China August 5, 2005March 2, 2017 Len: ‘Who is Peter Copperfield?’ ☞ The magician David Copperfield. His close friends call him Peter. (Or so my fingers must have imagined yesterday when they typed that. Don’t blame me, blame them.) BOREALIS So now the Borealis web site lets you jump to the Chorus Motors web site, which lets you jump to a new Wheel Tug web site, which links to the company’s analysis of the per plane benefit of installing its system – $860,000 a year. This, of course, from the same company that not so long ago estimated annual profits of $1 billion by now (or some such – I lose track). But even if the airlines look at this analysis and decide that, no, a $250,000 annual saving might be more realistic, that could still make for a good business. There are thousands of commercial jets in service, with thousands more likely to come on line. And the cost of making the motors themselves, in quantity, is probably pretty trivial. So maybe the company can come up with a business model that nets them $25,000 of that $250,000 (or $86,000 of that $860,000) per year per plane . . . that’s $25 million (or $86 million) for each 1,000 planes. Not bad – especially when you consider that this technology, and the company’s other technologies, may have other applications as well. But let us never forget to say – and with feeling – this is risky! Less so, I think, than before the plane went zipping around the tarmac. But risky. JESUS LOVES THE CHINESE PEOPLE A great overview of our relationship with China – which is, obviously, fundamental to our future. Thanks, Ralph. Click here. I LOVE DAN RATHER I know it’s popular to pile on, but I think Dan Rather deserves great praise, and thanks, for his career to date. My favorite quote from the current Esquire interview: The press [should be] a watchdog. Not an attack dog. Not a lapdog. A watchdog. Now, a watchdog can’t be right all the time. He doesn’t bark only when he sees or smells something that’s dangerous. A good watchdog barks at things that are suspicious.
More Evolution August 4, 2005March 2, 2017 But first . . . BOREALIS Chris Williams: “You have your choice. You can have one of the following: 1) Congratulations!! You were right all along and we skeptics will now live out our lives in relative poverty whilst you elevate to rub elbows as a peer of Bill Gates. 2) You are way out of control, Andy. Here’s the press release quote . . . “We are striving to help our aerospace customers operate more efficiently, cleanly and quietly at airports,’ said Jim Renton, a director of Technology Integration in Boeing Phantom Works, the company’s advanced research and development unit. ‘Our testing has shown that onboard electric motors can be very useful in achieving that goal if packaging, weight and flight-related technical issues identified during these tests can be resolved.” “Guy, that is Boeing-speak for, ‘We completed our contract to perform this test and there is no way in hell we are going to say this is a great thing and will make money for anyone.’ “The ominous phrase is ‘resolve technical issues’ and the inclusion of the word ‘weight’ and ‘packaging issues’ is devastating. I gotta suspect they can’t strap a motor that heavy that far forward of the center of gravity of the aircraft and have it not nose into the ground on takeoff. And worse, packaging issues means it is too big to retract into the nose gear wheel well. These are huge investment issues. “There are no rearview mirrors on airliners. The doods with the red batons are still going to get paid on pushback. “Maybe you’ll get a few points on the stock. Maybe more. Nothing wrong with that, but don’t go counting your billions until Boeing says they are putting these motors on the first 787 production run.” ☞ Thanks, Chris. Of course you’re right about not counting billions. And the one time I ever rubbed elbows with Bill Gates was 20 years ago, at a technology conference I snuck into. Trust me, I never expect to meet him again. But here’s what I think you’re missing. Let’s say the weight and packaging issues cannot be resolved and there’s no use for this thing in aircraft. How about elevators? Cars? Golf carts? Locomotives? Subway cars? Can you think of ANYTHING that might benefit from a revolutionary new electric motor technology? If the answer is no, then – assuming the other technologies are equally worthless and the giant iron ore deposit proves valueless for some reason also – I am correct in what I’ve been saying all along: this investment is risky! You could lose your money! But where before one might have just rolled one’s eyes at all the crazy technological claims, and the iron ore, it seems to me that now you have to consider that these things are probably real . . . at least in the sense that they are not complete pipe dreams or intentional frauds. It is certainly possible that nothing will come of any of this. But – and again, it may be wishful thinking on my part, ’cause I sure would love to see it – it now seems to me somewhat unlikely that the company has no value. Before the 767 moved, just the opposite was true: it seemed unlikely any of this could actually be real. (AND THIS JUST IN from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, complete with a drawing of the prototype assembly.) Dan: “My guess is that Boeing set the standards for