Author, Investor, Speaker, Mentor
I recently Twittered about the fact that I have a plan for a recession-proof business. I created the plan a couple of years ago, even lined up some killer reference customers, but never had time to put it into effect because of more time-sensitive priorities (Ustream, PBwiki). My “problem” is that between work, family, and … Continue reading Wanted: Co-founders for a recession-proof business concept
My friend Ramit recently issued a challenge to fellow personal finance blogger Trent of The Simple Dollar after Trent called Ramit’s “Scrooge Strategy” short-sighted for arguing that small frugality tips are counter-productive because they require too much effort for too little gain: Over a period of 1 month, starting Monday, March 2nd, I say we … Continue reading When Frugality = Insanity
Image courtesy of madonna-pix …Mindset. My pal Ben just posted his thoughts on Joseph Epstein’s “Ambition.” In it, Epstein tackles our ambivalence towards ambition: “In the modern world, and especially in America, a new distinction, a cruel twist, has been added: not to succeed means to fail. Leaving aside for a moment what it is … Continue reading What Makes Ambition Good Or Evil Is…
Will Wilkinson on the future of the Republican Party: “If Republicans keep bleeding young intellectual talent because increasingly socially liberal twenty-somethings simply can’t stand hanging around a bunch of superstitious fag-bashers, then the GOP powers-that-be might start to panic and realize that, once the last cohort of John Birchers die, they’ve got no choice but … Continue reading Quote of the Day: “Once the last cohort of John Birchers dies…”
From Will Wilkinson by way of Andrew Sullivan: “The great success of the GOP over the last eight years has been to destroy the reputation of free markets and limited government by deploying its rhetoric and then doing the opposite.”
Image courtesy of Hammer51012The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates has an interesting post about why he and his partner aren’t married (this is an older post; I found it because of a more recent post by Ross Douthat): As much as I can recall, there were basically three reasons for us to get married. 1.) I might … Continue reading Why Marriage Matters
Aaron Perry-Zucker at Fast Company describes the new Pepsi logo as “branding lunacy,” and I could not agree more. If you have time (and a lot of bandwidth–it’s over 10 MB) and want to either laugh or cry, you should download the Arnell Group’s design brief, which invokes the golden ratio, the Mona Lisa, the … Continue reading How The Arnell Group Botched the Pepsi Logo With Crimes Against Design
A few random thoughts on the statement above: This is another way of stating Kant’s Second Maxim to treat people as ends, rather than means. After all, what is a cause other than something that you’re supposed to treat as more important than a single human being Viewed through the lens of corporate management, this … Continue reading “Believe in each other, not causes.”
Image courtesy of Steve Jurvetson John Siracusa, a veteran of eBooks for the Palm Pilot (!!!), has a great piece in Ars Technica on “The Once and Future eBook.” It’s a fascinating piece, and it doesn’t hurt that I’m a long-time fan of ebooks. Back in 1999, I even organized a panel on “digital products” … Continue reading “And Then They Died”: The Inevitability of eBooks
Photo courtesy of babileta From childhood, I’ve always thought of myself as lucky. Good things seemed to come my way, and bad things stayed away. At Stanford, I even adopted a special t-shirt as a lucky talisman. Whenever I wore it, no matter how dire the circumstances, I always seemed to be be able to … Continue reading The Four Secrets of Lucky People