Today I get to do my twenty-first straight day of radiation treatment. Don’t feel sorry for me at all, this is my fortunate opportunity to save my sight by deactivating a slow growing benign tumor in my brain which is dangerously close to my optic nerve. The proximity to the nerve is the reason that the surgeon who operated on me two years ago left the remnant of the tumor. It was just too close, even for the most skilled surgeon, to remove the whole thing. I have been doing the radiation at around noon, which is the ideal time…
Author: Lloyd Graff
The tariffs being imposed by the Trump administration on foreign steel and aluminum are an intriguing bargaining chip from a macro economic standpoint, but a pain in the ass for most shops trying to turn metal into profit versus competitors across the globe. For nimble companies with the skill and patience to file the paperwork for exclusions, the tariffs may become a competitive advantage against the folks who just call Central Steel and grit their teeth. For those firms whose primary added value comes from intellectual property the added raw material cost will be immaterial. This is a situation where…
I have lost 32 pounds over the last four months, and I am stunned. It has not been that hard to do once I decided it was something I truly wanted to do. Tony Robins says the “WHY” question is the most important, and I agree. If you ask yourself, “why do I want to lose weight?” and you answer, “I want to feel better and live longer,” the how will make itself apparent. In my case the why and how questions became salient during a doctor’s visit in which my blood pressure reading was on the wrong side of…
The conventional wisdom is that “I need employees, but I can’t find them.” This seems odd to me. I’ve been hearing the same lament for so many years and it still does not ring true. In a workforce of 161 million people in the U.S. with millions of ambitious, bright, stable people there are always going to be folks who want to make a change to improve their lot. Allow me to throw out a few ideas that may kindle a new approach to finding productive employees or fresh employment opportunities. Stop looking in all the old familiar places. Don’t…
Making sense about the economy today. As I travel the 15 minutes from my home to work I see four vacant strip malls. Maybe a restaurant still survives and a dry cleaner, but mostly I see vacant space, empty parking lots and for rent signs. Retail is dying out in my area of Chicago suburbia. It appears the space will be empty indefinitely as Amazon remakes retail. Food delivery will expand as people get used to ordering their asparagus from photos. Prepared food will continue to grow in popularity from restaurants and specialty retail shops. There is an opportunity for…
Lloyd and Noah Graff are on vacation this week. Here is a favorite Swarfblog from the archive. Phone Call to the Dead September 29, 2016 This American Life on NPR routinely does amazing stories on radio. The program, hosted by Ira Glass, recently had this piece that really struck me. In 2010 a man named Itaru from the town of Otsuchi, Japan, was having a hard time dealing with the loss of his cousin. He decided to install a phone booth with an old rotary dial phone on the grass in his backyard where he could go to communicate with…
Today is the beginning of a new year for me. The Chicago Cubs begin spring training in Mesa, Arizona. Since the Cubs lost to the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series last October I’ve been longing for this day – the beginning of the beginning of the season. I need these days to look forward to. I need an excuse to restart, reboot, begin to begin. I need the psychological energy that a relaunch provides. The winter slog of Chicago weather is reaching its nadir. We had 20” of snow over the weekend, and I woke up to stalactites…
Janet Yellen has been dumped into the Brookings Think Tank by Donald Trump. Should we care? Yes. For years, she resisted her traditional banker type peers on the Fed and kept interest rates very low by traditional standards. The old bankers were peeved because higher interest rates usually mean bigger profits for lenders. Janet Yellen was no silk-stocking blueblood by upbringing. Her father was a doctor whose patients were primarily dockworkers living in the poor Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn. Yellen’s bias has always been towards economic growth and she advocated for accommodative low interest rates that probably contributed to…
Over the course of one week I will have had the opportunity to watch two of the greatest athletes of all time compete at the highest level at an age when they should have been long retired. Last week Roger Federer won his twentieth Grand Slam tennis title, the Australian Open, at 36 years old. This Sunday Tom Brady of the New England Patriots goes for his sixth Super Bowl win at age 40. I find interesting parallels between the two men and their careers. Federer’s success was waning in his early thirties. Novak Djokovic became the dominant player in men’s…
The use of advertising slogans must be as old as advertising itself. But if you are like me, most slogans are immediately forgotten if they were ever remembered in the first place. But what if you take note of a slogan because it offends you. I thought of this a couple of days ago watching the new Gillette ad, which emphasizes the prowess of American manufacturing and even showed a man working at what appeared to be a Bridgeport mill. And then the slick TV ad ended with the hackneyed old Gillette slogan “the best a man can get.” It…