Things you always wanted to know the answer to [Vol. 2]
Discussion
MissChief said:
mattdaniels said:
No, they didn't have to buy anything beforehand. Google "shorting".
So why did they need the money from everyone then?I am not an expert on 80s open-outcry commodity trading floors but in reality Winthorpe would only be able to trade on behalf of the bank - not for himself/him+others. Valentine would absolutely not be able to trade without some credentials so that's just poetic license.
I think it would be hard for Joe Public to swallow that you can make these huge speculative trades without putting up any capital and it was better to have Coleman and Ophelia beneficiaries too from a plot perspective.
It wouldn't be such a good story if Winthorpe just made the money for himself - it's better for them all to have skin in the game.
VladD said:
walm said:
...skin in the game.
I guy I used to work with had the book of that title on his desk for years. Given that he was a huge football fan I always assumed it was a book about racism in football and I'd never heard the term in regard to business.(Although it wasn't.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_in_the_game_%28p...
ghamer said:
What exactly was Hitler's beef with the Jewish people?
I'm not sure if he had any particular reason to hate them, or he just needed someone and they suited him - he picked on other minorities as well of course, but they were the biggest group. In order to draw people to him and his cause he created a common enemy - it gave people someone to blame for their woes in life - he tapped age old prejudices about them - greed and dishonesty etc and exploited them - "look you're poor and hungry because the Jew took all the money and bread".
Funkycoldribena said:
A lot of people seem to think the word "lose" is spelt "loose",what happens when they come to spell the actual word "loose"?
They probably just assume it's spelt the same way like you might "wind your clock whilst outside the wind blows" or something like that.I'm quite horribly dyslexic, really - properly diagnosed and all that. I would have spelt 'lose' as 'loose' until about my mid 20's. I didn't know 'too' existed, just assumed 'to' worked for both and spelt Weather, Weather, whether I meant whether or Weather.
P-Jay said:
Funkycoldribena said:
A lot of people seem to think the word "lose" is spelt "loose",what happens when they come to spell the actual word "loose"?
They probably just assume it's spelt the same way like you might "wind your clock whilst outside the wind blows" or something like that.I'm quite horribly dyslexic, really - properly diagnosed and all that. I would have spelt 'lose' as 'loose' until about my mid 20's. I didn't know 'too' existed, just assumed 'to' worked for both and spelt Weather, Weather, whether I meant whether or Weather.
goldblum said:
ghamer said:
What exactly was Hitler's beef with the Jewish people?
He felt their presence as a race in Germany weakened the German (Aryan) bloodstock and said they were like a disease upon the German people.RobinBanks said:
goldblum said:
ghamer said:
What exactly was Hitler's beef with the Jewish people?
He felt their presence as a race in Germany weakened the German (Aryan) bloodstock and said they were like a disease upon the German people.McAndy said:
Why are green screens green? I.e. what makes the colour more suitable than another for applying CGI over?
They aren't always greenFill your boots:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_key
furtive said:
Cracking: thanks! VladD said:
If time slows down as you approach the speed of light, does that mean that light particles/waves are frozen in time and are exactly as the were at the big bang or even still at the big bang?
You are talking about time dilation but have it a little confused.Time doesn't slow down FOR YOU at high speeds.
But for someone else watching your wrist watch as you cruise past at 0.99c, it will be going slower than their wrist watch. (And theirs will look slow compared with yours.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation
However, you can observe things that are very old as long as they are far enough away.
So a quasar 12.9 billion light years away will let us see photons from a period of time close to the big bang.
(Well... 770 million years after it: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2012/dec/...)
walm said:
VladD said:
If time slows down as you approach the speed of light, does that mean that light particles/waves are frozen in time and are exactly as the were at the big bang or even still at the big bang?
You are talking about time dilation but have it a little confused.Time doesn't slow down FOR YOU at high speeds.
But for someone else watching your wrist watch as you cruise past at 0.99c, it will be going slower than their wrist watch. (And theirs will look slow compared with yours.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation
However, you can observe things that are very old as long as they are far enough away.
So a quasar 12.9 billion light years away will let us see photons from a period of time close to the big bang.
(Well... 770 million years after it: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2012/dec/...)
ghamer said:
What exactly was Hitler's beef with the Jewish people?
The Jewish people have been the target for race hate for thousands of years, often getting the blame when people simply need someone to blame.It is also believed that Hitler blamed the Jews in Austria for his own problems in early life, and was convinced that some Jewish relatives (it is believed he was actually 1/4 Jewish - through Jewish grandparents I think) would rather he starve to death than help him.
But its an easily definable and quantifiable enemy - the largely peaceful Jews are easy to identify and demonise, and a mob likes nothing better than a weakling to pick on. I think he just used them to unify a mob behind him to bring him to power. Give the people someone to hate, and they'll follow you.
TTmonkey said:
But its an easily definable and quantifiable enemy - the largely peaceful Jews are easy to identify and demonise,
That's the strange thing though. Some Jews are easily identifiable as such, but most Jews I've known have nothing in common with each other. Anti Semites must be in constant danger of liking people they shouldn't.How can anyone possibly generalise about a group that includes, for example) Nigella Lawson, Felicity Kendal, Einstein and Bob Dylan? The idea of them getting together in an international conspiracy is like a Mitchell and Webb sketch.
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