March 2022

Worried about your stock portfolio? I get it

The market is, for the most part, overvalued. And it’s been fluctuating scarily since Russia invaded Ukraine. My friend and colleague Alex Green wrote an essay in The Oxford Insight recently, which made a…

What I Believe: About Investing

To be successful at anything, we must begin with the ancient Greek aphorism, “Know thyself.” With respect to investing, that means understanding your instincts and emotions with regard to fear and greed…

Interesting: The Origin of “OK

The initials “OK” debuted in print 183 years ago, beginning the rise of one of the world’s most recognized words. Charles Gordon Greene, editor of The Boston Morning Post, likely authored the satirical piece…

Assisi, Italy

Some years ago, K and I spent several very pleasant days in Assisi. It is the birthplace and burial site of St. Francis, the patron saint of animals and the environment. But you don’t have to be into St…

Edna St. Vincent Millay to Witter Bynner, May 2, 1935

Edna St. Vincent Millay is one of my favorite American poets. I was both amused and bemused to discover that she didn’t like writing letters: Edna St. Vincent Millay to Witter Bynner, May 2, 1935 “I simply…

Warren Buffett On Investor Temperament Over Intelligence

“The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect.” – Warren Buffett

superjacent

Something that is superjacent is positioned immediately above or on top of something else. Example (from “The Castles of Moravia,” a 2011 article by Evan Rail in the Travel section of the NYT): “Village…

A book recommendation from JW

“Mark, have you read the book Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton? I’ve been reading it and found myself wondering what you’d think. I always appreciate your rare intersection of wealth building, philosophy, and…

Bill Burr’s Top 10 Moments on Conan

The Truth About Stress

Stress is bad for you. It wears you down. Makes you irritable. Clouds your brain. And over the long run, it shortens your life. I knew that. Until I read a review of The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal…

UK Government Report: COVID Deaths Among the Vaccinated

This sounds wrong, but I have seen it published a few times without contradiction (so far). So, I’m giving it to you. The UK government released a report at the end of February that said that seven out of 10…

The Stock Market: What…

Worried about your stock portfolio? Here are some facts from Mitch Zacks (by way of JS) that may ease your concerns: * S&P 500 earnings have been going up while the index has been falling. That means the P/E…

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater K and I visited Falling Waters about 10 years ago. It was a memorable day and a wonderful learning experience. If you are a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright, you should check out…

Five Causes of The Great Depression

On Black Monday, Oct. 28, 1929, the Dow Jones dropped nearly 13% in one day. That started a period of catastrophic declines that destroyed almost half of the Dow’s value in a single month. By 1932, at the…

Letter to the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh, 1928

George Bernard Shaw wrote more than 60 plays, but he also wrote a lot of personal letters. I read once that he sent somewhere in the region of 250,000 letters and postcards during his lifetime, the majority in…

George Bernard Shaw On Self-Creation

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. It’s about creating yourself.” – George Bernard Shaw

grabble

To grabble is to grasp or grope – probably from the same Old English/Germanic origin as grapple (wrestle). Example from “The Tall Men” by William Faulkner: “A fine loud grabble and snatch of AAA and WPA and a…

A letter from a young, determined-to-become-wealthy, nephew

“I’ve been looking at a lot of art recently as I would like to expand on what I already have. I’ve found this piece and would like to know your opinion on it and if you think it would be a good investment. I…

Mazzy Star: A New Discovery



The Greatest Film Ever Made”?

About 30 years ago, I severed an Achilles tendon playing basketball. Post-surgery, I had to spend more than three weeks off my feet. I was very active athletically at the time, so the thought of being supine…

Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane Release date: 1941 Directed by Orson Welles Starring Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, and Agnes Moorehead Available on several streaming services, including Netflix and Amazon Prime…

Barking Up the Wrong Tree

TS recommended it to me a few weeks ago. I bought it and put it on top of my “recently recommended” pile. I might have gotten to it a year from now, but the title intrigued me. So, I picked it up and started…

Michael Masterson On The Power Of Execution

“Ideas in and of themselves have little value. It is their expression that matters – the particular emanation of the idea with its particular shape and size and bells and whistles.” – Michael Masterson

cipher

A cipher (SY-fur) – from the Arabic for “zero” – is a secret code, usually one created using a mathematical algorithm. It can also be used to refer to someone or something of no importance. Example: “An…

Standing Out When Everyone Sells The Same Thing

How to compete in a saturated market… (Does this video make me look a little nutty?) 

