On stomachs and brains...........

   "I see two views of humanity.  In the first view people are stomachs.  More people mean more eaters and less for everyone else.  In the second view, people are brains.  More brains mean more ideas and more for everyone else."

"Most importantly, as the rest of the world catches up to the United States both politically and economically, our relative status will inevitably fall.  Their gain, however, is not our loss.  As other countries grow in stature, we need to remember that we benefit when other nations grow rich."

-Alex Tabarrock, Launching the Innovation Renassaisance

Tabarrok also employs a quote from Thomas Jefferson.  It starts:  "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper from mine, receives light without darkening me."   That quote sounded vaguely familiar.  A quick search turned up this post that puts the entire quote in its context.

Missing the Mighty E..............

While the Eclectipundit continues his non-blogging ways, here are
a few of his past blog headers to help remind us of the good old
days.  Enjoy:

On aging gracefully...................

"Wherever I turn I see fresh evidence of my old age.  I visited my place just out of Rome recently and was grumbling about the expense of maintaining the building, which was in a dilapidated state.  My manager told me the trouble wasn't due to any neglect on his part: he was doing his utmost but the house was old.  That house had taken shape under my own hands; what's to become of me if stones of my own age are crumbling like that?   Losing my temper I seized at the first excuse that presented itself for venting my irritation on him.  'It's quite clear,' I said, 'that those plane trees are being neglected.  There's no foliage on them.  Look at those knotty, dried-up branches and those wretched, flaking trunks.  That wouldn't happened if someone dug round them and watered them.'   He swore by my guardian angel he was doing his utmost:  in everything his care was unremitting but the poor things were just old.  Between you and me, now, I had planted them myself and seen the first leaf appearing on them myself."

"So I owe it to this place of mine near town that my old age was made clear to me at every turn.  Well, we should cherish old age and enjoy it.  It is full of pleasure if you  know how to use it.  Fruit tastes most delicious just when its season is ending.  The charms of youth are at their greatest at the time of its passing.  It is the final glass which pleases the inveterate drinker, the one the sets the crowning touch on his intoxication and sends him off into oblivion.  Every pleasure defers till its last its greatest pleasure.  The time of life which offers the greatest delight is the age that sees the downward movement - not the steep decline - already begun; and in my opinion even the age which stands on the brink has pleasures of its own - or else the very fact of not experiencing the want of any pleasures takes their place.  How nice it is to have outworn one's desires and left them behind!"

Seneca,  Letter XII, Letters from a Stoic

Opening paragraphs.............

     "He rode into the dark of the woods and dismounted.  He crawled upward on his belly over cool rocks out into the sunlight, and suddenly he was in the open and could see for miles, and there was the whole vast army  below him, filling the valley like a smoking river.  It came out of a blue rainstorm in the east and overflowed the narrow valley road, coiling along a stream, narrowing and choking at a white bridge, fading into the yellow dust of June but still visible on the farther road beyond the blue hills, spiked iwth flags and guidons like a great chopped bristly snake, the snake headless in a blue wall of summer rain."
-Michael Shaara, Killer Angels

Of growth and happiness...........

"Man is formed for growth, and he is under the necessity of growing.  It is essential to his happiness that he should continuously advance.  Life without progress becomes unendurable, and the person who ceases from growth must either become an imbecile or insane.  The greater and more harmonious and well rounded his growth, the happier man will be."
-Wallace D. Wattles, The Science of Being Great

faineant.........

This word for the day is brought to you by Mr. Webster
and the third edition of his New College Dictionary:

faineant      adj.        lazy; idle

Having had a killer week at work, a faineant mood overtook
him.  He didn't even have enough energy to blog.

Ouch.....................

thanks jonco

On giving..............

"You were given a gift by the Creator, God, the Universe......
Whatever.   Until you have returned the favor, life will have
a certain, feckless emptiness to it."

     "I've had my share of crappy jobs, as have we all.  You
know what?   I never hated a job because of what it took
from me - all jobs take a lot from you, especially the best
ones.
     "I hated a job because it never allowed me to give
enough to the world."
    
     "I'm not the world's most talented person at what I do.
Neither or you.  That doesn't make the gifts we have any
less valid.
     "Giving the gift is an act of love.  And love is the only
thing that matters."

-Hugh MacLeod,
Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination

Major Tom..................?

photo courtesy of  (do follow the link for the stunning full size photo)

"Ground control to Major Tom"..................so go the opening
lyrics to David Bowie's  1969 hit, "Space Oddity."   For some
silly reason the embedding of his Youtube performance of this
classic has been disabled.  What are they thinking?  Anyway, it
is worth the trip over there to watch and listen - just
follow this handy link.

