John Coogan > Recent Status Updates

Love these cases. The drunken bar bet to sell a farm for $50k is fascinating.

Took a break to read the Monuments Men.

Capitalism is a distributed data processing system whereas communism is a centralized data processing system.

Capitalism is a distributed data processing system whereas communism is a centralized data processing system.

Willhelm von Humboldt said "The aim of life is distillation of the widest possible range of experiences into Wisdom"

Old games like chess don't involve investment. Settlers teaches modern economics. "Why can't you just be happy with your $100,000?"

Vampire bats "loan" blood to each other.

Great Leap Forward disaster: Chinese govt sets unrealistic grain production goals and timelines. Farmers exaggerate production, bad data trickles upward and govt winds up trading food for guns because it assumes excess, people starve.

"Since there is only one real world, while the number of potential virtual worlds is near infinite. The probability that you are in the real world is near zero. "

Sad to hear about his downfall, too bad.

Sad to see him surround himself with yes men. Still seems like he accomplished a lot despite not staying current to trends in public behavior.

Hate how he treated his brother. Love the financial engineering portion on the public authorities.

Anecdote about giving governor Al Smith keys to the Central Park zoo was particularly funny.

Great quote: "Rabble? That's me!"

Putting on hold until I finish Bonfire of the Vanities and read the other book in the series.

Interesting characters so far, I was a bit thrown by the narrative style at first.

Picked up for the flight home to LA (only slightly inferentially). Going to start at the beginning though.

Very excited to start this book, been too long since I enjoyed a good novel.