Dah Hui Lau (David)

Richard Feynman: No Ordinary Genius

2012-01-03T14:47:00.000Z

23 and 1/2 hours: What is the single best thing we can do for our health?

2012-01-03T12:18:00.000Z

Cute Baby Photos Can Help Recover Lost Wallets

2011-12-30T10:43:00.000Z

Strangers are more likely to return lost wallets containing photos of cute babies, according to British researchers. The scientists sprinkled 240 wallets across Edinburgh last year with pictures of either a smiling baby, a puppy, a "happy family," or a "contended elderly couple." It turns out nobody cares about your pooch, retired parents, or smugly superior family life. But that cute wittle baby? Apparently it triggers a "compassionate instinct towards vulnerable infants that people have evolved to ensure the survival of future generations." Finally, an everyday use for evolution!

When faced with the photograph of the baby people were far more likely to send the wallet back, the study found. In fact, only one in ten were hearthearted enough not to do so. With no picture to tug at the emotions, just one in seven were sent back.

According to Dr Wiseman the result reflects a compassionate instinct towards vulnerable infants that people have evolved to ensure the survival of future generations. "The baby kicked off a caring feeling in people, which is not surprising from an evolutionary perspective," he said.

Scientists argue that it would be difficult to genetically code for feeling empathy exclusively towards your own child and much easier to code for feeling empathy towards all children. If you find a baby alone, there is a good chance it belongs to you, making it an effective evolutionary trait, said Dr Wiseman.

Link

Seth Klarman on Charlie Rose

2011-11-28T14:16:00.001Z

INSIDE EDITION Investigates Electronic Pickpocketing

2011-11-24T13:58:00.001Z

Cheryl Murphy: Learning the Look of Love

2011-11-16T10:19:00.001Z

According to Rubin, normally two people in conversation give each other eye contact anywhere from 30-60% of the time but couples who are in love look at each other 75% of the time during conversation and are slower to break their look away from each other when interrupted.

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Learning the Look of Love: That Sly “Come Hither” Stare

By Cheryl Murphy | October 17, 2011

While it might not be witchcraft, the formula for ‘love at first sight’ remains a mystery. However, if you pop the following ingredients into a kettle: large pupils, long glances, and a lovely, attentive smile, you may not have concocted a bona fide love potion but your witch’s brew could contain some insight into the laws of attraction.

Being an optometrist and all around eye aficionado, I have a deep interest in the connection between the eyes and love. After reviewing many decades of literature and research, I have picked out a few studies that I think help us to understand how love affects our eyes and how our eyes can affect the level of attraction and love we feel for someone else. Let’s start off this “Learning The Look of Love” series by first exploring love and eye contact.

Part One: That Sly ‘Come Hither’ Stare

Let’s pretend it’s Friday night, you’re in a bar and you are people watching. It’s dim in here but what do you see? You may see strangers exchanging glances with each other from across the crowded room. Once their eyes meet if eye contact is established and a look is held, the game of love has begun. A man peers around the room and becomes suddenly intrigued by a woman returning his glance. The glance turns into a gaze. He initially found her beautiful but now the magnetism of her prolonged eye contact has amplified her attractiveness.

Like the man in the bar, we do perceive people as more attractive when they are engaged in eye contact with us and when they shift their direction of gaze towards us as confirmed in experiments performed by Mason et al in 2005. This directed gaze apparently signals their interest and the fact that they find us interesting makes them even more appealing to us. In other words, if someone who you find attractive locks eyes with you, they automatically go up a notch on your love barometer.

For Complete Article

Ben Milne: This 28-Year-Old's Startup Is Moving $350 Million And Wants To Completely Kill Credit Cards

2011-11-16T10:06:00.001Z

There's a tiny 12-person startup churning out of Des Moines, Iowa.

Dwolla was founded by 28-year-old Ben Milne; it's an innovative online payment system that sidesteps credit cards completely.

Milne has no finance background yet his little operation is moving between $30 and $50 million per month; it's on track to move more than $350 million in the next year.

Unlike PayPal, Dwolla doesn't take a percentage of the transaction. It only asks for $0.25 whether it's moving $1 or $1,000.

We interviewed Milne about how he is building a credit card killer and Square rival from the middle of the nation where VCs and press are scarce.

BI: We hear you're making credit card companies angry. How are you doing that?

Ben Milne: Ultimately we're trying to build the next Visa, not the next PayPal. We're building a human network based on how we think the future of payments will work. The current model needs to be blown up.

