Married to an FBI July 29, 2005March 2, 2017 Summer’s going too fast. Doesn’t it always? F11 Steve Benoit: ‘Hit the F11 button when in your browser to see how it collapses the garbage at the top of your screen. It toggles back and forth. Love it. I can read most things without scrolling! Maybe you knew this tip, but I didn’t despite years of computer work.’ CTRL-F Joe Cherner: ‘Your article got it WRONG. The find function works WITHOUT typing ctrl-F. You simply type the first few letters of the word you are looking for. Firefox goes right to it.’ YAHOO MAPS Well, you don’t literally see real-time traffic – the cars inching along. Just icons on the map. And you don’t see the actual Italian restaurants (or Japanese or Thai or . . . ), just clickable icons. But this is certainly worth a look. EVOLUTION? Stephen Gilbert: ”To some, this story might be seen as evidence of evolution.’ ☞ It seems elephants are becoming tuskless, because what used to be their defense has made them a target. MARRIED TO AN FBI Doug Jones: ‘A friend posted this: By Beth Quinn Times Herald-Record I was going to leave the gay marriage issue alone just to save myself some grief. But then I thought, what fun would that be? Somebody’s got to irritate the self-righteous folks who tell the rest of us how to live, and it might as well be me. You know who you are, so get your writing implements ready because you’ll want to damn me to hell by the time we’re done here. For me, there is one central question in the whole gay marriage controversy: What do you care? What difference does it make in your own life if two gays or lesbians get married? It simply mystifies me that you feel threatened by this. What possible harm could it do in your personal, little life whether the two guys living at the end of your block say “I do”? I keep hearing the same pat answer from your prophets of doom – that allowing homosexuals to marry will “destroy the institution of marriage.” Well I gotta’ tell you, a lot of gays and lesbians have been getting married lately, and so far my own institution of marriage is doing just fine. I checked. When I heard they were lining up for licenses, I asked my husband if he felt our marriage was going downhill on account of it. He just ignored the question and wanted to know what kind of perennials I thought we should plant. I took that as a good sign. Perennials are an investment in the future, so I figure he’s sticking around despite what those homosexuals are doing. So, self-righteous folks, I guess I’m wondering what’s wrong with your own marriages that you feel so threatened by another couple’s happiness. Are you unable to sustain a good sexual relationship, knowing that two gay guys are sleeping together in wedded bliss? Are you unable to have an intimate conversation with your spouse because you’re distracted by the notion of two women going off on a honeymoon? Because if your marriage is that unstable, you should stop worrying about what others are doing and tend to your own problems before your divorce contributes to the decline of the institution of marriage. I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I’ve completely failed to come up with ways that gay marriage will have an impact on your life. It won’t raise your taxes. It won’t cause the kid who shovels your driveway to quit. It won’t make your laundry dingy. It won’t alter the weather. It won’t cause your dog to start passing gas. It won’t affect your relationship with God. It won’t cause you to develop a tumor on your head. Those of you who would talk about grand concepts like society and institutions and pillars and guideposts and moral fibers and whatnot, I say this is just your excuse for meddling. And history has shown us that nothing good ever comes of meddling in other people’s affairs. Every time Christians showed up to mess with heathens, for example, we just ended up with a lot of unhappy heathens with syphilis and smallpox. Those of you who would point out that the dictionary definition of the word “marriage” involves a man and a woman, let me point out that the dictionary is a living, breathing document that changes as word usage changes. If you doubt it, look up the word “dot” in a current edition. We the people get to decide what’s in the dictionary. The dictionary doesn’t get to dictate our societal conventions. Your hair isn’t going to catch on fire if the definition of marriage is eventually changed to read, “two consenting adults” instead of “man and woman.” As for the Bible, which is always the last refuge for those of you who want to impose your will on us savages, we’re not all reading out of the same book. More fundamentally, the Bible is not a legal document. If it were, those who fail to love one another would be rounded up and thrown in jail. The prison budget would go through the roof what with all the new cells we’d be needing for the neighbor haters. I have only this advice to offer those of you who oppose gay marriage: Don’t marry a homosexual. If you’re a man and you don’t want to marry another man, for crying out loud, stick to your guns! That would be a terrible idea. You’d be miserable! Same for women. Marry someone of the opposite sex if that’s your personal preference. After all, no one’s got the right to meddle in your private affairs. ☞ Nicely put. Yet I think she misses the real fear here: that if marriage equality is granted, kids may come to think it’s OK to be gay – and for a lot of reasons, parents would rather their kids be straight. But if sexual orientation is not chosen – and, though I can’t speak for yours, mine sure wasn’t – then this fear is unfounded. Doug responds: ‘Sexual orientation a choice? My somewhat limited understanding of DNA indicates otherwise. (Hey, I have a physics degree, some background in geophysics and petroleum engineering, and I work for civil engineers. What do I know about DNA?) I didn’t choose to be heterosexual, it just happened that way. Having a ‘minority’ for a partner (she’s Native American, or, as she prefers, FBI – Full Blooded Indian) has really taught me to accept people as people. Folks is folks. What I am convinced of is this. You, me and a bunch of white folks and persons of a zillion ‘minorities’ could gather in a room. The only thing present there would be a bunch of human beings with a whole lot of extremely closely related DNA with a few minor differences, each of which is beyond any person’s control. Too bad some people are unable to understand this.’ ☞ Indeed. See you in August.
