What They’re Teaching at Medical School (and Why I Write About Self-Washing Dinner Tables) June 30, 2000February 15, 2017 Ross Moorman: “I first came to know you when the chairman of my department (University Hospital, Jacksonville, FL) greeted us on the first day of my residency. He did NOT offer great words of wisdom about the treatment of diabetic ketoacidosis or how to tell whether chest pain was a heart attack or last night’s burritos. He actually showed us a copy of your investment guide and proceeded to tell us that we had to read it during our three years of training. I did, and have recommended it to others. “Since those formative years, I have read many other investment books as well. I’ve used Ameritrade and Brown and Sharebuilder, and even looked at Folio(fn), which deserves serious attention as soon as they offer margin accounts. I’ve read Business Week and Forbes and watched CNBC ’til the early hours. “The question that I pose to you is as follows: After all the study, and hype, and personalities, shouldn’t we all just invest $500 every month in Spiders, and be done with it? Is it so simple? Is that why you spend your considerable talents talking about plates nailed to the dining room table? Should we be spending our time trying to do what we do even better, and investing the difference in Spiders, or even ‘Wilshies’ (my dreamed of depository receipt that mirrors the ENTIRE U.S. stock market–or even the ‘Totally Universal Wilshires’ that mirror the stock market of the entire world in one easily managed share)? “Is it that simple?” Yes. Largely. Except that if you’re a doctor, you should be putting away $600 a month, not $500. And whoever you are, you shouldn’t be doing it on margin. Of course, if “everyone” indexed, indexing wouldn’t be so smart. Terrible companies and great companies would all be accorded equal enthusiasm, which would soon make the terrible ones grossly overpriced and the good ones, bargains. But everyone will not index. So for most people, indexing (with that portion of one’s funds dedicated to stocks) is a wise choice. Attempting to do better, most people — because of transaction costs and taxes — will do worse. There’s the entertainment value, the challenge, the dream . . . what if my little speculation went through the roof! . . . and there’s the feeling of connectedness to the world around you . . . I own Cisco! I own Home Depot! (well, I don’t but if I did). But from a cold money point of view, a doctor would be better off in Spiders than in an actively managed portfolio, studying medical charts rather than stock charts. Maybe that’s what the chairman of Ross’s department had in mind. David Letterman on why Senate candidate Rick Lazio failed to march in New York’s Gay Pride parade: He didn’t know what to wear — and he was feeling fat. Monday: Where do Maine lobsters come from?
G.O.D. , Amazon, and Professional Money Managers June 29, 2000January 28, 2017 First, reaction to the Geodesic Oversight Dome (wherein satellites can read lips, as in, “Please G.O.D., help me — I’m drifting out to sea”): Bill Coppedge: ” I hope it’s not a cloudy day!” Dana Dlott: “You can’t beat the laws of physics. The ability of a space telescope to resolve features is proportional to the size of the mirror. Super spy satellites look like the Hubble Space Telescope pointed down instead of up. The mirror is 8 feet in diameter. That is about all that can fit in the Shuttle cargo bay. From 150 miles up, this mirror can (under perfect atmospheric conditions) resolve something like 6 cm, which might or might not be barely enough to read a license plate on a perfect day when it was pointed upward. (Maybe this works if the license plate is “1” or “x”). To read lips, you would need resolution of 1mm I would guess. That means the mirror has to be 500 ft across. When they start building space shuttles 500 feet across it’s time to worry. You might be able to have a smaller shuttle and assemble the mirror in space, maybe. It would be so big everybody could look up and see it even in the day.” I can live with that. I’m more worried about the clouds. Mike Duffy: “Too much Jack Daniels on the Cheerios this morning?” And now a word from Dorothy Mallonee, who bought Amazon when I told her not to and watched it climb tenfold. (Not for nothing is this column free.) Did she still own it, I wondered? “Yep, still own 800 shares of AMZN. I’ve ridden it down from the high at the first of the year. Will I sell it? Well, um, er, uh, yeah, sometime. “This experience has helped convince me that my new full-service broker may be right: He’s pitching professional money management to me, and giving me what sounds like a pretty good deal on the fees, about 2% annually, inclusive of brokerage fees. The two organizations we’re leaning towards: Roxbury in Santa Monica, CA, with a Large Cap Growth philosophy, and Davis in NY with a Large Cap Value philosophy. Neither has a high churn rate, both are well-established. I’ve visited both in person. How ’bout a column on professional money