Christmas in Provo, without people

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Jason Zweig on Wall Street ethics

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A funny but sadly true note: Wall Street may have higher ethical standards than some businesses (smuggling, prostitution, Congressional lobbying, and journalism come to mind) but the investment world nevertheless has enough liars, cheaters, and thieves to keep Satan's check-in clerks frantically busy for decades to come. --Jason Zweig That's in a footnote on page 262 of the 2003 revised edition of Benjamin Graham's classic book The Intelligent Investor . Graham first published the book in 1934 and revised it several times, publishing his final edition in 1973. Graham died in 1976. A new edition was published in 2003, with the original text of Graham's last edition left intact, but surrounded with Talmudic-style treatment by Jason Zweig. Jason's new commentary appears after each chapter and in footnotes. This brings the book up to date and adds some perspective and humor, and notes cases where Graham has been vindicated or (rarely) disproven by history. ...
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Beyond Fear by Bruce Schneier

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The full title of this book is Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World , and the book delivers on the promise of that title. I started it a couple of months ago, and enjoyed taking my time reading just a few chapters at each sitting. Bruce Schneier is a well-known cryptographer -- he was a major participant in the AES cipher contest a few years back -- but this is a nontechnical book. He does an excellent job of demonstrating that security is all about tradeoffs: cost vs. benefit in terms of money, attention, convenience, freedom, etc. There's no perfect security, and all security decisions need to be re-evaluated from time to time. Based on what? Bruce outlines a five-step process to evalute security decisions: What are you trying to protect? ... "So much of the bad security surrounding us is a result of not understanding exactly what is being protected and of implementing countermeasures that move the risk around but don't actually mit...
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Defenestrations of Prague

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Did you know there's such a thing as the Defenestrations of Prague ? I didn't until recently. I'd like to know how familiar the word "defenestration" is to everyone. I know what it means because of the German and French words for window -- "Fenster" and "fenêtre" -- but I can't tell if I'd know if I didn't know that. From Wikipedia's entry on Defenestration: The term originates from two incidents in history, both occurring in Prague. In 1419, seven town officials were thrown from the Town Hall, precipitating the Hussite War. In 1618, two Imperial governors and their secretary were tossed from Prague Castle, sparking the Thirty Years War. These incidents, particularly in 1618, were referred to as the Defenestrations of Prague and gave rise to the term and the concept. How about that? An interesting way to demonstrate political outrage. There are other incidents of defenestration, in Prague and elsewhere, listed in the ...
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