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There’s a national park close to my house that has a large lake and all the swimming accoutrements left over from the 1970s. It’s a nightmare for any “safety Nazi.” The water is very deep. A diving board is very high and slippery, even slightly broken. There is no lifeguard on duty. If you dive …
“I just joined the Club!” That’s the whole content of an email I received from a very old friend who is very special to me. He is speaking of the Spy Briefing Club, the startup digital literary city created by Spy Briefing Books. I credit this writer for (inadvertently) training me in an important aspect …
Someone asked me the other day if I believe in conspiracies. Well, sure. Here’s one. It is called the political system. It is nothing if not a giant conspiracy to rob, trick and subjugate the population. People participate in the hope of making our lives better, or at least curbing the damage government does. Yet …
What’s great about POM Wonderful? Sure, this pomegranate juice tastes great. POM is one of the few drinks that seems to have the same scrunch-up-your-mouth effect that you get with a bold dry red wine. When I was a kid, it didn’t exist. Like everything wonderful in this world, it comes to us because of …
The great recession continues in so many ways but online commerce is booming as never before, increasing in the last quarter of 2011 at the fastest rates in six years. Before you know it, the retail side alone will account for $300 billion in sales per year. We click and pay, and if it’s not …
You might have noticed that lots of people are really down on the so-called 1%. It drives many people, especially politicians, absolutely bonkers that there are lots of people out there sitting on millions, billions. Populists imagine that these people do nothing but hoard and count and let out menacing laughs about the advantages they …
The United States is home to a gigantic socialist sector, larger and with a greater reach than any in the world, and it is fed by tax dollars and managed entirely by the government. Strangely, the opponents of socialized medicine and socialized industry don’t complain about it. In fact, all throughout the 1980s and 1990s, …
Dreamers and accountants — they say that both types of people are necessary for a great business. One without the other is a dead end. Together, the magic can happen. And the magic is certainly happening at the Spy Briefing Club, now celebrating what Doug Hill calls its one-month-iversary (I’m pretty sure that is a …
Let’s say that Rajat Gupta, former director at Goldman Sachs on trial for insider trading, is toss in the slammer for passing on information four years ago. Let’s say that he really did receive — and then let slip — a tip that Goldman would soon be getting a nice cash infusion from Berkshire Hathaway, …
Now that hysteria over my original Brazil column has died down, let me add some comments and reflections about it and what gave rise to the reactions. To review, I had written a piece praising the many glorious features of Brazil and especially the way in which civilization has managed to thrive by virtue of …