And How, Exactly, Will Living in a Cave Help? March 31, 2008March 10, 2017 THREE CHEERS FOR DIVERSIFICATION The Estimable Less Antman writes: ‘What should you do about your investment portfolio as a result of the current crises? Nothing, of course. The market, at any one time, reflects what is already known. Future changes are the result of what is currently unknown. This is why I diversify widely: because I’m ignorant about the future. A diversified portfolio containing US stocks, international stocks, emerging market stocks, domestic REITs, international REITs, and commodity futures has, so far (knock on wood) insulated my portfolio (whose components and target weights are publicly viewable on my wiki) from all the excitement. With the S&P 500 down around 10% with one day to go in the quarter, my portfolio is somehow up for the year (not by much, but still better than being down). Because I know something others don’t know? Hardly. It is because I know what I don’t know. Ignorant Investors of the World Unite!’ ☞ I largely agree. I do think the market sometimes – like the law – is a ass. And that when it is, one might reasonably try to lean against it. The housing market was an example. One could have fairly guessed it was overvalued. One could even have guessed this would lead, sooner or later, to a decline in the stocks of, say, homebuilders. (In the gap between sooner and later a lot of money can be lost, to be sure.) And that falling home prices might lead to other things. But for most of us – except for some play money we can truly afford to lose (and to glean from the speculative volatility a bit of tax advantage, using the losses to lower ordinary income and the long-term gains to fund our charitable giving) – a strategy like Less’s makes lots of sense. HAPN – INHI One such speculation were our HAPN warrants, which are now INHI warrants, giving you the right to buy INHI stock (for which some institutional investors paid $6 not long ago, but which trades at $2.50 today) at $5. The warrants are currently around 18 cents, down from the 30 cents and more where some of us bought them, but still with three years to run. Will the company grow fast enough (or at all) for this to work out? I have no clue. But for those who own it, here’s a link to a recent investor call. SERIES I SAVINGS BONDS Max: ‘I’ve read with interest over the years your discussions of Series I bonds. And my wife and I have invested in them periodically. This past week, we tried to buy them at our credit union. We found out that, unlike past years, we could only buy $5,000 per social security number. (Details here.) What gives? It’s a bit hard to understand, really. As a debtor nation, one would think the U.S. would want to have the debt held nationally (like Japan did when its property bubble burst). Instead, we reduce the amount citizens can buy and, to use Warren Buffett’s words, ‘force-feed’ the rest of the world $2B of our debt daily. Does it make sense to you? And if you believe Bill Gross and others who say the government understates inflation, the whole thing becomes curiouser and curiouser. Personally, instead of messing around with Series I bonds (or any other U.S. government bonds) anymore, I’ll invest even more in foreign currencies and stocks. If the Treasury doesn’t want my money, so be it.‘ ☞ Well, they definitely want your money two weeks from tomorrow (April 15). But you make a great case. I assume the limit was lowered from $30,000 to $5,000 because the financial lobby wants as little cash as possible escaping their opportunity to earn fees, spreads, or commissions on it. Republican Administrations, at least the past few, have generally done what corporate interests have asked them to. NEWSER James Musters: ‘Have you used Newser? It’s cute, fast and configurable.’ ☞ Good tip. WORLD MAY NOT END; CAVE MAY MELT FIRST Newser offered this item, which begins: Seven members of a Russian doomsday cult, all women, have emerged from the cave where they have been holed up since November, awaiting the end of the world (note: in May), Itar-Tass reports. Twenty-eight more remain in the cave southeast of Moscow-but they are expected to come out soon, as melting snow has caused part of the cave to collapse. Holdouts have threatened to explode gas canisters if anybody tries to remove them by force, but rescue workers and Russian Orthodox priests have been negotiating through a chimney. The cult’s leader was brought from a psychiatric hospital to help with talks. Authorities have agreed to let the women take refuge elsewhere to wait for the apocalypse. . . ☞ And you think some of your neighbors are a little nuts. If it were me, and I believed the world would be ending in May, I sure wouldn’t have spent the preceding months in a cave. What ever happened to ‘eat, drink, and be merry?’
