Doug Cornelius .com

As an alum, I received a message from Jehuda Reinharz, President of Brandeis. Although the previous message was clearly that they the school was closing the Rose Art Museum, the new message was sent “clear up some of the misconceptions surrounding these issues.”

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This book managed to squash any latent desire I had to take up high altitude mountaineering. In High Crimes,  Michael Kodas tells us about his disastrous expedition on the north side of Everest, approaching from Tibet/China. He also intertwines his story with that of Gustavo Lisi and his disastrous climb up the south side of Everest, approaching from Nepal.

If you take a peak at my photos from my climb of Mout Rainier, you can see that I had the mountaineering bug for a while. In a complicated life, it’s great to have a simple mission on the mountain: go as high up the mountain as you can and get back safely. Having kids suppressed that mountaineering bug. An early lesson I learned was that the summit is not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is getting back home safely. The mountain will be there tomorrow for another try at the summit.

After reading this book, it sounds like many of the Everest climbers fail to realize their goal.

High Crimes acts as a continuation of Into Thin Air. Jon Krakauer told us how big money was making it easier to get you to the top. Climbers no longer had to go through a long apprenticeship climbing higher and higher peaks before tacking the highest mountain. Commercial operators were increasingly happy to help you to the top as long as you had the cash. Experience was not necessary. The commercial guides would supply it.

High Crimes paints a deteriorating picture of Everest where some guides do not even supply the necessary experience. In the Kodas expedition the group is under-prepared and fractious. In the Lisi expedition, he gets left for dead on the top of the mountain.

Kodas tell us of climbers shopping for the least expensive guides, guides inflating their experience, expeditions being under-supplied, theft and violence. Kodas tells of several expedition returning to their high camps, exhausted from their climbing, only to find their tents emptied of supplies by thieves from other expeditions.

Kodas tells us of under-trained climbers and guides that imperil not only themselves, but other expeditions on the mountain. Climbers take so long on the few technical aspects of the climb that dangerous bottlenecks form.

Kodas also paints a grim picture of base camp on the North Side of Everest. China has built around that reaches all the way to base camp. As a result there is wild west town that sprouts up during climbing season. His description reminds me of Deadwood, except with nylon tents.

It seems Everest has fallen to the greedy. It sounds like it is no longer a great climb.

With my move from Goodwin Procter to be Chief Compliance Officer at a real estate company, I have been using a blog to keep my notes. I have just open up this blog to the public. You can see what I have been up to at Compliance Building.

Disclaimers

From Twitter Mosaic:

Get your twitter mosaic here.

On February 17, 2009, Securities Docket is sponsoring a webcast that will look at the numerous ways that securities and compliance counsel and professionals can now use web 2.0 to promote, market, and network themselves, their practices and their firms as never before.

Please join Bruce Carton, Editor of Securities Docket, and me for a webcast that will discuss the best new tools and strategies available to securities and compliance counsel and professionals, including:

• RSS;
• Social Media, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook;
• Blogs;
• and much more.

To attend this webcast scheduled for February 17, at 2 pm Eastern, please sign up on the Securities Docket website.

On February 17, 2009, Securities Docket is sponsoring a webcast that will look at the numerous ways that securities and compliance counsel and professionals can now use web 2.0 to promote, market, and network themselves, their practices and their firms as never before.

Please join Bruce Carton, Editor of Securities Docket, and me for a webcast that will discuss the best new tools and strategies available to securities and compliance counsel and professionals, including:

• RSS;
• Social Media, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook;
• Blogs;
• and much more.

To attend this webcast scheduled for February 17, at 2 pm Eastern, please sign up on the Securities Docket website.

New York magazine has a lengthy story on the largest real estate deal deal in US history: The $5.4 Billion sale of MetLife’s interest in the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village residential complex. The complex is enormous: 80 acres of land on Manhattan’s East Side, 25,000 residents, 110 buildings, over 11,000 units, 2,260 enclosed parking spaces, and 110,000 square feet of retail space. The complex stretches from 14th Street to 23rd Street.

The article, Clash of the Utopias by Gabriel Sherman, starts with the history of the complex. It was an ambitious post-war slum reclamation project. It was intended as middle class oasis in the expensive heart of the city. The vast majority of units are rent-stabilized.

The purchase price was high. According to the story, the rent flow from the property was less than the debt payments. The new owners would need to kick-out illegal rent-stabilized tenants. They would need to raise rents.

Since the time of the acquisition, the real estate market has changed. The story points out that they had to decrease rents and offer incentives to get vacant units rented.

