Thursday, July 13, 2017
Sorry, not sorry......................
Sorry, not sorry. A neologism which I hear young people use frequently, and now people my age are adopting. It's a great phrase. People want you to be sorry for something you did, you feel you're in the right. Sorry, not sorry.
"Safe Spaces" aren't about knowledge. They are about being thin-skinned and unwilling to think.
... life means we're free to be offended. We're not free from being offended. We're free to be heard. We're not free to force people to listen. If my tone offends you, if it causes you to discount what I have to say, if it causes you any kind of problem, well, it's your right to feel that way. Good luck with that.
-three wee excerpts culled from this Maggie's Farm essay. Read the whole thing.
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Cruising............................
Russ Ballard...................................................The Fire Still Burns
Opening paragraphs....................
For something so unprecedented, so fraught with institutional risk, it was all handled with a minimum of fuss. And quietly, too. That was the remarkable thing about it, the operational silence with which it was carried out. Yes, there had been the dramatic announcement broadcast live to the nation, and the splashy first Cabinet meeting, and the lavish party at Ari Shamron's lakeside villa in Tiberias where all the friends and collaborators from his remarkable past - the spymasters, the politicians, the Vatican priests, the London art dealers, even an inveterate art thief from Paris - had come to wish him well. But otherwise it came to pass with scarcely a ripple. One day Uzi Navot was seated behind his large smoked-glass desk in the chief's office, and the next, Gabriel was in his place. Absent Navot's modern desk, mind you, for glass wasn't Gabriel's style.
-Daniel Silva, House of Spies
On sources................................
"Too much self-centered thinking is the source of suffering. A compassionate concern for others' well-being is the source of happiness."
-The Dalai Lama
On dejection..........................
"If something can be done about the situation, what need is there for dejection? And if nothing can be done about it, what use is there for being dejected?
-Shantideva
Monday, July 10, 2017
30 observations after 30 years..........
Today marks 30 years since a confident young man walked into the back office of Schroder Investment Management in London, to start his first day on the job, the first in his career. Ask me a question back then and I would have answered assuredly and quickly. Today I’d be more likely to say ‘I don’t know’ with just as much confidence.
-so commences this Broadsword Capital post. Read the whole thing. Here are a few wee passages:
The lessons stand the test of time. The stocks, companies, and players change, but human nature never changes. We’re all human, even millennials.
Everything is a risk. Getting up, going out, crossing the road, but ultimately I am responsible for everything that happens to me.
Social media is a tough arena. ... Be nice. We all have off days. You never know what’s going on in people’s lives. Everyone’s going through something.
Moment by moment....................
"Throughout the entire history of philosophy, philosophers have sought to discover what man is - or what human nature is. But Sartre believed that man has no such eternal nature to fall back on. It is therefore useless to search for the meaning of life in general. We are condemned to improvise. We are like actors dragged onto the stage without having learned our lines, with no script and no prompter to whisper stage directions to us. We must decide for ourselves how to live."
-Jostein Gaarder
via
Sunday, July 9, 2017
The more things change...............
In the eighteenth century certain members of the clerisy, such as Voltaire and Tom Paine, courageously advocated our liberties in trade. And in truth our main protection against the ravenous has been just such competition in trade - not City Hall or Whitehall, which have their own ravenous habits, backed by violence. During the 1830s and 1840s, however, a much enlarged clerisy, mostly the sons of bourgeois fathers, commenced sneering at the economic liberties their fathers were exercising so vigorously, and commenced advocating the vigorous use instead of the state's monopoly of violence to achieve one or another utopia, soon.
-Deidre Nansen McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital Or Institutions, Enriched The World
a fresh living thing......................
To understand anything you must live with it, you must observe it, you must know its content, its nature, its structure, its movement. Have you ever tried living with yourself? If so, you will begin to see that yourself is not a static state, it is a fresh living thing. And to live with a living thing your mind must also be alive. And it cannot be alive if it is caught in opinions, judgments and values.
