S.N. Goenka is a famous Vipassana Meditation teacher, and has taught many students, including Ram Dass, Krishna Das, Lama Surya Das, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, and thousands more. In this twenty minute video he talks about the meditation that he teaches.
This information about the term “Beta” comes from the Investopedia website:
1) You can think of beta as the tendency of a security's returns to respond to swings in the market.
2) A beta < 1 means that the security will be less volatile than the market.
3) A beta > 1 indicates that the security's price will be more volatile than the market.
4) For example, if a stock’s beta is 1.2, it’s theoretically 20% more volatile than the market.
5) Many utilities stocks have a beta < 1. Conversely, most high-tech Nasdaq-based stocks have a beta > 1.
As an example of this, I’m currently looking at a REIT that has a Beta of 0.66, while Apple’s Beta is 1.44.
I quit using Facebook about a month ago, and since then a few friends have written to ask why. The short story is that I don’t like seeing something in my life and then thinking, “Oh, I should post that on Facebook.” It’s like when you go to dinner with someone and you can tell that they’re itching to check their phone, or they want to take a picture of their meal so they can post it somewhere. I hate all of those feelings, and therefore I don’t use Facebook any more.
As a result of that feeling, and having been sick lately, and of having known a number of addicts during the last ten years, I appreciate what Johann Hari says in his TED Talk:
“I increasingly began to think that the connections we have are like a parody of human connection. If you have a crisis in your life you’ll notice something: It won’t be your Twitter followers or Facebook friends who come to sit with you.”
At the end he states very powerfully, and IMHO very accurately:
“The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, the opposite of addiction is connection.”
Here’s his 15-minute talk:
When you have an MRI on your abdomen, the body parts that are being scanned get warm very fast. Which is kind of freaky.
I’ve become a big fan of FAST Graphs over the last few months. They show a lot of good information about stocks in a compact, easy to read format. This video provides a little bit of information about how to use their charts:
A couple of years ago I was hoping the tech industry would realize that living in Alaska isn’t that bad, and it’s even insanely beautiful in the summer months. But now as I live in Colorado, with the population rapidly growing here, I hope the tech industry never discovers Alaska. There needs to be places with low population densities like Alaska, at the very least just so we can have vacations to “get away” from humanity for a while.
“My Guitar Gently Weeps” is played slowly by Tom Petty and others in this video, until Price walks onto the stage at 3:28 and picks up the pace with a tremendous performance at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. RIP, Prince, April 21, 2016.
If you ever wondered what happened to Dr. Joel Fleischman of Northern Exposure, here’s Rob Morrow performing a song named “Look at Me” with Carlos Calvo:
From this si.com article: (Joe) Maddon, when asked what impresses him most about Arrieta, says, “His constancy of character. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody work like he does, and when he plays, there’s an extreme calmness about the guy. When I speak to him in the dugout during the game, I can have a conversation with him. A lot of guys you can’t. He looks you right in the eye, he speaks slowly, there’s never any heavy breathing. Among all the pitchers I’ve ever had, he is in the present tense as well and as much as anybody.”
I just read that the song, Nothing Compares 2 U, was originally written and performed by Prince. Sinead O’Connor made the song famous in 1990 with this version:
“It’s by giving back that we receive, and I am eternally grateful for my sobriety and my life today.”
~ Joe Walsh (My favorite member of The Eagles. The quote is from the “Show More” section on this YouTube video.)
If you like to watch compact videos of specific college football players, draftbreakdown.com is a good website with a free, dedicated “videos” section for players like Paxton Lynch (now of the Denver Broncos).