managers? My wire house, Prudential Securities, has arrangements with a number of them by which a client can get in for $100k — much, much less than the normal minimum investment these organizations require of their private clients. “AMZN, hey, it’s worth $100+/share, right, cuz it once traded at that price? I know, I shouldn’t be allowed out of the house unsupervised, but AMZN has been a ton of fun, and I’ve always regarded it as a pure speculation, as you will recall! Even if I end up having to dump it at the behest of Roxbury or Davis, my cash basis is about $11/share and, because of my husband’s death, my basis for capital gains tax is about $55/share.” Wait, Dorothy! In a world where one might reasonably expect 5% or 6% a year after tax (I don’t think the next 18 years are going to be like the last 18), a 2% hit — especially as it may not be deductible — is just a terrible handicap. And heck, you tripled your money with Amazon. You think a pro can do better than that? Over the long run, most pros will do about as well as the market as a whole, less their (in this case huge) fees. Why not sell at least some of your Amazon here for a tax loss? (When Dorothy’s husband passed away, she was able to boost the basis of all the stocks she inherited to the value as of his death. So even though she’s tripled her money in AMZN, she’d actually get to declare a loss if she sold.) If AMZN goes way down — it’s still valued at three times American Airlines — you can be glad you sold some. If it goes way up, you’ll have tripled your money on some of it (with a tax-loss, no less), and made an even bigger profit on the rest.
Copenhagen and Copyrights III June 28, 2000January 28, 2017 Yesterday, I was roundly corrected on my Niels Bohr column. Today, “just a little more and we’re done.” (Do I sound like your dentist?) First, a little electron humor . . . Anonymous: “In your Niels Bohr column, you mentioned physicist Werner Heisenberg. I’d like to invite you to the next meeting of the Heisenberg Fan Club. Unfortunately, I can only tell you where OR when it meets, but not both.” Ba-dump-bump. Next, a curtain call . . . Bill Jones: “I just happened to be in New York last week attending a conference when I read your column about the play Copenhagen. Based on your review, I made a point to see the play. I was absolutely blown away by it! It’s an excellent playwright who can make even me think that I understand the complexities of atomic science. I’ll forgive your politics if you continue to make excellent recommendations like this one! Penultimately, the physics of hell . . . Jim Reed: “Your Niels Bohr story reminded me of this story: The Physics of Hell The following is an actual Bonus Question given on a University of Washington engineering midterm: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle’s Law (gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following: “First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, lets look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. “Since there are more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added. “This gives two possibilities: “1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose. “2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over. “So which is it? “If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms. Teresa Banyan during my Freshman year, that ‘it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,’ and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in said pursuit, then, #2 cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and will not freeze.” The student received the only A in the class. And finally . . . Mike da Mailman: “I like your idea to ask about the source of whatever someone feels the need to forward. Such as that Niels Bohr story. Could you also express to your vast audience that, when forwarding by e-mail, it would be nice to cut and paste only the part of the e-mail that the recipient is intended to read rather than all the headers, all the addresses and all the extra comments that the past 17 readers have added? If I am worth taking the time to send me something, and the item is worth your taking time to send, then the small amount of time it takes to clean up the useless and unnecessary stuff before sending it to me would be appreciated. “PS. If someone takes the time to delete all the >’s and spaces they have earned my endless gratitude. This action and the time spent speaks volumes of your opinion of me. “PPS. The time saved by receiving clean e-mail will help me with my Mikeyday, and eventually spread throughout the land and you will get your Andyday.” [Please note that, in e-mails, PS stands for pre-signatorum. You place it before the signature so it won’t be lost to a recipient who fails to scroll down to see it. PPS thus stands for pre-pre signatorum and should, by rights, come before the PS. Unless it stands for post-pre signatorum, in which case Mike has it in the right place. The committee has not yet met to determine this one. Never mind.]
