Secrecy and Coup d'Etats

A selection of news commentary, feature films, and unsubstantiated rumours.

A. In 1994, the scientist Jacques Vallee wrote a pretty convincing rebuttal of the so-called Philadelphia Experiment (the USS Eldridge in 1943 as a purported invisibility / teleportation experiment known in naval intelligence circles as Project Rainbow). Vallee who is now a venture capitalist was the basis for characters in Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1978).

B. The film director John Carpenter on where he gets his horror ideas from and his varied Hollywood career. In late life, he focuses on composing music, basketball, the news, video games, and dreaming. This illustrates his internal locus of control.

C. Quantitative hedge funds are falling off a cliff in China. One related market signal of this is that if you search for “quantitative trading” on Amazon, you will begin to find self-published books of sophisticated quant models that differ from the Wall Street consensus or what the trade press (John Wiley & Sons, McGraw-Hill, and Harriman House) all release for professional execution traders.

D. The artist Florentina Holzinger has stunned audiences at the Venice Biennale. I’ve not yet seen her shows. The news coverage reminds me of Stelarc.

E. Vanity Fair’s Daisy Shaw-Ellis profiles the enduring influence of Ancient Egypt on popular culture (she blames Napoleon) and on contemporary fashion.

F. A philosopher Rick Roderick lecture series on Friedrich Nietzsche. He explains the overman / ubermensch, self becoming, master and slave morality, the Antichrist, the Eternal Return, perspectivalism, genealogy, the influence on Michel Foucault, and how Nietzsche’s sister led his misinterpretation and misuse by Germany’s Nazi Party. I had flashbacks to undergraduate philosophy lectures (which covered Niezsche across several units) whilst hearing these talks, which are vintage early 1990s.

G. The Ewan McGregor film Rogue Trader (1999) on Nick Leeson and Barings Bank has been leaked online. This is peak late 1990s.

H. A BBC documentary on the 1956 Suez crisis.

I. John Frankenheimer’s coup d’etat film Seven Days In May (1954).

J. An interview with veteran investigative journalist Steve Coll.

K. Orson Welles and Peter O’Toole on William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.