Spirit

The world is filled with intelligent people in finance.  Unfortunately, being intelligent doesn’t
always mean you are smart.  To make sound
investments, you need to be looking forward and constantly coming to rational
conclusions.  One has to avoid sheltering
oneself in a herd of backward focused investors taking comfort in performing in
line with the masses.  Patting yourself
on the back as all markets are trending higher and wallowing in ignorant pity

I was reading to the kids the other night from Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia, by Suzanne Massie. It’s a wonderfully written book. Here’s a passage that caught my eye. Christianity first came to Russia in 988, with the conversion of the Kievan Prince Vladimir to Orthodoxy. In this passage, Massie explains how the Slavs brought their own traditions into the forms handed to them from Byzantium: