Walmart Goes Green July 31, 2006January 15, 2017 But first . . . THE OTHER SIDE Osborne Lytle: ‘I agree with you about Global warming, but I expect better from our side (liberals). When you say that you will give ‘the other side’ and quote Peter Doran as agreeing with you it sounds false and rather Republican.’ ☞ Well, yes, but that was sort of the point: there really is no credible other side – and the folks who are cited as representing it, like Peter Doran, are being misrepresented. If it seems extreme to suggest ‘there really is no credible other side,’ you may find this interesting. One man’s impressive effort to find out. The whole thing is worth reading, but here are a few key paragraphs: . . . What I expected to find was a brou-ha-ha. I thought that Hansen, employed by NASA, would tell me in the nicest terms how those folks at NOAA had it wrong. Or vice versa. What I found is that the scientific fight over global warming turns out to be a gross mismatch. While I don’t know the exact proportions, to say that there are one thousand scientists on one side for every one on the other would appear a close approximation. The side on which “our” five scientists fall says that Global Warming is real, is mostly man-made, is accelerating, and is the cause for climate changes already observable. This consensus also holds that, in the main, Al Gore’s movie has it about right. Associated Press science reporter Seth Borenstein made the front page in newspapers all over the country this week in covering that point in Scientists OK Gore’s Movie for Accuracy. . . . I note that the U.S. Surgeon General released an assessment this week concluding there are no safe levels of secondhand smoke. I also note that some of the websites and scientists upholding the minority view on global warming also held the view that secondhand smoke is not an environmental health problem. It becomes clearer to me that a blending of science and industrial advocacy dominates one side of these debates. But this does not stop those who’ve already made up their minds on global warming to continue to believe as they have. In response to our Lavender Room exercise one of our forum regulars had the courage to write, “I have made up my mind that global warming is bullshit regardless of what data is presented to me.” Alarming to me is that this posture appears to extend to high offices of government. . . . If they made a movie about YOUR HOUSE, would you go see it? Well, they have. SHINE SUNLIGHT ON SUNSET There is a move afoot to create a Sunset Commission, by which federal programs and regulations – but not corporate tax breaks! – could be terminated by a Presidentially-appointed panel unless Congress took specific action to continue them. Last year, Rolling Stone reported on three sentences buried in the President’s 2,000-page budget requesting this. Now come bills in the House and Senate designed to enact it. Consider this analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities . . . (‘Successful commissions traditionally are formed to operate in a bipartisan fashion. The pending sunset-commission proposals, in contrast, would make it possible for program terminations and cuts to be implemented on a strictly partisan basis, even if they do not have enough support to be enacted under normal procedures.’) . . . and click here if you are concerned it may be a bad idea. And now . . . SOME GOOD NEWS FOR A CHANGE: WALMART GOES GREEN An engrossing and highly encouraging business story. As both a passenger of Spaceship Earth and a shareholder of WMT, I’m encouraged! Gee, if the Walmarts of the world put their minds to it . . . Tomorrow (which you can click today): Lebanon
The Other Side of the Debate July 28, 2006March 4, 2017 AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH One of the scientists widely cited as being on the other side of the global warming issue is Peter Doran, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. See? The jury’s still out. (And why would the administration listen to the scientific community anyway? Scientists fail to see the importance of teaching creationism in science class. Scientists murder microscopic embryos in their quest to cure Parkinson’s and paralysis. Scientists are Democrats.) (See, tellingly: ‘SCIENCE FRICTION: The growing – and dangerous – divide between scientists and the GOP.’) So in the interest of presenting both sides of the ‘debate,’ let’s give a little space to Professor Doran, who writes in yesterday’s New York Times: Our results have been misused as ‘evidence’ against global warming by Michael Crichton in his novel State of Fear and by Ann Coulter in her latest book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism. Search my name on the Web, and you will find pages of links to everything from climate discussion groups to Senate policy committee documents – all citing my 2002 study as reason to doubt that the earth is warming. One recent Web column even put words in my mouth. I have never said that ‘the unexpected colder climate in Antarctica may possibly be signaling a lessening of the current global warming cycle.’ I have never thought such a thing either. . . . I would like to remove my name from the list of scientists who dispute global warming. ☞ It took an extra 30 or so years for the tobacco-industry-manufactured scientific ‘debate’ over smoking to be resolved. Millions died prematurely who might have chosen not to smoke if the debate had not been intentionally muddied for so long. The problem is, we may not have 30 years to start doing something about global climate change. People – even our President, who says ‘probably not’ when asked whether he’ll see the movie – ought to allow for the possibility that this global emergency is real. If they made a movie about YOUR HOUSE, would you go see it? Well, they have. ANOTHER SCARY REAL ESTATE FACTOID According to Steven Krystofiak, President of the fledgling Mortgage Broker Association for Responsible Lending, a recent sample of 100 ‘stated income’ loans which were compared to IRS records (which is allowed when the lender has a signed IRS form 4506, but hardly ever done) found that in 90% of the cases, income had been exaggerated by 5% or more – and that in nearly 60% of the cases, it had been exaggerated by more than 50%. ‘These results,’ concludes Krystofiak’s source (page 15), ‘suggest that the ‘stated income’ loan deserves the nickname used by many in the industry, the ‘liar’s loan.’ ‘ Krystofiak’s organization is quite small – well, just three members so far, including him – because let’s face it: mortgage brokers are in business to broker mortgages, not discourage them. (Similarly small groups include On-Line Viagra Marketers United Against Spam and Garage Owners for Taking Full Responsibility When Your Car Is Looted or Damaged While In Our Care.) But the practice he is trying to highlight does seem to merit concern. One more reason residential housing may more and more become ‘a buyer’s market’ in the months ahead. LEBANON It is all so tragic and ominous, one barely knows where to begin. Monday, I’ll post some of the heart-felt and thought-provoking analyses I’ve received, for your comment.
