Unknown:
There are two lasting gifts we can give our children. One is roots, the other wings.
Peter Bernstein:
You cannot manage outcomes; you can only manage risk.
Albert Camus:
Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.
Albert Camus:
An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
Stephen Covey:
In order to have influence, you have to be influenced.
Søren Kierkegaard:
Most people are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others, frightfully objective sometimes--but the task is precisely to be objective toward oneself and subjective toward all others.
Milan Kundera:
There are no small parts.
Only small actors.
Blaise Pascal:
The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
Alexander Pope:
To err is human; to forgive is divine.
Donald Rumsfeld:
Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.
Jean-Paul Sartre:
If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.
Jean-Paul Sartre:
We must act out passion before we can feel it.
The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 by Paul Krugman
And in a more subtle, perhaps unintentional meassure, regulators historically limited the amount of competition among banks, making a banking license a valuable thing in itself, possessed of a considerable "franchiase value"; licensees were loath to jeopardize this franchise calue by taking risks that could break the bank. But in the 1980s these restraints broke down in many places. Mainly the cause was dregulation. Traditional banks were safe, but also very conseravtive; arguably they failed to direct capital to its most productive uses. The cure, argued reformers, was both more freedom and more competition: let banks lend where they thought best, and allow more players to compete for public savings. Somehow reformers forgot that this world give banks more freedom to take bad risks and that by reducing their franchise value it would give them less incentive to avoid them.
It seems, in other words, that the Keynesian compact is a some-time thing. The common view among economists that floating rates are the best, if imperfect, solution to the internationl monetary trilemma was based on the experience of countries like Canada, Britain, and the United States. But during the 1990s a series of countries--Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, Korea--discovered that they were subject to different rules. Again and again, attempt to engage in moderate devaluations led to a drastic collapse in confidence.
Breakthrough Networking: Building Relationships That Last
by Lillian D. Bjorseth
Going behind someone's desk without being invited is another examples of invasion of space.
Work at getting the other person's arms open as quickly as possible to affect an attitudinal change: extend your hand if you have not yet shaken hands; ask for a business card; offer your business card; etc.
Women tend to look a man in the eye when he is talking but not when they are talking to him.
Taking time to read cards to then commenting on any part of them shows other people that you are interested and want to learn more about them.
If you want the other person to have your card, ask for his/her card first.
Arrive early to meet organizers but don't launch into a long conversation; keep your eyes peeled for people who are alone and help them feel welcome; introduce contacts to each other with a sentence or two of information; pull people into conversations by reviewing what you were talking about and asking his/her opinion.
To remember names, repeat the person's first name several times during the first few minutes of the conversation; study the person's business card; repeat the name when ending the conversation.
Help others when they cannot remember your name.
Fooled by Randomness
by Taleb Nassim Nicholas
Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance.
Nero believes that risk-conscious hard work and discipline can lead someone to achieve a comfortable life with a very high probability. Beyond that, it is all randomness: either by taking enormous and unconscious risks, or by being extraordinarily lucky. Mild success can be explained by skills and labor. Wild success is attributable to variance.
If you think merely reading history books would help you learn from other's mistakes, consider the following nineteenth century experiment. In a well known psychology case the Swiss doctor Claparede had an amnesic patient completely crippled with her ailment. Her condition was so bad that he would have to reintroduce himself to her at a frequency of once per fifteen minutes for her to remember who he was. One day he secreted a pin in his hand before shaking hers. The next day she quickly withdrew her hand as he tried to greet her but still did not recognize him.
A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in light of the information until that point.
To be competent, a journalist should view matters like a historian, and play down the value of the information he is providing, such as saying: "Today the market went up, but this information is not too relevant as it emanates mostly from noise."
One vicious attribute is that the longer these animals can go without encountering the rare event, the more vulnerable they will be to it. For evolution means fitness to one and only one time series, not the average of all the possible environments.
The problem is that we read too much into shallow recent history, with statements like "this has never happened before", but not from history in general (things that never happened before in one area tend to eventually to happen).
The number of managers with great track records in a given market depends far more on the number of people who started in the investment business than their ability to produce profits. It also depends on the volatility.
Life is unfair in a nonlinear way: a small advantage in life can translate into a highly disproportionate payoff; a very small help from randomness can lead to a bonanza.
Start stressing personal elegance at your next misfortune. Try not to blame others for your fate, even if they deserve blame."
The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time
by Jeffrey Sachs
1. When a society is economically dominant, it is easy for its members to assume that such dominance reflects a deeper superiority - whether religious, racial, genetic, cultural, or institutional - rather than an accident of timing or geography.
Americans believe that they earned their wealth all by themselves. They forget that they inherited a vast continent rich in natural resources, with great soils and ample rainfall, immense navigable rivers, and thousands of miles of coastline with dozens of natural ports that provide a wonderful foundation for sea-based trade.
2. Economists call ideas nonrival in the sense that one persons' use of an idea does not diminish the ability of others to use it as well. This is why we can envision a world in which everybody achieves prosperity. The essence of the first Industrial Revolution was not the coal; it was how to use the coal.
3. Conservative governments of the United States, United Kingdom, and elsewhere used international advising to push programs that found no support at home. Many African countries have heard an earful from the World Bank over the past two decades about privatizing their health services, or at least charging user fees for health and education. Yet most of the high-income-country shareholders of the World Bank have health systems that guarantee universal access, and all have education systems that ensure access to public education.
4. "We shall never be able to move again, unless we can free our limbs from these paper shackles. A general bonfire is so great a necessity that unless we can make of it an orderly and good-tempered affair in which no serious injustice is done to any one, it will, when it comes at last, grow into a conflagration that may destroy much else as well." Keynes
5. Great Britain attacked China in 1839 to promote British narcotics trafficking. It is as if Colombia waged war with the United States today for the right to sell cocaine.
