Alex Burns

Confirmation of candidature is a PhD project’s one year milestone. You can download the second, revised version of my PhD Confirmation of Candidature document here. It outlines my project scope, some of the relevant literature, key research questions, and methodological framework.

My thanks to Michael Janover, Pete Lentini, Ben MacQueen, Andy Butfoy, and Luke Howie at Monash University’s School of Political and Social Inquiry for their critical feedback.

Bill Keller in The New York Times on new books about nuclear weapons proliferation:

 

What has been sorely missing from the debate about Iran’s nuclear program is a serious, reported effort to understand what goes on in the minds of the Iranians. David Patrikarakos, a journalist who has written for a number of high-end British periodicals, fills that void with “Nuclear Iran,” a cleareyed history of the Iranian nuclear program, enriched by access to a number of key participants and a wealth of scholarly empathy. The book contains more administrative detail and diplomatic byplay than a lay reader will crave, but it also includes a succinct and subtle rendering of modern Iranian political history and a digestible primer on the basics of nuclear science. (For the record, Patrikarakos, unlike Bracken, believes that, as counterproductive as an attack on Iran might be, “the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran is worse.”)

In large measure, the history of nuclear Iran is the story of the relationship (“pathology” might be a better word) between Iran and the United States. Our present Iran problem, we are reminded, is partly of our own making. We installed the shah, who embraced nuclear power as a flag of Persian modernity. We indulged Saddam Hussein in his brutish attack on Iran — a war that led Iran’s Islamist government to conclude that it was on its own in the world. The fact that we invaded Afghanistan while paying court to terrorist-­breeding (but nuclear) Pakistan taught Iran that weapons of mass destruction command deference. Then, in the Bush axis-of-evil years, our hard-­liners convinced their hard-liners that nothing short of regime change would satisfy Washington. Add these understandable fears to a long history of xenophobia and Persian status anxiety, and it would be astounding if Iran didn’t at least contemplate acquiring the bomb.

When a young Jack Snyder wrote a 1977 RAND monograph that conceptualised strategic culture he tried to understand Soviet politico-military elites and their decision-making on nuclear weapons. David Patrikarakos‘s book joins David Crist‘s The Twilight War (New York: Penguin Press, 2012) in exploring the strategic interdependence of Iran’s nuclear development program with United States politico-military decision-making. A nuclear Iran is thus exactly the kind of geopolitical problematique that contemporary researchers interested in strategic culture might study. Snyder was part of a so-called first generation that might have used national country studies to understand the Iranian leadership. Now, this is the domain of political psychological profiling and estimative assessments for strategic intelligence. The so-called second generation would highlight the strategic interdependence of Iran and United States decision-making, and strategic alliances — including the US support for Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and the George W. Bush Administration’s decision in late 2001 to invade Afghanistan in order to end the Taliban regime’s support for Al Qaeda. The third generation might examine the evolution of institutional decision-making which has led to the “present Iran problem” for the United States. The fourth generation might examine how the international system and regional developments helped to shape United States and Iran decision-making; and might also compare Iran as a case study to countries like South Africa and Libya that have rolled back their nuclear capabilities. Patrikarakos and the other authors that Keller profiles might be the beginning of a literature review for a research program on United States and Iranian strategic cultures, and their decision-making and threat perception role in nuclear capability-building.

The Failure Test Entry Working

3:30-8:30pm, Saturday 5^th January 2013

Melbourne, Australia

Preparation Material: Adam H. Grimes’ The Art and Science of Technical Analysis (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2012); Margery Mayall’s University of Queensland sociological research on technical analysis; BusinessSource database search on academic research into technical analysis, and trader development and learning; and MarketPsych.com behavioural finance and psychological tests.

Aims:

(i) Identification of trading personal goals for 2013.

(ii) Illustrative understanding of technical analysis as a trading methodology for alpha generation.

(iii) Consideration of learning barriers to trader development.

Technical analysis (TA) is the study of group psychology in financial market using price, sentiment, and volume indicators, and pattern recognition. It arose in a modern context due to Charles H. Dow and Richard Schabacker’s study of market patterns in the late 1800s-early 1900s. Robert D. Edwards and John Magee’s Technical Analysis of Stock Trends became the TA bible of market patterns later promulgated in variations by Martin Pring and others. Richard D. Wyckoff (the Wyckoff Method), Robert Prechter (Elliott wave theory), and other TA theoreticians have made influential contributions. TA focuses on identification of trends, retracements, breakouts, pullbacks, support and resistance. It anticipated some aspects of current academic research programs on behavioural finance and market microstructure but from a trader or practitioner viewpoint.

Academics and traders remain divided on TA’s efficacy. In 1934, Alfred Cowles contended that a ‘buy and hold’ strategy beat Dow Theory trading. Early studies from 1966 to 1970 by Eugene Fama and his University of Chicago colleagues found that TA filter rules were unprofitable once transaction and execution costs were considered. Fama’s finding led academics to focus on the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, and, ultimately, mutual fund and passive index fund products. In contrast, TA became popular in the mid-late 1970s amongst trend-following Commodity Trading Advisors on volatile commodities and foreign exchange markets. The ‘housewives of Tokyo’ who speculated on currency movements now challenged the ‘gnomes of Zurich’ or institutional investment managers. Victor Sperandeo who traded for George Soros used Dow Theory. The bootlegged PBS documentary ‘Trader’ (1987) shows Paul Tudor Jones II and Peter Borish using Elliot wave theory and 1929 price data to predict a stockmarket crash in early-mid 1988. Finance theories in academic journals and hedge fund manager practices diverged into parallel universes.

