Gordian Knots

Life

raj — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 05:19:45 +0000

200 books recommended by Reddit

raj — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 08:09:46 +0000

1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. (UP:1443 | WS:2210 | Total:3653)
2. 1984 by George Orwell. (UP:1447 | WS:2090 | Total:3537)
3. Dune by Frank Herbert. (UP:1122 | WS:2140 | Total:3262)
4. Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut. (UP:967 | WS:1750 | Total:2717)
5. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. (UP:931 | WS:1680 | Total:2611)
6. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. (UP:1031 | WS:1530 | Total:2561)
7. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. (UP:907 | WS:1320 | Total:2227)
8. The Bible by Various. (UP:810 | WS:1230 | Total:2040)
9. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. (UP:603 | WS:1220 | Total:1823)
10. Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling. (UP:1169 | WS:560 | Total:1729)
11. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. (UP:610 | WS:1090 | Total:1700)
12. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman. (UP:483 | WS:1130 | Total:1613)
13. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. (UP:473 | WS:1070 | Total:1543)
14. The Foundation Saga by Isaac Asimov. (UP:519 | WS:960 | Total:1479)
15. Neuromancer by William Gibson. (UP:449 | WS:960 | Total:1409)
16. Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. (UP:664 | WS:710 | Total:1374)
17. Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. (UP:455 | WS:870 | Total:1325)
18. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. (UP:402 | WS:880 | Total:1282)
19. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. (UP:388 | WS:890 | Total:1278)
20. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. (UP:466 | WS:790 | Total:1256)
21. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. (UP:403 | WS:830 | Total:1233)
22. Godel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid by Douglas Hofstadter. (UP:400 | WS:790 | Total:1190)
23. Tao Te Ching by Lao Tse. (UP:334 | WS:770 | Total:1104)
24. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielwelski. (UP:347 | WS:720 | Total:1067)
25. The Giver by Lois Lowry. (UP:429 | WS:630 | Total:1059)
26. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. (UP:264 | WS:680 | Total:944)
27. Animal Farm by George Orwell. (UP:367 | WS:550 | Total:917)
28. A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. (UP:266 | WS:580 | Total:846)
29. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. (UP:254 | WS:550 | Total:804)
30. Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. (UP:265 | WS:520 | Total:785)
31. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. (UP:264 | WS:520 | Total:784)
32. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. (UP:249 | WS:530 | Total:779)
33. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. (UP:212 | WS:560 | Total:772)
34. His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman. (UP:194 | WS:560 | Total:754)
35. The Stranger by Albert Camus. (UP:197 | WS:550 | Total:747)
36. Various by Dr. Seuss. (UP:235 | WS:500 | Total:735)
37. The Road by Cormac McCarthy. (UP:157 | WS:570 | Total:727)
38. Lord of the Flies by William Golding. (UP:247 | WS:470 | Total:717)
39. The Monster At The End Of This Book by Jon Stone and Michael Smollin. (UP:277 | WS:430 | Total:707)
40. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. (UP:224 | WS:480 | Total:704)
41. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. (UP:241 | WS:460 | Total:701)
42. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick. (UP:270 | WS:390 | Total:660)
43. A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. (UP:169 | WS:460 | Total:629)
44. The Art of War by Sun Tzu. (UP:199 | WS:430 | Total:629)
45. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. (UP:228 | WS:390 | Total:618)
46. Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes. (UP:140 | WS:460 | Total:600)
47. The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons. (UP:251 | WS:340 | Total:591)
48. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. (UP:108 | WS:450 | Total:558)
49. The Declaration of Independence, The US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights by Various. (UP:178 | WS:370 | Total:548)
50. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. (UP:194 | WS:340 | Total:534)
51. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (UP:169 | WS:340 | Total:509)
52. Odyssey by Homer. (UP:153 | WS:310 | Total:463)
53. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. (UP:173 | WS:280 | Total:453)
54. A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin. (UP:167 | WS:270 | Total:437)
55. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. (UP:147 | WS:290 | Total:437)
56. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. (UP:103 | WS:320 | Total:423)
57. Ringworld by Larry Niven. (UP:193 | WS:220 | Total:413)
58. A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin. (UP:82 | WS:330 | Total:412)
59. The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick. (UP:74 | WS:330 | Total:404)
60. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry. (UP:84 | WS:320 | Total:404)
61. Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt. (UP:126 | WS:270 | Total:396)
62. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein. (UP:155 | WS:240 | Total:395)
63. The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. (UP:106 | WS:280 | Total:386)
64. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. (UP:143 | WS:230 | Total:373)
65. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. (UP:148 | WS:210 | Total:358)
66. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. (UP:148 | WS:190 | Total:338)
67. Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen. (UP:97 | WS:240 | Total:337)
68. Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. (UP:77 | WS:260 | Total:337)
69. Everybody Poops by Tarō Gomi. (UP:118 | WS:200 | Total:318)
70. On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. (UP:118 | WS:190 | Total:308)
71. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X with Alex Haley. (UP:105 | WS:200 | Total:305)
72. John Dies at the End by David Wong. (UP:59 | WS:240 | Total:299)
73. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx. (UP:117 | WS:180 | Total:297)
74. Contact by Carl Sagan. (UP:104 | WS:190 | Total:294)
75. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. (UP:116 | WS:170 | Total:286)
76. The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli. (UP:121 | WS:160 | Total:281)
77. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. (UP:92 | WS:180 | Total:272)
78. The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. (UP:119 | WS:150 | Total:269)
79. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. (UP:55 | WS:210 | Total:265)
80. The Stand by Stephen King. (UP:83 | WS:180 | Total:263)
81. The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac. (UP:80 | WS:180 | Total:260)
82. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien. (UP:48 | WS:210 | Total:258)
83. Moby Dick by Herman Melville. (UP:55 | WS:200 | Total:255)
84. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. (UP:75 | WS:180 | Total:255)
85. Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer. (UP:75 | WS:180 | Total:255)
86. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. (UP:129 | WS:120 | Total:249)
87. Asimov’s Guide to the Bible by Isaac Asimov. (UP:58 | WS:180 | Total:238)
88. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. (UP:104 | WS:130 | Total:234)
89. Collapse by Jared Diamond. (UP:53 | WS:180 | Total:233)
90. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallave. (UP:53 | WS:180 | Total:233)
91. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. (UP:112 | WS:120 | Total:232)
92. Chaos by James Gleick. (UP:58 | WS:170 | Total:228)
93. American Gods by Neil Gaiman. (UP:46 | WS:180 | Total:226)
94. Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein. (UP:103 | WS:120 | Total:223)
95. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime by Mark Haddon. (UP:52 | WS:170 | Total:222)
96. You Can Choose to Be Happy by Tom G. Stevens. (UP:70 | WS:150 | Total:220)
97. The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler. (UP:58 | WS:160 | Total:218)
98. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. (UP:73 | WS:130 | Total:203)
99. Candide by Voltaire. (UP:102 | WS:100 | Total:202)
100. Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler. (UP:62 | WS:140 | Total:202)
The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum. (UP:50 | WS:150 | Total:200)
102. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. (UP:49 | WS:150 | Total:199)
103. The Dark Tower by Stephen King. (UP:67 | WS:130 | Total:197)
104. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. (UP:62 | WS:130 | Total:192)
105. The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins. (UP:58 | WS:130 | Total:188)
106. The Making of a Radical by Scott Nearing. (UP:48 | WS:140 | Total:188)
107. The Turner Diaries by Andrew MacDonald. (UP:45 | WS:140 | Total:185)
108. The Scar by China Mieville. (UP:24 | WS:160 | Total:184)
109. Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse. (UP:58 | WS:120 | Total:178)
110. Going Rogue by Sarah Palin. (UP:51 | WS:120 | Total:171)
111. 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis De Sade. (UP:40 | WS:130 | Total:170)
112. Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke. (UP:87 | WS:80 | Total:167)
113. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. (UP:33 | WS:130 | Total:163)
114. Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche. (UP:50 | WS:110 | Total:160)
115. Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. (UP:37 | WS:120 | Total:157)
116. Naked Lunch by William Burroughs. (UP:25 | WS:130 | Total:155)
117. Childhood’s End by Arthur C Clarke. (UP:44 | WS:110 | Total:154)
118. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. (UP:34 | WS:120 | Total:154)
119. The Book of Ler by MA Foster. (UP:57 | WS:90 | Total:147)
120. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan. (UP:57 | WS:90 | Total:147)
121. Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. (UP:35 | WS:110 | Total:145)
122. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. (UP:24 | WS:120 | Total:144)
123. Watership Down by Richard Adams. (UP:32 | WS:110 | Total:142)
124. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. (UP:29 | WS:110 | Total:139)
125. Civilization and Capitalism by Fernand Braudel. (UP:28 | WS:110 | Total:138)
126. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman. (UP:48 | WS:90 | Total:138)
127. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. (UP:97 | WS:40 | Total:137)
128. The Saga of Seven Suns by Kevin J Anderson. (UP:57 | WS:80 | Total:137)
129. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck . (UP:86 | WS:50 | Total:136)
130. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. (UP:30 | WS:100 | Total:130)
