cream,, white mustard, butter, water, salt, pepper.

Here is the process: first, slowly brown the poultry liver with fresh thyme. Then reduce on low heat the whip cream with the white mustard and add some flower of thyme. Finely cut the poultry livers and strain them through a "filter" (chinois) in the cream reduction. Be careful with how the sauce evolves when it gets a bit thicker, put in butter and a bit of water. Add salt and pepper to taste.

It sounds simple in writing but in fact this recipe requires a lot of trial and error. It owes less to the culinary genius of a great chef than the thousand anonymous cooks that have beat in casseroles for generations.

The BIG SURPRISE for me is the absence of garlic. I would have sworn there was garlic in this sauce, I would still swore today, but apparently there isn't.... I thought it was a curled bearnaise sauce with garlic... I have to try to replicate this recipe. I have no idea if this is a prank by the "le monde".