Where Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘Eat Pray Love’ is Misguided
On the commentary site Intellectual Takeout Barry Brownstein remarks about Elizabeth Gilbert’s saga of self-discovery, Eat Pray Love: In a 2015 New York Times essay “Confessions of a Seduction Addict,” Gilbert confesses that in her youth she “careened from one intimate [non-monogamous] entanglement to the next—dozens of them—without so much as a day off between […]
Addicted to Trump
Don’t assume Trump to go quietly, warns broadcast journalist Ted Koppel in Washington Post, It is all but inevitable that whoever succeeds Trump in the White House will be perceived by 30 to 40 percent of the voting public as illegitimate-and that the former president will enthusiastically encourage them in this perception. Whatever his failings, […]
The True Investor Welcomes Volatility
Warren Buffett wrote in Berkshire Hathaway’s 1995 Chairman’s Letter: In assessing risk, a beta purist will disdain examining what a company produces, what its competitors are doing, or how much borrowed money the business employs. He may even prefer not to know the company’s name. What he treasures is the price history of its stock. […]
Is Obama’s Legacy Dead?
Matthew Walther, national correspondent at The Week, writes, Trump resembles most his immediate successor, whose actual accomplishments in office will always matter less than what his election itself represented. Obama’s actual achievements in office—the auto bailout, “Cash for Clunkers,” the passage of the Affordable Care Act, DACA, the Iranian nuclear deal, winning a Nobel Peace […]
How to Fail
Pema Chodron explains How to Fail (from Tricycle,) If you want to be a complete human being, if you want to be genuine and hold the fullness of life in your heart, then failure is an opportunity to get curious about what is going on and listen to the storylines. Don’t buy the one’s that […]
Steve Jobs on Saying ‘No’ by Saying ‘Yes’
Communications coach Carmine Gallo wrote in Forbes, According to Steve Jobs, “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud […]
A Defense Against the Vicissitudes of Inflation
Charlie Munger at the 2004 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting: Most people are going to get a very small real return from investment after considering inflation and taxes. I think that’s an iron law of the world and if, for a brief period, some of us do better than that, we ought to be very thankful. […]
Persevering Biological and Cultural Evolution
Theoretical physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson, Professor Emeritus in the School of Natural Sciences, in his Edge essay “Biological and Cultural Evolution: Six Characters in Search of an Author”: Our double task is now to preserve and foster both biological evolution as Nature designed it and cultural evolution as we invented it, trying to achieve […]
Lessons from Military Leadership
Lisa Petrilli presents lessons on leadership from two recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor: On Leadership: You never truly lead anybody until you learn to serve, and you never truly learn to serve until you learn there’s something so much greater than yourself. If it’s to be it’s up to me. I lead by […]
Seneca on the Happy Life
From Seneca’s De Vita Beata (“On the Happy Life,”) I shall make whatever befalls me become a good thing, but I prefer that what befalls me should be comfortable and pleasant and unlikely to cause me annoyance: for you need not suppose that any virtue exists without labour, but some virtues need spurs, while others […]