My father spent the past weekend with us in Austin. On Friday morning, my wife and I drove to his west Houston senior community and picked him up. We then returned along the same route back to Austin arriving mid-afternoon. The Austin to west Houston 154-mile drive along good roads takes about 2.5 …
Deep Freeze
My wife and I moved to Austin in 2014 after living in London (UK) for over four years. When I told my European friends we were moving to Austin, they spoke of the hot Texas summers and mild winters. We looked forward to more temperate winters and later purchased a condo on Vancouver Island (Canada) …
Bitcoin
I took a seminary course titled The Theology of Money. It fulfilled a required credit that I needed to graduate, and I was curious about the topic since I have an MBA. We learned basic macroeconomics, researched Scripture about money, and read both conservative and liberal Christian economic …
Citizenship
I worship at a central Austin Methodist church that is almost 100% Caucasian. A few years ago, a new pastor, Daesub, joined the church staff. He is South Korean and traveled to the United States to attend university. He later attended a Methodist seminary and became an elder in the UMC. Before being …
Contrarians
While serving on a non-profit investment committee, the outside investment service they employed proposed another energy related investment that had previously underperformed. Utilizing my decades of professional experience in energy, I rebutted several of their premises and put forward a different …
Empiricism
Last Wednesday, I was home and working upstairs. I came downstairs for lunch, was glancing at news reports on my iPad, and saw that the US Congress was in session. The Vice President opened the Electoral College ballets, and our elected representatives were due to vote on acceptance. Given the …
Stände
In October 2016, my wife and I flew to Frankfurt, Germany, rented a car, and picked up her aunt and uncle at a hotel outside the city. We drove through central and eastern Germany on a tour of Martin Luther (1483-1546) historical sites. We visited Worms Cathedral where Luther stood before the …
Joy
All my fellow seminary students were required to take a course in World Religions. I looked forward to this course as I knew little about other religions. It was taught by Dr. Whitney Bodman, Associate Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion. He is an expert in Islamic Studies and his lectures …
The Psychology of Money
Most people assume that financial traders take enormous bets in the marketplace. While there are individuals and companies that do take large financial risks, I worked for a large energy trading company and our trading philosophy was risk minimization. Our trading portfolio was highly diversified …
Cancelling Christmas
“Bah, humbug!” When we hear these words, we immediately think of Ebenezer Scrooge, Dicken’s protagonist in A Christmas Carol, first published in London during 1843. Scrooge was a miserly workaholic who hated Christmas: “If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on …