The novel by E.L. James, 50 Shades of Grey is a 2011 erotic romance novel that follows Anastasia Steele, a college student, and Christian Grey, a wealthy young businessman, as they enter into a complicated relationship involving a contract he proposes to her. That contract is what is called a BDSM contract standing for Bondage & Discipline, Dominance & Submission and Sadism & Masochism. The core principles of a modern BDSM community operates on the…
In ancient times there was a practice of assisted stretching that dated back thousands of years, rooted in spiritual rituals and ancient healing systems. Partner-assisted stretches were part of yogic tradition in ancient India, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) that used passive stretching in Tuina massage, and Thai monks, who developed Nuad Thai (Thai Yoga Massage) combining guided stretches and acupressure. Ancient cultures had remarkably sophisticated reasons for assisted stretching. The motivations fell into a few…
A friend of mine has asked me to shadow him on a private investment and manage it for his descendants should his health prevent him from doing so himself. Getting back into the process of venture capital is not really something I am all that keen on, but I’ve done it enough and am proficient enough that I’m happy to help out a friend. I made my living in finance and investments for almost 50…
Last night I stumbled on a little movie I hadn’t seen before called Brad’s Status. Brad’s Status is a 2017 film written and directed by Mike White, starring Ben Stiller. The premise is that Brad (Stiller) is a modestly successful nonprofit director taking his son to college visits (Harvard, Tufts) from his “ordinary” home in Sacramento, and becoming consumed by envy and self-doubt as he measures his life against four college friends who all seem…
A classic! The 2000 Coen Brothers film about channeling the general sentiment of exasperation. The movie is about a Depression-era Odyssey retelling that’s set in Mississippi, with George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson as escaped convicts on a rambling road trip. The Homeric parallels are playful but genuine with the Cyclops, the Sirens, and Tiresias (the blind prophet) all making appearances in transformed form. And the soundtrack, is arguably as important as the…
Back in 1961, when my mother brought my sisters and I up to Madison, Wisconsin from Turialba, Costa Rica, I started at the local elementary school into the prescribed second grade as the back-to-school season began. Within two weeks I had frustrated my teacher to the point where my mother was called in for a conference to discuss my schooling. It seemed that my one year of one-room schoolhouse education on the tropical grounds of…
Life has a way of happening in waves and right now we are in a travel planning wave. Note that I said travel planning, not travel. We are actually having a pretty light travel year due to modest planning and unforeseen changes which have caused us to cancel on two trips. That has left us with one foreign trip in September, one foreign trip in early 2027 and then a whole bunch of conversations which…
The thing about living out here in San Diego is that the weather is, simply perfect. I just asked Claude where the best place to live in the United States is in terms of comfort. Claude went through the preference Q&A needed to answer that sort of question, asking me about what sort of temperature I preferred (mild 60’s-70’s rather than warm 70’s-80’s) and what I wanted to avoid the most (humidity rather than cold/snow)…
When we bought this hilltop in early 2012, Mexican immigration was at a historically low point. 2011 represented the trough of a decade-long decline in Mexican migration driven by the 2008–09 financial crisis, a strengthening Mexican economy, and dramatically increased US border enforcement. After the Great Recession in 2007–2008, migration from Mexico declined sharply, falling from 1,089,092 apprehensions in fiscal year 2006 to 340,252 apprehensions in fiscal year 2011. Around the same time, the number…
As I mentioned before, my favorite painting is one that hangs in our living room directly over the etagere that I bought in Toronto 36 years ago. That etagere is home to all the most interesting and emblematic curios and artifacts that I and we have collected over the last seventy years. To be fair, some of them were really collected by my mother during her travels across Latin America as well, but they have…