Dazzling Digital Deals Four of Them Free March 28, 2008March 10, 2017 HE FOUND THE PUN (unfortunately) Yes, an orange juice tanker hit our barge… Mark Kirby: ‘And for a MINUTE MAID a huge commotion. (There’s a naval navel pun for you.)’ ☞ My fault for starting this. MOZY Mike Albert: ‘Mozy lets you specify your own encryption key (not the same as your login password), which never leaves your PC. Your data is encrypted on your PC before Mozy even sees it, so it’s unlikely that even the NSA could decrypt it. That’s what I do. I’m not worried about NSA or other legal attacks, but I am afraid that sloppiness at a Mozy data center that would let some hacker get my personal information. That’s not exactly unknown these days.’ ‘A DRIVE’ Joe: ‘Mozy, schmozy. A Drive gives you 50 gigabytes of FREE storage.’ ☞ It’s still in beta and doesn’t yet even schedule automatic backups (‘coming soon!’). But according to the FAQ, one of the things you can do is tag a file ‘shareable.’ You then get a URL you can share with others. So if I wanted to give you all access to some Excel spreadsheet, I could just insert the link here (but I haven’t). FREE PHOTO SHOP EXPRESS . . . with 2 gigs of free storage Also in beta. Well worth the click. SAFARI It’s Apple’s browser, also free, supposed to be nearly twice as fast on a PC as Internet Explorer. I tried it, and it seems fine – except I don’t see a way to do ‘tabbed browsing’ the way you can with IE. I assume it’s there someplace. (And how do you add the Google toolbar?) Have any of you spent some time on a PC comparing the two? Tips? Worth switching? Reason to use both? I TYPE FASTER THAN I TALK And even if I don’t, I seem to have more brains in my fingers than in my larynx. So this is not for me. But you’ve got to admit this quick pitch for speech recognition software is intriguing – especially if you just grabbed the plate your waiter warned you was ‘really, really hot’ to show how tough you are (and this time, for perhaps the first time ever, it was really, really hot). THEY SWITCHED TO MAC Richard Factor: ‘I had the same experience Aaron did – my Mac runs Windows better than the PCs I’ve used and retired. I am not particularly enthusiastic about the Mac OS, but I do like my Mac PRO. After a few days it didn’t even smell funny any more. Here‘s ‘that story.’ ‘ Clare Durst: ‘Thanks THANKS for your link to Bird and Fortune. Never heard of them before! What a gift to be able to watch them on YouTube. And yes, I switched to a Mac this Christmas and am delighted to have not only the Mac interface but my old PC programs running smoothly – more smoothly than they did in my old XP machine. The Mac, Google and gmail, and Firefox . . . I’m in hog heaven!’ David D’Antonio: ‘For what it’s worth, there are alternatives to Parallels if someone were to want to run Windows (or other operating systems) on a Mac. While I own Parallels, VMWare makes a product called ‘Fusion‘ that does essentially the same thing; it lets me install Windows on a virtual machine and use it. It has similar features to Parallels but appears to have far better tech support (I was able to find all the answers to questions in the VMWare forums). VMWare also has a long history of doing virtualization software for a variety of platforms; since we use it at work for other virtual machines, using it on my Mac at work was a no-brainer, as they say. I believe both companies offer ‘try before you buy’ versions so there is minimal risk in just checking then out.’ HE’S NOT SO SURE Dennis King: ‘In what strikes me as Aaron’s irrational exhuberance yesterday, he writes: ‘This is important because the old Macs had a Motorola processor.’ Everyone seems to rave about how nicely things work on a Mac. Peoples memories are short or they are just not old enough. I was around for all of the earlier versions of Mac OS from 1 through X. There were VARIOUS Motorola and PowerPC (Motorola/IBM) processors involved and many times it was less than pleasant making the transition from each processor and each version of the OS. I have file drawers full of older Mac software which DOES NOT run under OSX. Yet if some older Windows program does not operate under Vista this seems to raise a big concern. It is remarkable to me how much older Windows software DOES RUN on modern systems. ‘Aaron writes about how well Parallels runs other operating systems. I had a friend who was trying to get a Windows game running under Parallels. He struggled so much with it that he finally came to my place to install it on a ‘normal’ Windows machine to see if it could even be done. Yes it could, relatively easily. He eventually got the game running under Parallels, but it was no cake walk. ‘He writes, ‘And it boots Windows more quickly and smoothly than my ThinkPad ever did’ with no mention of what specific hardware he was using. Was the ThinkPad an older machine with a slower processor and less memory? Was the Apple machine a newer one with fast dual core processor and tons of memory? If so, that would be like comparing his Apple to oranges. ‘He writes, ‘So how does the Mac run Windows any better than my IBM did? This is all about hardware integration…’ and ‘When Windows throws up a blue screen of death (for example, on upgrading its service packs), Parallels restarts it in no time.’ I am running Windows on a Dell and have not seen a blue screen in years. Is it possible that the Apple/Parallels integration is NOT THAT TIGHT and that is what might be causing the blue screens? ‘He writes, ‘So why would anyone run Windows on the Mac, anyway?’ I am not sure. It seems Macs are useful to people who do not do that much with their computers… maybe internet access and email and they are happy. Most of the software that the REST of the people want to use runs on Windows. Even if that software is available on the Mac, it usually comes to market later, is usually not as full-featured as the Windows version, and is usually more expensive. So sure, if you want to pay 2 or 3 times as much and only do email, by all means switch to a Mac.’ JUSTICE After nine months in prison – and a ’60 Minutes’ report quoting Republicans appalled at the behavior of the Justice Department in this case – former Governor Don Siegelman of Alabama is out on bond while he appeals.
