2 Thoughts for the last day of the year

Wednesday, December 31, 2014 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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1.Much of higher education consists of learning to make yourself look good. It's an essential skill, but you might as well learn something else while you're there too.

 Chris Guillebeau

 2.Some people get an education without going to college; the rest get it after they get out.

 Mark Twain


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College a waste of time and money for kids, FT

 Here is what's wrong with college.
First, and foremost, it's too expensive. To send a kid to college you need from $200,000 to $400,000. That's insane. There's no way the incremental advantage they get from having a diploma will ever pay back that amount. Perhaps for the first time the opportunity cost (a phrase I remember from Economics 101) of college does not equal the extra profits generated by the degree.
Second, I don't believe in a balanced education. Most colleges require students to take a smattering of art, maths, sciences and so forth. Taking 10 courses a year on wildly different topics, with enormous homework responsibilities, not to mention droning, boring professors for at least eight of the 10, is the surest formula for creating complete non-interest and inability to remember anything in any of the topics covered. What a waste of $400,000.
And third, there are far better uses of time. One reader asked what her kid should be doing instead of college. Here are some of my responses:
1. Working - not just a labour or service job, but there are internet-content jobs out there. I have high school and college kids working for me who are making over $50,000 a year from writing gigs on the internet. Scour Craigslist for opportunities, your favourite blogs, or websites related to your favourite interests. Companies are dying for good content. Create your own blog, get yourself noticed, build relationships with other content companies and communities.
2. Take half the fee for one semester, give it to your kid, and tell him or her to start a business. Not every youngster has entrepreneurial sensibilities, but it's always worth trying once. The cost for starting a business is next to zero, so it's a viable alternative. What business should they start? For one thing, now that Facebook and MySpace have open development platforms, try out a few applications for these platforms; for a few hundred dollars you can outsource development of these applications to India, and get your friends to start trying them. Make sure they are viral (that is, a message should appear "click here to get all your friends to try XYZ") and see which ones are a success. I mention Facebook and MySpace because every kid is familiar with these sites and comfortable with the subtleties, and it's this comfort that can create the best businesses.
3. Spend a year trying to become good at one thing. Whatever your child's greatest interest is, whether cooking, chess, writing, maths, there are so many resources on the internet available for learning that college is almost the last place a kid should go to pursue a passion. Intense immersion in a favourite topic is the surest way to become an expert in that field.
Other linke

 http://thoughtmeme.blogspot.pt/2014/03/does-education-matter.html


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I took the day off yesterday

Wednesday, December 31, 2014 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Yesterday with freezing temperatures in Portugal i rode with a bunch of my friends to Montejunto. It was a very nice  to be able to ride in a week day. Almost 5 hours on the bike.

 Life is good. There are a lot of wonderful things to do without spending money! ahhh, we stop briefly for a coffee in Torres vedras.
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one victim of automation is marriage

Monday, December 29, 2014 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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This erosion of traditional marriage and family structure has played out most dramatically among low-income groups, both black and white. According to the sociologist William Julius Wilson, inner-city black men struggled badly in the 1970s, as manufacturing plants shut down or moved to distant suburbs. These men naturally resented their downward mobility, and had trouble making the switch to service jobs requiring a very different style of self-presentation. The joblessness and economic insecurity that resulted created a host of problems, and made many men altogether unmarriable. Today, as manufacturing jobs disappear nationwide (American manufacturing shed about a third of its jobs during the first decade of this century), the same phenomenon may be under way, but on a much larger scale....................

But while the rise of women has been good for everyone, the decline of males has obviously been bad news for men—and bad news for marriage. For all the changes the institution has undergone, American women as a whole have never been confronted with such a radically shrinking pool of what are traditionally considered to be “marriageable” men—those who are better educated and earn more than they do. So women are now contending with what we might call the new scarcity. Even as women have seen their range of options broaden in recent years—for instance, expanding the kind of men it’s culturally acceptable to be with, and making it okay not to marry at all—the new scarcity disrupts what economists call the “marriage market” in a way that in fact narrows the available choices, making a good man harder to find than ever. At the rate things are going, the next generation’s pool of good men will be significantly smaller. What does this portend for the future of the American family?

From The Atlantic, Kate Bolick, All the single Ladies


If the marriage only works if man makes more money than the woman marriage is in deep trouble because many typical male professions are shrinking fast. Automation is killing all the repetitive jobs.

