Year: 2014

I’ve written about them before, but you will SO enjoy this seven-minute update.  Imagine how bright our future can be.

If I ran Exxon, I’d buy Corning and invest billions to own a piece of this fossil-fuel replacing future.  Not running Exxon, I just bought a few shares of Corning  — GLW.  I have no idea whether this is anywhere close to the best way to “play” solar roadways nor whether their initial commercial adoption is three years off or ten.  But it’s pretty hard to watch the video and not get excited . . . or chip something in to the effort, which you can do here.

Tell me this isn’t the coolest time ever to be alive.

(Because sure, it must have been cool to watch electricity roll out, but you could easily die of the flu at the same time . . . and dentistry was excruciating . . .  and boredom was possible!  Remember boredom?  Today — with all the world’s knowledge, music, movies, books, games and people in your pocket — boredom is an impossibility so long as your device is charged.)

It is this kind of bright future — within our grasp but in no way guaranteed if we, as a country and a species, don’t apply a great deal of wisdom and cooperative effort to the onrush of technology — that so many of our fellow citizens died to protect, and whom we remember today.

Monday I offered a quiz (on which I scored zero).  Tuesday I posed a legal question (can you be held to a real estate contract made when you were drunk?).  And yesterday I told you about hats.  You’re certainly getting your money’s worth from this web site.

And at no extra charge you get updates.

THE QUIZ

Tom Stolze:  “I had fun with Monday’s quiz. Did you know there are nine more questions to the quiz?”

I did not.  I would have gotten most of these wrong, too:

11. What is the main ingredient of “Bombay Duck”? (fish)

12. What kind of tree is the Douglas fir? (pine)

13. Where did french fries come from? (Belgium)

14. In which state was playwright Tennessee Williams born? (Mississippi)

15. What country has the world’s largest Spanish-speaking population? (Mexico)

16. In what season does Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” take place? (Spring)

17. What do honey bees collect? (nectar)

18. Which is higher in latitude, Upper Canada or Lower Canada?  (Lower Canada, part of Quebec)

19. How long did the Thirty Years War last? (thirty years, 1618 to 1648)

THE LEGAL QUESTION

Marty: “First off, I’m guessing the law regarding making real estate contracts when drunk is just a subset of the more general rule regarding to what extent an individual can be held responsible for making contracts in general when he or she is drunk.  Second, this would likely be a rule that is state-specific, i.e., the law in any particular state is not necessarily the rule in another.  Third, although I know YOU know that you shouldn’t rely on general, out-of-context and unsolicited advice from a lawyer,  even with what I suspect is the way above average intelligence of your readers, I’d prefer not to have anyone in any way think they might rely on the following, so please don’t use my name, should you publish any of the legal portion of this email.

“My initial suspicion upon reading your post was that since one who is drunk generally gets in that condition voluntarily, or at least with a conscious knowledge that his or her actions could cause him to get drunk, it would be very bad public policy to permit a drunk person to use his drunkenness to avoid a contract he has entered into.  In addition, my experience as a lawyer tells me that even if one takes a different theoretical view, opening the doors to such an excuse would cause significant practical problems (litigants could always use drunkenness as an excuse to avoid contracts, and then it would be a matter to be litigated to find out if the evidence truly supports that defense).  Thus, I was surprised when I Lexis’d (the legal equivalent of “Google’d”)  << (drunk or inebriate! or intoxicate!) w/15 (capacit! or incapacit!) w/15 contract  >> for California case law (the jurisdiction in which I live) and came up with — Guidici v. Guidici, 2 Cal. 2d 497, 502 (1935) — admittedly 80 years old, but apparently still good law, which said:

The law upon this question is well settled and is stated as follows: “The rule that the person alleging his incapacity should be bound by his contract because intoxication is his voluntary act was at first relaxed by allowing him to show that his condition was brought about by the other party. But a more rational view now prevails. The law now regards the fact of intoxication and not the cause of it, and regards that fact as affording proof of want of mental capacity.  A completely intoxicated person is generally placed on the same footing as persons of unsound mind. One deprived of reason and understanding by reason of drunkenness is, for the time, as unable to consent to the terms of a contract as are persons who lack mental capacity by reason of insanity or idiocy. A person who at the time of making a contract is completely intoxicated may avoid his contract notwithstanding the fact that his intoxicated condition may have been caused by his voluntary act and not by the contrivance of the other party to the contract. . . .” (6 Ruling Case Law, p. 595.)

