Brian Gongol
If your skills are easily replaced, job security will be low
What's really important for people is to realize the value of having two specialties -- not just one. One is easily replaceable, but two makes for a better-rounded individual with far more pricing power in the market for labor. Charlie Munger just made a big donation to the University of Michigan in the hope of seeing cross-departmental cooperation among graduate students, saying "Specialization causes a lot of bad thinking."
Even the best intentions can leave us trapped
Students in northwest Iowa schools are involved in a stock-market investment competition in which they team up with one another and "invest" a hypothetical windfall of $100,000. It's great that the schools are doing what they can to encourage kids to learn about investing; something is definitely better than nothing in this regard. But it's impossible to do something tied to the school year that will teach kids the most important lessons about investing -- patience and the search for value -- because there's no way to fairly evaluate deep value investing on a time horizon of six or even nine months. Most people really need to learn how to invest for the optimal returns over many years -- and the way you do that is quite different from short-term speculation. Again, it's far better that these kids learn something about stocks rather than nothing, but it's hard to really instill the most important lessons without a much longer time horizon than the school year permits.
Tourniquets saved lives in the Boston bombing
Not to be widely used, but in catastrophic circumstances, they might be the best option
The Onion: "Majority of Americans not informed enough to stereotype Chechens"
It's not even satire -- it's the truth
This week in the business of making money and having fun
Notes for and from the Brian Gongol Show on WHO Radio for Sunday, April 21, 2013
