rkbabang

Much like my portfolio, it is adversely affected by cold weather. Shrinkage!

Answer: Larger than some, but smaller than others. To both questions.

From 2012: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/anonymous-size-of-your-portfolio-poll/

I believe the problem with global warming is the same as politics. There is a very delayed feedback loop. A voter votes for a terrible politician who creates all sorts of bad problems...but the problems don't manifest themselves for 20 years. That voter doesn't necessarily link their vote and the politician to the problems. If they do some new solution that might create problems is required to fix it, consequences are delayed. Global warming is the same. Something that's a problem right now might not be terrible for 20-30 years. There is no feedback, and it's not immediate so people have a tough time with it. I don't know why using less of things, being more resourceful, and conserving is all that bad. Even if there isn't any global warming those are good things we should be doing anyways. Unless someone is a contrarian to be contrary why is "I just want to waste and use too much of anything for no reason" something anyone strives for? I have no problem with using less of things, recycling, and everyone doing their small part. I do these things myself. What I have a problem with is things like carbon taxes which will not only hurt the economy but give the governments of the world trillions of more dollars to spend on weapons to slaughter people over resources with. No thanks. If it is a problem, and it increasingly looks like it is, then, like any real problem, government does not have the solution.

I really love all of his WWI/II stuff and all of his Roman Empire series as well. I'd recommend starting with the "Blueprint for Armageddon" series (I-V) since it is still free on his site. I'd download all his free series before he starts charging for them. He only keeps his latest few free, so if he comes out with a new one, one of the series that is now free will be moved to pay only. I've listened to all of them, I think my favorite series was probably "Death Throes of the Republic".

Also for audio. Anyone who hasn't listened to Dan Carlin's "Hardcore History" should give it a shot. It is like a cross between a podcast and a series of audiobooks on history. Some of the topics run many hours long. The most recent few are available for free, the older series are worth paying for.

Why Bitcoin is and isn't like the Internet "... I remember twenty years ago, giving a talk to advertising agencies, media companies and banks explaining how important and disruptive the Internet would be. Back then, there were satellite photos of the earth and a webcam pointing at a coffee pot on the Internet. Most people didn’t have the imagination to see how the Internet would fundamentally disrupt commerce and media, because Amazon, eBay and Google hadn’t been invented -- just email and Usenet-news. No one in these big companies believed that they had to learn anything about the Internet or that the Internet would affect their business -- I mostly got blank stares or snores. Similarly, I believe that Bitcoin is the first “killer app” of The Blockchain as email was the killer app for the beginning of the Internet. We are in the process of inventing eBay, Amazon and Google. My hunch is that The Blockchain will be to banking, law and accountancy as The Internet was to media, commerce and advertising. It will lower costs, disintermediate many layers of business and reduce friction. As we know, one person’s friction is another person’s revenue..."

This misses my question. Right now I have over 1000 books on the to-read list (yes, some of them are probably crap where I won't get through first 20 pages and over 70% are fiction so they only partially relate to this topic). So I don't need a reason to read. But I do need a reason to read particular book or a set of books. Cause otherwise, they will just go into 1001 through 1100 positions into the queue. 8) And in general most history books for me personally go to the bottom of the pile, not to the top. Was just looking at some Napoleon's biography recommended by Economist. Probably good book, decided not to even add to my pile. 8) Anyway, if you enjoy history books, that's fine. I was just looking for some extra motivation. :) Point taken. History interests me. In my view to come close to understanding humanity, you have to understand where we came from (history, evolutionary biology, philosophy, etc) as well as where we want to go (futurism/extropianism/sci-fi/etc)... So apart from finance and mindless-fiction, those are the types of books I tend to read.

