in economics and finance , a taleb distribution is the statistical profile of an investment which normally provides a payoff of small positive returns , while carrying a small but significant risk of catastrophic losses .

the term was coined by journalist martin wolf and economist john kay to describe investments with a " high probability of a modest gain and a low probability of huge losses in any period . "

the concept is named after nassim nicholas taleb , based on ideas outlined in his fooled by randomness .

according to taleb in silent risk , the term should be called " payoff " to reflect the importance of the payoff function of the underlying probability distribution , rather than the distribution itself .

the term is meant to refer to an investment returns profile in which there is a high probability of a small gain , and a small probability of a very large loss , which more than outweighs the gains .

in these situations the expected value is very much less than zero , but this fact is camouflaged by the appearance of low risk and steady returns .

it is a combination of kurtosis risk and skewness risk : overall returns are dominated by extreme events ( kurtosis ) , which are to the downside ( skew ) .

more detailed and formal discussion of the bets on small probability events is in the academic essay by taleb , called " why did the crisis of 2008 happen ? " and in the 2004 paper in the journal of behavioral finance called " why do we prefer asymmetric payoffs ? " in which he writes " agents risking other people ’s capital would have the incentive to camouflage the properties by showing a steady income .

intuitively , hedge funds are paid on an annual basis while disasters happen every four or five years , for example .

the fund manager does not repay his incentive fee . "

