The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb

Nassim Taleb's "The Black Swan" is that rare book that can change the course of one's life, and, if enough people use its insights, the course of history.  

Summaries are inadequate--one needs to study the book, as the shifts in thinking the author shows us how to make are so great, we need to invest time and attention.   Stick with it despite the resistance that deeply ingrained ways may raise (even unconsciously) against it.  

This is the only book I've ever found that prepared me to deal with uncertainty, and the future. 

Check out his website:

Black Swan website

In the book, he warned years ago that our current banking system could lead to worldwide financial problems, and he quotes that on passage on the site.

Pink Slip

Saturday afternoon, at a pocket park in Chelsea, I waited for my last boyfriend. (OK, so he was also my first and so-far only one.) I’d agreed to meet for coffee, a year after dumping him.
At a nearby café table, a group of young men chatted. One of them wore pink hot pants, pink tiger-striped sneakers and his uncombed, harshly dyed hair knotted and held by a gold plastic comb. An orchid fell from his hairdo each time he turned to yell at his dog. “Don’t embarrass me,” he scolded. The meek bitch looked nervously up from under a thick, cheap pink bow tied over her ears. The ribbon looped twice around her head and fell in her eyes. I think she was a mix of boxer and pit bull. She also wore a pink leather collar and leash.
The man entertained his friends with stories. “I was dragging this stuffed dog around, tying it up outside shops . . ..”
The boxer crept quietly over to me.
My ex arrived and looked at me, then the dog. She looked back at him, and then hopefully at me.
“I have a dog now,” I told Marc. “She’s named Precious.”
He raised his eyes sideways to the sky with a plaintive look that said, “Since she lost me, she’s gone barking mad.”

Keira Knightley in The Duchess

In the new film, The Duchess, Keira Knightley gives a mesmerizing performance as Genevieve Spencer, an ancestor of Princess Diana, who was Lady Spencer before her marriage to Prince Charles. Jeremy Irons brilliantly brings to life the rich old duke who arranges to marry her. It reminded me of his brilliant performance in "Reversal of Fortune." Both actors create characters who have layers of complexity. I felt that Keira was "channeling" Princess Diana--I saw in her the same paradoxical shyness and social brilliance, that strange mix of intimacy and mystery.  And the story of this duchess bears eerie similarities the Diana's own.  
Don't read a synopsis before you see it. Let the story surprise you.

Wisdom from the Best Investors

Warren Buffet said this morning, the economy is like a bathtub--it can't be full in one place, and empty in another. If one part is in hot water, we all are. He's a capitalist who sees the socialist dimension of economics. That's rich.

Go see the bull on Wall Street.  You'll see that if it looks dangerous being in front of the bull, with its lowered horns, you really don't want to be behind the bull, either.

The Sunday New York Times business section listed Richard Fuld, the CEO of Lehman Brothers, as worth in January at 827 million, and his assets this week at a measly two million. As a taxi driver said, "That's gotta hurt."
Warren Buffet has a disinterest in money that allows him to invest dispassionately, and that perversely has made him so wealthy. Money is fickle like that. It doesn't come to those who want it, it comes to those who can see through the illusions of the market to what has enduring value. Warren says that the market is a voting machine in the short run, and a weighing machine in the long run. Even greater than the power of his money is the power of his wisdom, which has such power to influence others in government and Wall Street.
Sir John Templeton said that the time to buy is when blood is running in the streets, and that's what Buffett did this week, investing five billion in banking while others were dumping their plummeting shares.
"No one knows who's swimming naked until the tide goes out," he said.
The tabloid headline of Richard Fuld's testimony in Washington was "Fuld on the Hill."
In this week's New York Times magazine, Christian Oth asked Edgar Bronfman, the"billionaire philanthropist," if Forbes assessed his net worth accurately at three and a half billion; the interviewer also asked how much money he'd lost recently, and Bronfman said he paid no attention.
"You don't get ulcers?"
"My father said, "I don't get ulcers, I give ulcers."

The only thing we have to do to make money is to buy low and sell high, which is so hard that the great investing houses have designed computer systems to do that--still, they trip up.  

Going against the opinions of the majority is tough.  Warren Buffett said, "Don't ask the barber if you need a haircut."
Money magazine’s editor, Eric Shurenberg asked George Soros, “Growing up in Nazi-occupied Hungary must help you keep today’s risky markets in perspective.”
“The prospect of extermination was a formative experience for me.” He laughed. “The Nazis taught me that the abnormal can become normal.”
“And the lesson in that?”
“It’s important in life and investing always to question yourself. Understand that you may be wrong especially when you believe too firmly that you’re right.”
“Have your billions (over nine) made you happy?”
“I’m reasonably happy, but the money’s not the point. It’s an indication that I’ve succeeded in the grand adventure of understanding reality.”

