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A Father’s Day Investment Guaranteed to Pay Dividends
My kids are getting older. In fact, they're officially both adults. So Father's Day looks a little different than it used to.
As I look back, there is an investment I made that paid-off in a big way, and I want to share it with you.
Like many parents, I wanted to teach my children that, to a large extent, they control what happens to them. One of the first ways I did that was to set up a "compensation system" for them to earn video games.
Some parents try to limit the amount of time their kids spend watching TV or playing video games. I tried something different. Instead, my kids earned their games by reading books. Here is a photo from way back then.
Paid With Play.
Here's how it worked. When they were younger, 10 books was enough to earn a small game. When they finished a book, it was their right, and my obligation, to take them to the bookstore for us to pick up the next book together. Likewise, when they finished the requisite number of books, it was their right, and my obligation, to take them to the computer store or game store for them to choose any game they wanted.
When they finished hundred books, they got a bonus of earning the next game system. That meant if they had a Nintendo, they could now also get a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.
How Can You Encourage a Jump to the Next Level?
There came a point when I wanted one of my sons to start reading grown-up books. He was comfortable reading a certain type of book, and didn't want to read the kind of books that I read. So, I created a bonus system that counted a particular book as three books. I didn't force him; I just let the easier path to a reward "whisper" in his ear what to read. Once he finished that, he never went back to teen fiction.
It Is a Great Way to Learn About Your Kids.
I also used the bookstore visits to get a sense of how the boys were doing. For example, I might say "I notice that you read five books in that series, maybe you'd like this book". Or, "That sure is a lot of science fiction; what was the last biography you read?" For the most part, though, I didn't care what they read. The key was to get them to want to choose certain books for their own reasons. Ultimately, their preference meant they were learning to love reading.
It Puts Them In Control of Their Destiny and Rewards.
My younger son likes competition. He also broke or misplaced many things. So, in order to earn back the Game Boy unit that he lost, I challenged him to read five books in five days. These weren't easy books either. It was designed to stretch him, and also to teach him that he could read a book a night. The bet was that he either finished all the books in the allocated time, or none of them counted towards games or Game Boys. On the other hand, if he read a book a night for two weeks, not only would he get to have his Game Boy back, the books would count towards a game too. It worked like a charm, and we were both happy.
So, Who Got the Better Bargain?
As they started to get into their teenage years, I needed to up the ante a little. So, 500 books meant they got a laptop of their choice. Both boys cashed in, and probably felt like they were taking advantage of their dad.
I got what I wanted, though; both my boys love reading, and know that they can accomplish anything they put their minds to … one step at a time.
That's an investment that will pay dividends for a long time.
Happy Father's Day.
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Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – June 17th, 2017
The new normal.
Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.
- Putin Implies the U.S. is ‘Stupid’, Talks about NATO ‘Falling Apart’. (ValueWalk)
- Anti-Semitic Incidents Rose a Whopping 86% in the First 3 Months of 2017. (Apple)
- Beyond Alt: Understanding the New Far Right. (NYMag)
- Malcolm Gladwell on Why We Shouldn’t Value Speed Over Power. (Heleo)
- Learning to Distinguish “Fear” from “Fear of Fear” is Key to Leading a Happy Life. (Quartz)
- Puerto Rico Votes in Favor of Statehood. (TheHill)
- Trump Tweets and the Efficient Market Hypothesis. (SSRN)
- Tony Robbins: What I Learned from the World's Greatest Investors. (Time)
- The World's Highest-Paid Musicians of 2016 – Pg.1. (Forbes)
- For Aramco Insiders, Prince’s $2 Trillion IPO Valuation Doesn’t Add Up. (WSJ)
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JIM ROGERS: “The Worst Crash In Our Lifetime Is Coming”
Jim Rogers knows a thing or two about markets. He is a successful investor and businessman (and was a co-founder of the Quantum Funds).
He recently talked about his expectations for the next couple of years. It's worth watching.
Jim predicts a crash within the next year (due to the bubble on many stocks popping).