Recent academic research has shed new light on this academic-practitioner divide. In a review of 95 academic studies on TA from 1960 to 2004, Cheol-Ho Park and Scott H. Irwin found that “56 studies find positive results regarding technical trading strategies” (“What Do We Know About the Profitability of Technical Analysis?, Journal of Economic Studies 21:4 2007, p. 786). They note data snooping problems with Edwards & Magee-style pattern recognition which other academic researchers have also identified. Importantly, Park and Irwin found that TA was profitable in spot foreign exchange and futures contracts “from the late 1970s to the early 1990s” involving “unlevered annual net returns of 2-10%” (Park & Irwin 2007, p. 795). This finding reflects the period when Sperandeo, Jones, Borish, and other non-TA traders like Martin Zweig were ascendant in financial markets. It contradicts the earlier findings of Cowles and Fama that TA has always been unprofitable.

Park and Irwin’s finding about TA’s period of profitability is also mirrored in other post-1988 academic studies. These find that the traders used arbitrage on anomalies; the transmission shocks of central bank monetary policies; the anchoring, crowded exits and rational herding of institutional investors; and changes to the international monetary system and political economy. However, these studies often fail to link their finding to the practitioner literature which offers independent confirmation, such as Jones II’s interview in Sebastian Mallaby’s More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010). TA practitioners like Jones II were also often aware of the speculative bubble literature—Charles Mackay, Gustave Le Bon, Charles P. Kindleberger, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Hyman Minsky—which has inspired contemporary research in behavioural finance. This is why Gordon Gekko’s apartment in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) had pictures from the Dutch Tulip bubble (1636-37). The conceptual gap between TA and behavioural finance is perhaps not as large for financial market practitioners as some academic researchers believe.

The decline in TA profitability after the early 1990s can be attributed to changes in central bank policy coordination, market microstructure, and the growth of algorithmic trading. For instance, the Wyckoff Method identifies institutional trading and market patterns also found in Robert Shiller’s study of ‘irrational exuberance’ and speculative bubbles. But the growth of new trading—options, futures, and high-frequency systems—have altered what the Wyckoff Method found in pre-World War II financial markets.  Collectively, the above developments over the past two decades have changed markets and volatility from trending to more range-bound dynamics. Edwards & Magee’s TA indicators, and support and resistance levels, can now be programmed into algorithms that actively trade against institutional and retail traders who still use traditional TA methods. This Darwinian-like evolution has led to the demise of dotcom era day traders (1995-2000), and trend followers who benefited from asset price valuations due to housing and commodities speculative bubbles (2003-2008).

Academic researchers rarely refer to the TA practitioner literature beyond introductory books by Alexander Elder, Van Tharp, and other authors. Academics often state incorrectly that TA remains unstructured as a knowledge domain: Edwards & Magee, the Wyckoff Method, Elliott wave, Fibonacci, Japanese Candlesticks, and other major TA methods and schools each have their exponents and adherents. Instead, TA now involves an industry of books, consultants and custom indicators targeted at the retail investor. University of Queensland sociologist Margery Mayall found that TA indicators shaped the self-beliefs, mindsets, and decisions of the Australian retail traders who she interviewed. Some of Mayall’s retail traders became focused on the never-ending Holy Grail Quest to find the ‘right’ TA indicator or system.

In contrast, proprietary trading desks now combine TA with behavioural finance, game theory, and market microstructure. Professional traders seek what Michael Steinhardt called contrarian ‘variant perception’ in financial markets compared with the ‘consensus perception’ of retail traders. There is always someone else on the other side of the trade even if it is a market-making algorithm. Academic researchers could bridge the gap with TA practitioners if the popular models were evaluated and back-tested in a more rigorous manner. However, recent work by Andrew Lo and other authors on rehabilitating TA remains at the interview or memoir stage, rather than using a robust empirical research design. Recent TA practitioner work by Adam H. Grimes, Xin Xie, Charles D. Kirkpatrick II, Julie R. Dahlquist, L.A. Little, David R. Aronson, and others looks promising. Grimes links TA and trader development to George Leonard’s Aikido model of self-mastery; to Daniel Kahneman’s prospect theory and behavioural finance study of cognitive biases; and to Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi’s study of creativity, flow, and optimal experience. This augments earlier work by the late Ari Kiev, Brett N. Steenbarger, and Mark Douglas on trading and performance psychology.

Since circa 1992, a subset of TA academic research has also used genetic algorithms and high-frequency tick data analysis to identify trading rules. The findings from this research often either remain proprietary or reflect mathematical and quantitative models. Hedge fund managers who use TA are closer to Aaron C. Brown’s Bayesian risk managers who revise and update their beliefs. Such hedge fund managers are often aware of confirmation bias, the disposition effect, overconfidence, model risk, and other cognitive biases identified in the behavioural finance literature. Hedge fund managers and professional traders now use TA in a mixed methods approach – if they have not already been replaced by algorithmic trading systems. Another problem with the genetic algorithms research is that whilst it identifies trading rules it often does not include trader learning, risk and money management practices. These are what Sperandeo, Jones II, Borish and other TA traders use, and thus these practices modify the efficacy of the trading rules identified. For instance, the PBS ‘Trader’ documentary (1987) shows Jones II using deception and rumour – closer to the Chinese 36 Strategies – to mask his order size and to influence other traders. Academic researchers using genetic algorithms and other methods have often overlooked this cunning or metic intelligence.