Go see the bull on Wall Street.  You'll understand that while you don't want to be in front of the bull, you don't want to be behind it, either.

In Vino Veritas

On the subway back from the Orpheus & Dionysus conference, I found a book on the remaining seat.
Pointing to “Olympus.” I asked the well-dressed man two seats away, “Is this yours?”
“You stole it,” he said, snatching it and leafing through the thick paperback. “This is where I left off,” he said, finding a page at the end folded down at the corner.
“Be honest,” he said to me. “How far did you get?”
He read a line, then mockingly called it “brilliant.” He dropped the book, distracted.
“Are those real Dolce and Gabbanas?” he asked a big blonde with earbuds in, listening to her Ipod.
“Yes.”
“Your pants are ruined,” he said of her white bell-bottoms.
She shrugged.
“What the heck is Ilium?” he asked me, leafing through the book again. “Because it appears in every chapter.”
“Ilium is where the Trojan War started,” I guessed wildly.
“No it’s not. That’s the Iliad.”
“The Iliad is about Ilium, dum dum.”
He pulled back his chin, cowed by my confidence.
A breathless man entered the car, saw me holding the book and eagerly grabbed it.
“I jumped the turnstiles to get this.” He ran back off the train just before the doors closed.
“You stole it,” my neighbor lowered his head accusingly. “I should have asked him what Ilium was.”
“Look, I’m coming home late Friday night from a conference on Greek myth. Anything else you want to know about ancient Greece, just ask.”
He opened his umbrella and closed it quickly from a strange angle on his lap.
“So what brokerage house are you from, Merrill Lynch?” I asked.
He blushed.
“Did you know,” I said, “that Hera and Zeus didn’t have any children?”
“I bet he had some fun with his thunderbolt.” He flapped his black umbrella open and closed again.
“Is he from Merrill Lynch?” I asked his friend.
“Yeah.”
“Let’s just call me Loser and you Never gonna Happen.”
He fluttered the black silk collapsing umbrella.
As we pulled into Hoboken, he held up a fist until I knocked mine against it.
“Ow,” he said. “Softer.”
I tried again, lightly.
“Owww. I bet you could beat up that guy who came back for his book.”
As the train door opened, he left ahead of me and didn’t look back. I gazed wistfully after him.
That was Dionysus, I saw now.

Wisdom is the wage of Experience, and its price

An Anglican bishop from 1100 AD has written on his tomb in Westminster Abbey:
When I was young a free and my imagination had no limits, I dreamed of changing the world. As I grew older and wiser, I discovered the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change only my country.
But it, too, seemed immovable.
As I grew into my twilight years, in one last desperate attempt, I settled for changing only my family and those closest to me, but alas, they would have none of it.
And now as I lie on my deathbed, I suddenly realize: If I had only changed my self first, then by example I would have changed my family.
From their inspiration and encouragement, I would then have been able to better my country and, who knows, I may have even changed the world.

Turnover

"People think that when they get to heaven they will turn over a new leaf," Thoreeau said. As if, once we’re dead, we’ll have the energy to retrace all our steps backwards, like a spiritual Ginger Rogers—in our gown and gold slippers. I grow tired trying to retrace an hour’s steps when I lose something. I usually decide that what’s lost is not worth the time to search.
The church down the street decided to hold a rummage sale and donations filled their entire community room. They sent out a plea for help.
We tried to sort through the drifts of cast-off clothing.
On the news, an old woman was discovered after weeks trapped in her house by her clutter with her husband’s corpse. The firemen dug for hours in protective masks to reach her.
In the debris scattered outside lay a large wooden spoon, the kind sold to tourists on tropical islands.
It reminded me of a Jewish story. A man visited hell, and the people there complained they were tortured by hunger. Banquets of food lay spread out, and long spoons.
“You see how they make us suffer, with these spoons that are too long for us to hold to our own mouths,” the damned wailed.
Then the man went to heaven, and found the same banquet spread. People there laughed and fed each other with the same great spoons.
This morning, instead of rolling feet first out of bed, I slid my head down the edge of the bed and looked upside-down through the window. The tips of the pines bowed with the wind that brought gold-rose clouds swirling. Is that how God sees the world, mostly heaven? For us, our interior life so overwhelms, that we hardly notice sky—is heaven as distracting to God? We think we would be happier if we knew that God paid more attention to us. But maybe the only way to true happiness is to be more like God, and see as he sees.