taleb distribution

the practice of bad driving has what i call a taleb distribution , after one of the themes in nassim nicholas taleb’s brilliant fooled by randomness . a taleb distribution has the property that many small profits are mixed with occasional large losses . overtaking on the inside is an activity with a taleb distribution .
the comments on page 231 on the gaussian distribution remind me of this story where even galton got confused about the tails of the distribution as applied to human height .
that rule only applies to normal distribution . so you would have made an assumption .
we can identify two huge problems to be solved . first , many investment strategies have the characteristics of a “taleb distribution” , after nicholas taleb , author of fooled by randomness . at its simplest , a taleb distribution has a high probability of a modest gain and a low probability of huge losses in any period .
>
the realization that the normal distribution is not the only way to model data
.
the positive square root of the second central moment of the density distribution function will keep being that .
benoit mandelbrot argued that financial markets follow a distribution much more similar to the cauchy distribution ( specifically the levy distribution ) rather than a gaussian . the problem of course is that the cauchy distribution is pathological in that it doesn ' t have a mean or variance , you can calculate similar properties for it ( location and scale ) , but it doesn ' t obey the central limit theorem so in practice it can be very strange to work with .
statistical economists or analysts always said that the normal distribution is a simplification and that this simplification has its own problems .
realization by who ? if you understand the normal distribution you had damn well better know that there are other probability distributions .
however , a single individual can be richer than the poorest 2 billion humans . so wealth follows a scale independent distribution .
the issue was not just that these distributions displayed taleb characteristics : these market activities were devised with taleb characteristics in mind .
i have several times in this column described the taleb distribution of regular small profits interspersed by large losses . taleb distributions are the basis of the carry trade – which exploits interest rate differentials – and many types of statistical arbitrage . taleb distributions are exploited by traders in hedge funds and at proprietary trading desks .
there are other , less abstruse examples . drinking more than is good for us has a taleb distribution . so does smoking – after all , most smokers do not get lung cancer .
holy grail distribution is a missing piece in almost every investment portfolio seeking protection from tail risk events combined with positive average returns .
exactly . i ' m astounded that this basic fact - that financial modelers have been using the wrong distribution for decades is not being denounced . for example , the capital asset pricing model ( capm ) which assumes that returns fall on a normal distribution .
of what you wrote , but i think you should reread your reply to taleb with as much scrutiny as you read taleb .
there are business lessons to be drawn from the bad habits of french drivers . we need to beware of activities whose outcomes have a taleb distribution – many small gains punctuated by occasional large losses .
realization by who ? if you understand the normal distribution you had damn well better know that there are other probability distributions .
kay goes on to add that governments yesterday as well as today appear to creating responses that are once again premised on the tailgating distribution .
people rarely check how closely their data conform to the standard distribution ; indeed , many people blindly apply the standard deviation to their data regardless of its distribution ! the resulting number is often more obfuscatory than helpful , to the extent that it crowded out more useful summaries .
in other words , we ' re using the normal distribution as the workhorse because considering other distributions is , well , inefficient / unproductive .
the name holy grail distribution captures both the difficulty of finding a strategy with these characteristics and the unique value it provides to an asset allocator .
the truth is that most times we don’t know the probability distribution at all . because the world is not a predictable casino game — an error nassim taleb calls the ludic fallacy — the best we can do is guess .
taleb has a good point about people mistakenly interpreting standard deviation ( sigma ) as mean absolute deviation ( mad ) . i like that he gives some conversions ( sigma ~ = 1 . 25 * mad , for normal distribution ) .
it is hard to deliver returns with holy grail distribution using only replication and generally available asset classes ; such returns have to be
engineered
. at the same time , allocation to investment instruments and strategies with holy grail distribution of returns may provide clear benefits of diversification and protection from periodic market - performance shocks .
well , frequentist methods are taking the blame for the most recent financial crisis , such as assuming a normal distribution when the empirical one is fat - tailed .
perhaps the bayesian methods will take the blame in the next financial crisis . such as the error in estimating a non - stationary distribution and quantifying the uncertainty .
[ … ] out scott locklin’s brutal takedown of our favorite blowhard , nassim taleb . the only part i disagree with it where locklin calls taleb [ … ]
i didn’t read taleb carefully enough to know whether he was targeting only quants .
compute - intensive statistical tests , which are data - driven and make fewer assumptions about the underlying distribution , can give tighter confidence intervals and detect statistical significance better .
can we escape the taleb problem ? understanding risk is the prelude to managing it . we know instinctively that the tailgating driver is not really smart – and nor is the high - yield bond trader . taleb exploits his distribution by looking for its opposite : trading strategies in securities markets that offer frequent small losses and occasional large gains .
however described , it is the same thing : a distribution of returns that produces frequent small profits punctuated by occasional very large losses . a high proportion of trading – and business – strategies in financial markets have this tailgating characteristic . i call it the taleb distribution , after the author of fooled by randomness ( an earlier , and better , book than the more widely read black swan ) , which gives numerous instances .
taleb ' s favorite topic is the
black swan event
which is something that the normal distribution , and the idea of standard deviation , don ' t model that well . in a normal distribution very extreme events should only happen once in the lifetime of several universes . of course assuming variation inline with a gaussian process is at the heart of how the black - sholes model calculates risk / volatility / etc .
i sometimes think that progress in the 21st century will be summed up as :
the realization that the normal distribution is not the only way to model data
.
a distribution built from mad will more closely resemble the reality of the s & p returns , and will create more robust models . there are many examples of this .
additionally , i will mention that we do not need normal distributions to make special the idea of standard deviations . in fact , it is the geometry of probability - the fact that independent random variables have standard deviations which
point
in orthogonal directions - which causes the normal distribution to be the resulting distribution of the central limit theorem .
gee , d’ya think so bub ? maybe i should go have some acupuncture done to harmonize my narcissism . taleb as schindler ? how about taleb as jesus sufferin’ christ ?
very nice ! i did have his books on my reading list . but this whole discussion definitely puts me closer to the
waste of my time
side of the distribution .
i never heard about taleb distributiom , is my first time sounds interesting . . . .
the fact you largely resort to attacking straw men rather than taleb’s actual arguments says everything .
i was initially very curious about your post . finding a substantive argument against taleb’s thinking is actually quite difficult to track down . imagine my disappointment when i discovered your post was mostly an ad hominem review of taleb the man rather than an measured analysis of taleb’s ideas .
ltcm had lots of small up months and a few large down months . this is not detected by the sharpe ratio as it assumes a symmetry in the distribution of returns . – nnt
what is more , his idea of black swans is not original , every experienced investor is aware that stock returns don’t follow a predictable distribution , that the end outcomes are extremely uncertain .
the pareto distribution , better known as the 80 / 20 rule , states that 80 % of the effects come from 20 % of the causes . for example , in most businesses 20 % of clients will generate 80 % of the income , 20 % of clients will generate the most customer service requests and so on . taleb argues that we’re moving to a 99 / 1 distribution , away from 80 / 20 . this shift has profound implications for our economy and society .
on page 240 , taleb writes that gauss , in using the normal distribution , “was a mathematician dealing with a theoretical point , not making claims about the structure of reality like statistical - minded scientists . ” i don’t have my stigler right here , but i’d always understood that gauss developed least squares and the normal distribution in the context of fitting curves to astronomical observations . sure he did lots of pure math , but he ( and laplace ) were doing empirical science too .
you have provided an interesting comment to taleb , but there are several things you are missing .
thank god somebody else out there sees that taleb is as mad as a bag of bats .
people ask why people get the heckles up about taleb , and it isn ' t actually about taleb at all . it ' s about the , for lack of a better phrase , taleb
fan boys
. bizarre that such a thing exists , but people like having their prophet .
taleb distributions are good when you have experienced only the upside . a taleb distribution led to the crises in the lloyd’s insurance market . excess - of - loss policies – t he lmx spiral – insured other syndicates against losses of unprecedented magnitude . the underwriters pointed out that they had taken in premiums for many years and paid nothing out . you do not have to be as smart as taleb to see the flaw but you do have to be a little smarter than the feltrim and gooda walker syndicates .
yet , taleb’s writing makes all those assumptions . if you can fill in the missing steps , then you will find that taleb provides a strong argument for why and how we got to this point .
thank you . i don ' t think it is intellectually honest for taleb to omit this fact .
