Recently in Interesting Tidbits Category
Intelligent design?
An interesting read from Time: Asia.
Recruited by the CIA to be a secret army during the Vietnam War, the Hmong rebels of Laos fought communism. Now they desperately battle for their own survival.
Also check out the intriguing Photo Essay.
It's been a long time since I really took the time to understand my Lao background. I am half Lao, after all. As I grow older, I began to analyze and understand the world, and all it's death and violence, as well as all it's love and nurturing. There's a delicate line between how much you know, and how much you want to know. And not knowing doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
So here's a question. Am I part Hmong?
At the end of the Vietnam war, the U.S. government stopped its support of the rebels it helped train. Some 200,000 Hmong managed to escape to America, while as many as 15,000 fled into the jungles.
I just finished reading the book The Millionaire Next Door. It is an extremely interesting read, especially for a book written almost ten years ago! It's such a shame that I started reading it now, and not when it came out. It would have made me rethink some financial choices I've made in the past. I totally recommend it! It has some excellent case studies of millionaires, their occupations, their nationality, and how they overcame adversity to build their own businesses. Very few of the millionaires in the book are not self employed. And many of these millionaires are first-generation. They didn't inherit their wealth.. They are also wealthy, not rich. They calculate in the book the millionaires net worth by roughly multiplying what they make a year by their age, divided by ten. So, for example, if I was making $100,000 a year, at age 27, my net worth should be $270,000. Of course I'm not making a hundred grand, and my net worth is definitely not $270,000!
