After some initial mystery leading up to publication, Michael Lewis’s new book Flash Boys is here and its subject is high-speed trading (sometimes called “high-frequency trading) that uses supercomputers and complex trading algorithms to attempt to generate profits through brute force. Lewis has become the most popular writer on Wall Street, giving readers a look behind closed doors. The Times has an excerpt of Flash Boys, while Bloomberg has more detail.
Michael Lewis’s Flash Boys Arrives
“Everything is handmade.”
Monologuist Mike Daisey was once devoted to Apple products. Then, one day, he "started to think, and that's always a problem for any religion." He began to question how his favorite products were put together, so he traveled to China with hopes of finding out. What he saw was shocking. If you own an Apple device (which I'm betting you do), you need to listen to this episode of This American Life.
Animals Everywhere!
It is a truth universally acknowledged (and recently addressed in Barclay Bram Shoekmaker's Millions review of Mo Yan's Frog) that literary translation is an imperfect art, and this list of mistranslated "literary moments" only offers more evidence for the claim. But for every serious blunder there's also a truly ridiculous one (or more). For example, the French translated the title of Animal Farm as Animals Everywhere!, which sounds a lot like a charming children's book and not at all like Orwell.
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Elgin Marbles Return Home?
British Members of Parliament have proposed a bill to return the Elgin Marbles (of Keats fame) to Greece.
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Witches of Walgreens
In the spirit of Alex Mar's Witches of America and Stacy Schiff's The Witches: Salem, 1692, here's a piece from Atlas Obscura on pinpointing the exact site of the Salem witch trials. Spoiler alert: it overlooks a Walgreens parking lot.
Book Pirates
The American author is dead, long live the American author! At the New York Times, a eulogy.
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Atwood and Yeats Together
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From “The Lost Memoirs of Senator Kefuaver F. Tutwiller, IV (1823-1913):
“In 1850’s, Flash Trading on my Aroostook Potato Exchange actually included a Most Swiftish Horse named Flash…. Riding Flash at incredible Speed, I sniffed out new stores of Potatoes faster than you could say “Jiminy!!” Alas, Just as with Icarus, My Heady Ride soon came to a Most Ignominious End.” (Below)
https://twitter.com/MamurphyMaureen/status/451119924815998978
Moe Murph (Faithful Biographer to Sen. Kefuaver F. Tutwiller, IV)
@maMurphyMaureen (Twitter)