Copenhagen and Copyrights II June 27, 2000February 15, 2017 Oops! Forgot to click “save” last night — sorry, to those of you who get this by Q-Page. Anon: “Yesterday you wrote . . . ‘10:03 am — I click on to urbanfetch.com. 10:07 am — I click SEND’ . . . I guess you’ve given up on being a cheapskate and buying things in bulk, ahead of time, eh?” No, still a cheapskate most of the time. But that’s what frugality when you’re young buys you . . . the ability, when you’re older, to splurge a bit. Meanwhile, lots of response to last week’s Niels Bohr story about measuring the height of a building with a barometer. Michael LeBoeuf: “Twenty years ago I used that anecdote in my book Imagineering, crediting the source as The Teaching Of Elementary Science And Mathematics by Alexander Calandra. Is the story true? I don’t know. But as for the student being Niels Bohr, that sounds like one of those made-up ‘true’ stories, like the one about the graduating class from Harvard Business School. In the Harvard story, only three percent of the class wrote down their goals at graduation. Twenty years later the three percent who wrote down their goals had amassed more wealth than the rest of the class put together. Yeah, right. Find the source on that one. It doesn’t exist, yet numerous motivational speakers tell it from the platform as gospel truth.” Gray Chang: “I heard the same story about 25 years ago, when I was a physics major in college. I remember it because I pulled the same stunt on a homework problem. A diving bell is lowered to the bottom of a lake, and the water rises by such-and-such amount inside the bell. What is the depth of the lake? I offered two answers. The easy way is to measure the length of rope used to lower the diving bell. The hard way is to do a bunch of calculations involving the volume of air in the diving bell and the water pressure. I only got partial credit for my answer. I forgot to account for the air pressure on the surface of the lake!” (Of course! The air pressure on the surface of the lake!) Otto Fajen: “This story is certainly incorrectly attributed (in that form) to Niels Bohr. The era when such a question would have been posed to him in school predates the existence of either the object or the term ‘skyscraper.’ While I never met the man, I had the honor to meet one of his students, Nicholas Bloombergen, who also is a Nobel laureate in Physics. We invited him to speak at our Physics Department colloquium at the Univrsity of Missouri, Columbia, when I was a graduate student.” Scott Nicol: “As you suspected, this story has been around for a long time, in many different forms. See this page, which traces it back to an article in Saturday Review (Dec 21, 1968). You’ll notice no mention of Niels Bohr — that part was likely added by a Danish patriot. The claim that Niels Bohr was the only Dane to receive the Nobel Prize for Physics is also false. He probably was the first, but his son, Aage Bohr, was a joint recipient of the award in 1975. Click here for a list of award winners, and here for a short bio of Aage.” Steve Casagrande: “A neat story, but probably just that — a story. Check out this urban legends page.” Judy Tillinger linked me to: the whole bohring story. Thad Fenton helped me out with my Ten Commandments: “No, Andy, it’s ‘So let it be written. So let it be done. ” And any number of you corrected my spelling. There are, of course, two Y’s and only one E in Yul Brynner. Anonymous Tape Duplicator: “The title of your column contained the word ‘copyrights’ which reminded me of something. My boyfriend, a professor at the University of Iowa, told me that textbooks are so expensive that students often just photocopy them instead of buy them. In fact, he was recently told that the students in one class bought one copy of a textbook, made copies for everyone, and then returned it for a refund. The punch line? It was an ethics class.”
Modern Magic June 26, 2000February 15, 2017 10:03 am — I click on to www.urbanfetch.com. 10:07 am — I click SEND. 10:57 am — Doorbell rings. To wit: six fresh bagels, a quarter pound of smoked salmon, a quart of milk, a pint of Ben & Jerry’s cherry Garcia frozen yogurt. Plus, if I had wanted it, shaving cream, the newspaper, a movie rental to watch tonight, a book or CD, a new telephone answering machine — tons of stuff. Free delivery within an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. No tipping allowed. The implications are . . . staggering. I may never leave the house again. (It’s only in New York and London so far — mostly by bike in New York and motorcycle in London. Privately held.) Amazon Update: This past December, with Amazon trading near its $113 all-time high, J.P. Morgan Securities initiated coverage with a “buy” rating. Twelve-month target: $160. Friday, Amazon closed at $33 and change. There is the natural temptation to buy it. It’s a great brand; it delights its customers with good service; and the stock is on sale at 70% off the price J.P. Morgan thought was already cheap. Buying it here may prove wise. Certainly wiser than at $113. But note that, at 33 and change, Amazon is still being valued at $12 billion, which in the old days was considered a lot of money. Even today, that’s 33% more than the valuation of Federal Express, which, like Amazon has a great brand name and can be expected to share in the e-commerce boom — and unlike Amazon, actually makes a profit. (A large one, in fact.) I am no longer short Amazon. There is a chance it has a lot further to fall — if it fell by another two-thirds, it would still be valued at more than the country’s largest airline. But there’s also a chance that 10 years from now it could actually be worth what J.P. Morgan predicted for six months from now. And I wish it well.
