Adopt the Amazon
Posted on Jul 10 - Filed Under Miscellaneous | Comments

Every now and again there is an environmentalist group picketing the preservation of the Amazon Rainforest. For those unfamiliar with the Amazon Rainforest, it is a moist broadleaf forest located in the Amazon Basin of South America. The area, also known Amazonia, the Amazon Jungle or the Amazon Basin, encompasses seven million square kilometers (1.7 billion acres), though the forest itself occupies some 5.5 million square kilometers (1.4 billion acres), located within nine nations: Brazil (with 60 percent of the rainforest), Peru (with 13 percent of the rainforest, second after Brazil),Colombia,Venezuela,Ecuador, Boliva, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. States or departments in four nations bear the name Amazonas after it. The Amazon represents over half of the planet’s remaining rainforests and comprises the largest and most species-rich tract of tropical rainforests in the world.
Get your contributions ready, and check out the WWF adoption program page
Winner pays over $2 million for the lunch with Warren Buffett
Posted on Jun 28 - Filed Under Miscellaneous | Comments

In our previous post, we speculated whether the Warren Buffett power lunch would go over a million dollars this year. Well, the result is in and it is way over a $1 million. The winning bid is $2,110,100 , which is almost 4 times of what was paid last year for the same auction ($650,000) According to Bloomberg, Zhao Danyang, the hedge-fund manager of Pureheart China Growth Investment Fund (Shenzhen, China) had the winning bid.
100% of proceeds from the auction benefits the Glide Foundation, one of the most effective institutions working to alleviate human suffering and poverty in the San Francisco Bay Area. Mr. Buffett has described Glide as “maybe the most effective organization I’ve seen for people down on their luck.” - source: eBay auction page.
The dinner will take place at Smith & Wollensky in New York City. According to their website: “Smith & Wollensky is one of the most trafficked restaurants in New York and among the most celebrated steakhouses in the world. Specializing in fresh seafood and lobster and assorted steaks and chops, Smith & Wollensky is well recognized for its healthy portions, seasoned service staff and pop Americana ambience. The surnames, Smith and Wollensky, were chosen from the local telephone directory by the restaurant’s founder Alan Stillman, of T.G.I. Friday’s fame. Wollensky’s Grill, a smaller but spirited bar room installed in the side of the famed midtown restaurant, is open until 2 a.m. Catering to night owls, Wollensky Grill offers a late night bill of fare featuring lighter supper versions of items from the grander Smith & Wollensky steakhouse menu and plenty of high-end red wines by the glass to choose from.” See more reviews about the steakhouse on Yelp