the test to closely simulate real world requirements and satisfy themselves as to speed, agility, heating limits, and on and on. It seems apparent to me the WheelTug and Chorus/Borealis satisfied those requirements. If it hadn’t there would not have been anything with Boeing’s name at the top.” Doug Mohn: “How come [Borealis CEO] Mr. Cox only owns 48,165 shares of Chorus and 20,549 shares of Borealis out of 5 million shares. Why doesn’t he own 70-80% of the company? Now it appears that the Parmenides Group is a Cox Family trust of and own 1/3 of Borealis, but why the subterfuge? Or course, why everything about this company? “These companies seem to be the creation of a very smart and idiosyncratic individual who is intent to prove the world wrong. He might very well be a genius, but I think he is also a perennial dreamer, and I doubt he takes the advice of others too well. A good business consultant could really help him clean up the mystery around the question, but it doesn’t seem like Mr. Cox is interested in clearing the confusion. “No doubt Mr. Cox really believes in what he is doing, but so did the carnival promoter who thought his horse could really count out the answer to simple math problems by stomping his feet up to the correct number. Funny, but the horse could never count when the promoter wasn’t present and signaling with his arms. It would be nice to know how well that little tug could work when the Chorus team wasn’t configuring the experiment as well – just how close to production ready was the test device. “So I will pass on this speculation, but I am eagerly awaiting a new chapter in your next edition of My Vast Fortune, ‘How I climbed to the top of the Rock of Gibraltar only to fall into the sea.’ “On a serious note, as DNC Treasurer, you should put a 100-foot pole between you and this stock and maybe only mention it once a quarter if at all. Should this stock really take off and then later crash, I don’t think you want to see your name in the New York Times over a stock scam. DNC TREASURER TOUTED STOCK OF MISSING SCIENTIST – MILLIONS LOST. On the bright side, since a Democrat would be involved, the SEC would get off its butt and actually investigate. “I know you have high integrity and you always state a long disclaimer in front of your Chorus/Borealis articles but please be careful.” ☞ The horse thing I get. And I once did a story on Uri Geller, who bent spoons without touching them (though not really, of course). But how do you fake moving an Air Canada Boeing 767? David Copperfield could doubtless make one disappear. But drive it around the tarmac like a golf cart? I appreciate your counsel. I can only promise you that if we lose money on this speculation – as we certainly may – I will lose more than any of my readers. Gary Diehl: “If you are buying a stock long term at $12 with the hope that over time it will one day reach $100, what difference does it make if you place a market or limit order? Will you pay significantly more with a market order, and don’t you risk missing the purchase altogether with a limit order? I know you mentioned that it was thinly traded, how does this affect the type of order you should place?” ☞ Back when the stock was selling around $4 or $5 and Boeing issued its first announcement a couple of years ago, one of our readers put in a market order and paid $11. Had he put in with a limit of $6, I expect he would have paid $6, even if it took all day to fill the order. If you’re buying just 100 or 200 shares, a market order is probably OK. For anything more than 100 or 200 shares, I’d be sure to protect myself with a limit order – even if it’s a dollar above whatever is the quoted asking price (to increase the likelihood of getting the order filled). And now . . . EVOLUTION (continued) Tim Kreider: “A reader of yours who is also a reader of mine suggested I send you a link to this cartoon, which I drew last year. I think he thought you’d enjoy it based on your posts about evolution vs. ‘intelligent design.'” ☞ I love it. The estimable Paul Lerman: “A great article in the London Times on this topic.” May 21, 2005 Creationism: God’s gift to the ignorant As the Religious Right tries to ban the teaching of evolution in Kansas, Richard Dawkins speaks up for scientific logic Science feeds on mystery. As my colleague Matt Ridley has put it: ‘Most scientists are bored by what they have already discovered. It is ignorance that drives them on.’ Science mines ignorance. Mystery – that which we don’t yet know; that which we don’t yet understand – is the mother lode that scientists seek out. Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious. Scientists exult in mystery for a very different reason: it gives them something to do. Admissions of ignorance and mystification are vital to good science. It is therefore galling, to say the least, when enemies of science turn those constructive admissions around and abuse them for political advantage. Worse, it threatens the enterprise of science itself. This is exactly the effect that creationism or ‘intelligent design theory’ (ID) is having, especially because its propagandists are slick, superficially plausible and, above all, well financed. ID, by the way, is not a new form of creationism. It simply is creationism disguised, for political reasons, under a new name. It isn’t even safe for a scientist to express temporary doubt as a rhetorical device before going on to dispel it. ‘To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.’ You will find this sentence of Charles Darwin quoted again and again by creationists. They never quote what follows. Darwin immediately went on to confound his initial incredulity. Others have built on his foundation, and the eye is today a showpiece of the gradual, cumulative evolution of an almost perfect illusion of design. The relevant chapter of my Climbing Mount Improbable is called ‘The fortyfold Path to Enlightenment’ in honour of the fact that, far from being difficult to evolve, the eye has evolved at least 40 times independently around the animal kingdom. The distinguished Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin is widely quoted as saying that organisms ‘appear to have been carefully and artfully designed’. Again, this was a rhetorical preliminary to explaining how the powerful illusion of design actually comes about by natural selection. The isolated quotation strips out the implied emphasis on ‘appear to’, leaving exactly what a simple-mindedly pious audience – in Kansas, for instance – wants to hear. The deceitful misquoting of scientists to suit an anti-scientific agenda ranks among the many unchristian habits of fundamentalist authors. But such Telling Lies for God (the book title of the splendidly pugnacious Australian geologist Ian Plimer) is not the most serious problem. There is a more important point to be made, and it goes right to the philosophical heart of creationism. The standard methodology of creationists is to find some phenomenon in nature which Darwinism cannot readily explain. Darwin said: ‘If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.’ Creationists mine ignorance and uncertainty in order to abuse his challenge. ‘Bet you can’t tell me how the elbow joint of the lesser spotted weasel frog evolved by slow gradual degrees?’ If the scientist fails to give an immediate and comprehensive answer, a default conclusion is drawn: ‘Right, then, the alternative theory; ‘intelligent design’ wins by default.’ Notice the biased logic: if theory A fails in some particular, theory B must be right! Notice, too, how the creationist ploy undermines the scientist’s rejoicing in uncertainty. Today’s scientist in America dare not say: ‘Hm, interesting point. I wonder how the weasel frog’s ancestors did evolve their elbow joint. I’ll have to go to the university library and take a look.’ No, the moment a scientist said something like that the default conclusion would become a headline in a creationist pamphlet: ‘Weasel frog could only have been designed by God.’ I once introduced a chapter on the so-called Cambrian Explosion with the words: ‘It is as though the fossils were planted there without any evolutionary history.’ Again, this was a rhetorical overture, intended to whet the reader’s appetite for the explanation. Inevitably, my remark was gleefully quoted out of context. Creationists adore ‘gaps’ in the fossil record. Many evolutionary transitions are elegantly documented by more or less continuous series of changing intermediate fossils. Some are not, and these are the famous ‘gaps’. Michael Shermer has wittily pointed out that if a new fossil discovery neatly bisects a ‘gap’, the creationist will declare that there are now two gaps! Note yet again the use of a default. If there are no fossils to document a postulated evolutionary transition, the assumption is that there was no evolutionary transition: God must have intervened. The creationists’ fondness for ‘gaps’ in the fossil record is a metaphor for their love of gaps in knowledge generally. Gaps, by default, are filled by God. You don’t know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don’t understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don’t go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God. Dear scientist, don’t work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries for we can use them. Don’t squander precious ignorance by researching it away. Ignorance is God’s gift to Kansas. Richard Dawkins, FRS, is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, at Oxford University. His latest book is The Ancestor’s Tale
Can Borealis Evolve into a $100 Stock? August 3, 2005March 2, 2017 EVOLUTION – THE VIEW FROM DC Bush endorses ‘intelligent design’ Contends theory should be taught with evolution By Ron Hutcheson, Knight Ridder | August 2, 2005 President Bush waded into the debate over evolution and ”intelligent design” yesterday, saying schools should teach both theories on the creation and complexity of life. In a wide-ranging question-and-answer session with a small group of reporters, Bush essentially endorsed efforts by Christian conservatives to give intelligent design equal standing with the theory of evolution in the nation’s schools. . . . Ah, that Republican leadership. You may be pleased to know that our Secretary of Education holds the same view. Can our country’s competitive future be anything but bright? EVOLUTION – THE VIEW FROM OKLAHOMA Editorial The New York Times July 10, 2005 It’s All Happening at the Tulsa Zoo Christian creationists won too much of a victory for their own good in Tulsa, where the local zoo was ordered to balance its evolution