Nine things to avoid while investing...........

During the time of this blog's infancy, I posted my 33 Guides for
Investing in Real Estate.  One of these days that list will receive
an update.  So, it was with great interest then that I read Richard
Green's recent post about "nine abuses common in pro forma
cash flow projections."  This list, which may come under
the heading of "wishful thinking" as much as "abuse," is pretty
much right on.  We have made a few of these mistakes ourselves. 
Thanks Richard.   The list:

Over-inflated expected income
Under-inflate expected expenses
An assumption that tenants will always pay expenses
Failure to examine individual leases
Underestimation of vacancy and collection losses
Forgetting that tenant improvements and lease
        brokerage fees are real expenses
Going-out cap rates that are lower than the going-in
        cap rates
Ignoring sales expenses
Understating the discount rate.

About that regulatory itch..............

     "Regulation is another area in which we have failed to put innovation at the center of our thinking.  There are good regulations and bad regulations and lots of debate over which is which.  From an innovation perspective, however, this debate misses a key point.  Let's assume that all regulations are good.  The problem is that even if each regulation is good, the net effect of all the regulations combined may be bad.  A single pebble in a big stream doesn't do much, but throw enough pebbles and the stream of innovation gets dammed.   The patent thicket we illustrated in Figure 1 (editor's note: added and explained below) has an analog, the regulation thicket.
-Alex Tabarrok, Launching the Innovation Renaissance

This chart (taken from here) was used by Tabarrock in his
chapter about the sorry state of patents.  The above chart
attempts to show all the patent infringement lawsuits that
have been filed over "smartphones."  I believe his point is that
complexity imposed upon innovation hinders it.

Mobility...............

It probably is a mistake to compare the Great Recession with the
Great Depression, so.......I am not going to.  But, we would be
remiss in not pointing out one of the Great Differences.  One of the
most re-played images of the 1930's was the Okies, fleeing the
dust bowl, heading for their grapes of wrath future in California.
It was almost a mass migration, as folks and their families fled
from territories of no hope to a distant land of maybe some hope. 
The country was mobile.  "The transient knew in his bones
that things were no better ahead than they had been behind,
but somehow the movement itself seemed positive. It was
something, however a hopeless thing, to do." (excerpted)

Fast forward 80 years.  Unemployment and under employment
are the talked about problems of this day.  What is missing is the
migration, the movement from areas of no work to areas with
some work.  According to my favorite economic futurist Jeff
Thredgold, "manufacturers cannot fill 600,000 skilled
positions, or 5% of all current manufacturing jobs....".  One
of the reasons given is the mis-match in location, skilled workers
not living in proximity to where their skills are needed.  The
culprit - the moribund residential real estate market and the
amazing number of people (25%) who owe more than their home
is worth.  Just when mobility would give hope, "the movement
of Americans is at its lowest level since World War II." 
Blame it on the real estate.

On exploring..................

Thanks Ka-Ching!

Mind Itself..........

     "Let me give you an illustration.  People have eyes, by which they can see all sorts of forms, like long and short, square and round, as so on; then why do they not see themselves? Just perceiving forms, you cannot see your eyes even if you want to.  Your mind is also like this; its light shines perceptively throughout the ten directions, encompassing all things, so why doesn't it know itself?
     "Do you want to understand?  Just discern the things perceived, you cannot see the mind itself.
     "An ancient said, 'The knife does not cut itself, the finger does not touch itself, the mind does not know itself, the eye does not see itself.'  This is true reality."

-Instant Zen:  Waking Up in the Present
Translated by Thomas Cleary

photo courtesy of

tergiversate................

This word for the day is brought to you by Mr. Webster
and the third edition of his New College Dictionary:

tergiversate    v.     1  to desert a cause, party, etc;  become a
                                      renegade; apostatize     2  to use
                                      evasions or subterfuge;  equivocate

as in:

He tergiversated the green ideology when he realized that global
warming was preferable to global freezing.
                 

Mismatch.................

"In 2009 the U. S. graduated 37,994 students with bachelor's degrees in computer and information science.  Not bad, but here is the surprise:  We graduated more students with computer science degrees 25 years ago!  In comparison, the U. S. graduated 80,140 students in the visual and performing arts in 2009 - more than double the number of 25 years ago!

"Few fields have been as revolutionized in recent years as microbiology, but in 2009 we graduated just 2,480 students with bachelor's degrees in microbiology - about the same as 25 years ago.  Who will solve the problem of antibiotic resistance?

"The U. S. graduated just 5,036 chemical engineers in 2009, no mare than we did 25 years ago.  In electrical engineering there were 11,619 graduates in 2009, about half the number of 25 years ago."

