If you live in Vermont, you’ve likely noticed a growing number of recreational dispensaries appearing throughout the state. Recreational cannabis was legalized in 2018 and retail sales began in 2022. Two years on, how has the rollout been shaping up? It turns out, we are not the only ones wondering. Vermont’s Cannabis Control Board (CCB) […]
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Travels to the roof of the world…
Tajikistan is not on everyone’s bucket list. In fact, most people are hard pressed to find the country on a map. But if you are interested in the high mountains of Asia, from the Himalayas to the Karakorum, the Hindu Kush, and the Pamirs, then Tajikistan is a prime destination. The Pamir Mountains, a high […]
On reading…truly, madly, and deeply…
This is a meditation on reading — deep, immersive reading, preferably of books, essays, or other thoughtful pieces. Not scrolling on your device. Not scanning for news. Not what might be euphemized as “research,” where your eyes flit here or there as you search for the correct spelling of Albania’s capital, the growth rate of […]
In podcasts we trust…
Podcasts have had a big impact on the way Americans spend their time. The New Oxford Dictionary awarded podcast “word of the year” back in 2005, but the medium did not enter many Americans’ consciousness until 2014 when the true-crime podcast Serial was released, reaching a record (at the time) five million downloads. Today, podcasts […]
Fed interest rate cuts – what do they mean for me?…
After an historically fast and furious campaign of interest rate hikes to combat inflation, the Federal Reserve is ready to cut at its meeting this week. Why are cuts coming now, and what do they mean for you and me? The Fed is all about its “dual mandate” of price stability and maximum employment. They […]
It’s mine, you can’t have it!…
Standard economic theory holds that rising demand leads to higher prices and falling demand, lower prices. When supply exactly matches demand, a “clearing” price or fair value is reached. In the real world, however, things do not always work out this way. In some cases, prices fail to adjust to shifting supply and demand because […]
“Most people can’t go water-skiing in their nineties”…
“Everyone’s health generally declines with time, and sooner or later we all die, so the question we all must answer is how to make the most of our finite time on earth.” “. . . if you knew you were going to die tomorrow, you’d spend today one way, and if it was two days […]
Some thoughts from the Paris Olympics…
In August, I had the pleasure of attending the Summer Olympics in Paris. Over a delightful but very hot week there, a few thoughts popped into my head—observations about the event from someone who spends too much time over-analyzing everything. The commercialization of sports is nothing new, but the resulting proliferation of sponsorships at the […]
The sun is shining on solar…
In a recent issue, The Economist predicted that by the mid-2030s, solar cells will represent the single greatest source of energy for electrical generation globally. To get a sense of just how big a claim this is, consider that today coal, at 36%, is the largest source and solar stands at just 6%. While the […]
Financial literacy comes of age… and it’s getting younger…
In an earlier edition of the newsletter, we reported on a study done by the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research. They found that the age at which financial mistakes are minimized is on average age 53 or 54. This means we stumble through a lot of financial errors from high school to […]
How good were our Covid-era predictions?…
It’s been more than four years since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020. Covid is still very much with us — in fact, there’s a surge in infections now, as there has been every summer since 2020. But we’ve come a long way from the dark pre-vaccine days […]
Döner diplomacy…
Every country has culinary specialties influenced by other places as food cultures eventually meld together. Rarely does it become political. In the U.S., we’ve got hamburgers (who knows where they came from). In the U.K., it’s curries and chicken tikka masala. In the Netherlands, they have rijsttafel (inspired by the Indonesian “rice table”). In Germany, […]