Miracle of Air Travel v. The Mayflower Voyage
Humans have the capacity to take momentous accomplishments for granted, reminds Claude Singer of the Brandsinger consulting firm: While cruising across the Atlantic in 5 or 6 hours at 35,000 feet, I sometimes think of the sailing ship Mayflower, which crossed from England to Massachusetts in 1620 with 102 passengers—about the typical number for an […]
Don’t Tell People What They Want to Hear
Carrie Maslen, global vice president for small and medium enterprises at SAP, quoted in Bloomberg Businessweek article on the worst career advice ever received: I was meeting with a manager when a co-worker stuck her head in to ask a question. After she left, he told me he didn’t mean what he’d said; he was […]
White Liberal Guilt Promotes Black Victimhood
Jason L. Riley of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research writes in Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed (2016) argues how America’s welfare programs have actually prevent black Americans from getting ahead: Upward mobility depends on work and family. Social programs that undermine the work ethic and displace […]
The Montessori Mafia
Stanford economist Erik Brynjolfsson writes in The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (2014,) Montessori classrooms emphasize self-directed learning, hands-on engagement with a wide variety of materials (including plants and animals,) and a largely unstructured school day. And in recent years they’ve produced alumni including the founders of […]
Embracing the Unbearable
British author and Buddhist teacher Stephen Batchelor writes in Confession of a Buddhist Atheist (2013): Rather than seek God – the goal of the brahmins – Gotama suggested that you turn your attention to what is most far from God: the anguish and pain of this life on earth. In a contingent world, change and […]
Underestimating Low-Probability Events
Warren Buffett at the 2004 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting: People tend to underestimate low-probability events when they haven’t happened recently and overestimate them when they have happened recently. That is the nature of the human animal. You know, Noah ran into that some years back. But he looked pretty good after 40 days…. We believe […]
15 of the Most Beautiful Villages in Europe
Lori Zaino of The Points Guy lists some of Europe’s best charming villages: Arcos de la Frontera, Spain Alberobello, Italy Cavtat, Croatia Grindelwald, Switzerland Riquewhir, Alsace, France Knaresborough, U.K. Dinant, Belgium Kinsale, Ireland Talasnal, Portugal Cochem, Germany Ragusa, Sicily, Italy Cudillero, Spain Oia, Santorini, Greece Sigtuna, Sweden Český Krumlov, Czech Republic
Overcoming Intellectual Arrogance
Peter F. Drucker in his “Managing Oneself” essay in the January 2005 Issue of Harvard Business Review, Discover where your intellectual arrogance is causing disabling ignorance and overcome it. Far too many people—especially people with great expertise in one area—are contemptuous of knowledge in other areas or believe that being bright is a substitute for […]
A Wealth Tax on the Rich Could End Deficits
Identifying the scourge of the great wealth divide, Michael Meacher, former Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton, The annual Sunday Times Rich List yields four very important conclusions for the governance of Britain (Report, Weekend, 28 April.) It shows that the richest 1,000 persons, just 0.003% of the adult population, increased their wealth over […]
The Risk of Missing or Being Late to an Opportunity
Charlie Munger at the Daily Journal Meeting 2019: The minute you point out there’s a big tension between good ideas yet overdone so much they’re dangerous, and good ideas that still have a lot of runway ahead. Once you have that construct in your head and start classifying opportunities into one category or the other, […]