Dwolla started out of my old company. I owned a speaker manufacturing company and we sold everything directly through a website. I got really obsessed with interchange fees and how not to pay them. Every time a merchant gets paid with a credit card they have to give up a percentage. In my case, I was losing $55,000 a year to credit card companies. I felt like they were stealing from me -- I was getting paid and somebody was taking money out of my pocket.

So I thought, how do I get paid through a website without paying credit card fees? We pitched a bank, and amazingly enough they said, "We'll give it a shot."

That was three years ago, so we've been working on the project for a really long time. In December of last year we figured out how to legally do what we do.

How many transactions are you doing?

The average transaction volume for Dwolla is right around $500 dollars. We move between $30 and $50 million per month.

What's your story?

I'm 28. I started my first company, Elemental Design, when I was 18. I dropped out of University of Northern Iowa and built that.

I started college because I thought that's where I was supposed to go. I applied to one college, I got in, went, and realized it wasn't for me. I had customers so I stopped going to class.

We grew that company from a $1,200 investment to over one million in revenue in four years with three or four people and without outside investment. The company was running itself and I wanted to work on another project.

For Complete Article

CNBC Transcript: Warren Buffett Explains Why He Bought $10.7B of IBM Stock

2011-11-15T15:10:00.001Z

BECKY: Wait. Wait a second, IBM is a tech company, and you don't buy tech companies. Why have you been buying IBM?

BUFFETT: Well, I didn't buy railroad companies for a long time either. I—it's interesting. I have probably—I've had two interesting incidents in my life connected with IBM, but I've probably read the annual report of IBM every year for 50 years. And this year it came in on a Saturday, and I read it. And I got a different slant on it, which I then proceeded to do some checking out of. But I just—I read it through a different lens.

JOE: What's the different lens? What's the different slant?

BUFFETT: Well, just like—just like I did with—just like I did with the railroads. And incidentally, the company laid it out extremely well. I don't think there's any company that's—that I can think of, big company, that's done a better job of laying out where they're going to go and then having gone there. They have laid out a road map and I should have paid more attention to it five years ago where they were going to go in five years ending in 2010. Now they've laid out another road map for 2015. They've done an incredible job. First, Lou Gerstner, when he came in, he saved the company from bankruptcy. I read his book a second time, actually, after I read the annual report. You know, "Who Said Elephants Can't Dance?" I read it when it first came out and then I went back and reread it. And then we went around to all of our companies to see how their IT departments functioned and why they made the decisions they made. And I just came away with a different view of the position that IBM holds within IT departments and why they hold it and the stickiness and a whole bunch of things. And also, I read very carefully what Sam Palmisamo...

JOE: Palmisano.

BECKY: Palmisano.

BUFFETT: ...Palmisano, yes, has said about where they're going to be and he's delivered big time on his—on his—on his first venture along those lines.

BUFFETT: The other thing I would say about IBM, too, is that a few years back, they had 240 million options outstanding. Now they probably are down to about 30 million. They treat their stock with reverence which I find is unusual among big companies. Or they really—they are thinking about the shareholder.

JOE: But you're buying this after it's really broken out the new highs this year, new all-time highs.

BUFFETT: We bought—we bought railroads on highs, too.

JOE: Yeah? They sent it—you know, stocks at new lows that, you know, can hit new lows where they...

BUFFETT: Right. I bought—I bought control of—I bought control of GEICO at its all-time high.

BUFFETT: No, I never talked to Sam. I've never talked to Sam. I've got this—I competed with IBM 50 years ago, believe it or not. I was chairman of a company, had, and I testified for IBM in 1980 when the government was attacking about on the antitrust situation. But I've never—I have not talked to Sam or now Ginni.

BECKY: You—this is the second time in the last several months that you've told us about a purchase you've made of a company you've been the reading annual reports for years.

BUFFETT: Right.

BECKY: Bank of America was the first.

BUFFETT: Right. I read those for 50 years.

BECKY: Read those for 50 years and you're looking at companies a little differently. You never really bought tech stocks before. You had always said you don't understand technology stocks.

BUFFETT: Right.

BECKY: Does this mean that this is a new era and you're going to be looking at a lot of tech stocks and I guess chief among them, would you consider Microsoft?

BUFFETT: I—well, Microsoft is a special case because Microsoft is off bounds to us because of my friendship with Bill and if we spent seven months buying Microsoft stock and during that period they announced a repurchase or increase of the dividend or an acquisition, people would say you've been getting inside information from Bill. So I have told Todd and Ted and I apply it myself that we do not ever buy a share of Microsoft. I think Microsoft is attractive but that—but we will never buy Microsoft. It—people would just assume I knew something and I don't, but they would assume it and they would assume Bill talked to me and he wouldn't have. But there's no sense putting yourself in that position.