I Think I’ll Try Firefox July 28, 2005March 2, 2017 FIREFOX Michael Cain: ‘Tabbed browsing is one of those things that you either love or not. If you love it, you can’t figure out how you got along without it. If you don’t, you can’t figure out what the big deal is. Meanwhile, the ‘ad-block’ add-on for Firefox is enough to make it worth considering all by itself. A couple minutes for each of the sites that you visit regularly, and they are essentially ad-free. Recently, the discussion at one site I read daily was focused on a particularly obnoxious set of ads that were running. My honest reaction was, ‘This site runs ads?’ I blocked them out months ago and had forgotten.’ Bill Spencer: ‘The comment yesterday that IE also has the Ctrl-F ‘find’ function is misleading. The invention in Firefox is not Ctrl-F, but the way the Find is implemented on the screen. Very clever and useful without taking away any web page display.’ GOOGLE EARTH Jim: ‘Amazon’s A9.com site has street level photos that compliment Google Earth’s photos. ‘Block View allows users to see storefronts and virtually walk up and down the streets of currently more than 10 U.S. cities using over 26 million photographs.” CULTS RW: You write: Strong faith? Swell. Certainty? Uh, oh. Or, as Vaclav Havel phrased it, Keep the company of those who seek the truth, and run from those who have found it.‘ PIMCO COMMODITIES Anon: ‘I own shares of the Pimco Commodities Fund that you mentioned July 18 – PCRIX. You wrote, you have the advantages of their expertise and the diversification that $3.75 billion under management can bring. I’m not sure that I agree with the ‘expertise’ part because it is an index fund. It simply attempts to track the Dow Jones AIG Commodities Index. Please don’t mention my name on your web site because I am a stockbroker and I don’t want anyone to think that I am giving investment advice.’ ☞ Fair enough. TROOP STRENGTH Even those who believe we should have attacked Iraq before we really had to (if we ever did really have to) . . . and before finishing off Bin Laden . . . can still wish we had done it better. Imagine if we had gone in with enough troops to secure the country. (And funneled fewer billions to Halliburton at $100,000 a head and more to unemployed Iraqis, but I digress.) On the issue of troop strength, consider this overview from Knight-Ridder’s senior military correspondent.
It’s Showtime (and a Few Words about Cults) July 27, 2005January 17, 2017 NTMD We should know soon how this company is doing. Are doctors writing prescriptions for BiDil (Nitromed’s only product)? And are insurers accepting those $2,500/year prescriptions or substituting the $300/year generic alternative? My smart doctor friend says that the generic alternative has long been known to most cardiologists. Of the 750,000 African Americans with congestive heart failure, about 20% are already on the generic, and unlikely to switch. Quite a few of those not on it are not on it because their doctors don’t feel they need this therapy yet – and that opinion may not change. The uninsured will be getting BiDil free or nearly free. And that leaves (he guesstimates) something under 20,000 insured patients who will receive prescriptions for BiDil that may or may not be honored by their insurers. At $2,000 a year to NTMD, those 20,000 patients at $2,000 each work out to $40 million a year in gross revenue, versus expenses the company has estimated at above $100 million. So – if these guesses are right, and they could of course be wildly off – we would be looking at more than $60 million a year in losses. Yet the company is currently valued at nearly $700 million. A lot to pay for a single product if it yields $60 million a year in losses. What’s interesting is that the weekly prescription figures should be available soon. (As, too, the determination of insurers whether to reimburse for those prescriptions or switch insureds to the generics.) Whether my guru is right or wrong, it shouldn’t take years to find out. It’s . . . show time. FIREFOX v. I.E. Mike: ‘I hate to find myself in the position of defending Microsoft, but . . . browsing with Internet Explorer 6.0, XP SP 2: ‘5. Find.’ I can also press Ctrl-F to search the page for anything. Microsoft didn’t miss that one. ‘4. No pop-ups.’ IE also has a built-in pop-up blocker. [Ah, but is it as good?] ‘3. Security. FAR more secure than IE.’ I don’t doubt this is true. Nobody cares about knocking off the little kids on the block. ‘2. Tabbed browsing.’ OK. ‘1. Painless install.’ IE comes installed with Windows – it’s hard to get more painless than that. ‘I’m not knocking Firefox, and I’m not necessarily defending IE – but if you’re going to argue for something, give me one irrefutable point, not five insubstantial ones.’ ☞ I haven’t tried Firefox yet, but I’m not sure I’d call #2 and #3 insubstantial. Paul Langley: ‘There are many reasons to use Firefox and I do about 80% of the time. The tab feature, the ability to use add-ons and plugs ins that allow you do such things as automatically open to the pages you last had open, or display (up to) a seven-day weather forecast and current time/temperature in the browser are strong reasons to use Firefox. There are also reasons not to use it. Other than compatibility problems, the biggest shortcoming is its inability to ‘send page’ or ‘send picture’ in emails. Instead it sends a link to the page or picture. I have read why it does it this way (standards that the developers adhere to). But the bottom line is when you want to send someone an article or picture and you know that the article/picture at the link changes every day, then you need to mail them the actual page/picture and so you have to use another browser – in this case Internet Explorer because it has the capability to send pages and pictures directly.’ THE SOUTHERN STRATEGY Jason Colin: ‘Isn’t it ironic that the Republicans have finally confessed to their racial divisiveness for the last 30+ years, and apologize to the NAACP for it now. They continue to spread hatred and fear towards gays and lesbians. Will it take them another 30+ years for them to figure out they are wrong again? Why aren’t the Democrats or the media picking up on this? The Republicans will continue to do this until everyone understands their control stems from fear, and the only way to do this is to make an issue out of it.’ KOOL-AID Frank Ryan: ‘I have a friend who was raised on that particular version of Kool-Aid. His mom was a member of The Way International early on and he grew up nurtured by this group. His whole family belonged to this group. He went on to college, got a degree in engineering and then worked at short-term jobs while running small fellowship groups. I hired him (in a very small business) and he flourished. We had many discussions about religion and Christianity (I’m Roman Catholic) and we spent a great deal of time discussing facets of our faith. He eventually left to go to one of their seminaries for a couple of years and then worked at their main campus in Ohio. ‘Five years later (in 2002), he called out of the blue. He needed a job. And a home. And a family. Things had seriously fallen apart in the hierarchy and he saw what these people really were. His whole life had fallen apart, and his family and circle of friends with it. I re-hired him and we spent many an evening talking. He really needed to rebuild the foundation of his life. They had raised him as a nearly empty shell spiritually. It was painful to see how they had taught him to distrust mainstream churches; some of the people best suited to help him. I am sure this was not a coincidence. ‘He now belongs to a mainstream denomination Protestant church. Much of his family (including his parents) gradually figured out what he saw: the people running this group were not people of God. They were running a cult and a business. In the meantime, they ruined many people’s lives. I fear that it will take many years for him to learn to forgive them, despite the fact that he has a forgiving heart. ‘I also had a friend in college who had become ensnared in Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church in the 1970’s. His description of their ‘indoctrination’ is chilling. It was, in my opinion, simply several days of psychological torture and brainwashing. ‘These groups are not real religions. Many of them are run by scam artists who use our ‘freedom of religion’ to evade any regulation. They are a blight on our free and open society. Most Christian groups are legitimate, but we all need to be on guard for those who are willing to defile religion for power and money.’ ☞ What is a real religion? What is a cult? One possible answer: the more unquestioningly and literally one takes matters that defy logic (in seven days – really? 72 vestal virgins – really?), the further one moves from a comforting spirituality that inspires kindness, hope, and good works toward something – call it what you will – that, at its extreme, leads to intolerance, hatred, and even mass murder. Strong faith? Swell. Certainty? Uh, oh. Or maybe a cult is just a religion with relatively few followers. But to put it that way is, I think, disrespectful of religion. AND SPEAKING OF INTOLERANT NUT JOBS Click here. My favorite part: Besen tracks down a dizzying array of former ex-gay leaders who later came out of the closet for good, including the two founders of Exodus.
5 Reasons to Switch to Firefox July 26, 2005January 17, 2017 GLOBAL COLLAPSE Brian: ‘That story you linked to on Robertson was fraudulent. Click here.’ ☞ Sorry about that! Before posting it I checked to be sure neither Snopes.com nor FactCheck.com had anything on it. According to the link above (confirmed by this one): Here is some of what Julian Robertson really said: “I am more disturbed than I have ever been in my investment life about what lies ahead. The American consumer has driven the world and the American consumer is out of gas and he is also involved in a housing bubble that puts his very dwelling at risk, and it worries me about what lies ahead because I don’t see any easy way out.” So it’s still not exactly sunny. But much of what I linked to yesterday was made up. Including the part about his CNBC interview knocking 50 points off the Dow. It did not. (For those curious about what’s become of Robertson since getting out of the hedge fund business – he’s 72 and enjoying his $850 million – click here.) I would guess we will muddle through, if only because we usually do. Then again, periodic financial crises have punctuated our history from pretty much the beginning, so it may be a bit foolhardy to imagine that it can’t happen again. Are we really getting richer because our homes keep going up in price – or are we getting poorer as we borrow more and more against them? Are we really getting richer when we cut taxes, especially on the rich – or are we getting poorer when we borrow tens of billions of dollars a year to do it? LARGER IMAGE I delayed posting these helpful responses because I wanted to juxtapose this subhead (Larger Image) with another I’m working on – Sharper Image. But too many of you have been squinting for me to delay any longer. Thanks to all who chimed in. Vince DeHart: ‘I notice that in Internet Explorer, the font size of the brown type appears just fine, while in Firefox (which I generally use) you get the small type that Ron describes. Using Ctrl and + increases the font size on the page, while Ctrl and – decreases it.’ Jacques Levy: ‘To adjust the font size on a page, just hold the Ctrl key and use the scroll button on your mouse to scroll up and down. This works in a lot of applications; Excel, Word, PDF, etc.’ Wayne Arczynski: ‘If you have a mouse with a scroll wheel, spin it up and down to zoom. This works in several app’s besides Firefox.’ Gary Diehl: ‘You might suggest to Ron that he download a copy of Virtual Magnifying Glass. It is a free open source program and extremely easy to use. It sits on your task bar so you can engage it as needed and then simply click it off when you don’t. Also on a related subject: Anyone who is squinting at an older (dark) monitor should strongly consider Monitor Calibration Wizard. This is my all time favorite piece of freeware. I have added probably five years of useful life to dozens of old dark monitors simply by installing this program. It, too, is free, easy to use, and it keeps monitors out of the landfill. I am using it on my current monitor, a beautiful 10 Year old 21″ NEC which I rescued from the dumpster three years ago after my company tossed it away (for being too dark and not worth fixing).’ THE FIREFOX NEXT TIME Gary Diehl: ‘Smaller, faster, more responsive, more screen area devoted to the web page, simpler to use – Firefox is the Prius, next to Microsoft’s Hummer. Here are the top 5 reasons to switch: 5. Find. How simple is this? When you have a web page loaded and you are looking for something particular in it, just hit [Ctrl]+[F]. How the heck did Microsoft miss this? 4. No pop-ups. The best pop-up blocking of any browser on the market. 3. Security. FAR more secure than IE, Firefox simply doesn’t use the technology that makes hacking IE so easy. 2. Tabbed browsing. Instead of piles of randomly placed windows, you have tabs, simple as that. I have five sites I routinely go to. “They” are my home page. I click from one to the next, open tabs, delete tabs, and it’s a breeeze. There is a short learning curve for using tabs, but once you get used to it you never go back. 1. Painless install. The very best, and most overlooked feature of Firefox, is how easy it is to make the transition from Internet Explorer. It copies all your favorite places, and at first glance looks and feels like IE. You do not have to learn anything new to use it. This allows people to pick up the new features at their own pace. ‘Of course Microsoft is frantically adding tabbed browsing, and some of the other features to the next version of IE due in 2006, but why wait?’ Courtney: ‘Firefox is great, but there are more choices and info here.’ And if you have real trouble seeing NIGHTLINE FOR THE EARS Sandy Birnholtz: ‘You recently wrote to suggest TiVo-ing Nightline. If you don’t mind missing the video and have the latest version of iTunes, a 21-minute podcast will be automatically downloaded to your iPod the next morning. It’s unreal how many good podcasts are available – Al Franken, etc. And free!’