I've read most of Jared Diamond's books and they are very, very good. It has been a while since I read any of his books, so I don't recall if this was true with all his books, but I feel depressed after reading his stuff and I am typically a pretty up beat person. I know what you mean. I'm an optimist to a fault, and I don't end up agreeing with many of his conclusions, yet I like reading things that make me look at things from a different angle. Also his writing is engaging, his experiences in New Guinea are fascinating, and he's very persuasive in his arguments. He tells a good story and keeps you reading.

I'd second the recommendation for "Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond and further recommend reading his other books as well. "Collapse", "The World Until Yesterday", and "The Third Chimpanzee" are all excellent. For American history the best book I've ever read is "Conceived In Liberty" by Murray N. Rothbard. It covers the period from just before Columbus until just after the Revolution. There are many places to read about Columbus and many books on the Revolution, but the almost 300 year period in-between is fascinating and largely untaught about in the usual U.S. history courses most of us have taken in high school or college. The hardcover is over 1600 pages, but you can also get the ebook for free in PDF or EPUB. As far as Jurgis's question goes, I never need a reason to read. I love to read and don't usually expect to get anything specific from any one book. If I find it interesting, informative, and/or entertaining I'll read it.

duh, I see where I messed up. For some reason I was thinking M couldn't be prime, but it is S that can't be the sum of primes. Thanks for the solution.

That's a tough one. I'll take your word for it that there is a solution. I tried to brute force it by writing a simple python script to output every possible answer of S and M (pun not intended) leaving out only the obvious ones such as a=b=2 or M being a prime number. I looked at the results and I think I see many values that could meet the conversation without either figuring out the answer. Such as: S=10: P would know that (a,b) = (5, 5) or (6, 4) or (7, 3) or (8, 2) P would also know that M = 25 or 24 or 21 or 16 All of those values for M have more than one possible value of (a,b). This is the same of you start with S = 11 or S=12. I don't get how Q knows the answer just by knowing that P doesn't know and knows he doesn't know. It seems like that leaves a ton of possibilities. I have to think about it more. By the way this is the python script: import os, sys, math def is_prime(num): if num > 2 and num % 2 == 0: return False for n in range(3, int(math.sqrt(num)) + 1, 2): if num % n == 0: return False return True results = ""; for a in range(2,100,1): for b in range(2,100,1): if b <= a and (a+b) > 5 and (a*b) > 8 and not is_prime(a*b): results += "a={}, b={}, S={}, M={}\n".format(a, b, a+b, a*b); f = open("s_and_m.txt","w"); f.write(results) f.close() EDIT: I just realized that 25 doesn't have more than one a,b pair. I'm going to figure this out.

According to this ( ) SpaceX failed to land the Falcon 9 first stage on a barge again.

I've gotten that before as well. What I usually do is select everything I was about to post->right click->copy, then reload the page and paste it back into the post box.

Thanks. That is an excellent observation. I think some of the things that come into play here are 1) most big brands have about the same quality so if you are going to buy it comes down to price. But many people don't want the big brands at all any more, because you can get exactly what you are looking for from smaller operations who's product quality is equal, or in many cases, greater than the big brands. The internet makes it difficult to stay in business for long with a shady sub-standard quality product. A quick search by any potential customer will quickly find your dissatisfied former customers. This works in favor of the small businesses who do produce a quality product as a quick search will also find rave reviews from many of your satisfied customers. There is no longer a need to stick with a big brand that you know well to protect yourself from shoddy products. In the past people stuck to the big brands that they were comfortable with even though they might have been over priced, bland, or not 100% what they would want, just because it was safer and easier than taking a chance with an unknown brand. This whole de-branding of the economy is going to accelerate as we become more and more networked and 3D Printing/small scale/additive manufacturing takes off. The easier it is to manufacture a quality custom product and the easier information flows, the less we need the things that we formally used to protect us such as brand loyalty or most consumer regulations. Look at the taxi regulations versus Uber and the other ride sharing companies. People want to do their own research and make their own decisions now, because it is no longer that hard to do. We are on the cusp of some major changes in just about every area of life. Big brands are just one of the many things that will go by the wayside. These manufacturing trends should also effect the shipping industry in a big way. It will become easier at some point to setup local manufacturing facilities than to ship products half way around the Earth. Shipping will be more about moving raw materials than finished products.