“The lawyer in me also suggests that to the extent you use or quote the above, you give an explicit warning for your readers not to rely on the above in any of their dealings.”

☞ Hey, you morons: don’t negotiate, agree to, or sign anything important when you’re drunk.  But if you did, and now regret it, it could greatly enrich a pair of opposing attorneys.  And yours might even be able to pull a rabbit out of a hat and — abracadabra — make your obligation disappear.  So try to find a lawyer also good at magic.

THE HATS

Satya Twena:  “Almost 4 years ago, when I started making hats, I went to Charles’s shop to show him the hats I had made (I knew he LOVED hats).  He was so excited AND then gave me the best advice to date.  He said: Satya, to truly be a designer you must be able to scale your business and you can’t be making your own hats…you have to work with the factory.  He went on to introduce me to the Makins Hat Factory.  I began working with them immediately and it allowed me to focus on building my business (instead of making each hat one by one).  For the last 3-1/2 years I worked closely with the factory, then last October the factory closed abruptly, they fired everyone (no one in the industry knew) – one of the employees called me to tell me to pick up my stuff so it wouldn’t get lost, stolen or sold in liquidation.  I though this was the universe’s way of telling me to STOP making hats focus on something else. But as it turns out, this was my opportunity to BUY the factory and November of last year, I became the owner of Makins Hats.  I think about and feel Charles’s presence here daily and I  believe it’s only because of him that this has all manifested. His thoughtfulness and interest in helping me has carried over every step of my career.”

☞ You can visit — and even (I’m guessing in the British accent Elaine May used as she was about to go up to the room with Mike Nichols for their adultery) “have your hat re-blocked.”  Or just blocked in the first place.

Have a great weekend.

But first . . .

$99 FOR A HAT

Well, but if it makes you look this great, and if it saves you from skin cancer, and if it’s made in the U. S. of A. — how do I know what women’s hats should cost?  All I know is what Bernard Baruch famously told us to “Buy straw hats in the winter, for summer shall surely come.”  (And then of course there’s that Nichols and May “Adultery” sketch — “You’ve had your hat reblocked!” — but that was about a man’s hat.)  Oh!  And you can roll it up for easy packing and it’s got an adjustable headband and even a sort of secret wallet.  With 15 days to go, my friend Satya has nearly doubled her Kickstarter goal.

THANK YOU, HOWARD

The reader who shared his $12,024-a-year budget with us wrote back to say, “I should have added at the bottom:  Thank Howard for Medicare and Medicaid.  Do you know Howard?”

I allowed as how I did not know Howard.  (Dean?  Well, he advocated Medicare For All, but didn’t found the program — did Lyndon Johnson have a Health & Welfare Secretary named Howard?  Was Howard Stassen involved?  Howard Cosell?)

He wrote back, “Who is Howard? was a legitimate question from a very young child, son of a cousin of my former wife, when he heard the prayer in church: “Our father, How-ard in heaven, How-ar-ed be thy name…”

Ah.  Beware the Undertoad.

FALLING BEHIND YOUR CLASSMATES?  OR THE JONESES?

The first thing is to recognize that the Joneses were crazy to buy that boat — let alone on credit — so the last thing you want to do is keep up with them. Just bring a chilled case of Pinot Noir each time you set sail so you get invited back.  The way an uncle gets to enjoy the kids all for the cost of a few gifts each year with none of the hassle, orthodontia, or tuition, it being better — from a strictly financial viewpoint — to give than to conceive.

And the second thing to recognize is that just because one of your classmates went on to conduct a major symphony orchestra before he turned 30 doesn’t mean you have to.  Sure, you may not yet have found yourself . . . after mini-stints in med school, on Wall Street, in rehab, and now “between things.”  But you still have time — as this inspirational video takes under two minutes to make clear.

Who invented them?

Think about it!

Apes don’t wear them.  Chimps only wear them when they’re working.  And don’t dress themselves even when they are.

For how many thousands of generations did we go around naked, shivering, and, after a certain age, not looking our best?  Who got the idea — and the tools — to skin an animal and then wear that skin?  (Gross!)  And the needle and thread, or primitive equivalents, to stitch it up?  Who thought of buttons?

My day dreams often try to imagine those distant ancestors and their day dreams . . . of flying through the air, like birds, and being warm when they were cold or cool when they were hot.

And then I snap back to the current reality . . . the same species, a thousand generations later, flying through the air — fully clothed, fashionable even — with magic in our pockets operable even at 37,000 feet, on the cusp of all but unimaginable global prosperity — if only we don’t hurtle off the rails.

