At the retirement center the other day, I inadvertently offended a frail, elderly woman without meaning to. Looking into her eyes, I saw the distress I’d caused and offered her a smile as well as an apology. The smile seemed to have helped. Walking away, I wondered what a robot woul

Want  help from Amazon with a purchase or a product?  Here’s the customer service number: 1-888-280-4331.  May it do you some good.  Knowing the number did little for me when I called at the  behest of two of my book readers.  Both had written reviews for my latest novels, Bal

As I wrote in an earlier blog, (Blog 5/26/16) the world is awash in personal savings accounts, what Ben Bernanke calls a “global savings glut.” (“Private Desires, by Geoff Colvin, Fortune, June, 2016, pg. 54.)  In a recent essay, Geoff Colvin points out this sea of cash is chan

Entrepreneur Warren Buffet, the nation’s second wealthiest man, (Click) was asked what advice he’d give to his wife about investing if he died before her.  His reply was she should buy  a low cost index fund, preferably from Vanguard. (Click)  An Index fund buys and holds stock

Unlike the past when technology eliminated some jobs but created others, the trend in innovation today is toward job elimination. (“In the Future, Will There be Any Work Left for People to do?” by Geoff Colvin, Fortune, June 16, 2014, pgs. 193-200.)  According to writer Geoff Col

Don’t ask me why, but when readers subscribe to my blog, the system ignores the request and sends an email asking for verification. Subscribers who fail to reply eventually write me to ask why my blogs aren’t arriving. In the past, I knew how to fix the problem. Recently, however,

I keep thinking about Scott Fitzgerald and his remark that the rich don’t think like the rest of us. Unfortunately neither do their sycophants. Geoff Colvin wrote a column in Fortune recently that portrays the Occupy Wall Street movement as a collection of air heads who don’t know

“Figures lie and liars figure.” That was a favorite aphorism of the man who preceded me as a county commissioner. He used the saying to mock any statistic that displeased him and used it so often that eventually he discredited himself. Still, I agree that statistics are as pliable