An Angry Man Back in 1987, over thirty years ago, I had a young man working for me who was very well-liked by everyone. He was a Midwesterner who was smart and shrewd, but generally mild-mannered. He had been a football player at a Division II school, and while tall and lean, he was also considered by everyone to be a strong athlete. In the two years he had worked for me, I had not…
Sideshow What is the main event of one’s life? I think we would all have a hard time not agreeing that it is love. And that means that the love we give not the love we get. As the saying goes, think about loving, not being loved. If we would all agree to that, why is there so much hatred all around us? The obvious reason is that how we express our love is…
The Kuomintang Candidate Richard was a young adventurer who wanted to see the world now that he had missed the greatest event of the century, World War II. He had been too young to enlist and then it ended with the flow of other young men returning with stories that he could never formulate based on his own lack of experiences. Richard wanted to be a writer. He was trying to form his own…
Blue Wave Blunders I have never registered for a political party in my life. I suspect what started as apathy has turned into resentment for the system at this point. I probably should try to help select the Democratic candidates (there is zero chance I would ever register Republican or even Libertarian). The truth is that I find most of the Democratic candidates (except perhaps Bill DeBlasio this time around) as somewhat acceptable and…
A Pang of Creativity I just saw something that knocked my socks off and that only happens occasionally. After 6+ years of working on the New York Wheel and trying to marshal all the creative energy I could muster from the people who build things like that, I got involved with a similar project in Dallas that wanted to do the same thing. I spent a fair bit of time episodically on the project…
A Heavy Heart How does a man of conscience grapple with his own failures in an era of increasing pragmatism? It’s not a rhetorical question. It is a question I face this morning and have faced on several other mornings. The story begins with a business failure twelve years ago. The length of time is important because it highlights that some things never go away, and we must all ask ourselves if that is helpful…
The Ego Spiral Sigmund Freud laid it out for us 120 years ago. He got his start at the task of educating the public in the popular aspects of psychoanalysis with his The Interpretation of Dreams, followed by The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious and eventually Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and The Ego and the Id. The jokes that come to mind ranging from the…
The Shit-Show Yesterday the New York Times published an article that the Bond Market is screaming one of its worst signals by going into the rare and portentous inverted position. That means long rates are lower than short rates. That means people are getting bearish about the economy and liquidity is starting to dry up. In forty-five years on Wall Street I learned many lessons, but none starker than to pay attention to…
Planning the Beachhead Next week I am going to Rotterdam for a conference. It is a conference I attended last year, which in and of itself is meaningful in that it demarcates the passage of time in our current scientific and commercial initiative. Last year there were 150 in attendance. I suspect this year will be closer to 200 attendees. This is only the third year of this conference and given the money-making nature…
Body of Evidence Charlie had always been a big man. In fact, he had been a big youth and a big child. He never completely understood where it all came from since his mother was 5’4” and came from sturdy Eastern European stock that was certainly broad, but not particularly tall. His father was a tall man for his era at 6’0” and narrow of hip and overall physique. Somehow that genetic combination yielded…