I’ll tell you a story now. The story of a generation that gets easily overlooked and technically isn’t even a generation at all. Why does it get snubbed? Because it’s a fortunate generation, a generation of great promise, ambitions and privilege. There’s a tendency not to think about people [more]

Alas, all the complaints about the fast life! Is it really the most pressing issue of our time? Many want to make us believe so. Countless books and articles are being written on the subject – about exhaustion, fatigue, burnouts and the unbearable pressures of the performance-oriented society. [more]

I pity history. It’s the most abused and mistreated subject matter there is. It doesn’t help that history is a soft science that can’t rely on axioms, mathematical proofs and systems of equations to convey anything close to what we like to call truth. And it certainly doesn’t [more]

Pundits and peers are giving Matthew McConaughey a hard time for his rambling, incoherent acceptance speech at Saturday’s Screen Actors Guild awards. The web community is no less vitriolic. McConaughey’s agitated 2.5 minute monologue about thespian virtues and space travel to Neptune instantly went viral and will be used [more]

If design were a form of government, it would be an authoritarian dictatorship. If it were a religion, it would be a monotheistic, intolerant one. If it were a film character, it would be Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from “Full Metal Jacket”. In short: design rules by an iron [more]

Whenever I hear someone exclaim enthusiastically: “There’s an app for that!”, I go a little ballistic inside. Yes, there very likely is an app for it – and that is exactly what’s fundamentally wrong with the concept of “developer-friendly” software platforms like iOS or Android. They’re supposed to [more]

Friday night I went to a new club that goes by the ominous name of “Kauz”, which translates into “oddball” or “little owl”. I didn’t encounter any birds (nor anyone resembling Athena, for that matter) but I sure did run into some oddballs. And they make for a [more]

Some people claim that friendship can withstand long spells of not being in touch. Those people obviously have no idea (and no friends). If you can’t spare the effort, it’s nothing short of insulting to resort to the baseless notion that friendship transcends time and space. It’s a [more]

I like lists – best-of lists, worst-of lists, year-end lists, rich lists, breakup lists, auction record lists, box office charts, you name it. Yes, they’re flawed – they’re judgmental, intransparent, self-serving and often lack objectively verifiable criteria. But they put my mind at ease, at least for a moment, by [more]

You can position yourself and build a reputation in basically three different ways: 1) you go mainstream and espouse average opinions, the safest and most popular choice but a recipe for mediocrity. 2) You follow your own instincts and convictions, regardless of what others say. That can be [more]

We live in the age of specialization and highly trained experts. It’s the end result of a lasting trend that began with the division of labor in the industrialization period, which spawned all sorts of management practices in manufacturing (think Toyota’s car plants and conveyor belts) and ultimately [more]

As I tried to look up the viewing rate of the latest installment of “The Bachelor”, the massively popular reality show about a highly eligible single man choosing his dream girl by way of an elaborate scheme of natural selection, I was directed to an unlikely website thus [more]

There is probably no contrast between two discrete time intervals as stark as the one separating the pre-Christmas from the post-Christmas period. It’s as if, on Christmas eve, someone flicks a switch and the city goes into hibernation, giving way to a virtual dead zone of human inactivity. That [more]

This week my Alma Mater, the University of St. Gallen, announced that Alumnus Joe Ackermann, the former chairman of Deutsche Bank, would sponsor a new chair for “Business Economics and Public Policy”. On 29 September, my other Alma Mater, Yale University, announced the largest donation ever received in [more]

Wednesday’s Fed meeting, above all, drove home one message: economics and finance are more publicized, yet less understood than ever. In the run up to the decision, the media were all over the issue, spilling black ink by the gallons on front pages, op-eds and headlines. It wasn’t [more]

I had planned on writing something else. In fact, I had already started writing something else. But, alas, fate intervened. In this instance, I had to make a judgment call. I choose a very recent first-hand experience over a carefully laid out argument on a more serious subject. [more]

Diehard pessimists, critics of civilization and fear-mongers like to claim that reality is crueler and more depraved than the darkest corners of human imagination. I always thought that was unnecessarily apocalyptic. First of all, the statement is based on flawed logic. By definition, any outcome of human action is rooted [more]

Speaking of universal truth and the pop culture binge reminds me of a particular achievement of creative ingenuity that miraculously manages to combine both in a compelling fashion. It is firmly ensconced in the mainstream, yet unrelenting in its scathing critique of the same. It is crass and [more]

“Classic” has become a ubiquitous adjective. While it’s supposed to identify something as having enduring value and merit beyond its time, it is now routinely accorded to anything that’s not quite new. At least not old enough for it to have proved its worth over a significant period [more]

It’s rare that I manage to arrange a spontaneous meet with someone. I barely dare ask my friends anymore because the probability of success is so low. So when it actually works out, it’s unequivocally a positive surprise. Wednesday night was one of those surprises. I didn’t have [more]

It’s remarkable how effortlessly people develop a sense of community. Not hard at all, especially if you’re a business traveller stranded at the airport. As I write this, I sit in Terminal D of Zurich International Airport. I got up at 5:45 to catch the 8:20 flight to [more]

Judging by the abundance of animal-related posts on Buzzfeed, one has to conclude that “Puppies That Make Your Heart Melt” and “Dogs That are Not OK With Sweater Weather” are high up in the public interest. While the obsession with the “human touch” makes crime, violence, extravagance, scandal, [more]

I’m an unabashed driving enthusiast. Not only do I find the act of driving extremely calming. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it’s also a good use of my time. Proponents of public transport (of which there are many in Switzerland who extol its virtues with messianic zeal) often augment [more]

We’re all doing great. Excellent, even! If worse comes to worse, we’re doing pretty decent. That’s the disease of the Western hemisphere. You can (and probably will) call me cynical, but think about it – unless you’re a shrink, when is the last time that you heard someone [more]

Every morning when starting up my Bloomberg terminal, I am greeted by a quote of the day. Today it read: “Measure not the work until the day’s out and the labor done”, courtesy of a certain Elizabeth Barrett Browning (who isn’t familiar, I must admit). Duh. Truisms leave [more]

Last Saturday around noon my old friend LA called me out of the blue. He was in town for the weekend and wanted to catch up. As is often the case with LA, there was a certain urgency to his proposition. Indeed, when I picked him up in [more]