> also he alludes to his paper with goldstein . it is clear form goldstein and taleb ' s manuscript that that taleb is not just throwing these arguments to talk trash about practitioners of statistics . they
many apparently successful traders and business people are still on the upside of their taleb distribution . they are accidents waiting to happen . it puzzled me for years that so many organisations believed they were making money out of proprietary trading in securities markets . these businesses were trading mostly with each other : since there is no perpetual motion , where did the money to fuel the system come from ? from taleb distributions .
what taleb failed to mention is that , once properly understood , standard deviation has distribution interpretations that can be much more useful than mad . for example , if the data is approximately normally distributed , then there is approximately a 99 . 99 % probability that the next data observation will be < = 4 * sigma .
taleb , the non - experts , expert non - expert . or something . too jokes , anyway .
this is actually what i expected to read :
the standard deviation is useful because with the average and the standard deviation , one can fully characterize a normal distribution . however , the standard deviation is less useful a statistical summary the farther away from ' normal ' you get , and in reality , there is no such thing as a normal distribution , as a true normal distribution is defined on the entire real number line from negative infinity to positive infinity . reality always provides some bound , and it ' s often quite distorted from guassian . for instance , a ' normal ' distribution averaging 2 with a standard deviation of 1 . 4 , bounded by 0 , is quite non - gaussian in many important ways ! ( not least of which is that you ' re going to have to do something to replace the missing probability . . . )
great article btw . i used to adore taleb’s fbr , but that was before i entered the world of finance and trading . taleb tends to repeat the obvious , and so tbs didn’t do too much for me .
his essential black - swan point is that extreme uncertainties cannot be parameterized by any distribution , that we fool ourselves when we translate “uncertainty” into “risk” as characterized by any distribution . it’s a good point , it’s as old as the hills , but it’s a good point…the rest of black - swan expounds on the biases that comform us in parameterizing risk ; e . g . , excel has cells for numbers , so the numbers must mean something
the normal distribution is fantastic in that it does appear frequently in nature , is very well behaved , and has been extensively studied . however a great amount of future progress is going to come from wrestling with more challenging distributions , and paying more attention to when assumptions of normality need to be questioned . of course one of the challenges of this is that the normal distribution is baked into a very large number of our existing statistical tools .
it’s an argument that’s well known , and pretty much irrelevant . as aaron brown put it , “ ( taleb’s book ) reads as if taleb has never heard of nonparametric methods , data analysis , visualization tools or robust estimation”
second , absolute nails sentiment that taleb engenders , i”ve read his books and i’ve listened to him , but he never seems to get beyond the obvious ( fat tails , gaussian distribution…yes…we know that…thanks… ) he didn’t convince me that he actually is a true quant with a meaningful , progressive self - critique . this makes sense of the posturing .
but please , keep buying china inc . more money for guys like taleb once the markets come crashing down again .
it would be nice to think taleb’s contribution to intellectual discourse is a net positive . i don’t agree , obviously .
to reiterate , there ' s nothing wrong with the normal distribution . we ' re not about to retire addition or subtraction just because there are
plenty of people who don ' t really realize
there ' s more to math .
could you sketch out why similar statements couldn ' t be made about mad ? my ( possibly flawed ) intuition is that the expected proportion of observations within n \ * mad should be similarly independent of the parameters of the normal distribution .
the standard deviation and assumptions of normality are so useful because of the central limit theorem . that is , if you have many iid variables which have finite standard deviation the sum will converge to a gaussian distribution as the number of variables increases .
if taleb’s arguments were obvious in the way you suggest , clearly there would not be a market for them . simple .
i understand from the papers that taleb is now in a big fight with merton . i agree with him on that .
for five years until 2004 spitznagel and taleb ran empirica , a hedge fund very similar to universa that in its short tenure generated low double - digit returns . after taleb became seriously ill the duo shut the fund . taleb has since given up money management to teach risk management at polytechnic institute of nyu in brooklyn , write books and advise foreign governments on his theories .
i disagree with your comparison of taleb to popper . popper would write things which occasionally made sense . feyeraband and taleb seem to be more of the “makin’ raspberries” school of disputation . throwing kuhn in there … at least kuhn eventually repented of his sins .
taleb’s antics are what he sells . nobody actually cares about his criticisms of specific models : it’s rare that he actually makes any . were taleb out there criticizing actual quant models , you know , by naming them , then stating in clear unequivocal terms where they don’t work and why , and maybe even points out a useful alternative , i would be a taleb fan . hell , in that event , i would be a taleb sahabah ; companion to the prophet . instead taleb goes on television and the ft and blurts out that “nobody knows nuthin . ” as such , the just argument against a stupid head is a clenched fist .
i also like how a lot of the people attacking taleb here , are making exactly the mistakes he describes in his books .
as of late on new year ' s day , i have still not heard from taleb via email . just too busy .
nassim taleb on the notion of alternative histories — “the quality of a decision cannot be solely judged based on its outcome . ”
if data is drawn from a laplace distribution of the form p ( x ) = exp ( - | x | ) , the mean absolute deviation is more informative than the standard deviation , but if its form is close to the normal , p ( x ) = exp ( - x ^ 2 ) , the standard deviation is more important . so whether to use the mean absolute or standard deviation depends on the distribution of the data . there is a field called robust statistics that looks at this question .
taleb’s books introduced me to seneca and stoicism and a whole area of a psychological biases that i hadn’t really spent much time considering or thinking about beforehand or reading . other books cover these areas better . for stoicism , actually reading seneca’s letters or marcus aurelius’s meditations is better than reading taleb’s version of it . for psychological biases , actually reading daniel kahneman is better than reading taleb . it sounds like in the areas where you agree with taleb with finance or math , you think a person would gain better understanding elsewhere .
the central limit theorem shows us that unimodal data with lots of independent sources of error tends towards a normal distribution . that description is a good first - pass , descriptive model for lots and lots of contexts , and standard deviation speaks well to normally distributed data .
i just have a simple question for taleb’s defenders . i’d love to know where he has offered more than the following two ideas :
aug . 16 — nassim nicholas taleb , adviser at universa investments , sat down for an interview with erik schatzker tuesday evening in new york . taleb , famous for his assessment of risk , says there are greater risks out there than nuclear war with north korea .
the holy grail distribution has a positive mean to justify the instrument ' s permanent role in the asset allocation framework . its positive fat tail , which is
co - located
with the left tail of other instruments , adds protection to investment portfolios during tail risk events .
odd enough . i think he’s smeared buffet and charlie munger as “lucky” before , though i may be confusing taleb with burton malkiel here .
this article is based on paper taleb published in 2007 . if you want to test yourself , submit yourself to experiment in page 3 :
key point number one in this memo is that the future should be viewed not as a fixed outcome that’s destined to happen and capable of being predicted , but as a range of possibilities and , hopefully on the basis of insight into their respective likelihoods , as a probability distribution .
i don’t have a problem with your comments about taleb , because he’s never interested me enough to pay attention to what he has to say .
taleb the philosopher observes that when it comes to the preservation and perpetuation of life , negative advice is more useful – the thou shalt nots .
your post was in reply to someone asking about taleb ' s black swans so i assumed you were talking about 2008 in reference to that .
nassim nicholas taleb , fooled by randomness : the hidden role of chance in the markets and in life , new york : texere , 2001 .
this is hardly a matter of trust , anton . scott has pointed you in the direction of the relevant academic literature as regards taleb’s revival of the long - shot lure . and if you want to know what an expert in extreme value theory thinks of taleb , you can read this :
of course taleb would not offer a useful alternative . he says repeatedly that there is no useful alternative . throw them all away ! ! ! !
i just came across this taleb interview made in february 2008 , about taleb’s view on simons . taleb says verbatim answering the 4th question ( about buffet ) : . . the only two people i think who are not lucky ; there is soros and then there is the other gentleman from renaissance . simons , he is not lucky . he is beyond . there is no exposure to uncertainty on his models . ” the video is here : urltoken
that ' s not interesting ? i think the difference between theory and practice is intensely interesting , and taleb has a lot to say about it .
no . it is the ideology of dissing taleb . obviously i am not his paid spokesperson . but please argue to the merit of his arguments .
more interesting will be how the fda takes into account the arguments that taleb and co put forward . expect fireworks in the coming weeks and months .
many economists and , by direct extension , financiers thought they had quantified all forms of risk . by quantifying all forms of risk , you can compute the first derivative . taleb and scores of others argued that all risk cannot be quantified . taleb made this argument long before the publication of black swan .
