Flotsam and jetsam are maritime terms that refer to different types of debris found floating in the ocean or washed up on shores, though they’re often used together colloquially to mean “odds and ends” or “miscellaneous items,” and especially things that have no control over their provenance and at at the mercy of fate. Flotsam refers to wreckage or cargo that floats on the water after a ship has sunk or been wrecked. It comes…
About a year ago, our friend Melisa decided that she wanted to put in a zen garden in the front of her house in a spot defined by the alcove created by her home’s architectural design as determined by a large boulder that sits imbedded in the earth in that alcove. These giant granite boulders that are strewn all over these hillsides in this part of the state are sometimes of defined size and shape…
If you read my blog, you know by now that I have been threatening to reduce my international travel for a number of years and I have continued to wrestle with the issue because every time I try to find my way to a reduction plan, I end up doing what I’ve done this year, which is to plan three international trips during the year which is somewhere between one and three too many. My…
The other day I read a piece about the supposed consequences of electing Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City, a notion that has gripped the financial press for a few weeks now. I even saw a post from my favorite financial writer, Bill Cohen, that stated that his conversations in the market indicated that Wall Street was far less worried about the U.S. bombing Iran than they were about Mamdani winning the Democratic…
The other day I read a piece about the supposed consequences of electing Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City, a notion that has gripped the financial press for a few weeks now. I even saw a post from my favorite financial writer, Bill Cohen, that stated that his conversations in the market indicated that Wall Street was far less worried about the U.S. bombing Iran than they were about Mamdani winning the Democratic…
Today I read an article about the assault on higher education being perpetrated by Chat GPT and other AI bots. It was a disturbing article because it seemed far too relatable to my own experience. I was teaching a business ethics course at University of San Diego in November 2022 when Chat GPT was released. That semester was over, so the first semester that Chat GPT was in full swing with the student population was…
I am sitting here in my garden on my hilltop in the middle of summer of my 71st year. I can hear some distant traffic noises but mostly I’m in the quiet of the garden with all sorts of birds chirping and singing and generally going about their morning routines. I have come down to the lower garden with my vinegar sprayer to beat back the incessant arrival of weeds. It’s what I would call…
One way to tell old school people from new age people is to watch what they do at Starbucks when its time to pay. It used to be that we would roll our eyes when someone used a card to pay for a coffee. It felt like that person was skating on thin financial ice, putting something as small as a coffee on a credit card. Of course it could have been a debit card,…
The year I started working after business school, 1976, ABBA released their hit song, Money, Money, Money with the tag line, “It’s a rich man’s world.” I recently read that in the clamber to build out AI capabilities as quickly as possible, the expanding array of AI companies, ranging from the monster tech companies like Microsoft, Google and Meta, as well as the start-ups like Safe Superintelligence (SSI) that are popping up like mushrooms after…
One of my favorite summertime activities in the past few years involves trekking south for 45 minutes to Coronado Island for a Sunday night free concert in Spreckels Park on Orange Avenue, the main drag of this beach community. John Diedrich Spreckels (August 16, 1853 – June 7, 1926) was an American businessman who founded a transportation and real estate empire here in San Diego in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His legacy…