TA-DUMP-DUMP

Jim Burt:  “That was a fun quiz in yesterday’s column.  I got five and a half right (I gave myself half credit for 108 years on the Hundred Years’ War).  The item about the camel’s hair brush (which I didn’t know came from squirrel fur) reminded me of a double tap joke I spring on unsuspecting suckers whenever I wear a camel’s hair sport coat:  “When I bought this jacket, it had a label on the sleeve that said ‘100% pure virgin camel’.  That made me think, ‘How do they know?’  But then I realized it was false advertising.  There’s no such thing as a virgin camel.  (Pause.)  They’ve all had at least one hump . . .'”

Tom Adams: “When did the Canary Islands move to the Pacific?  They are usually in the Atlantic.  Maybe the quiz isn’t that smart either.”

Paul deLespinasse:  “You said [of the guy who promised his kid a car]: ‘Actually, if you find yourself in that spot — you had had a little to drink when you made the promise, and you weren’t sure your child was even listening, for crying out loud, let alone would have made a contemporaneous note of it in his or her diary that could now be used as credible evidence if the matter were ever litigated (you didn’t even know she was keeping a diary!) — there’s a possible way out:’  . . .

“Two of the cases we read in the Contracts class the year I was a Fellow in Law and Political Science at the Harvard Law School (1970-1971) were relevant to your comment.  The first was Hamer v. Sidway,  a 19th century case in which an uncle had promised his nephew to give him $5,000 ( a LOT of money in those days and, indeed,  still in our day) if he would refrain from drinking,  smoking, swearing, or card-playing until he was 21.  When the brat turned 21 he approached the executor of the uncle,  who had died, demanding the money, and brought a lawsuit for breech of contract when the executor refused to pay up.  The executor claimed the nephew had benefited from abstaining from all these things, and that there was no ‘consideration’ which is legally necessary to constitute a contract.  Also that the statute of limitations had expired on the promise, even if it was a binding contract.  The court ruled that since the nephew had refrained from possible actions on the basis of the promised money,  that was good enough consideration to make it a valid contract.  It then agreed the statute of limitations precluded enforcing the contract,  but deemed that the promise had created a ‘constructive trust’ for the nephew, and there was no statute of limitations on trusts, or at least not as stringent a one.  So the nephew got the money.

“The other case involved a contract to sell real estate made when the seller was drunk.  I can’t remember the name of that case, or how it turned out.  Well, that was over 40 years ago.”

☞ One of our fine readers will surely know what rules apply to real estate sales made when drunk.  Counselors?

GETTING BY

I wrote a piece for New York Magazine once laughingly titled, “Getting By On $100,000 A Year” — laughingly, because back then it was as silly a notional hardship as getting by on half a million would be today — silly to most, but felt as real by many a family living in Manhattan, even though their doorman gets by on a tenth as much.

For a better sense of the real world, I share an email from one of you — an octogenarian dad and veteran who worked all his life — smart, honest, paid his taxes, suffered no addictions — retired, living alone in small town America.  He shares his financial picture, starting with his ancient pickup truck:

By odometer over the last nine months, I have driven an average of 103 miles per month, or about 1200 miles per year. I can drive roughly 150 miles on ten gallons of gas @ $3.80 per gallon (as of this date) which means I  fill up eight times per year for $304.00. I don’t carry collision insurance any more because my truck is almost 20 years old and I carry only the minimum amount of liability as required by law.  Six months’ premium is $131.86 ($263.72 per year).  I paid $6.59 vehicle tax to the county last year.  My annual license tag cost is $28.  Add the four together = $602.31/1200 = 0.50 cents per mile. Add in the average cost per mile for repairs since I bought the truck (20 cents a mile), and the total comes out as 70 cents a mile, or $840.00 a year ($70/month) just to drive the damn truck. The library is about six miles round trip, so it costs me $4.20 every time I go to the library.

To take it one step further, my Social Security, $926 + $76 a month EBT (‘food stamps’) = $1,002.00. Deduct  out of that rent + electric + phone (includes internet) + above + groceries is $738.00.  Which means I start out each month with $264.00 for everything else. Prior to my paying off a bank loan this month (for my son’s cremation), that figure would have been $164.00, and I always seem to end up the month with about $100 left over in my checking account. Not too bad.

