FundamentallySound Blog

I remember once in Amsterdam my friend Joel Ryan offhandedly commented that the culture at Stanford is strangely conservative. I thought of that right now as I'm on the train at the Palo Alto stop, looking at the Stanford types who are boarding and I notice they tend to have an expression of quiet entitlement and self-satisfaction combined with a slight nervousness. Their facial expressions say they've earned what they have and their relentless busy-ness in their seats is telling me they are still in the game, still competing right now, and don't forget that.

And I started comparing this with the highly-educated academicians I met in Holland who always seemed relaxed, gregarious, and radically open-minded. And I realized the difference is money: the elites of the educational field in Holland didn't seem as blatantly and annoyingly rich as their American counterparts. How does one manage to still care about the finer points of a STEIM performance by a little-known electronic musician from Antwerp with a CD released on an obscure label from Kobe when there's stock performance to think about. I mean, really.

But the fascinating people are those that are highly moneyed and able to hold onto their intellectual edge keeping a naivete about the world. I want to meet those people. And hey, I can be their ear to the ground, their man on the street if they want, helping keeping tabs on the kids' trends. For a fee of course.