My lessons from trying to beat the market and save me from myself. Plus some meandering trails off into the unknown.
Sep 16, 2018
A Low Cost Investor
Jul 16, 2018
A Brief History of the Metric System
1790: The National Assembly of France drafts a committee to establish a new standard for weights and measures that would be valid “for all people, for all time,” in the words of mathematician (and revolutionary) Marquis de Condorcet.
1799: The distance of the meter—named after metron, the Greek word for measure—is fixed at 1/10,000,000 of the length between the North Pole and the Equator, arrived at after two French surveyors spent six years measuring the distance between Dunkirk and Barcelona, which was used to calculate the longer distance. A platinum bar officially one meter long is cast.
1840: The metric system becomes compulsory in France.
1875: Seventeen nations (including the US) sign the Treaty of the Meter, creating international bodies to standardize weights and measurements worldwide, according to the metric system.
1975: US president Gerald Ford signs the Metric Conversion Act, declaring the metric system the preferred (but voluntary) system and establishing the US Metric Board, to speed America’s conversion.
1982: US president Ronald Reagan dismantles the Metric Board.
Jun 12, 2018
An Amateur Investor's Worst Investments
May 8, 2018
A Church in Finland
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Old Church of Isokyro |
But I wasn't prepared for what I found in Finland. My maternal grandparents immigrated separately to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan around 1902 when they were about 20. They married and brought up ten kids in the hovels of Ishpeming, my hometown. My grandfather and later my uncles worked underground in the iron ore mines.
Mar 7, 2018
A Health Care Directive
Recently, I reviewed our wills that we had written years ago. Our kids have moved out and we are fifteen years older than when we wrote them. Our wills also include health care directives. I was intrigued rereading what I wrote so long ago. I stand by it still and here I share with you its key elements (with a few insignificant edits). I suggest you have one done and file it with your primary health care facility.
“Whenever I am unable to decide or speak for myself, my health care agent has the power to make any and all health care decisions for me, including the power to give, refuse or withdraw consent to any care, treatment, service or procedures, including deciding whether to stop or not start health care that is keeping me or might keep me alive.

“I have little tolerance for pain and do not want it, whether physical or emotional. An example of emotional pain would include consciousness but inability to communicate or move. Another would be living permanently in a group facility such as a nursing home.
“I do not believe that allowing death by omission is wrong. You are free to let me die or even help me die if that is appropriate.
“My life would no longer be worth living if I were an emotional or financial drain on my wife, children or society; if I could not live a reasonably productive life; if I could not basically take care of myself; if I were to spend the remainder of my life in a nursing facility; or if I were unconscious with little expectation of returning to a somewhat productive life.
“Standard medical treatments may be used to try to improve my medical condition or to prolong my life but they should be stopped if they do not help.
“If I had a reasonable chance of recovery where I return to being a somewhat normal and productive person, I would want reasonable efforts made to recover me. But if recovery means, for example, permanent blindness, loss of arms, permanent pain and other major disabilities, I do not want efforts made to prolong my life.
“If I were dying, I would want all efforts made to minimize pain and no efforts made to prolong my life. If I were permanently unconscious or otherwise completely dependent on others for my care, I would want to die as soon as possible.”
“I would like to die at home. I remember when our dog, Sam, was dying. Rather than putting him alone into a sterile medical facility full of tubes in an effort to extend his life a few days or weeks or months, he laid in the family room with us until he couldn’t eat or drink. Then we brought him to the vet where he was euthanized while my wife held him. I only wish that you treat me as well as she treated Sam.”