In the past i think man didn't got distressed to pay all the households expenses because women gave them children and cared for them  Today if the man doesn't make any money why do women would support them? they can't produce children?

Single woman is the way forward because the the marriage pool of acceptable man is shrinking fast.


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Cold showers really work!

Monday, December 29, 2014 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Seven million years of human evolution were dominated by two challenges: food scarcity and cold. “In the last 0.9 inches of our evolutionary mile,” they write, pointing to the fundamental lifestyle changes brought about by refrigeration and modern transportation, “we solved them both.” Other species don’t exhibit nearly as much obesity and chronic disease as we warm, overfed humans and our pets do. “Maybe our problem,” they continue, “is that winter never comes.”......

 Another 2014 study found that, even after controlling for diet, lifestyle, and other factors, people who live in warmer parts of Spain are more likely to be obese than people who live in the cooler parts.

 From The Benefits of Being Cold, The Atlantic, 2014
An Easy way to get in shape fast is to end every shower with cold water. It's difficult but not impossible. Start from the feet up, 1 minute is enough. You get in shape really fast. 

My oldest son, who is 16, sleeps with the bedroom window open even in the winter! Despite being a good eater he is really skinny. I guess exposure to cold makes a big impact.


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Big smart Gurus/Stars are loosers in the long run

Monday, December 29, 2014 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Data lovers are winning everywhere . But they don't look like Stars. A star is someone who does a prediction and time to time they nail it big time. A star is someone who predicted 10 market crashes and on the 10 th time they are correct. A star is Nouriel Roubinni who predicted the 2007 sub prime crisis and since then has been wrong ever since.

A data lover is not a star. He doesn't do Big fat predictions. He does a lot of small bets and ultimately wins. A data lover is the casino. A Guru is the visitor/gambler who time to time hits the jackpot.

If you want a winner , don't expect big views expect a system.

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Is this the future!

Monday, December 15, 2014 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Is this the future? No this is already the present. You buy on internet, get the best price and the best advice. Since i start reading comments from previous buys i don't get bad advice from the Shop staff. Typically the shop staff only want to push the product of the week on you.

Retail shopping is going down and for good reason. Comfort, price and advice.



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Big get Bigger

Monday, December 15, 2014 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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In the first quarter, the latest data, companies with more than 500 employees accounted for 46.3% of private sector jobs, up from 44.2% a decade earlier, while those with fewer than 50 employees fell to 28.4% from 30.2%. At the same time, new business formations have been falling steadily since the 1990s, and intensifying since the Great Recession. Where are all the entrepreneurs?

From The Great Insight, A Gary Shillig
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A 50 year trend !

Friday, December 12, 2014 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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The declining labor share (NYT Economix)




Labour has been squeezed 

 A lot of people thought about outsourcing to China as the main culprit for this 50 year trend! My view is different, technology & automation is the real cause for this.

 What to do?

 http://thoughtmeme.blogspot.pt/2013/11/stayin-home.html


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Having to much is a big problem to children

Friday, December 12, 2014 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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“My own instinct is that it’s much harder than anybody believes to bring up kids in a wealthy environment. People are ruined by challenged economic lives. But they’re ruined by wealth as well because they lose their ambition and they lose their pride and they lose their sense of self-worth… there’s probably some place in the middle which works best of all.”

From Malcolm Gladwell , David & Goliath

In the book Gladwell cites a Hollywood millionaire problems rising his kids. He claims that parenting with no money is extremely difficult but with lot's of money is also challenging  Your kids are spoiled and used to only the best, have never experienced rejection & difficulties  They are not prepared for life !

That is the reason Wealth contains the seed of it's own destruction.

Normally Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations is the norm. To prevent this i guess you should not give everything to your kids they have to fight for something. You have to say no

How? 

when they ask for something you should never say that you can't afford it but that you can but you won't. This is key for them to figure out that the money is difficult to earn and that it should be difficult to spend to.

About this is important to not confuse necessity with desire. 

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Best Advice

Friday, December 05, 2014 Francisco Carneiro 1 Comments

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The best advice i ever heard was this

Recent performance is a very good indicator of future performance.

Never buy a stock that isn't going up.


