Hello Everybody, The events below are true, as reported by the New York Times. (Some people would find that line an oxymoron.) What do you do? Uncle Virg is dead. And just one day before his Social Security check is…
There are many things computer chips can do better than me, and I embrace it. They calculate better than I do, they find disease patterns for the CDC by culling meta-data, they control traffic lights of entire cities better than…
The History of Money Part III We left off talking about paper money, and we’re now going to look at the future, but before we do, let me give you a few facts. The US currently owes $27.551 Trillion dollars.…
The History of Money Part II Part I left off discussing the innovation of paper money, by merchants in Sichuan in tenth-century China, but that story is incomplete without a discussion of the Mongols and their role in the money…
Hello Everybody, 3761 BCE, the dead of winter The world was coming to an end. No, not the Al Gore style world coming to an end in a few decades if we don’t stop man-made global warming, but the world…
It’s Chanukka, so let’s talk about Gelt. The story of money is quite incredible, but we can’t cover it all in one week, so we’re going to start this week, and continue on to the next two weeks, so please…
The fifteen passenger van was dented, rusted, and filled with benches covered with industrial strength vinyl. For four years that canary yellow van conveyed me to school, about twenty minutes from my house, and deposited me back home again in…
Did I ever tell you about the time I was kidnapped by a group of radical turkeys? It was definitely one of the crazier times of my life, and something I generally avoid talking about because I’m still suffering from…
There are three kinds of people in the world. The people who wonder why tall, strong buildings fall down during earthquakes, the people who don't think about it much, and the people who wonder why anyone would think about earthquakes…
If you ever get a ride in my car, you might notice a collection of empty water bottles sitting quietly in the front passenger footwell. They have no more purpose to me, and I would throw them out in gas…