A podcast about books, art & life — not necessarily in that order
Here’s a neat little article on Warren Buffett’s willingness to learn from his mistakes.
 A key to investing well is a willingness to look stupid, Buffett says. “Most managers have very little incentive to make the intelligent-but-with-some-chance-of-looking-like-an-idiot decision,” Buffett wrote in 1984. Most would prefer “failing conventionally.”
He added: “Lemmings may have a rotten image, but no individual lemming has ever received bad press.”
I know I graced you guys with two straight weekends of great hike photos, but that streak comes to a close this weekend. What’s sad is that the weather today is absolutely gorgeous, and there are plenty of trails to hit.
However, I’m rendering unto Caesar this weekend, laying out the pages for that Top Companies issue. It requires a ton of nit-picky work, and if I don’t get this part wrapped up by tonight, it’ll be much tougher to finish the whole shebang before July 4th.
So, no great outdoors for me this weekend, but I promise to get out and take plenty of photos as the summer progresses, provided it doesn’t get beastly hot out here.
Meanwhile, here’s a pic of My Favorite Mermaid at last weekend’s Mermaid Parade at Coney Island:
Her group was Charlie’s Angelfish.
This issue will be over-and-done soon, dear readers. Till then, have some links.
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: June 29, 2007”
Ahoy, ahoy, dear readers! Sorry about the lack of posts. I’m afraid I’m utterly swamped with that Top Companies issue of my magazine. There’s still a huge amount of work to do (writing two more major profiles and two minor ones, then laying out all the pages for production), so you won’t be hearing from me much until next week.
But I do invite you to check out the blogroll over on the right. There are plenty of neat websites over there, including a few new additions. A few years ago I decided to overcome the monotony of business travel by stopping at airport newsstands and buying magazines about subjects I had no interest in. I’d try to read them cover to cover during these trips.
It seemed like a good idea until the time I saw a pilot at the newsstand, searching among the gun magazines.
So go click on a link you don’t think you’re interested in. It’ll be fun; trust me!
(And I promise I’ll be back with Unrequired Reading on Friday morning!)
Amy & I were clicking around the TV tonight when, on a whim, I stopped on Monday Night Raw. I saw Vince McMahon tearfully talking about all the contributions made by someone named Chris.
You never know when you see one of these if it’s just a bit. But it turned out that one of my favorite rasslers, Chris Benoit, was found dead in his home today, along with his wife and his 7-year-old kid. Right now, there’s no word on what transpired or how they were found, except that they weren’t shot to death.
The first time I saw Benoit perform, he had just come over to the WWF along with Eddie Guerrero (dead of a heart attack in 2005), Dean Malenko and Perry Saturn, who were known as The Radicalz (I found their politics to be quite mainstream). Eddie was the most popular of the four, probably due to of his latino appeal, but Chris could get anyone over.
Condolences to the remainder of his family.
(You can always blow off the writeup and go straight to the slideshow!)
Another gorgeous Saturday, another hike! My just-about-lifelong buddy Jon-Eric and I were supposed to meet for lunch on Saturday, but on Friday Amy pointed out how absolutely fantastic the weather was going to be (75, clear and dry), so she proposed a hike instead. Since Jon-Eric’s the guy who turned me on to the great hiking in NJ/NY, I knew he’d be all for it. As it turned out, she couldn’t accompany us, but Jon-Eric came up with a great one near Cold Spring, NY, off our Eastern Hudson Trails map.
When we got to the small Loebell parking area, there was one car and three bicycles there. A man and a woman were sitting in the car, and we checked with them to make sure we were at the right trail point, since we didn’t see any blue trail blazes. They confirmed that we were in the right place, and so we got our backpacks on and prepared to hike.
Then the woman said, “If you see three disoriented-looking people while you’re up there, can you point them toward this trail to get them back down here?” We laughed and said we would. “They’re supposed to be trail-running, but I doubt they’ll be running at this point.”
The man added, “And, uh, if they need water or first aid or anything. . .”
We laughed a little more nervously and headed out.
We encountered the “missing three” soon after. They were on the right trail, so we just let them know that the other guys were waiting with their car. They all had numbers on their shirts, as if they were in a race. They weren’t running.
As we trekked along, Jon-Eric asked, “What was on the t-shirts those people down at the car were wearing?”
I said the shirts had “NYARA” on them. I told him I’d never seen that acronym and I’d look it up when we were home. We kept on the trail. I misread one turn, but Jon-Eric corrected me, and we began to climb up Bull Hill. The trail ascended 500 feet in pretty short order, but it wasn’t a scrambling climb. It was just a steep trail that showed no signs of leveling off. It was early in the hike, and a cool day, so we weren’t too taxed by it. Which isn’t to say I wasn’t sweating like Patrick Ewing, but I do that when I’m driving, so hey.
