This is a personal blog on a personal website, and a pretty late entrant into the genre. I’ve thought for years that I really ought to have a place on the web to do … I don’t know, something. But every time building a personal site began to climb to the top of my agenda, the project foundered on the question of what the site should be about.
I know that’s a strange sort of question for a personal site. After all, a personal site should be about oneself, right?
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John Hussman, a Ph.D. economist and successful mutual fund manager, is one of the most trenchant observers of our markets and economy writing today.
He argues in this week’s “Weekly Market Comment” that we’ve repeated—and are repeating—the same policy mistakes that led to the lost decade(s) of growth in Japan beginning with the implosion of their real estate bubble in the early 1990’s.
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It’s marketing dogma. “Differentiate. Be different. Position yourself so you’re the only one: the best, the least, the most.” The catch? It’s hard to do. There are so many companies, products, and people in this world that it’s hard to be the most of anything.
Or is it?
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The history of weapons technology teaches that for advances in defensive capabilities beget advances in offensive capabilities, and vice versa. So more devastating bows and the first pistols led to the adoption of steel armored suits, which led to more powerful weapons which led to thicker armor, which … The same process repeated itself with the armored tank.
And it’s repeating itself today with a particularly insidious weapon employed by corporations everywhere: the automated phone tree.
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XPlane posted a mind boggling (and beautiful) presentation to YouTube on the exponential improvement in technology. Specifically the latest cell phone technology and the growth in digital media. It’s almost enough to make the technological Singularity hype not seem so far-fetched. Almost.
Money graf?
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Lots of interesting data reported in Restaurant Wine’s yearly review (as reported by Vinography).
Turns out Americans drink most of their wine in restaurants (where it is overpriced). Every one of the top ten wines by volume is white (or pink) and not, in my humble opinion, very good. The list:
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US Postal Service sends 32 page mailer urging the adoption of green marketing techniques.