Unless We Have Global Collapse . . . July 25, 2005March 2, 2017 STEM CELLS Preview an ad about to run in New Hampshire (a state filled with libertarians who help decide the next Republican presidential nominee). MONEY Not too late to buy NTMD puts, a risky but I think good speculation (consider the December or March 25s) . . . and American Express (AXP), a strong core holding, I hope, over the next couple of years. UNLESS, OF COURSE, WE HAVE GLOBAL ECONOMIC COLLAPSE In which case the NTMD puts would be fine, but AXP could suffer. And there could be a few other problems. Click here. [NOTE: After posting this, I was told the linked article takes very considerable liberties with what Julian Robertson actually said. See tomorrow’s column for more on this.]
Just a Few Quick Follow Ups July 22, 2005January 17, 2017 MARRIED $$$ Doug Olson: ‘You quoted a correspondent who advised getting married as financial advice. She’s half right: you need to get married AND STAY MARRIED. I first read this financial advice in Getting Rich in America by the MacKensies. I’m sure that’s a terrific financial practice, in the same way ‘Don’t buy stocks just before a bear market’ is.’ KOOL-AID Anne Speck: ‘Like your reader Dan, I’m a devout American Christian. I don’t have any problem at all with the comments you post on your site about Christians. As the dominant faith in the U.S., we have many flavors, though all related in profound ways. I have problems with the behavior of some parts of my faith community; I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t too.’ BROWSERS Dean Reinemann: ‘I have been using Opera as my browser for a couple of years. One of the features I like is the ability to zoom in to make reading text easier. Goes from 100 percent up to – I think – 2000 percent. It also stores your bookmarks so you can search them easily. You can get it free for Mac, PC, Linux and several other operating systems. It has loads of features, it’s small in size, quick, adaptable to the user, etc. Of course one gets use to a browser or anything, but for my taste and use, it’s great. You can also delete all private data easily.’ PPD The stock was down sharply to $45.52 yesterday, bringing the intrinsic value of our LEAPS down to $20.52 (up from the $11.80 we paid in March). This could be in anticipation of what the company signaled, when it announced higher sales recently, will be lower second quarter earnings (higher sales, but commissions are paid out up front, so, perversely, a big gain in sales cuts profits in the short term). I got an e-mail from Glenn E. Hudson, who suggested this stock in the first place, who now writes: ‘I am not as confident that we are going to see a short squeeze here because even though there still are a lot of shorts who haven’t covered, I think the fact that Prepaid Legal has already indicated that this quarter’s profits will take a major hit may cause a significant enough drop in share price to let the shorts off the hook. Prepaid Legal’s releases their quarterly earnings report after the bell on Monday, July 25th. I admit I can’t tell how the market will react to the quarterly numbers even though they have already been warned of lower profits and haven’t reacted negatively. You can do whatever fits your strategy but I would suggest you might consider taking some (half or more) of your profits at the appropriate time between now and the earnings release. As far as the expectation that PPD may be bought or merged into another company, I think there is still a good possibility that it might happen but am not sure that the share price will be significantly higher than the current PPD share price. It is still possible that shareholders will ignore the lower earnings this quarter and that shares of PPD could still rise even higher.’ ☞ Now you know as much as I do. WHO THE HELL WANTS TO HEAR ACTORS TALK? It turns out that some of the most famous quotes we’ve all heard are (at best) hard to authenticate. Click here.