Meeting Ben Carson

We met in the speaker’s lounge. A good-looking man, about my age. Strong handshake. Gentle smile. Good first impression. At that time, I knew two things about him. He was a famous neurosurgeon… and he was…

Voter Fraud Charged in Michigan

A Michigan county elections official and former township clerk was charged with ballot tampering related to the Aug. 2020 primary election, according to State Attorney General Dana Nessel. Nessel alleged that…

Charles Mizrahi Interview on Wealth Building

Click here for a recent interview I did with Charles Mizrahi.

St. Augustine, Florida

St. Augustine, Florida There are some international cities I can’t get enough of. Rome is at the top of the list. And then there’s Paris, Barcelona, Mumbai, and Madrid. In the US, New York and Chicago used to…

Milligan’s Reply

After Spike Milligan published “Monty,” the third installment of his memoirs, a reader wrote to praise the book, but added that he was bothered by a reference Milligan made about “cowardice in the face of the…

Vic Johnson On Personal Growth Through Goal Achievement

“Achieving big goals requires you to become a bigger person. You must develop new habits, abilities, skills, and attitudes. You must stretch yourself, and in so doing, you will be forever stretched.” – Vic…

conflate

To conflate is to fuse or confuse. To bring different things together and fuse them into a single entity – and, by extension, mistakenly treat them as equivalent. Example: “It is easy for those who conflate…

My response

Re Critical Race Theory: “Have you read How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi or White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo?” – AG My response: Yes. I read both of them. And I’ve mentioned both of them here on the…

Russia's Ukraine Invasion: Maher And Shapiro Debate Motives

Why did Russia invade Ukraine? Bill Maher and Ben Shapiro try to make sense of it…

The parents were immigrants from Korea…

They barely spoke English. But by the time I knew them, they had a small business. A sandwich shop across the street from Agora’s first headquarters, in a predominantly African American neighborhood in East…

What I Believe: About Family Culture

What I Believe: About Family Culture Good parents want to see their children exceed them. They want to see them attain heights they never reached. This is natural. It's DNA. And it's the impulse that creates…

COVID Outbreak in China

Tens of millions of residents across China are under lockdown as the country grapples with its worst reported COVID-19 outbreak since the beginning of the pandemic. Officials recorded almost 3,400 new cases…

Responding to Change

The information publishing industry, like all industries, has been changing since the internet revolution took hold for real at the turn of the century. It went through a major change from 2000 to 2020, and…

What I Like About Athens

Athens, Greece Kathy and I traveled first to Europe for several weeks after completing my two-year, Peace Corps stint in Africa. One of our favorite cities was Athens. We’ve been back only once since then, and…

Interesting

Interesting: Russia deploys at least 1,500 warheads on hundreds of missiles based on air, land, and sea platforms that can strike the entire US. Russia also is developing “novel” capabilities that can strike…

Guillermo Trujillo's El Cadejo Negro Joins Private Collection

Suzanne and I recently bought a treasure trove of Central American works for my collection from the Museum of Latin American Art in Los Angeles. Here’s one I particularly like, a large piece called El Cadejo…

Mikhail Gorbachev On Why He Started Perestroika

“Sometimes people ask me why I began perestroika. Were the causes basically domestic or foreign? The domestic reasons were undoubtedly the main ones, but the danger of nuclear war was so serious that it was a…

cadre

A cadre (KAH-dree) – from the Latin for “four” – is a small group of people that have some kind of unifying relationship. Example from an article in The Guardian: “Just another member of the insular elitist…

Readers Respond To Essays On Writing And Decision-Making

Re my Mar. 9 essay “Becoming a Writer… in Spite of Myself”: “Thank you for such an honest and candid essay about achieving a childhood dream. It is refreshing to hear a personal anecdote that rings true!” – BP…

How Well Do You Know US Citizenship Test Questions?

Here’s a test you might get if you were applying for US citizenship. I got three wrong. Does that mean I would fail? 

Batman (2022) And Kill Your Darlings Save Movie Night

After watching a string of “serious” movies, K and I thought we’d change it up and see something fun and frivolous. We booked two “extreme luxury” seats for an afternoon showing of Batman. The seats were…

Kill Your Darlings

Kill Your Darlings Release date: Oct. 16, 2013 Directed by John Krokidas Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Dane DeHann, Elizabeth Olsen, Jack Huston, Michael C. Hall, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Ben Foster Available on…

10 Very Good Books on Writing

On Monday, I answered a question asked by the son of a friend. He wanted to know what books he should read to improve his skills as a writer. Three titles came to mind immediately: The Elements of Style by…

Ernest Hemingway on Prose Structure

“Prose is architecture, not interior design.” – Ernest Hemingway

indite

To indite is to write, especially a literary or artistic work. As used in “Marginalia,” an essay by Edgar Allan Poe: “It is certain that the mere act of inditing tends, in a great degree, to the logicalisation…