Reflections on Turning Sixty

As I begin by seventh decade on Earth I would like to share some of what I have learned over the years.

1. If you want an attractive girlfriend play hockey for the University of Minnesota.
2. If you don't play hockey and want an attractive girlfriend move to Aarhus Denmark.
3. Danish is the sexiest accent.
4. There are few simple pleasures more rewarding than making a child or a woman laugh.
5. Death comes to us all.
6. Sheep die, cattle die, you yourself will die.  One thing never dies, the pursuit of economic rents by vested interests.
7. People who believe humans are basically good don't have a Twitter account.
8. If you are fifty years old and still talking about where you went to college be assured, your education was wasted.
9. Love is patient, kind and endures all things, it is not always tolerant, ask any parent.
10. Vegetables are not food, they are what food eats.
11.  An single Italian with a pencil and a piece of paper will design a more attractive car than a committee of Americans with the best Computer Assisted Design software.
12. Conversely, the easiest job in the world is designing the next Porsche 911.
13. Economists should be kind to environmental activists, they make the predictions of economists look incredibly accurate.
14. Cemeteries are full of irreplaceable men.  In other words you're not that special, that's okay.  
15. Dave Schweikhardt was an irreplaceable man. 
16. People don't understand the agri-food system, that doesn't stop them from having strong opinions
17. After I die and everyone who knows me dies, I will be utterly forgotten, as in point 14, that's okay too.
18.  People who review music on NPR have terrible taste.
19.  Pirate Metal is a real thing and it is awesome.
20. If you have a $500 cell phone, a subscription to HBO, and don't pay off the full balance of your credit card every month, it's not a failure of capitalism.  You are just bad with money.
21.  The Good Place taught me that rap musical about Kierkegaard is a terrible idea.
22. People in the Midwest and South take college football way too seriously.
23. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of the Lord endures forever.