Mendocino County Fires
In Mendocino County recently, on a day when the smoke from the hundreds of still-burning forest fires was relatively tolerable, I walked through a nearly deserted city park in Willits with my son and my brother and noticed two black men lunching at a distant picnic table. From previous conversations with my … Continue Reading »
This week our Prius odometer hit 40,000 miles. We bought the car in May 2005, exactly three years ago. We average 43 mpg. That means we have purchased 930 gallons of gasoline during the three years, or 310 gallons each year.
Looking at the price of gas in Northern California (blue line) over … Continue Reading »
Craigslist, the largest source of classified ads in any medium throughout the world, serves 450 cities in 50 countries.
Craig Newmark
Started in 1995 by software engineer Craig Newmark, 55, as a bulletin board for posting notices of social events relevant to San Francisco-based software and internet developers, Craigslist now adds 30 million new listings and logs … Continue Reading »
Much of the talk about unsettled times ahead looks to oil as a cause: economies will undergo transition and regional conflicts will increase.
Think also about water.
Lake Chad is an exemplar. At one time the world’s sixth largest lake, included in four African countries (Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria), it has, in less than a half-century, … Continue Reading »
“It is the private trading of complex instruments that lurk in the financial shadows that worries regulators and Wall Street and that [has] created stresses in the broader economy. Economic downturns and panics have occurred before, of course. Few, however, have posed such a serious threat to the entire financial system that regulators have responded … Continue Reading »
In December 1990, when I was working as an investment banker in San Francisco, I wrote and recorded a rap song.
