Last night I wandered into a bookstore by mistake and ended up sitting through a fascinating talk by economist Jared Bernstein. He was discussing the economic trends that have us feeling overworked, underpaid, and anything but upwardly mobile. Unlike most economists, though, he could speak plain English and made his points accessibel and understandable.
So I [...]
I grew up in the era of the Apollo moon launches. One of my earliest memories is traveling to Cape Canaveral and watching from the beach as one of the missions was launched towards the moon. It was pretty incredible.
Despite frequent moves and attending six schools between elementary school and college, science was in the [...]
It’s almost April 15th, that wonderful time of the year when we pay taxes.
And I say this time of year sucks!! It doesn’t suck because of taxes; they’re inevitable. It sucks because of all the whining people do about taxes.
People complain about taxes all the time. We’re pretty ungrateful, here in America. We have among [...]
What a great idea! Twitter is a little one-to-many text messaging tool. I can send out a text message to Twitter, and everyone who has elected to “follow” me gets the message. The intent of Twitter is that you send out a message answering the question, “what are you doing right now?”
Initially, it was fun. [...]
Hey! Can only type for a minute. Very exciting stuff happening. I’ve closed a book deal for a book based on the Get-it-Done Guy podcast. Starting to write next week! This week was too exciting. Burst hot water heater. Had to have the whole thing ripped out and replaced. Back went out, couldn’t walk. Car [...]
A friend pointed me to this simple graphic in the Washington Post that explains the whole subprime mortgage mess. The only missing piece is that Joe the Hedge Fund manager and Bob the Banker both took home hundred-million-dollar salaries and bonuses before the house of cards collapsed. And even though their businesses may have tanked, [...]
It’s amazing. I always found it odd when applying for a mortgage that banks considered income, but not asset base. If I have a bunch of money and invest in an investment that’s growing in value by 33% per year but not throwing off income, they won’t consider that in deciding to grant a mortgage. [...]
Check out http://www.TheStoryOfStuff.com. It’s a bit heavy-handed in places, but if you watch it with an open mind, she makes some really good points about consumer culture. The planned obsolescence bit, while obvious, was something I’d never really thought about in terms of the global “material economy.”
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On a recent birthday I was looking back at the strategies that my friends from high school and college and I employed to get where we are today. We assumed that success would bring happiness, and as far I can tell, we were wrong. It turns out that the two are separate, even [...]
In a wondrous attempt to increase security, more and more vendors are now requiring me to choose passwords of many characters with mixed case, numbers and punctuation. My bank does one better, where I have five different question/answer combinations they ask, then once I’ve passed their quiz, they display an image that I’m supposed [...]
