The New New Thing

I just finished reading The New New Thing, Michael Lewis’s book tracking the life of serial billionaire tech entrepreneur Jim Clark up to 1999. Clark founded Silicon Graphics, Netscape and Healtheon, which all turned out to be billion-dollar companies (at least, at some point in their lifespan). Lewis is perhaps best known for Liar’s Poker, the investment banker’s must-read book, and of course the other interesting books and articles he has since published as a journalist (his NY Times article on catastrophe bonds was great). His easy-to-read writing style definitely comes through in The New New Thing. The book is a bit outdated as it was written before the dot com crash, but it is still an engrossing, intriguing and humourous read. It provides an insight into Clark’s unique and somewhat unpredictable personality as he interacts with engineers, venture capitalists, bankers, lawyers and sailors (yes, sailors) throughout the 90s. I think it’s a book that’s still very much relevant today. Highly recommended.

  11:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Books  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Arrested for a racist blog post

A Chinese-Singaporean blogger going under the handle of “Fragrance Prince” was travelling on the MRT one day. Sitting on the floor of the train was a hobo, who apparently was suffering a particularly noticeable case of bromhidrosis. Feeling so offended by the man’s very presence, he snapped a photo. Based on that photo, Singaporean hobos look pretty presentable actually. Later that day, the Prince returned home and vented his feelings in a blog post entitled “Weirdo In 1st World Country”.

Unfortunately, the hobo turned out to be a Malay and the Prince’s rant on the hobo disintegrated instead into a racist rant aimed squarely at Malays. You can read the post here.

Pretty distasteful stuff. But then a few days later, someone knocked on his door and the day after that, the news reported that:

POLICE have arrested a 24-year-old man for posting contents in his blog that could “wound the racial feelings of another”, according to their statement.

The man was picked up at about 9.45 pm at his home in Paya Lebar Way. A computer was seized for investigations. …

Under the amendments made last September to the Penal Code, whoever, with intent to wound the religious or racial feelings of any person, causes any matter to be seen or heard by that person, shall be punished with a jail term of up to three years, or with a fine, or with both.

Ouch. That’s a pretty hardcore law, and that’s a pretty hardcore way of enforcing it. Then again, the Singaporeans aren’t exactly known for being soft. (Interestingly, it looks like judicial caning was actually introduced by the British to Singapore… probably a way to beat the natives into submission… but then when the Brits left, the Singaporeans decided they liked the idea and ran with it. Kind of ironic.)

Our racial vilification laws in NSW are quite a bit softer. It looks like making a racist blog post may only a criminal offence if it incites hatred towards, serious contempt for, or severe ridicule of, a person (or group of persons) on the ground of the race of the person, either because it threatens physical harm towards the person or their property, or incites others to cause that physical harm. And then the maximum penalty is only a fine and/or up to 6 months in the slammer. It looks like if Fragrance Prince was living in Sydney when he did that, he’d still be sitting pretty at home (though no doubt trying to fend off an online flame war).

  10:14pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Law  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Health checks

We had our annual “health and wellbeing” fair at work today. They turned the main function room into a bustling health fair of sorts and set up different stations where you can do all manner of different things.

The firm is currently running through the graduate recruitment process so there’s a constant stream of uni students waiting in reception to be interviewed. The main function room happens to be right next to the reception area, the mild bewilderment of the interviewees was evident as they watched people go into this room which looked like some sort of corporate funhouse and then emerge with showbags. (Hint to guys interviewing: please do not wear white socks with a suit and black shoes.)

I went to the body composition station and the massage station, but they had things like reflexology, iridology, heart checks, etc. They set the massage chairs along the North wall so you get a beautiful view of the harbour as well. Very relaxing. Somewhat surprisingly, my health appears to be fine… I’ve put on about 5kgs since I started working, but it’s still well within the healthy range. They measured some obscure stats as well. Apparently my basal metabolic age is 12(!), which is a good thing, but I’ve been warned it slows with age, making it easier to pack on the kilos. My hydration level is 63%, which is within the average range of 50-65%. This was very surprising, given my low daily intake of water. I get by on one 600ml bottle of water, then have a couple cups of water in the evening. My daily intake typically isn’t much more than a litre. Apparently my bones also weigh about 3 kilos and I have a visceral fat rating of 2.

At the end of the analysis, the person talking me through my stats wrote down some suggestions for me. One of them reads: “Increase physical activity, e.g., take stairs instead of lift.” Sitting on a floor 200 metres above ground level, I still can’t tell if she was joking or not.

  10:59pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

The Aussie $

The AUD/USD hit 0.9610 a few hours ago and is now hovering at about 0.9600. Another bid for parity maybe? One thing’s for sure – now is a great time to take a trip to the States.

  10:07pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Miscellaneous  •  Tweet This  •  Comments (1)  • 

A book to add to the reading list

Malcolm Gladwell’s releasing a new book called Outliers later this year. It’s a book about the backgrounds of the highly successful. Ought to make for interesting reading… I know I’ll be picking up a copy when it comes out.

The promo blurb reads:

Outliers is a book about success. It starts with a very simple question: what is the difference between those who do something special with their lives and everyone else? In Outliers, we’re going to visit a genius who lives on a horse farm in Northern Missouri. We’re going to examine the bizarre histories of professional hockey and soccer players, and look into the peculiar childhood of Bill Gates, and spend time in a Chinese rice paddy, and investigate the world’s greatest law firm, and wonder about what distinguishes pilots who crash planes from those who don’t. And in examining the lives of the remarkable among us—the brilliant, the exceptional and the unusual—I want to convince you that the way we think about success is all wrong.

The reference to “world’s greatest law firm” perked my attention. My hunch is that Gladwell has written about Wachtell. WLRK is a firm which has, on a consistent basis, the highest profitability per partner – and not by a few percent over its closest competitor (typically Cravath) but by margins in the region of 50% or so. And its associates are paid absurdly well because of it (although the rumour is that they push the equivalent of 3000 billables each year – I say “equivalent” because they tend to work on an i-bank-like contingency fee basis). More interesting is that it’s a relatively young firm. In fact, three of its name partners are still working there. It’s also a small firm – only a couple hundred attorneys. Another unique aspect is that it has a partner:associate ratio of about 1:1.

  8:15pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Culture  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  •