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peterbirksI've always felt it to be slightly sad that, when a CEO announces his departure from a company, its share price goes up. Although I have no concrete details on this, it does seem to me that the reaction to such announcements is more often positive than negative. When I own shares in said company (in this case, Office 2 Office, up 6.3% on news that CEO Ray Peck has moved on) then I am quite pleased.
I suspect that the more-frequent fillip to shares reflects an underlying belief amongst investors that change is good, provided the company has't been a rip-roaring performer. Office 2 Office has been a bit of a wimp this past year (unfairly, I think, so I have held on to the shares), but a change in CEO would normally, I would have thought, had a negative impact before any positive reverberations fed through. Perhaps the upward tick reflects the time scale under which investors operate.
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The publishing business mainly consists of publishing directors and promoters in bed with each other sucking each other's cocks, so it is of little surprise to me that Bluff Magazine nixed one of its poker writers for reporting "the truth" about Daniel Negreanu (whatever that might be -- that he isn't that good except against poor players, and thus on a par with most winning limit players, only able to skin the donkeys through ABC play?). What did surprise me was Dr Pauly's talk of "journalistic integrity".
Perhaps they do things differently in the US, but, well, puh-leaze. If you write for a publication that takes advertisements, then journalistic integrity has nothing to do with it. It's all about not upsetting the advertisers. I'm lucky. I produce a subscription publication that doesn't take ads, but even I have to be careful when it comes to writing about some of the companies who are significant clients of other publications in my company's portfolio. To this extent, the poker magazines' "big clients" are the poker sites, and the poker sites want to protect the reputations of their representatives, the name poker players. You aren't going to get an exposé of the sleaze in poker in a glossy that publishes adverts from casinos and poker site. If you want to write journalistic integrity, write a book.
Once you stop "just writing a blog" and become a paid writer for a poker glossy, you become a hack, and you write what your employers want to read, not "the truth" (whatever that might be).
I suffer no crisis of conscience about this. I'm a grown-up. I know how it works. What puzzles me is that there appear to be writers in the poker world who aren't aware of this simple state of affairs. Pauly has been around long enough to know what's what. But perhaps he's just too much of a free spirit to accept it.
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A good example of "being in bed with promoters" is always the entertainments page. Look at yesterday's "Metro" in London. "Was Sienna not faking it?" runs the headline, which leads a story that is little more than a puff piece for Factory Girl . Can the writer really believe this, that Hayden Christiansen were really "at it" when a love scene was filmed? Do these people know nothing of the ways of slimeball promoters? And, more importantly, are they not aware that precisely the same promotional trick has been used many times to increase attendance at a movie not killing the box office (the remake of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" rings a bell here)?
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I defrosted and cleaned the freezer last night/today. I feel very self-righteous. Now I just have to eat up the food transferred from freezer to fridge and m,ake up one of the largest vegetable curries in history from the now unfrozen peas, beans and, quite possibly, chips.
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I suspect that the more-frequent fillip to shares reflects an underlying belief amongst investors that change is good, provided the company has't been a rip-roaring performer. Office 2 Office has been a bit of a wimp this past year (unfairly, I think, so I have held on to the shares), but a change in CEO would normally, I would have thought, had a negative impact before any positive reverberations fed through. Perhaps the upward tick reflects the time scale under which investors operate.
+++++++++++
The publishing business mainly consists of publishing directors and promoters in bed with each other sucking each other's cocks, so it is of little surprise to me that Bluff Magazine nixed one of its poker writers for reporting "the truth" about Daniel Negreanu (whatever that might be -- that he isn't that good except against poor players, and thus on a par with most winning limit players, only able to skin the donkeys through ABC play?). What did surprise me was Dr Pauly's talk of "journalistic integrity".
Perhaps they do things differently in the US, but, well, puh-leaze. If you write for a publication that takes advertisements, then journalistic integrity has nothing to do with it. It's all about not upsetting the advertisers. I'm lucky. I produce a subscription publication that doesn't take ads, but even I have to be careful when it comes to writing about some of the companies who are significant clients of other publications in my company's portfolio. To this extent, the poker magazines' "big clients" are the poker sites, and the poker sites want to protect the reputations of their representatives, the name poker players. You aren't going to get an exposé of the sleaze in poker in a glossy that publishes adverts from casinos and poker site. If you want to write journalistic integrity, write a book.
Once you stop "just writing a blog" and become a paid writer for a poker glossy, you become a hack, and you write what your employers want to read, not "the truth" (whatever that might be).
