Lake Forest: more gannets and no more alarms; Daniel Kahneman; Luis de Camoes

 

Gannets rule.  But you already knew that.  The photo above won first prize in the World Nature Photography competition.  It was taken off Scotland by Tracy Lund who was out on a small boat when gannets started diving.  She lowered her camera in a waterproof housing over the side. 

While we probably will set alarms again from time to time, this is Carol’s last day of work and she will never again set an alarm to wake up to go to the office.  This is momentous.  A life changing experience that some of you have had and most of you will and I have not.  I last held what is called a ‘real job’ fifty years ago and can attest that having control of your own time is wonderful, if you can fill it purposely and enjoyably.  Carol is ending a successful forty year career as an architect.  She tells me she is ready, but that she feels this morning as though she is stepping off a cliff.  I will help her fall with grace and land safely.

There is an outstanding article in the WALL STREET JOURNAL about Daniel Kahneman, the Noble Prize winning economist who recently died.  I did not know of him, but he re-enforces some of my own observations.  I read WSJ through my subscription to Apple News+ and so cannot give you the link.  I checked and the WSJ site will not let you read the article without a subscription, but here are two key segments.

Before the pioneering work done by Kahneman and his research partner, Amos Tversky, who died in 1996, economists had assumed that people were “rational”, meaning we are self-interested, use all available information to make unbiased decisions, and our preferences are consistent.  Kahneman and Tversky showed that’s nonsense.

In other words we are not homo sapiens.

Danny also insisted that studying the pitfalls and paradoxes of the human mind didn’t make him any better at problem solving than anybody else:  ‘‘I’m just better at recognizing my mistakes after I make them.’’  

For all his knowledge of how foolish investors can be, Danny didn’t try to outsmart the market.  “I don’t try to be clever at all,”  he told me.  Most of his money was in index funds.  (So is ours.)  “All of us would be better investors if we just made fewer decisions.”

An intelligent and interesting man.  Read the article or about him if you can.

A worthwhile result of my being cabin bound is that I have been reading even more than usual.  A few days ago I finished the BEING ALIVE anthology and so needed to find another book of Western poetry.  I decided to reread Luis de Camoes THE LUSIADS for what will be my third or fourth time.  It was a fortunate choice. 

The poem relates Vasco de Gama’s voyage to India and a reader benefits from knowing some Portuguese history which I do.

Camoes was himself in India and China for seventeen years, perhaps banished after a duel.  His return from The East took almost three years and included his leaping from a sinking ship with nothing but the manuscript of what would become THE LUSIADS.

He finally made it back to Lisbon in 1570.  THE LUSIADS was published two years later and he was given a tiny royal pension for ‘the adequacy of the book he wrote on foreign matters’.

He died in poverty in 1580 at age 55 or 56.  The exact date of his birth is not known

My Kindle edition translated by Landeg White is very readable and is bringing me great pleasure.  My aged spirit still thirsts for the epic.