BECKY: But...

BUFFETT: I can say I've never met Sam but I can't say I've never met Bill.

BECKY: But does this change the rules of the game that you would actually look at technology stocks now?

BUFFETT: I look at everything but most things I decide I can't figure out their future.

BUFFETT: Yeah, it's a—it's a company that helps IT departments do their job better.

JOE: Yeah.

BUFFETT: And if you think about it, I don't want to push the analogy too far because it could be pushed too far. But, you know, we work with a given auditor, we work with a given law firm. That doesn't mean we're happy every minute of every day about everything they do but it is a big deal for a big company to change auditors, change law firms. The IT departments, I—you know, we've got dozens and dozens of IT departments at Berkshire. I don't know how they run. I mean, but we went around and asked them and you find out that there's—they very much get working hand in glove with suppliers. And that doesn't—that doesn't mean things won't change but it does mean that there's a lot of continuity to it. And then I think as you go around the world, IBM, in the most recent quarter, reported double-digit gains in 40 countries. Now, I would imagine if you're in some country around the world and you're developing your IT department, you're probably going to feel more comfortable with IBM than with many companies.

JOE: Well...

BUFFETT: I said I competed with IBM 50 years ago.

BECKY: Yeah.

BUFFETT: We actually started—I was chairman of the board, believe it or not, of a tech company one time, and computers used to use zillions of tab cards and IBM in 1956 or '7 signed a consent decree and they had to get rid of half the capacity. So two friends of mine, one was a lawyer and one was an insurance agent, read the newspaper and they went into the tab card business and I went in with them. And we did a terrific job and built a nice little company. But every time we went into a place to sell them our tab cards at a lower price and with better delivery than IBM, the purchasing agent would say, nobody's ever gotten fired from buying—by buying from IBM. I mean, we probably heard that about a thousand times. That's not as strong now, but I imagine as you go around the world that there are—there's a fair amount of presumption in many places that if you're with IBM, that you stick with them, and that if you haven't been with anybody, you're developing things, that you certainly give them a fair shot at the business. And I think they've done a terrific job of developing that. And if you read their reports—if you read what they wrote five years ago they were going to do and the next five years, they've done it, you know, and now they tell you what they're going to do in the next five years, and as I say, they have this terrific reverence for the shareholder, which I think is very, very important.

And I want to give full credit, incidentally, to Lou Gerstner because when he came in, I was a friend of Tom Murphy's and Jim Burke's, and they were on the search committee to find a solution when IBM was almost broke in 1992, and everybody thought they were going pretty far afield when they went to Lou Gerstner. And look what...

BUFFETT: Well, you don't have to think of—you don't have to think of another one, Joe. And if you read his book, you know, "Who Said Elephants Can't Dance?" it's a great management book. Like I said, I read it twice.

ANDREW: What was it when you're reading the report? I mean, most investors who are trying to invest like you, they're reading annual—what is it in the report that you said, ah, I missed it?

BUFFETT: Well, it was—it was a lot of interesting facts and you know, I recommend you read the report, you know. And I didn't look at the pictures and I'm not sure there were any pictures. I kind of like that, too. But there were—there were lots of things in that report but the truth is, there were probably lots of things in the report a year earlier or two years earlier that you say, why didn't I spot it then? And I think it was Keynes or somebody that said that the problem is not the new ideas, it's escaping from old ones. And, you know, I've had that many times in my life and I plead guilty to it.

BUFFETT: I will tell you one very smart thing that Thomas Watson Sr. said. I knew Thomas Watson Jr. just a little bit. Tom Watson Sr., this applies to stocks. He said, "I'm no genius but I'm smart in spots and I stay around those spots." And that's terrific advice.

· Transcript Part 1: Buffett on Europe & U.S. Housing 'Depression'

· Transcript Part 2: Buffett Calls Romney the Strongest GOP Candidate

· Transcript Part 3: Buffett on MF Global and Excessive Risk

· Transcript Part 4: Buffett on Occupy Wall Street and the 'Harold' Hint

· Transcript Part 5: Buffett on Why He Bought $10.7B of IBM Stock

· Transcript Part 6: Buffett on Infrastructure Investments and Bank of America

· Transcript Part 7: Buffett on China, the Economy, and Corporate Jet Tax Breaks

What Has Warren Buffett Been Buying? 'Harold'

2011-11-14T13:29:00.001Z

What Has Warren Buffett Been Buying? 'Harold'

Posted By: Alex Crippen | Executive Producer

cnbc.com

| 14 Nov 2011 | 07:27 AM ET

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway releases its end-of-Q3 stock portfolio snapshot later today, but during his live appearance on Squawk Box this morning Buffett revealed its big secret: Berkshire has bought $10.7 billion worth of common stock in IBM , or 64 million shares at an average price of $170.