Zeke and Josiah June 23, 2000January 28, 2017 Of the dining room table with flaps that fold up and allow the dishes to be washed in place, I wrote: “Sound impractical? What if the dishes were glued to the table, so they didn’t move as the soapy jet stream hit them, or need to be re-centered once clean? This gets better all the time.” To which Jeff responds: “No, this is getting worse. You should’ve stuck with the reloadable dishwasher-cabinets idea. How am I going to eat off of dishes stuck to the table? What if I want to spin my dish to get at the particular food on the other side? Or, suppose I want to share something with my wife (suppose I had a wife)? If that doesn’t stop you from creating this ridiculous invention, consider what happens if one piece gets a chip or breaks or something — do you have to replace the entire thing? (What, you may ask, might break immovable dishes? Wait until my future alleged wife and I have children — I’m sure they’ll find a way.) As for me, I’ll stick with individual, modular, and replaceable parts (spoken like a true engineer, eh?). If I want new dishes, I just replace them, not my entire house.” All great ideas meet resistance at first. Robert Doucette: “These folding table/dishwasher stories have been reminding me of a lame joke I read in my youth (remember Boy’s Life?). I’ve been holding off on this joke for quite some time, but maybe if I tell it we can discuss something else for awhile — maybe something about money. Hell, I’d prefer one of your Ostrich recipes over another week of dishwasher stories. “It seems there were two mountain men. Today these would be members of some wacko militia or a pair of Unabombers (Duobombers?), but in my carefree youth, mountain men were quaint characters who lived in Montana & West Virginia, but mostly inhabited these lame stories. Well, these mountain men got a letter that their citified cousins were coming to visit. Not wanting to spend more time than necessary with the cousins, they devised a plan. “Two weeks later the cousins arrived. The mountain men — let’s call them Zeke and Josiah — welcomed their cousins and soon they were all sitting down to a fine mountain meal of grilled trout with a wild raspberry glaze. (Generally, mountain men dined on roots and road kill, but I’m trying to go against type, here). “During the meal, the city cousins were surprised to find their plates were nailed to the table (ok, see, I am leading us back to the dishwasher stories). After the meal, they volunteered to wash the dishes, and asked about the nailed down plates. Josiah (or maybe Zeke) said not to bother and opened the door and called for his hounds. Suddenly, three or four large dogs ran into the house, jumped on the table and licked all of the plates clean. (Now you see why I don’t like being reminded of this story.) Then Zeke said, ‘That’s how we wash the dishes here in th’ mount’ns,’ slipping into mountain patois. “Well, the city cousins suddenly remembered a stockholder meeting they had to attend and packed their bags and left. Once they were out of sight, Josiah turned to Zeke and said, ‘Well, Zeke, y’know it took us only a couple weeks to teach the dogs to do that, but it’s gonna take months to teach ’em not to.’ “Now, Andy, I know plenty of other crappy stories like that, so stick to money and don’t make me tell you anymore of them.” I give! I give!