Hot and Bothered July 27, 2006March 4, 2017 A GRAND TIME “The federal government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans,’ reports the New York Times – ‘specifically those who are subject to gift and estate taxes when they transfer parts of their fortunes to their children and others. …[S]ix I.R.S. estate tax lawyers whose jobs are likely to be eliminated said in interviews that the cuts were just the latest moves behind the scenes at the I.R.S. to shield people with political connections and complex tax-avoidance devices from thorough audits. …” BUT WARM From the blog of sports columnist Peter King at SI.com: Wherever you are, have you noticed the weird weather patterns in the last few months? Unending, intense rain. High winds. It was in the midst of a 12th day of measurable rain in a 14-day period that I saw An Inconvenient Truth, the Al Gore movie about global warming. This is the most apolitical piece of advice I could ever give you, because I realize Al Gore is not popular with all of you. And I really don’t care very much about Gore weaving details of his personal life into the global-warming lecture. But you should see this movie and judge the facts for yourself. What’s happening out here is no isolated occurrence. It’s going to keep happening and it’s going to get worse. Facts are facts. And we all need to do something about this phenomenon of the Earth heating up and the polar ice caps melting. This is not exactly the venue to warn the world about global warming, but all you football junkies readying for your fantasy drafts should do one real-world thing in the next couple of weeks: take two hours to see this movie. I’m not saying you’ll be glad you did, because it’s going to slap you around mentally a bit. But it’s something you need to see. You don’t want to wake up in 15 years with the Earth permanently damaged and huge portions of the Earth’s surface under water, forever. If they made a movie about YOUR HOUSE, would you go see it? Well, they have. LEVERAGE WORKS BOTH WAYS Andrew Long: “You’ve understated the pain that flippers feel because you haven’t taken the leverage into account. Your hypothetical flipper (15.7% loss) is actually facing a 62.8% loss (assuming a 75% mortgage) Leverage is great when assets appreciate but sucks when their value declines.” ☞ Quite true. If housing prices drop 20%, many speculators will be caught losing 100%, not 20%, of their investments.
The Dog That Moos July 26, 2006March 4, 2017 THE DOG THAT MOOS This site – and the five moo-ing canine TV commercials it leads to – is worth a few minutes of your morning . . . whether because you need to be enlightened (which I highly doubt) or because you know someone who does (possible) or because it’s interesting to consider whether this ad campaign, running in Colorado Springs, will be effective. (Or simply because it’s fun to hear a dog moo.) After the animated clip, you’ll find a small ‘Norman on TV’ link at the bottom of the screen that takes you to the five clickable TV commercials. BEING STUPID IS APPARENTLY A CHOICE ALSO From Sunday’s Columbus Dispatch: I think homosexuality is a lifestyle, it’s a choice, and that lifestyle can be changed. I think it is a transgression against God’s law, God’s will. – Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, running for Governor ☞ In other words, if God had meant for men to fly, He would have given them wings; and if he had meant for them to be gay, He would have wired them to be attracted to people of the same sex. Oh, wait. He did. (He also wired some people – perhaps Ken Blackwell – to fall close enough to the middle of the sexual orientation spectrum that, for them, it really can be a choice how to lead their lives. They deserve respect and equal rights, too. But in my experience, at least, most of us are wired to be essentially or entirely straight or gay.) 34 DEMOCRATS For those of us who believe dogs that moo should have rights to pursue happiness equal to the rights of any other dogs (if they pay their taxes and don’t pee on the sidewalk), there was good news last week. Not the defeat of Ralph Reed (although that, certainly, too) – the defeat of yet another attempt to write discrimination into the United States Constitution, this time in the House of Representatives. Voting against the Republicans to defeat the Federal Anti-Marriage Amendment were 159 Democrats. Voting to pass it were 34 Democrats. Those 34 Democrats fall into two groups: Those who actually believe granting Charles and me equal Social Security benefits, inheritance rights, and such, will somehow threaten their own marriages. Those who know it won’t – who know that