Reasonably good: has some memorable images and some nice touches. The mechanics of the information battles are cleverly worked out: I particularly liked the Letter Bomb.

However, there are some weaknesses, like a cloyingly sentimental romantic subplot, and an antagonist who remains entirely offstage. Definitely has an enthusiastic-but-clumsy first novel feel.

Not bad overall. Review, review, Wikipedia.

Watching
Saw Fighting at the cinema. Newbie in New York takes up illegal bare-knuckle fighting and progresses through a series of fights.

Not the most original of concepts, but pretty well done. Liked the resolutely shabby depictions of cramped apartments in New York. Fight scenes are OK: quite realistically done without improbably balletic choreography.

The characters are handled well, with naturalistic dialogue and a great low-key performance from Terence Howard as a hustler on the very lowest rung of the hustle-ladder.

Worth seeing. Review.

Museums
Spent some time wandering around Hampstead Heath at the weekend, so dropped in on Kenwood House to the North of it. Free entry, not crowded, has a good selection of paintings: a nice Rembrandt self-portrait and Gainsborough, Reynolds and Turner represented.

Web
Video. Transforminators.

Find this somewhat disturbing: Anti-Moslem demo turns violent.

Grand Unified Theories of Schwarzeneggar, cutlery.

Economics. Randomize monetary policy? Inflation and UK debt. Solving the problem of the bonus culture.

Until the 1970s, the predominant institutional form for risk taking in financial institutions specialising in speculative trading was partnerships, with partners’ unlimited liability a central element... The partners had a highly developed sense of risk and their asymmetric exposure to it, in no small part because failure could also mean personal bankruptcy.

Partnerships have disappeared over time, and the predominant institutional structure in the financial industry is now the limited liability corporation...

The bonus culture is now an embedded market convention -- inextricably linked in many peoples’ minds with free and efficient markets. Attempts to dismantle the bonus culture are presented as attacks on this philosophy.