Why I No Longer Invest In Stocks And Bonds

I’ve touched upon this subject in my subscription newsletter, but I had no plans to write anything more until I got a note from a friend, mentioning a particular investment analyst and his views on investing over the next few years. I had to agree that it was brilliant analysis, but at the same time I knew that I’d never do anything about it, because I simply can’t bring myself to put money into “the markets” anymore. Continue reading “Why I No Longer Invest In Stocks And Bonds”

Why Bitcoiners Are Doing What Libertarians Never Could

I am not trying to insult libertarians; they’ve been right, or reasonably close to right, on a great many things, and for decades on end; that’s not trivial. Nonetheless, they could never get much moving in the world, while Bitcoiners, to use an old but fitting phrase, are turning the world upside-down.

I think it’s important to understand why. Continue reading “Why Bitcoiners Are Doing What Libertarians Never Could”

The Purpose And Value of Art

As far back as we can see in any detail, we find humans creating art. But art is an odd thing, in that people generally create it for internal (and thus hard-to-articulate) reasons, making clear, logical explanations difficult. Making it still harder has been an obsession with incoherent and confusing art over the past century

We can begin our examination with a passage from Leo Tolstoy’s What Is Art?: Continue reading “The Purpose And Value of Art”

Revisiting Parenthood, After A Century of Socialism And Freud

We all know that parenthood has been publicly trashed over the past half century. The larger culture portrays Fathers as dolts and full-time moms as second class women. These ideas, hammered endlessly and over decades, have had their effects. Continue reading “Revisiting Parenthood, After A Century of Socialism And Freud”

What Are The Judeo-Christian Principles?

It has become common to speak of Judeo-Christian principles, but that begs the question of precisely what those principles are. And so I searched for a clear set of them, and came up dry. I found statements of religious beliefs and I found lists of good habits that were spawned by Judeo-Christian principles, but I didn’t find the principles themselves. Continue reading “What Are The Judeo-Christian Principles?”

My Adventures At Climate Change Central

In 1999, my friend Henry Lamb mentioned that he had been attending UN meetings. I thought it sounded intriguing and asked for details. After all, reading about an organization is one thing, actually attending its meetings is another. And because I was so enthused, Henry offered to get me into the Kyoto accord meetings in Bonn, Germany. Continue reading “My Adventures At Climate Change Central”