encouraging stable relationships discourages promiscuity and strengthens the social fabric – but who feel they have to vote this way because their constituents would fire them if they didn’t. With Group #1, we simply need to have continued respectful conversations. With time, attitudes are changing. I’m not saying that to know us is to love us – Charles can be demanding and I drive people crazy asking them for money – but in general, when you get to know gay couples, especially gay couples who have been caring for each other for ten or twenty or thirty years – sometimes longer and more faithfully than even you and your own spouse may have done – you come to see this as harmless or even good. And as Americans, you are proud our country allows people to pursue happiness in almost any way they choose, so long as it does not impinge on the rights of others. With Group #2, we need to recognize that pragmatism is part of getting things done. Especially because those 34 were not needed to defeat the Amendment, should we really be too upset by their votes? Isn’t it more important to take back the House of Representatives than to defeat the Amendment by an even wider margin (much as I would have liked to see that)? The whole point of the House vote, after all – since the Amendment was already dead, having gone down in the Senate – was nothing more than Republican political gain. The reasons the Republicans scheduled it were three, I think, and only three: Stoke the Republican base, who agree with Ken Blackwell (who would have been quoting Ephesians – ‘Slaves, obey thy masters’ – in an earlier day). Defeat incumbent Democrats by turning their ‘pro-gay marriage’ votes into attack ads in October. Deflect attention from the soon-to-be $10 trillion National Debt ($8 trillion of it racked up under Reagan, Bush and Bush) and stem cell research and Katrina and global warming and corruption and torture and our having weakened our Armed Forces and turned most of the world against us – and on and on and on and on. THIS SATURDAY If your attention has not been deflected, click here to find or host an event Saturday.
We Got Stucco July 25, 2006March 4, 2017 Michael Monahan: ‘Remember that Marx brothers’ routine? Groucho is the shady real estate salesman (in Florida, of course), speaking to a crowd of would-be ‘investors’ . . . ‘Folks, we got it all. You can get brick. You can get wood. You can get stucco. Ohhhh, how you can get stuck-o.’ Well, here are some painfully precise anecdotes, ’06 versions, from Sacramento.’ ☞ Michael links us to a blog, ‘Flippers in Trouble,’ which shows the previous sales prices and current asking prices of 188 properties. For example, a nice 6 bedroom house someone paid $858,500 for on March 16, 2005, and now has on the market asking $804,900. The blog shows that as a 6.2% LOSS, but that only begins to state the pain. That’s the asking price. Let’s say someone offers $725,000 and they reach a deal at $775,000. Less 6% brokerage and $5,000 in additional closing costs = $723,500. So now the owner is down $135,000 (15.7% LOSS). Except he may have spent some money fixing it up, which would widen the loss. Not to mention the costs he may be incurring ‘carrying’ the house while it’s on the market. Sure, maybe he lives in it himself and has not already bought or rented a second place in the city he’s been transferred to . . . or maybe he has a wonderful tenant who is happy to pay full rent as prospective buyers come traipsing through – and to keep paying that rent right up to the day of ‘closing.’ But it would not be at all unusual for the seller to lose two or three months’ rent in this process, but still be on the hook for his mortgage payments, property tax, insurance, lawn care and all the rest – widening the loss further. And what if he doesn’t get $775,000? Faced with the prospect of monthly carrying costs for an empty house, and fears of a weakening real estate market, he’ll settle for $750,000 instead (say) – giving him a loss of at least $160,000 for his year and a half of effort on this project. Or, unwilling to take less, he’ll watch as the market weakens further . . . and then, when he finally is ready to accept $750,000, find that the new low ball offer he’s faced with is $650,000. At some point, and despite the cost to his credit rating, he might just hand the keys to the bank. Foreclosures will not do much to strengthen the market for others on the Flippers in Trouble list. And if none of this happens? Terrific. JET LAG ADVISOR Alan Caroe: ‘This very useful site was described in yesterday’s LA Times. If they made a movie about YOUR HOUSE, would you go see it? Well, they have.
