1. Trade like an actuary.

2. I about cried when I came across this post: It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time.

3. The more I think about it, the Lincoln Monument feels completely ridiculous.

4. Ever discover something delightful that has been around a long time? Finding Joshua Judges Ruth, By: Lyle Lovett has been like that for me this last week.

5. “I say this because something important happened to me when I read Emily Dickinson. I fell in love with books. Some people find beauty in music, some in painting and some in landscape, but I find it in words. By beauty, I mean the feeling you have suddenly glimpsed another world or looked into a portal that reveals a kind of magic or romance out of which the world has been constructed—a feeling there is something more than the mundane and a reason for our plodding. The portal is different for everyone. Many of my friends find it by studying physics or math, some from biology or music, but for me it has become literature.”

-Donald Miller, Father Fiction (Amazon)

1. Trading should not be emotional. If done right, it should be boring.

2. World cotton prices – and U.S. cotton prices.

3. I do like to write a word or two about the books I read.

4. I have only ever written one review on Amazon. Why? The author asked me to.

5. (On Russia) “This isn’t a country in transition but some sort of postmodern dictatorship that uses the language and institutions of democratic capitalism for authoritarian ends.”

-Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing Is True And Everything Is Possible (Amazon)