Marrying for Money July 21, 2005March 2, 2017 SMALL PRINT John T Bennett: ‘In Firefox, hold down ctrl and hit it either + or – . With Internet Explorer, click View and then text size.’ Michael Axelrod: ‘There are many other reasons to switch to Firefox as well.’ KOOL-AID Dan: ‘I have long enjoyed your thought provoking comments. This makes it hard not to come back to your column anymore. Which is my first response to your anti-church columns of late. I am a Christian and I vote my conscience. That does not make me a whacked out drone who thinks Bush II is the greatest man since Jesus. Your columns do not adequately portray American Christians. In fact, you seem intent on reinforcing negative stereotypes that serve no purpose but to further separate the reds and blues in this country. This is really troubling, as what we need is coming together on values that we all share, not focusing on the differences. I want to threaten never to read your column again, but I know I will. Just don’t know why you want to bash one specific group because you don’t agree with them. Maybe I’ll boycott a week or so.’ ☞ Thanks, Dan. My intention is not to offend, let alone bash. And I totally agree that – as I read the Bible – true Christians are nothing like the ones in power who relentlessly favor the rich over the poor, reject every plea for clemency (even mock the condemned, as Bush did Karla Faye Tucker), abuse the environment, and, far from turning the other cheek, rush to war even when not attacked. (Iraq did not attack us.) GOOGLE EARTH Risë Vandenburg: “We are loving Google Earth like no other software we have ever had.” Brad: “I found the Google Moon site today. To see the best part, keep hitting the plus key (zoom in) until you reach the highest level. It made me laugh!” MARRIAGE $$$ Sue Rinne: “I’m 43, and only beginning to think about saving for retirement. Oops. Luckily, a previous employer was thinking about it for me, so I have $60k in a pension fund. Luckier still, I married a wonderful man a couple of years ago. He began thinking about retirement only a couple of years before I did. Feeling anxiety from his slow start in this area, he is now a zealot for savings, and immediately upon our marriage he gave me $3000 and told me to open a Roth IRA (my first, at the age of 42!) Here’s my point: Next time you update your investment book, one piece of advice might be this: Get married. John and I were ‘together’ for almost 17 years before we got married. For a variety of reasons, we never shared a home. That meant we had two sets of living expenses. Now we have one. For the 5 years immediately preceding our marriage, we lived 250 miles apart. That cost us a little in phone bills and travel expenses, but it cost even more in boredom-and-loneliness-prevention tactics for me. I bought CDs, books, and clothes not because I needed them or even wanted them, but because I was bored and – sometimes – lonely. Most importantly, I am now somewhat responsible for someone else’s financial security and future. When I was single, I spent what I wanted to and saved nothing, because I was only hurting myself. It was nobody’s business if I hit 65 without a penny in the bank – and, frankly, I thought much more about the present than about that distant future. Now, my husband and I are in this together and THAT HAS MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE FOR ME. I am responsible to him – as he is to me – for our financial picture. I’m also more future-oriented. We are looking forward to a lovely, comfortable retirement by living off of one modest salary and investing the entirety of another modest salary. We’re catching up quickly! So, for some of your readers, the best advice might be: Get married. ☞ Or, for those of us forbidden by law to marry: “live together.” Thanks, Sue!
He Drank the Kool-Aid July 20, 2005January 17, 2017 But first . . . GOOGLE EARTH Daniel: ‘Based on your minimalist comments regarding Google Earth, is it possible that you – being primarily from the lands of flat spaces – have not grasped why Google Earth is one of the most astonishing inventions ever? I’m sure you’ve already seen this but just to be pedantic, be sure that you have ‘Terrain’ checked in the primary display selection window. Enter ‘Grand Canyon, AZ’ as your search. Apply the ‘adjust tilt’ selector, which is the lever control to the right of the main navigation panel. Now try flying INTO the inner gorge with the canyon walls on both sides and zoom in to the point that you can see the rapids. Next, with ‘Buildings’ check-marked, enter New York City as your search target. Apply the tilt lever. Now try navigating around THROUGH the downtown buildings. Be astonished.’ ☞ Heck, Luke Skywalker was flying through canyons in 1977. Still, it’s kind of neat we can now do it ourselves. I just worry that if we all try this at the same time, there could be collisions. Wear your helmet. EYESIGHT Ron C.: ‘When you include a column from another source, you print it in very small brown type that I find extremely difficult to read. I assume you are trying to save space, but I’m trying to save sight. If you can do something about this problem I suspect many others besides myself would be very grateful.’ ☞ Thanks, Ron. I think there’s probably a way to adjust your browser to display the whole column larger. But until you find a 17-year-old who knows how, you could always just cut-and-paste those 10-point excerpts into Word and then raise the font to any size you like. (In Word, control+open-bracket notches highlighted text up larger and larger.) And now . . . NOTES FROM A FORMER CULTIST . . . With seemingly nice teenagers morphing in just months into suicide bombers, it’s of no small interest how exactly this happens. I sure don’t know. Still, this note from one of you helped me imagine how one comes to drink the Kool-Aid. (Have we a remarkable readership, or what?) My Cult Years Personal History by John Seiffer Growing up in an upper middle class town with parents who were smart, intellectual, and cultural Jews, I was a hippie wannabe. I was old enough to identify with flower children, smoke a little pot and even march against the Vietnam War, but I was only 14 when Woodstock happened and I wasn’t old enough to be a full-fledged YIPPE or anything serious like (god forbid) a Weatherman. And I wasn’t the right color to be a black panther. Perhaps I could sue for discrimination? The summer before my junior year in high school (1970), an older sister of a friend of mine came back to town as a Jesus freak and turned a bunch of us on to the bible. Now this was something cool! It was unusual (to say the least) and totally anti-establishment. It was against established religion (not that I’d had any ties to religion to begin with) it was certainly anti-intellectual. It gave us a cause (we were on a mission literally to save the world) and it was communal. Not in the sense that we lived together but we were a tight knit community. Having alienated everyone else, what other choice did we have but to commune with each other? The group was The Way International, a two-bit ‘ministry’ founded by a guy in Ohio who had gotten kicked out of his parish years before. He said he was forced out for teaching the real truth like it had never been known before, but I’ve since heard it was for messing with the money, the women or both. We started some prayer meetings and bible studies in high school and since we were in a liberal part of the country (Westchester county NY) and most of us were top students we attracted the attention of a writer who did a story on us for Life Magazine called ‘The Groovy Christians of Rye, NY’ My mother was quoted in the article as saying ‘Drugs I can understand, but this is creepy.’ Don’t you hate it when your mother turns out to be right after all these years?