I am sitting in the hot tub on an overcast Autumn day. It’s the first time -in many weeks that I have used the hot tub, and I feel like I have earned it by virtue of working most of the day on two active cases, one of which is at the stage of finalizing the report for submission to the court of arbitration, and the other is heading into a full day deposition tomorrow…
I wrote yesterday about Bill Ackman and his support of Trump. One of Bill Ackman’s 33 reason why he dislikes the Biden/Harris agenda was: #8 – “promote DEI ideologies that award jobs, awards, and university admissions on the basis of race, sexual identity and gender criteria, and teach our students and citizens that the world can only be understood as an unfair battle between oppressors and the oppressed, where the oppressors are only successful due…
I used to be a Crocs guy. They were my casual shoe of choice for a long time. By the time I moved out here to this hilltop for retirement, coming on five years ago now, my shoe wardrobe consisted of a whole array of $450 Allen Edmonds work shoes of all kinds. I would say I was 70% into black with the others all oxblood maroon. I found those colors were the most appealing…
If you look at my resume or even my profile on my expert witness website, you will see that I consider one of my core competencies to be the area of investment management that is often referred to as wealth management. While that term can be applied to almost any sort of financial instrument investment process (wealth being generic term not necessarily confined to any market segments), it is generally applied to the accumulation of…
A Labor of Love Today is Labor Day, which has been a national holiday since 1894. Even though it falls 2-3 weeks before the formal calendar transition from summer to fall, America always considers it the end of summer and the start of “back-to-school” season. It’s one of these times when everyone seems focused on their business before the holidays kick in at the end of November. Strangely enough, the hardest working folks in my…
Catching a Break It has been a very warm week here on the hilltop. Notice that I am saying warm and not hot. Because it has been dry, the warmth of the day has felt good and not bad or oppressive. Nonetheless, when I stopped by to see our friends Faraj and Yasuko yesterday, two people who seem always on the go and usually outside in the garden, they were hunkered in the house with…
Economizing I have often said that if and when I write my definitive autobiography, there is only one title that I can use. I will call it The Hole in My Pocket. That title suits me because I have lived life without much budgetary concern. Attribute this in a good way to my mother. Despite that she was a product of the Great Depression, it does not seem to have affected her the way it…
Approaching Singularity Recently I was sent a book by a colleague who was surprised that I had not read Ray Kurzweil and his two books called The Singularity is Near and the more recent The Singularity is Nearer. Kurzweil is both an inventor and a futurist who has become largely acclaimed as the guru of AI prognostication. The term “singularity” is taken from math and physics and means that special point in a mathematical function…
The Art of Juggling We all have to juggle at one time or another, but I think it is safe to say that the fine art of juggling is usually honed in the service of business. Sometimes we are forced to juggle work and home life and God knows I’ve had my share of that, with work winning more times than I care to admit. These days, that particular juggling act is much easier since…
The Holding Pen of Life In a recent British movie I watched, the narrator sets up the plot about a man in later life (Jim Broadbent…Bridget Jone’s dear old dad) who will be facing a crisis of his legacy. The comment is a made about the man when he was young and in school that he and his fellows felt as though they were in a holding pen. He goes on by saying that he…