My friend Luis called yesterday (11/24/09) to tell me that his father, Vicente Locay had passed away.
Vicente was not a tall man, but he stood tall at key moments in his life.
Luis told many stories about what Vicente said and did in Cuba. One of my favorites [...]
The story below is very reminiscent of a story that Michael Lewis tells in The New, New Thing about how entrepreneur Jim Clark learned to fly.
Possible lesson: impatience and quick learning may not be traits of all high level entrepreneurs, but they appear to have been [...]
"Students from Bridges Academy in Washington, D.C., at a Capitol Hill rally last month in support of the city's Opportunity Scholarship Program, which gives students from low-income families scholarships for private schools." Source of caption and photo: online version of the [...]
(p. A13) The drought that gripped the Southeast from 2005 to 2007 was not unprecedented and resulted from random weather events, not global warming, Columbia University researchers have concluded. They say its severe water shortages resulted from population growth more than rainfall patterns.
[...]
The small dark blue squares indicate the "number of nations that have imposed protectionist measures on each country" and the light blue squares indicate the "number of measures imposed on each category of goods." Source of quotations in caption and of [...]
(p. 212) Before returning to Los Angeles, Disney and Kimball also went to Dearborn, Michigan, outside Detroit, and visited a village of another kind--Henry Ford's Greenfield Village, a collection of old and reconstructed buildings that included the Wright brothers' bicycle shop and a replica of [...]
Source of book image: http://press.harvardbusiness.org/on/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/verganti_300dpi.jpg.
Luigi Zingales, Robert C. McCormack Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at the University of Chicago. Source of photo and information in caption: [faculty.chicagobooth.edu].
[...]
"The Reaper Curve: Ezekiel Emanuel used the above chart in a Lancet article to illustrate the ages on which health spending should be focused." Source of caption and graph: [...]
(p. 152) As late as January 1940, Disney still resisted selling stock--"I wanted to build this in a different way," he told sonic of his artists--but by then his need for money was such that going public had become the lesser of evils. Preferred stock in [...]
Source of graphic: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.
(p. A3) BOSTON -- The Democrat-controlled legislature in Massachusetts is poised to pass a bill in coming days giving Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick authority to appoint an interim senator to succeed the late Edward M. Kennedy, strengthening the party's U.S. Senate majority and bolstering prospects for' [...]
Source of book image: http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/wp-content/e/a336.jpg
I have always believed, and recently increasingly believe, that Walt Disney was one of the most important entrepreneurs [...]
(p. A19) In a warning often repeated by environmental campaigners, the Vanuatuan president told the United Nations that entire island nations could be submerged. "If such a tragedy does happen," he said, "then the United Nations and its members would have failed in their first and" [...]
Source of book image: http://bobsutton.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b75569e20120a5fa1e26970c-800wi.
(p. A21) Several years ago I grew concerned about my postmenopausal mother's risk of osteoporosis. I tried to convince her to initiate hormone replacement therapy. She didn't listen to me. Instead, she spoke with her gynecologist, who--contrary to best medical evidence at the time--recommended against such' [...]
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. Source of the caricature: online version of the WSJ interview quoted and cited below.
(p. A11) "I honestly don't know why the article became such a lightning rod," says John Mackey,' [...]
"The jubilation on the Wall's western side on Nov. 10, 1989." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.
Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.
It is interesting that President Obama is open to meeting with authoritarian dictators of terrorist nations, such as Iran, but is reluctant to meet with the peace-loving Dalai Lama.
"Michael Kellerman and daughter Jovi, 1, wait in line near 69th and Underwood for a flu shot Thursday morning." Source of caption and photo: online version of the Omaha World-Herald article quoted and cited below.
(p. A9) Cash-for-clunkers programs have no lasting economic benefit and could even lead to a "substantial weakening" in euro-zone automobile sales next year, the European Central Bank said.
The findings, though far from original, amount to an official slap on the wrist to [...]
"A 1950 Studebaker Commander Convertible, with its famous 'bullet-nose' front end." Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.
Studebakers were made mainly in South Bend, Indiana, where I was born [...]
(p. B10) In 2007, Congress set a national goal of creating an advanced biofuel industry, and established a quota for gasoline marketers to blend a modest 100 million gallons of such fuel into gasoline by 2010.
. . .
The industry is likely [...]
"The unusual suspects, 1969: top row from left, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle and Terry Gilliam; bottom row from left, Terry Jones, John Cleese and Michael Palin." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.
[...]