In order to observe the movement of your own mind and heart, of your whole being, you must have a free mind, not a mind that agrees and disagrees, taking sides in an argument, disputing over mere words, but rather following with an intention to understand - a very difficult thing to do because most of us don't know how to look at, or listen to, our own being any more that we know how to look at the beauty of a river or listen to the breeze among the trees.
When we condemn or justify we cannot see clearly, nor can we when our minds are endlessly chattering; then we do not observe what is; we look only at the projections we have made of ourselves. Each of us has an image of what we think we are or what we should be, and that image, that picture, entirely prevents us from seeing ourselves as we actually are.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known
A continuation....................
It is one of the most difficult things in the world to look at anything simply. Because our minds are very complex we have lost the quality of simplicity. I don't mean simplicity in clothes or food, wearing only a loin cloth or breaking a record fasting or any of that immature nonsense the saints cultivate, but the simplicity that can look directly at things without fear - that can look at ourselves as we actually are without any distortions - to say when we lie, we lie, not cover it up or run away from it.
Also in order to understand ourselves we need a great deal of humility. If you start by saying, 'I know myself', you have already stopped learning about yourself. ...
-Jiddu Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known
The biggest picture....................
You want to talk about "big picture" thinking? It doesn't get any bigger than this. We're talking about stuff like fate and destiny.
We often confuse those two words as meaning the same thing. But UCLA professor Howard Suber clarifies the distinction. Fate is that thing we cannot avoid. It comes for us despite how we try to run from it. Destiny, on the other hand, is the thing we must chase, what we must bring to fruition. It's what we strive toward and make true. When bad things happen, the idea of fate makes us feel better, whereas taking the time to consider eulogy values helps us think more about destiny. Success doesn't come from shrugging off the bad as unchangeable and saying things are already "meant to be"; it's the result of chasing the good and writing our own future. Less fate, more destiny.
-Eric Barker, as borrowed from the chapter in Barking Up The Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong, wherein he compares "resume" values and "eulogy" values
Saturday, July 8, 2017
Working on it..................
William Bell............................................I Forget To Be You Lover
Where would we be without "experts"......?
Also, the more self-confident an expert appears, the worse his or her track record is likely to be.
-Barry Ritholtz, lifted from his footnotes to this post on "An Expert's Guide to Calling a Market Top."
Since we are sharing..................
..............................................the good stuff today, check out Dan Piraro's Bizarro cartoons.
I hate being bossy..................
...............................so consider this as a suggestion, not an order: visit View From the Ledge. The Intertunnel is a better place when Jeff posts regularly.
Friday, July 7, 2017
Taking the rest of the day off...............
The Rippingtons................................................Wednesday's Child
Knowledge is good......................
"It’s a universal law — intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education,” observed Alexander Solzhenitsyn. “An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.”
-as culled from here
Ouch..........................
"The Bloomberg syndrome is a characteristic of contemporary government officials. When they are unwilling or unable to address pre-modern problems in their jurisdictions — crime, crumbling infrastructure, inadequate transportation — they compensate by posing as philosopher kings who cheaply lecture on existential challenges over which they have no control."
-Victor Davis Hanson, as extracted from here. As they say, read the whole thing.
Stories..............................
Optimists told themselves a story that may not have been true, but it kept them going, often allowing them to beat the odds. Psychologist Shelly Taylor says that "a healthy mind tells itself flattering lies." The pessimists were more accurate and realistic, and they ended up depressed. The truth can hurt.
-Eric Barker, Barking Up The Wrong Tree
That woman.......................
Marshall Tucker Band......................................Can't You See
Connection.............................
Karl Marx was wrong about a lot of things in economics, but we're now realizing he was also right about some stuff. When you remove people's emotional connection to their labor and treat them merely as machines that produce effort, it's soul killing.
-Eric Barker, Barking Up The Wrong Tree
Thursday, July 6, 2017
In praise of mavericks....................
Here was just the right sort of maverick: someone with very high intellectual credentials and a sterling education but not housebroken enough by politics to prevent her from doing serious research on the character strengths of students who succeed and the character deficits of students who fail.
-Martin E. P. Seligman, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being
Incalculable................................
Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in the main outlines.
-Bertrand Russell, from his essay "Philosophy's Ulterior Motives," as found in Unpopular Essays
Must be thinking more, here of late......