An Orange Juice Tanker Hit Our Barge There's a Naval Navel Pun Here Somewhere March 27, 2008March 10, 2017 MOZY Jeff: ‘You write: ‘My reason for using Mozy is for the day the NSA comes and spirits away my computer.’ Of course, if your data is on Mozy, they can just get it from there without telling you (and it probably says so in the satirically named Patriot Act).’ ☞ Good point. Well, at least then we can both have access to it. GLDD Drew Bubser: ‘For those of us who exercised the original Aldabra options and purchased the GLDD stock with the intent of holding onto it for a long term gain, what is the advisable course now that the stock is trading close to $5.00? The fundamentals of GLDD do not seem to have improved much, and the recent management conference call indicated [no quick improvement].’ ☞ I continue to think that all the basic reasons to be in this for the long-run hold: Silt builds up. The normal levels of annual dredging to keep our ports clear has been cut way back by budget constraints from the Iraq war but one day may be restored. GLDD has 53% U.S. market share and lots of work overseas. Yes, an orange juice tanker hit one of our barges in the waters around Newark, but how often is that going to happen? (Plus, for much of the loss we were insured and we’re suing for the rest.) BOREF Herron Benjamin: ‘Interesting article in USA Today about airlines’ concern for rising fuel costs. Seems like a gizmo such as the Wheel Tug would certainly have a place in any sort of airline strategy to mitigate them. Looks like BOREF is a steal at its recent $4.30 closing price. Do you see the dwindling stock price as a indicator of a perceived bleak outlook for Borealis, an overreaction to shaky market conditions, or a sleeping giant?’ ☞ Well, it’s hardly a sleeping giant. And it’s harder still to think we could have waited nine years to buy it and paid not much more today than we did then (although on even modest volume, the stock would go up . . . just as it’s gone down on modest volume . . . so we likely couldn’t replace our positions at this price). And certainly if we’ve learned anything about this bizarre company it is that its claims and projections have been wildly, preposterously overblown. But work on WheelTug and on the Roche Bay iron ore deposits seems to be progressing; and if either of these panned out, let alone both, it would not be hard to make a case for a value 20 times the company’s current $25 million market cap. So I hang on to every share, all bought with money I can truly afford to lose. YOUR EXPERIENCES SWITCHING TO A MAC Aaron Stevens: ‘Well, you asked! First, it’s important to note that all Mac computers are now built with Intel processor chips. This is important because the old Macs had a Motorola processor. Each processor family has a unique set of binary-coded machine language instructions for fundamental computer tasks like addition, loading operand data from memory, and storing the result of operations back to memory. Software compiled (think: packaged) for one processor’s machine language instruction set does not run on any other processor for this reason. Now, since Mac has an Intel processor, it can run all of those programs which were written for PCs over the years. ‘But how does it run Windows? There are several options, but I’ll just mention two. One is something from Apple, called Bootcamp, which lets the user choose which operating system to boot at the time the computer starts up – Mac or Windows. You have to make that choice each time you boot up. The other strategy is called virtualization. A virtual machine is a computer simulating a computer – or more precisely, a software application simulating the low-level hardware interfaces of a computer, which enables running an operating system inside the virtual computer, which is running as a software program on the actual or host computer. There’s a great product called Parallels Virtual Desktop which does this beautifully. ‘Parallels lets you install any other operating system (including Linux, XP, or Vista) in a virtual machine on the Mac. Now, what’s really clever is the integration: first, you can launch Windows in 3 modes: single window (where it looks like windows in a program within the Mac desktop; full screen, where it looks like you’re just sitting at a Windows PC, with no visible traces of Mac; and ‘coherence’, which allows you to see the Mac desktop, and the Start menu/taskbar from Windows, and run any Windows application in a Mac window. It’s hard to describe without showing you the pictures, so you can look at the Parallels website for the pictures. Now the integration points that make it lovely: Parallels maps the Windows ‘My Documents’ folder to the Mac ‘Documents’ folder, so any document created/edited in Windows is actually stored in the Mac filesystem, and thus fully accessible in all Mac programs and automagically backed up by Time Machine. It also maps the Windows ‘Z:/’ drive to the Mac user’s ‘home directory’. So basically all the data lives within the Mac filesystem. Parallels also integrates features like copy/paste, so I can copy the amount of a transaction off my bank’s website in Firefox under Mac, and paste it into Quicken under Windows, without even thinking about them being on separate operating systems. ‘So how does the Mac run Windows any better than my IBM did? This is all about hardware integration, I believe. Since Apple is the only company that makes the Mac, it can carefully manage which hardware chipsets and drivers are used, and the number of permutations is limited. Windows, on the other hand, must work on any ‘compatible’ hardware, which includes literally billions upon billions of possible permutations of hardware combinations. The complexity of such interactions is mind boggling, and I believe not possible to fully test all combinations. In fact, I believe Microsoft puts the burden on testing this on the hardware vendor/integrator (e.g. IBM, Dell, whatever), but the truth of the matter is that the testing can only go so far, and some incompatibilities invariably will slip through. However, the Apple hardware is so well integrated, and just works together, out of the box, no questions asked. ‘And it boots Windows more quickly and smoothly than my ThinkPad ever did. When Windows throws up a blue screen of death (for example, on upgrading its service packs), Parallels restarts it in no time; and, since the Mac OS doesn’t crash during the Windows blue screen, I can still do email and listen to iTunes while Windows gets back up. So why would anyone run Windows on the Mac, anyway? I try to limit my Windows time to applications which have not been developed for the Mac (for example, Quicken Mac is very limited in features and updates). I didn’t want to give up on those applications, but with Parallels I didn’t have to. The best of both worlds, I think.’