science exhibit with a display extolling the Genesis account of God’s creating the universe from nothing in six days. A determined creationist somehow talked three of the four zoo directors, including Mayor Bill LaFortune, into the addition by arguing that a statue of the elephant-headed god Ganesh at the elephant house amounted to an anti-Christian bias toward Hinduism. After the inevitable backlash from bewildered taxpayers warning that Tulsa would be dismissed as a science backwater, the directors “clarified” their vote to say they intended no monopoly for the Adam and Eve tale but rather wanted “six or seven” creation myths afforded equal time. There was the rub: there are hundreds of creation tales properly honored by the world’s multifarious cultures, starting with the American Indian tribes around Tulsa. You want creationism? How about the Cherokee buzzard that gouged the valleys and mountains? And why should Chinese-Americans tolerate neglect of P’an Ku and the cosmic egg at the zoo, or Norse descendants not speak up for Audhumla, the giant cow? The futility of this exercise was emphatically made clear last week when a crowd of critics demanded reconsideration. With the speed of the Mayan jaguar sun god, zoo directors reversed themselves, realizing they had opened a Pandora’s box (which see). In stumbling upon so many worthy cosmogonies, Tulsa did us all a favor by underlining how truly singular the evolution explanation is, rooted firmly in scientific demonstration. Second thoughts are a creative characteristic of Homo sapiens, and the Tulsa Zoo directors did well by theirs. They were fortunate to have Ganesh, known to true believers as the remover of obstacles and the god of harmony, on the grounds. BOREALIS Richard F: ‘The fact that Boeing is even willing to try using the electric motor is certainly encouraging. But the Reuters news account I read is singularly free of technical details. For example: How fast can the aircraft taxi on electric power? How much weight does the electric motor assembly add to the aircraft? These facts are vital to the viability of the project. If the motor can only provide enough power for ‘pushback’ from the gate, then it is really only valuable for a small amount of labor saving, while you have the weight contribution for the entire flight. Additional weight is what causes high fuel usage! Only if it can drive the airplane fast enough to taxi without all the other aircraft blowing their horns on the tarmac will the fuel saving on the ground more than compensate for the extra weight during the entire flight. Also, remember, the electric power to run this motor has to come from somewhere. Extension cord? Someone would have to unplug it. Batteries? Much too heavy. I’ve got it! Let’s get power where we always do – from the jet engine! (I’m being facetious – maybe the APU [auxiliary power unit, a small turbine engine in itself] might be sufficient.) Landing gear assemblies are complicated and expensive and only appear simple. Adding an electric motor to make them self-propelled is not as easy as it sounds. Unless the motor is capable of more than very slow speed taxiing, I think you’ll find that the expense and relatively marginal utility will relegate it to an ‘option’ on aircraft that make a lot of short flights to poorly staffed airports. None of which is to say I shouldn’t have bought the stock when you first recommended it at $3.’ ☞ Thanks, Richard! I don’t think Boeing would have gone as far with this as they have if they hadn’t thought about these issues. I, too, had first imagined a system of extension cords (vying for outlets with travelers waiting at the gate to recharge their cell phones). But as I understand it, the power will indeed come from the APU. And might not the motor’s added weight be offset by not having to carry fuel to run the engines on the ground? Fuel is heavy, too. The real problem as I see it is: how do you get the pilots to be able to hear the honking on the runway. The horns will have to be VERY loud, and that could raise environmental concerns. Joseph Sermonsky: ‘Do you really believe it could go to $100?’ ☞ Yep. One of the problems people have in making rational decisions in the stock market is that they too often look at share price without asking, ‘how many shares?’ To the average person, a $100 stock sounds more expensive than a $3 stock. But that’s ridiculous. If the first company is divided into a million shares, it is selling for $100 million ($100 times a million shares). If the second is divided into 10 billion shares (like, say, Microsoft), it is selling for 300 times as much – $30 billion ($3 times 10 billion). (Or $280 billion for Microsoft’s 10.7 billion shares at $26 each.) Share price is only what you get after guesstimating what the overall enterprise might be worth and then dividing by the number of shares it’s divided into. So Joseph’s question really is: might the market value Borealis at $500 million? It sounds like a staggeringly large number and in many senses is. But it’s still just the cost of a single ritzy hotel, say. Or two or three jumbo jets. If you had your choice between owning two or three jumbo jets, on the one hand, or a set of patented technologies that you thought just might have huge industrial ramifications across the globe in the decades to come – which