This report of Partner’s trip to Panama was originally written in the winter of 2014. Please see the postscript for some updates. If you’re Jewish, chances are high that you’ve heard of Boca Raton. It’s a beautiful city of tidy…
One of the most dramatic thefts of the past thirty years was the decades-long attempt of Chinese manufacturers to steal the color white. You think white is easy, but white is actually extremely difficult to make, and is a multi-billion…
Ladies and Gentleman We’re going to do something a little bit different this week. I hope to write a children’s book soon, and I’m going to give you not just a sneak preview, but rather a very rough draft of…
About two months into the pandemic I started making herring. The chocolate chip cookies made me do it. I was giving classes all the time, to people who were isolated, and often sad and fearful. On a regular basis I…
She’s all of two and a half feet tall, much smaller than most of her peers. She lives a life of quiet solitude, passing her time in a small glass house, all by herself. But that’s not to say that…
A few years back, I had three teeth extracted. The dentist who did the pulling, cutting, drilling, cutting, and stitching was a fine man named Dr. Gregg Bobier. He has great chairside manner and a calming demeanor, but nonetheless, the…
Manju Das was quite possibly the richest housemaid in the world at one point, with close to two million dollars in her bank account. Today she lives in a hut, her body wracked in pain because she can’t afford any…
SELL THE HOUSE SELL THE CAR SELL THE KIDS That phrase, all in capital letters, may not look like much to you, but it sure raised a lot of capital at an auction last year. Those words, put in black…
“Let them eat cake!” Those infamous words, allegedly uttered by the young Queen Marie Antoinette of France, are considered to be the ultimate example of willful naiveté, apathy, and economic hubris all wrapped into one succinct package. It didn’t bode…
It was only after Kevin McNally got in his car and switched on his Uber app that he saw the words that would upend his life; “You’ve been deactivated.” Kevin had been driving for Uber for the last seven months,…