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Posts under ‘life’

Randomness happens

YAHOO.Shortcuts.annotationSet=YAHOO.Shortcuts.annotationSet||{};YAHOO.Shortcuts.annotationSet['lw_1206974406_0']={“text”:”Nassim Nicholas Taleb”,”weight”:0.25,”type”:["shortcuts:/us/instance/person/author"],”category”:["PERSON"]};YAHOO.Shortcuts.annotationSet['lw_1206974406_1']={“text”:”NCAA basketball tournament”,”weight”:3.35194,”type”:["shortcuts:/concept"],”category”:["CONCEPT"]};YAHOO.Shortcuts.annotationSet['lw_1206974406_2']={“text”:”Kansas”,”weight”:0.288981,”type”:["shortcuts:/us/instance/place/destination","shortcuts:/us/instance/place/us/state"],”category”:["PLACE"],”metaData”:{“geoArea”:”212939″,”geoCountry”:”United States”,”geoIsoCountryCode”:”US”,”geoLocation”:”(-98.320213, 38.498058)”,”geoName”:”Kansas”,”geoPlaceType”:”State”,”geoState”:”Kansas”}};Just finishing Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness and just finishing the NCAA basketball tournament. What do these two events have in common? Well in it Taleb discusses how we rely on past performance too much, how survivor and hindsight biases effect our decisions and the value we place [...]

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The portfolio approach to life

My definition of a portfolio is having a range of investments where risk is diversified. If you’re investing, you’re likely to be taking this type of approach. Venture Capital and other industries are likely to take this approach. When recently considering life decisions I decided that maybe taking a portfolio approach to life isn’t a [...]

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Beggars choosers

Whoever said beggars can’t be choosers? It wasn’t me. As I walked from the gym to the tube this evening I was approached by a homeless man and we had the following exchange: Him: Hey man, I’m really hungry. Need to get some food. Got 20p? Me: Sorry man, I got 5p Him: (pause) Naah [...]

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Impeccable timing

YAHOO.Shortcuts.annotationSet=YAHOO.Shortcuts.annotationSet||{};YAHOO.Shortcuts.annotationSet['lw_1201912383_0']={“text”:”Yahoo! email account”,”weight”:2.01978,”type”:["shortcuts:/concept"],”category”:["CONCEPT"]};YAHOO.Shortcuts.annotationSet['lw_1201912383_1']={“text”:”London”,”weight”:0.25,”type”:["shortcuts:/us/instance/place/destination","shortcuts:/us/instance/place/gb/town"],”category”:["PLACE"],”metaData”:{“geoArea”:”1390.88″,”geoCountry”:”United Kingdom”,”geoCounty”:”Greater London”,”geoIsoCountryCode”:”GB”,”geoLocation”:”(-0.12715, 51.506321)”,”geoName”:”London”,”geoPlaceType”:”Town”,”geoState”:”England”,”wikiid”:”London_%282005_film%29″}};YAHOO.Shortcuts.annotationSet['lw_1201912383_2']={“text”:”Yahoo”,”weight”:0.25,”type”:["shortcuts:/us/instance/organization/company/company_name","shortcuts:/us/instance/organization/company/yahoo_property","shortcuts:/us/instance/organization/domain"],”category”:["ORGANIZATION"],”metaData”:{“canonicalName”:”Yahoo! Inc.”,”domain_name”:”Yahoo”,”domain_url”:”http://www.yahoo.com/”,”exchange”:”NMS”,”symbol”:”YHOO”,”yprop_name”:”Yahoo!”,”yprop_url”:”http://www.yahoo.com/”}};When I was in University the internet was just being discovered. I subscribed to a Yahoo! email account, taught myself html on Geocities and fell in love with the web. I was lucky to have such experiences.When I left University, circa 2000, I came to London at a time [...]

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No excuse for lack of passion

YAHOO.Shortcuts.annotationSet=YAHOO.Shortcuts.annotationSet||{};YAHOO.Shortcuts.annotationSet['lw_1201607321_0']={“text”:”Yahoo”,”weight”:0.25,”type”:["shortcuts:/us/instance/organization/company/company_name","shortcuts:/us/instance/organization/company/yahoo_property","shortcuts:/us/instance/organization/domain"],”category”:["ORGANIZATION"],”metaData”:{“canonicalName”:”Yahoo! Inc.”,”domain_name”:”Yahoo”,”domain_url”:”http://www.yahoo.com/”,”exchange”:”NMS”,”symbol”:”YHOO”,”yprop_name”:”Yahoo!”,”yprop_url”:”http://www.yahoo.com/”}};YAHOO.Shortcuts.annotationSet['lw_1201607321_1']={“text”:”Stanford”,”weight”:0.25,”type”:["shortcuts:/us/instance/organization/school/higher_education"],”category”:["ORGANIZATION"]};YAHOO.Shortcuts.annotationSet['lw_1201607321_2']={“text”:”London Business School”,”weight”:2.02413,”type”:["shortcuts:/concept"],”category”:["CONCEPT"]};I started this blog as I finished the MBA to document my transition from a graduate to a professional. Professional what? I’m not sure. Right now it’s a marketer working for Yahoo! Allow me to think out loud for a couple of minutes. Last week I was listening to a great podcast [...]

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Random thoughts and the inspiration behind them

Three things I’m thinking about today: 1. It’s kind of crazy that if you build an exceptional brand that gets engrained into people, it’s hard for a competitor to overtake you, no matter how much better the experience is. Inspiration: the fact that Mapquest still dominates the US mapping market 2. Investment into public transport [...]

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Taba, Egypt and Petra, Jordan

As regular readers and friends may know the wife and I spent 7 days by the Red Sea just after Christmas and over New Years. The holiday was a veg out, lie by the beach, get some rays time holiday and we did just that. The bad – although the hotel promised wifi the connection [...]

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My resolve for 2008

Happy New Year! A week off the grid in Egypt and I’m back bigger (5 desserts a day will do that to you), browner (yes as brown as I already was it is possible for me to get darker), and better (read a good book, that will do it for you). But more on Egypt [...]

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Cruelty while holding for a call

I still have no internet at home – long story, longer post coming. While calling Orange – which sucks for service by the way – for the 18th time in 2 months, and the second time today, I was put on hold. Now Orange has a pretty good line up of songs but when they [...]

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Legalise it?

Twice in the last three days I’ve read about how legalising drugs may solve some of the world’s problems. According to William Buiter, a professor of economics at LSE wrote in a column in the FT on Friday that: “It surely makes more sense for the government to tax the poppy harvest than for the [...]

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