Buffett's company now owns 5.5 percent of the company but doesn't intend to buy any more. "I wouldn't be talking about it if I did." He started in March with the goal to buy $10 billion worth of stock.

We've noted that Berkshire's 13-F filings for the first and second quarters said that some holdings were being kept confidential, and it appears this is the buying spree Buffett was keeping under wraps. (He doesn't want copycat buyers to drive up the price of a stock he's actively acquiring.)

Buffett says he has not talked to the company or current CEO Sam Palmisano about his purchases, but he thinks IBM has done an "incredible job" executing its long-term strategy, has an excellent "road map" for the future, and "respects" its shareholders by being honest with them and doing big stock buybacks. "They've done all kinds of things right."

He gives a lot of credit to former CEO Lou Gerstner, and wishes he'd bought the stock back when Gerstner was running the company. "It was something I should have spotted years earlier." He decided to start buying this year after reading the company's 2010 annual report.

Buffett typically shies away from technology stocks because he often doesn't "understand" what they do, but told us he'd been "hit between the eyes" by how the company finds and keeps clients. "It's a company that helps IT departments do their job better. It is a big deal for a big company to change auditors, change law firms," or change IT support. "There is a lot of continuity to it."

At first he gave the Squawkers a one-word puzzle: the name "Harold." After several minutes of incorrect guesses, Buffett revealed that "Harold" refers to IBM. The connection: a common nickname for Harold is Hal, HAL 9000 was the name of the computer in the 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it's often been associated in people's minds with IBM.

Buffett says he would never buy Microsoft , another computer-related stock, due to his close friendship with Chairman Bill Gates.

Buffett says Berkshire did add to its Wells Fargo position and he thinks Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan is following a "very logical path" to fix the bank.

Asked if he supports the Occupy Wall Street movement, Buffett said because its goals and leadership are unclear it probably won't change things. He does, however, continue to believe the "super-rich" need to share in the national sacrifice that will be needed to get the federal government's budget deficits under control.

Link

The fight of Richard Rainwater's life

2011-11-14T10:24:00.001Z

Legacy of a dealmaker

Of all life's cruelties, it seems especially tragic that Richard Rainwater would suffer from this affliction. Rainwater is a self-made billionaire, a Texas incarnation of the Horatio Alger story. But he hasn't built a chain of discount stores or a computer company or even a private equity firm to leave behind. No, Rainwater's business genius has always been his energy and imagination -- his uncanny ability to see where the world is going and find a way to exploit that turn. It was his personal magic that made big deals happen: his ability to pick the right opportunity, the right partners, the right CEO, and then to provide inspiration. The billion-dollar edifice he built was all in his head.

And now it's crumbling away.

Today Rainwater requires 24-hour care. He is unable to walk unassisted. He has trouble swallowing. His speech is almost impossible to understand. "Of anybody I ever met, Richard was the most charismatic, the most outgoing, most hands-on, huggy, high-fiving, jumping-up-and-down, vivacious executive," says Michael Eisner, whom Rainwater helped install as CEO of the Walt Disney Co. (DIS) "And then to have him relegated to this condition that incapacitates him? It's the irony of human existence."

Though Rainwater has usually operated behind the scenes, his impact on the world of business has been immense. He helped create or fix a string of companies, ranging from entertainment (Disney) and health care (Columbia/HCA) to energy (Mesa, Ensco) and real estate (Crescent). Many regard Rainwater as the father of the modern private equity business. "He may be the best deal guy ever," says David Bonderman, co-founder of TPG Capital, the private equity giant. "Richard figured out there was a place for private capital to do aggressive deals, and he did it better than anybody else." Rainwater has been something of a pied piper, too, launching and salvaging careers and helping others build personal fortunes. The list ranges from George W. Bush and Sears Holdings chairman Eddie Lampert to former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach and Florida governor Rick Scott.

The latest chapter of Rainwater's story, told here for the first time, makes painfully clear the democracy of disease. Battling for his life, Rainwater has bankrolled an extraordinary, and characteristically creative, campaign to seek a cure for his rare affliction. But the odds are long. In all probability, there isn't enough time or enough money, even for a one-of-a-kind billionaire.

