It was an honor to be inducted into the Horatio Alger Society alongside such remarkable individuals. I was particularly moved by the story of fellow awardee Vance Cryer. He was the first person to have received a Horatio Alger scholarship and later become inducted into the society. I admire the way that he serves our nation and our community and has risen from challenges in such a noble way. Watch this beautiful note that he wrote to his younger self.
Is it just me or is it totally unethical for a bank to charge you $3 to just see your balance on their ATM – particularly when their ATM offers you at multiple points to see your balance before or after withdrawing money but never tells you it will charge you an additional and separate $3 just to see that balance?!
I happen to have caught this in my bank statement but couldn’t believe it. So last night I went by the Citi bank ATM again and paid attention and indeed they try multiple times to get you to see your balance but never once explain they’ll charge you $3 separately and additionally for this silly service. Not sure if other ATMs do this but I bet the overwhelming majority of consumers have no idea of this abuse.
“Strategy is what you don’t do.”
- Michael Porter, as quoted by Drew Gilpin Faust (Harvard’s President)
in NYT art.
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The Chinese symbol for Danger is composed of crisis plus opportunity.
Westerners love this beautiful insight.
Yet when you ask a Chinese person if they know it, they all know how
to write danger, and when asked, they all know what each of the
components mean, but most have never stopped to think of the wisdom
and inherent lesson contained therein.
Some times we are too close to things to notice.
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“When you hire someone, you look for brains, energy and integrity,
and if they don’t have the third, integrity, you better watch out,
because the first two will kill you.”
- Warren Buffett, as told by Robert A. Iger, who also added
‘curiosity’ as a valuable trait (NYT 5/3/09, B2)
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Government changes every 2-4-8 years in democracies. In dictatorships,
it changes every two to four (or even eight) decades.
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Some Palestinian intellectuals understand a one state pursuit is not
feasible or advisable bc Israelis will never accept it and bc it
doesn’t even address the core Pal aspirations (ie refugee rights,
Palestinian national symbols/Statehood). Yet they nevertheless find it
useful to advocate it as a tactic to scare Israelis into moving
towards a two state solution.
But the danger with this tactic is twofold. First, Palestinian
citizens will be sold on this grand unachievable take-all vision,
feeding into absolutist impossibilites that people have been sold by
their pandering leadership (on both sides) for far too long. This is
precisely the opposite of what we need: to say to both sides what
needs to be said: peace will not come without necessary compromises.
Second, this plays straight into Israeli suspicions about Palestinian
intentions to reject Israel’s right to exist as the sole homeland of
the Jewish people.
Palestinians who still cling to this phased approach – and Israelis
who feel they can continue the occupation and ‘manage the conflict’ –
need to bear in mind the Gaza tragedy. So long as one side cannot live
with security and freedom, the other side will also face tragic
consequences.
Peace, security, freedom, respect and dignity CAN come to all, and
only to all, people in the region.
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On a ride to the airport around 5am, my taxi driver was listening to
melodic Muslim morning prayers. I wanted to see how he related to the
elections campaign, where much was made about whether Obama “is a
Muslim” or “an Arab.” He is not, but why should that have been seen as
such a threat? And how do Muslims relate to the way pundits and
politicians treated a religion or ethnicity with such suspicion?
How does an average devout Muslim immigrant from Egypt see it?
I asked him open-ended questions so as not to bias him, and his first
reply was:
“well, you see he just selected a Jew”
He was referring, disapprovingly, to Obama’s selection of Rham Emanuel
as his incoming Chief of Staff.
We have a long way to go – across all communities – to reach post-
racial politics that acknowledge our shared fate and responsibility to
tackle the big challenges that our globe will be facing.
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You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out – and what we are witnessing at some of our largest financial
institutions is an ugly sight."
- Warren Buffett
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Having dinner at Candle 79, the waitress introduced herself by asking
if we’d like to start the evening with ‘some filtered tap water.’
She won us over.
That this felt unusual is a sign of how ridiculous our world gas
gotten. NY restaurants nowadays make big profits from selling you
bottled water, even though Ny tap is as good as any, and far more
environmentally sound.
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