would you choose? Personally, I’d choose the jets. A $500 million bird in the hand is worth billions in the bush. Who of us needs more than $500 million? I’d sell two of the jets and use that cash to pay the cost of living in the third. Would that not be cool? Can you imagine the parties? And never having to be on standby for upgrades? But say you were CEO of Microsoft, with $37 billion in cash to invest. Which would you choose: the jets or the technologies? Or say you were ‘Mr. Market’ as a whole, with trillions of dollars to invest – which would you choose? My guess is that a lot of investors would go for the jets but a lot of others would gamble on the technologies. So that at a $500 million market valuation – $100 a share – you might have some people selling to take their bird in the hand but others buying to take their gamble on what could be an even bigger return. Imagine, as I noted yesterday, Borealis someday becoming one-third as valuable as the Wrigley Gum company. I’m not saying I expect it. I’m not saying it will ever happen. But to me, it is at least conceivable. And that would put the share price of Borealis not at $100, but $1,000. So yes, I think people may well gamble $100 a share in hope of $1,000. Clearly, even at $10 or $20 a share, let alone $100, this is speculative. See yesterday’s caveats, and be particularly fearful of the ones I didn’t include. It’s the risks we don’t see coming that often bite the worst. (Here’s one I forgot: the company’s top scientists being killed in a car crash.) But I continue to think this is one amazing lottery ticket – and in some senses a better bet at $15 than it was at $3. At $3, we really had no idea if the company was real or could actually succeed at anything. Now, we know it managed to move an Air Canada 767 around the tarmac like a golf cart. That’s a hard thing to fake. DAILY DELIVERY I clicked the ‘Q-Page’ button at the bottom of this page just to see what it would do – and darned if it didn’t cause my column to be delivered to myself – free! – every morning at 6am. In case you want to receive it this way, too, it apparently requires just a single click. (What will they think of next?)
Borealis!!! August 2, 2005January 17, 2017 Well, it worked.The little motor that could – did. It drove an Air Canada widebody around the tarmac like a golf cart. Those of you who could afford to gamble with this stock as suggested here over the years are likely to be nicely rewarded. Those of you who did not take the plunge might still want to consider it. [Note: The stock is VERY thinly traded. Do NOT place a ‘market’ order. If you do buy any, place a ‘limit’ order at or not too far above the quoted asking price. Quotes can be found in the Pink Sheets.] But let me start from the specific and work outward. Yesterday morning, Boeing announced the results of their test. In part: In June, the Phantom Works/Chorus Motors team, in cooperation with Air Canada, installed an electric motor drive on an Air Canada 767 and conducted a series of successful tests. Air Canada pilots performed ground maneuvers on slopes and terrains typical of those at airports around the world, including driving in reverse from a gate and taxiing forward to a runway. Tests also were performed at ramp temperatures exceeding 120 degrees Fahrenheit and at loads of up to 94 percent of the maximum takeoff weight for the airplane. There are several ramifications, it seems to me. The first is that Borealis stock, which long-time readers of this column bought mainly at around $3.50, and which had bubbled up to around $11 in recent months, closing at $12.30 last night, should be an interesting speculation at least up to $100 a share. At that price, the company would be valued at $500 million (5 million shares at $100 each). The WheelTug business alone could be worth that much. After all, jets don’t come cheap. If you were about to buy a dozen of them, would you want the kind can drive around the airport like a golf cart, or the old-fashioned kind? Boeing, it seems to me, may gain a significant competitive advantage by being able to offer this – picking up the occasional $2 billion order it might otherwise have lost to Airbus. And what about retrofitting thousands of existing jets with this system? There’s no guarantee it can be done economically, but there are certainly incentives to try. You no longer need to pay a guy to back you out from the gate – or wait for him to arrive if he’s busy tugging a different jet. (Time is money in the airline business.) You no longer have to burn fuel while you’re taxiing around O’Hare, seventeenth in line for takeoff. You even save on wear and tear to those big expensive engines of yours – extending the time between each mandatory maintenance overhaul. You cut down on noise. You cut down on pollution. So while there are surely risks (read on), just this Wheel Tug subsidiary of the Chorus Motors subsidiary of Borealis could be worth $500 million all by itself. But listen: If it can drive a 767, might it not be able to drive a forklift? Or an elevator? How about a car? It’s much to soon to do more than guess at the potential. But if Nitromed can be valued by the market at $730 million, as it was last night – a company whose sole product is the combination of two generic drugs priced at six times the cost of the generics