Perhaps, as Borges concludes in his story, it is forgetting, not remembering, that is the essence of what makes us human. To make sense of the world, we must filter it. "To think," Borges writes, "is to forget."
-Joshua Foer, Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
Can I get an Amen.........................?
In the age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow.
In the age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention.
And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent that sitting still.
-Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness: Adventures In Going Nowhere
It's a process...............................
Traffic...................................................John Barleycorn Must Die
There were three men came out of the west, their fortunes for to try
And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn must die
They've plowed, they've sown, they've harrowed him in
Threw clods upon his head
And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn was dead
They've let him lie for a very long time, 'til the rains from heaven did fall
And little Sir John sprung up his head and so amazed them all
They've let him stand 'til Midsummer's Day 'til he looked both pale and wan
And little Sir John's grown a long long beard and so become a man
They've hired men with their scythes so sharp to cut him off at the knee
They've rolled him and tied him by the way, serving him most barbarously
They've hired men with their sharp pitchforks who've pricked him to the heart
And the loader he has served him worse than that
For he's bound him to the cart
They've wheeled him around and around a field 'til they came onto a pond
And there they made a solemn oath on poor John Barleycorn
They've hired men with their crabtree sticks to cut him skin from bone
And the miller he has served him worse than that
For he's ground him between two stones
And little Sir John and the nut brown bowl and his brandy in the glass
And little Sir John and the nut brown bowl proved the strongest man at last
The huntsman he can't hunt the fox nor so loudly to blow his horn
And the tinker he can't mend kettle or pots without a little barleycorn
THE YEAR WAS 2081......................
.......................................and everybody was finally equal.
Re-reading Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s short story, Harrison Bergeron, is an annual event around these parts. Try it out.
Others feel the same
Wise selfishness............................
"So as you rightly mentioned, a self-centered attitude is the source of the problem. We have to take care of ourselves without selfishly taking care of ourselves. If we don't take care of ourselves, we cannot survive. We need to do that. We should have wise selfishness rather than foolish selfishness. Foolish selfishness means you just think only of yourself, don't care about others, bully others, exploit others. In fact, taking care of others, helping others, ultimately is the way to discover your own joy and to have a happy life. So that is what I call wise selfishness."
-The Dalai Lama
receiving and retrieving.................
Spirit ........................................................................Nature's Way
It's nature's way of telling you something's wrong
It's nature's way of telling you in a song
It's nature's way of receiving you
It's nature's way of retrieving you
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong
It's nature's way of telling you, summer breeze
It's nature's way of telling you, dying trees
It's nature's way of receiving you
It's nature's way of retrieving you
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong
It's nature's way, it's nature's way
It's nature's way, it's nature's way
It's nature's way of telling you
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong
It's nature's way of telling you
It's nature's way of telling you
In a song, oh-h
It's nature's way of receiving you
It's nature's way
It's nature's way of retrieving you
It's nature's way
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong, something's wrong, something's wrong
-Randy California
It's nature's way of telling you something's wrong
It's nature's way of telling you in a song
It's nature's way of receiving you
It's nature's way of retrieving you
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong
It's nature's way of telling you, summer breeze
It's nature's way of telling you, dying trees
It's nature's way of receiving you
It's nature's way of retrieving you
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong
It's nature's way, it's nature's way
It's nature's way, it's nature's way
It's nature's way of telling you
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong
It's nature's way of telling you
It's nature's way of telling you
In a song, oh-h
It's nature's way of receiving you
It's nature's way
It's nature's way of retrieving you
It's nature's way
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong, something's wrong, something's wrong
-Randy California
It's Entertainment.....................
The world is actually entertainment. Like amusement, it is meant to be worn lightly. Heaven is within and is revealed by awareness. The world is merely an appearance. Its melodrama is an artifice of the distorted sense of perception. It leads one to think that the world is large, powerful, and permanent and that the Self is small, weak, and transitory; exactly the opposite is true.
-David R. Hawkins
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
Soothing every raging wave that comes.......
Sugarloaf..........................................................Green Eyed Lady
Transition from misery to hope................
