My schedule was completely reshuffled this afternoon because my grandmother and four-year-old niece stopped by for a wonderful surprise visit. During the conversation, it came up that Ellie had never seen Mary Poppins. Completely unacceptable! We cancelled everything else for the day, bought it on Apple TV, made English tea with sugar and milk (though,…
DetailsThe Berkshire Hathaway shareholder discounts at Nebraska Furniture Mart end in a few hours, with the discount at Borsheim’s cutting off tomorrow. The furniture buyer with whom I am working has spent the past week finalizing my spreadsheet, locking me into the enormous savings that are available. [mainbodyad]Taking advantage of the stockholder pricing is one…
DetailsI’ve been watching the French election. Hollande won. He has promised a 75% income tax on the rich and vows to, “re-negotiate a European treaty on trimming budgets to avoid more debt crises of the kind facing Greece.” Looks like we’re selling the French stocks in the retirement funds. I’m not dealing with this s**t. Forgive me the language. Life is too precious, and too hard, to deal with thugs who don’t understand human nature and the velocity of money. A fundamental rule of humanity is that people go where they feel secure and appreciated. I love the United States. If the United States took $75 out of every $100 I earned, do you think I would stay here? If I did, do you think I’d work anymore?
DetailsOne of the most useful business strategies, and life strategies, I know has to do with stealth projects, stealth accomplishments, and stealth resources. The strategy can be useful for games, in your own company, or in your own family. Showing you how it works might be the easiest way to explain it. Last night, Aaron…
DetailsYou have can almost anything you want in life. No one is going to give it to you. There is no calvary coming. Your parents, your friends, none of these people can live your life for you. Instead, you have to figure out 1.) What you want, and then 2.) Take specific, targeted actions to…
DetailsThis morning, I woke up thinking about the Euthyphro dilemma. It was as if I had been in the middle of a debate, passionately arguing my case for the nature of goodness, when I was suddenly interrupted by the real world as a text message jolted me out of bed. I walked around, threw on…
DetailsLast night, I published my monthly updates for the Investing for Beginners site at About.com, a division of The New York Times. One of the articles I wrote has to do with something called Taxmageddon. As the law stands now, in eight months, Americans will face one of the largest tax hikes in history, with…
DetailsMy dad likes building stuff. It’s actually one of the coolest things about him. Whereas I design things on paper, then work with people to bring it into reality, he pictures it and then does it himself. Since I was a kid, my dad has wanted to restore an old Ford pickup truck. He…
DetailsShortly after World War I, Raymond Poincaré, the Prime Minister of France, decided against partnering with Royal Dutch Shell to fund the energy needs of the French people. One of his military commanders, Colonel Ernest Mercier, worked with 90 banks and businesses to establish a new oil company called French Petroleum Company (er, technically, Française des Pétroles Compagnie since they weren’t speaking English). The name might sound prosaic but keep in mind this was the era of “General Electric” and “Standard Oil”. The new undertaking began operations on March 28th, 1924. Today, that business is known as Total, S.A. and it is one of the six supermajor oil powers on the planet.
DetailsLast night, we were in a hurry; were sponsoring a movie night and didn’t have much time to get dinner and dessert together. There would be no perfectly molded honey lemon bee hive cakes or unique custom icing crafted. Instead there would be delicious nachos and some sort of after dinner sweet. Whatever we did…
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