I resolved in 2013 to integrate TA’s relevant insights into a personal knowledge base and bespoke trading system for alpha generation. Academic research rigour can be combined with professional trading insights whilst retail trading myths promulgated by the TA industry and self-styled trading coaches can be avoided. A mixed methods research approach looks promising: where TA sees trends and retracements – a market microstructure researcher may see the interaction of strategic traders, order flow, and order types – and a behavioural finance proponent may find specific cognitive biases and decision heuristics. All three approaches look at the same market data via different lenses and vantage points. I took several MarketPsych.com tests to identify and to understand personal cognitive biases and psychological preferences. Once identified, I then compared the personal cognitive biases with past trades using an after action review approach. This illustrative research will inform operative action research to improve decision heuristics, mental models, and risk preferences for future alpha generation.

Fred Kaplan‘s journalism on nuclear strategy and geopolitics is a personal influence. I’m looking forward to Kaplan’s new book The Insurgents (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013) on how David Petraeus, John Nagl, and others changed United States military doctrines on counterinsurgency. Janet Maslin observes in her New York Times review:

 

Some of Mr. Kaplan’s book is about significant events, like the handling of Mosul. But most of it concentrates on the theoretical arguments behind even the most minute-sounding differences in military dictums. Even after counterinsurgency began to be codified and taught, it was a source of confusion for junior officers unfamiliar with its ways of utilizing Iraqis and later Afghans, not fighting them at every turn. “I get what we’re supposed to achieve,” one said succinctly, “but what are we supposed to do?”

Even as the counterinsurgency thinkers fine-tuned their phrases — “clear and hold” evolved into “clear, hold and build,” and later into “shape/clear/hold/build,” each with a slightly but significantly different meaning — their approach was viewed by some as a provocation. The book describes how blasts from The New York Post led to the insertion of words like “sometimes,” “some” and “most” into Mr. Petraeus’s field manual, “FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency,” and how the manual’s way of answering old questions only prompted new ones.

The Insurgents will also interest change management, leadership, organisational dynamics, and disruptive innovation practitioners.

Antifragile: How Things Gain From Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (New York: Allen Lane, 2012). (TS-5) (MAM-5). Taleb (Fooled By Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes) is a former options trader and philosopher who focuses on the ontology and epistemology of uncertainty. Antifragile develops a via negativa philosophy about things that benefit from disorder and shock: vega and long gamma exposure in stock markets; post-traumatic growth in medicine; and cultivating ‘optionality’ and the ‘barbell strategy’ as ways to deal with Hazard, chance, and life stressors (preferably of short duration followed by recovery). Taleb rails against ‘fragilistas’, ‘touristification’ and details a range of Black Swan errors that humans and social institutions can fall prey to. He constructs a dense personal, subjective universe that needs its own glossary to decode. Antifragile’s mix of analysis, critique and personal memoir would have benefited from an editor but is filled with Taleb’s philosophical insights. For a specialist view of vega and long gamma see Robert A. Schwartz, John Aidan Byrne and Antoinette Colaninno’s Volatility: Risk and Uncertainty in Financial Markets (New York: Springer, 2011) (TS-4) (MAM-4). For an historical counter-view to Taleb on vega and risk see Aaron C. Brown’s Red-Blooded Risk: The Secret History of Wall Street (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2012) (TS-3) (MAM-3).

Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace by D.T. Max (New York: Viking, 2012). (TS-3). David Foster Wallace (1962-2008) was a United States novelist, short story writer and essayist best known for the maximalist novel Infinite Jest (New York: Little, Brown, 1996) (TS-5). D.T. Max’s autobiography is a cathartic and confronting exploration of DFW’s development as a humanist, philosophical writer, his impact on academia and popular culture, and his personal demons. DFW struggled with depression and nervous breakdowns at Amherst to write the Wittgenstein-influenced novel The Broom of the System (New York: Viking Press, 1987) (TS-3). Infinite Jest combined a critique of popular culture with DFW’s experiences in Alcoholics Anonymous, and brought him major critical acclaim and commercial success. In some ways this could be interpreted as de facto Recognition (‘the most influential writer of his generation’) which DFW was unprepared for, and which attracted criticism from Bret Easton Ellis and other writers. Max is unflinching about how DFW dealt with this disproportionate success and includes some reflective correspondence with Don DeLillo, Jonathan Franzen and other writers. DFW would spend over a decade writing his unfinished novel The Pale King (New York: Little, Brown, 2011) (TS-3) and struggling with Buddhist mindfulness practices. He articulated this philosophical shift in his commencement speech ‘This Is Water’ delivered at Kenyon College in May 2005 and available on YouTube. Perhaps what DFW missed was a balanced initiatory sense (which developed from Infinite Jest to The Pale King) and the appropriate psyche-strengthening resources and skills to overcome his suicidal ideation. DFW’s papers are now housed at the University of Texas at Austin.