ahhh taleb… you got to hand it to taleb , he has a huge head for heights , but has he really got those “street smarts” he so oft speaks of ? its quite obvious that the success of dynamic hedging had an funny ( ha ) effect on him . barking mad ? definately maybe .
what about bank’s debt converted into equity ? ? ! ! ! this was after all the quantitative easing , only taleb transferred the concept to individual consumers .
maybe taleb is in fact the genius he sets out to prove himself to be . after all , he did come up with a seemingly valid formula :
for the most part , taleb criticizes everything but he never offers any solutions . his observations when they make sense are trivial , like tails are fat .
[ … ] scott locklin on nassim nicholas taleb . akpc _ ids + =
126 ,
; popularity : unranked [ ? ] [ … ]
actually , taleb has explicitly stated that the 2008 financial crisis was not a black swan nor does he claim to be able to predict any of them .
it is sad that taleb does not see the value in the standard deviation ; standard deviation is far more natural , and more useful , than mad .
still , i think that non - parametric methods are much more valuable as a solution to dealing with non - normal data than what taleb is proposing .
> the problem of course is that the cauchy distribution is pathological in that it doesn ' t have a mean or variance , you can calculate similar properties for it ( location and scale ) , but it doesn ' t obey the central limit theorem so in practice it can be very strange to work with .
a key difference between these types of risks is the statistical structure of their impact . this structure is either dependent on scale or independent of scale . an example of a scale - dependent distribution is the weight of an adult human which is generally never greater than about 10 times the weight of an average human .
also he alludes to his paper with goldstein . it is clear form goldstein and taleb ' s manuscript that that taleb is not just throwing these arguments to talk trash about practitioners of statistics . they report findings of an experiment with multiple groups of applied statisticians . i ' ll quote from it [ 1 ] :
another solution to the problem of hedging tail risk events is to have a complementary strategy with a performance pattern that helps reduce the impact of market performance shocks . an instrument with a returns distribution featuring a positive mean and a fat , right ( positive ) tail that is realized just when traditional portfolios take a hit .
the black swan book ? really , it’s like taleb found a way to fill his publisher’s ink cartridges with crap before having the manuscript sent to the printers .
excellent ! another entertaining piece of fiction . much shorter than the first , but since i’m a complete unknown and taleb is well - known that’s only appropriate .
there is no snark in my post : i am outright calling taleb a false prophet who is guilty of exactly the things he criticizes in fooled by randomness .
by the way , i studied some stock rates to see taleb ' s arguments , a thing i normally wouldn ' t do . see my blog above .
tagged with black swans , delta hedging , implied volatility , nassim taleb , nickels in front of a steamroller , options , vix , volatility , volatility arbitrage .
i don’t think the essential criticism is that taleb is hysterical . ( his hysteria may be a marketing tactic ) . i read the argument as : taleb affirms quantitative nihilism . ( i am not myself sure , i just read that as the argument . like i said , i am here for the writing clinic… ) .
and you are basing that statement on… . hahahaah ! please enlight us on your specific sources of how you know that and why taleb is lying about his profession .
i am yet to see anybody who thinks that standard deviation is mean deviation . it ' s taleb though . baseless assertions insulting groups of people are his craft .
gladwell plays into the comparison about as much as the editors of cosmopolitan would play into it if niederhoffer and taleb had shared the cover of an issue of cosmo .
[ … ] nassim taleb : clown of quantitative finance « locklin on science – as such , taleb is merely setting himself up as some sort of heretical alpha monkey of the quants for stating the obvious , the misleading , and occasionally the gratuitously wrong - headed and untrue . – lol heretical alpha monkey of the quants [ … ]
i hold bush responsible for all of this…taleb’s book is entertaining . where is the book from india that talked about reddy adn his ideas . that’s the book we needed .
< plus , it’s not like jim simons has time to write financial times < articles . he’s too busy making money more or less proving people like < taleb wrong .
taleb did not claim the banking crash to be a black swan ( unpredictable ) . it was completely predictable and he has said as much . you probably overlooked that .
i’m having a tough time deciding which is right on this , you or taleb . could you please tell me your net worth so i can compare it to his ?
i will say though , taleb reader ' s are surely great words with friends or scrabble players . you just can ' t help picking up a few new words .
i am wondering if you have a lot invested in concepts and techniques that mr taleb is suggesting are broken . there is certainly a tone of defensiveness about your post .
rely on predictions of events that are unpredictable - so faulting him for predicting or not predicting this and that means one does not really understands what taleb is talking about .
he is saying it ' s not useful for real world things and people are just confused . what you wrote is reasonable view . what taleb writes isn ' t .
the true hero is not taleb , but reddy , the master of india’s banks , who kept sanity during an insane time . india and china are doing fine , thanks very much , due to their restraint and maturity . taleb’s point is simply to identify the flaw in quant models that kept regulation from doing its job in the last decade .
i think that taleb is extremely interesting . well , maybe not taleb himself , but the phenomenon of taleb . post the crisis , he’s such a great example of everything he criticised pre the crisis , one wonders whether anyone in the audience at his popular lectures ever reflects on this contradiction . rare events : before the fact , hard to predict ; after the fact , easy to explain . but how ingenious to be able to sell this insight whilst simultaneously declaring that one predicted a rare event , and explaining how ?
good to see an fairly anti - taleb post picking actual holes in what he says – as someone who is definitely pro - taleb ( his books have changed my outlook on various aspects of life ) i have often tried to find holes in his logic and never have been able to – i am not convinced this post changes that but definitely got me thinking and one of the few anti - taleb posts ( well at least not fawningly positive ) that doesnt really resort to playing the man instead of the ideas .
yes , and capm is based on the gaussian also , as is most everything in first year quantitative finance . that doesn’t make these models useless any more than other statistical models based on gaussians when we know the process ain’t normal . hell , the entire concept of “statistical distribution” itself is kind of a lie : everyone knows financial processes are markov .
the most popular pop - writer in quantitative finance at present is nassim taleb . his latest screed in the financial times is what spurred me to write this post . the article wasn’t entirely written by taleb - though i guess the other guy is his fund partner , so it is no surprise that it suffers from all the mush headed absurdity of taleb’s other articles and books . i won’t pick on the other guy ; or even mention his name : he’s got a job to do , and he has the good manners to not make himself a public figure . taleb , on the other hand , is sort of the paul feyerabend of quantitative finance . like feyerabend , he is well read , a good writer and quite charming . like feyerabend , taleb seems to earn his daily bread by showing up and being kind of witty . finally , both feyerabend and taleb are very much against method . this means , effectively , they’re both intellectual nihilists . feyerabend thought we couldn’t know anything for various reasons too silly to get into right now . taleb thinks all of quantitative finance is nonsense and we should do away with quants . i am guessing the former’s delusions had something to do with drinking the same berkeley tapwater in the 1960s which made everyone else believe in crazy things , but taleb was a trader , and it’s a common prejudice of traders to dislike quants for cutting into their p / l .
if you want to make that argument , then you need to look at popper . indeed , taleb’s writing and logic are much closer to popper than any of the relativists .
the problem that taleb is generally referring to in financial models ( and those are the published models , not proprietary models ) is that they use statistical concepts founded from physics .
i don ' t agree with your ' vile idiot ' statement but i mostly concur with your thoughts . i hope that you don ' t let taleb affect your senescence .
the appeal of any popular mountebank is best summed up by p . t . barnum : there is one born every minute . had taleb been an honest writer , he might have educated his readers on the concept of “sample bias . ” but if taleb were an honest writer , nobody would read his stuff . smugness is a lot cheaper than understanding .
i guess i share taleb ' s problems with models . even before i read taleb i would say to myself
the map is not the territory
, particularly with regard to software abstractions . i think the space between the model and reality is where you find a lot of interesting things ( including the ability to make a lot of money ) .
second , in regard to conglac2009’s ( michael’s ) comment , taleb shouldn’t be requiring , or expecting , ft readers to read his prior books before reading an op - ed piece .
here ' s taleb on mandelbrot :
[ he ] had perhaps more cumulative influence than any other single scientist in history , with the only close second , isaac newton .
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over the past few months i’ve been forming a thesis about where the world is heading . much of my thinking comes from seven important books . two of the most important authors who have influenced my thinking are nassim nicholas taleb and jaron lanier . many of the ideas that follow are theirs . and when taleb’s and lanier’s ideas intersect , you get very interesting hypotheses .
“taleb thinks all of quantitative finance is nonsense and we should do away with quants . i am guessing the former’s delusions had something to do with drinking the same berkeley tapwater in the 1960s which made everyone else believe in crazy things , but taleb was a trader , and it’s a common prejudice of traders to dislike quants for cutting into their p / l . ”
yeah , i could make up a whole story “filling in the blanks” about how taleb actually is the clever monkey he says he is . or i could make up a whole story “filling in the blanks” of how we’re not in an economic crisis . or i could just concentrate on what taleb actually said in both his books , essays and his wacky financial times article .