Real Estate (Really) July 24, 2006March 4, 2017 REAL ESTATE So is the air going out of the balloon? And if so, how much is left to go – and how fast? And everywhere? I dunno, I dunno, I dunno. But I shorted a housing-related stock (symbol NVR) at $273 a share on October 10, 2002 – at least I did you the courtesy of not telling you – only to see it rise to $747 a share a couple of years later, where, wincing, I doubled down (doubled up?), and then to $938 last July – where I should have told you about it, because it closed last night at $426. Which is a long way of saying that investors seem to think the future is not as bright for housing stocks as they did a year ago. Or take WCI Communities, whose stock closed last night at $15.48, down from $35.20 less than a year ago. If the stock market is a barometer, predicting storms ahead – well, there may be some. (Then again, investors don’t always get it right. And when they do, they often over-react. So maybe these stocks are ‘oversold’ and maybe the worst of the slump in residential housing is actually behind us. I don’t think so, but what do I know?) Thanks to Michael (below) for pulling together some interesting tea leaves for us to read. But first: Pieter: ‘Living in an overpriced house in LA, it would be great to be able to lock in current profits, without having to sell – and also be protected against the coming downturn. What do you think of these options and futures, tied to specific real estate markets (Los Angeles, Miami, New York, etc.)?’ ☞ I haven’t used them and will be interested in the thoughts of others. A few basics though: (a) futures are a lot riskier than options, so if you do this, use options; (b) any profits you do make will likely be taxed at short-term rates (from what I could see on the CME site, these options don’t go out past next May, not long enough to take a long-term gain); but mainly (c) you and I are not the only ones thinking prices could drop – so that expectation will be built into the price of the options. (If it’s not, they could be a bargain – or the market could simply be smarter than we are, foretelling a further rise in home prices we don’t see.) You could do okay hedging against a sharp drop in home prices; but these are not easy games to play and win. And now: Michael Monahan: ‘Looks like the days of reckoning have finally arrived. Are the stars in alignment for this to be the perfect storm? Teasers gleaned from Housing Tracker:’ Greater Miami area: 08/14/2005 Inventory: 12,361 Median price: $425,000 07/14/2006 Inventory: 36,199 Median price: $389,000 Greater Phoenix area: 08/14/2005 Inventory: 7,447 Median price: $379,900 07/14/2006 Inventory: 26,491 Median price: $344,900 ☞ Aha. Triple the inventory overhanging the market. That can’t be good. And Michael has more. (I won’t translate all the terms . . . I think you’ll get a sense of what they mean from the context. Just picture chickens coming home to roost.) ‘Data collected from the Mortgage Brokers Association for Responsible Lending:’ As of September 2005, Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs) accounted for roughly 70% of the prime mortgage products originated and securitized and 80% of the sub-prime sector. 49.3% of ARMs with interest-only features originated in 2004 lacked full documentation. In 2006 97.5% of borrowers are likely to face a payment shock of at least 25% and 75% of borrowers could face a shock of 50% or more. [This strikes me as impossibly high, unless it refers specifically to adjustable-rate mortgages taken out recently, with teaser rates. – A.T.] These changes do not include additional shocks that would result when monthly principal repayments kick in on loans that began as ‘interest-only.’ Payments will increase on 41% of the outstanding subprime loans in 2006 alone. In the San Francisco Bay Area, almost 75% of mortgage loans taken out last year (2005) allowed borrowers to delay the payment of principle. Negatively amortized loans jumped to 29% of the Bay Area mortgage market from less than 10% in 2004. 70% of borrowers with ARMs that allow negative amortization are currently making minimum payments. [I.e., their mortgages are actually growing slightly, not shrinking slightly, each month.] [And speaking of increasing indebtedness:] In 2004 $600 BILLION of consumers’ spending power was from borrowing against home values – double that year’s tax cuts, as estimated by Brooking Institution scholar Peter Orzag. 2nd homes accounted for 14% of new mortgages in 2004; in 2000 it was only 7%. Mr. Greenspan said that the fact that someone can sell a 2nd home without moving, “suggests that speculative activity may have had a greater role in generating the recent increases than it customarily has had in the past.” ‘For more, check out thehousingbubbleblog.com.’ ☞ More? You think we can take more and still breathe? Well, perhaps we can if we’re renters flush with cash waiting for the possible bargains. And yet Michael presses on: ‘Some other links that might help your readers: piggington.com has two articles at page top that strike me as really good: Evidence of a California Housing Bubble and Risks of a Serious Home Price Decline.’ ☞ Those are about Southern California. Fortunately, you live in New Jersey. Oops. Michael points us to this ‘beautiful historical document‘ – from the Northern New Jersey Real Estate Bubble Blog (motto: keeping a watchful eye on our small part of the largest asset bubble in history.) And then there’s this (do not click if you are offended but thinly-veiled four-letter words): housingbubblecasualty.com. Finally, Michael clipped this July 13, 2006, post from piggington: I am a Realtor here in San Diego and I am continually amazed at the depth of misconceptions in our industry. I have usually abstained from postings on-line but in the past few months, usually after listing appointments [i.e., where he meets with a prospective seller about listing his home], I have felt more and more compelled to do so. … First let’s look at the source of data which is Dataquick, who in turn gathers numbers from the sold entries that realtors like me enter into the MLS. Rule 1, when you enter a sold price, you DO NOT subtract credits. Now, in today’s sales, I would estimate that, due to declining conditions, credits and rebates, are present in 30-50% of home sales. So right off the bat, the Dataquick numbers are not even accurate [because they don’t reflect those credits]. Second, online housing comparison and estimators like Zillow, Home Insight, even Realtor.com continue to propagate INCOMPLETE information. Consumers go to ALL of these sites to value their home. Well do any of you readers know how these sites make their valuations? They simply use the MLS information. However how far back to they go? Listen guys, most of my listing appointments consist of trying to demonstrate what the market is doing. That entails reversing peoples opinions that they are entitled to a certain price of their home because that is what the house down the street sold for in 2004 or that is what Zillow told them. When I ask them how Zillow came up with the valuation they do not know. When I ask them how many expired, cancelled and withdrawn listings are in their mapcode, they do not know. Having a degree in electrical engineering has made me totally anal about data. If you do not use accurate data, your analysis is flawed and soon becomes pointless. As for the run up in prices and who is to blame… That is EASY…The buyers are to blame. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BUY A HOME. As far as I know nobody has ever held a gun to a buyer’s head and forced him to sign a contract. Don’t blame appraisers, realtors, mortgage brokers, or even Uncle Sam. In the past 3 days I have gone to 3 listing appointments … all speculators who bought a few months ago and want to spin the properties. In each case I simply showed them the stats of their neighborhoods. In each case they were all severely disappointed. One guy got a 4/2 in Escondido for 525k after it had been on the market for 70 days back in March. It was listed at 525k to 610k. (Obviously a Prudential listing) So when he tells me he wants to get 625k for it (and he did some nice work inside) and I tell him I can price it at 625k, but I don’t think it will sell, he doesn’t understand why… Well if nobody touched it at 525k for 70 days what does that tell you? When I asked him why he didn’t try to get it at 475k he said they wouldn’t do that because it would have been a short sale. So what? Let it foreclose and buy it then. I lost A TON of money on stocks in 2001… I could have blamed my money manager, I could have blamed Wall Street, I EVEN INVESTED IN ENRON. It was simply stupidity and greed on my part. Nobody forced me to do these stupid things. Bad decisions are usually motivated by emotions such as greed or paranoia. Generally they are not motivated by hard analysis, patience, and/or data. Yes through the past 10 years most realtors told you if you don’t buy now you may never get in… but you didn’t have to buy. I have no sympathy for overextended homeowners. Is it too much to simply put a budget on paper BEFORE you buy? Most buyers I work with have already been on-line looking for homes for weeks and even months before they contact me. When I ask them if they have written up a budget for their financial future that would include a mortgage, property taxes and insurance over 90% of them say NOT AT ALL. Yes I represent sellers but also homebuyers and yes I encourage them to finance their purchases with standard 30-year fixed rate mortgages. When they cannot afford the payment my first sentence to them is, maybe you should wait until you can afford the payment rather than buy now. Yet that statement is more than likely met with deaf ears. The response to that is, what about some of these new loan programs I hear about? So I point them to a mortgage broker and let them do their thing… In all cases I do review their loan program and sit down with them to point out the risks of what their payment will be in 3, 5 and 7 years. I tell them I don’t LIKE those vehicles but as long as THEY KNOW the possible outcomes, then I will not feel I acted improperly. My name is Adam Rappoport and my brokerage is G & R Realty. Finally, my read on the market is that we will continue to stay flat with single digit depreciation in low and mid range housing for the next few years. A wild card may be an impending recession that I feel should come upon us soon and we may see a cash infusion into the economy as soon as next summer. The other wild card is stagflation which may be an ugly reality as it would force the rates to stay high and that would definitely accelerate home depreciation. Just….my….guess. ☞ My Dad used to say, ‘Life is not a business.’ If you view your home as a home, not a speculation – and if you can afford to live in it – who cares what happens to real estate prices over the next few years? Otherwise, it seems to me there could be pain ahead.