131. The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. (UP:40 | WS:90 | Total:130)
132. The Chomsky Reader by Noam Chomsky. (UP:28 | WS:100 | Total:128)
133. The Panda’s Thumb by Stephen Jay Gould. (UP:17 | WS:110 | Total:127)
134. Flatland by Edwin Abbot. (UP:36 | WS:90 | Total:126)
135. On the Road by Jack Kerouac . (UP:36 | WS:90 | Total:126)
136. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. (UP:44 | WS:80 | Total:124)
137. The Classical Style by Charles Rosen. (UP:28 | WS:90 | Total:118)
138. Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman. (UP:17 | WS:100 | Total:117)
139. An American Life by Ronald Reagan. (UP:16 | WS:100 | Total:116)
140. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan. (UP:36 | WS:80 | Total:116)
141. The Little Schemer by Friedman & Felleisen. (UP:36 | WS:80 | Total:116)
142. Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau. (UP:24 | WS:90 | Total:114)
143. Black Lamb, Grey Falcon by Rebecca West. (UP:28 | WS:80 | Total:108)
144. Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche. (UP:48 | WS:60 | Total:108)
145. Sandman by Neil Gaiman. (UP:17 | WS:90 | Total:107)
146. The Game by Neil Strauss. (UP:36 | WS:70 | Total:106)
147. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman. (UP:15 | WS:90 | Total:105)
148. Mere Christianity by CS Lewis. (UP:34 | WS:70 | Total:104)
149. Walden by Henry David Thoreau. (UP:24 | WS:80 | Total:104)
150. The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter. (UP:10 | WS:90 | Total:100)
151. Cthulhu Mythos by H.P. Lovecraft. (UP:19 | WS:80 | Total:99)
152. The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. (UP:39 | WS:60 | Total:99)
153. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. (UP:26 | WS:70 | Total:96)
154. The Prince of Nothing by R. Scott Bakker. (UP:45 | WS:50 | Total:95)
155. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. (UP:14 | WS:80 | Total:94)
156. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. (UP:33 | WS:60 | Total:93)
157. The Wasteland by TS Elliot. (UP:19 | WS:70 | Total:89)
158. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. (UP:38 | WS:50 | Total:88)
159. Pi to 5 million places by [kick books]. (UP:26 | WS:60 | Total:86)
160. The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker. (UP:36 | WS:50 | Total:86)
161. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. (UP:33 | WS:50 | Total:83)
162. Guts by Chuck Palahniuk. (UP:21 | WS:60 | Total:81)
163. fear and trembling by Søren Kierkegaard. (UP:20 | WS:60 | Total:80)
164. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. (UP:70 | WS:10 | Total:80)
165. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. (UP:19 | WS:60 | Total:79)
166. Ulysses by James Joyce. (UP:29 | WS:50 | Total:79)
167. Macbeth by Shakespeare. (UP:38 | WS:40 | Total:78)
168. Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. (UP:27 | WS:50 | Total:77)
169. Atheism: The Case Against God by George H. Smith. (UP:36 | WS:40 | Total:76)
170. The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood. (UP:16 | WS:60 | Total:76)
171. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. (UP:25 | WS:50 | Total:75)
172. Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder. (UP:13 | WS:60 | Total:73)
173. Women by Charles Bukowski. (UP:13 | WS:60 | Total:73)
174. Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. (UP:32 | WS:40 | Total:72)
175. We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. (UP:20 | WS:50 | Total:70)
176. How We Die by Sherwin B. Nuland. (UP:19 | WS:50 | Total:69)
177. Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein. (UP:19 | WS:50 | Total:69)
178. The singularity is near by Ray Kurzweil. (UP:17 | WS:50 | Total:67)
179. The Day of the Trifids by John Wyndham. (UP:16 | WS:50 | Total:66)
180. The Long Walk by Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman). (UP:36 | WS:30 | Total:66)
181. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. (UP:18 | WS:40 | Total:58)
182. The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts. (UP:17 | WS:40 | Total:57)
183. The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. (UP:37 | WS:20 | Total:57)
184. The Elegant Universe by Brian Green. (UP:16 | WS:40 | Total:56)
185. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. (UP:13 | WS:40 | Total:53)
186. Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. (UP:13 | WS:40 | Total:53)
187. King Lear by Shakespeare. (UP:29 | WS:20 | Total:49)
188. The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell. (UP:28 | WS:20 | Total:48)
189. The Voyage of Argo: The Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes. (UP:8 | WS:40 | Total:48)
190. The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. (UP:37 | WS:10 | Total:47)
191. Nichomachean ethics by Aristotle. (UP:16 | WS:30 | Total:46)
192. Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandlla. (UP:15 | WS:30 | Total:45)
193. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. (UP:4 | WS:40 | Total:44)
194. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. (UP:13 | WS:30 | Total:43)
195. The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. (UP:12 | WS:30 | Total:42)
196. The Occult by Colin Wilson. (UP:12 | WS:30 | Total:42)
197. Cosmos by Carl Sagan. (UP:21 | WS:20 | Total:41)
198. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. (UP:31 | WS:10 | Total:41)
199. Hamlet by Shakespeare. (UP:29 | WS:10 | Total:39)
200. The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. (UP:28 | WS:10 | Total:38)

