After our meet-and-greet, the Oracle of Oil sat down to answer a few questions on camera:
And then completely unprompted, he added:
When you’re a billionaire, you don’t need a Blackberry
T. Boone Pickens was just here this afternoon. There’ll be more on that later, including some video from Barbara.
But anyway, we were all talking about how he now owns 10 million shares of Yahoo but doesn’t really know what Yahoo does (he’s piggybacking on Carl Icahn’s campaign to throw out the current management). He started talking …
So what could Bernanke actually do about inflation?
At the nudging of the Schiff family, I just read through Ben Bernanke’s speech from Tuesday that generated lots of headlines because he said the word “inflation” and the word “dollar” in the same sentence. In the words of an e-mail blast I got from financial Armageddonist Peter Schiff:
Cheered by the fact that Ben Bernanke has finally
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Bosses, please replace the donuts with kiwi
News flash: work makes you fat.
What’s a desk-bound cubicle slave to do? You could needle your boss into setting up a convertible work station, like this one profiled in the Louisville Courier-Journal, but who wants to stand when you can sit? I say God gave us butts for a reason. Employer-sponsored weight-loss programs are gathering …
Confessions of a high-school cheerleader
I was probably someone you hated in high school. I wasn’t just a cheerleader; I bullied my way into the captain job as a junior, over two seniors with more experience but gentler personalities. I ruled our squad like Hitler in a miniskirt. Under my command, what started as a roundly mocked troupe of Aquanetted, Maybellined moppets won …
How bosses can go telecommuter-friendly
So you’re a manager trying to fill a key position. You’ve just met the ideal candidate: smart as heck, snappy sense of humor, exactly the skill set and experience needed for the post. You make an offer. He grins his likable grin and says: “I’d love to take this job. But I would insist on working mostly from home.”
If the notes I’m …
All women execs want is a wife
This summer, I’m going to embark on an experiment: I’m going to be my own wife. I’m going to stay home from the office. I’m going to puree baby food, walk my older kid to summer camp, maybe even plant a lame vegetable garden. I’m going to sort through our finances, make sense of our cable/Internet/phone plan, fill out all those migrainey …
How to get a job in the advertising business
My favorite soccer blog, Du Nord, is being kept up by various guest contributors while its proprietor vacations in Ingerland. In the middle of a long Sunday post by indie-musician-turned-(via an interlude in the advertising business)-landscape-architect Matt Olson, one encounters this arresting passage:
I found myself sitting in the
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E-mail vs. text: a question for young workers
I recently e-mailed our babysitter about some upcoming dates. I waited and waited for her response, but it never came—by e-mail, anyway. When I finally thought to check, there was a prompt answer waiting on my cell phone. “ive gt dance rhsl so i cant,” she’d texted. Oh. Thx anywy.
It’ll come as no particular shock to you that my …
Merrill’s David Rosenberg goes postal on the inflation conspiracy theorists
It is very fashionable these days to declare that the Consumer Price Index is wildly understating actual inflation. I’m dubious, and my dubiousness may eventually lead to some actual reporting and maybe a column, but for the moment I rely on the judgments of people named David. First there was David Leonhardt a couple weeks ago in the …
Why the Obamas’ hearts must be breaking today
This weekend, Obama supporters cheered quietly as their presidential candidate officially broke up with his church. As Steven Gray reports from Chicago on Time.com, the senator and his family resigned from Trinity United Church there after months of roiling conflict surrounding its controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright …
Long Beach and Los Angeles no longer sending out mostly empty ships
My column this week begins with this image:
The giant ships from Asia steam into the Southern California ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach laden with flat-screen TVs, flip-flops, copying machines, nail clippers, Thomas the Tank Engines and all the other necessities of modern life. They leave port a few days later loaded mainly with
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