"When he can’t tinker, he grows anxious. “If I don’t do a set in two weeks, I feel it,” he said. “I read an article a few years ago that said when you practice a sport a lot, you literally become a broadband: the nerve pathway in your brain contains a lot more information. As soon as you stop practicing, the pathway begins shrinking back down. Reading that changed my life. I used to wonder, Why am I doing these sets, getting on a stage? Don’t I know how to do this already? The answer is no. You must keep doing it. The broadband starts to narrow the moment you stop.”"See Jerry Seinfeld Intends to Die Standing Up. I like this part, too:
"Seinfeld believes funniness is genetic. When his father, Kalman, was stationed in the Pacific during World War II, he’d transcribe jokes he heard and store them in a box for safekeeping. “In the army, that’s kind of how you got through it,” Seinfeld says. “People would tell jokes by the score, because what else are you going to do to maintain sanity? The recognizing of jokes as precious material: that’s where it starts. If you’ve got the gene, a joke is an amazing thing. It’s something you save in a box in a war.”"Everyone knows that Proust sas a neuroscientist because there is a book by that title. Click here to go to the Amazon link. Here is their description:
"In this technology-driven age, it’s tempting to believe that science can solve every mystery. After all, science has cured countless diseases and even sent humans into space. But as Jonah Lehrer argues in this sparkling debut, science is not the only path to knowledge. In fact, when it comes to understanding the brain, art got there first.A New York Times blog has more. See Jerry Seinfeld, Comedy Athlete
Taking a group of artists — a painter, a poet, a chef, a composer, and a handful of novelists — Lehrer shows how each one discovered an essential truth about the mind that science is only now rediscovering. We learn, for example, how Proust first revealed the fallibility of memory; how George Eliot discovered the brain’s malleability; how the French chef Escoffier discovered umami (the fifth taste); how Cézanne worked out the subtleties of vision; and how Gertrude Stein exposed the deep structure of language — a full half-century before the work of Noam Chomsky and other linguists. It’s the ultimate tale of art trumping science.
More broadly, Lehrer shows that there’s a cost to reducing everything to atoms and acronyms and genes. Measurement is not the same as understanding, and art knows this better than science does. An ingenious blend of biography, criticism, and first-rate science writing, Proust Was a Neuroscientist urges science and art to listen more closely to each other, for willing minds can combine the best of both, to brilliant effect."
“During National Entrepreneurship Month, we celebrate the hard work, ingenuity, and courage of our thinkers, doers, and makers. I call upon all Americans to celebrate November 16, 2012, as National Entrepreneurs' Day”Click here to learn more.
“Most of you will fail, disrespected, impoverished, but we are grateful for the risks you are taking and the sacrifices you are making for the sake of the economic growth of the planet and pulling others out of poverty. You are the source of our antifragility. Our nation thanks you.”Click here to learn more. Taleb is the author of such books as Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder and The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.
"Customers of all sorts of businesses in Greece will be able to walk away without paying if they don't receive a record of their transaction, under rules set to take effect soon.Here is a related story. Greece takes bottom EU spot in global corruption index. What would Plato or Socrates say?
Restaurants—seen as among the worst offenders, in part because much of their business is transacted in cash—will be required to add a notification about the right to refuse payment to their menus. But everyone, from doctors and lawyers to plumbers and taxis, also is liable to be stiffed if they don't give receipts.
The new regulations are the latest effort by the cash-strapped Greek government to crack down on endemic tax evasion—adding an extra incentive for businesses to issue receipts. The receipts produce a record of the transactions, and authorities use that record to calculate taxes owed by the business.
"With this measure the consumer is protected and a bold step is taken against tax evasion," said Athanasios Skordas, Greece's deputy development minister.
The "shadow economy" accounts for about 24% of Greek gross domestic product, according to a study by Margarita Tsoutsoura of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Tax dodging costs Greece about €28 billion ($36 billion) a year, an amount equivalent to roughly 15% of annual economic output, the study says."
"The bottom fifth earned just $9,974, but spent nearly twice that — an average of $18,153 a year. How is that possible? Those lower-income families have access to various sources of spending money that doesn’t fall under taxable income. These sources include portions of sales of property like homes and cars and securities that are not subject to capital gains taxes, insurance policies redeemed, or the drawing down of bank accounts."New Mpls. Federal Reserve Bank Study Shows Significant Earnings Mobility Between 2001-2007. Here he shows that 44% of the people in bottom quintile in 2001 had moved to a higher quintile in 2007.
"Between 1971 and 2011, the share of adult Americans in the “middle class” decreased by ten percentage points from 61% to 51%. Of that 10% of American adults who left the middle class, 6% moved up to the “upper-income” category and 4% move down to the “lower-income” category."Census Data Show Significant Income Mobility. Here says that:
"From 1996 to 2005, we have the income mobility data for income quintiles. Of those filers who were in the lowest 20% in 1996 and who also filed in 2005, 42.4% remained in the bottom 20% but 57.6% had moved up to a higher quintile: 28.6% were in the next highest quintile, 13.9% were in the middle quintile, 9.9% were in the second highest quintile, and 5.3% were in the highest quintile."The Rich Are Getting Richer and the Poor Are Getting Richer; The Good Old Days Are Now. In 1971, 88.3% of all American households had a refrigerator. Today, 98.5% of poor households do. This is true for many other goods. More poor people have them now than did the average people in 1971. In 1973, the average worker had to work 89 hours to buy a refrigerator. Today it is only 23 hours. This is true for many other goods.