☞ I know people who spend that much on avocados.  Do Republican politicians know — when they seek to cut food stamps, depress wages, close libraries, and repeal affordable health care —  how close to the margin so many of our fellow citizens live?

77

In 77 countries (and almost Mississippi) it’s a crime to be gay.  Share this on Facebook?  Here’s the global breakdown — every country in the world.

GOOD ADVICE FROM BAD PEOPLE

I’ve already told you about Zac Bissonnette’s Good Advice from Bad People: Selected Wisdom from Murderers, Stock Swindlers, and Lance Armstrong.  It’s got only 4 stars on Amazon, dragged down by this 2-star review:

This book is certainly amusing. The writing is crisp and stylish, with a keen ironic edge and plenty of wit. The best entries are thought-provoking as well. Without ever becoming didactic, the author skillfully suggests interesting questions. Is the problem with us for celebrating fraudulent or shallow people? Or with them for hypocrisy? Or is the problem that we don’t really know what good advice is, accepting easy platitudes over useful wisdom that real people can apply? . . .

(The reviewer goes on to blast Zac for being too tough on people who are “tainted,” certainly, but not outright “bad.”  Fair enough.  No one ever accused Zac of excessive charity toward his fellow man.)

So that’s the outlier bad review on Amazon — “amusing, crisp, stylish, with a keen ironic edge.”  I would kill for bad reviews like that.  (One of mine on Amazon — 1 star, not 2 — concludes: “I bought a remaindered copy of this book, but even at that it was too expensive.”)

Here is a rave in The Guardian that makes great reading.

Might this be the perfect graduation gift?  (Well, along with the car or the trip to Europe or whatever the hell you got yourself roped into years ago when you never dreamed she or he actually would make honor roll.)

Actually, if you find yourself in that spot — you had had a little to drink when you made the promise, and you weren’t sure your child was even listening, for crying out loud, let alone would have made a contemporaneous note of it in his or her diary that could now be used as credible evidence if the matter were ever litigated (you didn’t even know she was keeping a diary!) — there’s a possible way out:

Double or nothing.

If they agree to take this quiz:

QUIZ

This has been careening around the Internet (thanks, Mel!).  Just in case you haven’t seen it yet, I have sobering news for you: you will fail.  And so will your honor-roll graduating senior.  I sure did.

New Senior’s Exam: You only need 4 correct out of 10 questions to pass.

1) How long did the Hundred Years’ War last?
2) Which country makes Panama hats?
3) From which animal do we get cat gut?
4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?
5) What is a camel’s hair brush made of?
6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?
7) What was King George VI’s first name?
8) What color is a purple finch?
9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from?
10) What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane?

Remember, you need only 4 correct answers to pass.

Check your answers below …

ANSWERS TO THE QUIZ

1) How long did the Hundred Years War last? 116 years
2) Which country makes Panama hats? Ecuador
3) From which animal do we get cat gut? Sheep and Horses
4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution? November
5) What is a camel’s hair brush made of? Squirrel fur
6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal? Dogs
7) What was King George VI’s first name? Albert
8) What color is a purple finch? Crimson
9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from? New Zealand
10) What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane? Orange (of course)

You can still give your kid — who just lost his brand new lime green Chevy Spark — Zac’s book.  He will think of you as a bad person and you can give him this good advice: “Never take a bet that looks too goods to be true.”

But first . . .

BOREF

So Borealis is back into single digits — it closed at $9.55 yesterday — which is surely discouraging to those who paid as much as $21 for it (most of mine was purchased around $3.50, but I’ve paid as much as $16.34) . . . but is basically irrelevant.  The thing will either happen or it won’t.  And by “the thing,” I mean most immediately (which could still be years off) WheelTug actually powering the plane you’re on as it backs out of the gate.  But if that happens, it’s not crazy to think lots of other stuff could follow.  (If this electric motor technology works with airplanes, might it find some application in automobiles?  Might some of the company’s other hoped-for breakthrough technologies prove real, too?)  At which point Borealis, which now trades with a market cap of $50 million — $25 million less than Demi Moore is asking for her apartment (though, admittedly it’s a triplex overlooking the park) (and, admittedly, she probably won’t get it) — would be worth billions.

Some of my smartest friends think there’s a minuscule chance Borealis will pull any of this off (while others, like me, would have assumed it should be spelled ‘miniscule’ but it’s not), which is why I always stress that you must only take this gamble with money you can truly afford to lose.*

But — as we have now demonstrated that the technology works . . . and as we now have partners and customers as real as Parker Hannifin, El Al, and others . . . and enthusiasts like airline industry dean Bob Crandall — I predict the chances are not minuscule at all.