If the Taiwanese Go Nuclear, We Could Send in the British Navy March 26, 2008January 5, 2017 CHUMBY Kathi Derevan: ‘I was on the waiting list before they were released to the unwashed hordes, so I have had mine for quite a while. I especially enjoy having the pug clean the inside of my screen.’ MOZY ON OVER TO MAC Aaron Stevens: ‘I appreciated your plug for Mozy and encourage everyone to do regular backups. When my last IBM ThinkPad died in December (and I did have backups that I laboriously burned to CD every week), I got a MacBook Pro. Mac has made backups so easy, it’s automagic. There’s a program called Time Machine, part of Mac OSX Leopard, included for no additional cost. You plug in a USB hard drive, and that’s it. It makes automatic backups every hour, only of files that have changed since the last backup. It keeps hourly backups for 24 hours; daily backups for 30 days; and weekly backups until you run out of disk space, at which point it clears up space by deleting oldest first. And by using a neat Unix file system trick, it doesn’t actually create duplicate copies of any of your unchanged data, but merely bookkeeping links to those files, so disk space is used very conservatively. Given your love for the iPod and iPhone, you should really consider a Mac next time. Oh, and it runs Windows better than my IBM did, but that’s another story for another day.’ ☞ Hey, tell that story. (Anyone switch to Mac and not enthusiastic?) HE LIKED ADLAI Stewart Dean: ‘I grew up in the South (or in a border state, Kentucky) in a liberal intellectual family in the ’50s and ’60s. I was nearly the only kid in my school for Adlai. But God, that we had two such men, Adlai and Ike. And that Ike was followed by Kennedy! And my older brother was gay, which must have been very disturbing and hard for him in that benighted time and place. I must have been 10 or 11 when he was out of the house and I snooped out his secret stash…and found some beefcake magazines. It was one of those things you remember, like where you were when you heard that Kennedy was shot. I remember thinking, ‘Huh????’ and then put everything back and never said a word. I am a raving heterosexual, as were our parents, mated like lovebirds; they were befuddled but stretched themselves to accept it. Bill died in the early days of AIDS epidemic, when that diagnosis was the Black Spot of Death, miss him. I think it is one of the few great mercies of our time that gay and lesbian people can finally be themselves after some fashion.’ AND SPEAKING OF BRITISH SEA POWER Okay, so the Taiwanese ordered a little $100 battery and we sent them the tip for a nuclear warhead. Who’s perfect? According to our friends who so well explained the subprime crisis in an earlier video, the British military aren’t perfect either. Thanks to James Musters for the link to this day-brightening video.
Will These Sites Suit? Search Me. March 25, 2008March 10, 2017 THE STARGAZER SAFETY KIT Here‘s something that could make your family safer: A series of nine forms (use as few or as many as you like) ranging from Emergency Contacts and Medications to About a Pet and your family’s Safety Plan. Print them out, store them on a flash drive on your keychain, email them to a relative in another city, upload them to your on-line backup at mozy.com (I’ve found mozy.com, by the way, to be pretty terrific) – you decide how to use this, but simply deciding to use it could be a wise move. ONESTORM.ORG And here is something similar that, though designed specifically for hurricanes, could be used to prepare for any emergency. MOZY.COM Okay, since you asked. I have it set up to back up my files every four hours. Because it only backs up files it sees have changed, it’s very quick – once your initial backup is completed. That initial, monster back up can take forever, so I decided not to give it all 4.7 gigabytes at once. I started with just one subdirectory of about a gig. And I learned to do big virgin backups overnight, while asleep. Ever since, it’s been a breeze. Restoring is interesting, too. If you need a single file – perhaps a previous version of an Excel spreadsheet you had just hopelessly gummed up – you can grab it (up to 30 days back). I never seem to need that. My reason for using Mozy is for the day my hard drive crashes or the NSA comes and spirits away my computer while I’m out doing my Power Walk and no one can explain how it could have disappeared – but the building personnel are all harmlessly drugged into unconsciousness and someone reports having seen an unmarked black van drive parked across the street even as cell phones all lost their bars for a 500-yard radius. (Or maybe I just dropped it.) Got the picture? For free, you can download all the data you uploaded to Mozy onto another computer – if you have enormous patience. Or for $67 (which includes shipping) you can have a DVD FedExed for next day delivery. I still do occasional onsite backups – you never know when a tornado might hit Mozy. But so far, I consider this one a winner. Cheap and easy to use. VISUAL SEARCH Bob Redpath: ‘I always enjoy when you pass on new tech ideas, so (no, I’m not selling anything and I’m not involved in any way with this company — other than volunteering as a beta tester) here’s one that I thought you and my fellow readers might find interesting: SearchMe.com, a visual search engine. It looks like the spawn of Google (which I love) and iTunes album search. You can see the websites that come up in your results before you click on one.’ ☞ Click on the quick demo video and you’ll see. Kewl.
Make Widgets, Not Warships And Power Them from the Moon's Pull On the Oceans March 24, 2008March 10, 2017 DON’T BE A DUMBY – GET YOUR OWN CHUMBY! As Forbes explains, ‘Chumby is a pretty goofy device with a silly name and a weird shape. And nobody needs one. But it’s worth checking out because we’re going to be seeing a lot more devices like this, smart little machines constantly fetching information from the Internet, spreading the Web beyond the realm of PCs. . . .‘ And also because I own a tenth of one percent of an eighth of of the venture fund that owns 22% of it, so for each one you buy, I have to chip in a nickel. (Well, something like that.) Plus the genius behind it is a friend of mine. You can choose from more than 400 streaming widgets on the Chumby Web site. Keep track of your friends on MySpace and Facebook, see photos from Flickr, check in on your Ebay bids, read right-wing blogs or left-wing newspapers, watch sports videos or a videoclip of David Letterman’s Top Ten List, listen to podcasts or check out your daily horoscope. If your friend has a Chumby you can become online “chums” and send widgets to each other over the Chumby Network. What a great graduation gift, now that the Encyclopedia, Dictionary, and Thesaurus are all free (they’re called: Google). They even have a widget to keep track of the delegate count. I LIKED IKE Stewart Dean: ‘There was a time when a President spoke to us, reasoned with us, and exhorted not fear, but our better angels.’ ☞ Stewart included a link to such a speech, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower – hear here – and I assumed I knew which one it was. But no, it was from his (also wonderful) military-industrial complex speech. The speech I was thinking of: . . . Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point the hope that come with this spring of 1953. This is one of those times in the affairs of nations when the gravest choices must be made, if there is to be a turning toward a just and lasting peace. It is a moment that calls upon the governments of the world to speak their intentions with simplicity and with honesty. It calls upon them to answer the question that stirs the hearts of all sane men: is there no other way the world may live? . . . ☞ And he believed in evolution. THE RISE OF BRITISH SEA POWER The power of the waves may one day power the world. Or some meaningful fraction of it, anyway. Click here.
