How to retire early : A sensible approach

"Taking these sabbaticals was what I saw value in—but it wasn’t until around 2011, when I stumbled across a website called Early Retirement Extreme, that I realized I could work hard for five to ten years to make those periodic trips more of a permanent fixture. I was already a pretty good saver, but what I read on the site encouraged me to ramp it up even more. All I would need to do to retire early was to save and invest until my portfolio reached at least 25 times my annual expenses."


More here


The first step, as always, is in committing oneself towards doing it. The second step is in taking the first step... forward, that is.


Arise, awake. Stop not till the goal is reached.

Uncle Sam weighs in

"In 2012 he formed a think tank called the Center for the Global Enterprise and just came out with an e-book called Re-Think: A Path To The Future. The book argues that multinational firms in a rapidly integrating world need to remake themselves into what he calls globally integrated enterprises (like he did with IBM). So-called GIEs are different than mere multinationals in structure and operating approach. Legal could be in Amsterdam, research in China and California, HR and accounting in New York. Talent goes where it’s needed. Work flows to where the customers are, not where the headquarters is. Country managers don’t get to act like royalty of their own realm. Collaboration is digital and frequent. Palmisano says that IBM saw a total productivity gain of $6 billion from 2006 to 2010 by doing things like globalizing support services and the supply chain (fewer and bigger factories), freeing up local managers to focus on sales and relationships. IBM outgrew growth markets such as China and India at twice the rate of the tech industry."


More here

Peter Matthiessen's dead

A nice article on him just before he died, here


The Snow Leopard is something I have read and its a great book to read.

Why hawks win

Another Danny Kahneman special.


"
Imagine, for example, that you have been placed in a room and asked to watch a series of student speeches on the policies of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez. You've been told in advance that the students were assigned the task of either attacking or supporting Chávez and had no choice in the matter. Now, suppose that you are then asked to assess the political leanings of these students. Shrewd observers, of course, would factor in the context and adjust their assessments accordingly. A student who gave an enthusiastic pro-Chávez speech was merely doing what she was told, not revealing anything about her true attitudes. In fact, many experiments suggest that people would overwhelmingly rate the pro-Chávez speakers as more leftist. Even when alerted to context that should affect their judgment, people tend to ignore it. Instead, they attribute the behavior they see to the person's nature, character, or persistent motives. This bias is so robust and common that social psychologists have given it a lofty title: They call it the fundamental attribution error.
"


Link here through FP.

So, you are smarter than the CIA?

Recently, the GJP super forecasting team has been getting a fair bit of popularity. So, one co-superforecaster and the idea behind the project (Phil Tetlock) chime in on this link.

Dailymall speaks about it here.
NPR
Washingtontimes

The lady they are talking to, Elaine Rich, is part of a different team, amongst the 8 super forecasting teams, and we all compete together and a bit against each together.

Pretty embarrassing, really. Next year being season 4 will finish things off. Where to from there?
Time will tell.