The State of the Union

For the first time since 2002 I actually watched the President’s SOTU speech. I thought it was excellent. But then, I believe in the Wilsonian principles his foreign policy is based on. And I liked the broad strokes of his domestic policy plans. I watched it on NBC and they (Williams and Russert) declared all … Read more

A sad reminder about cancer and lymphoma

This morning the NY Times had a story about the death of playwright Wendy Wasserstein, yesterday at Memorial Sloan Kettering due to “complications of lymphoma”. She was 55. Wasserstein, whose brother is Bruce Wasserstein, a very well-known and successful Investment Banker, won a Tony and a Pullitzer Prize in 1989 for her play “the Heidi … Read more

Interesting study of political party faithful and their brain wiring

I know not everyone visiting this journal will care about the attached excerpt but I found it fascinating, maybe because it reinforced my own thinking!

About a year ago I started receiving an unsolicited eletter from an investment manager, John Mauldin. I’d never heard of him, and usually when I get unsolicited stuff from investment people (who are mostly looking for business from me for my clients) I look at it once and then hit the delete button after that.

However Mauldin periodically has some good stuff in his email – about six weeks ago he did a good job on what is and what is not important about the yield curve inversion – so I usually look at it. (And he never has a sales pitch! No "I can make your clients 20% a year", blah, blah, blah)

Anyway last week he had a short piece about a neuro-physiology study at Emory University of people who were either devote Democrats or Republicans. Basically how they will re-arrange reality to fit their mindset. And the fact that we all do that in our lives, to a greater or lesser extent.

I cut and pasted the piece out of his email and If you wish to read it – it take’s about three minutes – just click below.

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Day 19 – transplant plus 11

The game plan is discharge either tomorrow (Saturday) or for sure on Sunday. The decision will be made tomorrow and I think it will probably depend on my platelet and red blood cell count. They may decide to keep me until Sunday, give me a platelet transfusion and then release me. One of the nurses … Read more