There are many things that could be the catalyst for the fall, but he predicts it will be not only the worst in your lifetime, but also in his lifetime (and he's pretty old!).
Blodget: Can anybody rescue us?
Rogers: They will try. What’s going to happen is they’re going to raise interest rates some more. Then when things start going really bad, people are going to call and say, "You must save me. It’s Western civilization. It’s going to collapse." And the Fed, who is made up of bureaucrats and politicians, will say, "Well, we better do something." And they’ll try, but it won’t work. It’ll cause some rallies, but it won’t work this time.
Blodget: And we are in a situation where Western civilization already seems to be possibly collapsing, even with the market going up all the time. Often when you do have a financial calamity, you get huge turmoil in the political system. What happens politically if that happens?
Rogers: Well, that’s why I moved to Asia. My children speak Mandarin because of what’s coming.
You’re going to see governments fail. You’re going to see countries fail, this time around. Iceland failed last time. Other countries fail. You’re going to see more of that.
You’re going to see parties disappear. You’re going to see institutions that have been around for a long time — Lehman Brothers had been around over 150 years. Gone. Not even a memory for most people. You’re going to see a lot more of that next around, whether it’s museums or hospitals or universities or financial firms.
Scary stuff.
What do you think is going to happen?
If our current actions are leading us towards a crash, what will stop it?
How will Algo trading help or hurt the outcome for the masses (and the few)?
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Postmodern Jukebox’s Cool Cover of “Creep” [Music Video]
Creativity isn't limited to creation.
Sometimes how you approach something changes it.
For example, in music, there are some pretty famous covers that "beat" (or revitalize) the original.
- Aretha Franklin's Respect (An Otis Redding song) is so familiar that it seems like it's the original.
- Disturbed's The Sound of Silence (A Simon&Garfunkel song) has a whopping 236 million views on YouTube.
- Johnny Cash's version of Hurt (A Nine Inch Nails song) has over 50 million views on YouTube.
If you want to stretch it … how about a death metal version of Mary Poppins?
Some bands exist primarily to do covers. Few do it like Postmodern Jukebox, which an avid following – and an abundance of talent.
Here is one of their hits, a torch song inspired version of "Creep" by Radiohead. Worth a listen.
As I was putting this together, I came across a different version of Creep played on a Gayageum (a traditional Korean instrument).
Different … but interesting.
There are many ways to approach almost everything.
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Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – June 9th, 2017
The Comey situation is nuanced … No, confusing.
It doesn't matter which side you're on, there's stuff to support and stuff to oppose.
Nonetheless, the result is no longer in contention. Trump won the first battle. Comey isn't the Director of the FBI.
Comey may still be trying to win the war. Last week, he testified in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
My favorite quote of the night was: ""The statue of justice has a blindfold on because you're not supposed to be peeking out to see if your patron is pleased with what you're doing."
Watching the selective belief in Comey's statements is interesting. Sometimes it seems that Liberals only hear how Trump mishandled Flynn … while Conservatives only hear the lack of investigation into Trump's Russia ties.
At the end of the day, Trump felt finally vindicated from the left's accusations.
So, is the situation nuanced … or just plain confusing?
Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.
- Cavaliers Still Send Paychecks to Warriors Coach Mike Brown. (ESPN)
- Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded. (New York Times)
- Bill Gates Has Seven Predictions for the Future. (Futurism)
- SNL Just Came up with a Hilarious Version of Alexa Designed for Senior Citizens. (TechCrunch)
- TCU’s First Little Genius Graduates with Physics Degree at 14 Years Old. (DallasNews)
- Former Mozilla CEO Raises $35M in under 30 Seconds for His Browser Startup Brave. (TechCrunch)
- The Hunger Bonds – A Modern Dilemma (Project-Syndicate)
- Meet the 9 Hedge Fund Managers Who Made the Most Money in 2016. (BusinessInsider)
- Dying Malls in the US Should Take Note of How China is Approaching Retail. (BI)
- Why Amazon is Eating the World. (TechCrunch)
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A Better Way to Exercise – Whole Body Vibration Technology
Do you remember seeing a video of one of those old "exercise machines" that vibrated a belt around somebody's middle? While that might have been a fad, we now know that was not exercising.Strangely, there is now something similar that is gaining in popularity and actually seems to work quite well. It's called the Power Plate.
