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The big news out of New York City these days is Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s proposed ban on the sale of soda drinks over 16-ounces (about 1/2 liter) at restaurants, movie theaters, sports stadia, street carts, fast food chains, etc. Bloomberg stressed that we have a responsibility to combat obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, and that the government
June 4, 2012 New York City This past Friday, Barack Obama was at a Minneapolis-area Honeywell plant touting his economic recovery credentials to cheering disciples. One of the excited faithful was a young boy, fifth-grader Tyler Sullivan, who took the day off from school to hear the President speak. The President was full of the usual
June 1, 2012 New York City This week saw yet another move from the Chinese government to internationalize its currency and eventually overtake the dollar. The latest? Direct foreign exchange between the Chinese renminbi and the Japanese yen. In other words, when the two nations trade, they’ll no longer need to use the US dollar as
May 31, 2012 New York City One of breakout standup routines from the late, great George Carlin was his 1972 monologue “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.” In the presence of polite company, I shall not repeat them… but rest assured, the routine is still hilarious to this day. I wish I could say
May 30, 2012 New York City After a ridiculous 6-hour delay that bordered on the surreal, I finally arrived to New York’s Laguardia Airport last night at nearly midnight. Miraculously, my checked bag arrived quickly… and without the usual trappings of physical abuse from airport ground crews. The taxi line was long… but I eventually settled
May 29, 2012 Denver, Colorado, USA There’s a rather peculiar tribe of people in northern Uganda known as the Ik that has completely mystified anthropologists for decades. You see, the Ik are unlike just about any other people on the planet in that they shun cooperation, community, and even family. Due to the constant disruption of
May 25, 2012 Yangon, Burma If you’re sick and tired of all the doom and gloom that pervades the US and Europe, and should your personal circumstances allow, I unreservedly recommend that you hop on a plane and go and check out Burma. This is a rare good news story, and it may very well
May 24, 2012 Lake Tahoe, USA Yesterday was my lucky day. While hiking in the middle of nowhere around Lake Tahoe, I literally stumbled onto a 1-ounce US silver eagle coin, 1996 issue. It was just lying there on the ground without a soul in sight. The coin was pretty muddy, but I managed to
May 23, 2012 Lake Tahoe, USA Let’s face it– our modern consumer society makes things easy… we don’t have to think about, or even know how to ‘do’ ANYTHING, from lawn care to vehicle maintenance to carpentry. While it may be convenient, this level of specialization does breed a certain amount of dependency… and nowhere is
May 22, 2012 Los Angeles, USA This week, the universally stupid brainchild of US Senators Chuck Schumer and Bob Casey known as the Ex-PATRIOT Act inched a bit closer towards becoming law. ‘Ex-PATRIOT’ is an absurd acronym that stands for “Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy”. I call it the
May 21, 2012 Los Angeles, USA I had the privilege of seeing Roger Waters perform ‘The Wall’ to a live crowd of over 40,000 fans at the LA Coliseum on Saturday night– the second time I’ve seen the show on this tour. It was an amazing production– I wholeheartedly recommend the experience as
May 18, 2012 Undisclosed location, USA When you think about it, it’s easy to understand why financial markets and media have been so fixated on the Facebook IPO. The creation of so many billionaires and millionaires overnight is certainly cause for good cheer, and given the debacle in Europe coupled with America’s looming
May 17, 2012 Undisclosed Location, United States I’ve been in the US for a little more than 24-hours. And having flipped through the TV channels trying to figure out what useless drivel big media is passing off as ‘news’, I realized that I’m going to vomit if I hear the word “fair” one
May 15, 2012 Santiago, Chile Over the weekend, I had the privilege of breaking bread with our workers at the farm in celebration of the phenomenal harvest season we’ve had. And a celebration it was– everything from the blueberry harvest in December all the way up to the wine grape harvest that just ended, this season
May 14, 2012 London, England Imagine you are one of two people playing Monopoly. While you follow the rules religiously, the other player, who also happens to be the banker, does not. He routinely appropriates properties. If he doesn’t like the score on the dice, he simply changes them. He continually takes as much money from the
