Todos se han de haber preguntado alguna vez en su vida ¿qué es lo que hace Santa cuando estamos dormidos?, pues aquí les presentamos una de las tantas hipótesis que existen.

Las ilustraciones son hechas por Matthew Inman.

Vía SmilePanic

e.me

Great. Let’s party like it’s 2007 all over again:

Dec. 15 (Bloomberg) — The three largest U.S. banks are preparing for a comeback in the market for collateralized debt obligations backed by high-yield, high-risk loans, two years after issuance tumbled when credit markets seized up.

JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. are approaching managers of leveraged loans to offer terms for new collateralized loan obligations following a record rally this year in the debt, according to people familiar with the discussions who declined to be identified because the talks are private. The highest-rated portions of CLOs have climbed to 89 cents on the dollar from a record low of 69 cents in April, according to Morgan Stanley data.

via JPMorgan Poised to Lead CLO Comeback After Record Loan Rally – Bloomberg.com.

This, along with the news the Europeans want to kick-start securitization again shows we have learned nothing, but like Scott Wieland (who I enjoy listening to immensely) trying to kick the heroin habit, it’s just so hard.

How many times are we going to go to rehab to kick our habit of wanting a cheap liquidity fix? The Betty Ford Clinic with its rehab program of deflation, risk aversion, and illiquidity remains open to receive us…

Para ver el capítulo 1 clica aquí.

Bueno, todos sabéis (o deberíais) que nuestro querido ex-alcalde (personalmente infamoso por la nefasta normativa de cinismo) bailó la batucada por Paseo de Gracia al son de Carlinhos Brown, mientras se planteaban de quitarles el CCCB al famoso Festival, por suerte, una encuestas (si queréis saber la verdad jamás os fiéis de una encuesta) demostraron que la gente se gastaba la pasta gansa viniendo a Barcelona por el festival, con lo que los peseteros de los políticos (supeditados a gestionar el parque temático de los empresarios hoteleros) hicieron la vista gorda. A mí que me expliquen como se puede montar una batucada por Paseo de Gracia, tener al Clos sudando la camiseta dando pena y luego prohibir la música callejera en Ciutat Vella. Por suerte al Clos lo extraditaron a Turquía… aunque nos dejaron al Hereu que como su fatídico nombre indica heredó la política de tocar los huevos, eso sí, más disimuladamente y sin confrontación directa (recordamos la batalla campal que se organizó con la gestión del botellón en barcelona?) Fora la normativa de civisme!

Well, you probably don’t know it, but Barcelona has become a non welcoming place for skateboarding, they say we brake things… I say what about cars?

This is my personal version of an old poster of 1979 (the year I was born) by Mariscal.  For thos who don’t speak Catalan, Bar means Bar, Cel means Sky and Ona means Wave…

Mi visión personal del viejo póster de 1979 de Javier Mariscal, por supuesto es una crítica explícita a las políticas y realidades entorno a Barcelona, han pasado los felices años post-olímpicos y mientras construyen barbaridades como el Hotel Vela (ahí está el espigón que dejará a los surfers sin olas) Barcelona se vende al turismo.

Giancarlo Fisichella erobert seine 4. Pole-Position und die erste überhaupt für Force India im Qualifying für den morgigen Grand Prix von Belgien in Spa-Francorchamps. Wie zuletzt beim GP von Australien 2005 eine italienische Frontreihe mit Jarno Trulli auf P2. In den ersten drei Startreihen fünf Fahrer, die ihren Teamkollegen dank der grösseren Erfahrung schlugen.

In den Top 6 tauchen 5 Fahrer mit mehr als 150 Grand Prix-Starts auf, auch der Beste der jungen Garde, Robert Kubica (P5), unterlag seinem erfahreneren Teamkollegen:

1. Giancarlo Fisichella, 225 GPs
2. Jarno Trulli, 213 GPs
3. Nick Heidfeld, 163 GPs
4. Rubens Barrichello, 282 GPs
5. Robert Kubica, 51 GPs
6. Kimi Räikkönen, 151 GPs

Erste Sieger des Wochenendes gibt es auch zu vermelden:

- Kyle Busch gewann Freitagabend das erste NASCAR Camping World Truck Series-Rennen am Chicagoland Speedway, IndyCars und Indy Lights beginnen ihr Training und gehen heute Abend an den Start. Ryan Briscoe hat bei den IndyCars die Pole inne vor Teamkollege Helio Castroneves.

- Erster rein portugiesischer Sieg in der GP2 durch Alvaro Parente und Ocean Racing Team. Nico Hülkenberg beute mit P2 seine Führung in der Meisterschaft aus, Lucas di Grassi kletterte ebenfalls aufs Podest. Die weiterene Fahrer in de Top 10: 4. Maldonado, 5. Nunes, 6. Rodriguez, 7. van der Garde, 8. Kobayashi, 9. Mortara, 10. Clos. Übler Crash in Eau Rouge von Stefano Coletti.

- J.R. Hildebrand wird mit einem fünften Platz Nachfolger von Raphael Matos als Indy Lights Champion. Das Rennen am Chicagoland Speedway gewann Daniel Herrington.

P.S. Alle Rennberichte ab Dienstag unter www.P1Mag.de kostenlos downloadbar.

Giancarlo Fisichella scored his 4th career pole position and the first ever for Force India during qualifying for tommorrow’s Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps. As back at the Australian GP in 2005 it’s an all-Itallian front row with Jarno Trulli lining up alongside on the grid. Overall the qualifying result seemed to be result of experience of youth.

