Buying a Home is Usually a Terrible Investment
A lot of people will tell you that buying a home is a good investment, but “that couldn’t be further from the truth,” says Peter Mallouk (of wealth management firm Creative Planning) and Ramit Sethi (author of I Will Teach You to be Rich (2009)) on why buying a home isn’t a good investment: At […]
COVID-19: End of the Large Widebody Aircraft
Emirates Airline’s Sir Tim Clark, in an interview with The National, Abu Dhabi, opines that that COVID-19 pandemic is upsetting the airline industry. Large widebody aircraft like the Airbus A380 and Boeing 747 are done. Emirates is the largest operator of A380s with 115 in its fleet and 8 more on order. “We know the […]
We Need Not be Defined by How we Feel
American Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck writes in Everyday Zen: Love and Work (1989): There’s an old koan about a monk who went to his master and said, “I’m a very angry person, and I want you to help me.” The master said, “Show me your anger.” The monk said, “Well, right now I’m not […]
The Two-pronged War on Coronavirus
Talking Anushka Asthana’s Today in Focus podcast, Larry Elliott, the Guardian’s economics editor, says how the global shutdown brought about by the coronavirus pandemic has sent the world’s economy into a tailspin as workers and customers stay at home: I’ve covered many recessions in my time as an economics journalist, but very rarely has the […]
Creative Entrepreneur: Branding and Social Media Marketing
Artists and their works tend to attract publicity on social media. What’s selling is not just the artist’s works but also his/her creative process. William Deresiewicz writes in the January/February 2015 issue of The Atlantic, Among the most notable things about those Web sites that creators now all feel compelled to have is that they […]
COVID-19: Permanent Social Distancing on Airplanes?
Emirates Airline’s Sir Tim Clark, in an interview with The National, Abu Dhabi, opines that that COVID-19 pandemic is upsetting the airline industry. He feels that the industry doesn’t need permanent social distancing on planes. The virus will either peter out or we’ll get a vaccine. The idea of reconfiguring planes, removing seats on planes […]
Stop Avoiding Conflict
Leadership consultant Kevin Eikenberry on not making zero conflict a goal: Put people together doing most anything for most any length of time and conflict will occur. Put people together and ask them what the challenges are at work, and conflict will always come up. People have experience and an opinion about conflict, and they […]
The Duty of Public Servants
Political commentator Walter Lippmann on the duty of public servants in a tribute to statesman John Foster Dulles (namesake of the Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia) who died on May 24, 1959: : Perhaps the highest function of a public servant in a free and democratic society is to preserve its oneness as […]
Productive Long-term Business Relationships
Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz writes in The Hard Thing About Hard Things how he and fellow venture capitalist Marc Andreeseen have managed to work effectively together across three companies over eighteen years: Most business relationships either become too tense to tolerate or not tense enough to be productive after a while. Either people challenge each […]
Pork-making Without the Homage of a Tear
Novelist Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1905) shocked the nation with a novel revealing what went on inside the stockyards and slaughterhouses of Chicago: It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was pork-making by machinery, pork-making by applied mathematics. And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of […]