“non - normality is why i’ve made myself a minor expert in kernel regression . if i had listened to taleb , i’d have thrown up my hands and gone back to physics . ”
“there are far more successful and long lived funds , as i have already pointed out which trade the inverse of the taleb “swan strategy” at very high sharpe ratios . ” – scott locklin
scott locklin can be peer reviewed right here on the internet , sparky . i don’t get paid to make fun of taleb for a living : though it sounds like a fun job .
i really tried to get through
the black swan
and taleb ' s writing struck me as so pretentious and self - involved that it made it impossible for me to finish .
i actually love taleb ' s books ( black swan , antifragile ) . and i work with
data scientists
, most with ph . d . s , many in statistics .
you ' re late ! taleb began publishing his arguments years ago and continues to publish . you ' re way behind . read his papers and read his books in the following order :
i was a senior quant at renaissance ( simons ' outfit ) working on options among other things . what ' s annoying about taleb is the overtones that every one else in the business is a moron . does he really think that simons believes market moves are normally distributed ? indeed i wrote a paper internal to renaissance on the distribution of tail area moves . taleb seems to think that these can ' t be modeled , but i have never understood his reasons for thinking that . there is a whole area of statistics (
extreme value theory
) which seemed to me to apply well to financial data . our data in renaissance yielded quite good models , which i ' ve no reason to think have broken down with the market crash .
« the world has lost trillions » the world has made and then lost trillions of paper gains and then losses . « through the hands of risk managers and courtesy their models based on gaussian distribution and other quantitative techniques . » courtesy of their using whatever mathematical technique looked likely to underestimate risks and lead to higher papers profits and cash bonuses by requiring less than prudential reserves .
once we ' ve considered that little exercise above , we can almost deduce what taleb distribution is . it describes a situation that has very steady , consistent gains but has a hugely skewed risk / reward profile . so we can transfer this idea to trading forex , for the purpose of any calculations we will assume that the round trip cost of trading eurusd equates to 1 pip after commissions - of course this will vary with market liquidity . this strategy is commonly employed by major hedge funds and is commonly referred to as
picking pennies up ahead of a steamroller
nassim taleb criticized pinker’s arguments a few years ago , arguing that pinker didn’t take proper account of the statistical nature of war as a historical phenomenon , specifically as a time series of events characterized by fat tails . such processes naturally have long periods of quiescence , which get ripped apart by tumultuous upheavals , and they lure the mind into mistaken interpretations . pinker responded , clarifying his view , and the quotes above come from that response . pinker acknowledged the logical possibility of taleb’s view , but suggested that taleb had “no evidence that is true , or even plausible . ”
it ' s a useful metric when treated carefully , but it is rare to encounter it treated carefully . science courses would be well - served to stop teaching it in favor of a stronger emphasis on multiple distributions . ( multiple distributions are usually touched upon , but implicitly our curricula overfavor the gaussian distribution and end up accidentally implicitly convincing students its the only one . )
this has nothing to do with taleb and everything to do with genuine intellectual inquiry . if academics were thinkers rather than followers , it would be possible to prevent the gross abuse of paradigms .
author of ' the black swan ' and ' fooled by randomness ' former trader nassim nicholas taleb illustrates the concept of the ' barbell strategy ' - a risk hedging strategy robust to losses .
assume these experiences were drawn from the bell - shaped normal distribution on which such claims are generally based . if i were to write down as a percentage the probability that goldman sachs would encounter three 25 standard deviation events followed by a 20 standard deviation event , the next 15 lines of this column would be occupied by zeros . such things simply do not occur . so what did ?
people have a natural bias to look at returns and not to look at possible losses ,
says taleb .
if you reduce big losses , your overall returns will be higher .
however , taleb is not a relativist nor is he logical positivist , which is what most economics faculty are . he is a falsificationist . in my limited experience , most research methodologists are falsificationists .
i also agree with taleb that ducks are occasionally black and that water is generall wet . that doesn’t make the rest of what he says less idiotic . go back and read what i wrote .
[ … ] had thought that truly great polemic was dead and gone . i was wrong . it’s directed at nassim taleb , the black swan guy and here’s a sample : mountebanks [ … ]
like taleb , you remain unable to name one of them models , or suggest a useful alternative . stating that “models sometimes don’t work” is as useful as “sometimes boats sink . ” stating where they don’t work , why , and how to fix them is useful . taleb is not useful , relevant or even much of anything beyond a third rate charlatan who impresses the rubes with big words .
a central challenge of strategy is that we have to make choices now , but the payoffs occur in a future environment we cannot fully know or control . a critical step in embracing uncertainty is to try to characterize exactly what variety of it you face—a surprisingly rare activity at many companies . our work over the years has emphasized four levels of uncertainty . level one offers a reasonably clear view of the future : a range of outcomes tight enough to support a firm decision . at level two , there are a number of identifiable outcomes for which a company should prepare . at level three , the possible outcomes are represented not by a set of points but by a range that can be understood as a probability distribution . level four features total ambiguity , where even the distribution of outcomes is unknown .
on sept . 10 , 2009 former trader and bestselling author nassim taleb did something that he very seldom does : he wore a tie . taleb has oftentimes publicly expressed his distaste for the blood - constraining artifacts , as well as for those who tend to don them , so the lebanese - american let the world know that was a very special day for him by betraying a sacred personal disposition .
[ … ] 21 , 2009 scott locklin dismisses taleb in a recent post . i won’t get into the quant debate , as i’m not qualified to judge , but i will pick up [ … ]
while i am not a taleb fan ( he had his own black swan and became exactly the reviled expert his own books warn us about ) , your hostility in this case seems out of place .
description : author of ' the black swan ' and ' fooled by randomness ' former trader nassim nicholas taleb illustrates the concept of the ' barbell strategy ' - a risk hedging strategy robust to losses .
if you are scratching your head in utter confusion , do not worry . i will continue to delve into this topic with examples and pictures so that we can all grasp the basics . the general idea for the strategy is that options inherently trade at an implied volatility that is higher than realized volatility on average . some academics ( nassim taleb ) believe that options trade at a higher implied volatility because black - scholes assumes a normal , bell shaped , distribution in stock returns . we can all agree that stock returns are anything but normal after going through the extreme volatility of 2008 . in fact , during the 4th quarter of 2008 the s & p 500 had moves in excess of + / - 5 % during 25 % of the trading days . if we assume that the s & p 500 has a long - term standard deviation of 20 % on average , then a 5 % daily move is in excess of 4 standard deviations . in a nutshell , equity markets are fat - tailed , meaning that observations that are far away from the mean happen much more frequently than a normal distribution can account for . nassim taleb would argue that these “black swan” events more than wipe out the small profits from selling options .
another problematic example comes from taleb’s disdain for mathematics in economics . he has misstated his case . a minority of economics , finance , and marketing faculty believe that economics has become nothing more than calculus . taleb’s disdain comes from falsificationists’ philosophy . there are two types of theories : theories that have been disproved ( e . g . , newtonian physics ) and theories that cannot be disproved given current research methods .
funny , i’m pretty sure the sharpe ratio does pretty well at noticing that taleb’s fund is a massive pile of suck . feel free to pick any other performance metric : yearly returns , cumulative returns , sortino ratio , bias ratio ; doesn’t matter : his fund still amounts to “capital assets destruction model . ” wheras betting against taleb’s dumb strat is a good business , and tail risks can apparently be managed .
> taleb doesn ' t point one situation when mad works better than sd ( i pointed out some where sd works better than mad ) he also doesn ' t address obvious problems which such substitutions create .
you state that
standard deviation tells you how volatile measurements are
. but taleb shows how financial markets are non - gaussian and have
fat tails
and gives the data and the supporting arguments .
though , i do not fully agree to the second part of your analysis as i think you miss taleb’s point . – a black swan event is by definition unexpected . the best we can do is hedge against those events . when taleb says one shall be long on options , it is only a matter of the capped loss they provide ( even if the payoff may be lower than selling options ) . you may make less money than in shorting implied volatility , but you are hedged against a potential black swan . you’re saying taleb being wrong does not make sense at that particular point , as you’re target is different .
for nearly more than 50 years , going back to lewis fry richardson , it’s been known that the cumulative distribution of wars by size follows a rough power law , the number of events larger than size s being proportional to 1 / s raised to an exponent α . this is also an approximation , of course , because there is an absolute maximum possible size for a conflict — it can’t be more than then entire population . hence , the power law form can only hold over a certain range . to take this into account , cirillo and taleb also rescale the data to take into account the finite size of the human population .


