Look up every once in a while!

I sometimes feel conditioned never to look beyond the first ten feet of the earth. When I remind myself to look up, there’s so much great stuff. Trees, antennae, water towers, buildings. Never mind the visual pollution of smoke, contrails, and billboards.

Clouds in particular are nifty. They’re almost always changing, even if you look at the same patch of sky. They have pleasing shapes, and just a little bit of texture. Simple pleasure, clouds are.

Interest and time, finance and economics

Do paragraphs like these intrigue you?

Even if there’s something to the relationship banking story, it’s not sufficient to explain the resilient centrality of banks. Why can’t local nonbank finance companies couldn’t enter into persistent relationships with firms, evaluate creditworthiness, and earn the same smoothed interest rates as banks? Banks’ advantage in earning an interest rate spread comes ultimately not from anything special about their portfolio of assets, but from what is special about their liabilities. Banks pay no interest at all or very low interest rates on a significant fraction of their liabilities, low-balance checkable demand deposits. The class of bank creditors called “depositors” accepts these low rates because 1) they deem the bank to be highly creditworthy, and so don’t demand a credit spread; and 2) they gain an in-kind liquidity benefit because “bank deposits” serve as near perfect substitutes for money.

If you answered yes, you and I are the same kind of strange geeks who enjoy figuring out the puzzle that is finance and economics. Steve Waldman writes on these topics with an enjoyable blend of erudition, philosophy, explanation, and contemplation. He’s worth reading, if you are again like me and seek to use the systems of finance and economics to explain parts of our puzzling world.

Diving into comics

I’ve quite enjoyed this summer’s batch of movies. In particular, many of the comic book franchises are catching my fancy. The Onion A.V. Club, deeply devoted to geeking out on pop culture, has devoted two of their series Gateways to Geekery on digging deeper into two of those comic book franchises. Starting points, and what to avoid, for The Avengers and The Dark Knight have caught my eye and led to several purchases in the excellent Comixology iOS app.

Nick Offerman, a gentleman

Nick Offerman of Parks and Recreation plays TVs hardest-on-the-outside, sweatest-on-the-inside libertarian and manly-man Ron Swanson. The manly man parts come from Offerman a little bit. He’s a bit of a modern gentleman:

GQ: You strike me as a guy who has a powerful code for behaving properly. Are there some rules you could share with GQ’s readers?

Nick Offerman: I would say, first of all, be prepared. I can’t say enough about that. Right now I’m traveling in New York City, but I still have my Swiss army knife on me. I grew up among farmers in Illinois and so you always have to have the tools you might need in the eventuality of a flat tire or a broken window. In the traditional role of man, it falls to you to keep the weather out and fish in the boat. Two: Be polite. Good manners have gotten me as far as anything else in this business. The first film I did, Chain Reaction, was with Keanu Reeves and Morgan Freeman. I had some really nice scenes as Keanu’s building super, which were then completely cut from the film [giggles]. Anyway, at the end of my day on set, I hung up my costume in the trailer, and the wardrobe assistant came to pick it up. I said something involving please and thank you. She stopped, put her hands on her heart, and said, “Can I just say thank you so much for treating me like that, and for hanging up your clothes?” I said, “Are you kidding me?” And it quickly became clear, as I continued working, that having manners was equivalent to a superpower in the business.

The rest of the interviews paints what I think is a great picture. Do right by people, strive to make great things, love the people close to you. More like that, please.

See also: Ron [Paul] Swanson, pictures of Ron Paul with Ron Swanson quotes. Gold.

Live at Leeds, the benchmark for live albums

To cover the time gap between Tommy and Who’s Next, The Who released live album, Live at Leeds. This is an absolutely fantastic album, and tops many lists of live albums. The Who are taut and wild, completely on top of their material, yet energetic and fierce.

My favorite track here, one of my all-time favorite tracks, is their cover of Summertime Blues. There is tremendous energy here. Even better, the band plays as an extremely tight ensemble; every part and player brilliantly melds into one raucous romp through teenage frustration. I cannot recommend this album and this track enough.

That’s all for this week. Hope you enjoyed it!

~Adam Keys