Top 15 Countries by GDP 1970-2017
The rise of China is remarkable. Hint – switch off the sound the background music is bloody irritating.
The Shortness of Life: Seneca on Busyness and the Art of Living Wide Rather Than Living Long
“How we spend our days,” Annie Dillard memorably wrote in her soul-stretching meditation on the life of presence, “is, of course, how we spend our lives.” And yet most of us spend our days in what Kierkegaard believed to be our greatest source of unhappiness — a refusal to recognize that “busy is a decision”…
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The Aging Athlete
Trail running has long been my happy place. Actually, any form of running enables me to start my day invigorated and ready to go. Regular exercise associates with many upsides. Exercising so that we can live longer is a draw for a few. Most master athletes I have met exercise because they have to. They…
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A Magician Explains Why We See What’s Not There
Norman Triplett was a pioneer in the psychology of magic, and back in 1900, he published a wonderful scientific paper on magic that, among many other things, discusses an experiment on an intriguing magical illusion. A magician sat at a table in front of a group of schoolchildren and threw a ball up in the…
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Can meditation really slow ageing?
It’s seven in the morning on the beach in Santa Monica, California. The low sun glints off the waves and the clouds are still golden from the dawn. The view stretches out over thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean. In the distance, white villas of wealthy Los Angeles residents dot the Hollywood hills. Here by…
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I am a Winner
If you have ever wondered why the world is like it is consider the image below which is a snip of an email I received this morning. Apparently in their largess the UN has decided to give me $7.5M if I send them $12,000. Intriguingly scams like this are like any other business, you wouldn’t…
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Base Metal Prices
Sometimes when you look at a group of prices what you see is not necessarily what you get as I found out when I had a quick look at base metal prices. What triggered this little foray into a segment of the market I dont really deal in was the piece below that appeared on…
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Is It Ever Too Late to Pursue a Dream?
Dry heaves racked Dan Stoddard’s body as he bent his 6-foot-8, 325-plus-pound frame awkwardly over a toilet, shaking as he vomited up the Gatorade and other fluids he had consumed in an attempt to stave off dehydration. The 39-year-old hadn’t slept well in days, and even when he did manage some shut-eye, it was only…
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How To Deal With Regrets
“Mistakes are the portals of discovery” wrote the author James Joyce. I recently spoke with a young analyst in Private Equity who wanted to take a pragmatic look into regrets with one qualifier – “not the deathbed kind.” He wondered aloud, what were some common regrets of people ten or twenty years older? And did they…
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