Tom White

Like a raging river, information courses along faster than ever before.The maelstrom will never cease. In fact, her gales will blow harder, her raindrops grow fatter with the bits and bytes that make up our digital deluge.We have too few hours to comb through too much information. Not to mention, it takes real, hard, honest work to separate the... See more

It’s no wonder that a favorite book of mine is titled: Investing: The Last Liberal Art. Though worth a read in full (and a good number of routine rereads at that), the below quote captures the book’s overarching thesis:[E]ach discipline entwines with, and in the process strengthens, every other. From each discipline, the thoughtful person draws... See more

  Readers crave lessons; aspiring diplomats can learn from them; old hands can quibble with them. Cooper calls them “maxims.” One is particularly powerful – and painful. It comes from Robert McNamara and his reflections on Vietnam written in 1995. It is a searing indictment as we ponder the calamity in Afghanistan. It sums up a lot of Cooper’s own... See more

I mention the above because via writing online (how else?!) I met writer, podcaster, and cryptophile extraordinaire Jason Levin who kindly invited me to discuss the interesting times in which we find ourselves.Amongst other things, we explore:Friendship before, during, and after collegeThe origins of White NoiseForthcoming White Noise pieces"Ode to... See more

Jim Collins originally used the Flywheel as a metaphor in Good To Great:Picture a huge, heavy flywheel — a massive metal disk mounted horizontally on an axle, about 30 feet in diameter, 2 feet thick, and weighing about 5,000 pounds. Now imagine your task is to get the flywheel rotating on the axle as fast and long as possible.Pushing with great... See more