Full Article

Bill Gates Talks About the Future

2011-11-01T15:22:00.001Z

With the convergence of major advances in computing hardware and software, technology is playing an increasingly important role in many aspects of society. In his speech at the University of Washington, Bill discussed important breakthroughs in computer science and engineering that have implications in education, health, and improving the lives of the world’s poorest 2 billion people.

Charlie Rose - Walter Isaacs Interview

2011-10-28T17:05:00.001Z

An hour with Walter Isaacson, author of "Steve Jobs". Video Link

Charlie Rose - Ray Dalio Interview

2011-10-24T13:57:00.004Z

Good interview. Please watch at Charlie Rose.

Jobs: 'Find What You Love'

2011-10-17T13:09:00.001Z

Steve Jobs, who died Wednesday, reflected on his life, career and mortality in a well-known commencement address at Stanford University in 2005.

Here, read the text of of that address:

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

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How Exercise Can Strengthen the Brain

2011-10-06T12:25:00.002Z

Can exercise make the brain more fit? That absorbing question inspired a new study at the University of South Carolina during which scientists assembled mice and assigned half to run for an hour a day on little treadmills, while the rest lounged in their cages without exercising.

Earlier studies have shown that exercise sparks neurogenesis, or the creation of entirely new brain cells. But the South Carolina scientists were not looking for new cells. They were looking inside existing ones to see if exercise was whipping those cells into shape, similar to the way that exercise strengthens muscle.

For centuries, people have known that exercise remodels muscles, rendering them more durable and fatigue-resistant. In part, that process involves an increase in the number of muscle mitochondria, the tiny organelles that float around a cell’s nucleus and act as biological powerhouses, helping to create the energy that fuels almost all cellular activity. The greater the mitochondrial density in a cell, the greater its vitality.

Past experiments have shown persuasively that exercise spurs the birth of new mitochondria in muscle cells and improves the vigor of the existing organelles. This upsurge in mitochondria, in turn, has been linked not only to improvements in exercise endurance but to increased longevity in animals and reduced risk for obesity, diabetes and heart disease in people. It is a very potent cellular reaction.

Brain cells are also fueled by mitochondria. But until now, no one has known if a similar response to exercise occurs in the brain.

Like muscles, many parts of the brain get a robust physiological workout during exercise. “The brain has to work hard to keep the muscles moving” and all of the bodily systems in sync, says J. Mark Davis, a professor of exercise science at the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina and senior author of the new mouse study, which was published last month in The Journal of Applied Physiology. Scans have shown that metabolic activity in many parts of the brain surges during workouts, but it was unknown whether those active brain cells were actually adapting and changing.

Full Article

Jobs, Who Built Most Valuable Technology Company, Dies at 56

2011-10-06T08:53:00.001Z

Steve Jobs, who built the world’s most valuable technology company by creating devices that changed how people use electronics and revolutionized the computer, music and mobile-phone industries, died. He was 56.

Jobs, who resigned as Apple Inc. chief executive officer on Aug. 24, 2011, passed away yesterday, the Cupertino, California- based company said. He was diagnosed in 2003 with a neuroendocrine tumor, a rare form of pancreatic cancer, and had a liver transplant in 2009.

“We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away,” Apple said. “Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.”

Jobs embodied the Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He was a long-haired counterculture technophile who dropped out of college and started a computer company in his parents’ garage on April Fools’ Day, 1976. He had no formal technical training and no real business experience.

What he had instead was an appreciation of technology’s elegance and a notion that computers could be more than a hobbyist’s toy or a corporation’s workhorse. These machines could be indispensable tools. A computer could be, he often said, “a bicycle for our minds.” He was right -- owing largely to a revolution he started.

Obama Statement

Jobs’s passing was met with an outpouring of grief from consumers who laid flowers and posted tributes on the walls of Apple stores and technology executives who partnered and competed with Jobs over the years and paid homage in statements. Flags flew at half-mast at Apple’s headquarters and the company published an honorarium on its website. Even U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama lamented the loss.

“Michelle and I are saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Jobs,” Obama said. “Steve was among the greatest of American innovators -- brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.”

On his watch, Apple came to dominate the digital age, first through the creation of the Macintosh computer and later through the iPod digital music player, the iPhone wireless handset and more recently, the iPad tablet.

With each product, Jobs confronted new adversaries -- from International Business Machines Corp. in computers to Microsoft Corp. in operating systems, to Sony Corp. in music players and Google Inc. in mobile software.