More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places by Michael J. Mauboussin (rev. ed.) (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). (TS-3) (MAM-1). Mauboussin is Chief Investment Strategist at Legg Mason Capital Management and Adjunct Professor of Finance at Columbia Business School. More Than You Know is a guide for investment strategists to find alpha (actively managed returns in excess of a performance benchmark — or, philosophically, what is psyche-enhancing in your life). It is an accessible guide – influenced by Edward O. Wilson’s ‘consilience’ integrative approach – to current thinking about behavioural finance, market microstructure (how market design and transaction costs impact price activity), portfolio management, and how the emerging sciences can be applied to investment management, idea generation, and decision-making. The essay structure in More Than You Know also highlights the importance of metacommunication in conveying new insights to different audiences: this is a book about how the exploratory search for investment and trading ideas can lead to new applied knowledge and can refresh strategic thinking. For an overview of Mauboussin’s interest in the emerging sciences, fitness landscapes, and economics see Eric D. Beinhocker’s The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics (New York: Random House, 2006) (TS-3) (MAM-3). For an in-depth conceptual and historical account of model-making in economics, game theory and macroeconomic simulations see Mary S. Morgan’s The World In The Model: How Economists Work and Think (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012) (TS-4) (MAM-4).

How Much Is Enough? The Love of Money, and the Case for the Good Life by Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky (London: Penguin Books, 2012). (TS-3) (MAM-3). In 1928, the economist and philosopher John Maynard Keynes spoke to Cambridge University undergraduates on ‘economic possibilities for our grandchildren’. The Skidelskys set out to examine how and why Keynes’ forecast has failed to occur. This book generated a sustained public debate about consumption, work productivity, and income inequality in London’s Financial Times and other media outlets. The ‘insatiability’ of work, Faustian and self-interested economics, and shifts in global attitudes to wealth are considered. The Skidelskys debate the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth World-3 simulation forecast and its ‘overshoot and collapse’ scenario; happiness economics; and what a ‘good life’ consists of. They conclude that a philosophically-oriented worldview that cultivates the Good is healthier than a consumption-oriented life. For the historical context of the shift from Keynes to Faustian and self-interested economics, and the key personalities involved, see Jeff Madrick’s Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present (New York: Vintage Books, 2011) (TS-3) (MAM-3). If you aspire to the 1% then Chrystia Freeland’s Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else (New York: The Penguin Press, 2012) (TS-3) (MAM-3) might convey why this was a highly visible socio-political issue in 2012.

The Stewardship of Wealth: Successful Private Wealth Management for Investors and Their Advisors by Gregory Curtis (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2012). (TS-3) (MAM-3). Curtis is founder of the wealth advisory firm Greycourt & Co. The first third of this book explores Curtis’s views on creative capital, wealth management, government policies, capital and financial markets, and risk. The second third deals with advisors, family investment decisions, and trusts. The third deals with asset allocation and portfolio decisions including equities, international markets, real estate, fixed income, and alternative investments (including hedge funds and private equity). Curtis addresses money managers, tax minimisation strategies, investment policy statements, and the myths of wealth, the rich and happiness. A website has further chapters and resources. If you are considering a career in private wealth management then you might consult G. Victor Hallman and Jerry S. Rosenbloom’s Private Wealth Management: The Complete Reference for the Personal Financial Planner (8^th ed.) (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009) (TS-4) and Harold Evensky, Stephen M. Horan and Thomas R. Robinson’s The New Wealth Management: The Financial Advisor’s Guide to Managing and Investing Client Assets (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2011) (TS-4) which outlines the CFA Institute’s approach.

The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction by Nate Silver (New York: Penguin, 2012). (TS-3) (MAM-3). Silver is a United States statistician and ‘sabermetrics’ (sports statistics analyst) whose blog FiveThirtyEight (currently hosted by The New York Times) achieved a highly accurate forecast of the 2012 United States election outcome. The Signal and the Noise outlines Silver’s Bayesian approach to forecasting and prediction, including under what conditions these may fail. His methodology uses Big Data, model building, probability, analytics, inference testing, and other tools. If you grapple with uncertainty or to use statistics insights in organisational management, Silver’s book may be a useful introduction to a rapidly growing field. Jim Manzi’s Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society (New York: Basic Books, 2012) (TS-3) argues for the use of induction, randomised trials, and experimental social science in government, political administrations, and the diffusion of social innovation.

Market Sense and Nonsense: How the Markets Really Work and How They Don’t (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2012). (TS-3) (MAM-3). Schwager is a futures market expert whose four volume Market Wizards interview series (1989-2012) have status amongst traders as mouth-to-ear initiation. Market Sense and Nonsense collects Schwager’s insights on capital preservation; market experts and the investment media; why he feels the Efficient Market Hypothesis doesn’t always work; and lessons on evaluating past returns, volatility, risk, hedge funds, mutual funds, and portfolio management. A strategic primer for new investors to understand how capital and financial markets work, and how to critically evaluate advice, media, and other information sources.

Why I Left Goldman Sachs: A Wall Street Story by Greg Smith (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2012). (TS-3) (MAM-3). On 14^th March 2012, The New York Times published Smith’s op-ed ‘Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs’. In the NYT op-ed and this follow-up book Smith adopts a ‘whistleblower’ stance about the cultural change he believes the investment bank Goldman Sachs has undergone from client-oriented service to extractive rent-seeking and proprietary trading. This rushed-to-publication book doesn’t live up to the promise of Smith’s op-ed and “muppets” claim about how Goldman Sachs views its clients. However, it can be read as a firsthand, somewhat initiatory account of Smith’s transformation from idealistic intern in 2000 to disaffected sales trader and manager in 2012. Were there ethical dilemmas, shadow projection, or a combination? The reaction to Smith’s book particularly from NYT Dealbook editor-at-large and CNBC co-anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin offers lessons in framing and metacommunication about ethical dilemmas. For an historical and contemporary overview of Goldman Sachs and its investment bank culture see Charles D. Ellis’s magisterial The Partnership: A History of Goldman Sachs (New York: Allen Lane, 2008) (TS-3) (MAM-3) and William D. Cohan’s reportage Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came To Rule The World (New York: Penguin Books, 2011) (TS-3) (MAM-3).