I believe most of the key people and investors in the transaction knew this was a long term deal that would not result in a quick flip for cash. A complex this big does not move quickly. But, it is hard to resist a tract of land this big in the middle of Manhattan. There were lots of bidders who wanted the project.

The story spends a big chunk of space talking about the Speyer family and their family business.

The comments to the story are biting and largely critical of the new owners and their stewardship of the complex.

[For full disclosure, my former firm represented parties in the transaction and played a significant role in the acquisition, financing and other items mentioned in the story. I had no active role. BlackRock/Tishman Acquires Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village for $5.4 Billion. Deal of the Year. Fund Formation of the year.]

Disclaimers

I just finished reading The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The title of the book comes from the observations of Europeans that all swans are white. Much to their surprise, they came to Australia and found their first black swan. The book starts with this story to illustrate the “limitations to our learning from observations or experience and the fragility of our knowledge.” As Taleb points out, it very different to think there is evidence of no possible black swans, than there is no evidence of the possibility of black swans.

Taleb has received lots of press and admirers given the recent meltdown in the financial markets. The book was published in 2007. Taleb seems to have perceived the coming collapse (and probably got a rich financial reward based on his strategy).

His supreme self-confidence (arrogance) shines brightly through in his writing. He has little time for shallow thinking and those who think they understand risk or the financial markets.

Another example running through the book is the first 1,001 days of a turkey’s life. For a 1,000 days the farmer brings food to the turkey every morning. On that last day, things change dramatically. The farmer shows up with an axe instead of food. A surprise and horrible change in circumstance for the turkey. But all the historical evidence for the turkey indicated that the farmer would show up with food and not an axe. Of course, on the flip side, the farmer saw the axe day coming.

As Yogi Berra philosophized: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

It is the unknown unknown that is most dangerous. We spend too much time focusing on knowing what we know. We need to spend focusing some energy in realizing what we do not know and what we do not know what we do not know.

As a compliance and risk professional I was particularly intrigued by the story of the four largest losses by casinos. As you might expect, casinos run very thorough security programs, compliance programs and risk management programs. The four largest losses fell completely outside the casinos’ models. One was the white tiger’s attack on Roy, the second was a disgruntled contractor who attempted to dynamite the casino, the third was the kidnapped daughter of a casino owner, and the fourth an incompetent employee who failed to file the 1099 reports with the Internal Revenue Service.

It is also important to draw the distinction between positive contingencies and negative contingencies. The black swan can be one that brings unexpected destruction or one that brings an unexpected windfall. His philosophy is to play it safe, but hedge for a disastrous losses and spectacular windfalls. Mitigate the unexpected consequences.

I expected to get a lot of insight from the book. But it was one of the few books that changed the outlook on my profession.

The Boston Public Library has posted a collection of Newton post cards using Flickr. Several of the pictures show how the Charles River used to look in its run through Newton.

This looks like the dam at Upper Falls (the Silk Mill Dam):

You can compare this to my recent picture of the dam at Upper Falls from my paddling trip through Hemlock Gorge:

It was interesting to see what the area around Horseshoe Dam looked like prior to the construction of Route 9, as seen in this picture:

CCH gathered some great information on “professionals” using Web 2.0: Professionals and Web 2.0 (.pdf).

They interviewed 229 professionals within organizations across the Asia-Pacific region. The report addresses the use of wikis, blogs, social networks, and RSS in Australia, New Zealand and Asia. The respondents consisted of professionals in tax & accounting, legal, HR and business. Most of them were employed by orgainzation with over 200 employees. the report indicates taht web 2.0 is becoming a way for you to start research and keep up with developments in your industry.

Web 2.0 is rapidly changing the landscape of professional information, with 43.7% of professionals using Web 2.0 tools at least once a week. While results show there is some reluctance for many organisations to adopt Web 2.0 before value can be established, a high percentage of ad-hoc use (at least 25.8%) is occurring due to the accessibility and functionality of the tools. This suggests Web 2.0 applications have gained a significant share of time spent online. We are increasingly using these tools to search, communicate and contribute to the web in both a personal and professional context.

Some highlights from the report:

• 33% of the respondents in the legal field said they used a wiki for professional purposes at least once a week.
• 35% of the respondents in the legal field use a blog for professional use at least once a week.
• 20% of the respondents in the legal field use a social network for professional use at least once a week.

Sure, you can look at the numbers and say that they have not reached early adoption. But, two years ago these numbers would probably be close to zero. I predict we will see these numbers crossing into the majority within two years.

Thanks to James Mullan of the Running Librarian for pointing out the report.