separately – is it too much of a stretch to imagine that a revolutionary electric motor technology could be worth even more? And that’s just the Chorus Motors subsidiary of Borealis. Now that we know it is for real, one imagines that there just might be something to the preposterous claims and patents of the company’s other subsidiaries – Power Chips, Cool Chips, and Avto Metals, each of which purports to be revolutionary – and perhaps even to its claims of a billion-dollar iron ore deposit conveniently located by what could be a deep water port on the East Coast of Canada. So you could imagine – and I stress ‘imagine’ – how one day this company might sport a $5 billion market cap. That would make it one-fourth as valuable as the Gap (which is saying something, because humans would be half naked if it weren’t for the Gap), a third as valuable as Wrigley Chewing Gum (which is also saying something, because who doesn’t love gum?), and give it a market cap less about 1.5% that of GE (which wrote the book on electric motors and just about everything else). I’m not saying Borealis will ever sport a $5 billion market cap ($1,000 a share), just that I can imagine someone looking at the stock if it ever gets to $100 and thinking, ‘Hmm. It’s a crapshoot, but there’s a chance for a tenfold gain. I think I’ll give it a shot.’ Which is why someone in his right mind might pay $100. Now for the caveats. I personally think these results from Boeing speak volumes and that the stock will go much higher. But this is no Treasury bond! And my view may be colored by owning a load of shares myself. (Never underestimate the power of wishful thinking.) The company is incorporated in Gibraltar, for crying out loud! It does not file with the S.E.C. It could face all manner of technical frustrations, reliability issues, patent infringements, personnel defections, and mean-spirited competition. Management could do incredibly dumb things. Or maybe there’s some underlying scam – not in the technology, which now seems to have some validity, but in the corporate governance. Maybe Gibraltar will send its army in to nationalize Borealis. Optimist that I am, I think it’s also possible that this wildly unorthodox company will one day come in from the cold, with S.E.C. filings and normal stock exchange listings. None of that should be as difficult as moving a jumbo jet with an electric motor.
Summer Browsing for a $5 Million Open Mind August 1, 2005January 17, 2017 SUMMER George: ‘You say, ‘Summer’s going too fast. Doesn’t it always?’ Not around here. George Berger, Phoenix, AZ.’ ☞ Good point. BROWSER MTGlass: ‘Those attracted to Firefox features but reluctant to switch from IE should try Avant Browser. It is a wrapper around IE that provides full-featured tabbed browsing, customizable ad blocking, togglable Flash blocking, password completion, cookie control/deletion, and more. It’s fully compatible with IE, because it uses the IE engine, and works with all combinations of Windows and IE versions. Oh, and it’s FREE with no adware/spyware either.’ PCRIX Mike Lynott: ‘I was considering investing in PCRIX until I noticed that the Yahoo Finance page you linked to indicates that the minimum investment is $5,000,000! (Does this fall into the category of ‘Don’t believe everything you read on the web,’ or does this mean that you have VERY wealthy readers?)’ ☞ I do have very wealthy readers, because they have open minds and big hearts (most of them), and what’s worth more than that? But as pointed out in Jack Nettleton’s July 18 note, ‘The institutional class shares are available to anyone who pays $35 – through Vanguard Discount Brokerage in my case.’ I haven’t bought PCRIX myself, but it sounds as if some of the deep discount brokers can get it for you. MARRIAGE Wendy Caster: ‘What if gay people weren’t innately gay? Would it mean that we don’t deserve rights? If my sister and her best friend were both widowed and decided to choose each other instead of new husbands, would they deserve fewer rights than I deserve, as a born-that-way lesbian? We deserve rights because we’re humans and because we’re citizens of a country that promises it is the home of the free. It’s time for the U.S. to put up or shut up.’ CHRISTIANITY Suzanne Cole: ‘Just wanted to respond to the comments from Dan [who felt that by running Notes from a Cultist I was Christian-bashing – A.T.]. I am what might be called a ‘devoutly liberal Christian’ (‘devout’ in the sense that I practice my faith daily and attend services regularly; ‘liberal’ in that I believe in an open-minded interpretation of the Bible and ‘Christian’ in that I follow Jesus). I am frequently impressed and pleased by your occasional references to Jesus’ teachings of liberal principles of peace, justice and fairness to everyone. So, from this Christian, I thank you for your respect of my faith.’ ☞ Thank you! Thomas Jefferson said, ‘It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.’ (I know this from reading an advance copy of the forthcoming How the Republicans Stole Christmas by Bill Press.) I don’t think Jesus would have had a problem with that view. Indeed, I think he would have had less of a problem with an atheist who helped the poor than a believer who helped the rich at the expense of the poor.
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.]