On important differences..........

.....between financial advice and investment management.

"...helping people make better decisions with their money in the face of uncertainty that is impossible to reduce."

What happens when............

..................................................the media goes in the tank?

"Our public life is now less authentic than professional wrestling."

Ouch.   As quoted from here.

Perspective......................

.................None of my history professors shared this view.

Beware......................

.............................................of mathematical optimization.

No library is complete...............

........................................without a shelf for Nicholas Bate.

Can't find fault here...............

............................................Scott loves his Gov't Mule.

Spirals...................................

Pat Metheny..................................................................Chris

All you need to know.................

.........................................about regret minimization - here.

"So I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, 'Okay, now I’m looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have.'  I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day, and so, when I thought about it that way it was an incredibly easy decision.”

As arguments go...............................

..........this one on behalf of free trade sounds pretty good.


"Free trade is the enemy of complacent corporations and their crony conspiracies with corrupt politicians. It ensures that business serves its customers more than its owners."


-as culled from #6, here

The population of the US of A......................

..............fifty years ago was about 179,000,000.   It is now about 320,000,000.  Not quite a doubling, but a still significant growth.


Just wondering what the author of this quoted passage expected to happen when a country adds 141,000,000 folks.   Will someone who has read the book please let me know?  Thanks.

How do clown hunts...............

.......................................relate to investing in everyday life?

the buzz of the bazoo............

Apes, may I speak to you a moment? 
Chimpanzees, come hither for words. 
Orangoutangs, let's get into a huddle. 
Baboons, lemme whisper in your ears. 
Gorillas, do yuh hear me hollerin' to yuh? 
And monkeys! monkeys! get this chatter--
For a long time men have plucked letters 
Out of the air and shaped syllables.
And out of the syllables came words
And from the words came phrases, clauses. 
Sentences were born--and languages.
(The Tower of Babel didn't work out--
it came down quicker than it went up.) 
Misunderstandings followed the languages, 
Arguments, epithets, maledictions, curses,
Gossip, backbiting, the buzz of the bazoo,
Chit chat, blah blah, talk just to be talking, 
Monologues of members telling other members 
How good they are now and were yesterday, 
Conversations missing the point,
Dialogues seldom as beautiful as soliloquies, 
Seldom as fine as a man alone, a woman by herself 
Telling a clock, "I'm a plain damn fool."

Read the dictionary from A to Izzard today. 
Get a vocabulary. Brush up on your diction. 
See whether wisdom is just a lot of language.

-Carl Sandburg,  Is Wisdom A Lot Of Language?

Train yourself........................

Guard your speech.  Never speak of yourself, your affairs, or anything else in a discouraged or discouraging way.  Never admit the possibility of failure, or speak in a way that infers failure as a possibility.  Never speak of the times as being hard, or of business conditions being doubtful.  Times may be hard and business doubtful for those who are on the competitive plane, but they can never be so for you;  you can create what you want, and your are above fear.  When others are having hard times and poor business, you will find your greatest opportunities.

Train yourself to think of and to look upon the world as a something which is Becoming, which is growing; and to regard seeming evil as being only that which is undeveloped.  Always speak in terms of advancement;  to do otherwise is to deny your faith, and to deny your faith is to lose it.  Never allow yourself to feel disappointed.  You may expect a certain thing at a certain time, and not get it at that time;  and this will appear to you like failure.  But if you hold to your faith you will find that the failure is only apparent.  Go on in the certain way, and if you do not receive that thing, you will receive something so much better that you will see that the seeming failure was really a great success.

-Wallace D. Wattles,  The Science of Getting Rich

Somewhere.....................................

“I have a feeling that inside you somewhere, there’s somebody nobody knows about.”


-Alfred Hitchcock


via

Compared to what...............................?

....................................Assessing the Obama presidency.


The history major in me suggests we check back in twenty years.

Incomprehensibly.............................

"How incomprehensibly strange is this world; how large, in the passing of trivial events.  In thanksgiving for the peace that passeth all understanding, let us whisper deep to deep."


-David Warren, as culled from recent commentary - here


photo, enlargeable with explanation, via

Cognitive dissonance...........................

......................when "it's complicated" is the correct answer.

The wonderful contradictoriness of life.....

..............................for example,  the enabling of constraints. 

Take a chance.............................

"Someone to inspire, to connect with, to lead. A system to transform. An idea to share. Responsibility is often just lying around, waiting for someone to take it."


-Seth Godin, as extracted from here

Speaking of............................

....................................................................Ray Bradbury:

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. 

It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.” 


-Ray Bradbury

Probably..........................

cartoon via

May I get an Amen..............?

"...I consider it cause for alarm when one subscribes entirely to the dogma of any group."

-Tynan, as culled from here