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Uh guys? Does anyone remember what ELSE was going on around the end of April, 2011 when President Obama released his long form birth certificate? No?The White House Correspondent’s Dinner-AND-The Abbottabad Raid in Pakistan to kill Osama Bin Laden.When the final D-Day and H-Hour for the raid were decided, the White House took steps to distract national and international attention away from the possibility of finding out that the raid was about to take place. They made sure to avoid the “Dominos” effect - drawing attention to the fact that something was brewing at the White House due to the large number of pizzas ordered from one place - by spreading the orders around to different pizza places and staggering the delivery times. They let the word get out that there was a plumbing issue due to be fixed that first weekend in May and cancelled White House tours. Then President Obama released his “long form” birth certificate. All this was to turn attention away from the goings on that weekend at the White House.I was saying to my son that it was like he threw a piece of raw meat to the press and said “Look over there.” My son, aged 13, said, “No, it was like he said ‘Look at that cloud over there.’ Everyone knew that it would be white and puffy but they had to take a look anyway.”At the White House Correspondents dinner comedian Seth Myers joked that his whole routine was supposed to be based on the President’s birth certificate and now he had very little material to work with.The main reason that President Obama released his birth certificate information when he did was so that he could use it as the material in his White House Correspondent’s Dinner routine poking fun at Donald Trump. The White House was betting that it would be the lead on the news all weekend and would be an effective distraction from what was really going on at the White House and the Pentagon. The speech is really funny and worth watching.The next day, the mission to attack the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad began.As several people who were present at the dinner that evening said later, they would not want to play poker against Barack Obama. He really knows how to hold his cards close.So, on one hand, the CIA was able to track down Osama bin Laden and the US Navy Seals were able to successfully attack his compound and bring him to justice for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. On the other hand, the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner is probably what inspired Donald Trump to run for president and look where that got us.

First, an anecdote (Mikhail Rozhkov kindly reminded me of that).— Have you heard that Ivanov won a thousand in a game of chess?— Sure thing. But it was Rabinovich, not Ivanov. It was a game of poker, not a game of chess. It was ten thousand and not one thousand. And, well, he lost, not won.It was neither Stalin, nor the Trans-Siberian, nor a ruler, nor a finger.The Trans-Siberian Railway was built in 1898–1904 when young Iosif, son of Vissarion the shoemaker from the town of Gori in Georgia/Sakartvelo, was a mere priest school (seminary) student in Tiflis (Tbilisi), expelled in 1899. Even before the expulsion from the seminary, in 1898, with otherwise commendable effort he became a radical Marxist, which apparently was the reason to kick him out of school where he was among the best students.MORE DETAILS ON HOW STALIN BECAME STALIN (skip for further railway story)After expulsion Iosif was a cram teacher for a short time, later becoming a racketeer nicknamed Kóba, and was involved in criminal and revolutionary activities around Trans-Caucasian area and other parts of Russian Empire that was almost at the peak of its might and development. For his Marxist undoings he needed a convincingly sounding pseudonym too, so then, about 1902 or so, he started to call himself Iosif Stalin. Nevertheless, he allowed his old and most trustworthy friends to call him Koba in private talks, as a reminder of turbulent youth.Stalin’s real family name was Dzhugashvili (as well as Lenin was originally Ul'yanov and Lev Trotsky was Léiba Bronshtéin) and that was mentioned in encyclopedias and official biographies of the period. In the first years after the 1917 revolution Iosif Dzhugashvili became Iosif Stalin officially. He signed as I. Stalin, his Soviet domestic passport, the Party Card and other IDs contained that surname, but his autobiographic forms that were filled as a formality, but nevertheless filled, probably by his long-time — and legendary — secretary and immediate aide Andréy Poskrébyshev, likely had the original surname as well.His two sons had different surnames — Yakov Dzhugashvili, from