A Very Funny Clip March 21, 2008January 5, 2017 SUBPRIME James Musters: ‘This video was posted on YouTube last October. I think you linked to it. In retrospect it is quite prophetic. Time for people to see it again. If the comics knew what was coming, and named Bear Stearns by name, how come the market did not figure it out earlier? And watch this one. Both were posted last October.’ ☞ Who could forget that clip? And, yes, it’s even more painfully funny today. iPHONE #4 Mike Gavaghan: ‘The problem you had where you could only hear audio on your iPhone when the headphones were plugged in is, apparently, a fairly common problem. Sometimes, the iPhone simply doesn’t recognize that the headphone plug has been removed. It happened to me, and it’s probably going to happen to you again – even on your replacement phone. When it happened to me, I was fortuitously sitting next to a fellow iPhone user (at jury duty, of all places). It happened to him once, and he showed me how he was taught to fix it. Rapidly insert and remove the headphone jack a couple times. I did that twice and, voila!, I could hear through the earpiece again!’ ☞ Proving once again that the real Genius Bar is my readership – I should have consulted you (collectively) first! OKLAHOMA Last Friday I posted a 17-year-old’s letter to an Oklahoma state legislator who had said she believed people like me and Charles posed more of a threat to America than terrorists. Two responses: Jeff Cox: ‘My wife and I wanted to buy a house in Las Vegas, but we could buy a bigger house in Oklahoma and save enough money to visit Las Vegas twice a year for the rest of our lives. As a consequence, our house is still gaining value. I’d like to say Oklahomans have more sense than the people paying too much in Las Vegas and California, but then our lawmakers say something stupid about terrorism and homosexuality. Please know only a few of us are that ignorant. I don’t know why we elect those few. For laugh value, the best Oklahoma lawmaker story in my memory was about 25 years ago, when one lawmaker pushed another, knocking him down, in an argument over who would appoint the chaplain for a coming session.’ Mary Rainier: ‘Your column was forwarded to me by the director of my son’s gay youth support group (rosmy.org). I was compelled to write to Representative Kern [as follows].’ Representative Kern, . . . I am so lucky to be the mother of an 18 year-old gay son who is the joy of my life. He is smart, funny, nurturing and dynamic. I have been asked if I could change Corey to be “normal” would I do so. I answer, “he is completely normal and NO! I would not change a thing.” He is perfect the way he is. Sadly, he lives in a world where terrorism is a real threat, but even more so, ignorant people in positions of power are an even greater threat to him and other young people like him. I thought that Virginia was a state with such narrow-mindedness embedded in its laws and history, but I came to realize that the “heartland” of America also has its share of backward thinking. Here, my son has found the help and support he needs from his family and a wonderful support group in Richmond that works to send young leaders into the world where they can be defined by their words, actions and content of their character, not just by their sexuality, as you have so sadly done to them. They are not one-dimensional beings, but real people with much to offer including the love they will one day share with their same-sex partners. I was shocked to hear that you are an educator and you and I are in the same field charged with opening young minds to ideas of hope, self-worth and respect for others. I am ashamed that someone with your lack of Christian values is allowed to call herself one. Sadly, Ms. Kern, you and your fellow haters, along with terrorism, are one of the greatest threats we have to America and I wish Tucker, who wrote the letter about his mother sadly dying in the Oklahoma bombing, the very best as he and my wonderful son are the future and with them I can only trust that they will teach their children the Christian values of love, faith, hope and charity, regardless of their religion or sexual orientation. I sign off as “Mother to one and teacher to many,” Mary Rainier Librarian T. C. Walker Elementary Gloucester, Virginia ☞ What a fine sentiment for a Good Friday.
