Retirement Planning: A Single Point of Failure

A single point of failure is defined as “a potential risk posed by a flaw in the decision, implementation or configuration of a circuit or system in which one fault or malfunction causes an entire system to stop operating.”

In relation to retirement planning, the goal is to minimize the possible effects of a single point of failure (SPOF) by addressing the various expenses, yield and risks of the ideal mix of income producing assets.

A potential SPOF for many retired Americans is the Social Security (SS) system. Today, for more Read More

PAJARITO RAMBLER…

Column by Nina Thayer

The recent rains have brought a wealth of wildflowers to the Pajarito Plateau including the Quemazon Nature Trail, where I hiked recently.

Quemazon, which is a local Spanish word for “burned”, is indeed that. The entire mountainside was consumed with crown fire in the Cerro Grande Wildfire 12 years ago.

The nature trail was completely restored in the years after the fire by more than 250 Mountain School students and reopened by the County in 2004.

The trailhead is located off of Trinity Drive in the Western Area. Bear left to remain on Trinity Read More

Column by Kent Pegg

One of the key factors to weight loss and weight management is your metabolism. Metabolism is a term that refers to how your body transforms the calories in the food you eat into energy.

The food is broken down into sugars and amino acids that the body then has available for use as energy. The energy is then either used or it is stored as muscle or fat.

If you want to lose weight and keep the weight off, one important thing to do is to know your metabolic rate. Your metabolic rate is the number of calories your body burns in the course of a day.

To accurately determine your metabolic rate, Read More

Column by Elena Yang

Jeffrey Pfeffer & Robert Sutton’s “The Knowing-Doing Gap: How smart companies turn knowledge into action” is an easy-to-read book, like many of their other collaborative works.

This is not a conventional book review but rather my attempt to capture some important points and use them to launch some stories and reflections.

In today’s space, I will delineate three difficulties in acting on knowledge. I will finish the remaining two more obstacles and a few recommendations next week.

As Pfeffer & Sutton point out, given the plethora of business books published every Read More

Male hummingbirds from left, a Black-Chinned, Calliope and Rufous Hummingbirds. Photo by Bob Walker

Forty-eight species of hummingbirds have been identified on the North American continent. Of these, at least 17 species have been reported in New Mexico.

Another 28 species are identified as living in Mexico, but New Mexico is adjacent to it. Could some illegal alien species occasionally fly north to Los Alamos? If additional species from Mexico start to appear, is this an indication Read More