< When I got involved, the group was beginning a pretty large growth spurt that in the next 10 years would include almost 100,000 people. So there was a need for leaders. I went through their leadership program and got ordained. I was legally able to perform wedding and funerals and such. I was never at the very top of the organization – I rose to a level perhaps analogous to Vice President in a public corporation. The teachings of the group were supposed to be built on biblical research but as is typical in such organizations, it was really built on ‘What the head guy says is THE TRUTH.’ There were some references to obscure ancient texts, some mistranslation of Greek and Aramaic and such, but no real questioning allowed and certainly no academic-style inquiry. It was pretty fundamentalist in doctrine and very conservative in politics – which it didn’t mind foisting on followers who were assumed not to be spiritual enough to make up their own minds about such matters. As you would expect from a group that believes God has called them to spread the one true light, there was a high degree of fanatical devotion. It differed from the current religious right in isolating itself more from main stream society (it was, among other things not nearly as involved politically) and in a few doctrinal differences (acceptance of abortion being one – turns out the top leaders needed this to cover evidence of some of their indiscretions). The organization was based on fellowships in people’s homes. It was not a communal cult, like the Branch Davidians where everyone lived together. But it did have a sizeable training program where as many as a thousand people lived on 4 campuses for 2 years of indoctrination. At its height it had fellowships in all 50 states and dozens of other countries. And it was certainly a cult in the sense of devotion to its leader and the obedience it required in almost every aspect on people’s personal lives. There was also, I was to find out later, quite an amassing of money and sexual favors at the very top. Looking back, I know that the reason it appealed to me personally was I was a kid with ‘potential’ but no inner drive or direction. Not uncommon when one has an overbearing mother and an emotionally distant father. Involvement in The Way provided direction, a surrogate family and a strong father figure. Not to mention shelter from having to do the hard work of growing up emotionally. When I first joined, it was a rather free spirited, but as it grew in numbers, the organization instituted rules and required more commitment – especially for leaders. Commitment to such a cause required orienting your entire life around it – jobs, friends, family etc. In my case, with no internal ambition, I found this an easy path for me to follow. I stayed involved through college and into my thirties. They provided a ‘career path’ for some who became paid employees. But they weren’t paid or treated well. I found it easier to remain a committed volunteer. I supported myself with a series of small businesses that gave me the income to live and freedom to be involved with annual retreats, and leadership conferences. They also encouraged leaders to move every few years, and being entrepreneurial made that easier. So it was actually the start of my life as a serial entrepreneur. And as an ironic side note, as the group grew, it became obsessed with growth and even more so after the numbers peaked and started to slide. The height was probably in the late 1970’s. In the early ’80s I was in charge of the fellowships in Marin County (and up the coast) in Northern California. It was a time when Japan was economically kicking the butts of companies in the US so there were a lot of business books written about how to get, or stay on top. My ‘boss’ was in charge of a couple western states, and at our leaders meetings he would talk about stuff he was learning from those books in an attempt to help us increase our numbers. So it also furthered my education in business principles, which in retrospect has been a lot more helpful than what I learned about the bible. As things progressed I did feel a bit constrained but by then I had no other part of my life to balance out. Leaving the group would mean having to rebuild my entire life – new friends, new employment, new identity in a certain sense. And I wasn’t ready to even consider that. It took an organizational crisis for me to decide it was time to take that jump. By then I was married (thankfully we got out before our first child was born) and I don’t know if I could have done it without the support of some friends who were doing the same thing. What happened was a power grab. The man who started the organization (Victor Paul Weirwille) had decided, for whatever personal reasons, that he would replace himself as leader before he died. He chose his successor based on loyalty. This guy (Craig Martindale) was loyal, but also loud, boorish, and obnoxious. The group was already starting to decline in numbers (due in large part, I think, to social changes that made YUPPIES more attractive than Jesus Freaks) but Martindale’s leadership style furthered that decline. Still Weirwille was around for a number of years and either through senility, declining health or frustration with having been kicked up stairs (even though he himself did the kicking) he lashed out against his successor just before he died. But he lashed out privately – to a confidante he had installed as leader of the operations in Europe, a man named Chris Geer. Coincidentally Geer was a fellow ‘groovy Christian.’ I knew him in high school and we had gotten into the organization at the same time. Weirwille told Geer of his dissatisfaction and also the fact that he was dying of cancer. He told him to wait a year after he died and if things didn’t change, to come back to the States and raise hell. Which is what happened. As a member of the clergy, I was invited to some of these hell raising sessions which had the effect of putting the organization in turmoil. Folks were deciding which person they were going to follow and a few of us decided not to follow either of them. Some started their own groups but me and some others took the opportunity to reject the bible, Christianity, and any of the stuff we’d been taught. We then got on with rebuilding our lives. Epilogue I left in late 1986. The group is still alive. Groups actually. Geer runs his own. And many followers have left to form or join offshoot groups. Martindale was tossed out as President of The Way a few years ago after a former employee sued on charges of sexual abuse. It was settled out of court. But the group never came clean about the extent of the problem. They just kicked the one guy out and hushed it up. The Way became much more legalistic in the years after I left. It has shrunk to a number estimated at fewer than 4,000 with maybe half of those children. But it is reputed to have assets of around $40 million. Most of the former members I know who did not join (or start) an off-shoot have in fact gone back to beliefs similar to those they grew up with. In my case, after some therapy, a divorce and re-marriage I’m a more fervent agnostic than I’ve ever been, and I practice non-observant, cultural Judaism with a burning indifference I never had before. Conclusion The experience has certainly given me insight into the fundamentalist mind set. You can’t talk to these people. It takes so much effort to maintain these kinds of beliefs, despite all the evidence that the world doesn’t work that way, that logic is just not given much weight. Every idea, action, opinion, thought and emotion is judged only against the holy doctrine and is concluded to be either right or wrong. No shades of gray are allowed. The sense of superiority and hubris are immense. Such is the burden of one called to know and (more importantly) spread the only truth that can save people from an eternity of damnation. When applied to action, this mind set provides intense motivation to do tireless grunt work. Such vast armies of dedicated folks who are willing to be seen as weird yet who are conditioned not to think outside the lines are a huge benefit to leaders who want to rise to power. In “my day” we focused this action on recruitment (the