I was talking about this Solar system. I would give at most 70 years for organic bodies. (And I believe immortality will be here in ~50 8) ). So there's no rush to travel fast when you are non-organic and immortal. We don't really know what will be modus operandi of these beings anyway. (For sceptics, I am not 100% optimist. I see a binary future: there will be huge societal changes because of the above which may lead to pretty complete annihilation. But if we don't annihilate, then the "future's so bright we gotta wear shades". And don't forget: if you have kids, they are likely to be immortal. Or dead. Wish them luck. ;) ) I have the same view as you do. We will either spread throughout the galaxy and eventually others or we will kill ourselves off completely in the next 100-500 years. We will never be immortal though. There is no such thing. We may live a long time, hundreds or maybe even tens of thousands of years, but no human conciseness will survive for trillions of years. You can only fight against entropy for so long. Sooner or later we will all be dead and so will your kids.

You have to talk to the farmer. I do business with a couple of farmers who have told me that they don't even call themselves organic, because 1) it is too expensive to be certified, and 2) they would never use the chemicals most organic farmers use.

This article is written by someone I know who has visited North Korea and smuggled a bunch of books out. http://reason.com/archives/2013/07/23/my-week-in-north-korea He wrote a book called "Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il", he calls it an "unauthorized autobiography", because he writes it as if he was Kim Jong Il writing his own autobiography. Sort of an inside joke, because Malice ghost-writes celebrity autobiographies for a living. Anyway he wrote it as if it was Kim Jong II writing for the North Korean people to read. It is all the history and propaganda that they are told and are supposed to believe. It's an interesting book and well worth the read.

I spend most of my free time figuring out how to make this happen for myself. Started a blog about it to help myself focus on making it happen yesterday. This ties back into healthcare as health insurance being tied to employment is what is keeping a lot of people in jobs they don't like. Imagine if you couldn't really buy car insurance or home insurance on your own, or from out of state companies, or with the exact level of coverage that you wanted because of stupid government regulations.

I think you have found the answer to your question. Maybe do an instructional youtube video on how to rotate your hand 90° for better videos. You'll probably get a lot of views. "Most people would rather die than think; many do." --Bertrand Russell

Another secular trend will be the legalization of Marijuana in all 50 states and eventually at the federal level. The profit will be made catering to the Whole Foods crowd with boutique brands and strains, as well as vaporizers and food products/oils/additives. People will want to know that their weed was grown organically and they will want a customized experience for different situations with known levels of THC and CBD. There's a difference between after dinner weed, medicinal weed, and "I want get totally stoned and watch Pink Floyd The Wall" weed. Here's a good article: http://www.fastcoexist.com/3043513/world-changing-ideas/here-comes-the-whole-foods-ification-of-marijuana

I think the health industry is ripe for disruption in a big way. Less focused on human averages and more focused on individualized care tailored to each persons individual genetic needs with a focus on influencing their epigenetic gene expression through lifestyle changes, diet, supplementation, and individualized drugs. Genetic research, antiaging research, and big data are all going to play a big role. I'm not sure how to turn this into investing advice though, it is too early in the game. But I know it doesn't bode well for existing drug companies and the rules they currently play by. Some will adopt, others won't, and some will try to use politics to ban new ways of doing things (new treatments, types of practitioners, distribution of certain types of medical information, etc), which will fail due to the increasing difficulty with controlling information and travel.

Yes, but then Apple replaced RIMM in the horsemen index.

Scudbucket, Thanks for your notes. This seems like an interesting read.

For anyone who can't get enough of this topic be sure to read through all of these threads too: :) Seduced by Food: Obesity and the Human Brain Losing weight - resurrecting the old thread Do You Really Need This?