A survey of private equity firms found that most firms are comfortable with a debt/equity ratio of 4:1 following a dividend recap.

I have been asked about the single most important artifact that I have seen. It is a single broken piece of pottery no bigger than a couple of inches, but its interpretation makes it one of the most significant artifacts in Jewish history. It is an inscribed potshard (a fragment of pottery) from Masada (in Israel) marked with the name ben Yair. […] While it remains a single potshard marked in ink, it is a powerful symbol of what motivates archaeologists in the field: a simple object that signifies an entire historical event.

Guenn and George asked permission to see it, and I weakmindedly agreed, making them promise to run.

He deplored the fact that Chambers rather than someone like Thomas Sandby had been commissioned to build Somerset House, and he also audaciously argued that architects like Chambers had been more interested in filling their pockets than in promoting the grand style by causing the interior of buildings to be "frittered and broken by stucco ornaments of griffins, cobwebs, honey-suckles, pannels, and such like insipid, not to say disgusting trash, as misoccupy all the space around us, which ought to have been wisely and happily reserved for those highly cultivated efforts of Painting and Sculpture, so worthy the national reputation.