Visionary to Virtuoso

And Jobs would prove himself not just a techie visionary, but the virtuoso executive who built the world’s second-most valuable company after Exxon Mobil Corp.

The opening act of Jobs’s professional ascent stretched from 1976 to 1984. He scored his first hit with the Apple II computer, a device that resonated with schools and some consumers and small businesses, and made Apple an alluring alternative to IBM, then the world’s largest computer maker. Apple had its initial public offering in 1980 and the graphical Macintosh was born just over three years later.

During his second act, from 1984 to 1997, Jobs’s star dimmed. In 1985, he was fired after a power struggle with Apple’s board. He started another computer company, NeXT Computer Inc., and bought a digital animation studio from filmmaker George Lucas. The firm later took the name Pixar.

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Michael Lewis: California and Bust

2011-10-06T08:49:00.001Z

On August 5, 2011, moments after the U.S. government watched a rating agency lower its credit rating for the first time in American history, the market for U.S. Treasury bonds soared. Four days later, the interest rates paid by the U.S. government on its new 10-year bonds were plummeting on their way to record lows. The price of gold rose right alongside the price of U.S. Treasury bonds, but the prices of virtually all stocks and other bonds in rich Western countries went into a free fall. The net effect of a major U.S. rating agency’s saying that the U.S. government was less likely than before to repay its debts was to lower the cost of borrowing for the U.S. government and to raise it for everyone else. This told you a lot of what you needed to know about the ability of the U.S. government to live beyond its means: it had, for the moment, a blank check. The shakier the United States government appeared, up to some faraway point, the more cheaply it would be able to borrow. It wasn’t exposed yet to the same vicious cycle that threatened the financial life of European countries: a moment of doubt leads to higher borrowing costs, which leads to greater doubt and even higher borrowing costs, and so on until you become Greece. The fear that the United States might actually not pay back the money it had borrowed was still unreal.

On December 14, 2010, the television news program 60 Minutes aired a 14-minute piece about U.S. state and local finances. Correspondent Steve Kroft interviewed a private Wall Street analyst named Meredith Whitney, who, back in 2007, had gone from being obscure to famous when she correctly suggested that Citigroup’s losses in U.S. subprime bonds were far bigger than anyone imagined, and predicted the bank would be forced to cut its dividend. The 60 Minutessegment noted that U.S. state and local governments faced a collective annual deficit of roughly half a trillion dollars, adding that another trillion-dollar gap existed between what the governments owed retired workers and the money they had on hand to pay them. Whitney pointed out that even these numbers were unreliable, and probably optimistic, as the states did a poor job of providing information about their finances to the public. New Jersey governor Chris Christie concurred with her and added, “At this point, if it’s worse, what’s the difference?” The bill owed by American states to retired American workers was so large that it couldn’t be paid, whatever the amount. At the end of the piece, Kroft asked Whitney what she thought about the ability and willingness of the American states to repay their debts. She didn’t see a real risk that the states would default, because the states had the ability to push their problems down to counties and cities. But at these lower levels of government, where American life was lived, she thought there would be serious problems. “You could see 50 to a hundred sizable defaults, [maybe] more,” she said. A minute later Kroft returned to her to ask when people should start worrying about a crisis in local finances. “It’ll be something to worry about within the next 12 months,” she said.

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Jenna Marie James: Ball State student wins lunch with Warren Buffett

2011-09-14T14:57:00.000Z

A truly awesome presentation! Must watch! The message is applicable to our lives too!

Thanks Jenna,
David

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A Ball State University senior has won a chance to have lunch with investor Warren Buffett, which is something others have paid millions to do.

Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, Business Wire, said Tuesday that 21-year-old Jenna Marie James's video about the future of public relations won the contest it sponsored.

So James will join Buffett and Business Wire executives at the New York Stock Exchange on Sept. 30.

Earlier this year, a private lunch with Buffett sold for $2,626,411 at a charity auction.

James says she's excited to learn from Buffett and talk to him about her generation.

James' winning video ( http://on.fb.me/nQthzs) talked about some things that are already changing communications, like mobile applications on cell phones, as well as some things that haven't happened yet, like holographic technology.

Link

Buffett’s New Hire Is Marathoner Whose BofA Bet Beat Berkshire

2011-09-13T10:30:00.000Z

Ted Weschler, the hedge-fund manager and marathoner, made money trading Bank of America Corp. stock and held the biggest stake of a bankrupt chemicals firm before being hired by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

Weschler bought 2 million Bank of America shares in the first quarter of 2009 when the credit crunch pushed down financial stocks. The shares had more than doubled, on a quarterly average basis, when he sold them a year later. Weschler’s $217 million holding of W.R. Grace & Co., which entered bankruptcy in 2001, dates from at least 2003.

