Mental Model: Goldovsky Errors How can a dead body hang in a tree for nearly 14 hours and not be noticed by a town? How can experts at one of the world’s top scientific institutions miss an easy-to-spot mistake for almost 30 years yet a 5th grader spots in 2008 after only a few seconds? …
Mental Model: The Dunning–Kruger Effect Have you ever wondered why some people come to erroneous conclusions despite all the counter evidence, overestimate their abilities, and constantly make mistakes whereas other, more intelligent people often claim ignorance and throw things on the “too hard” pile? The reality is that not everyone in a given population can…
As I mentioned in the Amouage Jubilation XXV review yesterday, one of the Amouage fragrance samples we received from the company, which is the official perfumer to the King of Oman in the Middle East, was Amouage Reflection for Men. I said that if the Jubilation XXV was the King, then Amouage Reflection was the…
Today, the postman came bearing gifts; specifically, the package of fragrance samples I bought from Amouage, the official perfumer of the King of Oman in the Middle East. They shipped from the retail boutique in London via Royal Air Mail and arrived far sooner than I anticipated. My family came over and we broke out…
Want to know why the middle class is disappearing despite families now having two people in the work force instead of one? Here is Elizabeth Warren discussing in an hour-long lecture at Berkeley. She is the author of The Two Income Trap.
Coco Chanel was able to launch her business by partnering with financier Pierre Wertheimer. She ended up with 10% and creative control, her friend, Théophile Bader, owned 20%, and Wertheimer owned 70%. She came to resent the arrangement.
Voltaire led a life that is extraordinarily useful for those who want an example of how to contribute to the improvement of civilization, live extremely well, and follow your passion.
Did the Founders Intend for There To Be a Separation of Church and State in the United States? A friend from college and I have been discussing whether the separation of church and state is what the founders intended and whether it is a good or bad thing for society. After a few years of studying…
As you can probably tell from my recent posts, I’ve been working my way through a compendium of Chinese proverbs. This type of reading has always been among my favorite – to take an observation and think about it for days, weeks, sometimes even longer, extracting every lesson I can from it. Here are some of my favorites.
There is a traditional Chinese proverb that goes something along the lines of, “Do not take the seeds and throw away the melon”. Though there are many ways you can approach this, and multiple lessons that can be extracted from reflecting on it, it can be particularly sage when it comes to running a business and allocating the cash flow from that business. One of my favorite examples comes from The Coca-Cola Company.