The .Plan

More from Warren Buffett…

Bill reads many thousands of pages annually keeping up with medical advances and means of delivering help. Melinda, often with Bill along, travels the world looking at how well good intentions are being converted into good results. Life has dealt a terrible hand to literally billions of people around the world, and Bill and Melinda are bent on reducing that inequity to the extent they possibly can.

If you think about it - if your goal is to return the money to society by attacking truly major problems that don’t have a commensurate funding base - what could you find that’s better than turning to a couple of people who are young, who are ungodly bright, whose ideas have been proven, who already have shown an ability to scale it up and do it right?

You don’t get an opportunity like that ordinarily. I’m getting two people enormously successful at something, where I’ve had a chance to see what they’ve done, where I know they will keep doing it - where they’ve done it with their own money, so they’re not living in some fantasy world - and where in general I agree with their reasoning. If I’ve found the right vehicle for my goal, there’s no reason to wait.
–Warren Buffett, interviewed by Carol Loomis, Fortune, June 25, 2006

Looks like J.F. will have a busy day at work tomorrow…

Warren E. Buffett, considered the world’s second richest person, is to start in July giving away 85 percent of his stock in his company, Berkshire Hathaway, to five foundations, with most of it to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, according to transcripts and an article published on Fortune magazine’s Web site today.

…Asked if it had occurred to him of the irony that he, the second richest person in the world, was giving billions of dollars to the first richest, Mr. Buffett said, according to the Fortune report: “When you put it that way, it sounds pretty funny. But in truth, I am giving it through him, and importantly, Melinda as well, not to him.”
–Christine Hauser, “Buffett to Give Billions to Gates Charity and Others”, New York Times, June 25, 2006

Should I jump ship?

I guess meeting people on match.com is much like meeting medical students…

The first time I used Match.com, I was struck by the jampacked schedules professed by online daters. Judging by the profiles, we are all single-handedly building biotech companies, hiking Everest, and curing bird flu; naturally, we all want partners with similarly full lives. It seems our greatest collective fear isn’t that we’ll meet ax murderers or bigamists in cyberspace. It’s that we’ll meet, and be taken for, exactly what we are: people who use the Internet to find dates.

But this desire to seem busy, and to be busy, can have unintended consequences. In Patrick’s and my case, it meant we never saw each other again. I like to think that if I had been really interested, I would have postponed dinner with my mother or skipped that first-time-homebuyer’s seminar. And, yes, part of me knew that if Patrick had been really interested, he would have found a way to see me again. Perhaps our mistake was in waiting for the other person to show a strong interest first, to say, “Yes, yes, I’m dying to see you, and here’s how I’ll prove it.”

After all, for anyone who has been disappointed on a blind date, a busy schedule is a socially acceptable way to avoid future disappointment. It’s a way of saying no to risk without actually saying no, of telling ourselves we’ll make time when the right person comes along (in a shower of fireworks), but not until then.
–Alison Lobron, “Disappearing Act”, Boston Globe Magazine, June 25, 2006

Yesterday it hit 80 degrees. Perfect for a run along Lake Washington. Dogs everywhere. Swank lakeside houses. When you reach McGilvra Blvd, Mount Rainer comes into view — beautiful, beautiful mountain. Reminded me that, come September, I will be snowboarding every weekend when I am not on call.

1. Matthew Sweet - Come to Love
   
2. Guster - Great Escape
   
3. Hot Hot Heat - Running Out of Time
   
4. Guns’n'Roses - You Could Be Mine
   
5. The Donnas - Everything is Wrong
   
6. Jennifer Knapp - Undo Me
   
7. Israel & New Breed - Not Unto Us/ Who Is Like the Lord
   
8. Malaika - Ngiyabonga Nkosi Yam
   
9. Mapaputsi - Woza Friday
   
10. Lene Marlin - Sitting Down Here
    
11. Madonna - Hung Up
    
12. Me & My - Baby Boy
    
13. Melodie MC - Anyone Out There
    
14. Ismael Miranda - Se Fue y Me Dejo
    
15. N Sync - Bye Bye Bye
    
16. Mike and the Mechanics - Over My Shoulder
    
17. Leigh Nash - Need to Be Next to You
    
18. Rachel Stevens - Nothing Good About this Goodbye
    

When I hit Leschi Park, I began to sense that not all was right with my left ankle. Turned around. On my return to Madison Park, I discovered the lakeside area that serves as a kind of beach (except no sand)/swimming area. The water was not warm, but neither was it frigid — a pleasant surprise, and just perfect for my ankle.

Today it is supposed to hit 90. Sweet! I love this city.