"American Express created the day three years ago, it says, to help small businesses struggling during the recession. The credit and charge card company encourages cardholders, who have registered in advance online to make purchases with their cards in exchange for a $25 rebate paid for by American Express, if they buy something at a participating business. American Express won't say how much the promotion costs, but Susan Sobbott, president of American Express OPEN, the company's small business division, says it is a considerable amount."Click here to read the article. My essay on how entrepreneurs are like heroes from mythology is below. Candace Allen has said that
"Just as the society that doesn't venerate winners of races will produce fewer champion runners than the society that does, the society that does not honor entrepreneurial accomplishment will find fewer people of ability engaged in wealth creation than the society that does."That is from her essay The Entrepreneur as Hero. Many others have said that entrepreneurs are heroes. I provide more information on this after my essay. So here it is. It was originally published in The New Leaders: The Business Bulletin for Transformative Leadership, November/December 1992. Title: The Calling of the Entrepreneur
"Parkinson's Law states that 'work expands to fill the time available'. While strenuously denied by management consultants, bureaucrats and efficiency experts, the law is borne out by disinterested observation of any organization. The book goes far beyond its famous theorem, though. The author goes on to explain how to meet the most important people at a social gathering and why, as a matter of mathematical certainty, the time spent debating an issue is inversely proportional to its objective importance. Justly famous for more than forty years, Parkinson's Law is at once a bracingly cynical primer on the reality of human organization, and an innoculation against the wilful optimism to which we as a species are prone."
"“EV owners report an average monthly increase in their utility bill of just $18 to recharge their vehicle’s battery — which is significantly less than the $147 that they would typically pay for gasoline during the same period of time,” the study said.
The problem, said Neal Oddes, senior director of the green practice at J.D. Power, is that there “still is a disconnect between the reality of the cost of an EV and the cost savings that consumers want to achieve.”
A battery-powered all-electric vehicle will cost about $10,000 more than a similar gasoline-powered vehicle, he said. Based on annual fuel savings, it would take an average of 6.5 years to recoup that money."
"Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says banks' overly tight lending standards may be holding back the U.S. economy by preventing creditworthy borrowers from buying homes. Bernanke says some tightening of credit standards was needed after the 2008 financial crisis. But he says “the pendulum has swung too far the other way.” He says some qualified borrowers are being prevented from getting home loans. Bernanke comments to an audience in Atlanta came on a day when it was reported that average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage fell to a record low of 3.34 percent. Rates have been low all year but have fallen further since the Federal Reserve started buying mortgage bonds in September to encourage more borrowing and spending."
"Stephen Moore did a great job explaining how complicated our tax code is and how high taxes have gotten relative to what was originally promised in 1913. One other way to see the insidiousness of taxes is to realize that they are just as much the "noise" in the economy as prices are the "signals." The income you get paid is the price for your services and therefore signals the value of those services. But taxes reduce the clarity of that signal (hence, they are noise) by reducing how much of your pay you actually get to keep. As taxes increase, the noise-to-signal ratio in the economy increases even more, meaning distortions, and the misallocation of resources they cause increases disproportionately. For example, if the income tax rate is 10%, you keep 90% of your income. The noise-to-signal ratio is .111 (or .1/.9). But if the tax rate goes up by .10, or to 20%, the noise-to-signal ratio goes up even more, by .15 to .25 since you keep 80% of your income. The .25 comes from .20/.80 equaling .25. Another .10 increase in the tax rate increases the noise-to-signal ratio by .179 from .25 to .429. Then going from a 30% tax rate to a 40% tax rate makes it go up by .238, from .429 to .667. Every tax increase causes increasing damage to the economy's ability to efficiently allocate resources."
"To all the reasons to worry about the rapid rise in government debt in the wake of the financial crisis, add another: It’ll stunt our growth.
In a new paper presented Monday at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association, Carmen Reinhart of the University of Maryland and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard study the link between different levels of debt and countries’ economic growth over the last two centuries. One finding: Countries with a gross public debt debt exceeding about 90% of annual economic output tended to grow a lot more slowly. For advanced countries above the 90% threshold, average annual growth was about two percentage points lower than for countries with public debt of less than 30% of GDP.
The results are particularly relevant at a time when debt levels in the U.S. and other countries at the center of the financial crisis are rapidly approaching the 90% threshold. Gross government debt in the U.S., for example, stood at 85% of GDP in 2009 and will reach 108% of GDP by 2014, according to IMF projections. The U.K.’s gross government debt stood at 69% of GDP in 2009 and is expected to reach 98% of GDP by 2013.
