Mozart wrote music at age 5, gave public performances at age 8, and composed some of the world’s most beautiful symphonies before his death at age 35. A close look at his background reveals:
* His father, Leopold, was an expert music teacher who published a violin textbook the year Mozart was born.
* Leopold systematically instructed Mozart from at least age 3 (probably sooner).
* Mozart’s first four piano concertos, composed at age 11, contained no original music. He cobbled them together from other composers’ works. He composed his first original masterpiece, the Piano Concerto No. 9, at age 21. That’s a remarkable achievement, but by then he’d gone through 18 years of intense, expert training.
As Alex Ross, music critic for TheNew Yorker, says, “Ambitious parents who are currently playing the ‘Baby Mozart’ video for their toddlers may be disappointed to learn that Mozart became Mozart by working furiously hard.”
Then there’s Tiger Woods, who shot a 48 over nine holes at age 3, appeared in Golf Digest at age 5, broke 80 at age 8, and won six consecutive Junior World Golf Championships. The list goes on. At age 20, he dropped out of Stanford to turn pro, since his peers were no longer competition.
His early life parallels Mozart’s in many ways:
* Tiger’s father, Earl, was a teacher. (He became obsessed with golf in this 40s.)
* Earl gave Tiger his first metal club, a putter, at age 7 months. And he put a highchair in the garage so Tiger could watch him hit balls into a net. “It was like a movie being run over and over and over for his view,” Earl wrote.
* Earl started taking Tiger to the golf course before age 2, where they played and practiced regularly.
Yet when questioned about Tiger’s amazing career, both father and son give the same answer: hard work.
Back from the sunny beaches of Rancho Santana on the Pacific Ocean to my house on the equally sunny beaches of the Atlantic Ocean in Delray Beach, I was only dimly aware that the Delta variant of the coronavirus was skyrocketing. You couldn’t tell from the airport or by looking at people on the streets or at Boheme Bistro, where we dined that first night. Unlike New York and California, Florida has maintained a policy of minimum mandates during the entire pandemic. We were in lockdown for some number of weeks when there was a legitimate fear that hospitals would be overwhelmed. That didn’t happen, and the lockdown was relaxed. Since virtually no businesses were shut down, Florida’s economy stayed strong these past 18 months and is now enjoying the benefit of a flood of people buying up houses and condos to move into or use as second homes.
Freedom is never free. There is always a cost. Sometimes it is paid in labor. Sometimes in risk. Sometimes in blood. I decided to check the data to see how my home state is doing compared to similarly large states that imposed (and still are imposing) severe sanctions.
Here are the scores so far:
Contracted COVID Cases (per 100,000)
New York: 11,500
New Jersey: 12,000
California: 10,600
Florida: 14,300
Deaths (per 100,000)
New York: 278
New Jersey: 300
California: 165
Florida: 190
What does that mean?
All three large-population states with the toughest lockdown requirements have done better than Florida, with about 30% fewer cases. But in terms of what really matters – deaths – New York and New Jersey did considerably worse than Florida with about 50% higher mortalities. California did somewhat better at 165/100,000 vs. 190/100,000 – about 16% less.
My prediction is that after all is said and done, including vaccinations, the difference in mortality between high-mandate and low-mandate states will be about the same. And if that turns out to be true, the only valid conclusion we will be able to draw is that mandates and lockdowns were not effective in reducing deaths. What will have been effective is simply distancing: Rural (less populated) states and countries will end up with fewer deaths per population.
To understand how the Chinese economy got where it is today, you need to know a bit about China’s Cultural Revolution and what happened after that.
In 1966, 17 years after Mao Zedong established the People’s Republic of China as a Communist state, he set in motion the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” whose purpose was to “to struggle against and crush those persons in authority who are taking the Capitalist road.”
Soon gangs of students and the government’s so-called Red Guards attacked people wearing “bourgeois clothes” on the street, “Imperialist” signs were torn down, and intellectuals and party officials were murdered or driven to suicide. Those that submitted to the revolution were forced to publicly admit to their status and repent for their past transgression, before they were stripped of their homes and other private property and sent out to the country to work as laborers for the party.
The result was 10 years of economic destruction, famine, repression, and widespread violence that crippled the economy and left more than a billion people poverty-stricken and hungry.
But then, after Mao died, China liberalized its economy under Deng Xiaping, whose Boluan Fanzheng program dismantled the Maoist policies associated with the Cultural Revolution and allowed for a significant amount of private enterprise.
As a result, China is no longer the overpopulated, poverty-plagued country it was 40 years ago. It is a major military and economic power – as large or nearly as large as the US, and growing much faster. And without the US’s terrible debt problem.
Click here for a good, quick review of the Cultural Revolution.
In discussing podcasts, a colleague wrote: ”Oh, Man! I can’t stand listening to a podcast with two old guys throwing the F Word around – like they’re trying to one-up each other with how many times they can say FUCK!”
