In 1936, Parker Brothers released an add-on to the popular Monopoly board game called the Stock Exchange. Although the core Monopoly game had two asset classes – real estate and a few common stocks in the form of the four railroads and two utility companies – the Stock Exchange add-on brought the experience to a…
Mental Model: Horns Effect and Halo Effect One of the most powerful, and potentially harmful, mental models you will encounter in your life is known as the horns effect and halo effect. It can cloud your judgment, and because it is closely related to the mere association mental model, has the power to cause you…
My brother-in-law told me about the Elder Scrolls games, which I had never played. The new Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released on 11/11/11 and I had it pre-ordered for Playstation 3 back in September so it would show up on release day. Given the insanely great reviews for the series, it seemed like a good franchise to take on faith, just like we did with Fable II, Uncharted 2, Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, etc. The critics don’t always get it right but game players normally do. In this case, both are thrilled with as near-perfect ratings as you can get.
We often talk about avoiding wipe-out risk on this blog. In fact, avoiding wipe out risk is one of the main reasons to study mental models because it takes a lifetime to build a reputation and only a few minutes to destroy it. I can think of no better real-world case study than the Joe Paterno and Penn State debacle that has dominated the news cycle (and rightly so) for the past few days.
A week ago, I decided to pack up all of the high-end coffee equipment temporarily, put it in the cabinets, and break out an old-school style percolator; the type that my grandparents used when they were first married in the 1950s and 1960s. There was something wonderfully imperfect about it. A few coffee grinds inevitably…
Mental Model: Cui Bono Lucius Cassius Longinus Ravilla was a famous Roman judge, who, according to Marcus Tullius Cicero, was regarded as an “honest and wise” man. He was known for a habit of constantly asking the question, “Cui bono?“, which roughly translates into “who benefits?”. In a crime or a political scheme, Lucius Cassius…
his article deals with people who want to be rich. Not just financially independent or reasonably well-off, but actually rich relative to the average American; the folks who want to be able to write a check for a Lexus or live in a nice house, in a neighborhood with great schools, without worrying about it, while watching their net worth climb year after year, decade after decade. The strategy involved for that type of success is slightly different in that it requires you to often build off a foundation that I call your primary economic engine. But I’m getting ahead of myself …
Last week, Simon Cowell’s new show, X-Factor, called one of my companies, Mount Olympus Awards asking if we could outfit the varsity jackets for Marcus Canty’s performance of Bobby Brown’s hit “Every Little Step I Take” on tonight’s live show. Most of the time, letterman jackets with custom chenilles take 4 to 6 weeks, but…
This Halloween evening, I am sitting at one of the desks in my home, drinking a cup of Costco coffee, and penning About.com content for the Investing for Beginners site. I’m going to try and pre-write the next few months’ worth of articles and set them to automatically publish themselves due to the upcoming time crunch…
Yesterday, we took a look at the worst paying college degrees. Today, I want to look at a list of the best paying college degrees. It is clear that, like all things in a free society, supply and demand determine payoff. Engineers rule the day when it comes to making a wise investment in education,…