Economics and similar, for the sleep-deprived

A subtle change has been made to the comments links, so they no longer pop up. Does this in any way help with the problem about comments not appearing on permalinked posts, readers?

Update: seemingly not

Update: Oh yeah!


Thursday, July 26, 2012

 
Booking now - speaker tours for books that have not been written yet

"Cake" by Malcolm Gladwell 

This is a book about having your cake, and the power and complexity of having your cake. We've always been taught that cake is for eating. "Eat your cake!", our mothers said to us, pushing slices of delicious Victoria Sponge down our throats. But counterintuitively, that might not be true.  Actually, in many exciting cases, having your cake is better.

Take the example of Jim-Bob Houlihan. Every day for forty years, he bought a cake from the bakery next to his house. His workmates thought he was crazy; he never ate them, and he doesn't even like cake. But when the bakery burned down, it was possible to reconstruct its valuable recipes from the museum of cakes, all stored in Jim-Bob's lever arch files. Now he's a billionaire and lives in a cake-shaped mansion in Beverly Hills. He has all the biscuits he can eat.

The idea for this book came to me when I was at a friend's wedding. I was given a slice of wedding cake and ate it. It was delicious! I particularly liked the marzipan. I love cake and eat it every time I get the chance.

But hang on, you might say - isn't that more of a story about eating your cake? I thought this was meant to be a book about having your cake, not eating it! Well, it's both. A lot of the time - even most of the time - eating your cake is a lot more sensible than having it. After all, what would you want to have a cake for, if not to eat it? And most cakes don't really store very well, so if you've had your cake for a while, you probably need to either eat it or throw it away.

So when I say that this is a book about how great it is to have your cake, I should probably say that it's about having your cake and eating it as well. Some people say that you can't have your cake and eat it. They're probably right. But have your cake, eat your cake - really the most interesting and vital issue here is that now you have to give me ten thousand dollars please.
6 comments this item posted by the management 7/26/2012 06:13:00 AM

Friday, July 13, 2012

 
Also from my email outbox ...

"As far as active investment goes, I always put it this way - are you prepared to put as much time and effort into managing your investments as you would into running a small business?  If you are then go for it - playing the market is not a bad hobby, about as interesting as birdwatching or something. And most people on this list actually do have enough intelligence to beat the market and therefore to beat most active-managed funds, in my opinion.  The trouble is of course that beating the market doesn't just require intelligence, it requires self-discipline, hard work and the ability to control your emotions.  But in many ways so does success in bird-watching."
6 comments this item posted by the management 7/13/2012 06:05:00 AM


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