Bob’s Father Was An Ape MYM Printing / Real Estate Time Travel July 21, 2006March 4, 2017 WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? This article might pique your interest in this movie. HURRICANES FOR DUMMIES A nice review of our friend Bryan’s Hurricane Almanac – and a plug for his web site. Tell me this isn’t a great way to get your 12-year-old interested in science. JUST ANOTHER FALSE ALARM? William McLeese: ‘In the final chapter of his superb book Collapse, Jared Diamond points out that a huge percentage of fire alarms turn out to be false. If we considered false alarms an excuse for inaction, we would have abolished fire departments long ago.’ Ted Gault: ‘Thanks so much for mentioning that Y2K was AVERTED due to much effort; it wasn’t a hoax. Few beyond those of us that worked to prevent the problem, and our accountants who funded the effort, seem to remember that today.’ TREMENDOUS IMMEDIATE Joel Margolis: ‘If, as you say, Bush, Cheney and Rice were told by the CIA at Blair House on January 7, 2001, that Osama Bin Laden posed a ‘tremendous’ and ‘immediate’ threat to the United States, could you tell me exactly what your heroes – Clinton, Gore, Cohen, Reno, et. al. – did about it? Or did the threat only occur on January 7, 2001?’ ☞ You can read about it in Bob Woodward’s largely pro-Bush Bush at War. Go to Amazon and ‘Search Inside the Book’ on ‘Blair House.’ You’ll find it at page 18. You will see that ‘President Clinton had approved five separate intelligence orders authorizing covert action to attempt to destroy bin Laden and his network.’ The CIA was urging Bush to continue or step up those efforts; instead, he shut them down and (we know from Bush’s first Treasury Secretary’s book) turned his attention to Iraq. APES Bob Neinast: ‘Regarding the so-called ‘global cooling’ crisis in the 1970s, that was media hype. Very few scientists were pushing that. Click here. And regarding whoever got mad at you for saying we descended from apes, they are wrong, too. The common ancestor of us and the other apes would almost certainly also be called an ape, by any reasonable definition of the word. Indeed, by any reasonable scientific definition of the word, we are apes. I am an ape. My father was an ape. I am descended from my father.’ Kathy Flake: ‘I was also going to send you a (not-so-angry) message saying that we did not descend from apes but rather a common ancestor, but I asked my daughter, who is studying anthropology, and she informed me that although humans and apes descended from a common ancestor, that common ancestor was an ape.’ If they made a movie about YOUR HOUSE, would you go see it? Well, they have. Monday (which through the miracle of relativity, traveling at the speed of light, you can experience today): Real Estate For MYM owners ONLY: YOU CAN STILL PRINT CHECKS — MYM LIVES! Charlie Engelke: ‘Bill Strong reported that he couldn’t print from MYM to the USB printers on his laptop. Your solution of printing to disk works, but there’s another way. MYM wants to print to LPT1:, which was always the printer connected to the parallel port (which few PCs have any more). But Windows networking will let you assign the name LPT1: to any network printer, and MYM works with such printers. Say your network printer name is MYPRINTER, on a PC named MYPC. Then run the following command (from a DOS window, or using the Start/Run menu choice): net use LPT1: \\MYPC\MYPRINTER /persistent:yes ‘Now when you try to print from MYM, it works. I’ve been using this for years, under every version of Windows through XP (I haven’t tried Vista yet). But Bill wants to print to a local USB printer, not a network printer. The solution is emotionally dissatisfying, but it works: share the USB printer. You can do this with the Control Panel’s Printers and Faxes applet (see below). Once you share it, you can run the ‘net use’ command. I’ve done this for laptops, and it works with MYM. ‘Here’s how you do the ‘share’ thing: ‘Open the Control Panel and select Printers and Faxes. You should see a list or box of printers (or maybe only one). Right click on the printer you want to use, and select Properties from the pop-up menu that appears. The Properties window that opens has a lot of tabs, one of which is labeled ‘Sharing.’ Select that tab, and then click the radio button ‘Share this printer.’ It will fill in the blank for ‘Share name’ for you, but the name it fills in may be long and have spaces, which would make the ‘net use’ command harder to run later, so enter a short, easy to type name instead – perhaps ‘MYMPrint.’ Click the Okay button to close the Properties window. If you are running security software, it may pop up and ask if you intended to do what you just did, and you’ll have to say it’s okay. ‘Next, you need to know your PC’s name. (If you don’t know it, use the Control Panel and select System, which will open a Properties window. Click on the tab labeled ‘Computer Name.’ The ‘Full computer name:’ will be displayed (always followed by a period that is NOT part of the name). Take note of it and cancel to close the window. ‘Suppose your computer name is called mypc. Finally, use Start/Run and type the command net use lpt1: \\mypc\MYMPrint /persistent:yes ‘And now MYM should print. I’ve been using the “net use” trick for years and years successfully, but with real network printers. The second level of the trick, of sharing a local printer and then “net use” it from the same PC, worked for me in the past but I haven’t actually had a local printer on a laptop and used it lately.’ ☞ Oh, Charlie. Would you consider living in my office closet? I think everyone needs a Charlie Engelke. Thank you!