Which brings me to the title of this column.

WORST PREDICTIONS EVER

Mine was that “A Chorus Line,” which I got to see in previews with its author, Jimmy Kirkwood, at the Public Theater, would never make it to Broadway.  That I ultimately saw it five times and can sing you virtually word of it, should you ever fund yourself in hell with me, is irrelevant: when I first saw it, I thought it would flop.)

Here are 25 more (rock n’ roll would never catch on, said Variety; stock prices had reached a permanently high plateau, said Irving Fisher; man would never leave the earth’s atmosphere, said the New York Times).  Plus — because if this web site is not about delivering value, what is it about? — 26 more. (High speed rail travel would never be possible because passengers, “unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia,” said a professor.)

So will people 10 years from now scoff at my having thought BOREF was a great lottery ticket at $10 a share — and the notion that this little company could enable boarding and deplaning from both front and back of the plane, cutting the time in half?  Or will they scoff at those who said it could never happen (or that it would happen, but with some other company’s technology)?

I’m dying to find out.

If the odds on this particular lottery ticket are anywhere north of 10%, the math tells me its expected value is way more than its cost.  But if the odds are minuscule, then it’s not.

In truth, we’ll never know what the odds actually were today.  If it works out, we’ll assume the odds were great, even if, in truth, we totally lucked out by the skin of our teeth.  If it fails, we’ll assume the odds were very long, even if we only missed by a hair.

*Though I don’t actually see how we could lose all our money — at the very least, all the company’s patents and intellectual property (and mineral rights) ought to be worth something, and entice the next generation of dreamers to buy shares from those who give up and sell.  No?

I have the most remarkable readers.  (Don’t blush: it’s true!)

One of you — from Toledo — won the national high school debate championship back in the day.  And then, after graduating — but long before managing the billion dollars he manages today — coached another team to win its national championship.  (So why a financial analyst now and not a super lawyer? Who’s to say.)  Of interest to me: after decades of preferring mutual funds to individual stocks, he’s broken his own rule to buy this one, on the London exchange.  It promises to deliver nicotine in a controlled way — better than current electronic cigarettes — so I have mixed feelings: will it help more people quit smoking real cigarettes than it addicts to nicotine?  “Could do,” as the Brits say.

Another of you, Jim Burt, wrote this heretofore unpublished essay years ago.  “The title gives away the subject matter,” Jim says, “but there’s a twist.  The top of the nonfiction bestseller list in 1942 was occupied by Philip Wylie’s Generation of Vipers, in which he excoriated the generation then reaching maturity as lacking in education, motivation, and self-discipline, devoted to self-indulgence, hot cars, and substance abuse.  [“Perhaps the most vitriolic attack ever launched on the American way of living — from politicians to professors to businessmen to Mom to sexual mores to religion — Generation of Vipers ranks with the works of De Tocqueville and Emerson in defining the American character and malaise.”]  The book sold like hotcakes.  The generation he was condemning, of course, was the one known to us today as ‘the Greatest Generation.’ ”

The Greatest Generation
by Jim Burt

I’ve been listening this week to the audiobook version of The Greatest Generation, Tom Brokaw’s misty-eyed retrospective of the Depression kids who fought World War II and built the modern United States. It is often quite moving, both because it tells the stories of real heroes and because it reminds me of my parents, both of whom served in the Army in that war. Arguably, though, it begs the question: Why was this “The Greatest Generation”? I don’t want to take anything away from my parents’ generation, but it’s my conclusion that this was an outstanding group that was made, not born, great.

In every generation, as Shakespeare famously put it, “there are those who are born great, those who achieve greatness, and those who have greatness thrust upon them.” No generation in history ever had more greatness more forcefully thrust upon it than this one. What were the ingredients of that greatness?

As a group, they were forged in the Great Depression, annealed in poverty, and shaped on the anvil of hard work, ill health, and low expectations. Most, in a generation which after the war became the most educated in history, never expected to be able to go to college. Many were so ill-fed and ill cared for that 40% were rejected as unfit when conscription began in 1940. They were prepared for hardship in war by hardship in peace. But this didn’t make them great. At most, it made them malleable and uncomplaining, and perhaps adaptable.