(p. 423) The work was extraordinarily difficult, pushing the limits of the technically possible. Disappointment is my daily bread, he had said. I thrive on it. But he did not thrive. Often he thought of abandoning the work, abandoning all of it. Yet every day he [...]
Source of cartoon: online version of the NYT commentary quoted and cited below.
(p. A19) In "A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland," an account of his travels with James Boswell through the Hebrides in 1773, Johnson vividly described the desolation of a feudal land, untouched by commercial exuberance. He was struck by the utter hopelessness in [...]
"Work has been put on hold for this stretch of 132nd Street between Blondo Street and West Maple Road. Omaha officials say the stimulus funds will be worth the wait, but some nearby residents are upset about the slowdown." Source of [...]
(p. 421) . . . , in 1928, Fred Griffith in Britain published a striking and puzzling finding. Earlier Griffith had discovered that all known types of pneumococci could exist with or without capsules. Virulent pneumococci had capsules; pneumococci without capsules could be easily destroyed [...]
Source of graphic: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.
Nobel Prize winning economist Vernon Smith sees that the current health care system is an incentive and information "nightmare." The third parties, who pay, have neither the incentive nor the information to reward the providers who do a good job. And patients, who have the information, [...]
"AGE WELL. David Sinclair, left, and Christoph Westphal, co-founders of Sitris Pharmaceuticals, in Dr. Sinclair's laboratory in Cambrdge, Mass. The company develops drugs that mimic resveratrol, a chemical found in some red wines." Source of caption and photo: online version of [...]
I found the passage quoted below to be especially illuminating on how rapid mutation helps explain why the flu virus is so successful and dangerous. (An additional important factor is that the virus can survive in birds, without killing them.)
It occurs to me that something [...]
The Measurement Center of the Fraser Institute held a contest on the theme of what most needed to be better measured. I entered the contest, arguing that high level entrepreneurs are crucial to economic growth and human progress, and yet [...]
George Shultz has a distinguished résumé. He was Dean of the University of Chicago business school, Secretary of the Treasury under President Nixon, and Secretary of State under President Reagan. Along with the late Milton Friedman, he is sceptical about the War on Drugs, and is [...]
Big Tyrannosaurus rex and much smaller Raptorex kriegsteini. Source of image: http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/upload/2009/09/raptorex_tiny_king_of_thieves_shows_how_tyrannosaurus_body_p/Raptorex_Trex.jpg
John Barry calls our attention to the views of Thomas Huxley who gave the keynote address at the founding of the Johns Hopkins University:
Source of graph: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.
(p. 4A) WASHINGTON -- The four drafty buildings had been fixtures of the Energy Department complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., for more than half a century. They burned energy like 1950s sedans.
The buildings seemed like perfect candidates for a federal [...]
"'Roger the Plumber' owns his own business and is excited to go to work every day." Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.
Here is the core of John Barry's account of how President Woodrow Wilson, and his administration, turned what might have been an ordinary flu, into what, by some measures, was the worst pandemic in human history:
"Amir Jahan found her health insurance wouldn't pay for all of her $200 stomach surgery; she continues to work with an untreated tumor." Source of caption: print version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below. Source of photo: online version' [...]
(p. A23) If you want to know why Americans are so fearful of a government takeover of the health-care system, take a look at the results of a new Gallup poll on government waste released Sept. 15. One question posed was: "Of every tax dollar" [...]
Source of book image: http://www.virology.ws/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/great-influenza.jpg
I like John Barry's' [...]
(p. A23) The global recession and financial crisis have refocused attention on government stimulus packages. These packages typically emphasize spending, predicated on the view that the expenditure "multipliers" are greater than one--so that gross domestic product expands by more than government spending itself. Stimulus packages typically [...]
"Print of New Amsterdam by Joost Hartgers, 1626." Source of caption and image: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.
(p. 45) The most compelling evidence that freedom promotes happiness comes from the fact that migration is almost always toward more freedom.
Source:
Lee, Dwight R. "Happiness and Liberty." Intercollegiate Review 42, no. 2 (Fall 2007): 41-48.
(Note: italics in original.)
[...]
"A nurse practitioner with a patient at a retail clinic in Wilmington, Del." Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.
Clayton Christensen, in a chapter of Seeing What's Next, and' [...]
One of the advantages of flexible economic systems, such as capitalism, is that they can adapt to unexpected or exogenous changes in the environment (e.g., changes in the weather). In the empirical analysis quoted from below, the primary finding is that roughly half of the short-term [...]
