What do you do when you hear a great new song by one of your favorite artists that reminds you of all the mistakes and compromises you’ve made in your life. And, is full of hope. You try to write a blog post about it.
[Disclaimer: Since starting up the blog again, my goal has been to avoid posts that ranted against the daily insanity visited upon us by our institutions. But after filing my 2011 taxes that goal has been set aside for today.] This from my inbox, where I am being Congratufuckinglated for having the IRS Accept my … Continue reading
During the greatest transfer of wealth from savers to borrowers in history, my banker has a better idea. Instead of depositing my savings in their institutions (for which I get essentially zero interest), they are steering me towards the bank’s common stock, promising several percentage points of yield and price appreciation.
Why would a recluse turn out to be a better citizen than your typical politician? Aside from what’s obvious about politicians, the answer is in the Dunbar Number. Dunbar’s number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships … It has been proposed to lie between 100 … Continue reading
… and when to start over.
Airlines and Cable Networks, two of our most popular industries today. If you ignore the Banks. Sign up for Cable and you get more channels than you need or want. You’ve been bundled. Get on an Airline and nothing is included in the price of your ticket. You’ve been unbundled. And yet, as a consumer, … Continue reading
It is entirely possible that Airlines will soon revoke the law of diminishing returns. And I’m not talking about their profits, but instead their ability to come up with new ways to tack on charges. United Airlines has just begun to offer a new ‘service’, which they’ve dubbed Premier Line. Board the airplane sooner and get earlier … Continue reading
For a brief moment in High School when I had an inspiring English teacher I thought I would become a writer. It was a very brief moment. But what goes around comes around. So today I’d like offer some assistance to the writers of Mad Men, the TV series that has now been nominated for … Continue reading
Talk about being “in the zone”. The final episode of Mad Men (Season 1) shows Don Draper coining the word Carousel for the gizmo that holds the slides on Kodak’s slide projector. And creating the Kodak Moment campaign to sell memories instead of hardware. Which got me thinking about what could top this bit of … Continue reading
Finally, proof positive that the world is going to sh*t. The Economist, to prove a point, has linked to an article in The Onion. The matter of love, literature and taste is a silly minefield—one that often says more about how we brand ourselves than about what is essential for romantic compatibility. Source – The Economist … Continue reading
Full disclosure right off the bat: I’m a total Google Fan-Boy, even though in my case the term “boy” stopped being appropriate over 50 years ago. Nevertheless. I’ve talked before about how Google changed my life, and the life of virtually everyone else on this planet, by ‘organizing the world’s information’ and making it available. But … Continue reading