Alice!

A compilation of all the gorgeous Alice costumes: http://alice-kingsley.livejournal.com/

Vote for Becca!

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Buy and Hold: The Intelligent Investor

In finance, for personal investors, they advise us to diversify our investments across stocks (by investing in index funds) and across time, by buying young and holding till retirement. This diversification across time is different from the typical, say, average small company fund that flips its stocks, on average, every five months. One prominent and successful investor, though, took a perspective much closer to our personal finance route. An article in from the Wall Street Journal two weeks ago commemorates the retirement this week of "one of the great traders of the mutual fund industry, John Laporte of T. Rowe Price New Horizons." Mr. Laporte looks for future growth companies, seeking "creative leaders, a strong corporate culture and innovative ways of doing business." It requires immense effort to find these companies, but once you have found them, they can be a huge source of profitability. One in eight small growth stocks becomes large each year and on that cusp, they generate as much as 62% on average. The advantage of this technique is that these are typically only available in small blocks, ideally suited for small investors.  

BRELLIS!

Best quotes.

"Diplomacy is rape described as seduction" 
 
"If you were drunk, I don't think I would notice for a while" (this was about me- I don't think many people would disagree)

Who is Brooke Ellis? "The wierdo econ major who lizzy vaguely dislikes and val loves"

"Dick Cheney suffered his third heart attack last week. Only four horcruxes to go."

 

Power Dressing in Paris

One more thing...

Then I desperately need to go to bed! 

I'm dying to go winter camping- I think the picture says it all. It comes from the coolest site ever. 

Also. 

My addiction to Outside is in full force again... for good reason! 

ARCTIC SURFING!!

Lara Stone; Maillots

I love this photo- I want her outfit, her attitude, her face! 

Especially the maillot. That's what I want to be wearing at Havasupai... 

Python Tries to Eat Alligator: An Analogy for China

I randomly found this when I was looking for pictures of Burmese pythons (because who doesn't look for pictures of Burmese pythons?): 

"In 2005, a 13-foot Burmese python tried to swallow an indigenous 6-foot alligator in Everglades National Park. However, the alligator was too big that python’s stomach ripped open. Later on, the biologists and ecologists figured out that the python was starving for days. This also is an apt analogy that represents the Chinese ambition: desires overwhelming the reasonable consciousness." 

Sick, huh?! (Mostly the python story but I guess China's ambitions are kinda sick, too)

The reason I was looking for pictures of Burmese pythons was because I was reading the "Room for Debate" article in the New York Times: Killing Pythons and Regulating Them.  It is about the fact that Florida has, apparently, experienced an "Invasion of the Giant Pythons,"  at least according to the show of that name on PBS.  They got there by a combination of irresponsible pet owners but also the hurricanes that wrecked exotic-pet warehouses and set them loose across the state. Florida now has the highest concentration of non-native amphibian and reptiles species in the world. 

Now, I kind of think this is wicked cool, but there is the problem of them ruining the entire balance of the ecosystem, like the Brown Tree Snake has done in Guam. Fortunately, the recent cold spell killed as many as half of them. Experts hope that a combination of nature and concerted efforts to manage the population will allow successful containment. 

Now I want to watch A Series of Unfortunate Events!  Uncle Monty is my hero!

It's Time to Make Management a True Profession

HBR Article: It's Time to Make Management a True Profession

Fascinating article arguing: "True professions have codes, and the meaning and consequences of those codes are taught as part of the formal education required of their members." Giving business the equivalent of a Hippocratic Oath would "forge an implicit social contract with society: Trust us to control and exercise jurisdiction over an important occupational category, and, in return, we will ensure that the members of our profession are worthy of your trust - that they will not only be competent to perform the tasks entrusted to them, but that they will also conduct themselves with high standards and great integrity"

Judging a book