"Bear in mind that over the past 25 years the total number of students in college has increased by about 50%...."

"In 2009, for example, we graduated 94,271 students with psychology degrees at a time when there were just 98,330 jobs in clinical, counseling, and school psychology in the entire nation.  The latter figure isn't new jobs - it's total jobs."

-Alex Tabarrok, Launching the Innovation Renaissance

thanks Alex

It is no wonder that...........................

......Seth Godin's blog is widely read and highly respected.  He
offers a different way of thinking about things..........daily.    A
smattering of excerpts from recent posts for your enjoyment:

"As usual, when confronted with two obvious choices, it's the
third choice that pays."
1/3/12
--------------------------------------------------------------

"This notion of lockstep started to inform all elements of our
culture. Not just what time rush hour was (what a bizarre
concept) but how old you should be to go to college and to
get a job and to get married and to have kids and to retire."

"........ The decision to work at a different rate than others
can be a significant competitive advantage.

"Celebrate New Year's when you want to, and as often as you
choose. They're your resolutions, not ours."
1/1/12
---------------------------------------------------------------

"So stop thinking about how crazy the times are, and start
thinking about what the crazy times demand. There has never
been a worse time for business as usual. Business as usual is
sure to fail, sure to disappoint, sure to numb our dreams.
That's why there has never been a better time for the new.
Your competitors are too afraid to spend money on new
productivity tools. Your bankers have no idea where they can
safely invest. Your potential employees are desperately
looking for something exciting, something they feel
passionate about, something they can genuinely engage in
engage with.

"You get to make a choice. You can remake that choice every
day, in fact. It's never too late to choose optimism, to choose
action, to choose excellence. The best thing is that it only
takes a moment -- just one second -- to decide."
12/31/11
--------------------------------------------------------------

"As soon as you accept that just about everything in our
created world is only a few generations old, it makes it a lot
easier to deal with the fact that the assumptions we make
about the future are generally wrong, and that the stress we
have over change is completely wasted."
12/29/11
--------------------------------------------------------------


"I'm often stunned by the lack of questions that adults are
prepared to ask."

"Is the weather the only thing you can think to ask about?
A great question is one you can ask yourself, one that
disturbs your status quo and scares you a little bit."
12/27/11
--------------------------------------------------------------

"If your plan will only succeed if there is no turbulence at
any time, it's probably not a very good plan (either that or
you're not going anywhere interesting.)"
12/22/11

If this is true............I'm in trouble

"But, just like I had to eat all of the vegetables on my plate
when I was a kid – - I bought the book, so I had to read it."

This quote was lifted from David Kanigan's latest book review.
One of the more undisciplined areas of my life falls under the
heading of "book buyer."  Over the years, I have bought books
because they were highly recommended by a trusted source,
because they looked interesting, because they felt good in my
hand, and just because.  My observant daughter, seeking to
fatten her purse, once told me that I needed to pay her $.25
for every book I bought until I had read all the ones that I had
bought but not read.  Not falling into that trap.  If I stopped
buying (or downloading) books today, the supply of unread
books would provide sustenance for years to come.  And yet...
yesterday I downloaded a book David recommended.  Go
figure.

More stuff I never knew................................ or, the Framers swing and miss

     "In 1796, Hamilton made a bolder move against Adams, a harbinger of the intraparty conflict that would break out among Federalists in 1800.  He tried to manipulate the Electoral College system to deprive Adams of the presidency and get his own favored Federalist Thomas Pickney, elected to the position instead.  Hamilton's scheme took advantage of the complex and sometimes seemingly perverse mechanics of the original electoral system.
     "In their conception of the Electoral College, the Framers foresaw an elite group of well-qualified electors exercising their collective judgment in picking the best-qualified President and Vice President from an open field of leading figures across the country.  Through this process, the Framers hoped to avoid both the formation of national political parties, which were never mentioned in the Constitution, and the development of coordinated partisan voting.

-Edward J. Larson, A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous
Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign

Opening paragraphs............

"In an era when nearly every college president bore a triple-
barreled name, none carried as potent a charge as Nicholas
Murray Butler.  To his intimates the president of Columbia
University was 'Murray': to the associates who saw him found
the school's Teachers College in 1887 at the age of twenty-
five he was 'Nicholas Miraculous.'  His employees simply
called him President (when they didn't refer to him as 'Czar
Nicholas'), his acquaintances, Doctor.  The editors of Life
named him 'one of the most erudite men of his time.'  None
of this necessarily contradicted Senator Robert M.
La Follette, who said Butler was a 'bootlicker of men of
fortune.'  Theodore Roosevelt was even blunter: he
considered him 'an aggressive and violent ass.'"

-Daniel Okrent,  Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center