TGIF: Back to Blogging

Last week, I was able to finally kick the rust off the ol’ blog, give it a crank, and get the engine started back up. It had been a while.

There were lots of ready excuses to not blog over the last couple of months: I had a consulting gig going strong, the kids were “learning from home” which was a hoot, and I was a bit thin on topics appropriate for a global pandemic.

But the gig is over, the kids have settled into their summer routines, and perpetual pandemic is everyone’s new normal. So let’s resume cobbling together some random thoughts with little structure, or, as some call it, “writing.”

Book Club!

Against all odds, our little book club is thriving. Since I read many a book each year, my idea was to use something I was already doing to help produce some posts. By combining my reviews with others, folks would get a variety of perspectives, and I might be led to some new books. Plus I’d become buddies for life with my fellow reviewers.

You can read our latest review of Atomic Habits by James Clear here. We’ve previously reviewed American Kingpin (story of the guy who founded the Silk Road drug marketplace) and Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell.

We’ve already seen exponential growth in members (from 2 to 4…), and we’ve got another book lined up: Robert Shiller’s Narrative Economics.

Everyone writes the review before they see the others’, so you’ve got to form and defend a point of view knowing it’ll be scrutinized. That is rather novel nowadays; I’m enjoying having an objective and respectful (so far…) debate with others, and it’s giving me some welcome mental exercise.

We Have a Winner

I like the taste of beer.

But in hot summer months, I risk drinking beer when I’m thirsty. 

So I’ve started trifling with zero alcohol beer, which for much of its history has tasted just as delicious as it sounds. 

Our local food jobber has stocked Anheuser-Busch’s Busch NA (“Non-Alcohol”) for some time. While I recognize the limits of my palate, I’m happy to report it’s not bad, and it definitely tastes beer-ish.

But my store just added another AB option, so I had to do a comparison.

Budweiser Zero wins the challenge, and it’s getting very close to being indistinguishable from a regular light American lager. (Beer snobs: please insert your joke here about that meaning it tastes like water or pee or whatever. I’ll wait.) It won’t completely replace my beer consumption, but it’s a clever trick to keep my alcohol intake minimal. It also costs as much as regular Budweiser (without having any alcohol tax), so AB must be making a killing. Everyone wins!

The Market for President

Oh my. We have a horse race after all. 

Hillary Clinton’s campaign seemed to be, “I’m not Donald Trump.”

Joe Biden, ever the cunning strategist, has apparently decided to go with, “I’m not Donald Trump. P.S. I’m also not Hillary Clinton.” Let’s see how that strategy is working:

While Biden is our current favorite, the race is nowhere near done. For reference, Clinton was dominating the odds in June 2016 (her lead narrowed sharply closer to the election, showing that gamblers may be smarter than pollsters). Stay tuned!

Happy Friday everyone!