Decades ago, while Philip H. Lieberman was soaking in a bathtub and listening to the radio, he heard anthropologist Loren Eiseley ponder an evolutionary puzzle: Why couldn’t monkeys talk? Like us, they’re social primates, intelligent and certainly not quiet. Rhesus macaques grunt, coo, screech and scream. Infant macaques make sounds known as geckers. Despite the grunting and geckering, though, no other…
….Huh’s math career began with much less acclaim. A bad score on an elementary school test convinced him that he was not very good at math. As a teenager he dreamed of becoming a poet. He didn’t major in math, and when he finally applied to graduate school, he was rejected by every university save…
I have reflected on the post I wrote last week about the great superannuation rip off in which I compared the returns from investing in an average growth fund with those derived from investing in the index. It struck me over the weekend that the majority of fund managers (read almost all ) are followers…
I’ve asked Michael Yardney to write a special guest column today. Michael has been a friend of mine for many years and is our ‘go to’ guy when it comes to property. I’m sure you’ll find his insights powerful. Now… over to Michael. There are, broadly speaking, two ways to see the world and these…
You will note somewhat sadly that not one of them is located locally…. More here – MIT Technology Review
You don’t have to wait long to see a headline proclaiming that some food or behaviour is associated with either an increased or a decreased health risk, or often both. How can it be that seemingly rigorous scientific studies can produce opposite conclusions? Nowadays, researchers can access a wealth of software packages that can readily analyse…
It is at this time of the year when superannuation funds crow about how good they have done and of their inestimable benefit to mankind in general and this year was no exception. So as is my now annual tradition I thought I would have a look at how good they have done and compare…
My contingent shorts were hit last night so I have to disclose that I am currently short silver. It will be interesting to see how these silver stocks fare during the day ahead.
In my junk folder I have for the past upteen decades been getting random charts by a group called Chart of the Day. Surprisingly, I dont get them everyday – so the implication that you get a chart everyday that is interesting is perhaps a little bit of an oversell. This morning I go the…
“Anxiety can just as well express itself in muteness as with a scream,” wrote existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1844. While Kierkegaard spent much of his work analyzing the agonizing nature of anxiety, he did not think that it was an emotional state to be avoided. Instead, the philosopher argued that one cannot live an authentic life…
I have always been acutely aware that financial success can often disappear with a single misstep. I have over the past three decades seen many people who have made a single error and never recovered. I have known high flying brokers who after the 1987 crash went to work in their local news agency and…
It may cost more than $100 million, but many social problems could be alleviated with the creative infusion of cash. Compensating organ donors could increase the supply of organs and save thousands of lives annually. Paying opium farmers in Afghanistan and Latin America to grow something else could bring an even larger dividend in averted…
In our newest conversation on Bespokecast, we sit down with short seller Marc Cohodes. Marc manages his portfolio from San Francisco, and has had great success with high profile bear cases focused on frauds, fads, and failures in recent years. His investment industry experience dates to the early 1980s, and has helped him hone his…
I am not one for historical comparisons because they are largely specious and mostly irrelvant but this one gives a nice bit of history that I lived through so consider it a nostalgia piece. ……The Nikkei stock index rose more than 900% in the 15 years before it finally topped. It was a frenzy powered…
