Tidbits & Quotes: March 2005

But tonight, he's pitching against time, he's pitching against the future, against age, against ending. Tonight, he will make the fateful walk to the loneliest spot in the world, the pitching mound at Yankee Stadium, to push the sun back into the sky and give us one more day of summer.

I viewed the selection of a flight provider as akin to picking a brain surgeon: you simply want the best. (Let someone else experiment with the low bidder.)

... a hypothetical tale about an employee who asked his boss for permission to hire an assistant. The employee assumed that adding $20,000 to the annual payroll would be inconsequential. But his boss told him the proposal should be evaluated as a $3 million decision, given that an additional person would probably cost at least that amount over his lifetime, factoring in raises, benefits and other expenses (more people, more toilet paper). And unless the company fell on very hard times, the employee added would be unlikely to be dismissed, however marginal his contribution to the business.

... illustrates the importance of a guideline – stay with simple propositions – that we usually apply in investments as well as operations. If only one variable is key to a decision, and the variable has a 90% chance of going your way, the chance for a successful outcome is obviously 90%. But if ten independent variables need to break favorably for a successful result, and each has a 90% probability of success, the likelihood of having a winner is only 35%. ... Since a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, it makes sense to look for – if you’ll excuse an oxymoron – mono-linked chains.

It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

You have a lifetime to work, but children are only young once.

We are not retreating - we are advancing in another direction.

Work

AH, blessedness of work! the aimless mind,
Left to pursue at will its fancies wild,
Returns at length, like some play-wearied child,
Unto its labor’s knee, and leaves behind
Its little games, and learns to soothe its blind
Wide longings in the sweet tranquillity
Of limited tasks, whose mild successions wind
In pauseless waves unto the distant sea;
For blank infinity is cold as ice,
And drear the void of space unsown with stars,
And dolorous the barren line of shore;
Therefore it was with lover-like device
This lower world was built, through whose cleft bars
The limitless sun of Truth shines more and more.

Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.