Weschler, 50, is part of the second generation of Berkshire leaders whom Buffett, 81, is picking to maintain the culture and performance of the firm he built over four decades. Weschler’s bets will get bigger at Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire, which holds about $100 billion in stocks and bonds. His investment approach may serve him well under Buffett, who touts his own fondness for reading corporate regulatory filings, said Bruce Kershner, a headhunter who previously worked for Weschler.

“All he liked to do was read and read and read,” Kershner, president and founder of Bethesda, Maryland-based Kershner & Co., said of Weschler. “He said he took vacations and he would just read his financial statements.” Kershner recruited analyst Bill Beisswanger for Weschler’s fund.

Weschler and Todd Combs, the former hedge-fund manager hired by Berkshire last year, will assume Buffett’s investment responsibilities when the billionaire chairman retires, Berkshire said yesterday in a statement. Until then, Buffett will oversee the bulk of the portfolio. A third manager may eventually be added to the investment team, Berkshire said.

Peninsula Capital

Weschler is shutting his Charlottesville, Virginia-based Peninsula Capital Advisors LLC and returning funds to limited partners. He’ll join Berkshire early next year. Peninsula, which had about $2 billion in nine U.S. stocks as of June 30, counted Michael Bills, the former chief operating officer of Tiger Management LLC, among its investors.

“This is a brilliant move for Berkshire,” Bills, founder and chief investment officer at Charlottesville-based fund of hedge funds Bluestem Asset Management LLC, said in an e-mail. “We are fortunate to have been limited partners with Ted, and think the world of him.”

Peninsula held stock in Cincinnati Bell Inc., Cogent Communications Group Inc., DaVita Inc., DirecTV, FiberTower Corp., Liberty Media Corp., Valassis Communications Inc. and WSFS Financial Corp. at the end of the second quarter.

The hedge fund is run in a three-person office, with Weschler assisted by an analyst and an office manager, a person familiar with the business said. It is based in an office above a bookstore in downtown Charlottesville.

Full Article

Meet Ted Weschler: Buffett auction winner, Berkshire's new hire

2011-09-12T13:27:00.002Z

It is surely unprecedented for a person to spend $5,252,722 to get a job, but in a funny way, that is precisely what Ted Weschler, of Charlottesville, Virginia, did. The details, in all their improbability:

Warren Buffett announced this morning that Weschler, 50, the highly successful managing partner of hedge fund Peninsula Capital Advisors, will soon join Berkshire Hathaway to run a portion of its investments. That move, added to thehiring of Todd Combs last year, is aimed at preparing investment-rich Berkshire for a day when Buffett, who just turned 81, will no longer be running the company's investments.

And how did Buffett get to know Weschler? It's here that fact becomes stranger than fiction.

Full Article

Irving Kahn: Advice From a 105-Year Old Banker

2011-09-12T10:17:00.002Z

The stock market is imploding, Europe is on the brink, and, if the doomsayers are to be believed, we could be headed for a double-dip recession.

None of that worries Irving Kahn, perhaps the world’s oldest working investment banker. “There are a lot of opportunities out there, and one shouldn’t complain, unless you don’t have good health,” says Kahn. At 105, he might well be the last man on earth who can speak authoritatively on both longevity and making money amid a historic market meltdown. In 1928, at the age of 23, he went to work on Wall Street as a stock analyst and brokerage clerk. By the tail end of the Great Depression, in 1939, he’d made enough money in the market to move his wife and two children out of public housing and into their own house in the suburbs.

Kahn is still in the game, waking every morning at 7 and going to work as chairman of Kahn Brothers, the small family investment firm he founded in 1978. Until a few years ago, he took the bus or walked the 20 blocks from his Upper East Side home to his midtown office. “For a 105-year-old guy, it’s pretty remarkable,” says Thomas Kahn, Irving’s 68-year-old son and the company’s president. “I get tired just thinking about it.”

Perhaps his closest rival for the title of oldest person working in the securities industry was the financier Roy Neuberger, who passed away in 2010 at the age of 107. But Neuberger had retired at 99. Two of Kahn’s older sons, both in their mid-70s, have likewise retired.

Small and gnomish, Kahn counsels patience in hard times as he holds forth on market distortions and the roots of economic unrest, which he pins on “a bunch of gamblers going crazy on the floor of the exchange.” “Wall Street,” he adds, “has always been a very poor judge of value.”

