STOCK market investors who buy and sell on the flip of a coin might sound irresponsible, but a handful of random traders could be just what markets need to avoid bubbles and subsequent crashes. Financial booms and busts occur when traders all rush to purchase or sell stock just because others around them are. “I…
I had been planning to write a piece on that thieving prick Jordan Balfour since he is so archetypal of what is wrong with the finance industry. But every now and again someone comes along and does a much better job than you could and saves you the trouble. Sure, it has a big star…
Local chemistry teacher James Kennedy has done something very clever – he has given a breakdown of all the chemicals that occur naturally in food. This seems to be somewhat of a pushback to the knee jerk reaction people have when they see lists of ingredients in food and then freak out that it is…
The Long Now Foundation’s monthly Seminars About Long-term Thinking were started in 2003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking; to help nudge civilization toward our goal of making long-term thinking automatic and common instead of difficult and rare. Click player image.
Here are some bits and pieces I have been putting away for the weekend. The six things that make stories go viral will amaze and maybe infuriate you Sit Back, Relax, and Read That Long Story—on Your Phone Whats That You’re Calling a Bubble? 16 Basic Principles for Avoiding Stupidity Dropbox and Uber: Worth Billions,…
If you were anywhere near any of the financial media’s outlets in the past few days you could not avoid being bombarded by the superannuation industry trumpeting the returns of last year. If you missed the sycophantic, over the top, jingoistic wank fest that was the reporting of these results here is a glimpse of…
The long knives have been out for TED Talks for some time. Benjamin Bratton called them “middlebrow megachurch infotainment.”Evegny Morozov called the TED publishing arm the “insatiable kingpin of international meme laundering.” The gist of these arguments is that TED Talks are vapid, culty mass-selfies that fetishize technology for every solution. It is “placebo science” meant to…
I make no secret of the fact that I think that the local market is very short on opportunities for trend followers. In this day and age there is no excuse for not utilising the ability technology gives you to diversify internationally – to not do so is simply lazy. To highlight my point consider…
Over the weekend through simple poor management on my behalf I was exposed to two articles purporting to tell me what 2014 had in store for me. The first was in the Age which I spotted over toast and vegemite whilst out enjoying breakfast. Grandiosely titled What the charts predict for 2014 – technical analysts…
If to enjoy even an enjoyable present we must have the assurance of a happy future, we are “crying for the moon.” We have no such assurance. The best predictions are still matters of probability rather than certainty, and to the best of our knowledge every one of us is going to suffer and die.…