Billy Crystal on Global Climate Change And the Bush Veto, Gift Certificates, Windows Vista July 20, 2006March 4, 2017 But first . . . OOPS One of you is angry with me for saying we descended from apes when in fact we and apes may have descended from a common ancestor. Another of you is angry with me for saying the hole in the ozone layer came from deodorants and refrigerants without mentioning the chlorofluorocarbons from industrial processes. (I mean, really angry!) BUT SHOULDN’T WE REALLY BE ANGRY . . . . . . with George Bush for vetoing the stem cell research bill . . . and with those who are likely to keep that veto from being overridden? By leaning against this medical research instead of encouraging it, the Republicans have been doing two things: first, they have been handing the lead in an important 21st Century industry to our friends in other lands; second, and more important, they have delayed the kinds of breakthroughs that could improve the quality of life – or save the life – of you or someone you love. Imagine if the polio vaccine had been delayed five years. What if your parents had contracted it during that unfortunate five-year window? Better – says the Republican majority – to discard microscopic embryos than to use them to save you or your loved ones from a final decade like Ronald Reagan’s or a nightmare like that of J. Michael Fox or Christopher Reeve. CARD AVENUE Johnny Dicks: ‘I recently discovered cardavenue.com. It is an online marketplace for buying, selling, and trading retail gift certificates. I HATE receiving gift cards. The gesture is always nice, but I would much rather have cash. On this site, you can ‘liquidate’ your gift cards for what usually works out to about 90% of the value plus a small fee ($.39 cent postage – no kidding, that’s it, plus the Paypal fee if you use it). Or, if you know you want to buy something, say a Brooks Brothers suit, for example, and you know it will cost $300, you can go to cardavenue.com, buy three $100 cards, and get an automatic 10% off (or sometimes better). Or – and this is the most practical use – I can trade you my Best Buy $100 for your Home Depot $100. I really hope you’ve never seen this site. I love being revelationary.’ ☞ And revelationary you are. PEAS Fred: ‘I read your column on peas and then yesterday along comes a guy in my office with a cane. Torn calf muscle. Beach volleyball. Forwarded him your article. Note to self: add frozen peas to grocery list.’ ☞ Vegetables are my forte. MYM LIVES Frank Schrader: ‘I installed the beta of Windows Vista [Microsoft’s new operating system] and one of the first things I tried was Managing Your Money DOS Version 12. It works just fine, which is great because I’m not ready to give it up yet. It still does everything I want it to and I have records dating back to 1987!’ ☞ Orphaned 13 years ago, yet it lives on. Continued kudos to Jerry Rubin and countless talented young programmers under his direction who made MYM such an amazing tool. Bill Strong: ‘Purchased new laptop. MYM 12 will not print. Only have USB ports on laptop. Any way to keep MYM12 working? Hate being without it.’ ☞ Except for printing checks, the solution is easy: print ‘to disk’ and then open those reports with your word processor and print from there. (To get report columns to line up, you may need to change the font to Courier and/or reduce the font size.) For checks, the solution is to keep your old computer and printer around. MOVIE NEWS Kevin Kotowski: ‘Saw An Inconvenient Truth the other day and you’re right. Everyone who cares about the environment AND has an open mind should see it. I wonder whether, if a Republican had made it instead of Mr. Gore, it would find more acceptance among those who decry it without even seeing it.’ Dan Stone: ‘One of the most disturbing issues surrounding the release of Gore’s movie was Bush’s ‘probably not’ when asked if he’d see it. This underlines the fact that Bush self-censors his sources of information and that he is close-minded to any information that might challenge his pre-existing opinions.’ If they made a movie about YOUR HOUSE, would you go see it? Well, they have. And now . . . JUST ANOTHER FALSE ALARM? Jim Hickel: ‘About a year ago, I created this website which listed all the great “catastrophes” of my lifetime (the population explosion, nuclear winter, Y2K, and, yes, global COOLING) that seemed to generate large headlines and tremendous public anxieties and then…fizzle. Can you help me understand why global warming is different?’ ☞ Good question. Because, so far, our healthy fear of nuclear war and nuclear winter have kept us from having one? And because a small fortune was invested in revising software to make it Y2K compliant? And because (shorthanding what should be a longer discussion), China instituted draconian measures to curb its population explosion? (I don’t remember any tremendous public anxiety over global cooling.) So sure! As long as we get smart and take the necessary measures to avert it, catastrophic global climate change will be yet another false alarm. Your site summarizes the (in hindsight ridiculous) prediction of The Limits to Growth that (in your words) ‘The price of natural resources . . . particularly oil will skyrocket during the remainder of the century as supplies dwindle’ when in fact (you say) ‘Natural resources are more abundant, and are less expensive in real terms, than they were when The Limits to Growth was published.