earth and ashes ( persian : خاکستر و خاک ) is a 2004 afghan film directed by atiq rahimi .

it was afghanistan 's submission to the 77th academy awards for the academy award for best foreign language film , but was not accepted as a nominee .

it was also screened in the un certain regard section at the 2004 cannes film festival .

it won the golden dhow award at the 2005 zanzibar international film festival .

earth and ashes

earth and ashes by atiq rahimi 68pp , chatto & windus , £9 . 99
earth and ashes and over 2 million other books are available for amazon kindle . learn more
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scattering by air – a very symbolic gesture of freedom and release , scattering ashes into the air is a versatile method used to disperse remains on private and public lands . after the scattering , the ashes can be ceremonially raked into the ground or left alone for the earth to claim .
' ashes to ashes ' derives from the english burial service . the text of that service is adapted from the biblical text , genesis 3 : 19 ( king james version ) :
and the angel took the censer , and filled it with fire of the altar , and cast it into the earth : and there were voices , and thunder , and lightning , and an earthquake .
and the angel took the censer , and filled it with fire of the altar , and cast it into the earth : and there were voices , and thunderings , and lightnings , and an earthquake .
a novella written by afghan author atiq rahimi , earth and ashes paints an accurate picture of afghanistan during the soviet invasion . dust , tears , heartbreak - - earth and ashes focuses on a grandfather and his grandson , both of whom are visiting the grandfather ' s son ( the grandson ' s dad ) to inform him of horrific news that threatens to rip their family apart . a compelling read .
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the prayers have gone up , and the sprinkling of the ashes earthward is the symbol of the answer descending from heaven . we may recall the similar action of moses before pharaoh , when he took ashes of the furnace and sprinkled it towards heaven , but it descended towards earth , as a symbol of the plague about to fall upon the land (
the daughter of a prominent university professor has chosen to join her late father as he orbits earth .
) . the hot ashes are the tokens of the coming judgments . as in the parallel vision in ezekiel (
and there took place thunders , and voices , and lightnings , and an earthquake .
revelation 8 : 5 commentaries : then the angel took the censer and filled it with the fire of the altar , and threw it to the earth ; and there followed peals of thunder and sounds and flashes of lightning and an earthquake .
we don’t contribute to light pollution nor add to the ever - growing number of objects accumulating in earth orbit .
the term has been used frequently in literature and song lyrics . ashes to ashes is the title of a 2009 bbc television series . it was also used as a song title by david bowie in 1980 , which included one of his best - known lyrics :
scattering by trench – after a shallow trench or grove is dug into the soil , the ashes are ceremonially poured in and then covered with soil . the trench can simply be a hole , or shaped into a symbol or to spell out a word . some people scatter ashes using the trench technique on a beach and time it so the tide comes , breaks down the uncovered trench , and washes the ashes out to sea .
forasmuch as it hath pleased almighty god of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed , we therefore commit his body to the ground ; earth to earth , ashes to ashes , dust to dust ; in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life , through our lord jesus christ ; who shall change our vile body , that it may be like unto his glorious body , according to the mighty working , whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself .
5 . cast it into the earth—that is , unto the earth : the hot coals off the altar cast on the earth , symbolize god ' s fiery judgments about to descend on the church ' s foes in answer to the saints ' incense - perfumed prayers which have just ascended before god , and those of the martyrs . how marvellous the power of the saints ' prayers !
grief journey – cremation ashes don’t have to be scattered all in one place . if you divide the remains into several small containers you can scatter the ashes wherever you see fit . plan a vacation to visit places of significance , or make a spiritual pilgrimage . another option is to keep the ashes in an urn and remove a tablespoon or two for scattering whenever you travel or move to a new place .
scattering by burial – similar to the trench method but more akin to a traditional cremation burial , except the ashes are buried in a location other than a cemetery . the ashes can simply be poured into the hole or placed in a biodegradable urn for burial .
aerospace engineer , test pilot , united states air force pilot , and as one of the seven original astronauts in project mercury orbited the earth aboard faith 7 .
cremation ashes may be scattered personally or through a service depending on the method of dispersal . if you choose to perform your own ash scattering , it is best to have one person at a time control the release from the container while the others observe . a group may take turns doing a partial scattering one at a time , or they might release the ashes simultaneously from smaller containers each containing a portion of the ashes .
however the scattering takes place , it is important to cast the ashes downwind to keep the remains from blowing onto your party . cremation ashes are not in any way a health risk , but some may find the contact disturbing or disrespectful . the ashes will consist of dense , sand - like matter and a few bone fragments that will likely fall to the ground quickly , but some will remain airborne in the form of a whitish - gray cloud upon dispersal .
the 16th celestis memorial spaceflight will launch into earth orbit late this year from nasa’s kennedy space center , florida . reservations are still open .
ascension release – instead of being dispersed from the ground , another option is to have the ashes scattered from the sky . this is usually done by professionals , who cast the ashes from a private plane over sea or land . other options include - but are not limited to - hang gliders , hot air balloons and weather balloons . some will allow you to do the scattering yourself or will coordinate with your ceremony to fly over and scatter the ashes so that the dispersal can be seen from the ground .
lit . ,
from or out off the fire ,
i . e . , the coals or hot ashes . for ἐκ out off see on
a foreboding black - doom metal dirge , meditating on a dark world caked in ash , resulting from all the earth’s nuclear arsenal detonating at once .
there is no carping to be done with the details of a book such as this , because the text so manifestly serves noble purposes of consciousness and of conscience . earth and ashes is an ethical act that must be taken as a whole ; it transcends the ordinary categories of literature . rare is the book that warrants , for its moral illuminations , such pure esteem .
and cast it into the earth - margin , upon . the margin expresses undoubtedly the meaning . the symbol , therefore , properly denoted that fearful calamities were about to come upon the earth . even the prayers of saints did not prevail to turn them away , and now the symbol of the scattered coals indicated that terrible judgments were about to come upon the world .
( revised version ) . the angel now returns to the altar of burnt offering , whence he takes fire , which he casts upon the earth . this action denotes that god ' s judgments are about to descend on the earth , and it therefore forms the visible token of god ' s acceptance of the prayers of the saints , and his answer to them .
celestis provides an easy - to - use tracking tool that lets family and friends track the mission ' s progress as the celestis satellite orbits the earth or makes its way into deep space .
in addition to the more traditional avenues of cremation burial or preservation in a columbarium , the scattering of ashes is a meaningful and time - honored means of memorializing a loved one after cremation . there are several methods for the release of ashes that can be personalized in any number of ways . much of the decision depends on the wishes of the deceased and how those left behind want to honor that person’s memory . consider your choices carefully ; once the ashes are scattered they are gone forever , unless you keep a portion of the remains for remembrance or as part of a keepsake .
earth and ashes is a story of such spareness and power it leaves the reader reeling . set during the russian occupation of afghanistan , it is a fable about war , family , home and tradition . an old man and his grandson sit in a deserted landscape of dusty roads and looming mountains . what are they waiting for ? as we watch them we learn their story . . . atiq rahimi has managed to condense centuries of afghan history into his short tale of three very different generations . at the same time , he has created a story that is universal in its power .
for all the sympathy the book generates , the characters remain in many ways bewildering to a western reader . here one is forced to accept a culture different not only on its surface but also in its very conception of human relations . these characters think things we would never think and act in ways we would never act . earth and ashes opens a way into afghan life but keeps that life unfamiliar . this is one of its triumphs : it does not allow its readers the arrogance of identification .
“anyone seeking to understand why afghanistan is difficult and what decades of violence have done to its people should read atiq rahimi . he is a superb guide to a hard and complex land . ” —ryan crocker , former us ambassador to pakistan and iraq , and us envoy to afghanistan “the blasted dreamscape of rahimi’s story and his tightly controlled prose make this a sobering literary testament to the horrors of war . ” — publishers weekly “it has the feel of a book of great antiquity and authority ; you could more readily level the afghan mountains than damage the dreaming culture that earth and ashes both embodies and silently trusts . ” — london times “with this novel rahimi picks up a shard of broken glass and sees the whole truth of his devastated country . ” — der spiegel ( germany )
. on these coals no incense was placed , but they were thrown at once to the earth . the new emblem , therefore , is the taking of coals , and scattering them abroad as a symbol of the destruction that was about to ensue .
. this is a new symbol , designed to furnish a new representation of future events . by the former it had been shown that there would be much prayer offered ; by this it is designed to show that , notwithstanding the prayer that would be offered , great and fearful calamities would come upon the earth . this is symbolized by casting the censer upon the earth , as if the prayers were not heard any longer , or as if prayer were now in vain .
there are a variety of creative options for how and where the ashes are scattered . often , cremated remains are dispersed at a place that had personal or philosophical significance to the deceased . it can be a favorite destination such as a beach , forest or meadow ; or someplace that reflects the person’s everyday life such as a park , golf course or even their own home . keep in mind when choosing a location that there are laws governing the scattering of cremation remains . these laws vary from state to state and will affect how and where the ashes can be scattered , and whether you will need a permit to do so .
memorial crafting – a portion of the remains can be preserved inside a keepsake…or crafted into one . for example , a small amount of ashes can be handcrafted into glass - blown tokens , jewelry or glass art and inscribed with a memorial message . cremation ashes can also be mixed into charcoal , paint and tattoo ink , or used in a more involved process to create objects such as fireworks or even diamonds . many memorial crafts such as these are created by artists all over the country , so take the time to explore what possibilities are available to you .