I agree. Vulgar language – whether on podcasts or anywhere else – is akin to sports cars and beachwear. Some things that work for you when you are young make you look foolish when you are not.
There should be a rule about using the F word as you age. You can use it all you want in your teens… once a day in your 20s… once a week in your 30s… once a month in your 40s… once a year in your 50s. And once you hit your 60s, you should have found another word – like “Fudge!” – that is more age appropriate.
On Friday, more than six months after President Biden put her in charge of the “border problem,” Kamala Harris visited the US-Mexico border. (The White House announced her trip the day after Trump announced that he’d be going on June 30.)
When asked as recently as last month why she hadn’t yet been there, Harris mocked the question. “I haven’t been to Europe either,” she said, laughing that odd laugh of hers.
Earlier this month, however, she did fly down to several countries in Central America to talk about “the root cause” of the increase in undocumented immigration: the wealth and income gap between the US and those countries.
It is mindboggling to me that anyone would take that seriously. How is she going to fix the gap? By magically raising the per-capita income of Guatemala and El Salvador to US standards?
Meanwhile, Mexican and Central American cartels are making billions trafficking people and drugs to the US. Every day, thousands of men, women, and unaccompanied children are coming into the country. Some manage to sneak in and disappear. But most get caught or turn themselves in, knowing that the Biden administration’s policy of booking and releasing them (into the US) means, essentially, free entry.
Since January, there has been a surge of border crossings, both illegal crossings and immigrants seeking asylum. Well, actually, most of the asylum seekers are people that cross the border illegally and then turn themselves in to authorities on the other side, knowing that they will be booked and released, so long as they promise to return one day for a hearing.
At the current rate of 6,000 apprehensions a day, and including those that avoid detection, the total number coming into the US in 2021 could exceed 2 million.
There are consequences. One is a huge increase in illegal drugs (including methamphetamines and cocaine) entering the country.
Another is the human cost of trafficking humans…
So, what’s the deal? Why the open-border policy? Every other sovereign country in the world has strict border controls. Biden himself was an advocate for secure borders for most of his career. He may be a little foggy upstairs, but he’s not braindead. And neither are the people around him, the people that are making the domestic policy decisions.
I have two theories. The first is not my theory, but it’s fun to imagine:
Keeping the southern border open is part of a Democratic two-prong strategy to maintain control of both houses of Congress and the executive office forevermore. The first prong is to make Puerto Rico and Washington, DC, states and thus secure four more Democrat senators. The second prong is to boost the Democrat voting population by bringing in several million illegal immigrants, who, the Dems think, will vote Blue.
The second is more mundane:
In his bid for the presidency, Trump’s position on the border struck a chord that surprised everyone, including him and his campaign. It was such a strong issue that he/they felt compelled to make it one of the pivotal “achievements” of his first term in office. The Dems were forced to oppose it. Not because they believe in open borders, but because they were committed to opposing everything that Trump did. When it was discovered that arrested children were being kept separately from their parents, the public was outraged. And so, like it or not, the Biden administration felt compelled to dismantle everything Trump did to secure the border. This led to the current surge, which the Republicans are loudly criticizing. But the Democrats can’t do anything about it or it will look like some part of Trump’s policies may have been right. Instead, they have tried their best to ignore what’s happening down there because they don’t want it to become a pivotal issue again in 2022 or 2024.
At the age of 60, Martha Gellhorn, best known as the third wife of Ernest Hemingway (although she was already an accomplished writer with a brilliant career when she met him) decided she’d learn to dance.
Here’s an excerpt from a letter she wrote to her son Sandy:
Meantime, to make you howl with laughter, I take discotheque dancing lessons, with Mary Hall, grey-haired Mum of Fred Tompkins, from an 18-year-old lassie named Pam. It is funnier than you would credit and I must say it has jogging beat, as exercise. You should see your old Mum solemnly learning steps entitled Funky Broadway, Tighten Up, Pearl, Boogaloo, Shingaling, Stomp. I specially admire that basic gesture, the heart of the matter, which most closely resembles a male dog in the act of procreation. Anything anything to make life here a little less dismal. (Source: Letters Of Note)
No, it’s never too late to start dancing. Here’s a video proving that point…
The policemen involved in the fatal shooting of Andrew Brown Jr. will not face charges, the Elizabeth City (N. Carolina) DA announced recently.
Brown, who was Black, was killed in April as he tried to flee from deputies that were attempting to serve an arrest warrant. He was shot five times. Once in the back of the head.
The decision not to prosecute the officers was based at least partly on a 45-second clip from police body camera footage. The DA said it demonstrates that the officers were in danger of losing their lives and were defending themselves. The family of Andrew Brown vehemently disagreed. They said it was more like a public execution.