In the top six we find the more experienced drivers with more than 150 Grand Prix starts beating their younger team-mates:

1. Giancarlo Fisichella, 225 GPs
2. Jarno Trulli, 213 GPs
3. Nick Heidfeld, 163 GPs
4. Rubens Barrichello, 282 GPs
5. Robert Kubica, 51 GPs
6. Kimi Räikkönen, 151 GPs

Racing action:

- Kyle Busch won the first ever NASCAR Camping World Truck Series at Chicagoland Speedway on Friday night, IndyCars and Indy Lights are up later today. Ryan Briscoe and Helio Castroneves got the front row positions for the IndyCar race on Saturday night.

- First all-Portuguese win in GP2 at Spa with Alvaro Parente, winning the feature race for Ocean Racing Team ahead of Nico Hülkenberg and Lucas di Grassi. Further positions: 4. Maldonado, 5. Nunes, 6. Rodriguez, 7. van der Garde, 8. Kobayashi, 9. Mortara, 10. Clos. Bad crash in Eau Rouge by Stefano Coletti.

- Jr. Hildebrand follows Raphal Matos as Indy Lights Champion after scoring a 5th place at Chicagoland Speedway. Daniel Herrington won the race.

P.S. All race reports on free download at www.P1Mag.de on Tuesday.

In my last post I wrote that Scheme lets you extend the base language in powerful ways. In this post I’ll give you a concrete example of such an extension: TinyClos.

TinyClos is a minimal implementation in Scheme of Common Lisp’s object system CLOS. CLOS is different in many ways from the object systems of C++ and Java that most of us are familiar with. Two big differences are multiple dispatch and open classes.

Before I explain what multiple dispatch is I must explain what dispatch refers to. When you make a function call in any language, the compiler or language runtime must figure out which function the call refers to. This is called binding the function to an implementation. In some languages binding always occurs at compile time, in others always at runtime, and in still others sometimes at runtime and sometimes at compile time.

Some languages, such as C++, allow you to declare many functions with the same name as long as they have different parameter lists. Not only the name of the function but also the number of arguments and their types are used when binding. This is called overloading in C++ terminology. However, overloading is a compile-time mechanism, and as such only looks at the static types of the arguments. If you want to bind the call based on the run-time type of an object you have to make the function virtual.

However, virtual functions in C++ (and most other mainstream languages) only take the run-time type of the first parameter into account–the “this” pointer. This is called single dispatch, because it dispatches the call based on a single argument. As you can probably guess by now, multiple dispatch is when the run-time types of multiple arguments is used for binding. In other words, multiple dispatch is like overloading but with run-time types.

This is immensely useful in some situations, because you can decide what to do based on combinations of types, without having to sprinkle your code with instance-of tests or resorting to ugly work-arounds like the visitor pattern. For instance, to express that anti-aircraft units can attack air units but not tanks or other units types, I just specify a method can-fire-at? for the type combination (AirDefenseUnit, AirUnit) and another one for (AirDefenseUnit, Unit). The method with the most specific matching argument list will be selected, at run time.

Here’s another simple example in the syntax Bjarne Stroustrup wants for C++ (not included in the coming update of the standard):

bool canShareHex(virtual Unit u1, virtual Unit u2) {
  return true;
}
bool canShareHex(virtual GroundUnit u1, virtual GroundUnit u2) {
  return false;
}
bool canShareHex(virtual AirUnit u1, virtual AirUnit u2) {
  return false;
}
bool canShareHex(virtual SeaUnit u1, virtual SeaUnit u2) {
  return false;
}

In other words, GroundUnits can share hex with all units but other GroundUnits. This example also demonstrates the other feature I wanted to write about: open class extensions. As you can see above, the methods were not part of a class but added separately. This too is very useful, because you can’t always anticipate what people may want to do with your classes, and sometimes it’s impractical to cram everything into one class.

For example, let’s say you are writing a compiler and define classes for different kinds of expressions, like addition and multiplication and so on, reflecting the tree structure of arithmetic expressions. Since the set of operations (optimizations) you may want to perform on the tree is open ended, you wouldn’t want to make them all methods of the tree classes. It would be much cleaner to define each optimization separately, while still dispatching on the actual run-time type(s) of the tree nodes.

With Scheme, I could just download TinyClos and start using these features. They can be compiled efficiently too, though I’m not sure they are in Chicken. Knowing that it can be solved should the need arise is reassuring, though.

Further reading:

• An efficient implementation of open multimethods for C++: www.research.att.com/~bs/multimethods.pdf
• Multijava, a version of Java extended with multiple dispatch: ftp://ftp.cs.iastate.edu/pub/techreports/TR04-01/TR.pdf

This Friday Total Beverage will be doing an online and in-store tasting as part of TasteLive.com. Follow along as we taste the full line up of wines from Clos LaChance.

The Walt Disney Company has announced that “Soarin’”, the attraction that “flew” in for the Happiest Celebration on Earth, is going to be shut down. Disney says that it was meant to be removed before the start of their 2009 campaign, “What Will You Celebrate?” The attraction is closing April 5, and will be replaced with another attraction that has not yet been specified. Disney says that although Soarin’ is one of their most popular attractions, with up to 120 minute wait times, they are still demolishing it to keep up with their current promotion/campaign.

For more information, click here.

As I watch conditions get rapidly worse out our windows, I have decided to close early today.

I don’t look forward to the drive home and would rather do it in a little bit of light as opposed to the dark.

We will be closed as of 1pm today.

Sorry for any inconvenience this causes anyone.

MORALE: on les mène par le bout…

PUERTA PLATA, République Dominicaine, départ jeudi 15 janvier.