atiq rahimi ( b . 1962 , kabul ) moved to pakistan in 1984 and finally to france where he received political asylum ; he then studied at the sorbonne . in 1992 - 1995 he shot several documentaries for french television . in 2000 his first novel , earth and ashes , was warmly received by french critics , and in 2004 the author transferred it to the screen as his first feature . the film was chosen for the section un certain regard at the recent festival in cannes . rahimi published another novel in france in 2002 , les milles maisons du rêve et de la terreur .
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atiq rahimi’s earth and ashes tells an enormous story by way of a very small one . the narrative , written in the second person , describes the journey of an old man , dastaguir , with his grandson , yassin . they are going to see the grandfather’s son , the grandson’s father , murad , who works in a mine and wasn’t at home when his afghan village was destroyed by the russians and nearly everyone was killed . the first half of the book describes dastaguir’s wait with yassin at the roadside checkpoint for a truck to take them the final leg of their weeklong journey to the mine ; the second half is about dastaguir’s ride to and arrival at his destination .
earth and ashes is the spare , powerful story of an afghan man , dastaguir , trying desperately to reach his son murad , who has left his village to earn a living working at a mine . in the meantime the village has been bombed by the russian army , and dastaguir , with his newly - deaf grandson yassin in tow , must reach murad to tell him of the carnage . the old man is beset on all sides by sorrow , that of his grandson , who cannot understand , that of his son , who does not yet know , and his own , made even crueler by the message he must deliver .
brevity is the sister of talent ,
wrote anton chekhov , thinking of his short stories , in 1889 . his comment applies equally , if uneasily , to the heterogeneous fictions caught between the novel and the short story . post - conrad , james , woolf and rhys , the short novel is still often seen as a second - class form , lacking both the novel ' s scope and range and the manoeuvrability of the short story proper , which raymond carver loved because it
can be written and read in one sitting
. when the writing calls for a more muscular definition , publishers offer unwieldy conjunctions (
short fictions
,
short prose
) or duck the question altogether with
shorts
. two fictions from france , earth and ashes and desolation , inhabit this genre - bending ground .
the story of the village ' s destruction emerges bit by bit , while dastaguir distracts himself from his grief with simple objects : an apple , stones , chewing tobacco . following the old man ' s jumps of attention , earth and ashes progresses in choppy , disconnected paragraphs . even its conversations fail : yassin , deafened by the blast , repeats
water !
,
all dead
or
don ' t !
, unresponsive to his grandfather ' s pleas and rebukes . his uncomprehending deafness mirrors the book ' s own strangeness : filtered through dastaguir ' s apathetic gaze , its gathered fragments remain oddly unaffecting .
8 : 1 - 6 the seventh seal is opened . there was profound silence in heaven for a space ; all was quiet in the church , for whenever the church on earth cries through oppression , that cry reaches up to heaven ; or it is a silence of expectation . trumpets were given to the angels , who were to sound them . the lord jesus is the high priest of the church , having a golden censer , and much incense , fulness of merit in his own glorious person . would that men studied to know the fulness that is in christ , and endeavoured to be acquainted with his excellency . would that they were truly persuaded that christ has such an office as that of intercessor , which he now performs with deep sympathy . no prayers , thus recommended , was ever denied hearing and acceptance . these prayers , thus accepted in heaven , produced great changes upon earth . the christian worship and religion , pure and heavenly in its origin and nature , when sent down to earth and conflicting with the passions and worldly projects of sinful men , produced remarkable tumults , here set forth in prophetical language , as our lord himself declared , lu 12 : 49 .
there is some variety among the mss . in the order of the words here used . some place “lightnings” before “voices . ” these signs and sounds herald the approach of judgments . god has arisen in answer to the cry of his people . “the earth shook and trembled . there went up a smoke and a fire : coals were kindled at it . at the brightness that was before him his thick clouds passed , hailstones and coals of fire . the lord also thundered in the heavens , and the highest gave his voice , hailstones and coals of fire . yea , he sent out his arrows , and scattered them : he shot out lightnings and discomfited them . . . he delivered me from my strong enemy” (
scattering by water – the remains are scattered onto a body of water from the shore , a dock or a boat . loved ones may place flowers , petals or floating candles into the water alongside the remains as a tribute . these will float on top of the water while the ashes sink below the surface .
written by atiq rahimi , an afghan political exile in paris , and translated by erdag m goknar , earth and ashes was acclaimed in france as a baffling
prodigy
.
novel , short story , fable ?
wondered one critic . at barely 60 pages , the question is apt . rahimi ' s book follows an old man , dastaguir , and his grandson , yassin , sole survivors of a russian bomb that devastated their village , as they carry the news to the mine where the boy ' s father works . their long wait at a dusty border post is narrated by dastaguir in a strained second person , both inviting the reader to share his experiences and insisting on his own detachment from them . the cumulative effect is one of shocked numbness : the old man speaks to himself as though to a stranger , issuing fragmented pleas , questions and instructions :
put the box back . think of something else .
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took ) the censer , and he filled it from the fire of the altar , and cast it ( i . e . ,
voices , and thunderings , and lightnings—b places the
voices
after
thunderings .
a places it after
lightnings .
at the memorial service preceding , families share life stories and share a contemplation of the next day’s launch . as the countdown reaches zero and liftoff occurs , an overwhelming emotion of joy and completion prevails .
earth and ashes ‘s story is just eighty - one pages long , more the length of an epic poem than a novel . it shares with poetry a simultaneous richness and discipline of language – one feels the economy of expression in every sentence , but there is a lushness , too , in the barren context of the narrative . the most lyrical writing is inside quotation marks , the author giving his characters a more poignant eloquence than he claims for himself , an eloquence that the translation seems to sustain . a shopkeeper says to dastaguir , “you know , father , sorrow can turn to water and spill from your eyes , or it can sharpen your tongue into a sword , or it can become a time bomb that , one day , will explode and destroy you . ” yassin has gone deaf from the sound of the bombs , but he attributes the quiet to the world rather than to himself , and he says , “the bomb was huge . it brought silence . the tanks took away people’s voices and left . they even took grandfather’s voice away . grandfather can’t talk anymore , he can’t scold me . ”
the caring and experienced professionals at solimine funeral homes are here to support you through this difficult time . we offer a range of personalized funeral , memorial and cremation services to suit your family’s wishes and requirements .
the often spare and elliptical narration , and the very effective descriptions of the weariness and worry of the most simple actions and exchanges , work very well . this is a powerful , understated work - - but in conveying the complete crushing of these souls so well is also horribly , horribly bleak .
has murad turned away from tradition and family , and embraced the ways of the outsiders ? has he forgotten what matters ? it all turns out to be more complicated ; it also turns out that dastaguir and murad and yassin have been entirely disenfranchised , powerless against those who can much more easily ( and forcefully ) impose their will . ultimately , too , there is nowhere for them to turn , and dastaguir and yassin will , essentially , walk back out into the wilderness , as their world has been taken from them .
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directed by : atiq rahimi produced by : les films du lendemain genre : fiction - runtime : 1 h 45 min french release : 05 / 01 / 2005 production year : 2004 dastaguir sits besides the side of a road , his little grandson yassin by his side . the desolate afghan landscape spreads out around him : a partially destroyed bridge , a dry riverbed below , arid mountains in the distance , and a long , dusty road reaching its vanishing point at the horizon . the road leads to a distant mine - - a destination dreaded and yet sought out by dastaguir . he reluctantly undertakes this journey to see his son , yassin ' s father , who works at the mine . he must tell him that their village has been bombed and their family killed . it ' s a difficult task for the old man who is torn between his own grief , unbearable solitude and the codes of honor so deeply engrained in the afghan soul . while struggling with so many conflicting emotions , dastaguir comes across various strangers on his way : a grumpy guard in his sentry house , a philosophical merchant , a mysterious veiled woman who endlessly waits , and other victims of this vile war that continues elsewhere , off screen .
earth and ashes
is a fable about devastating loss , redemption and the perseverance of the human spirit when confronted with the atrocities of war . more info : urltoken
which being here more generally mentioned , are by and by more particularly expressed .
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oscar winners morgan freeman and john legend added as presenters along with j . j . abrams , sacha baron cohen and henry cavill dave grohl will give a special performance
kristen bell and michael b . jordan to host academy ' s sci - tech awards
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short novels lend themselves to fable and allegory , constantly negotiating between their own neatly bounded spaces and the tangled sprawl of politics and society . where the 1 , 400 - page sweep of war and peace , say , is inextricably engaged with the society it describes , retreat to the confines of a novella may suggest the deliberate isolation of dissent .
and the angel took the censer , . . . . the golden one before mentioned , the use of which was to take and carry in it burning coals of fire :
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please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review ' s biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers . similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole . we acknowledge ( and remind and warn you ) that they may , in fact , be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure .
, & c . ; ] “voices” and “thunders” should be transposed . we have similar signs in
celestis ceo and co - founder , charles chafer , describes his meeting with arthur c . clarke and how celestis will fly arthur c . clarke ' s dna to the moon . read more
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jackie chan , anne v . coates , lynn stalmaster and frederick wiseman to receive academy’s 2016 governors awards
the river creates and the river destroys in an eternal cycle that even man can ' t escape .