To an extent hard for today’s young people to realize, they were inculturated with a respect for our political and religious institutions and leaders and a reverence for the symbols of those institutions, such as the Flag. As a group, they tended to be more deferential to gray hairs than any generation that has come of age since the 1960s, and were more accustomed to such conventions as answering with “Sir” and “Ma’am” to persons in authority.  And they were indoctrinated in a conventional morality which seems pretty archaic today, although even in their heyday it was characterized by a double standard that made its sexual ethics more moral in form than in practice. In some respects, these cultural and moral standards — which is how they were regarded in those days — were pretty awful, as in their support for racial segregation and widespread anti-semitism. But, even at their best, these characteristics did not make them great. At most, they made this generation easier to lead and to motivate.

The “Greatest Generation” was molded in its most important aspects by factors entirely separate from chest-thumping patriotism, “old-fashioned morality,” or a hard-scrabble youth. This was a generation that was called to great responsibility in great numbers at an age that leaves us gasping with incredulity today, at teen-aged bomber pilots, nurses, and company commanders. Whether serving with combat troops or on the home front, these young people, in their teens and twenties (a fact that even the most realistic war movies tend to disguise) were called by necessity to perform to the limit of their capabilities. They were given rigorous training and experience in highly technical and demanding skills, achieving levels of expertise formerly, and since, found only in persons of middle age. They knew that lives depended on their doing their utmost, and this challenge was accompanied by another important factor, the knowledge that they served a great and noble cause, a knowledge and experience with enduring effect.

These were the factors that made the “Greatest Generation” what it was: Challenge, intensive training and experience, and identification with a noble cause. With such a start at such an age, it should hardly be surprising that they continued to serve with distinction after the immediate stimulus of war was behind them.

These factors were thrust upon more members of that generation, more quickly and intensively, at an earlier age, than on any generation before or since. But they are factors that are available to all of us. In business, academe, and the military, it is the “challenge assignments” that forge leaders. The early embrace of training and experience “jump starts” anyone in any profession or trade, allowing one’s genuinely productive years to begin much earlier. There are noble causes, whether through our religious institutions or public service, awaiting us in plenitude, regardless of our age and condition of life.

Just as the “Greatest Generation” was made, not born, each of us has the capacity to achieve greatness. The difference is that greatness is less likely to be “thrust upon” us. We have to seize it, to make it. Each of us is called to live to our fullest potential at every moment. The people we admire most are those who have most successfully answered that call.  Listen for it.

MYM 12

Bill Dunbar:  “I’m writing because I’ve still been using Managing your Money on an XP machine.  Amazing that in 25 years or however long, I still haven’t found a better general money program.  Sadly, since Microsoft has stopped supporting XP, I’m trying to move onto a Windows 7 machine. Apparently the DOS programs are different. Any way to get it to work? If not, I think at one time, there was a way to get most of the contact data to Outlook. Is that still possible if the program won’t go any more?”

☞ MYM works fine with Windows 7 if it’s “32-bit” Windows 7.   Just get a C: prompt from the ACCESSORIES menu. make a c:\mym12 directory — and all the rest as if it were XP.  If it’s 64-bit and/or if you switch to Windows 8, you’ll need a free download called DOSBox and setting MYM up will be a little trickier, but someone shold be able to make it work for you.  As for exporting to Outlook, press Ctrl-C to call up the Card file, then F1 for HELP, then scroll down to the EXPORTING cards section of help at the end.  Basically, you’ll want to auto-mark ALL your cards and then export them to a comma-delimited file.  Excel will import it fine.  How much fun was MYM.  Loved every  minute of it.

FRANCE 24

Somehow there is a terrific channel on my cable package — channel 54 on RCN in New York — called “France 24.”  In English.  Commercial-free, as best I can tell.  And so smart and international and informative — 24/7.  Makes our CNN, let alone our nightly news programs, seem awfully lame by comparison.  So strange . . . very little French about it, actually.  But well worth checking out: it streams on-line for free.

MICHAEL SAM 96

I know nothing about football, but the official NFL Michael Sam jersey — wildly overpriced at $99.95 — is selling like mad.

Too cool for school.

I’ve written about Warby Parker before.  This four-minute interview with its founders (once the silly banter ends) is just so upbeat.  A little company of bright, modest young idealists doing battle with the global monopolist — successfully! — cutting prices for people like me by two-thirds or more . . . even as they empower Third World entrepreneurs with free glasses to sell cheap to people living on less than $4 a day.  (That part didn’t make the video clip.)

I’m wearing mine now, even as I type.

Yay!