It’s not the money

raj — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 20:51:06 +0000

Via Mercenary Trader » Four Lessons from Druckenmiller

But at the end of the day, what matters most is quality of life and overall personal fulfillment, not dollars accumulated.

This is partly because the pursuit of monetary wealth, in and of
itself, is largely a trick and a trap. Those individuals who pursue
money for its own sake are almost invariably chasing some demon, or
feeding some insecurity otherwise masking itself as ambition.

And in terms of personal stature, no matter how much money you have, someone else will always have more. If you delude yourself into thinking you’re the richest guy around, that’s just a failure to look around.

More importantly, one can be “rich” in plenty of ways above and beyond
money. To benchmark one’s sense of self against a bank account balance —
equating self worth to net worth — is an invitation to shallow misery.

You get the idea… bottom line being, it’s not about the money. Doing what you love, and doing it every day, is a key ingredient in the secret recipe for a blessed and fulfilled life.

What is investment ?

raj — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 06:00:37 +0000

“.. professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole; so that each competitor has to pick, not those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors, all of whom are looking at the problem from the same point of view. It is not a case of choosing those which, to the best of one’s judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be.” – John Maynard Keynes

Think Different

raj — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:36:58 +0000

Six keys to being excellent

raj — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 03:30:00 +0000

Via Harvard Business Review

Pursue what you love. Passion is an incredible motivator. It fuels focus, resilience, and perseverance.
Do the work first. We all move instinctively toward pleasure and away pain. Most great performers delay gratification and take on the work of practice in the mornings, before they do anything. That’s when most of us have the most energy and the fewest distractions.
Practice without interruption for short periods of no longer than 90 and then take a break. Ninety minutes appears to be the maximum of time that we can bring the highest level of focus to any given activity.
Seek feedback, in intermittent doses. The simpler and more precise feedback, the more equipped you are to make adjustments. Too much too continuously, however, can create cognitive overload, anxiety, and interfere with learning.
Take regular renewal breaks. Relaxing after intense effort not only an opportunity to rejuvenate, but also to metabolize and embed. It’s also during rest that the right hemisphere becomes more which can lead to creative breakthroughs.
Ritualize practice. The best way to insure you’ll take on difficult is to ritualize them — build specific, inviolable times at which do them, so that over time you do them without having to squander energy thinking about them.

Procastination

raj — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 03:27:43 +0000

I never put off till tomorrow what I can do the day after. – Oscar Wilde

Research papers

raj — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:53:38 +0000

Price, Earnings, and Revenue Momentum Strategies by Hong-Yi Chen, Sheng-Syan Chen, Chin-Wen Hsin, Cheng-Few Lee

Value and Momentum Everywhere by Cliff Asness, Tobias Moskowitz, Lasse Pedersen

Identifying Overvalued Equity by Messod Beneish, D. Craig Nichols

The Fundamentals of Commodity Futures Returns by Gary Gorton, Fumio Hayashi, K. Geert Rouwenhorst