I know nothing about the case other than what I just told you and that 45-second video clip. So I may be wrong. But to me, it looked a lot more like an execution than self-defense.
At my private Cigar Club, we serve our guests a variety of cigar sizes, strengths, and flavors – ranging from as little as $4 a stick to more than $16.
I want my guests to have the best smoking experience they can. But that doesn’t mean giving them nothing but expensive cigars. I won’t serve inexperienced smokers strong cigars, because I know those cigars will likely make them feel nauseated. Likewise, I don’t serve them expensive cigars, because I hate seeing someone mistreat a carefully grown, meticulously crafted, world-class cigar.
As with just about every consumer good, you don’t have to spend a lot of money to buy a very good cigar. If you do some research and testing, you can enjoy great cigars for less than $10 a stick.
The best cigars for less than $10 a stick (or $250 per box)
* Rocky Patel Edge HabaN TORO
* Perdomo Double Aged 12 Year
* My Father El Centurion Toro Granda
* My Father Flor de Las Antillas Belicoso
* Punch Diablo Diabolus
* Perdomo Lot 23
* Romeo & Jullietta Reserva Robusto (Ataldis USA)
* Casa Magna Jalap Claro Toro Box Press
* Arturo Hemingway Short Story
* Alec Bradley Nica Puro Torro
* LIga Undercrown Sun Gran Toro
* Don Pepin Garcia Blue Original Generosos
Under $6 a cigar ($150 a box)
* Arturo Fuente Chaeau Fuente Natural
* Padron Classic 2000 Natural
* AJ Fernandez Last Call Geniales
* Tatuaje Tatoo Robusto
* Legado de Pepin Toro
* Cadwell Long Live the King Harem
* Crux Passport Half Corona
* Gran Habano Corojo Robusto
* Foundation Charter Oak Broadleaf Rothschild
* Quesada 40th Petite Belicoso Clasica – Small Batch
If you aren’t a cigar smoker, know nothing about them,, but want to gift someone a box of cigars that won’t disappoint, you might consider one or several sample collections. Below are four you can buy from JR Cigars for about $40.
I’ve been in the business of selling newsletters by subscription since my Peace Corps days. The subscription business was always bigger than the general advertising business, but nobody knew it. When the internet became the thing around 2000, we changed from 90% paper to 90% digital in just a few years, but we continued with the subscription model because we realized it was perfect for digital marketing. And digital marketing was growing like crazy.
Since then, we’ve gradually seen our publishing competitors (newspapers and magazines) gradually shift from relying on advertising to subscription models.
The Wall Street Journal was one of the first major news sites to put up a “paywall” (as it’s called). Reuters, one of the world’s largest news publishers, is the latest.
According to an article from The Daily Upside that BK forwarded to me, they are relaunching their website to focus on business and financial news… and asking their readers to pay for it. (“It seems,” says BK, “like the media world is still trying to figure out what you guys figured out years ago.”)
After a “preview period” of 5 free articles a month, digital subscribers will pay $34.99. That’s what Bloomberg, Reuters’ main rival, has been charging – and Bloomberg expects to reach about 400,000 consumer subscriptions this year, up from 250,000 last year. The WSJ charges $38.99, and the NYT charges $18.42.
The article points out that “the ‘professional’ audience (aka, those with a corporate expense account) is a lucrative audience to target. And many publishers are beginning to see the value of stable subscription revenue…. In 2020, subscription news revenue grew 16% even as advertising revenues slumped heavily amid the pandemic. Overall, the subscription news economy has grown by nearly 500% in the past decade.”
To Buy or Not to Buy: Suzanne and I Compare Notes on 7 Paintings by Denis Nunez
One of the fun things I like about collecting art with a partner is that you get to know one another’s preferences – generally and with respect to particular artists.
When Suzanne Snider and I are buying pieces of the most important modernist artists for our permanent collection, our preferences are almost always in total alignment. That’s because we have spent so many years studying these artists and their work that we know exactly what sort of images best represent them at various stages of their development.
It’s not so easy when choosing work by contemporary artists. These are living artists, few of whom have reached a level where they are traded by the large, international auction houses and collected by major international museums. In other words, there is no uniformity of opinion as to whose fame will endure and which of their styles and periods will be considered their best.
But that doesn’t stop us from forming our own opinions and having debates about the pros and cons of individual pieces.
Yesterday morning, Suzanne sent me 7 recently available pieces by Denis Nunez, a contemporary Nicaraguan artist that we’ve been keeping an eye on.
Rather than tell her, I asked her to guess which ones I liked (and might want to bid on) and which one I hated.
Here are the 7 pieces. (See if you agree with my favorites.)
Suzanne thought I would like #1, #2, #5, and #6. And knowing that I hate semi-abstract representations of attractive women, she guessed that I would hate #7.
She was very close. I liked #1, #2, and #6. And, yes, I hated #7.
