How quickly things change. Not so long ago, most Chinese who studied overseas stayed overseas because job prospects were far superior to those in China. Now, according to China’s Ministry of Education, three-quarters of Chinese students are returning home after graduation. Finding a job overseas has gotten harder, while the job market in China has […]
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The 2-Minute Thought: This year, spend less time on time management . . .
entrepreneur.com A recent article in The Guardian by Oliver Burkeman titled “Why time management is ruining our lives” addressed — well, how time management is ruining our lives. How we spend each day and string those days together into a meaningful life has been a central human question since ancient times. But in this modern […]
The Test Kitchen is Under New Management…
We first started publishing a Holiday Chocolate recipe in 1998. This is our 19th version. We have been a little unscientific with our selections in the past. We often have come down to crunch time with the desperate plea, “Anyone got a recipe for this year’s letter?” Well no more. Seriousness is Job One in […]
Wow, What An Amazing World We Live In!…
A recent story from China in The New York Times International edition (November 15, 2016) caught my eye. Many “common cuckoos” spend the spring and early summer of each year in wetlands near Beijing, China. They feast on caterpillars and grubs in the wet soil. By summer, however, temperatures get pretty hot and the cuckoos […]
The Psychology of Gift Giving…
Gift giving can be a simple joy or a source of stress. We want to give gifts that bring happiness to the recipient, but we know they can fall flat or end up being returned, discarded or re-gifted. When we laugh at Johnny Carson’s quip about there being only one fruitcake in the world that […]
Spinning Our Wheels…
The holiday season brings warm recollections of leisurely time spent with family and friends. But increasingly I have been wondering if these memories are more relics of the past than an accurate portrayal of the average worker’s experience today. Average annual hours worked has fallen over the last six decades across much of the industrialized […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Doing Good Work at In-N-Out Burger
USA Today It’s always a source of wonder when fast food chain In-N-Out Burger ranks near the top of Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work, as it has in recent years. This year (the 2017 list) it ranked seventh nationally. Silicon Valley News reported that In-N-Out was the third best place to work in Silicon Valley […]
The 2-Minute Thought: A Stock Picker’s Market?
People say it’s starting to look like a stock picker’s market. That’s because the performance of individual stocks and the performance of different sectors are diverging. Since President-elect Trump’s win in November, the disparity in returns among different sectors is the highest it’s been since 2009. In addition, correlations among individual stocks have been falling. […]
Dewey Versus Truman… Rest in Peace…
Your time on the stage as the greatest political upset is, well, history. Donald Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton is the new shocker for the ages. I would guess that even many Trump supporters were surprised. Now on to what this will mean for everyone. The Financial Times from London says this “marks a thunderous […]
In Search of the True Self…
Recently I stumbled on the fact that the third most popular course at Harvard University is Classical Chinese Ethical and Political History. Who would have guessed? The course explores the teachings of Chinese Philosophers from 2,000 years ago. Michael Puett, who teaches the course, has now written a book with a co-author, The Path, explaining […]
The Power of Alipay…
We know there just was an election that was kind of important, but last week there was another fascinating day of an entirely different nature: Singles Day on November 11. Singles Day is a made-up holiday in Asia that started as a way for young people to celebrate being single (since the date is written […]
Spending in Retirement – the Big Unknown…
Retirement planning can be devilishly difficult. It requires you to think about what your life will look like many years ahead, trade-off spending today for spending in the future and, at some level, face mortality – all endeavors most of us would rather avoid. One of the biggest challenges is forecasting your spending. A standard […]