a poker - playing restaurateur and former traveling salesman befriends a group of refugees newly arrived to finland .
neurotech is the perfect combination of electronics and metal . this song has helped me before , listen .
on their third album , khemmis move further away from doom and into full - on power metal .
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after the rise of the taliban in afghanistan and the restriction of women in public life , a pre - teen girl is forced to masquerade as a boy in order to find work to support her mother and grandmother .
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kathy baker , o’shea jackson jr . , freida pinto and jimmy smits to perform at academy nicholl fellowships live read
atiq rahimi ( عتیق رحیمی ) was born in afghanistan in 1962 , and has lived in france since 1984 .
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) , physical disturbances here accompany the manifestation of god’s wrath and judgment . in answer to the prayers and longings of the saints ( renan , 393 ) , god at last visits the impenitent pagan world with a series of catastrophes (
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i read a lot a lot . to discover a writer who ' s little known in anglosaxonia , who tells a simple , everyday tale with the power , the beauty and the brilliance of this tiny book is a rare and wonderful event . it ' s about afghanistan as occupied by russia , but it ' s really about what we do in war and what goes unoticed by the politicians who sit in comfortable offices and order the killings to occur . rahimi ' s other books are equally extraordinary . i read this in one glued to my chair sitting and rushed out to buy his others !
lacma and the academy co - present a major u . s . exhibition highlighting the prolific career of mexican cinematographer gabriel figueroa
elderly dastaguir and his newly deaf 5 - year - old grandson yassin hitchhike and walk , but mostly walk , as they make their way to the coal mine where dastaguir ' s son murad works . dastaguir . . . see full summary »
jermaine fowler and omari hardwick of sorry to bother you take us back in time to the worst jobs of their careers .
. the order is not the same here as there , but lightnings , thunderings , and voices are mentioned in both .
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atiq rahimi , whose reputation for writing war stories of immense drama and intimacy began with this , his first novel , has managed to condense centuries of afghan history into a short tale of three very different generations . but he has also created a universal story about fathers and sons , and the terrible strain inflicted on those bonds of family during the unpredictable carnage of war .
the academy continues residency at the metrograph theater in new york with “the ballad of gregorio cortez” and tribute to george a . romero
slowly , dastaguir ' s story can be pieced together , as it is explained why he is here now , and , for example , why the young boy is now deaf ( though the boy himself barely realizes it ) . the story is set during the soviet occupation of afghanistan in the 1980s . while not indomitable , the foreigners are a powerful presence and the crushing force they can apply directly - - and horribly - - affected dastaguir and the village he comes from ; they also control the mine where murad works .
yasmina reza , another parisian , has drawn on camus and houellebecq ' s brutal accounts of alienation for her own short novel . in desolation , translated by carol brown janeway , the ageing narrator , samuel , addresses a series of reflections and complaints to his absent son . samuel ' s mordant comments balance precariously between relish and bitterness : their acerbic charm is always on the verge of turning rancid .
this is an extraordinary short story or novella . it is the story of a grandfather and grandson travelling together to find their son / father respectively . it sounds like a simple story , but it is based during the russian occupation of afghanistan and blends great tragedy with honest thoughts and feelings of the characters whilst also making reference to the eleventh century , persian , book of kings . it is absolutely transferrable to the present day and could easily be a story of a family in the very recent past ! this book was a recommendation for me based on other books i had read . it was a great recommendation and i will definitely read more from this author .
the book is partly allegorical : the characters represent the problems of afghanistan and stand in for a much larger ravaged population . it conveys with heartbreaking clarity the quality of a destroyed country and its courageous , nearly annihilated inhabitants . what is perhaps most terrifying of all is that this book is set during the russian invasion of afghanistan ; this is how bad things were before the mujahideen and the taliban . we have become somewhat inured to the horror , so much of which we witnessed on news broadcasts , until we thought we knew it . here it is once again made incomprehensible to us . dastaguir and murad and yassin are the voices of this national despair , but the book is also the compelling narrative of individual afflictions . your heart is in your throat as dastaguir approaches the mine ; you are deeply pained by the sadness and confusion with which he approaches a world broken beyond recognition ; and you are filled with wonderment at the unbreachable fact of his survival . we get lost in his dreams and in his fears and most of all in his immediate quandary : is it better to go and tell murad what has happened , to bring such miserable news to someone who may now be innocent of it , or would it be better to turn around and go home , leaving murad some further time to live without this knowledge , which cannot do anything but injure him ? then again , would it injure him less to hear of it from his old father than to hear the dread words from a stranger ?
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here , is to be understood the wrath of god , often in holy writ compared to fire , poured out upon the roman empire , or the visible church . upon which followed great judgments , and confusions , and tumults , expressed here , or ushered in , as before ,
is a novella of only sixty - seven pages , set on a single day , with barely any action . dastaguir has traveled with his grandson , yassin , to the mine where his son - - and the boy ' s father - - murad works . murad left their village four years earlier , and he has only been back four times since - - though most recently just a month earlier . grandfather and grandson wait to hitch a ride for the last stretch , encountering only a few people - - among them the guard on the road and a shopkeeper .
canadian actor , known for his role as lt . commander montgomery scott (
scotty
) in the television and film series star trek .
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finally i ' ve got some money to buy neurotech ' s discography ! and if i had , i would give much more than now and maybe than i will ever have . this music is great , especially stigma , my favorite album for 3 years . it ' s beautiful , i still replay that songs ( as well as from other albums ) and i ' ve never tired of it like it usually happens with all artists .
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elderly dastaguir and his newly deaf 5 - year - old grandson yassin hitchhike and walk , but mostly walk , as they make their way to the coal mine where dastaguir ' s son murad works . dastaguir must tell murad that the rest of their family were all killed in a recent bomb attack .
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. the meaning must be , to represent the same instrument as obtaining god’s mercy on his people , and executing his vengeance on his enemies : cf .
old dastagir and his grandson yassin climb out of a truck in the middle of the arid afghan landscape and set out on foot along a dusty road . they eventually come to a bridge over a dry riverbed . their road continues through the desert to a far away valley where yassin’s father is supposed to work . the old man tries to find a truck that’s going their way . he wants to tell his son that bombs have destroyed their village and that only he and yassin survived . hours pass by and in his sorrow the exhausted old man doesn’t know what to do . he is trapped in his thoughts of the terrible night when his whole family died and little yassin went deaf . because he is afraid that the horrifying news will evoke righteous anger in his son and a desire for revenge , he somewhat subconsciously postpones their meeting . he confides his worries in the people he meets : the bridge guard , a kindly shopkeeper , and a mysterious woman who is also waiting – all are victims of a war which is still going on somewhere off screen . based on his own novel , the filmmaker located the movie on the road connecting kabul with northern afghanistan , which passes through an incredibly photogenic landscape : an undulating desert between mountains . the timeframe of the old man’s journey to find his son is not precisely specified , thus the story takes on the nature of a parable of desperation caused by destructive loss , and of the need and ability of the human spirit to face the horrors of war . the director cast non - actors from among the local inhabitants .
comment : ex library book with usual stamps and stickers . uk expedited shipping available on this item for 4 . 99 . fast shipping . excellent customer feedback .
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, where the man clothed in linen is commanded to go between the wheels under the cherub , and fill his hands with coals of fire from between the cherubims , and to scatter them over the city as a symbol of its destruction . here the coals are taken , evidently , from the altar of sacrifice . compare the notes on
i read this book after finishing chris hedges ' superb hymn to thanatos ,
war is a force that gives us meaning .
this short book , also written with depth , clarity and beauty , is the
amen
to mr . hedges book . both books highly recommended for those who praise war & support the so - called
war on terror .
and for those who have experienced war ? dreams are revived and some dragons are hopefully laid to rest . deep thanks to both writers .
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in a brief few pages , atiq rahmi conjours up the devastation of war on a human level . a penniless old grandfather and his grandson , yassin , deafened from the effects of war ( from noise or shock , we don ' t know ) are making the laborious journey to the mine where murad , yassin ' s father , and the only surviving member of the family , is working . the rest of the family has been massacred by the soviets invading afghanistan en route they meet several characters , all in their own way affected by the war . the guard at the bridge , the shop keeper , the truck driver and murad ' s boss , all surviving as best they can . in spite of the brevity of this book the profound feeling of damage and loss that it leaves with its reader is a measure of its power . my book had only 54 pages and presumably was an edited version for younger readers . i would love to read the full version , which is no doubt even more powerful and thought provoking .
like meursault and the narrator of whatever , samuel is isolated and imprisoned within the confines of a short novel .
is there a reality outside oneself ?
he wonders .
explain travelling to me ,
he begs his globetrotting son , who has betrayed his father by joining the contemptible
mass of normal people who aspire to happiness
.
the wanderings of an old man and his grandson through the arid but gorgeously photogenic landscape of northern afghanistan , devastated by a war which has been going on for 23 years .
one of the original mercury 7 astronauts , l . gordon cooper , jr . was an american hero and a true space pioneer who helped lead america into the space age .
celestis ambassador marc lee honors wende doohan , her late husband james doohan ( star trek ' s
mr . scott
) and all those who inspire us . read more
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