Go Read!

A few items that have caught my eyes these past few days that I think are worth passing along.

We wrote a few days ago about that college cheating scandal currently roiling the country.   Here's a great article written by a former guidance counselor at a prestigious LA private high school.  It's written from the perspective of dealing, even 25 years ago, with very wealthy parents attempting to game the system in placing their children in Ivy League colleges or places such as USC.  Her insights are compelling, even if a bit dated.  The heart of this story is about certain wealthy or powerful people and their sense of entitlement.  That is also why I don't think this story is going away any time soon.  

I've been saying for some time that we are finally on the verge of unlocking the potential of space as a profitable path for business and not something that is the sole provenance of governments.  The era of reusable rockets is substantially going to bring down the costs of getting to orbit.  Here's a piece backing my thinking on this.  Go read out of UBS report "Investing In Space".   They make the following observation that "mainstream financial markets are only just starting to awaken to the commercial and disruptive opportunities that space offers, as technology is starting to tear down the high entry barriers to access space".  Also, among other things, they note that "the combination of declining space launch costs and advances in satellite technology will raise the value of the space economy from USD 340bn currently to nearly USD 1trn over the next two decades. And while traditional satellite, government, and military applications in space will continue to grow, in our view, the space economy will start to have major spillovers across several industries. The emergence of satellite broadband internet is one such example."

Finally I am a keen observer of millennials as I have three of them in that age bracket.  Here's an interesting article noting the split between older millennials who bore the brunt of the financial crisis and younger millennials who came of age more during the recovery period.  I think the article makes some interesting points but I also think that a generation which is usually defined as somewhere between 25 and 30 years is an awfully long time.  I'm generally considered the tail-end of the baby boom era and I've always noticed that there are differences along many lines between those of us born from say 1955 on as opposed to those that came of age earlier in the turbulent 60s.  For one thing, in general, those born at nearer the end of our generation seem to be more conservative.  At any rate the article is interesting for pointing out that not all millennials are cut from the same cloth.

Back early next week.