“If history is any guide,” the rising government debt “is very troubling for the U.S. and other advanced economies,” says Ms. Reinhart.
The relationship between government debt burdens and growth is even stronger for emerging-market economies, Ms. Reinhart and Mr. Rogoff find. For countries above the 90% threshold, average annual growth was about three percentage points lower than for countries with public debt of less than 30% of GDP. The countries above the threshold also experienced much higher inflation: prices rose more than twice as fast as in countries with small debt burdens."
"The annual increase in average published tuition and fees for in-state students at four-year public colleges, 4.8 percent, is smaller than it has been in more than a decade. At private nonprofit four-year colleges, the increase was 4.2 percent..."
"Last year tuition at public four-year colleges increased by 8.4 percent over the previous year."
"[President Obama proposed] ... to reward states for holding down tuition, among other goals, but also remove funds from colleges that don't offer a good value at an affordable price."
"For the 2012-13 academic year, according to the College Board, the average list price for in-state students' tuition and fees at public four-year institutions hit $8,655, up from $8,256 the year before. At private, nonprofit four-year colleges, the sticker price for tuition and fees rose to $29,056, compared with $27,883."
"Full-time, in-state undergraduates paid an average of $2,910 after grant aid and tax benefits at public four-year institutions in 2012-13. Students at private, nonprofit four-year institutions paid an average net price of $13,380. In 2011-12 the net price was $2,620 at four-year public colleges and $12,600 at four-year private nonprofit colleges."
"Neither sticker price nor net price captures the complex reality of individual variation, the report notes. Prices can be quite different from college to college."
"...in 2011-12, 49 percent of undergraduate grant aid came from the federal government, up from 37 percent a decade before."
"In the mid-1980s, the states awarded only 9 percent of their undergraduate grant aid without regard for need. But by 2011-12, they were distributing 29 percent that way. More states are focusing their aid programs on keeping top students rather than helping the neediest ones."
"About 60 percent of students who graduated in 2010-11 from the public or private nonprofit four-year institution where they started had taken out loans, the report says. Their average debt was $25,300. A larger proportion of graduates of private nonprofit colleges borrowed, and their average debt was about $6,000 higher."
"The more than $1-trillion in total outstanding education debt, including from graduate and professional school, can sound scary. But that sum is driven up by increases in enrollment."
"Of course, college affordability is affected not only by rising prices but also by family resources. Average family incomes were lower in 2011 than they were a decade ago, after adjusting for inflation, according to census data cited in the report."
"I [Chapman] asked Harvard economist Claudia Goldin if there is sufficient evidence to conclude that women experience systematic pay discrimination. "No," she replied. There are certainly instances of discrimination, she says, but most of the gap is the result of different choices. Other hard-to-measure factors, Goldin thinks, largely account for the remaining gap -- "probably not all, but most of it."
The divergent career paths of men and women may reflect a basic unfairness in what's expected of them. It could be that a lot of mothers, if they had their way, would rather pursue careers but have to stay home with the kids because their husbands insist. Or it may be that for one reason or another, many mothers prefer to take on the lion's share of child-rearing. In any case, the pay disparity caused by these choices can't be blamed on piggish employers.
June O'Neill, an economist at Baruch College and former director of the Congressional Budget Office, has uncovered something that debunks the discrimination thesis. Take out the effects of marriage and child-rearing, and the difference between the genders suddenly vanishes. "For men and women who never marry and never have children, there is no earnings gap," she said in an interview."
"Ten years after graduation, women fall further behind, earning only 69 percent of what men earn. Even after controlling for hours, occupation, parenthood, and other factors known to affect earnings, the research indicates that one-quarter of the pay gap remains unexplained and is likely due to sex discrimination."I emailed them the following question but never heard back:
"So the 69 percent means that women earn 69 cents for every dollar that men make ten years after college. That makes the gap 31 cents. But when these other factors are accounted for, one-quarter of the gap remains. Since one-quarter of 31 is 7.75, that means when all other factors are held constant, women earn 92.25 cents for every dollar that men make. Is my interpretation correct? How does this compare to what other studies have found? Is this gap changing over time? Were any other causes for the remaining 7.75 cents examined besides sexual discrimination?"The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis just issued a report that says Gender Wage Gap May Be Smaller Than Many Think. Excerpts:
"...the gap between the median earnings for men and women was 16.5% in the second quarter of 2011, a historical low and down from 30% in 1989. ... the gender wage gap is very likely affected by the disparity of men in higher paying professions. That disparity, while troublesome all on its own, may be skewing the data.
“Research suggests that the actual gender wage gap (when female workers are compared with male workers who have similar characteristics) is much lower than the raw wage gap,” the authors write.
... after having children many women prefer jobs that have lower pay but better benefits — either better health-care coverage or other perks like a more flexible work schedule.
Economists Eric Solberg and Teresa Laughlin applied an index of total compensation, which accounts for both wages and benefits, to analyze how these benefits would affect the gender gap. They found a gender gap in wages of approximately 13%. But when they considered total compensation, the gender gap dropped to 3.6%,” the authors write."