“This may surprise you, but there were a large number of valuable buys during the Depression.”

Full Article

Interview With Prem Watsa

2011-09-08T09:17:00.000Z

Excellent interview.

Link

What's the connection between curiosity and happiness?

2011-09-07T16:22:00.003Z

This study examined curiosity as a mechanism for achieving and maintaining high levels of well-being and meaning in life. Of primary interest was whether people high in trait curiosity derive greater well-being on days when they are more curious. We also tested whether trait and daily curiosity led to greater, sustainable well-being. Predictions were tested using trait measures and 21 daily diary reports from 97 college students. We found that on days when they are more curious, people high in trait curiosity reported more frequent growth-oriented behaviors, and greater presence of meaning, search for meaning, and life satisfaction. Greater trait curiosity and greater curiosity on a given day also predicted greater persistence of meaning in life from one day into the next. People with greater trait curiosity reported more frequent hedonistic events but they were associated with less pleasure compared to the experiences of people with less trait curiosity. The benefits of hedonistic events did not last beyond the day of their occurrence. As evidence of construct specificity, curiosity effects were not attributable to Big Five personality traits or daily positive or negative mood. Our results provide support for curiosity as an ingredient in the development of well-being and meaning in life. The pattern of findings casts doubt on some distinctions drawn between eudaimonia and hedonic well-being traditions.

Source: "Curiosity and pathways to well-being and meaning in life: Traits, states, and everyday behaviors" from MOTIVATION AND EMOTION, Volume 31, Number 3, 159-173,

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Crisis Checklists for the Operating Room: Development and Pilot Testing

2011-09-07T16:16:00.000Z

Background

Because operating room crises are rare events, failure to adhere to critical management steps is common. We sought to develop and pilot a tool to improve adherence to lifesaving measures during operating room crises.

Study Design

We identified 12 of the most frequently occurring operating room crises and corresponding evidence-based metrics of essential care for each (46 total process measures). We developed checklists for each crisis based on a previously defined method, which included literature review, multidisciplinary expert consultation, and simulation. After development, 2 operating room teams (11 participants) were each exposed to 8 simulations with random assignment to checklist use or working from memory alone. Each team managed 4 simulations with a checklist available and 4 without. One of the primary outcomes measured through video review was failure to adhere to essential processes of care. Participants were surveyed for perceptions of checklist use and realism of the scenarios.

Results

Checklist use resulted in a 6-fold reduction in failure of adherence to critical steps in management for 8 scenarios with 2 pilot teams. These results held in multivariate analysis accounting for clustering within teams and adjusting for learning or fatigue effects (11 of 46 failures without the checklist vs 2 of 46 failures with the checklist; adjusted relative risk = 0.15, 95% CI, 0.04–0.60; p = 0.007). All participants rated the overall quality of the checklists and scenarios to be higher than average or excellent.

Conclusions

Checklist use can improve safety and management in operating room crises. These findings warrant broader evaluation, including in clinical settings.

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Reversion to the mean

2011-09-07T10:44:00.000Z

“What goes up must come down” is an everyday expression which explains the statistical concept, reversion to the mean. Most statistical theories or investment models are very complex and have limited successful track records, but reversion to the mean is intuitive and easy to grasp.Most important, reversion to the mean is the basis of value investing. Many well-known and successful investors, including Benjamin Graham, David Dodd, Warren Buffett and Seth Klarman, are value investors. These investors use reversion to the mean as an investment philosophy to guide them to buy certain companies. By exploiting time arbitrage, a fancy term meaning one has a long-term time horizon and can weather short-term fluctuations, investors can make money by buying undervalued stocks and waiting for them to return to their historical valuations — to revert to the mean. An easy to understand example illustrates this basic philosophy.

Imagine that company XYZ has traded throughout the past five years at an average multiple of 18 times earnings. This means that the stock price divided by earnings per share — the company’s net income divided by common stock shares — has equaled 18. Now, the company trades at 12 times earnings. We can see that the lower multiple, 12 compared to 18, means that the price for a share of stock has decreased in relation to the profitability of the company. Clearly, something in the market has occurred to cause shares to dip and reach a lower valuation. Perhaps a top manager such as the CEO or CFO suddenly resigned, or the company had to deal with a product recall or fell short of Wall Street’s earnings expectations. But if the investor sees no secular, long-term changes in company XYZ, this dip in share price and valuation creates a great buying opportunity because the stock should eventually revert to the mean and trade at its historical 18 times earnings.

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