My Fourth iPhone March 20, 2008January 5, 2017 ON THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE WAR Associated Press – March 19, 2008 8:13 AM ET MUSCAT, Oman (AP) – Vice President Dick Cheney has spent the day fishing in the waters between Oman and Iran on the Sultan of Oman’s 60-foot royal yacht. SENATOR McCAIN’S STRONG SUIT The presumptive Republican nominee – a fine man who forthrightly acknowledges that the economy is not his strong suit – told the press at least three separate times in the last day or two that Iran is training Al Qaeda terrorists and sending them to Iraq. As the Wall Street Journal noted, ‘Iran is a mostly Shiite country and al Qaeda is primarily a Sunni militant group.’ The two branches of Islam do not actually get along so well. Do not miss Keith Olbermann’s one-minute take on this. (The full clip runs two minutes and thirty-seven seconds. McCain is at the end.) MAULDIN Eric Scott: ‘I’ve been receiving John Mauldin’s weekly newsletter [from which you excerpted yesterday] for a few years now. I’m not a big investor but I like to keep up with the times, and Mr. Mauldin’s viewpoints (while often quite bearish through the last few years) are always backed with very solid evidence. I have to admit I don’t always agree with him (he is, after all, a staunch Texas Republican) but I always look forward to hearing his opinion. I recommend you try his free newsletter. It is always very informative.’ ☞ I agree. FLORIDA Sam Linder: ‘You write, ‘What’s sleazy about thinking Florida democrats should not be disenfranchised because of something the Republican Governor and Legislature forced on them?’ Please explain to those of us who don’t understand the process how a ‘Republican Governor and Legislature’ forced the Democratic Party to move its primary without its permission. It strikes me as rather odd!’ ☞ Good question. Elections in Florida, including primaries, are administered and paid for by the State. Democrats voted unanimously for an amendment that would have moved the primary back to February 5, within the rules, but the Republican-controlled legislature defeated the amendment. At first I thought this mess was just bad luck – Karl Rove couldn’t be that smart, think that far ahead. But the more I think about it, the less sure I am. Skip Sherrod: ‘Wait a minute. I seem to remember reading that all but one of the Florida Democratic legislators voted for this plan.’ ☞ Correct. The bill was (diabolically?) constructed to do two unrelated things: first, to replace paperless voting machines with machines that provide a paper trail in the event of a recount; second, to move the primary date up to January 29th. The first part – integrity of our elections – was so important to Democrats that they could not vote against the bill. They tried hard to split the two pieces, and voted unanimously for the February 5th amendment, but the Republicans wouldn’t allow it. THE PRIMARY Stewart Dean: ‘After all the packaged, controlled nomination and campaigning of Gore and Kerry, this campaign is a delight that’s got people engaged and alive.’ MY FOURTH iPHONE At first, last Fall, I thought my iPhone had lost its ring. As explained here, this was only because I am an idiot. Even before I got to the Genius Bar, someone showed me the little switch that elegantly enables or mutes the ring. But then, after two months’ ownership, my iPhone lost its ticklishness. I would touch it in places that used to make it do wonderful things, but now, suddenly – nothing. As explained here, this time Apple was the idiot. But by going to their big New York store and waiting 40 minutes, I got a new phone. That one has served me well, with many wonderful features, like ‘visual voice mail,’ that can’t be beat. I am (still!) listening to the biography of Alexander Hamilton on this phone, and when I get a call, the narrator elegantly fades out, I hear a ringing sound, and can ‘pick up’ the phone, if I want to take the call, simply by pinching the earphone wire by my neck. When the call ends, the book (or song, or whatever) starts back up right where it left off. The stock quote feature often works. Likewise the weather, maps, and so much more. It’s not perfect everywhere in every way, but it’s pretty darn terrific. So a week ago, iPhone #2 suddenly developed this glitch: even after I unplugged the earphones, it thought they were still plugged in. The phone worked fine with them in; but without them, I couldn’t hear anyone, when they called, and they couldn’t hear me (both important functions of any telephone) unless I put them on speaker. And you don’t always want your calls on speaker. I’m told that the Apple store near me in Florida does $40 million a year – from one store. The corollary of that it’s always packed and a challenge to get help. But two nights ago, shortly after midnight, I went on-line to make an appointment at the Genius Bar – and I got doubly lucky. First, by signing on shortly after they open the queue for the day’s appointments, I got the one I wanted: 3:50. Second – and this I think surprised the harried Geniuses almost as much as it surprised me – at exactly 3:50, I heard my name called. ‘Andrew?’ It doesn’t always work that way, but it did yesterday: credit where credit is due. Within 10 minutes, my Genius determined I needed a new phone . . . transferred much of my stuff over onto it (not the books and songs – those I would have to re-synch at home) . . . and I was on my way with iPhone #3. Two minutes later I was back, to everyone’s annoyance (there’s always a crowd around the Genius Bar vying for attention), because I was getting ‘5 bars’ for a second, then no bars for 30 seconds, then five bars for a few seconds, then ‘no service.’ As my Genius attempted to flee to the Secret Back Room Where They Do Stuff and Emerge with Solutions for another customer, I managed to block him (I played soccer in high school) and held the phone up to his face, with no bars. He fiddled with it briefly and handed it back to me, fixed. ‘How did you do that?’ I asked. ‘I reset the wifi network framis SSID,’ he said too quickly for me to know what he really said or had done – and vanished into the Secret Back Room Where They Do Stuff and Emerge with Solutions. But within seconds – things move fast in today’s cyberworld – I had lost the bars again, and it was not working. Knowing he would eventually emerge and return to his post, I positioned myself directly in front of the Genius Bar, determined not to let him reach his goal without my stopping him first (again with the soccer). Multitasking madly, he took the phone – while producing the Solution for another customer he had gone into the Secret Room to procure, and fending off a third customer who had shown up for his 3:20 appointment at 3:20 and been told to come back in half an hour but, now, having come back, was told his name had already been called so his appointment had been canceled – and after fiddling with iPhone #3 a little more, handed me my fourth iPhone, which so far is working fine, and onto which I easily managed to restore my music and books by re-synching. Since these $400 phones only cost Apple a dime each to make (or, if I’m underestimating, then perhaps it’s because their monthly split with AT&T is so lucrative), I guess Apple can afford this. I remain a basically very happy customer, even if it’s been a bit of an adventure. And they have provided me with four phones in seven months. The best thing about this may be that I was initially worried that I’d have to send my phone in once a year to have its battery changed. (You can’t do it yourself.) But if they keep giving me new phones, I’ll never have to do it!