I suffer no crisis of conscience about this. I'm a grown-up. I know how it works. What puzzles me is that there appear to be writers in the poker world who aren't aware of this simple state of affairs. Pauly has been around long enough to know what's what. But perhaps he's just too much of a free spirit to accept it.
++++++++
A good example of "being in bed with promoters" is always the entertainments page. Look at yesterday's "Metro" in London. "Was Sienna not faking it?" runs the headline, which leads a story that is little more than a puff piece for Factory Girl . Can the writer really believe this, that Hayden Christiansen were really "at it" when a love scene was filmed? Do these people know nothing of the ways of slimeball promoters? And, more importantly, are they not aware that precisely the same promotional trick has been used many times to increase attendance at a movie not killing the box office (the remake of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" rings a bell here)?
+++++++++
I defrosted and cleaned the freezer last night/today. I feel very self-righteous. Now I just have to eat up the food transferred from freezer to fridge and m,ake up one of the largest vegetable curries in history from the now unfrozen peas, beans and, quite possibly, chips.
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 09:39 pm (UTC)If it was meant as "a joke", but was taken the wrong way, then it would normally be okay for the writer to simply clarify the matter ASAP.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 09:46 pm (UTC)As to your main point, yes, couldn't agree more.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 09:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 10:16 pm (UTC)PJ
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 11:02 pm (UTC)dd
no subject
Date: 2007-02-03 11:43 am (UTC)PJ
no subject
Date: 2007-02-04 02:00 pm (UTC)http://jasonkirk.net/blog/?p=67
and
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=114028923&blogID=225285773&MyToken=08aab67f-b2e4-459a-9e26-2b62ee5a1930
which doesn't say too much....
no subject
Date: 2007-02-04 02:09 pm (UTC)The Bluff "swipe" was nothing to do with the Jason Kirk suspension, apart from the fact that thhey were somewhat contemporaneous and that both involved Bluff Magazine.
Indeed I suspect that Pauly went into print because he was concerned that some people might think Jason had been suspended for being the "swiper", whereas in fact the suspension was down to the Negreanu comments.
PJ
Top O'The Page
Date: 2007-02-04 05:55 pm (UTC)When I find myself doing so on paragraphs detailing the third-best way to have oral sex with budgerigars, I'll have a short rethink.
However, I think you're spot-on with this bizarre tendency for a share to rise (usually between 5 and 10%, in my entirely anecdotal recollection) when The Man is chucked out. On one level, it makes no sense. Basically, you're swapping a certainty for a non-certainty. OK, the certainty might be a bit on the duff side, but there's generally no good reason to expect that the non-certainty is going to be an improvement. Certainly not on a 10% margin within two or three days.
I suspect it's got a lot to do with psychological reasons; specifically, the alpha-male (and, dare I say it, retarded public schoolboy) attitude in boardrooms.
Logically, this should make for a foolproof formula for making money. Buy shares in companies that are about to change CEOs or chairmen (I suppose that makes BP a bit juicy); wait for the changeover; sell the stock immediately. Don't muck around with takeover candidates, because then you're up against the big boys (private equity and the like), and they've got much, much deeper pockets than you have. And -- here's the kicker -- short the fuckers within the next two weeks or so. There's no possible way that replacing one muppet with another muppet can make that much of a lasting difference.
On the other hand, perhaps I should just stick to my day job, shining suede shoes at Penn Central.
Veg curries
Date: 2007-02-06 12:32 am (UTC)Peas, obviously, work as a side-dish. Needs the standard three spices in the standard order; definitely some ghee (vegetarian if you have to); red onions or else shallots. Add any variety of mushroom, spinach etc to taste. I find that grilled feta cheese cubes help ... which means tomato paste/reduced tomato sauce. Damn. Forgot that. Probably need cayenne pepper for that. In which case, it might be worth adding two or three cloves to the onion mix, together with a half-stick of decent cinnamon. Given that, I would recommend making the tomato sauce separately, from fresh tomatoes, and sieving it; then adding a generous couple of teaspoons full of honey, and some freshly-ground pondicherry pepper. Maybe the vietnamese stuff works as well; I dunno.
Add chopped chives for the finished dish. Not coriander. I've tried that a hundred times, and it's entirely pointless. Coriander roots do, however, make a big difference to a Thai curry.
Beans? Well, what were they doing in the freezer in the first place? Stick 'em in a big pot with chopped onions, minced beef/lamb, and bog-standard curry powder, and you'd be amazed at how good the results are.
'Course, this is all crap, but I'm assuming the stuff has all gone off by now and is about to be transported by the Micra to the tip. I should be safe, then.
Which is more than you'll be if you actually listen to the stuff above.