John T. Reed’s news blog

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a classic example of a negative pregnant in his Congressional testimony. He was asked about a Facebook executive trying to hire Obama digital campaign workers after the 2012 election. The exec told the Obama people that they saw that they were misusing private information, but that they did not stop them because Facebook was “on Obama’s side.”   Zuckerberg rushed to fire back an obviously rehearsed answer. He said Obama developers did not get any more access to privacy data than anyone else, or words to that effect. I could not find the exact quote...

I went to a Giants game yesterday with a college classmate. Several players on each team took their leads from first base several feet back off the baseline from first to second. That is incorrect. Others lined up ON that baseline, which is correct..The best practice is you line up right on the base line between first and second always because there is always a force out at second on a runner at first base. And you do the same if you are a runner at second base, but only if there is a runner also on first because that creates...

When I was a student at West Point and since, I periodically heard about the Army or the military lamenting that too many junior officers were getting out rather than staying in long enough to become captains or majors. That, in turn, meant that the pool from which they could promote officers to colonels and generals was unhappily less numerous and less qualified. . The Army appoints committees to produce reports and recommendations about how to fix this. They created the Junior Officers Council. The officer students at Fort Monmouth Signal school, mostly captains, were about to unanimously elect second...

This is an email I got today from a U.S. Marine:.Dear Mr. Reed, At some point in the past I emailed you about me wanting to enlist. Despite your warnings I did it anyways. One of THE worst mistakes of my life. I can not even express the level of stupidity in the training, leadership, and daily life of the Marine Corps. Wish I had heeded your words. I count down the days till I am free of this misery. Hopefully I don’t pay the price on deployment. I don’t get why civilians worship the military. They don’t know the...

Below is a video by my son Dan and me discussing my new book Aggressive Tax Avoidance for Real Estate Investors, 20th edition.