Eventually, we reached the crest of Bull Hill and stopped off at the first of many scenic points. A hyper-friendly dog named Nebbie greeted us, accompanied by her (?) owners. We shot the breeze with them for a few moments while taking in the scenery. Then another group joined us at the point: the man and woman from the car.
“Did they take a helicopter?” I asked Jon-Eric. “How’d they catch up with us?”
He pointed out that we’d taken the longer route up, and that they must’ve gone on the Split Rock trail, which we’d be taking at the end of our route. Still, they were awfully quick.
They greeted us and said that they hadn’t gotten a chance to go on the trail, so they wanted to see some of the points on the hill before leaving. Jon-Eric asked them what NYARA is. We discovered that it’s the New York Adventure Racing Association and that the couple from the car were helping run the association’s adventure race, a.k.a. The Longest Day.
What does The Longest Day entail, you ask? Kayaking, mountain biking, trail-running and orienteering, over 12-15 hours. “That’s one long-ass day,” I muttered.
Our friends on the scenic point were volunteers up from Philadelphia. The top three teams in the NYARA event qualify for the USARA’s national event in November, which appears to be sponsored by a brand of whiskey. The trio we encountered on the trail were, unfortunately, coming in last.
As we meandered on up the ridge, we laughed over the idea of entering an adventure-race, but I think Jon-Eric would’ve been all over this idea, if we were 10-12 years younger.
From there, we continued along the ridge, stopping for all the great views. We discovered that we could see NYC from one of the points. The horizon was really hazy, but I just barely captured the sight with my camera (you’ll need to hit the “all sizes” button and check out the largest version).
As we sat down for some water at one of the points, we were greeted by a hiker who was coming from the other direction. He told us about some of the amazing views just off the trail, which were tough to find now that the leaves we so thick.
Back on the trail, Jon-Eric commented about the etiquette of hiking: “It’s funny that someone will just talk to you on the trail, and tell you about a great scenic point, or just say hello and start a conversation, when you’re up here. Because if a stranger tried talking to you in the city, you’d just run away or ignore him.” I thought about Borat.
On the way down from the ridge, we got lost a bunch of times due to crappy trail blaze placement, but that became a point of fun as we goofed on our inability to see the color yellow. The bad blazes reached the peak of absurdity when, we found this one. “I don’t think that one should count,” I said.
I’m sure I’ve written before about the friendship Jon-Eric and I share, and this hike was another episode in the loose, easy conversation we have on our hikes (previous installment: Sterling Forest on New Year’s Eve day). It’s awfully good to have friends you know well enough to talk with in shorthand.
And when we don’t talk, it’s usually either because we’re enjoying the silence, or totally out of breath and trying not to show it.
(Yeah, yeah. You wanna go see the slideshow.)
When I used to play video games, I never got into survival horror or first person shooters. I was much more interested in turn-based strategy games on the computer (think Civ) and whatever the best NBA game was on a console. I also spent a bunch of time with my Sims, because it was like being an interior decorator for very sophisticated Tamagotchi.
Which is to say, I’m not much of a gamer. But I did enjoy this article about psychopathology in video games.
Thursday evening, I came across the story (thanks, Deadspin!) about . . . well, why don’t I let the headline speak for itself? Ex-Marine Kills Bear With Log.
Friday morning, around 6:15 a.m., I looked out of my window and noticed a full-sized bear walking into my driveway from across the street.
I zoomed across the house to grab my camera and take some pix (from upstairs), but the bear was out of sight. I went down to the front door to take a peek outside. He’d already ambled over to the neighbors’ yard, and was too shielded by trees for me to get a good photo of him. Unless . . . I was stupid enough to run over and get closer to him!
It’ll gratify you to know that I’m actually not that stupid. Instead, I lamented the lost pic. It’s the first time I’ve seen a bear in my neighborhood since I moved back to NJ in 1995. I’ve seen them a few times in morning commutes, and my old girlfriend saw one during a nature-walk, but that was it.
At work yesterday, I mentioned both stories to one of my coworkers who once shot cell-phone video of a whole family of bears walking through her backyard. She shared a story about the vicious bear gangs in her town.
Of course, this doesn’t beat last year’s “bear wanders into urban war zone” story that ended with the Irvington, NJ cops unloading their shotguns on a black bear that was believed to have gotten lost while trying to score some weed.
I’m busy with those pharma profiles, but not so busy that I didn’t have time to assemble some links for you to follow into the weekend, dear reader!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: June 22, 2007”