Facts and Fantasies about Commodity Futures by Gary Gorton, K. Geert Rouwenhorst

Behavioral Finance: An Introduction by Guido Baltussen

People who think they are crazy enough to change the world, are the ones who actually do

raj — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 06:46:13 +0000

Investment approaches

raj — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:13:08 +0000

The High Dividend Yield Return Advantage: Download this Paper
What Has Worked In Investing, Studies of Investment Approaches and Characteristics Associated With Exceptional Returns: Download this Paper
Value Investing and Behavioral Finance Download this Paper

Civilization and anarchy

raj — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 05:21:54 +0000

Civilization and anarchy are only seven meals apart. – Spanish proverb

Risk and Uncertainty

raj — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:47:38 +0000

Risk is randomness with knowable probabilities. Risk can be measured and presumably managed. Uncertainty is defined as randomness with unknowable probabilities. Randomness is all the stuff left over after we think we have thought of everything. Because these unknowable risks can’t be measured, they certainly can’t be managed

Housing misconceptions

raj — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:45:42 +0000

Via James Kwak
Housing is generally a worse investment than either stocks or simple U.S. Treasury bonds. Then why do so many people think it’s such a great investment?

1. Leverage. Let’s say inflation is 2% and housing returns 3% (1% real return). If you put 10% down, now your house is returning 30%, or a 28% real return; subtract a 6% fixed-rate mortgage, and you’re making about 22%’or twenty-two times the real return of the underlying asset. Of course, we all know the dangers of leverage.

2. Price illusion. People remember the nominal price they paid for their houses. When they sell them thirty years later, they look at the difference between the nominal purchase and sale prices and think they made a ton of money. This is especially true of the generation that bought houses in the 1960s and early 1970s before inflation hit; they saw their home prices go up by a factor of ten and thought it was due to high real returns.

3. Bubbles and optimism bias. Every now and then we have a huge bubble. For a while, people think that’s the new normal. For a while after that, they continue to think it’s the new normal, because they are biased toward optimistic expectations about the world. (Note that during the first half of the decade that I was advising friends that housing was a bad investment, housing was actually a great investment, assuming you could get out in time.)

Links

raj — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 17:04:27 +0000

From Ragas To Riches

raj — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 04:50:55 +0000

From Ragas To Riches
In the past 25 years, members of the Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA) acquired more than 20,000 hotels with more than one million rooms. This represents more than 50 percent of the economy lodging properties in the U.S. and 40 percent of all hotel properties including many upscale hotels. If you bear in mind that Indian Americans constitute less than one percent of America’s population, the achievement appears extraordinary. The market value of these hotels totals about $40 billion. It is estimated that the hotels employ almost 800,000 people and annually pay some $700 million in real estate taxes annually. Incidentally, there may be an additional 4,000 hotels owned by Indian Americans who are not AAHOA members.

Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind

raj — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 18:31:32 +0000

Garry Kasparov, the legendary chess champion has written a fascinating article “The Chess Master and the Computer”. The main subject of the article is a review of the book entitled “Chess Metaphors: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind. As a onetime Chess freak, I found it fascinating.

Lemming pledge

raj — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 18:24:37 +0000

There’s more to life than money

raj — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 07:02:00 +0000

“In 1923, seven men who had made it to the top of the financial success pyramid met together at the Edgewater Hotel in Chicago. Collectively, they controlled more wealth than the entire United States Treasury, and for years the media had held them up as examples of success.

Who were they? Charles M. Schwab, president of the world’s largest steel company (Bethlehem Steel); Arthur Cutten, the greatest wheat speculator of his day; Richard Whitney, president of the New York Stock Exchange; Albert Fall, a member of the President’s Cabinet; Jesse Livermore, the greatest bear on Wall Street; Leon Fraser, president of the International Bank of Settlement; and Ivar Kreuger, the head of the world’s largest monopoly.

What happened to them? Schwab and Cutten both died broke; Whitney spent years of his life in Sing Sing penitentiary; Fall also spent years in prison, but was released so he could die at home; and the others—Livermore, Fraser, and Kreuger, committed suicide.”

—Donald McCullogh, Walking From The American Dream

Gas mileage on a Ferrari

raj — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 06:34:16 +0000

Via Bad Money Advice
College is an expensive endeavor, and the price of textbooks does not
help any, but let’s get real. It’s like worrying about the low gas
mileage on a Ferrari.

American Dream

raj — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 06:23:27 +0000

“It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”- George Carlin