BAGEHOT by James Grant, Norton Publishing I found this book to be an interesting window into Victorian life, politics, and the then current “political economics”. Grant has a remarkable ability to present biographical information in the context of the nuances of the period of time in which his subject lived…

The battle of Gettysburg is probably the most discussed battle in history, certainly the most discussed of the Civil War. Most interesting to me is that a far more decisive, and militarily complex, battle was concluded while Gettysburg was being fought: Vicksburg, far to the west. Virginia and Maryland were…

I suspect that moderate inake of coffee on a regular basis is very helpful for prostate health and quite possibly good for general nutrition. The study described however is probably not very helpfulin that it fails to adjust for probable co-morbidities Fairly certainly high consumers of coffee also tend to…

No matter what I say about the Civil War (or most thins for that matter) I offend a lot of people. Rather than address the many many issues separately, I am going to attempt a plenary dispostioon here. …

This book is exhaustively researched. On the whole I think Isaacson unbased and balanced in this judgments and observations. I would be hard pressed not to grant that this is a truly great biography. Throughout the book I was struckby the continuing (unintentional??)theme, essentially, that: everyone Kissinger ever met thought…

LEVERAGE IS NOW MORE THAN EVER THE KEY Leverage has for many years been the big advantage of a real estate equity investment to a corporate equity investment. This is still true, but for largely different reasons that seem to be being totally ignored by the investment community in valuing…

THE TENANT SELECTION PROCESS: 1. Not checking the rental/eviction histories of a prospective tenant is apt to be a $20K or more mistake for a landlord. References from a current landlord are nearly useless: they want to keep good tenants and get rid of bad ones. …

The so called Dunning-Kruger effect is constantly adumbrated, I suspect by people themselves intellectually challenged, as establishing, as best I understand it, that people who speak with obnoxious certainty are invariably or at least statistically more probably mentally deffective. Propounded by “social psychologists” David Dunning and Justin Kruger, as nearly…

I don’t know how true it is, but I have heard that the Post Office is or was the largest employer in the State of Maine. I do know that Maine (and probably South Dakota, Wyoming and the like) national politicians are, understandably, very protective of the Post Office. Even…