Summer Re-Runs? June 22, 2000February 15, 2017 This is column #1098, and it occurs to me that you may actually have missed a few. For the first few years, they appeared on the site of a deep-discount broker called Ceres (which was soon renamed Ameritrade). Here — in the spirit of summer re-runs — is the very first one, from four and a half years ago. I’m not putting it up there with the original Seinfeld episode or anything. But here it is. # Welcome to my “daily comment.” The ground rules Ceres and I have agreed to are simple. I can write whatever I want, ranging from a sentence to an epic, and nothing is off limits. I can even say things like, “Don’t trade stocks yourself – for most people, it’s smarter to invest through no-load mutual funds.” Which it is. (Not that this has ever stopped me from testing my hand against the pros.) Most days, I’ll presumably write something vaguely related to money, since money is much on my mind. But don’t be amazed by a political screed or two, or a recipe for low-fat lunch. (OK, here it is: take one low-fat Bilinksi chicken sausage, microwave 90 seconds, place across a slice of low-fat bread, drown in ketchup, envelope in your fist, and eat, being careful not to bite off a finger in your enthusiasm – it’s that good.) On the theory that we should start with something simple, like cash, today’s “comment” is an ode to automated teller machines. Some people still don’t like using them, but for most of us it’s hard to remember that just 20 years ago ATMs barely existed – and were met with considerable animosity when they were. Even the press was dubious. “People will never trust them,” was the general reaction. Not me. I love machines, am only so-so with humans, and hate standing in line. So I was an “early adopter.” But what I learned 20 years later – last weekend, in fact – is how one big New York bank, Chemical, decided to overcome resistance and build usership. A massive educational ad campaign? Nah. Supposedly, according to a friend who used to work there, Chemical simply programmed the machines to occasionally dispense extra cash. Knowing New Yorkers, Chemical knew word would spread. (Remember, back then people counted their cash-machine cash very carefully, to be sure they got what they were supposed to. So if they got an extra $10 or $20, they noticed.) I can’t say for sure Chemical actually went through with this. Nor what proportion of honest souls, if any, actually turned in their surplus cash (sounds like a college psychology course experiment, no?). But compared with the cost of a major New York City ad campaign, dispensing a few thousand extra twenties is a bargain. If any of you are working to introduce “digital cash” to a skeptical universe, perhaps there’s a marketing lesson here somewhere. If you need guinea pigs to ply with extra digicash, please include me in the beta test. # [Programming note: Tonight’s Frasier is the one where he’s booked as a TV talk show host. Rerun. In tonight’s Just Shoot Me, Finch encounters his ex-wife at Nina’s “sexaholics” meeting. Rerun. Tonight’s E.R. is the one where Dr. Corday’s domineering mother comes to visit. Rerun.]
G.O.D. June 21, 2000March 25, 2012 Satellites are so powerful they can now read license plate numbers on the ground. Soon they will be reading lips. The ultimate voice recognition. On this first day of summer, this has given me an idea. You know how, in The World According to Garp, John Irving warns his young son to be wary of The Undertoad whenever he goes swimming? His parents have told him to watch out for the undertow and, mishearing, he has come to imagine it as a giant, slimy menace. The undertow is real! Ocean currents are real! One minute, you’re in shallow water by the shore, the next minute you’re floating just beneath the horizon, toward the Galapagos. With enough food and water — none — for maybe a day and a half. Your cell phone, even if it were not back on your towel along with your summer reading, is even more useless than it is in that blind spot on the Triborough Bridge. But imagine a system of satellites so numerous and powerful a decade or two from now that they form the Geodesic Oversight Dome (G.O.D.). There you are, in terrible trouble, knowing nothing of computers and satellites, thinking only of sharks and thirst and sunburn. (“I told you to put on sunscreen,” are the first words you can hear your mother saying if you ever actually somehow make it back to shore.) You have tried paddling with your hands, kicking with your feet. But the current is too strong, and you are now entirely alone, bobbing out of sight of land. Done for. You look up to the sky and mouth, silently, “Oh, please, God. Help me.” You make all sorts of promises to be good (“no more day trading, I promise!”). Only this time, where it would once have been touch and go whether help would arrive, the Geodesic Oversight Dome efficiently reads your lips, sends a signal to a Coast Guard computer, and forty minutes later you are back on the beach calling your broker. Could this be the secret plan Craig McCaw has in mind?
