Even after being out of the army for over 15 years, I sometimes still have dreams in which I lose my beret.

Strange. Because I never lost my beret while I was in the army. Nor was I really worried about it.

Though a woman I worked with got really sick on a helicopter flight one time and upchucked in someone else’s beret.

I wish I still had mine. An ex-girlfriend threw it away. She also tossed an artillery shell (the empty brass, anyway) that I’d been given. One that I personally fired. It was huge.

Should’ve broken up with her much, much earlier than I did. She was one of those who wanted to “fix” me. I’m not broken, just weird. At the end, she defined “fixing” me as throwing away or destroying anything that mattered to me.

Amazing the things people do. But I don’t dream about her; I dream about my beret.

This is a chart my amazingly talented partner put together that shows the S&P 500 inflation-adjusted index vs. PE ratio.

Look at that PE spike during the Great Recession. Conventional wisdom would tell you not to buy then. (That’s when we bought.)

This is valuable because how often you see major indices not inflation-adjusted.

Obviously age discrimination is de facto policy at many companies.

And it’s to save money, of course — but I wonder if there isn’t another factor contributing?

HR is if you haven’t noticed usually filled with very young people, typically right out of college (Usually young women, but that doesn’t really matter I don’t think.)

Just an idea. No clue if it has any explanatory power, but I wonder how much age discrimination is just a fait accompli of a bunch of 23-year-olds who see anyone 40 and above as unbelievably, inconceivably ancient?

I’d be willing to wager that has something to do with it.

A test would be to see what sort of job ads are produced by HR departments that skew much older than average, and compare those to ads produced by departments that skew younger.

I suspect there’d be a difference.