What I Learnt Today

Warren Buffet, the ‘sage of Omaha’, is the world’s most famous investor, and currently the world’s third richest man. He is CEO and Chair of the Investment Company Martha Hathaway. His net worth is estimated at $47 billion, and he has said he plans to give 99% of that to good causes. Despite his immense wealth, he is well known for his frugal living.

He is the archetypal exponent of ‘value investing’. He only invests in companies where he understand the business, and where it has ‘sound fundamental’.Once he has purchased good stock, he tends to stick with it. He shuns frequent trading and speculative trend based ‘technical’ investing.

“A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful . . . Let me be clear on one point: I can’t predict the short-term movements of the stock market. I haven’t the faintest idea as to whether stocks will be higher or lower a month — or a year — from now. What is likely, however, is that the market will move higher, perhaps substantially so, well before either sentiment or the economy turns up. So, if you wait for the robins, spring will be over”

Although there are more than 50 books in print with his name in the title, he has written none of them. As far as we know what he thinks, it is gathered from the collective annual reports he presents to the lucky shareholders of Martha Hathaway.

This is a story that Buffet says was told to him by his mentor, Ben Graham.

“Let me tell you the story of the oil prospector who met St. Peter at the Pearly Gates.

When told his occupation, St. Peter said, “Oh, I’m really sorry. You seem to meet all the tests to get into heaven. But we’ve got a terrible problem. See that pen over there? That’s where we keep the oil prospectors waiting to get into heaven. And it’s filled—we haven’t got room for even one more.”

The oil prospector thought for a minute and said, “Would you mind if I just said four words to those folks?”

“I can’t see any harm in that,” said St. Pete.

So the old-timer cupped his hands and yelled out, “Oil discovered in hell!” Immediately, the oil prospectors wrenched the lock off the door of the pen and out they flew, flapping their wings as hard as they could for the lower regions.

“You know, that’s a pretty good trick,” St. Pete said. “Move in. The place is yours. You’ve got plenty of room.”

The old fellow scratched his head and said, “No. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go along with the rest of ’em. There may be some truth to that rumor after all.”

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Our friend and neighbour Mike leaves tomorrow to climb Mt McKinley, the highest mountain in North America and thus one of the ‘Seven Summits‘. It is a 36 hour journey from Brisbane to Anchorage, and then another flight next day to the small town of Talkeetna, at the base of the mountain.

At 6194 meters (20,320 feet), Denali, (the Inuit name for Mt McKinley) is a challenging climb. It has a significantly higher rise from base camp to summit then does Everest – so it is further to walk.  (The summit of Everest is 8850 meters, or 29,035 feet). Mike has been trekking up and down the hills around here carrying a 30kg pack for the last six months, so fitness should not be the problem. In Alaska he will also have to pull a sled – (as a vet, you think he’d take a husky).

About 1,300 climbers attempt the climb each year, of which about half make the summit. Most take between two and four weeks. 

There are three potential obstacles that might prevent the trek from reaching their goal.

• Mt McKinley is particularly challenging because of the severe arctic weather. April is very early in the season for an expedition to head out, (Mikes team will be the first this year), so the greatest threat will be winds stronger than 50km/hr and temperatures less than -50ºC, which may confine them to the tent for days at a time. They have only a three week window to get there and back again.

• Altitude sickness, or Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS) can strike climbers unpredictably –  you cannot know in advance who will be affected. It can occur at altitudes over 2400m (8000 feet). Remember, McKinley is over 6000 metres! The symptoms initially are similar to those of a hangover, or a case of the flu, with headaches, fatigue, nausea, dizziness, and sleep disturbance. Exertion makes things worse. Sometimes, acute mountain sickness will progress to more dangerous conditions, with fluid build up in the lungs (HAPE) or brain (HACE). 

  Altitude sickness can be prevented with ‘acclimatisation’ and gradual ascent. It is hard to become acclimatised to heights in Alstonville, so medications are sometimes used as prevention. Acetazolamide, or Diamox, is used to prevent AMS, and Nifedipine (Adalat) is used to prevent HACE. Ginko Biloba is sometimes taken to alleviate some early symptoms of AMS. Dexamethasone treats serious illness. Mike is carrying all of these (so he might not make it through customs!) The ultimate treatment is to descend.

• Crevasses are giant cracks in the glacier ice, and there are many glaciers to cross when climbing Mt McKinley. Crevasses are often not visible as snow can blow over the top, freeze, and form a thin snowbridge, which gives way when stepped on (a la Touching the Void). Basic gear therefore includes crampons and ice axes, and the team members are tied together with a rope, so that if one falls in to a crevasse the others can perform a ‘crevasse rescue’.

Mt McKinley has two summits, North and South, the South being the higher. In the early 1900’s, a number of people attempted unsuccessfully to climb the mountain.