Copenhagen and Copyrights June 20, 2000January 28, 2017 Gennady — who sent in that joke about Meyerowitz, who lost $500 at poker and dropped dead — also sent me this: The following concerns a question in a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen: “Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer.” One student replied: “You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building.” While the answer was original, it so incensed the examiner that the student was failed immediately. The student appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics. To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer which showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic principles of physics. For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn’t make up his mind which to use. On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows: “Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H = 0.5g x t squared. But bad luck on the barometer.” “Or, if the sun is shining, you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper’s shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper.” “But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force T = 2 Pi Sq Root (l / g).” “Or, if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, one could walk up the staircase and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths and then add them up.” “If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building.” “But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor’s door and say to him ‘If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if you will tell me the height of this skyscraper’.” The student was Niels Bohr, the only Dane to win the Nobel prize for Physics. A great Dane indeed, and I have two things to say about this. OK, three. First, I love this story — as who could not. Thank you, Gennady. Second, if you get to New York, see the wonderful hit play, Copenhagen, your enjoyment of which will even be heightened a notch now that you know Niels Bohr. (It will help to know Werner Heisenberg, also — read the Playbill or a review of the play before the lights go dim.) Third, it is such a good story, it occurred to me that Gennady hadn’t written it. Not that Gennady couldn’t have written it. Gennady is one smart cookie. But it read too polished to be something Gennady was just taking a few minutes to recall for me from his University days. When queried on the source, Gennady shrugged (or I imagine he shrugged) and e-plied — as so many of us have in this situation — “I don’t know; someone sent it to me.” This left me with two troubling questions. First, could I pass it on to you without crediting the author? And second — was it even true? (Not that knowing the source would make it true; but when you know the source, or the alleged source, at least you have a way to begin to assess it.) As to the first qualm, if the author ever surfaces, I would be eager to set the record straight and give him or her credit. Even half my monthly pay for writing this column. Or a barometer. As to the second — is the story true — well, who knows? (One of you may, which is the great thing about an interactive column.) I raise all this because I have a suggestion. Remember my suggestion for moving e-mail postscripts before the signature (making them Pre Signatorums)? That has, you will agree, spread throughout cyberspace, transforming the culture and sparing the world untold loss and disharmony. (Prior to the Pre Signatorum, people were routinely failing to scroll down past the signature and thus missing crucial postscripts, on the order of, “PS – I’m kidding.” Or, “PS – If the 3,800 cartons can’t arrive in Akron by the 28th, then ship them to Canton instead.”) OK, this suggestion is even bigger. Namely: whenever you get something clever that is passed on but unsigned — like Niels Bohr, above — ask the sender to ask whoever sent it to him to find out the source. You will not, likely, find the source this way. But fairly soon, if this becomes Internetiquette, we will become more source-conscious and stop chopping them off when we forward e-mail. Those who initiate these little gems will either get the credit they deserve or, if they choose not to take credit, perhaps tell us why they have worked so hard to create something anonymously. Fair enough? “So it is written, so let it be done.” — Yul Brynner
Thor He’s a Jolly Good Fellow and Other Reader Mail June 19, 2000January 28, 2017 David D’Antonio: “As I’m sure others will tell you, its a mean trick to have ‘fake’ links. Both of the ‘here‘s in your final sentence Thursday weren’t links, they were in fact, just blue-colored words! Bad author, no biscuit!” George: “The other day you wrote a bit about Thor, the Viking who stood around 53rd Street. I also remember seeing him quite a few times on 6th Ave. He was actually known as Moondog and his real name was Louis Hardin. He passed away last year. here’s part of the obit from The New York Times.” By GLENN COLLINS The gaunt, blind musician known as Moondog, who was celebrated among New Yorkers for two decades as a mysterious and extravagantly garbed street performer but who went on to win acclaim in Europe as an avant-garde composer, conducting orchestras before royalty, died Wednesday in a hospital in Munster, Germany. He was 83. Day in and day out, the man who was originally named Louis T. Hardin was as taciturn and unchanging a landmark of the midtown Manhattan streetscape as the George M. Cohan statue in Duffy Square. From the late 1940s until the early 1970s, Hardin stood at attention like a sentinel on Avenue of the Americas around 54th Street. No matter the weather, he invariably dressed in a homemade robe, sandals, a flowing cape and a horned Viking helmet, the tangible expression of what he referred to as his “Nordic philosophy.” At his side he clutched a long spear of his own manufacture. Most of the passers-by who dismissed him as “the Viking of Sixth Avenue,” offering him contributions and buying copies of his music and poetry, were unaware that he had recorded his music on the CBS, Prestige, Epic, Angel and Mars labels. Hardin’s jazz-accented compositions, generally scored for small wind and percussion ensembles, often achieved a flowing, tonal symphonic style. One of his songs, “All Is Loneliness,” became a hit when recorded by Janis Joplin. Poor old Thor. Amazing! I had no idea! Live long enough, as they say, and all shall be revealed. (Especially when you have as eclectic and astute a readership as mine.) Esther: “Enough fluff. How about a stock tip?” Oh, gosh, another stock tip. Don’t you know you are supposed to put $250 a month into each of three index funds for the rest of your life and just leave it at that? Don’t you listen? Well, here is one I bought because, as usual, someone much smarter than me, who’s looked at it much more closely than I have, thinks it will do very well over the next couple of years: McKesson (MCK).