‘ It brings to mind that scene in City Slickers where Billy Crystal tries to break the ice by asking Curly whether he’s ‘killed anybody today?’ Curly fixes him with an icy stare and says, ‘Day ain’t over yet.’ (People kept telling New Orleans that it sat in a bowl below sea level, and a bad storm could be catastrophic. But it never was – until it was. Would have made sense to take those warnings seriously. People kept telling the Administration, as it prepared to attack Iraq, ‘if you break it, you own it.’ Would have made sense to take those warnings seriously. Bush, Cheney and Rice were told by the CIA at Blair House on January 7, 2001, that Osama Bin Laden posed a ‘tremendous’ and ‘immediate’ threat to the United States. Would have made sense to take that warning seriously. People who see the movie will find it compelling. People who don’t will not make the peril any less real by ignoring it.) Tomorrow: Real Estate
Underarm Deodorant July 19, 2006January 15, 2017 Not everybody uses it, and this is a very important point. Even with just a billion people using it, a few decades back . . . and some of those billion using roll-on deodorant . . . the emission of chlorofluorocarbons still made a giant hole in Earth’s ozone layer. And it was widening. The global community was alarmed and took action and now three things are true: More people than ever use deodorant (praise the Lord) None of it emits chlorofluorocarbons (an alternative propellant was found – likewise for refrigerants) The hole in the ozone layer gradually disappeared (but you should still use SPF 15 or higher this weekend) Okay? Do you see my point? No? My point is that if a little Right Guard can threaten our atmospheric equilibrium, isn’t it just really dumb to bet that the literally trillions of pounds of carbon dioxide we dump into the air each year will have no effect? Be honest: don’t you use more gasoline than deodorant? I am amazed at all my Republican friends who read this page who seem to agree with the Administration that it’s no biggie. David D.: ‘I won’t be seeing ‘the movie’ any time soon, especially since you’ve been pushing it so heavily, but the thing I find most interesting is that it was mostly made with Apple’s Keynote presentation software (as detailed here).’ Mike A.: ‘OK, so you can dismiss Lomborg’s arguments. How about picking on someone with a little more heft? Like the WSJ Opinion piece from Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospherics at MIT. Prof. Lindzen is no fan of Mr. Gore’s alarmism.’ ☞ I already did. To which Mike responds: ‘I, for one, am glad that President Bush is looking at all the scientific evidence, and waiting for a greater degree of agreement, before embarking on a costly crusade that may have no merit.’ Mike, like our President, is not going to see the movie. And perhaps Mike, like our President, believes the jury is still out on this Darwin stuff. Yet the overwhelming majority of the scientists who follow this – like the overwhelming majority who thought cigarette smoking was linked to lung cancer and the overwhelming majority who think we are descended from apes – believe Al Gore is pointing out something we all need to own. Indeed, if that overwhelming majority is right, yesterday’s 99-degree temperature in New York may – well, Mother Nature may be just getting warmed up. According to USA Today, the past six months were the warmest since we started keeping records in 1895. The scientific case is based on records from ice cores going back 650,000 years. The natural cycles of carbon dioxide, followed by temperature, look like the teeth on the blade of a very long saw – except that suddenly after 650,000 years, in the last century, the carbon dioxide level is going through the roof (could those trillions of pounds of CO2 we emit have anything to do with that?) and the temperature level, if 650,000 years of history is any guide, seems likely to follow. Want more? Watch Tom Brokaw’s 2-hour special on The Discovery Channel, which one of you writes in to say is ‘in some ways more impactful and alarming than the Gore presentation.’ It’s being run several times in the days ahead. And don’t forget Who Killed The Electric Car? If they made a movie about YOUR HOUSE, would you go see it? Well, they have. PEAS Steve Benoit: ‘Peas saved my sore neck on a road trip this past Spring from Spokane to San Francisco. I froze a blue-ice-gel cold pack that got me to the Washington-Oregon border. From there, no one sold pre-frozen packs, and ice was too cold/messy. The peas were something I could buy at any grocery on the way, when I’d stop for gas or a meal. They conformed well, and stayed cold longer than the gel pack!’ CORRECTION Monday‘s column excerpted Paul Krugman on ‘Left Behind Economics.’ (The economy is growing smartly, the ultra-rich are doing very well, but median family income, adjusted for inflation, keeps falling.) I should have titled it: A RISING TIDE LIFTS ALL YACHTS. How did I not think of that? Tomorrow: Real Estate
Inadvertant Andy Day July 18, 2006March 25, 2012 I really wasn’t trying to take today off; the heat wave melted my broadband connection (or something like that). Back tomorrow.