A word to the wise. The supposed merger between US Airways and American is a fiasco. The lowlight for me is American canceling a reservation without bothering to text, email or call me. Other flaws include inaccurate web site information, and employees who are stressed out and surly. It’s truly a shame the airlines are immune from lawsuits, and the FDA is toothless and fully captured. #Offtopic

Who knew: crocodiles can and do climb trees, and also used twigs balanced on their snout to lure birds. Apparently these facts have been well-known for some time to those who spend a lot of time around crocodiles. For those of us in Chicago, however, this is major news, albeit irrelevant to day to day life. #Offtopic

Who knew? There’s a "Luxury Law" meeting for general counsels of companies that are luxury brands. #Offtopic

The February 16, 2014 NYT includes an interesting/depressing article on NSA and friends eavesdropping on lawyers and their communications with clients. #Offtopic

An update on the post below. As of today (Monday December 30th) the phone lines at BCBS are so full that I can not even get past a fast busy signal to ask for a third insurance card. Private insurance clearly is no readier for "peak insurance" than was the Obamacare web site. ________________________________________________________________________________ More health insurance idiocy from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois. As of January 1, 2014, BCBS issued a new health insu

Nice of Apple to issue a buggy software upgrade for its computers. My secretary ran the upgrade and now her tow year old Apple desktop refuses to reboot. A quick look via Google shows lots of other people looking for help too with an upgrade problem. Will Apple and the rest of the tech world ever learn that life is not a beta test, and they should test things well before selling or issuing them? #Offtopic

After Fidelity’s absurdly bad web site performance, I’m especially open to new ideas on which brokerage firms to use to invest. So, it’s interesting to see growing press about an apparently emerging new commission-free stock broker known as Robinhood. Some further background is here, from last spring. Imagine how great it would be if this and other new upstart firms were to force exchanges to change the ridiculous Regulation T rules and require instant closing of trades for r

The Obamacare web site looks great when compared to Fidelity’s web site. Not once but twice, Fidelity’s computer systems have failed and destroyed my newly-created 401(k) account. Once was by phone – a month or so ago. Fidelity’s person did the account creation from information I gave them by phone. They claimed the account was all set up, but it never could be activated and disappeared despite various emails to "the help desk." Tonight I went online and created a new accoun

A wonderful, biting post by the Epicurean Dealmaker as to the life and fate of young investment bankers. Young lawyers no doubt could learn from and enjoy an equally biting commentary. #Offtopic

A plea from a father in Spain is a good impetus for another post on the critical needs for bone marrow donations to aid persons facing cancer. The short version of the story is that bone marrow cells contain numerous stem cells for white, red and other forms of blood cells. Transplants of bone marrow cells are key for many persons facing first time cancers, and are likewise key for many people facing relapses after their tumors mutate or move out of an indolent state. Bone ma

Frequent readers have seen several "off topic" posts ripping Verizon’s lousy 4G service. Happily, those are at an end – I just switched to TMobile. The final straw was inability to efficiently download information to my Ipad at the San Jose, CA airport. Yep, right at the airport of Silicon Valley, the Verizon service was terrible. So, I went looking for better, and here’s what I found. (Apparently many others also are frustrated – I learned later that TMobile had a record qu

Dying while asleep is usually viewed as a peaceful end to life. But that’s not always true. Not so long, a man in Florida died asleep in his bed when his home was swallowed by a sinkhole. Now comes news of a Brazilian man dying when a cow crashed through the asbestos-cement roof of his home and fell on the sleeping man and his wife. The roof joined to a hillside, and the cow apparently moved off the hill and onto the roof. #Offtopic

Dilbert provides valuable "context" on management books. #Offtopic

"Hawkey day" in Chicago. Red is everywhere as Chicagoans of all kinds and ages are out to celebrate the Blackhawk’s winning the Stanley Cup. The series with Boston was great, and the ending unreal. City pride is high, as illustrated by hockey helmets adorning the lions that welcome visitors to The Art Institute. One fan held up a clever sign, thanking the team for the "Best 17 seconds of my life." To celebrate, here’s another world-class Chicago talent, Buddy Guy, covering S

Investing in a new Verizon Jetpack 4G modem in like investing in stocks – some days are good, and some days (and locations) are awful. Of late, awful performance by Verizon is dominating. Time and again, Chrome is unable to connect to the Internet. But for some reason, Verizon’s ads do not mention the volume of failures. We live in an age of increasing data and quantitative analysis. Perhaps some day we will have nudges, regulation or legislation that will cause/force wireles

From the WSJ this morning, the story behind the iconic photo of 1 man and 4 tanks in Tiananmen Square. #Offtopic

"Return of the Hero" is a moving and pointed Memorial Day story about an amazing woman in war and in death. The story is from a wonderful blog: Pulse – Voices from the Heart of Medicine. #Offtopic

Great graphics can communicate so much information. For anyone interested in debates about corporate tax rate, the NYT has a great online infographic on effective tax rates. It also can be rearranged to show effective tax rates by industry. #Offtopic

Happy Friday. A new post by the Epicurean Dealmaker runs a skewer through pretty much every part of the media coverage of and the substantive issues related to JP Morgan Chase leadership and Jamie Dimon. Two excerpts follow to tempt you to click here and read it all: "Seriously, folks, the brouhaha surrounding the upcoming nonbinding shareholder vote to separate the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer roles at J.P. Morgan is getting a bit silly. People are marshaling all sor

From the Tuesday April 9 entry from the Visual Thesaurus – Word of the Day "Well I Swear! Word of the Day: perjury The -jury part of today’s word is from the same source as the word jury but it’s pretty hard to get at the meaning by composition. Jury is ultimately from a Latin verb that means "swear," and the per- bit, in this case, means "beyond the limits." So perjury is beyond the limits of swearing, when the swearing is the kind where you’re supposed to be telling the tru