• FAMILY AND BUSINESS LEADERS WHO ARE MOST EFFECTIVE at optimal wealth protection and profitability with minimal risk generally utilize independent experts to focus and counsel on strategic and longer-term issues to provide input for broad and reality-based perspective. This allows decision-makers to best avoid ‘not knowing what they don’t know’ and best ensure that prudent alternatives for economic, financial, taxation and family or team cohesion are considered before critical steps get taken. DCG has decades of expertise in providing such counsel. Call us before your reality check bounces!
  • CULTURE EVOLVES ON A HUMAN GENERATIONAL BASIS. “Over the past five centuries, Anglo-American society has entered a new era every two decades or so, where people change how they feel about themselves, the culture, nation and future” and every four generations (80 to 100 years) has historically cycled a “seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy and destruction.” The 1st Turning is an “upbeat era of institutions and weakening individualism, when a new civic order implants and the old values regime decays” – typically after victory over some foreign threat (e.g. WWII). The 2nd Turning is “an awakening, a passionate era of spiritual upheaval, when civic order comes under attack” provoked by aggressive moralism with culture wars raging over immigration, substance abuse, etc. (viz. ‘the 60s’). The 3rd generational Turning is “an unraveling, a downcast era of strengthening individualism and weakening institutions, when old civic order decays with hostility toward the corruption of civic life, while a new crop of young adults are without allegiance, all feeling as if they’re drifting toward a cataclysm.” The 4th Turning is “a crisis – a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of old civic order with a new one” and the very survival of the nation feels at stake. A well-documented and compelling book written 20 years ago very closely forecasted our current state of affairs, projecting the likelihood that “sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression & WWII,” effectively generating a revolution in some capacity. Very worth reading:  [THE FOURTH TURNING – W.Strauss & N.Howe]
  • MORE BIG TECHNOLOGY JUMPS: (1) Internet connection without battery power. A prototype disposable contact lens can “communicate and power itself by harvesting and recycling signals from Wi-Fi devices or radio/TV stations.” Researchers at University of Washington have also developed a “skin patch that can sense temperature & respiration, and a concert poster that broadcasts snippets of music over FM radio.” The technology is called “backscatter.” [THE WEEK – Nov 11, 16]   (2) The Hyperloop concept is moving forward with successful firing of a sled down an open test track using electromagnetic force. The Elon Musk conceived project is being developed in Dubai with a plan to connect a 100-mile stretch between two cities through a tubular transport system that can propel vehicles atop a thin cushion of air in twelve minutes.  [MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW – Nov 9, 16]  (3) Private communication between computers: Artificial Intelligence research at Google has taught computers how to “create their own encryption techniques without human assistance. Computers will one day be able to talk to one another in ways that humans –or other computers – can’t crack.”   [THE WEEK – Nov 18, 16]
  • PTSD – POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER – relates to the psychological effects of being involved as victim or witness in a traumatic event. It often affects military personnel, but can result from violent crime, serious accident or natural disasters; with children and young adults, PTSD can also stem from abuse or bullying. Symptoms include anxiety, sleeping and/or eating problems, ‘flashbacks’ and fear of “reliving the event.” Newest research at Stanford University School of Medicine, involving 9 to 17 year olds, found that “a part of the brain linked to emotions & empathy is changed by exposure to acute long-term stress which plays a key role in development of PTSD… and that girls who develop PTSD may actually be suffering from a faster than normal ageing of the brain area which processes feelings and pain.”  [BBC.COM – Nov 12, 16]

      There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”   – Isaac Asimov

      Positively astonishing simple-card tricks by David Blaine – trick #3 is unbelievable:  https://biggeekdad.com/2016/11/simple-card-tricks/