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…
The Brown Lotus I have an acquaintance from my Cornell business school contacts who is a very bright Indian-American who operates in the venture capital space. He is a serious writer of editorials and I am on his email list. I have noted that while he is nowhere near being a MAGA Republican, he has a decided disdain for liberal ideology. He grew up in the impoverished areas of Southern India in a family run…
Running and Swimming My daughter, Carolyn, who is spending the month of July with us here on the hilltop, is a marathoner. She has run nine NYC Marathons and countless half-marathons. Last year while she was here, she tried running in the neighborhood only to find it too hilly and too warm for her, so this year she has asked me to take her to the gym so she can run on the treadmills. The…
Staying Relevant I have spoken before about the issue of people of a certain age (that would be of an older age like me) dealing with the issue of relevancy. This issue for me is less about desperately trying to find a way to stay relevant, and more about the issue of the decision we must all make at one time or another, or even on a continuous ongoing basis, as to whether or not…
Lawyering Up Everywhere I turn there are lawyers. The American Bar Association says that there are over 1.3 million lawyers in the United States. That’s only 0.73% of the working population of the country (I define that as those over 25 but under 75 since that seems like the working age), but it still sounds like a lot. That compares to 2 million engineers, 1.1 million doctors and only 141,000 bankers (I find that number…
Waves of Expertise There are plenty of historians who believe that the world moves forward in waves rather than in anything approximating a straight line. The Strauss-Howe Generational Theory is perhaps the best known of these waves or cycles and it states that there are four 20-year waves that form one full 80-year historical cycle. I have looked at the historical timeline and I find it hard to deny that there is a very clear…