In other words, when we economic historians lecture to undergraduates we emphasize an anti-Malthusian message of hope - that average human welfare has shot up startlingly since 1980. A graph of average income over time resembles an ice hockey stick, with tens of thousands of years spent tracing the long, horizontal handle. Then finally, after 1800, history reached the business end of the hockey stick and shot up the blade. A video by Rosling, "200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes," makes the optimistic point, illustrating the transition from misery to hope.
-Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital Or Institutions, Enriched The World
the strange idea.........................
The bourgeois, voluntary, egalitarian, bettering ideology writ across a society is recent, and therefore cannot be put down to ancient risings of empires and strugglings of classes, or to biological evolution on a scale of centuries. We did not become rich at the time of the rise of trade, which is paleolithically ancient, or upon the establishment of towns and the agricultural state and the legal protection of real property, which are less ancient but nonetheless many millennia old, or in long times of peace, which has characterized life in economically stagnant places as much as in Europe 1815-1914. An ideological change did it, and recently. In northwestern Europe the strange idea grew up that aristocracy (the rule of the best by descent) and theocracy (the rule of priests) and even plutocracy (the rule of the present rich) were all nasty. What replaced them in people's ideology, slowly, was the rule of the better technique, allowing free entry to compete with the monopolies that the aristocrats or the plutocrats had arranged under the aegis of a captured government. The new ideology in places like Britain and Belgium around 1800 favored a "betterocracy," or, if you want the pure Greek, a "kaluterocracy."
-Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital Of Institutions, Enriched The World
The Great Enrichment..................
Then after 1798 - as economic historians have discovered over the past few decades - life in quite a few places got better. Slowly, and then quickly, and by now with unstoppable, ramifying, worldwide force, it got much better. Material life got better not merely for Europeans or imperial powers or Mr. Moneybags, but for ordinary people from Brooklyn to Beijing.
The betterment stands out in human history as the Great Enrichment, the most important secular event since we first domesticated squash and chickens and wheat and horses. The Enrichment has been and will continue to be more important historically that the rise and fall of empires or the class struggle in all hitherto existing societies. Such perennial fascinations of historians, entranced by the realpolitik that accompanies empires rising and classes struggling, had little to do with our enrichment. Empire did not enrich Britain. America's success did not depend on slavery. Power did not lead to plenty, and exploitation was not plenty's engine.
The real engine was the expanding ideology of liberty and dignity that inspired the proliferating schemes of betterment by and for the common people.
-Diedre Nansen McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital Or Institutions, Enriched The World
Because the learning never stops...........
Not remembering my Zeno's Paradoxes, the Oracle Google was consulted. Now I remember, but I still don't understand. Read it yourself.
"To fully solve any of the paradoxes, however, one needs to show what is wrong with the argument, not just the conclusions."
Really? I think Diogenes the Cynic had the correct answer.
Forty years ago......................
Santana...................................................................She's Not There
Tuesday, July 4, 2017
Learning something new (again)............
.....................................................................The Ship of Theseus
A visit to this post at Maggie's Farm will provide the readable context, as well as a cool link. Keep learning.
Ouch.........................
Finally, no one has calibrated quite the nation’s deep antipathy toward the coastal media-university-political-cultural nexus, most specifically its utter hypocrisy. Half the country sees not so much Democrats or progressives, but rather a bankrupt class whose venom for others is used to excuse their own exemptions from the ramifications of their own ideology.
People are tired of the social justice warrior Obama frolicking in Tahiti, the feminist Hillary Clinton excusing four decades of the sexual predations of her husband upon the weak, the supposedly in the know campus bullies picking on the vulnerable while shelling out a quarter-million dollars for a mediocre education; the progressive media decrying inequality and fairness amid face-surgeries, hair plugs, nannies, and prep schools; the Silicon Valley masters of the universe sermonizing on the evils of walls, inequality, and social justice from their gated hideaways, servants, and schemes to monopolize, offshore, outsource, and avoid taxes.
There is a limit to Trump’s crude personal tweets, but apparently no observer has yet calibrated where it is—given the country’s disdain for the media, the progressive hypocritical agenda, and the scatological and obscene rhetoric of Trump’s opposition.
