“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.” —Mark Twain Last weekend, I visited my son in…
Last week, it was 70 degrees in Saint Joseph, Michigan. I ditched work and went for a walk through the woods to Lake Michigan. Then I laid on the beach for several hours, tuning into my body and moving my joints in every direction I could imagine, 30-50 times each….
There are so many things happening right now, I don’t know how much I’ll be able to cover in this post, but let’s begin with the most fundamental principle in international law: Pacta Sunt Servanda. It’s Latin for “agreements must be kept,” which is one of the oldest moral and…
“A leader must inspire or his team will expire.” —Orrin Woodward It is 3 o’clock in the morning, Sunday, and I’m speaking into my phone (voice to text) while I am laying in bed with a heating pad on my elbows. I’m supposed to heat them for fifteen minutes, massage…
Less than a week after I was born, Nixon ended the Bretton Woods International Monetary System, whereby the dollar was backed by gold. Watch his speech televised on August 15, 1971, or read it here. Otherwise referred to as the “Nixon Shock Speech” or the “Bretton Woods Speech,” Nixon outlined…
“Too often we… enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”—John F. Kennedy I’m back! My boys are settled into college, and I’m still struggling with elbow tendinosis and SI joint pain. So I’ve had to quit the gym and stopped running for now. Instead, I’ve been walking…
“Our city—look around you, see with your own eyes—our ship pitches wildly, cannot lift her head from the depths, the red waves of death . . . Thebes is dying.”—Oedipus the King I didn’t watch the presidential debate, as I was prepping for my son’s graduation party. I heard about…
“Parasites are not our enemies; they are reminders of our precarious place in the natural world.” —Carl Zimmer, author of Parasite Rex Last week I came across an article: America is the Narcissist of the World. Over the past few decades, extreme narcissism and other psychological disorders have proliferated in…
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.” —Gerald R. Ford Last week, I opened my brokerage account and found one of my larger stock holdings down over 95 percent. I tried furiously to buy a…
“The world consists of Yin and Yang, and understanding this is crucial for anyone seeking to navigate life’s complexities.” Life is complicated. It seems that just when we think we’ve figured something out, the game changes. In Marketland, this usually starts with recency bias: a form of cognitive reasoning that…
“Outstanding, sophisticated, and mesmerizing…a spiritual intrigue similar to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.” —ForeWord Reviews