7gen Bloc

In the August 5, 2007 New York Times Book review of Robert H. Frank’s new book Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class, reviewer Daniel Gross notes: Knowing that Steve Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group made almost $400 million last year, or that he spent $3 million last February on his 60th-birthday party, doesn’t simply make the typical American green with envy, and hence unhappy. Rather, Frank argues, the problem is that extreme consumption — at which Schwarzman excels — helps shape norms for the whole society, not just his fellow plutocrats.

"My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves & the quality of their knowledge too seriously & those who don’t have the guts to sometimes say: I don’t know.... (You may not be able to change the world but can at least get some entertainment & make a living out of the epistemic arrogance of the human race)." ―Nassim Nicholas Taleb

ScienceMan sent me a great article this morning on bisphenol-A. As he said in his e-mail, “It confirms our worst fears about the chemical, the chemical industry, and our regulatory system.” Now right away I know what everyone’s thinking… “Bisphenol what? Oh good lord… Spare me. I can’t even pronounce it let alone summon the necessary gumption to read an entire article about all this crap. Please just shoot me first.”

A new report released by Goldman Sachs on July 5th found that companies that are considered leaders in environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies are also leading the pack in stock market performance—by an average of 25 percent. That’s right – 25%, a margin so huge as to be almost hard to believe, but considering the source I’ll assume they did the math right.