Octopus: Sam Israel, The Secret Market, and Wall Street’s Wildest Con by Guy Lawson (New York: Crown Publishers, 2012). (TS-3) (MAM-3). I first heard about the Octopus power elite conspiracy from parapolitical researcher Kenn Thomas and later from open source intelligence advocate Robert David Steele. Octopus resurfaces in this biography of Bayou Group hedge fund founder Samuel Israel III who had $US117 million in debts and trading losses. Israel attempts to enter a purported high-yield bond debt ‘secret market’ involving the Rothschilds and other elite banking families. The first third of the book deals with Bayou’s Ponzi scheme; the second with how Israel becomes ensnared with conspiracy theorist Robert Booth Nichols; and the third with the fallout involving international prime bank fraud. This is a cautionary tale of multiple cons and marks; the ‘medial’ conspiracy netherworld; and the failure of reality-testing. Israel might have benefited from Mark Schindler’s Rumors in Financial Markets: Insights Into Behavioral Finance (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2007) (TS-4) and Jeffrey A. Winters’ Oligarchy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) (TS-4).

The New Machiavelli: How to Wield Power in the Modern World by Jonathan Powell (New York: Vintage, 2011). (TS-3). Jonathan Powell was Tony Blair’s Chief of Staff from 1994 to 2007. The New Machiavelli is a defence of applied Machiavellian realpolitik from The Prince and The Discourses that draws on Powell’s unpublished diaries and his political administration experiences. Powell discusses the Blair Government’s rise-to-power; Cabinet, Chancellery, and Civil Service negotiations; the importance of multi-stakeholder decision-making and strategic thinking; and how the Blair Government dealt with Europe, geopolitical crises, scandals, and war. For Powell, Blair was a leader who benefited from both Fortuna and also from heeding Machiavelli’s insights about people, persuasion, and leadership. For a comparative analysis of Machiavellian leadership and statecraft in the contemporary era see Carnes Lord’s The Modern Prince: What Leaders Need To Know (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003) (TS-3) which considers states, regimes, elites, and the various levers of national power (such as economics, diplomacy, force, intelligence, education, and strategic culture). Jeffrey Pfeffer’s Power: Why Some People Have It – And Others Don’t (New York: HarperCollins, 2010) (TS-3) considers power in organisational culture and leadership.

Wait: The Useful Art of Procrastination by Frank Partnoy (New York: Public Affairs, 2012). (TS-3). Partnoy is the George E. Barrett Professor of Law and Finance at the University of San Diego and a former investment banker at Morgan Stanley. Wait examines evidence and insights from diverse sources—sport, high-frequency trading, neuro-marketing, information economics, and fighter pilot training—that delaying our decisions can give us situational and strategic advantages. This book is pitched at a Malcolm Gladwell audience but with more substantive research and interviews. Partnoy introduces ideas that have become very influential in their fields, such as George Akerlof’s ‘market for lemons’, and John Boyd’s OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act) which is situated in Grant T. Hammond’s The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2001) (TS-4). The late Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s work on cognitive biases and decision heuristics is detailed in Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Penguin Books, 2011) (TS-1) (MAM-1).

Willpower: Why Self-Control Is the Secret to Success by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney (New York: Penguin, 2011). (TS-3) (MAM-3). Baumeister is the Francis Eppes Professor of Psychology at Florida State University. Willpower is the first popular account of Baumeister’s influential research program into emotional self-regulation, self-control, cultivating will, and the danger of ego depletion: perhaps the key to world-building. Baumeister and Tierney discuss current psychological research on will; the design of personal productivity tools; decision heuristics; self-help programs; parenting; dieting; and other topics. This is a gateway to academic research by Baumeister, Kathleen D. Vohs and others about self-control and experimental social psychology — where the insights and writing can surpass Tierney’s journalistic account here.

The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotion by Jaak Panksepp and Lucy Biven (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2012). (TS-3). Panksepp is a Professor at Washington State University and this book presents his affective neuroscience research program for a broader audience. Panksepp’s research examines how deep brain systems and affective consciousness can affect humans and animals, and might be part of the neuro-evolutionary roots of archetypes, legends and myths. He has identified several deep brain systems—seeking (expectancy), fear (anxiety), rage (anger), lust (sexual excitement), care (nurturance), panic/grief (sadness), and play (social joy)—that shape the neuro-biology of the core self. This book considers how the frontier research on brain emotional systems can affect our mental life and philosophy. Panksepp’s popular account here is supported by a growing number of highly cited academic research papers and collaborations.