How Bad? How Long? March 19, 2008January 5, 2017 But first . . . SUPERCALAPUGILISTIC SG: ‘I have to say the screw-up with delegates and lack of ability of the Democrats to hold the Party together does not inspire confidence in either their unity or organizational ability.’ ☞ Will Rogers notwithstanding (‘I don’t belong to an organized political party – I’m a Democrat’), the truth is, first, that a spirited contest between primary candidates is very democratic, with a small d – and most of us, on some level, do favor democracy. And while I join you in rolling my eyes at the process, it is actually following an organized, agreed-upon set of rules – even as there are, unquestionably, differing views on how good the rules are, how they might be changed for next time, and how to deal with the special circumstances in Florida and Michigan (and how a superdelegate ought to fulfill his or her responsibility). The main thing to say is that whichever of our two superb candidates gets the nomination – and it will likely be apparent in June, well before the Convention – there is good reason to think, and every reason to hope, the Party will unite behind that candidate. SG continues: ‘The scrabbling to change the rules in favor of me or you smells of the same sleaziness we have come to expect of our elected officials, now, before they’re even elected!’ ☞ Again, I disagree. I can totally see why each side feels as it does. What’s sleazy about thinking Florida democrats should not be disenfranchised because of something the Republican Governor and Legislature forced on them? What’s sleazy about thinking the superdelegates should follow the will of the people? SG: ‘I will, of course, vote Demo even if they put up Smokey the Bear.’ ☞ The last thing we need these days is a bear in office. And now . . . GET BACK TO THE ECONOMY, STUPID George Hamlett: ‘After the Alice-in-Wonderland political comments, a return to the economic crisis. This commentary from John Mauldin yesterday [click ‘next,’ at bottom right once there, to see it] is the best explanation, and defense, of the Fed’s action on Bear Stearns that I’ve seen.’ ☞ For those who lack the time to read it, the nub: It is precisely because the Fed is willing to take such actions that I am modestly optimistic that we will ‘only’ go through a rather longish recession and slow recovery and not the soft depression that would happen otherwise. . . . No one who owned Bear stock was protected. This was to protect the small guys who don’t even realize they were at risk. To decry this deal means you just don’t get how dire a mess we were almost in. ☞ Mauldin, in this and other comments I’ve read, is spot on. Don’t miss last week’s mega-comment, either. In small part: ‘We should not be surprised at the lack of liquidity in the credit markets. We have essentially vaporized 60% of the buyers of debt in the last six months. The various alphabet of SIVs, CLOs, CDO, ABS, CMBS, and their kin that were the real shadow banking system are either gone or on life support. It took decades to build these structures and it is not realistic to think we can replace them in six months. This is going to take some time. And time is what the Fed has bought this week by offering to take AAA mortgage paper and swap it for T-bills. They will start with $200 billion on offer. Remember you read it here first that that number will be increased and increased again. From the market’s initial euphoric response, you would think the problems have been solved and banks will once again start lending. Sadly, this is probably not true. . . . So, where are today’s P/E ratios? Let’s go to the data provided by Standard and Poor’s for the S&P 500. In January of 2007, S&P estimated that earnings for 2007 would be $89. Earnings for 2007 were actually $71.56, down about 20%. Last year about this time S&P estimated that earnings for 2008 would be $92. Today they estimate 71.20 for 2008. Lately every time new estimates come out they are down. But that is typical in a recession. Analysts are generally behind the curve. . . . We are now at P/E ratios that are back up over 20, and going to 22 by the middle of the summer. That would suggest that total returns are going to be under pressure for the next few years at a minimum and maybe for a decade. That does not bode well for retirees who are expecting the stock market to compound at 8-10% annually in order for them to be able to retire in the style to which the want to be accustomed. Real (inflation adjusted) returns of between 0 and 4% are more likely based on historical returns from today’s valuations. ☞ Live beneath your means, keep your transaction costs low, diversify, and don’t be fooled by 400-point rallies into thinking this is over. But don’t despair, either. (Look how much better things are today than, say, in 1929 – we have air conditioning! we have cell phones! we have TV and Google and antibiotics!) America has a lot of repair work to do to get back on track and forge ahead. But there’s every reason to think we will. Especially if we choose a President with a progressive vision of the future. BEAR BAILOUT Saber Thaxton: ‘You say the right resolution was to bail out Bear Stearns – how so? Bear Stearns is NOT a bank. Please tell me without the MBA/Financial analyst babble talk (if possible) how Bear deserves to be floated any more than Enron did? That is Las Vegas without any consequence. When you win, you win; when you lose, we give you tax money and you still win.’ ☞ In fact, the guys at Bear Stearns did not win. A junior employee with ‘only’ $5 million in Bear stock a year ago now has maybe $65,000 worth. A senior guy who had $200 million in Bear stock now has maybe $3 million. And as John Mauldin explains, over time, we taxpayers might even make a profit on the money we’ve fronted for this rescue.
