Game Changer June 30, 2015June 30, 2015 According to Bloomberg: The Way Humans Get Electricity Is About to Change Forever. Interested? Click the link! It’s all about the sun. (Spoiler alert: for all the good news it contains, it still won’t be enough to avert climate disaster. So — as the Pope recently noted — don’t think we can rely on technology alone.) # Of course, this has been a long time coming. Thomas Edison — who himself knew a thing or two about electricity — famously said, “I would put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” # You can stop reading right there. That quote and the Bloomberg link are more than enough. But in case you have time for nostalgia . . . # It seems like five minutes ago — though it was 1974 — that I was sitting (petrified!) with the Secretary of the Treasury, asking him why we should not begin adding a dime a gallon to the gasoline tax each year — using all those billions to lower the income tax — thus discouraging the thing we wanted to discourage (oil imports) and encouraging the things we wanted to encourage: work, saving, and fuel efficiency. As I’ve written here before: . . . Gas would have risen to the same $5 it hit not that long ago, but the cost of driving a mile would have stayed modest as fuel efficiency soared; and all those trillions of dollars over the years would have stayed in American coffers rather than flowing to our friends abroad. The Secretary — who was considered a bit of a terror (and who certainly scared me) — gave a long glower, as if trying to figure out how to deal with such a moronic question — and said, “Yes, of course we should! Everybody knows that. But we could never do it politically.” Just one enormous example of a simple, obvious policy change that would have made us far more prosperous today, and very likely safer, with a much stronger balance sheet. Forty years from now, will we be saying the same of our failure to address climate change? Or our failure to shift modestly from private consumption (bigger homes, bigger yachts) to public consumption (infrastructure revitalization)? In the winter of that same year — 1974 (as I’ve also written here before) — I had a cover story in NEW YORK Magazine about the potential for solar energy. I knew it was important – OPEC and Mideast oil were all anyone could think about (except Detroit’s executives, who would spend the next three decades in denial) – but I was surprised to learn my piece was going to be the cover. It seemed a bit of a stretch to run the piece in NEW YORK at all, let alone as the cover. What was famed editor Clay Felker thinking? It turned out he was thinking, ‘Let’s sell some magazines!’ He put a gorgeous model in a bikini absorbing rays on a float in the middle of a swimming pool. In February. I’m not certain how well the issue sold, but finally, nearly 35 years later [now, in 2015, 41 years later], solar energy is becoming sexy on its own. You could (for example) have done very well buying First Solar (FSLR) at 24 when it went public a year ago (I missed it); less well shorting a few shares as I did this fall at $160 (it closed yesterday at $281, up more than tenfold). [Around $51 today, down from a peak of $311, that short doesn’t seem to have been such a bad idea. But with shorting, it’s really important to gtet the timing right.] Although this stings a bit as an investor, I’m delighted to think we are finally at the point, or nearly so, that solar panel film can produce electricity at competitive prices. To say I am not expert in this field would be an understatement on the order of ‘the sun is rather hot.’ But according to this, FSLR’s cost of producing a watt of solar power was $1.16 recently . . . and according to this, a privately owned competitor called Nanosolar has begun selling its panels for 99 cents a watt, which (according to this) it manufactures for 30 cents . . . which puts the cost of solar below the cost of coal. [Hindsight alert: Nanosolar, Thin-Film Solar Hype Firm, Officially Dead.] . . . THE MAIN THING: CAN YOU IMAGINE? WE’RE GETTING CLOSE TO A BIG STEP TOWARD CLEAN, AFFORDABLE ENERGY. Don’t Sell Humanity Short Quite Yet. Has there ever been a more exciting time to be alive?
Amazing June 29, 2015June 28, 2015 It seems so simple and so clear. No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed. It is so ordered. Our friends on the other side of this and so many other issues — like the four dissenting Justices — disagree. Perhaps with time their views may change. The nature of traditional marriage, which once included polygamy and seven-year olds, changes. The natural order of things, like the Biblically sanctioned owenrship of slaves, changes. I am still wide-eyed from those two speeches Friday . . . in the Rose Garden and, hours later, Charleston. Amazing Grace. John McCain and Mitt Romney are wonderful people in many ways. But John McCain wouldn’t have made those speeches — or appointed two progressive Supreme Court Justices. Nor Mitt Romney. As Bush v. Gore so painfully reminds us, it truly matters who wins. A difference of two Justices is the difference between a 5-4 decision that grants marriage equality and a 3-6 decision that denies it . . . between a 6-3 decision that upholds Affordable Health Care for millions and a 4-5 decision that, based on one sloppy line in a giant piece of legislation whose intent is clearly known to everyone, takes it away. If you’re with Justice Scalia, Jeb Bush, Fox News, et al, on matters like these, you have every right to be — obviously — and I am particularly grateful for your visiting a site like mine and considering my views. But if you helped elect and re-elect Barack Obama, you helped lift the nation’s sights Friday afternoon, and light her White House Friday night, and I am yet more grateful still. Please stick with it. Four of our nine Justices will be in their eighties in the first term of the next presidency. Which party’s nominee gets to replace any who might retire is a matter of enormous consequence.