-Victor Davis Hanson, as extracted from this essay on the president's communication style
Next thing you know....................
...................................they will be telling us that quarter-pounders with cheese, with a side of fries and a coke, are bad for you. I wish these people would just stop.
via
School is never out....................
...........................................................with Professor Althouse:
....................................................fun with the language
....................................................on "doctoring" videos
Responsibility.........................
..........................is the price one pays for independence. Seth Godin has some thoughts, and some more thoughts, on the subject.
A few more thoughts on liberty and responsibility
There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.
-Denis Waitley
Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.
-Sigmund Freud
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
-George Bernard Shaw
The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That's the day we truly grow up.
-John C. Maxwell
You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.
-Jim Rohn
Freedom and responsibility aren't interconnected things. They are the same thing.
The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily. No great work has ever been based on hatred and contempt. On the contrary, there is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
-Ronald Reagan
Sunday, July 2, 2017
Well, it would explain a lot...................
If power were a prescription drug, it would come with a long list of known side effects. It can intoxicate. It can corrupt. It can even make Henry Kissinger believe that he’s sexually magnetic. But can it cause brain damage?
-Jerry Useem, as he opens this essay in The Atlantic
Read the whole thing. Amazingly, the essay never mentions our current president.
via
One reason us History majors..............
.........................appreciate the Oracle Google, is that it helps us understand correct grammar. Reading the essay featured in the above post, your faithful blogger was puzzled. Shouldn't "If power were a prescription drug..." be "If power was a prescription drug..."? The Oracle Google seems to say that the wordsmiths at The Atlantic are correct:
Learned something new today.
Saturday, July 1, 2017
Got to get The Dog one of those vests.....
"I have confirmed that 30% of the public can’t identify a joke without the help of a service animal."
-Scott Adams, taken out of context here
The Dog:
It is a Rippington kind of afternoon...........
The Rippingtons..........................................Led Here By An Eagle
Thursday, June 29, 2017
The Law of Unintended Consequences......
.......................................never rests (although one wonders from time to time if the consequences were truly unintended):
The true beneficiaries of Silicon Valley’s new minimum wage laws are going to be found in the corporate offices of the tech giants who create robots and the venture capitalists who invest in them rather than among the growing number of Californians trapped in the low-paid labor market.
-Walter Russell Mead, as lifted from here
A sign for our times..................
-taken from this Tony Isola post connecting the world of investing with Emerson's essay, "Compensation."
On the investigation of pleasure............
Pleasure is the structure of society. From childhood until death we are secretly, cunningly or obviously pursuing pleasure. So whatever form our pleasure is, I think we should be very clear about it because it is going to guide and shape our lives. It is therefore important for each one of us to investigate closely, hesitantly and delicately this question of pleasure, for to find pleasure, and then nourish and sustain it, is a basic demand of life and without it existence becomes dull, stupid, lonely, and meaningless.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti, as excerpted from Freedom from the Known
The importance of the process........
"Intelligent investors understand that a good process has very little to do with short-run outcomes but quality decisions give you a high probability of success over the long-run."
-Ben Carlson, concluding this post
On duty...................................
Some philosophers - not necessarily the ablest - are impressive through their quality of intellectual honesty. Of these a very good example was Henry Sidgwick, who was my teacher in ethics. In his youth fellowships at Cambridge were only open to those who would sign the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. Years after he had signed them, he developed doubts, and, though not expected to affirm that his beliefs remained unchanged, decided that it was his duty to resign. This action hastened the change in the law which put an end to the old theological restrictions. As a teacher, he showed the same honesty, and considered objections by pupils as courteously and carefully as if they had been made by colleagues. This made his teaching more fruitful than that of many abler men.
-Bertrand Russell, from his essay, Eminent Men I Have Know, as found here
On mis-estimation.....................
"Society is like a schoolmaster who estimates boys according to their conformity to a standard that is easiest for running a school."
Life its ownself..........................
"As a human being, one has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists."
-Albert Einstein
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
Gone, but not forgotten.....................