The Will of the People March 18, 2008March 10, 2017 Ah, the subtlety. Did you even notice that yesterday’s subheads were green? And speaking of noticing things (and speaking of bears) you might want to take this 15-second acuity test. HOW SUPERDELEGATES SHOULD VOTE Here’s what I wrote yesterday: First, they should decide whether one candidate, in their view, is more likely to beat McCain than the other. If so, that’s the one they should vote for. Period. (And, yes, into this calculus must go the factor of how the superdelegate vote itself might affect the chances of one or the other having the best chance to win in November.) End of story. If they decide that the electability difference is minor or impossible to discern (or that it doesn’t matter because either will almost surely win), then they should decide whether one candidate, in their view, would do a significantly better job as President. If so, that’s the one they should vote for. If, finally, they think each is more or less equally electable and more or less equally likely to be an outstanding President – albeit with different strengths and story lines – then they should simply ratify the will of the voters. If they can determine what it is. David: ‘Is this your opinion or party policy?’ ☞ Just my opinion! And you did not all share it: Jacob Roberts: ‘Your superdelegate voting criterion #1 would, if followed, produce one of the ugliest nominating conventions in recent history. I would forget #1 as a criterion.’ A.K.: ‘As I read your article today, I had a moment of clarity. You don’t care how many delegates will vote/voted for Obama or Hillary. You’re so hungry to get a Democrat back in power that, in effect, ‘Screw the delegates; pick whoever you think will win, no matter what.’ Am I wrong? I hope I am. I want to think that you want us to do the right thing, not the politically expedient thing. By the way, I’m an Independent and am not sure I’ll vote for.’ ☞ My first premise is that the DNC must not change the rules – at least not in any way both campaigns don’t agree to. It’s fundamentally important that the losing side not feel the DNC changed the rules to favor one candidate or the other. So when it comes to superdelegates – who were written into the rules 35-odd years ago – the standard is that they get to vote whatever way they think best. (Consider: if the standard were that they must simply vote for whoever has the most delegates, then they have no vote at all. It’s not a ‘vote’ if it can only be cast one way.) My second premise is that both of our candidates would do so much better for the country than John McCain that it’s far more important that one of them wins (and, incidentally, stanch the rightwing slide in the Judiciary) than which of them wins, different though they are. (Imagine electing Senator McCain. There are several reasons I’d rather not, much as I admire him; but how about just this one: It would send the world a message that . . . after all this . . . America had decided to stick with the same Party – ‘four more years!’ – led by the guy whose photo hugging George W. Bush will be the iconic image seen across the globe. This may not be entirely fair, any more than our perception of France is entirely fair, but it would be the message the world receives.) That’s why, Jacob and A.K., I think the most idealistic, high-minded thing a superdelegate can do, if he or she honestly believes one candidate has a meaningfully better chance of winning than the other, is pick that candidate – be it Barack or be it Hillary. That said, I agree with you: if it’s unclear who has the best shot of winning, and unclear who would be the most successful president – and to many superdelegates it may be agonizingly unclear – then they should definitely go with the will of the voters. BUT . . . WHAT IS THE WILL OF THE VOTERS? There are arguments for why it should be the delegate count, not the popular vote, from which the superdelegates divine the popular will – and arguments for the reverse. Arguments why Florida and Michigan should count in some fashion, even if they do not revote – and why they should not.* Arguments for overweighting the later-voting states – and for not. Arguments for overweighting the primary states versus the caucus states – and for not. (And arguments for overweighting the swing states . . . but those arguments belong up above, in step #1: electability.) Even those arguments have subarguments. For example, those who conclude the superdelegates should ignore the popular vote must decide whether it is the delegates of their state they should vote with (which would force Senator Kennedy and Governor Patrick to switch sides) or whether they should look only to the national tally (whatever that turns out to be). ______________________________ * My Florida plan (though only, of course, if the two campaigns agreed to it): Each campaign names its favorite pollster. Then you get those two, along with the DNC’s favorite pollster, each to do a poll Florida’s registered Democrats. Then you average the results and there you are. Florida would count; you’d save 20 million Democratic dollars that would have gone to administering a revote; and, yes, the margin of error might be 3% or 4%, but that could cut either way – as could the weather on election day. (Both sides seem to hate this plan, which suggests to me it may be a pretty good one.) AND EVERYBODY HATES THE . . . You may be familiar with Tom Lehrer’s “National Brotherhood Week.” It’s the lead song on his amazing 1965 album, “That Was the Year That Was” (lyrics, here). (The last cut is “The Vatican Rag.” Surely you’ve heard that one – no?) “I know there are people in the world that do not love their fellow human beings,” Lehrer intones in the lead-up to the song – “and I hate people like that.” I am reminded of this because of the verse in which “the Protestants hate the Catholics / and the Catholics hate the Protestants / and the Hindus hate the Moslems / and everybody hates the Jews.” All in good fun, of course – but even as necks get warm among both Obama and Clinton supporters, there’s one thing, at least, all of them can good-naturedly agree on: they hate the DNC. My wonderful Clinton friends want us to stick to the rules on superdelegates – but bend them just a little to count Florida, which went 55-27 for Hillary. After all, it wasn’t the voters of Florida who did anything wrong. They are furious with us. My wonderful Obama friends want us to stick to the rules on Florida – but would like the superdelegates to follow a new rule: that they should all vote for whichever candidate got the most delegates. They are furious with us, too. So it’s a mess; but do not despair. First, we have two superb candidates. Second, the DNC has been scrupulous in sticking to the rules (angering both sides). Third, everyone recognizes how important it is to find an acceptable resolution by mid-June, if at all possible, and – though it is way above my pay grade – I think a resolution is likely to be reached. Steve: “The DNC has not adequately ‘sold’ the superdelegate system to the country. As such, pressure to vote based on ‘district popular vote’ will likely prevail. But every state has different rules, most disadvantaging the bulk of the Democratic Party. A table measuring the number of votes-to-generate-a-delegate for each delegate would show a shocking imbalance. The Party created as open a system as it could, and then created a ‘balancing’ mechanism to assure that those who have actually been elected to office (federal, state-wide government or state-wide party) – and who have a very strong incentive to look at the practical world of politics – would have a say. These individuals, above all else, are required to win general elections.” ☞ Please remember; this column reflects my thoughts, only. I am enthusiastically neutral between our two superb candidates. I’d like to find a way both campaigns agree on for Florida to count; I’d like the independence of the superdelegates to be respected; I’d like the superdelegates to “do the right thing” – and expect they will.