In the SEC page we could read

This year's top-performing mutual funds aren't necessarily going to be next year's best performers. It’s not uncommon for a fund to have better-than-average performance one year and mediocre or below-average performance the following year. That's why the SEC requires funds to tell investors that a fund's past performance does not necessarily predict future results. You can learn what factors to consider before investing in a mutual fund by reading 

I don't agree with this paragraph, the best funds of this year probably will do better next year than a basket of this year worst funds. 

It's kind of simple but it works.


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With Globalization when you do good you can do really good!

Friday, December 05, 2014 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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To me there is no inequality here. If you are good like BEYONCE you can sell 1 million downloads in 1 hour from your webpage. 50 years ago FRANK SINATRA could gather 2000 people in a room. That is the difference.

What you should do? Go for it, do something that you cane scale up big time.


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Just do it !

Wednesday, December 03, 2014 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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if you get into Harvard it's because you are already good

If a college degree always means higher wages, then everyone should get a college degree: That’s the conventional wisdom encapsulated by Obama. But how can everyone win a zero-sum tournament? No single path can work for everyone, and the promise of such an easy path is a sign of a bubble.

.................

A Reformation is coming, and its message will be the same as it was 500 years ago: Don’t outsource your future to a big institution. You need to figure it out for yourself.



The bottom line on this is simple. No asset is so good that it can't be bid up to the point where it's overpriced and thus dangerous. And few assets are so bad that they can't become under priced and thus safe (not to mention potentially lucrative)

Howard Marks, Oaktree 2013



No doubt if you manage to get into Harvard you will do better than average. But you will be no Bill gates, Steve Jobs or Zuckerberg. You will do good for 2 reasons:

1.if you get into Harvard it's because you are already good. People are hand picked, you don't get good at Harvard, you were already good before getting in. Harvard is a stamp of quality.

2.If you don't miss the multiple parties on Campus you will make some friends for life. That is the biggest asset from higher education. Party til you die.

The flip-side is that higher education is unaffordable to many and even if you are smart enough to land at Harvard you don't get much bang for the buck! It's not a huge deal anymore. Too expensive.

what to do?

start doing as soon as you can. Stop studying in formal education. Work & read & do some higher education sorties (some 2 weekends programs, etc....), study as you go, never stop studying.




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Leisure has a good future.

Wednesday, December 03, 2014 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Everything that is physically possible will be invented
Humans are capable of an infinite amount of progress. We can improve things without limit, and learn without limit. This covers not just material improvement but also moral improvement. We have to invest in knowledge non stop. 

The way to go is to study forever.

http://thoughtmeme.blogspot.pt/2014/06/statistically-there-is-50-chance-that.html



 Deutsche Bank goes on to say that solar electricity is on track to be as cheap or cheaper than average electricity-bill prices in all but three states by 2016—assuming,that is, that the federal government maintains the 30 percent solar investment tax credit it currently offers homeowners on installation and equipment costs.................................

 And prices for solar are expected to keep falling as technologies improve and financing becomes more affordable. Solar leasing has helped hundreds of thousands of Americans realize the dream of going solar without breaking the bank. The companies behind such programs—SolarCity, SunRun and others—take care of installation, maintenance and upgrades while the customer ends up paying about as much for clean, green power as for grid power from coal or other fossil fuels.

 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rooftop-solar-cost-competitive-with-the-grid-in-much-of-the-u-s/

The future is some of us studying & inventing the future and a lot of us idle. Machines will do more & more. The future will be good. There will be a lot of spare time. Perhaps because of that NIKE stock is doing so well. Leisure has a good future.



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Love is rational after all

Monday, December 01, 2014 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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https://www.linkedin.com/home?trk=nav_responsive_tab_home


D5E05E95-1F99-4687-B2E7-72C81646175E.jpg


Since our parents inevitably made errors in their courtships, we are unlikely to be ideally balanced ourselves. We have typically come out too tall or too short, too masculine or too feminine; our noses are large, our chins small. If such imbalances were allowed to persist, or were aggravated, the human race would, within a short time, founder in oddity.The will-to-life must therefore push us towards people who can, on account of their imperfections, cancel out our own (a large nose combined with a button nose promises a perfect nose). Schopenhauer liked predicting pathways of attraction. Short women will fall in love with tall men, but rarely will you see tall men go for tall women (they unconsciously fear the production of giants). Feminine men will often be drawn to boyish women with short hair.

Alan de Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy
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