I sat down for breakfast this week with a friend and really fine appraiser who recently started his own business. A lot of his work is in the commercial mortgage sector, which is pretty typical for a fledgling practice. I don't do a lot of mortgage work, so I was surprised to hear of the [...]
I am not old enough to remember party lines (I am not sure they were ever used in the densely populated New York Metropolitan area) but I do remember phone books. Now a relic ignored by all and probably threat to the environment, phone books were at one time revolutionary. Before the invention of the telegraph [...]
Answer Yes or No to the following: Is the work you do every day repetitive? Do you know the answer before you start? Can someone be trained to do what you do in a month or less? Is what you do something that any healthy adult can do? Does your work involve forms of any [...]
An homage, a celebration, a shout out, a gesture of respect, admiration and appreciation is now potentially cultural appropriation? Isn't this how art, music, film, food and culture evolves?
Where is the modern Algonquin Round Table where artists and thinkers from a variety of disciplines come together to discuss big ideas? Where are the coffeehouses of Vienna where the likes of Jung, Freud, Zweig, Klimt, Loos and Adler would get together and toss about some bon mots? Where are the non-fiction Central Perk, Cheers or [...]
Drew University last week announced that it was slashing its tuition by 20% from $48,336 this year to $38,668 next year. So what prompted this act of altruism? Economic reality. Drew, like many small private universities, has struggled to maintain enrollment while charging a higher-than-average tuition. So how can Drew increase enrollment and maximize revenue? [...]
According to an article on the website Futurism, an incinerator in Switzerland was recently fitted with a carbon capture plant that is reportedly 1,000 times more efficient than plant photosynthesis. Filters capture the CO2 over several hours. The filters are then heated to 212 degrees Fahrenheit (no great feat, your teakettle does the same thing and [...]
Wind and solar power are getting more efficient and cheaper all the time. Which is great, as long as the wind blows and the sun shines. The Holy Grail of research in Clean Energy field has been storage. We need bigger, more efficient and cheaper batteries. Well, this is about to happen. According to a [...]
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Boston Properties Inc. Executive VP Raymond Ritchey pointed out, “...The millennial generation [is] moving out of the cities, forming households, having children, looking for better schools and that's going to drive rate demand in the suburbs.” Want to know how to predict the future? Follow the hype and say the opposite [...]