This machine uses something called whole body vibration, a technology developed by Russia to use in its space program to combat the affects of zero gravity. Later, they used this technology to help train athletes; and you've seen variations of this in training methods like plyometrics.
Here is a picture of the Power Plate my5.
They claim that 15 minutes on this machine is the equivalent of about an hour at the gym. So how does it work? Well, as long as you understand that you have to exert some effort, the Power Plate works much better than I would've guessed.
At its simplest level, the machine vibrates 40 times per second. The movements happen in three different planes: front-to-back, side-to-side, and up-and-down. The movements are small enough, and happen so quickly, that they are rarely visible to the naked eye. Nonetheless, your body certainly feels them.
The Power Plate is a little bit larger than your typical doctor's scale. You stand on its platform while performing various movements or stretches. For example, imagine doing a deep knee bend and holding that position when your thighs are parallel to the ground (basically a half squat). As you hold this position, normally, your thigh muscles would get a decent isometric exercise – and you can probably imagine them burning a little. Now imagine what would happen if, as you are performing that exercise, the platform vibrated 40 times per second. Think how many more muscles you would engage. Think how much better this would be as a core stability exercise.
The Power Plate is designed to support a wide range of exercises for all of your main muscle groups – and comes with various accessories, like straps and mats. I found that many of the exercises I enjoy most are movements that my wife says are similar to yoga positions. I try not to let that discourage me from doing them.
The machine gets used every day. My wife and son like it too. It is exercise, and it does take work. With that said, it has had a noticeable effect on my strength, flexibility and my ability to do traditional workouts at the gym.
You can find out more about this at the manufacturer's website.
Here are some links about the machine and exercises.
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A Legendary Performance – Weekly Reading Links – June 9th, 2017
Lighter Links:
Market-Related Links
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Invented or Discovered?
Nature can be pretty cool!
It turns out a lot of what we think human's "invented" was so natural that nature thought of it first.
Take a look at the British Planthopper that has mechanical gears in it's legs.
Or the fact that the T4 Bacteriophage looks like a lunar lander and has 20 sides.
via biology4u
It's interesting that some of man's greatest inventions are so innate that natural selection (or intelligent design) created it before we did.
Want another example?
Hospital-acquired Infections are diseases caught due to bacteria or fungi at a hospital(or other healthcare related areas). They account for over 99,000 deaths a year.
Because of that, R&D worked extensively to find bacteria-killing surfaces … turns out Dragonflies have been doing it for centuries.
Research companies (and dragonflies) have been using nano-textured surfaces to create a "bed of nails" that destroys bacteria by puncturing the cell wall.
If you like stuff like this, Check out this link on order vs. chaos.
There is always opportunity around you … You just have to know where to look.
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Inspiration Comes In Many Forms …
Once a year, I go to the World BBQ Championship at Memphis in May.
It's three days of friends, food, and fun.
This year was special. My friend, Andy Daniels' tent won third place in the ribs contest.
In addition, I gained some inspiration while spending time at Doug McKnight's tent with Blake Carson.
Have you ever been to a Brazilian steakhouse? On top of an endless supply of meat, they also have a unique "churrasco" cooking and presentation style.
Blake saw that style of cooking – and innovated it – creating the Carson Rodizio kit (which started as a Kickstarter project). It is a multi-rotisserie rack that converts your favorite backyard grill into an open and spinning Brazilian style Steakhouse. It's clever, functional, and cool … and it's been used to win multiple barbecue championships.
I love to experience an entrepreneur's mind at work.
It's not always about what you add. Sometimes, it is about what you take away. Less is often more.
Here is a one-minute interview with Blake.
For more on Carson Rodizio, here is their Facebook page.
Innovation, like opportunity, is all around you.
But it's not there for you if you don't see the opportunity, and seize it.
Tasty!
