Manny Kagan

Cheers,

Like Fish in the Water

You probably heard the expression “Like fish in the water”, which means the condition most of us are in, the comfort zone (regardless of our circumstances). And what happens when the fish is taken out of its familiar environment, the water? Some people did just that and as a result, we have companies like Microsoft, Google, Tesla and others.

According to the article in “Scientific American”, this process started 375 million years ago. At that time there was some type of fish, who for whatever reasons, decided to get out. At least this is one of the scientific explanations of how fish evolved into monkeys, and they, in turn, into us – Homo Sapiens, which in Latin means “wise man”.

I heard a story about one of these wise men, who owned fish from the ocean. He kept it in a fish tank, and every day had to drive to the ocean to replace water. Since he was a wise man, he decided to teach his fish to live in the tap water, and after he succeeded, he taught the fish to live without water, and after he succeeded, he trained the fish to walk, and after he succeeded he took the fish on the leash for a walk by the koi fish pond. It was after the rain. The fish slipped, fell into the pond and drowned. Of course, this is a joke. Koi are colorful fish of the Amur carp breeds, which usually can be found in the water gardens, where I encountered them in Maui. You can read more of my jokes in my latest book “42 Encounters with Laughter”.

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Cheers,

What Is Noise?

We are all surrounded by a lot of information and misinformation. As a result, many of us make decisions based on our gut feelings; which can lead to devastating results, as I found out in the book titled “Noise. A Flaw in Human Judgement”. The author, Daniel Kahneman who won the Nobel Prize in 2002 in Economics, and the 2013 President Medal of Freedom, joined forces with two brilliant researchers — Professor Oliver Sibony and Professor Cass R. Sunstein.

They call “noise” the way people make errors in judgments. Among many examples, are decisions made by the judges, who for the same crime can send a person to prison for 3 years or 13 years. Their decisions seemed influenced by the day of the week and depended on if their sports team won or lost the game over the weekend. Or the time of day – before the lunch or after.

When you read the book, you will learn that “noise” can have an effect on many aspects of our lives. Therefore, please be sure to check the validity of the sources of the information you are using. Sometimes “the noise” can be just shared gossip and not only among children.

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Cheers,

Old and New

I visited a client recently, who owns a building that was built in 1904, and survived the 1906 earthquake. Originally it was built as two units, Edwardian style. There is a separate carriage house in the backyard, which was used for housing horses. Presently, the main building changed from the original design. It is divided into five units plus a rental unit in the back.

In San Francisco, many buildings’ original design has changed. Some of them are under historic preservation and cannot be demolished unless of course, the new building will preserve the façade of the old one. This is exactly what happened to four one-story buildings on Market Street, across from Zuni Café. When we went for dinner there recently, I noticed that the old buildings were gone, to be replaced by a huge new high-rise with the fake old façade. Progress is marching on. However, we do not have to forget about the past. Not all buildings can be destroyed.

During our recent trip to the Gold County, we encountered three buildings which were built about 170 years ago.

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Cheers,

History Lessons

Through the years I’ve read and listened to quite a few books written by Bill Bryson; most of them about travel. Therefore, I was intrigued by the title, “A Short History of Nearly Everything”. After many hours of listening to the detailed accounts of how our world was created, based on his thorough review of every possible source, my feeling was how little “experts” really knew.

For example, the age of our earth had many estimates through the years. From 75,000 years to the current estimate 4,543 billion, plus or minus about 50 million years. The same goes for the history of the dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. In spite of many speculations, no one really knows how they disappeared.

While listening, from time to time my thoughts were directed to the process of the account of Creation, as it appeared in the Torah. Tomorrow, Saturday, October 2^nd starts a new cycle of reading Genesis, where it is written that the process took six periods called days. This corresponds to the evolutionary epochs, described by science. During many years, many large animals and birds have become extinct for various reasons, while small birds like hummingbirds survived, being around for about 42 million years. I was fortunate to capture three images of one bird in our neighborhood.

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