Burl Ives...................................................Ghost Riders In The Sky
#18 on this list
McArdle looks at......................
....................................................Seattle's minimum wage increases, and the studies that have followed:
"That’s the danger of striking out for uncharted territory; sometimes, you end up where there be dragons."
-full post here
Fifty years ago.......................
The Rolling Stones.....................................................Complicated
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
You'd think they were capitalists or something....
"Google has come up with many innovative products and services that have made a difference to our lives. That's a good thing. But Google's strategy for its comparison shopping service wasn't just about attracting customers by making its product better than those of its rivals. Instead, Google abused its market dominance as a search engine by promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results, and demoting those of competitors."
-borrowed from this Coyote Blog post about the EU fining Google more euros than I could count.
A few quotes.....................
“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”
-Mark Twain
"I fell in love, not with anything or anybody in particular but with everything.”
-George Harrison
“Up to a point a person’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and changes in the world about them. Then there comes a time when it lies within their grasp to shape the clay of their life into the sort of thing they wish it to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune or the quirks of fate. Everyone has the power to say, "This I am today. That I shall be tomorrow.”
-Louis L'Amour
“A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.”
-Dave Barry
“Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.”
-Steve Martin
“Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.”
-C.G. Jung
“Do not wait for the last judgment. It comes every day.”
-Albert Camus
Fifty years ago..........................
Otis Redding...............................................................Satisfaction
Monday, June 26, 2017
Reach out.....................................
Sam & Dave.........................................Hold On, I'm Coming
Self-knowledge............................
“Self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and self-respect is the chief element in courage.”
-Thucydides
Not your typical...............................
.............................................................graduation advice:
Don’t pretend you know what you’re doing. No one will believe it. Instead show humility and ask for lots of help. Because every recent grad looks fresh and full of potential and people will want to help you because you remind them of them, when they were young and fresh and full of potential. If you act like you know what you’re doing, they can’t offer help.
-From this Penelope Trunk post
Sunday, June 25, 2017
Others.............................
For that which you receive from others is a testimony to their virtue, but all that you do for others is the sign and clear indication of your own virtue.
-Giordano Bruno
Thinking Jeboy might like this..............
Ryan Tennis........................................Till The Ghost Is Gone
Complexity.........................
................for the sake of complexity doesn't seem very productive:
"In London I am often asked to give talks about developments in the finance sector to a general audience. One question which routinely comes up is “what do people who work in the finance sector, in those large office blocks and in the City of London and Canary Wharf, actually do?” And the answer I give is that, to an extent that almost defies belief, what they do is trade with each other."
"When I was a schoolboy in Scotland in the 1960s, joining the Bank of Scotland or the Royal Bank of Scotland was a career for the boys in my class who were not going to get good enough grades to go to leading universities. Even when a few years later I began my teaching career at Oxford, careers in the City of London were mostly for undergraduates who were not academically distinguished but nevertheless socially polished and well-connected. All that has changed, and not altogether for the better, as was evident when the Bank of Scotland and the Royal Bank of Scotland failed in 2008, after three centuries of prudent success, under the stewardship of able individuals with good degrees from the finest universities and business schools.
"Larry Summers, former president of Harvard and US Treasury Secretary, once observed that finance had once been the preserve of people whose primary skills were those of good companions at the 19th hole of the golf course, but had become the province of people with the sophisticated mathematical skills required to price complex derivatives.[10] Summers, with skills better adapted to solving differential equations than conviviality at the 19th hole, noted this shift with evident approval. I am not so sure."
-Quotes retrieved from this John Kay essay
On the collapse of transaction costs....
..............................and the coming "sharing economy":
Fifty years from now, people will look back on the turn of the century and wonder about us. They will wonder why we were so wasteful, so selfish. Why we had closets, garages, and rental storage units, all under lock and key so we could keep other people from using the stuff that we weren’t using, either.
-Mike Munger, as he opens this essay
Fifty years ago....................
Four Tops.................................Standing In The Shadow Of Love
I know a lot of people who will consider....
.............................................................this silly, but I don't:
"The wise know that the intellect can take one only so far, and beyond that, faith and belief must substitute for knowledge."
-David R. Hawkins
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