I just posted something about Madoff and Ponzi schemes six days ago and then this morning I awoke to the news that Madoff had died at the age of 82. He spent the last 11 years in prison for operating a multi-decade $64 billion Ponzi scheme. His original sentence was for 150 years. The New... Continue Reading →
A Hyper-bad Idea at the Hyper Local Level
I'm not sure why I was thinking about this. Maybe it was because I was talking to some friends about how serious the world of kids baseball has gotten and maybe because I was just reading some news about the latest nonsense in corporate strategy in some publication, but this story popped into my head.... Continue Reading →
Miracle Men and Exclusivity: Key Elements of the Ponzi Scheme
Is it not odd the way people are lured into frauds with the simple bait of exclusivity and Miracle Men. This idea came from a conversation with a friend about marketing and how active you need to be on line. I remarked that it was interesting that some of the biggest frauds of the last... Continue Reading →
Black Eyes and Tequila: Or The World is Hard Enough
So I was working the night shift over the weekend and glad for it because I really didn't want to deal with any people and their crud because I'm tired -- tired mentally, emotionally and physically. I lost a good friend suddenly and that's been the worst part of this whole year. I keep thinking... Continue Reading →
The Decline of U.S. Civilization in Comments
When some Canadian historian a few hundred years from now turns his or her hand to writing a definitive work on why so much of the continent below the 49th Parallel has become a smoldering wasteland, surely that historian will point to the comments sections of newspapers as the gateway to the eventual demise of... Continue Reading →
Coming soon: Black Eyes and Tequila
I've had some trouble writing a good blog this week, partly because I'm really invested in my current manuscript and partly because, like just about everyone else in the world, I'm pretty tired and beat down right now. I won't bore you with my complaints, at least not today. I'm not quite so desperate for... Continue Reading →
The River Changes but an Ocean Endures
You cannot step twice into the same river.Heraclitus 535 - 475 B.C. That is how I always remember this quote, probably because I read the Plato version of it. I also understood it to mean that because the river is ever flowing, the river is ever changing, so even if you step into the river... Continue Reading →
Hustled on the Side
In my previous writing life I was a reporter and one of my areas of focus was the economy and the job market. Now there are a lot of ways you can approach that subject, but since I was writing for the Connecticut Post and a couple other papers, I liked to remember that I... Continue Reading →
It’s a mystery…
Ok back in 1998, I saw the movie Saving Private Ryan and I thought, wow, that's one of the best movies I've ever seen. Then they announced during the Academy Awards that a movie called Shakespeare in Love won and I couldn't believe it. Don't get me wrong, I love Shakespeare. When I'm particularly down... Continue Reading →
Treasure Hunting and Fishing for Books
Photo by Mark Cruzat on Pexels.com On trips to the bookstore or the library, my mother would release us, my brother and I, like a Pirate Captain telling her crew to find lost treasure on an island. We would move into the stacks or towards the shelves of fiction in something just short of a... Continue Reading →
Robert Varnon -- R.D. Varnon 