Mormons still do). But in the last 20 years it has been focused on transforming politics and education. I no longer pretend to speak on behalf of the almighty, so I’m not willing to say if God equates an elected town council person with a saved soul, but I can tell you it probably feels a lot more successful to man a phone bank or hand out political flyers than it does to try to get the disinterested to come to your church or bible study. This attitude has taken the political left completely by surprise. Even when the progressives (or whatever you call them) had people in the streets and willing to do the work (I’m thinking of the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement of the 60s) those leaders never considered that their followers would gladly give up their capacity for thoughtful questioning. But such is the mind set of a fundamentalist. I’m not sure my personal history of getting in and out of this mindset can be applied to the religious right today. The main reason that I got in was as an act of rebellion. My sense is that most “believers” today are in due to a sense of community and family tradition – not rebellion. Also my involvement was due to some intense psychological/emotional needs. As you can imagine most relationships were pretty superficial so I didn’t really know the others involved as well as I thought I did. But I’d be willing to bet they had psychological problems as well. I can practically diagnose the top leaders as narcissists and megalomaniacs. I’m sure some of that plays into the thinking of fundamentalists today – but maybe in a less pathological way because there seems to be more functionality on a social level. And I got out due to an internal crisis, with the support of others doing the same thing. But I was in a group removed from society (and we knew it). The religious right today is much more a part of society – albeit one they are trying to reshape – so the prospect of an organizational crisis that shakes their belief system is less likely. And trying to “get someone out” is like trying to cure an alcoholic before they’ve hit bottom. I knew people whose parents hired deprogrammers to kidnap them. A number of them came back, they were after all of legal age. And the biggest problem is that once you are a believer that mind set filters everything else you allow yourself to consider. It’s not just that the ends justify the means (which they believe) but that the end conclusion justifies or invalidates any logical argument or whether you consider any data set valid or not. It happened to communist ideologs and radical lefties who were out to change the world (where are they now?) and it’s always been present in the radical religious movements in this country. One difference now it they’ve learned the patience and the willingness to work the system in ways that other groups have not.
NTMD, ‘Nightline’ Rocks, 8-Year Marriages . . . July 19, 2005January 17, 2017 NTMD: THE OPPOSING VIEW From the financial analysts at Medacorp Research: BiDil (NTMD): BiDil is an oral tablet that combines two cardiac medications, hydralazine and isosorbide dinitrate. BiDil was approved by the FDA in June 2005 for the treatment of CHF in black patients, who number at least 750,000 out of a total U.S. CHF patient population of 5 million. Our consultants expect rapid adoption of BiDil as an addition to standard therapy in 30-40% of their black CHF patients, as well as off-label use in 10-15% of non-black CHF patients. Although the two components of BiDil are available in generic form at an estimated $300 annual cost of therapy as opposed to an estimated $2,500 annual cost of therapy for BiDil, cardiologists believe that BiDil’s decreased pill burden will result in improved compliance with therapy and warrants the increased cost. So there you have it. You tell one group of patients: ‘you’re gonna die if you don’t take this pill three times a day’ and another group ‘you’re gonna die if you don’t take these two pills three times a day.’ The first group take their pill, because it’s easy to do. The second group, faced with the inconvenience and complication of taking two pills, don’t. I may have an abnormally strong will to live, but I’ve got to tell you: if I were in that second group, I’d find a way to take the two pills. And I might even understand why insurers and HMO’s would cover me for the $300-a-year two-pill regimen but not the $2,500 one-pill regimen, since both contain the same ingredients. NIGHTLINE If you have TiVo, the one-two combination, of course, is Jon Stewart at 11pm on Comedy Central and Nightline at 11:35pm (in most places) on ABC. In very different ways, they are voices of reason not to be missed. Jon Stewart you know. (After playing clips from an uncharacteristically aggressive press scrum with Scott McClellan, Stewart leaned into the camera to confide to the audience at home, in a whisper, ‘The White House press corps has been secretly replaced with real reporters.’) If only The Daily Show were really daily, not just Monday through Thursday! But fake news is hard. Nightline may be past your bedtime, but that’s why God invented VCRs and now (never One to rest on His laurels) DVRs. Perpetually on the verge of being cancelled for something more profitable, Nightline, now in its 25th year, manages to deliver remarkable programs almost every night. One recent program took us inside North Korea. Another showed Bill Cosby‘s crusade to reach lower-economic inner city youth. Another: Warren Buffett on nuclear proliferation. Another: the stem cell debate. This past Friday, there was an amazing story about SCUBA diving to a depth of nearly 900 feet in a South African cave. There will be the occasional topic that doesn’t interest you. But you’ll know that in the first minute. Or – if you’re trying to decide whether to tape Nightline or Jay Leno (what? you have only one TiVo?) – you may want to sign up for the daily e-mail that previews each night’s show. I know Ted Koppel may retire one day. Lord knows he’s earned it. But as tremendous a talent as Koppel is, there is a whole team of talented producers and others who make Nightline what it is. Thanks to Disney/ABC for sticking with Nightline, even if begrudgingly. It would be in the interest of their audience and their country, certainly, but also, I think, their shareholders, to give it another 25 years. In the long run, something this good can’t hurt the value of their franchise. MARRIAGE EQUALITY Paul Austin: ‘This article [SAME-SEX MARRIAGE BILL MUST STAND, MAJORITY SAY . . . poll suggests 55 per cent want it untouched] is the sort of thing that makes me proud to be a Canadian and scares me that my kids are headed to be Americans.’ ☞ Marriage equality means that committed couples willing to assume the responsibilities of marriage should be allowed to do so, and receive the benefits, regardless of things like their racial composition (illegal in some states until 1967), fertility (infertile couples should be permitted to marry even though procreation is impossible), or sexual orientation. I heard on the news the other day that the average marriage in America lasts 8 years. If true (and this site seems to confirm it), Charles and I have you guys beat. Why shouldn’t we have the same inheritance rights, auto-rental rights, Social Security survivor rights – and on and on – as you? I understand it’s a concept that takes some getting used to. Hats off to the 60% or so of Americans who have come around to favor ‘civil unions or marriage.’ Hats off to our neighbors to the North who are apparently even a little further along. PIMCO’s COMMODITIES FUND Richard: ‘The argument for PCRIX is that it should have a negative correlation with equities (and a slightly positive return), thereby lowering overall risk by producing a more diversified portfolio.’ KARL ROVE Ralph Sierra: ‘That was an excellent Krugman column on Rove, but I think this piece by Frank Rich is even more powerful.’ Tomorrow (or soon): Notes from a Former Cultist (Yes, One of Our Readers Helped Lead a Cult!)