the first wife (1907–1943; his Soviet domestic passport had 1908 as a birth year for whatever reason) and Vasily Stalin, from the second wife (1921–1962). That pretty much goes in line with Russian bureaucratic tradition to “make it smooth in papers”. After Iosif Stalin’s death Vasily was jailed. After the final release from jail in 1961 he was officially banned from living in Moscow and Georgia, and prohibited from using the surname Stalin, so he died shortly as Vasily Iosifovich Dzhugashvili.The Trans-Siberian was never imagined as a straight line. It was and is rather... not straight, because something was actually learned during the preceding 50 years of rapid railway development in Russian Empire and the rest of the world. Look at this map (in Russian), see a thin red line and think yourself if it is ruler-straight. I’d say no, even though due to scale the line here is significantly smoother than the railway is in reality.It is true though that there really are ruler-straight stretches there, between Ishím and Omsk, and between Barábinsk and Nóvosibírsk (as well as some other that are much shorter). They are there because it’s a flat steppe with solid enough ground to really make a straight line out of any kind of road.Now to the ruler story. It has to do with the third ever (and the second public) railway in Russia, between St. Petersburg (then capital) and Moscow.WHY RUSSIAN RAILWAYS USE A DIFFERENT GAUGE THAN THE REST OF THE WORLDThe first public line was a not quite practical 6 ft (1829 mm) gauge stretch between St. Petersburg and Tsárskoye Seló that was rather a proof of concept built in 1836–37 (later standardized), while the St. Petersburg — Moscow line was built in 1843–1851. The latter, and all subsequent regular-gauge Russian railways, had a gauge of precisely five feet, which makes 1524 millimeters. Later, in Soviet times, it was, mostly for simplicity in fully metricated country, narrowed down to 1520 mm everywhere except Finland (which proclaimed independence on December 6, 1917) and Estonia (which was independent in 1918–1940, and is since 1991) during the construction of new lines and repair of existing ones. It has nothing to do with another popular legend of a “pizzle length” wider Russian gauge, or a “brilliant strategic plan to hinder possible foreign invasion” — it was that just the 5 ft gauge was at the time considered more practical than a 6 ft gauge and easier to design and use than a European not-yet-standard 4’ 8½” (1435 mm) gauge. The difference between 1520 and 1524 millimetres is insignificant, yet it adds some to wear of wheels and rails. The modern Allegro EMU train (based on Alstom Pendolino) that runs between St. Petersburg and Helsinki is calibrated for 1522 millimetres — exactly between 5 feet and 1520 millimetres.The legend says that the emperor Nicholas the First just drew a straight line between St. Petersburg and Moscow on a map and in one place a royal fingernail made an obstacle to the royal pencil. Wrong, and I'll explain why.It was NOT an order of the emperor Nicholas the First to build it ruler-straight, it was a consensus among various officials that the most important (then, and, to a degree, now) railway of Russia was to be built as short as possible — and the most basic school geometry teaches us that the shortest way from point A to point B is a straight line.Of course that consensus had to be and eventually was approved by the emperor who was quite an engineer himself, but there was no emperor’s ruler in the real story. Nicholas the First really said that the railway should be built as a direct line, but he, for whatever reason, meant that it should not be routed through Velíkiy Nóvgorod, then a place much more important economically than it is today, despite being a huge tourist attraction. Yet, the railway is perfectly straight between Tósno and Chúdovo, right along the engineer’s ruler.Pavel Melnikov, who is considered (and actually was) the father and godfather of Russian railways (and not only Russian — his heritage can be found everywhere in the world in sleeper cars, for example, as his concepts were very thoughtful — enough so to live until modern days in 3rd and 2nd class sleepers, for instance), seriously objected the straightness of that line from purely engineering standpoint, but had less administrative power than those who thought rulers. Conclusion: bureaucrats+geometry=not good.Moreover, that “finger” near the village Veréb’ye appeared later, when Nicholas the First was long dead, in 1877 to 1881. By the way, Pavel Melnikov retired in 1872 and died in 1880 as a private person at his manor in Lyuban’, not far from that rail line — although I surmise that he gave some advice to actual designers of the “finger” curve.It happened because there was a gradient too steep for weak steam engines of the era — but, again, it took so long because… bureaucracy. Here’s another map in Russian with a thin red line.The red line here is that “finger” that did exist between 1881 and 2001, and the story appeared no earlier than in 1910s. The gray line is now again the main route (tracks along the red line were disassembled and now only traces of former infrastructure remain — to much dismay of locals who are deprived of a railway at their doorstep since then), and it poses no problem for modern electric locomotives and EMUs, diesel-electric engines, and even the remaining steam engines. You rarely see a steam engine on Russian railways after the late 1960s.STILL, TO TAKE A RIDE ON A STEAM-DRIVEN TRAIN IN RUSSIA IS EASY AND CHEAP EVEN IN THE 21st CENTURYApparently you can get a steam ride between Bologóe — the middle of the St. Petersburg-Moscow line — and Ostáshkov, an old town near the lake Seligér. It runs every Saturday at 9:25 in the morning from Bologoe (3 hours 24 minutes journey) and back after dinner at 3:07 p.m. from Ostashkov (3 hours 14 minutes journey).Contrary to other steam rides, that one is a commuter, tickets are sold for the regular price of 295 rubles — about US$4.50/€4.10 as of September 2019 (half price or free of charge for those eligible of social discounts). On other days this train runs under regular diesel, and it goes further to/from Velíkie Lúki under diesel as well. When under steam, the train has a water-refilling stopover at Kuzhénkino station where the old station building and infrastructure were specially restored, and there is some kind of small guided tour while the locomotive gets its water supply refilled. Thanks to Pavel Novikov for the information.Also there are some joyrides in and around Moscow, and some other steam events, but those, contrary to that regular train, have to be specially booked and cost like a tourist attraction rather than like a regular commute. Anyway, we have less steam engine stuff going on than the UK does.Anyway, even the steam engines that are used for historical rides, being powerful and originally made in the 1940s–1950s, can easily traverse gradients like that. Even more so because in that particular place it was made less steep: railway, locomotive and construction technologies made a giant leap during the 150 years that passed between the grand opening of that railway and reinstating it along the original route.THE “RULER-STRAIGHT” RAILWAY WAS NEVER RULER-STRAIGHTAnother really noticeable curve is between Rédkino and Kuz’mínka stations to the south-east from Tver’. There was no royal finger either but a huge bog that was later turned into a peat mine. Laying the railway tracks right across it is hard enough even in the 21st century, let alone in the middle of the 19th with the most primitive technology and unassisted manual labor that prevailed during the construction of that track (I’m a lifetime hater of Nikolay Nekrásov’s poem “The Railway” about the atrocities and disasters of that construction… because I had to learn it all by heart in the 6th grade and I never liked the style so I failed to do it on time and was in trouble about that).So much for distorted urban legends…

Elon Musk. No other person in the automotive industry today seems as contentious.With legions of fans and detractors, is this entrepreneur a true automotive visionary or merely an electric-vehicle-peddling charlatan? Is he a genius or is he crazy? In just the last couple months, they finally appear to have sorted out the major woes plaguing Tesla Model 3 production, but Musk just had to give up being chairman following a run-in with the SEC over a tweet about taking the company private.What’s Normal?Typically in a situation like this in which a public company was publicizing that they were considering a major corporate action, management would contact the listing exchange and ask for a trading halt so that they could make the appropriate announcement and let the markets digest the information in an orderly fashion before trading resumes. At roughly the same time, the company typically files form 8-K with the SEC, which is intended to notify investors of a significant event.Musk’s tweet came during market hours with no halt requested until the NASDAQ exchange requested it from the company.The 8-K is posted publicly, allowing the investing public to consider all of the important details of the event and they may include financial statements, press releases, data tables and any other information required to allow the markets to understand the event and decide whether the event should affect the price of the shares.Tesla – like all companies – routinely