Mosquito State

You following the primaries?

-Yeah. Hillary Clinton's not man enough to be president.

And this Obama guy is?

-Jenn, meet Beau, our senior vice president.

Pleasure, pleasure.

Happy Birthday.

-It's not for a couple more days, but thanks.

-I know you from your college-football days.

I spent some time in the Bay Area.

You were quite a thing at Stanford.

-Making me sound like a has-been.

No, that's not what I meant.

- My God. - I could've gone pro.

- Yeah? - Football or baseball.

Edward offered me more, so...

Whoa, is that the iPhone?

I got mine, too.

This is a prototype.

Not your ordinary iPhone.

Gift from Edward. - Ooh, wow.

Dickie.

What a surprise.

- No shit. Dickie Boca. - In all these years,

I don't recall ever seeing you at one of our quarterlies.

- Abby. - This is history.

-Sounds like a reason to celebrate.

-My colleague doesn't really drink,

but maybe tonight on such a rare occasion...

Here. Let me.

- Please. Join us. - Abby.

To you, Richard.

This is Richard, my golden goose.

Hi, Richard. I'm Lena.

Dickie, need a hand with that?

-And that would make you Jack... or the giant?

"Golden goose."

Isn't that from "Jack and the Beanstalk"?

-Well, in that case, I'm the giant.

-You two, stay out of trouble.

Hey, Beau, I'd like to tell you something.

Birds of a feather.

-Bartender, let me get two bottles of Cristal.

Hey, want a dab of MDMA?

Hey.

What brought you out tonight?

Miss.

Welcome home, Mr. Boca.

Shit.

This is some view.

But a bit stark on the decor.

There. That's better.

And this chair should go over there.

Sumsum, I hope you're okay.

My cat ran away today.

She's out there somewhere.

-I helped myself to some water.

What's all this about?

-Let me guess... A gift from Edward?

He admires you.

-He admires what I do for him.

Yeah. Golden goose.

I got that.

So what is it that you do?

Quant trading.

Wall Street?

Savage sport.

So, what,

you guys think you're matadors?

-No, if anything, I'm... I'm a spectator.

-I think you're more in the ring than you'd like to admit.

I just design the models.

So you're the math guy.

-Yeah, um... math and code.

Well, I synthesize and weigh a very large number

of different types of evidence, and, using certain metrics,

I hope to anticipate what'll happen next.

So you know what's going to happen next?

No.

But my models do.

How'd you get into that?

Do you really want to know?

Bees.

-Bees? Like honeybees?

-My thesis was on how bee colony collapse disorder

would cripple California's almond production.

Turns out, it did.

That's similar to what I'm studying.

Being around winemakers and viticulturists

got me thinking about sustainability,

which eventually made me take an interest in water.

That's my concentration.

- Water. - So what happened to the bees?

They vanished.

What do you mean, vanished?

Like, died?

No. No, vanished.

Like, nobody knows.

-And you didn't try to figure it out?

-Well, that's not what my models are programmed to do.

Like... like you, I-I study ecosystems.

Our Earth is 4.6 billion years old.

So we can gather inferential data

based on what's happened before.

Then I... then I program the algorithms

based on these findings, and they... they learn

from their environments.

So they're adaptive. They... They... They...

They can be applied to... To most anything.

But they're... They're predictors.

They're not mystery solvers.

Um...

I recently did one for wine.

But you don't drink.

No.

No, I collect.

This is the wrong one.

What?

I own the whole floor.

You can't be serious.

Yeah.

Velcome to my cell.

Freezing in here.

Wow.

You weren't kidding.

-Edward always told me high-end wine offered bond-like security

with stock-like returns.

It turns out, he was right.

It doesn't correlate to other asset classes.

Pick anything you'd like.

-One day, when I'm all grown up,

I'll have a place just like this.

I don't mean the whole floor.

Just this unit would do.

Except my place will have more than just one glass.

And a decanter.

What do I do?

You drink it.

But smell it first.

Here.

Loosen up.

This is meant to be fun.

You're good at this.

-It's just something that comes easy,

and it helps pay the bills.

At least until I get myself through school.

-What are you going to do with a background in water?

Um...

I don't know.

You strayed pretty far from bees.

I don't want to be managing a wine bar

for the rest of my life.

Maybe some form of artificial recharge.

All I know is our current model of progress is unsustainable.

So?

It's all the same.

Come on. Try.

Cherries, currants, earth.

A week-old sock.

First thing that pops into your head.

I don't know.

Grapes.

What?

It's corked.

What?

The wine.

It's corked.

You do know what that means?

Yes, um, TCA tainting.

Are you sure?

Quite.

Should we grab another one?

What's that?

That alarm?

This is when I wake up.

It's okay, Richard.

You have to learn to let things go.

I should see if my cat's back.

Thanks for the company.

Bye.

Do you see Murdoch

as taking a different approach withThe Wall Street Journal,

which, of course, is a very different kind of newspaper

than theNew York Post? - Well, I think it should be

noted that his brand of revitalization

with theNew York Post includes it losing

tens of millions of dollars.

So News Corp is big enough to absorb the losses

that he has, with... With theNew York Post

and the... the losses he had for many years

with Fox News Corporation.

I mean, what we've seen from Murdoch's news properties,

for example, just watching Fox News within the last year,

we've learned that Mark Foley is a Democrat,

Barack Obama went to a madrasa,

and there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

I think he has a broader agenda to try to really degrade

the idea of news, degrade reporting,

and degrade journalism so that journalism stands

at the same level as the kind of political message,

political propaganda he likes to push through his properties.