Recent content by GregLee

That's right. (One might also wonder why it works this way.) By the way, Wikipedia has an entry for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloppy_identity.

From another thread: There is a generalization of this "sloppy identity" between anaphoric expression (here "do so", meaning "donate her body to the local medical school") and antecedent expression used to interpret it (here "donate my body to the local medical school") which says that...

The interpretation of "did so" raises an interesting grammatical issue, which (as I understand it) I am precluded from commenting on here.

Yes, that's what I said. That's why the universal principle "there is a limit to what any human can do for another" is wrong. It's just not true.

Which word did I take too literally? "Any"? "Human"? What is the general way of understanding his message that I missed?

I didn't express what I meant very clearly. I didn't mean that individuals can't do better than mutual funds on costs (by trading less), but rather I meant that mutual funds can trade a given share for less, because they trade in large blocks and, probably, they can negotiate lower per-share...

I imagine that my own capacity for this is probably limited. But recognizing that we may run up against our personal limits is a far cry from what you proposed, which was "there is a limit to what any human can do for another." I think we should recognize that some people have been able to...

That makes sense to me.

That sounds like fun, except maybe the lightning part.

I question whether that is true.

I have read that mutual funds pay less for trading costs than individual investors do. I think that deserves mention when comparing pros and cons of owning stocks directly. (If it was mentioned earlier in this thread, I'm sorry that I didn't notice it.)

But that course was open to you, too, wasn't it? Do you envy those other people for having made more fortunate choices than you did? If you don't, you have nothing to complain of. If you do envy them, why is it their fault that you chose foolishly? In that case also, you have nothing to...

Traditional dance in Zomba, Cape Maclear, Malawi

Paranoia runs strong here. (I'm rather paranoid, myself -- I wouldn't trust a banker.)

The other side of this is that you may be able to do better than you thought, or your children may. My mother cared for her father-in-law for several years at the end of his life, and when her turn came, I cared for her, for about 2 years. It's within normal human capacities to do this. Well...