The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life by Timothy Ferriss (Las Vegas, NV: Amazon Publishing, 2012). (TS-3). Ferriss (The 4-Hour Workweek) is a raconteur who shifted from self-promoting author to popular blogger and adviser for entrepreneurial start-ups and venture capital. The 4-Hour Chef is Ferriss’s guide to accelerated learning using cooking as a domain of expertise. Ferriss’s framework of DSSS (deconstruction, selection, sequencing, and stakes) and CaFE (compression, frequency, and coding) is a distillation of techniques that Richard Bandler, John Grinder and Robert Dilts developed for Master Practitioner courses in Neurolinguistic Programming, and that were previously outlined in Leslie Cameron-Bandler, David Gordon and Michael Lebeau’s The Emprint Method: A Guide to Reproducing Competence (Moab, UT: Real People Press, 1985) (TS-3). However, Ferriss is able to use metacommunication skills to reach a broader audience: this is a book to be closely studied for how Ferriss distils and presents information, as well as his advice on transferring competence. For two comparative models on developing expertise see Brett N. Steenbarger’s The Daily Trading Coach: 101 Lessons For Becoming Your Own Trading Psychologist (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2009) (TS-3) and Robert Greene’s Mastery (New York: Viking, 2012) (TS-3). Cook Ferriss’s recipes at your own risk—and remember to send me some ‘food porn’ photographs.

The Net Delusion: How Not To Liberate The World by Evgeny Morozov (New York: Penguin, 2011). (TS-3). In a former life I edited an alternative news website and was a senior researcher on the sociology of the internet for a university research consortium. Morozov’s Net Delusion and his Twitter feed (@evgenymorozov) are one of the wittiest, scathing critiques of the democracy-internet nexus promoted by Wired, Fast Company and Red Herring magazines and by TED’s popular talks. Morozov in the past has been funded by the Open Society Foundations funded by George Soros. Amongst the book’s insights are an exchange between Aldous Huxley and George Orwell about oligarchical social control; how authoritarian regimes use the internet and social networks; how ‘internet freedom’ can have propaganda elements; and the technological determinism embedded in many internet histories. Morozov’s next book is To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism (New York: Public Affairs, 2013).

The Twilight War: The Secret History of America’s Thirty-Year Conflict With Iran by David Crist (New York: The Penguin Press, 2012). (TS-4). A possible conflict between Iran, and Israel and the United States was a highly visible geopolitical scenario in 2011 and 2012. Crist is a United States historian who spent over a decade researching this eye-opening exploration of United States diplomacy and low-intensity conflict involving Iran, from the Carter to the Obama Administration. The “Iran Problem” involves the Middle East, oil, religion, nuclear weapons development and other complex national security issues. For author and defense historian Thomas Ricks, The Twilight War “is the secret history of the last three decades of American foreign policy in the Middle East”: it provides the historical and institutional context to understand current geopolitical debates, forecasts and pundits. Crist’s contribution is to capture the multi-sided decision-making that occurs in a national security confrontation which lies below the escalation threshold of declared physical war.

Tantra by Geshe Tashi Tsering (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2012). (TS-3). Tsering is a guiding teacher at London’s Jamyang Buddhist Centre and this is the final volume in his very accessible Foundations of Buddhist Thought series (which might be regarded as vital for Buddhists and are useful metacommunication guides on how to present religious doctrines and practices to a broader audience). This book explains with model clarity the Tibetan Buddhist tantric practices of the Mahayana and Vajrayana schools with a Madhyamaka or Middle Path emphasis: initiation and vows; deity, guru, and kriya yoga and visualization practices; highest yoga tantra; the generation and completion stages; and the physiology of esoteric practices involving the subtle body. Kirti Tsenshap Rinpoche’s Principles of Buddhist Tantra (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2012) (TS-3) explains the Middle Path of spiritual illumination in greater detail, whilst Lama Yeshe’s Becoming Vajrasattva: The Tantric Path of Purification (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2004) (TS-3) explains Vajrasattva purification and retreat practices.

Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy by Georg Feuerstein (Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1998). (TS-3). Feuerstein (1948-2012) was a major scholar on Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, and yoga. Tantra provides an accessible, clear introduction to Hindu Tantric cosmology, the major Hindu deities and their religious significance, the subtle body, and the practices of mantra, mudra, and yantra. The chapter ‘The Transmutation of Desire’ quotes from Kaula and Left Hand Path scriptural sources, discusses the panchamakara or 5 Ms (madya, mamsa, matsya, mudra and maithuna); and examines how the ritualised practice of maithuna or sexual intercourse differs from the Western Neo-Tantra derived from the Kama Sutra. Feuerstein dispels many of the myths and misunderstandings in Western contemporary occulture about the panchamakara and maithuna, in particular. Feuerstein also makes comparisons where relevant between Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist forms of Tantra, their religious practices, and cultural transmission.

Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics, and Power in the Study of Religion by Hugh B. Urban (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). (TS-4). Urban is a Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at Ohio State University and an expert on the historiography and sociology of Tantra. Tantra posits that Tantra arose through the interplay of Western and Indian encounters and the ‘medial’ battle between scholarship and the popular imagination, and political elite and social non-elite practice. Urban examines the contributions and debates over Sri Aurobindo, Swami Vivekananda, Mircea Eliade, Sir John Woodroffe, Chogyam Trungpa, Osho, Aleister Crowley, and the popularity of ‘sex magick’ in contemporary occulture. Urban concludes that although Tantra is an “imagined category” it can also be reimagined in new ways. This book is an academic theory-dense gateway to the historically contested Vamachara (Left Hand Path) and its influence on Western contemporary occulture.

Sinister Yogis by David Gordon White (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). (TS-4). White is professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Sinister Yogis examines the esoteric writings of yogis in Hindu Tantra, their development of siddhis (special powers), and cross-cultural encounters with the West. Yogis had a far more sinister reputation in Hindu religious and occult circles before Colonialist discovery, and the modern yoga and Neo-Tantra industries which White traces to B.K.S. Iyengar in the 1930s. White includes a wealth of information and translated texts on the ‘immanent’ Vamachara (Left Hand Path) that contextualises yogic practices involving inner space, apotheosis, self-willed death, and siddhis. Gordon’s earlier books on Tantra and Yoga are highly recommended.

The Taming of Demons: Violence and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism by Jacob P. Dalton (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). (TS-4). Dalton is Assistant Professor of Tibetan Studies at University of California, Berkeley. This scholarly study examines the Tibetan ‘Dark Ages’ period or “age of fragmentation” (842-986 AD) and how socio-political upheaval shaped the subsequent transmission of Tantric Buddhist doctrines in the 11^th and 12^th centuries. Dalton focuses on Tantric manuscripts found in Dunhuang that explore the taming of Rudra and other Tibetan Buddhist demons; Buddhist warfare doctrines; the 19^th century debate about early Tibetan blood sacrifice rites; and transgressive ethics in Vajrayana Buddhism. How early Tibetan Buddhists dealt with the “age of fragmentation” violence had profound effects on its cultural transmission as a religion.

Understanding Sarkar: The Indian Episteme, Macrohistory, and Transformative Knowledge by Sohail Inayatullah (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2002). (TS-5). Inayatullah is a Professor at Taiwan’s Tamkang University and an Adjunct Professor at Australia’s University of the Sunshine Coast. Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar (1921-1990) was an Indian spiritual philosopher, social activist, founder of Ananda Marga, and conceptualised Progressive Utilisation Theory (PROUT). Understanding Sarkar is the book-length version of Inayatullah’s PhD that situates Sarkar’s neo-humanist, macrohistorical contribution in the context of Hindu Vedic and Tantra frameworks as initiatory, transformative knowledge, and the Yugas as historical cycles. Sarkar’s social cycle and sadvipra leaders (“the spiritual intellectual”) offer a way for social and civilizational transformation in the Kali Yuga, which Inayatullah compares with Sri Aurobindo and other Indian thinkers. Inayatullah also compares Sarkar to other macrohistorians including Ssu-Ma Ch’ien, Khaldun, Marx, Pareto, Mosca, Comte, Vico, Hegel, Toynbee, Spengler, and others. Inayatullah concludes with an analysis of Sarker’s laws for social change, and contrasts this with Krishnamurti, Foucault, Galtung, Wallerstein, and other contemporary religious and socio-political thinkers. For a background on macrohistory see Johan Galtung and Sohail Inayatullah’s Macrohistory and Macrohistorians: Perspectives on Individual, Social, and Civilizational Change (Westport, CN: Praeger, 1997) (TS-4). Further Sarkar-related analysis can be found in Sohail Inayatullah and Jennifer Fitzgerald’s Transcending Boundaries: Prabhat Ranjath Sarkar’s Theories of Individual & Social Transformation (Maleney, Australia: Gurukula Press, 1999) (TS-3) and Sohail Inayatullah’s Situating Sarkar: Tantra, Macrohistory & Alternative Futures (Maleney, Australia: Gurukula Press, 1999) (TS-3).

The Teacher-Student Relationship by Jamgon Kongtrul The Great (Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion, 1999). (TS-3). The institutional challenges of Dakshinachara or Right Hand Path religions in the West often relate to abuses of power rooted in Vedic-derived brahmacharya or guru and wisdom teacher yoga. This excerpt from Tibetan teacher Jamgon Kongtrul’s Treasury of Knowledge provides a Vajrayana Buddhist perspective on the Master or Wisdom Teacher and the Student, the criteria for selection, dangers of the Vajrayana path, and the mind-to-mind transmission of Dharma teachings. Kongtrul’s text provides Dakshinachara insights into the X crisis in the Church of Satan and the Xem crisis in the Temple of Set, and into scandals involving Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, Chogyam Trungpa, Adi Da Samraj, and other guru-like teachers.

Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal by Jeffrey J. Kripal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). (TS-3). Kripal is the J. Newton Razor Professor and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University. Mutants and Mystics is an historical and thematic analysis of the ‘daemonic’ Super-Stories and mythemes in the occult, paranormal and superhero literature, and their interplay with ‘medial’ subcultures and the individual Quest for higher consciousness and self-actualisation (Divinization or self-godhood). Kripal’s framework distinguishes between Orientation (East-West cultural transmission and fusion of religion, and mythological framing); Alienation (the impact on consciousness of cosmos awareness, an expanded space-time continuum, and UFOlogy); Radiation (how the discovery of the electromagnetic spectrum and quantum physics led to speculation about metaphysical energy and ‘siddhis’ or special powers); and Mutation (Eros as a vehicle for evolutionary transformation). For Kripal, this is an initiatory dynamic in which the individual has Realization awareness (they are being ‘authored’ by contemporary culture) and then Authorization enactment and experiences (in which individuals ‘author’ their own Divinization using elements of Orientation, Alienation, Radiation, and Mutation mythemes). Kripal discusses many authors including: Charles Fort, Wilhelm Reich, Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, Michael Murphy, George Leonard, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Philip K. Dick, John Keel, the remote viewing debate, and how Gopi Krishna and Sri Aurobindo influenced Western contemporary occulture.

Coauthor Ben Eltham bought a copy of Michael Mann‘s Sources of Social Power: Volume 2 (1760-1914) to a meeting on Friday afternoon.