Wikipedia reports

“In 1910, four locals, known as the Sourdough expedition, took up the challenge, despite a complete lack of climbing experience. They spent approximately three months on the mountain. However, their purported summit day was impressive: carrying a bag of doughnuts, each a thermos of hot chocolate, and a 14-foot spruce pole, two of them reached the North Summit, the lower of the two, and erected the pole.”

This story was doubted by all, until the first confirmed climbing of the South Summit in 1913 by Hudson Stuck and his party. Looking across, sure enough, they were able to see the Sourdough’s pole on the North Summit. 

We’ll be able to follow the progress of Mike’s trek using the Denali Expedition Dispatches.

You can keep an eye on the weather by selecting ‘Denali’ on this weather page.

As I write this, it is a refreshing -34 degrees (in Alaska, not here). Don’t forget your jumper, Mike. And your doughnuts and thermos of hot chocolate. Good luck and see you in May.

 

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On the night of April 11th 1961, 50 years ago, Lieutenant Yuri Gagarin of the Russian Air Force slept soundly.

His colleague, Gherman Titov, on ‘the reserve bench’ to take over if anything happened to Yuri, hardly slept at all.

On April 12th, Gagarin and Titoy had breakfast together, and then, dressed in his flight suit, Gagarin presented to work at Baikonur Cosmodrome’s Site 1, in Kazakhstan. Although he was an exceptional fighter pilot, he would have no control over the ship he was commanding this day. He would be sitting on top of the world’s biggest rocket, his destiny determined not by his flying skills but by the bomb that would be unleashed below him – 150 tons of highly explosive kerosene and liquid oxygen. He was bolted into the tiny Vostok space capsule, chatting calmly throughout to the engineering team and then via radio to Sergei Korolyov, the chief designer of the rocket, . Korolyov was so nervous he had to keep taking pills for his heart.

Noone knew for sure that a man could survive the acceleration forces that Gagarin was about to experience, nor that he would survive the conditions of space. Certainly, no-one could guarantee that this rocket would not explode uncontrollably as many of the test rockets had done. So Gagarin’s heart beat was monitored remotely throughout the launch.

His pulse never rose above 64. 64! My heart beat is higher than that even thinking about it.

Yuri Gagarin is the coolest person ever.

At launch, Gagarin was heard to say ‘oyekhali!’ – “off we go!”

Such was the power of the Vostok rocket, in just a few minutes he was the first man in space, and then the first man in orbit around the earth. In awe, he said “The Earth is blue. How wonderful. It is amazing.”

After one full orbit, retro-rockets slowed the capsule and it fell back into Russia. Gagarin ejected at a height of 7km, as planned, and parachuted to earth separated from the space craft. It is said that he scared the life out of the peasant farmer and daughter at whose farm he landed. The entire flight took 108 minutes.

There is no doubt that Yuri Gagarin had ‘the right stuff’. He was the son of a peasant farmer who rose by merit through the Russian military to be one of 20 cosmonauts.

He was assessed by the air force doctor in 1960 as follows:

“Modest; embarrasses when his humor gets a little too racy; high degree of intellectual development evident in Yuriy; fantastic memory; distinguishes himself from his colleagues by his sharp and far-ranging sense of attention to his surroundings; a well-developed imagination; quick reactions; persevering, prepares himself painstakingly for his activities and training exercises, handles celestial mechanics and mathematical formulae with ease as well as excels in higher mathematics; does not feel constrained when he has to defend his point of view if he considers himself right; appears that he understands life better than a lot of his friends.”

He was the obvious candidate to be chosen for the first space flight.

After the flight, Yuri Gagarin became the most famous man in the world. He was considered too ‘valuable’ to fly as a cosmonaut again, and retrained as a fighter pilot. Unfortunately, and somewhat ironically, he died in a crash on a routine training flight in 1968.

Gizmodo today has a special tribute to Yuri Gagarin., which includes this video of the launch.

 

 

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Computers are meant to make life easier, (although I would agree that it often doesn’t feel like that).

‘Power users’ often make use of small applications that enable them to handle repetitious and common tasks with much less work.

Lifehacker recently listed their top 10 micro-utilities for both Windows and Mac.

These applications might be a shortcut on your path to “Power-user-dom’.

Any other suggestions? Let us know in the comments.

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Dave, my friend the muso doctor, tells me that you can play any pop song ever written if you use the 1 5 6m 4 (I V vi IV) Chord Progression. 

Of course, I dont know what this means, so he demonstrated using Garage Band on the iPad in C major using the chords C G Am F.

You can see how frequently this chord progression is used by watching this video by Benny Davis, from the band Axis of Awesome. This was first performed at the 2006 Sydney University Arts Revue: ‘The Complete History of Everything That Ever Happened Ever. On Ice. On Fire.’

Now, go and write us a pop song.

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