Nitromed’s 2 Cents July 18, 2005March 2, 2017 BEST VIDEO OF THE YEAR Whatever you may think of dogs that play the piano – or national ID cards – your day will be brighter if, broadband enabled, you watch this. (Thanks, Jackie!) MY OLD BOOK Jack Nettleton: ‘When I read your book 20 years ago, there was some good advice to forget about commodities since 90% of commodities speculators lose money. I noticed that the 2005 edition has the same advice. I wonder whether the availability of PCRIX changes the situation. The fund invests in indexed commodity futures and puts the collateral in TIPS. The institutional class shares are available to anyone who pays $35 – through Vanguard Discount Brokerage in my case.’ ☞ Good question. The risks are obviously much smaller, because instead of your competing with giant market pros like Pimco (or General Foods or whatever example I used in the book), you have the advantages of their expertise and the diversification that $3.75 billion under management can bring. Also, the expense ratios for this fund are way below average for comparable funds. So it’s somewhat risky, but by no means suicidal the way individual commodities speculation is. MY NEW BOOK Before the investment guide I wrote Fire and Ice, a biography of Charles Revson, who founded Revlon. I was so lucky with it, I often thought of turning it into a series: Firewater and Icecubes would be the Samuel Bronfman/Seagrams story, and Fire and Life was what I wanted to call my insurance industry book. (I was overruled.) All this, long ago. The memories came flooding back with this suggestion from Rene: ‘Why don’t you write a new book about the Bush gang and Mr. Rove called Fire (Him) and Rice ? BOREF You’ve read about Borealis; now you can hear an interview with the head of Power Chips, one of its subsidiaries. Does he sound credible? Beats me. Click here. (Often, companies pay to be interviewed on this site. A representative of Borealis told me that, in this case, no compensation was involved.) NTMD’s 2 CENTS So I listened to the nearly three-hour conference call Friday morning. The company’s drug, BiDil, all seem to agree, will save lives and shorten hospital stays. Indeed, by that standard, it will have a negative cost – the $2,000 annual cost of the drug is less than the estimated $3,800 average annual savings on hospitalization. The only thing not addressed at much length: why would people – or insurers – pay $2,000 a year for this combo pill when the generic version of the same two drugs is available separately for about $350? (And what would keep a generic pill maker from one day bringing out its own generic combo pill?) To me, the people from the company sounded well-meaning and well-motivated. They have confirmed a life-saving therapy that almost surely has highly positive results among African-Americans. They are making it available free, or almost free, to anyone without insurance. They have 195 sales people now out selling 10,000, soon to be 30,000, docs on the benefits of this therapy. How can this not be good? The analogy that comes to mind is a study that shows that a combination of a 225 milligrams of aspirin and 1000 milligrams of vitamin E – when ingested with an artichoke heart – cuts the duration (and mortality!) of influenza in half. What a boon to the world such a discovery would be! But how would the drug company that had done the hard work to discover this, and the far harder work of getting FDA approval of the claim, make money from this discovery? And, I asked my guru genius doctor guy who got me started on this in the first place, how come the people at the company and the analysts on the conference call don’t see this? He e-mailed back in a language I only partly understand (like gangsta): ‘KOSP was at $40 in front of their launch of long-acting niacin for cholesterol. Six months later it is at 6. EYET was at 45 on Dec 31 as it launched a new drug for macular degeneration with partner Pfizer. It is now 13. NTMD has (1) no partner, (2) a tiny sales force, (3) a drug that is identical to existing generics. And so it goes.’ I should stress that buying NTMD puts (let alone shorting the stock) is – clearly – risky. Maybe insurers will decide to reimburse for BiDil after all. Maybe the company lawyers will be able to defend their intellectual property rights and keep insurers from substituting generics for BiDil. Maybe a Chinese pharmaceutical company will swoop in and acquire NTMD at 50. Maybe a short squeeze will develop and the stock will rocket to 90 before eventually falling to 3. At the peak of the conference call, with a very rosy picture being painted, the stock briefly broke 23. It closed the day up 2 cents, at $22.82 – a $690 million valuation for a company with no sales or profits, but on the cusp of what they hope will be large ones. In the next few months, prescriptions will be written for BiDil – or not. (For sure, a lot will be given away free.) So it’s not quite as dramatic as waiting by the side of an oil rig to see if anything comes gushing out. And not nearly as dramatic as watching Geraldo open Al Capone’s vault. But it could be a dramatic fall for Nitromed bulls and bears nonetheless. KRUGMAN ON ROVE Here. Tomorrow (or soon): Notes from a Former Cultist (Yes, One of Our Readers Helped Lead a Cult!)