Mann’s book is a dense, scholarly study and comparative analysis of the modern nation-state system that blends economics, history, sociology, and political science.

It’s also the kind of life-long, indepth research that is now impossible to do under Australian research and publications metrics. Research administrators interpret these metrics as Taylorist outputs: they often don’t consider the long-term investment needed to develop such research programs.

Mann has just released Volume 3 (1890-1945); and Volume 4 (1945-2011) is due out at the end of November.

I have started a Good Reads book list here. The list is revealing in a cumulative sense about what I have read at different times of my life — and it will be updated in the coming weeks. Starting the list also prompted me to clean out my bookshelves. Major insight: I bought a lot of books during research for the dotcom (1995-2000) and post-September 11 (2001-2011) speculative bubbles. I also bought a lot of books whilst: (a) trying to decide on a PhD topic; (b) browsing Melbourne’s (dwindling) secondhand bookstores from the early 1990s to about 2009; and (c) working on various postgraduate degrees and research projects. I expect to do a similar cull once the PhD is done. Casualties: dotcom era media theory (a former life); September 11 anthologies; partisan books on United States counterterrorism; ‘emerging threat’ books that I am never going to read; and pop techno-futures. The half-lives of many of these memes is short. I also seem to have read a lot more business strategy books whilst in Swinburne University’s Strategic Foresight program and whilst at the Smart Internet Technology CRC than I remembered. I’ll be donating other parts of my personal library, such as Masters books on North Korea and genocide, to Melbourne-based university libraries.

Australia’s Gillard Government has released its Australia In The Asian Century white paper.

You can read Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s comments here. The Lowy Institute’s Sam Roggeveen has some ‘initial’ analysis here.

Ben Eltham has some comments on the white paper for New Matilda here. We’ll mention it in an academic paper planned for the Australian Journal of Political Science.

Yesterday, I had to cancel two papers/presentations with coauthor Ben Eltham at the International Studies Association‘s annual convention in San Francisco in April 2013. We both were unable to get access to research incentive and travel funding for the ISA conference. Some lessons:

1. Negotiate your initial contract carefully. Your university employer makes a valuation decision on your career if it gives you an Academic Level versus a HEW Administrator contract. Academic Level roles are governed by the Minimum Standards for Academic Levels (MSALs) and can access research incentive and conference travel funding. HEW Administrator roles often cannot and don’t have as clear pathways for funding access: they are not considered researchers even if they have an existing track record. These access and resource allocative differences can shape your career and create a ‘success to the successful’ dynamic that is needed to become an academic superstar (Sherwin Rosen). Get access to research funds in writing and in your contract: an email or verbal promise often won’t survive a staff change or a cost reduction initiative.

2. Negotiate some personal discretionary funds. A secret of successful professoriate is that they negotiate a salary loading component during their initial contract negotiations that are personal discretionary funds. This enables conference travel independent of budget, staff or organisational changes.

3. Situate the conference within a long-term research program. University senior management have a ‘value for money’ philosophy. They are interested in grant and journal publication outputs rather than conference papers. You need to show in your conference travel application how the conference will build your international visibility (an MSALs criterion); how the papers will lead to high-level journal publications; and how you will build networks that could become collaborative teams or mentors for competitive grant applications. Be strategic about this: don’t just go to an international conference because of the exotic locale. You are instead reframing the ‘value for money’ philosophy as a strategic level investment in your research career, and with up-front, observable research outputs. Know what the economic value added of your research program is to your university. Link your research program to university areas of distinctive specialisation or strategic investment priority. Use the pre-panel discussions to find out what other national and international researchers and research teams are doing in your area.

4. Get an institutional champion. Explain to your boss or supervisor why the conference is important to your research program and overall career. Get their advice and help in dealing with the institutional paperwork for conference travel funding. Having an institutional champion means you won’t feel isolated and you have someone who can help to make the ‘research case’ to senior decision-makers if needed. Your professional association might also have a conference travel fund that you should apply for.

5. Develop healthy psychological barriers from your organisation’s problems and self-narrative. The rejection of conference travel funding might relate to other factors such as budget austerity, misaligned incentives (which can involve decision rights and moral hazard), or a change in research funding priorities. You need to differentiate yourself and your research program from the “struggle” narrative (Dr. Jose M. Ramos) that occurs in organisational reform initiatives. You likely did not cause institutional debt or the failure to invest in the necessary infrastructure and strategic portfolios — and you can be part of the change management initiative. Don’t take the funding rejection personally: practice mindfulness techniques and try to be psychologically resilient.

6. Write the papers anyway. If you don’t get conference travel funding then reframe this as a self-limit to work around. Think like a New Wave (1978-84) musician: if you decide to self-fund the conference travel then ensure your financial affairs and taxation records are in order. I liked Ben Eltham’s advice: “Let’s use this energy to write write a couple of shit-hot peer-reviewed papers.”

I’m giving a PhD Confirmation talk as part of Monash University’s annual PSI Symposium on 26th October (at the 1:30-3:00pm session in HB.39, Caulfield campus).

You can download the slides here and read the 2011 initial PhD proposal here.

My thanks to Michael Janover, Pete Lentini, Ben MacQueen, Andy Butfoy and Luke Howie.

I opted for a ‘document format’ rather than the aesthetic communication wizardry of Nancy Duarte’s Slide:ology. Maybe next time.