6. In the Soviet style economy, virtually 100% of the population worked in state owned enterprises. It could be said that 100% of the labor force in the Soviet system enjoyed the wheat based equivalent of the iron rice bowl.
7. China's political system is perhaps the longest standing state structure in the world: its roots can be directly traced to the administrative apparatus of the Han dynasty, almost 2200 years ago. The idea of a centralized state has been the basic Chinese model since the unification of China in 202 BC.
The centralization of China contributed to nearly five hundred years of decisions from the top that had huge, negative economist repercussions. Such a process would have been impossible in Western Europe, where political and thus economic power was always decentralized.
China's need for legitimate local government is greater than ever, because more decisions are being made at the local level. But if those important decisions are being made by people appointed from the top who cannot be effectively managed or who are not regarded as legitimate appointments by those below, the model breaks down.
8. Liberalize trade in agriculture, but do not believe it to be a panacea. The benefits will accrue overwhelmingly to the large food exporters: the United States, Canada, Argentina, Brazil and Australia.
9. Max Weber and his followers hypothesized that East Asian societies with Confucian values, notably China, would be unable to achieve economic progress. Later, when China and other countries of East Asia began to grow rapidly, Asian values were invoked as the explanation for success.
10. People are poor because they are lazy. How do we know they are lazy? Because they are poor. Promoters of these interpretations rarely understand that low productivity results not from laziness and lack of effort but from lack of capital inputs to production.
* Social commitments are commitments of individuals.
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert
by Gottman John
Almost everybody messes up during marital conflict. What matters is whether the repairs are successful.
Most marital arguments cannot be resolved. Couples spend year after year trying to change each other's mind but it can't be done.
Comical as it may sound, romance actually grows when a couple is in the supermarket and the wife says, "Are we out of bleach?" and the husband says, "I don't know. Let me go get some just in case," instead of shrugging apathetically. It grows when you know your spouse is having a bad day at work and you take sixty seconds out of your own workday to leave words of encouragement on his voice mail. It grows when your wife tells you one morning, "I had the worst nightmare last night," and you say, "I'm in a big hurry, but tell me about it now so we can talk about it tonight," instead of "I don't have time."
When you have a conflict, the key is to be willing to compromise. You do this by searching through your partner's request for something you can relinquish.
When choosing a long-term partner you will inevitably be choosing a particular set of unsolvable problems that you'll be grappling with for the next ten, twenty or fifty years.
When you let a child know that his or her feelings are okay to have, you are also communicating that the child himself or herself is acceptable even when sad or crabby or scared. This helps the child to feel good about himself or herself, which makes positive growth and change possible. The same if true for adults. In order to improve a marriage, we need to feel accepted by our spouse.
Softening the startup is crucial to resolving conflicts because discussions invariably end on the same note they begin. That's why 96 percent of time I can predict the fate of a conflict discussion in the thirst three minutes!
Partings. Make sure that before you say good-bye in the morning you've learned one thing that is happening in your spouse's life that day from lunch with the boss to a doctor's appointment to a scheduled phone call with an old friend.
Reunions. Be sure to engage in a stress-reducing conversation at the end of each workday.
Admiration and appreciation. Find some way every day to communicate genuine affection and appreciation toward your spouse.
Affection. Kiss, hold, grab, and touch each other during the time you're together. Make sure to kiss each other before going to sleep. Think of that kiss as a way to let go of any minor irritations that have built up over the day.
If you consider yourself inadequate, you are always on the lookout for what is not there in yourself and your partner. The problem is that we tend to focus on what's missing in our mate and overlook the fine qualities that are there we take those for granted.
One of the most meaningful gifts a parent can give a child is to admit his or her own mistake, to say, "I was wrong here" or "I'm sorry." This is so powerful because it also gives the child permission to make a mistake, to admit having messed up and still be okay. It builds in the forgiveness of self.
Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire-- Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do
by Alan S. Miller, Satoshi Kanazawa
The book reads like a evolutionary psychology version of Sex and the City. It uses Buss's Error Management Theory to explain why men overestimate interest from women and women underestimate interest from men. Does this also explain why men tend to ask women out on dates, not the other way around? Other questions to ponder follows.
1. Did women become smaller than men to mature earlier, hence compete earlier, in a polygynous society?
2. In the US, the strongest predicator of remarriage is sex: men tend to get remarried and women do not. Hence, serial polygyny.
3. Diamonds are the perfect courtship gift because they are expensive and have no intrinsic value.
4. It is the wife's age, not the husband's age, that determines the timing of the husband's mid life crisis. Similar logic can be applied to spousal abuse.
5. While men tend to be single-minded about making money, women tent to place much more importance on the criterion that "the work is important and gives me a sense of accomplishment".
6. Sexual harassment surveys often ask women if they have experienced unwanted sexual advances at work, but do not ask if women have experienced wanted sexual advances.
7. On racial discrimination, as opposed to that based on sex and age: since encountering people of other races daily is a recent phenomenon, there cannot be innate categorization of race in our brain.
8. Pascal's wager: given that one cannot know for sure if God exists, it is rational to believe in God.
9. On the survival of the homosexual gene: because gay men in the past were forced to get married and have children. "
The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story
by Richard Bach
"I told you I was selfish, a long time ago," I said. "I promised you that I'd always act in what I thought was my own best interest, and I hoped you'd do the same ..."
"Spare me your definitions, please!" she said, "It is by not always thinking of yourself, if you can manage it, that you might someday be happy. Until you make room in your life for someone as important to you as yourself, you will always be lonely and searching and lost ..."