files form 8-K, even for relatively mundane occurrences like a change in a management position, a change in the terms of company debt or the details of a press release, but so far, no form 8-K seems to have been filed yet regarding the proposed private buyout.Did Musk Violate Securities Laws?In a word, no. At least it doesn’t seem that way, though he is dancing pretty close to that fire.The SEC decided all the way back in 2013 that social media was a legitimate way for public companies to disseminate information, provided the company formally notifies investors where information will be available. Tesla has complied with these guidelines.There has been much speculation about the phrase “funding secured” all the way down to parsing the semantics of the word “secured” instead of “confirmed” or “committed”, but at the time being, there’s no indication that Musk said anything that is materially false - which would be a violation of securities laws.The laws are generally meant to prohibit “pump and dump” schemes, usually in small stocks, in which an investor with an existing position intentionally disseminates false information and then uses the resulting market reaction to liquidate that position at favorable prices.CNBC commentator and ex-hedge fund manager Jim Cramer – incidentally, no stranger himself to claims of market manipulation – pointed out on Wednesday that in this case “there was no dump.” That is, Musk did not use the rally to sell any of his shares in the company.Merry PranksterThe notoriously confident Musk even continued to taunt those with short positions in Tesla with a prank aimed at famous short seller David Einhorn in which he mailed the hedge-fund manager a box of actual short pants.Einhorn and his firm, Greenlight Capital are probably best known for their outstanding returns during the financial crisis when they correctly surmised that several major investment banks were in trouble and made outsized profits with short positions in those banks.Einhorn, himself a clever individual and semi-pro poker player who often donates his winnings to charity, got in a dig of his own when he replied via Twitter that the shorts “did come with some manufacturing defects,” an obvious reference to reports that Tesla’s Model 3s were being assembled hastily in the push to ramp up production and were consequently of lower quality than the company’s previous Model S and Model X.In a poker analogy, the fact that Musk is light-heartedly joking about the deal and its potential negative effects on short-sellers of the stock would seem to imply that he’s holding a great hand that he’s not showing yet.Or of course it could also be a bluff.Is the Financing “Secured”?That’s the million dollar question. (Actually, it’s the 72 billion dollar question.)Funding for the proposed deal does not have to involve a single buyer or lender committing the full $72 billion dollars. ($72 billion is an estimate, as the actual number of shares involved depends on the exercise of outstanding company stock options and the conversion of convertible debt, but it’s a reasonably close figure.) Given Tesla’s relatively poor credit ratings, a traditional leveraged buyout is unlikely, but there are other ways to make the deal happen.Musk has explained that existing shareholders would be given the choice to tender their shares for $420 in cash, or retain ownership of the same equity stake in a private structure.Tesla would need a majority shareholder vote to approve any deal. If 100% of existing shareholders chose to retain their stakes in a private entity, the deal could theoretically be done for zero dollars in cash. Musk himself owns approximately 20% of shares and he has stated his intention to retain that position even if the company is taken private. As of the most recent 13-F filings, institutions own another 63% of shares, with the top five holders combining for ownership of approximately 33%. That doesn’t include the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund, which it was announced this week has acquired almost 5% of Tesla on the open market.In short, Musk would only need the agreement of a handful of existing shareholders, along with their commitment to purchase any tendered shares to gain a majority and truthfully say the financing was “secured.”This is speculation of course, as Tesla and Musk have been tight-lipped so far about the details of their plan. To continue the poker analogy, Musk just shoved a big pile of chips into the middle and dared everyone at the table to make the call. Betting against him certainly hasn’t worked in the past but we’ll have to wait and see for a bit longer to find out how this hand turns out.The only thing we know for sure is that it will be interesting.