Three Clips — Oops: Make That Four June 26, 2015 NIGHTLY Did you see Larry Wilmore’s segment on the rebel flag Monday? So funny. So sharp. And informative! Did you already know about the “Cornerstone Speech” of 1861? . . . [The Confederacy’s] cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. . . . It was new to me — and puts the Confederate flag and its rebel counterpart into even starker relief. There is so much truly wonderful about the South and Southerners . . . obviously . . . just as there is so much wonderful about Germany and Germans, Japan and Japanese. But certain aspects of their histories — while they should never be forgotten — should probably not be flown proudly overhead. You’d think that would have gone without saying. But at least now, in the wake of tragedy, Alabama, Wal-Mart, Lindsay Graham, et al, have come together, finally, to say it. GAYLY Did you see this examination of gay voices? Six minutes. The surprise at the end is so obvious it’s not much of a surprise — but still powerful. REALLY? And with the Supreme Court “marriage” ruling likely to come down this morning or Monday morning, can it really have taken until now for this kick-ass review of “traditional marriage” to have appeared? Really? How I’d love Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito to watch it — the three Justices I assume will vote against civil marriage equality — and then hear their thoughts on the virtues of traditional marriage. Three clips totalling 22 minutes. LATE BREAKING NEWS And now this one, with the Supreme Court marriage ruling just having come down, wherein the President of the United States brings a boy who never thought he could have a life — never thought he could share his secret — never thought he could express his love — yet somehow knew, even then, as a boy, that what he felt wasn’t bad, just different . . . wherein that great President brings that young boy, now grown, to tears. Simply put, the last two days’ Supreme Court rulings have been good for health and for love. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Three Clips — Oops: Make That Four June 26, 2015June 26, 2015 NIGHTLY Did you see Larry Wilmore’s segment on the rebel flag Monday? So funny. So sharp. And informative! Did you already know about the “Cornerstone Speech” of 1861? . . . [The Confederacy’s] cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. . . . It was new to me — and puts the Confederate flag and its rebel counterpart into even starker relief. There is so much truly wonderful about the South and Southerners . . . obviously . . . just as there is so much wonderful about Germany and Germans, Japan and Japanese. But certain aspects of their histories — while they should never be forgotten — should probably not be flown proudly overhead. You’d think that would have gone without saying. But at least now, in the wake of tragedy, Alabama, Wal-Mart, Lindsay Graham, et al, have come together, finally, to say it. GAYLY Did you see this examination of gay voices? Six minutes. The surprise at the end is so obvious it’s not much of a surprise — but still powerful. REALLY? And with the Supreme Court “marriage” ruling likely to come down this morning or Monday morning, can it really have taken until now for this kick-ass review of “traditional marriage” to have appeared? Really? How I’d love Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito to watch it — the three Justices I assume will vote against civil marriage equality — and then hear their thoughts on the virtues of traditional marriage. Three clips totalling 22 minutes. LATE BREAKING NEWS And now this one, with the Supreme Court marriage ruling just having come down, wherein the President of the United States brings a boy who never thought he could have a life — never thought he could share his secret — never thought he could express his love — yet somehow knew, even then, as a boy, that what he felt wasn’t bad, just different . . . wherein that great President brings that young boy, now grown, to tears. Simply put, the last two days’ Supreme Court rulings have been good for health and for love. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Take Three Minutes To Go To Pluto? June 25, 2015June 22, 2015 After nearly a decade, we’re almost there. July 14 will be the fly-by. Read more? Tom Stolze: “A lot folks don’t know Pluto’s elliptical orbit around the sun takes 248 earth years! So NASA had to do this while Pluto is nearest to the Earth. In another 248 years there might not even be an Earth — or an Earth with humans. And, by the way, the New Horizons spacecraft has been the fastest of all, at 36,373 mph; it set the record for the highest launch speed of a human-made object from Earth. Even at that speed it will have taken 3462 days to go the 4.5 billion miles . . . and needs just 228 watts of power to operate all the cameras and other scientific equipment on board.” ☞ I’m not saying 36,373 miles per hour isn’t really fast. But because the earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old, you could say we’ve been going one mile per year. As my friend Bobby would say: “Think about it.”
Dr. Seuss, Judy, And 2016 June 24, 2015June 23, 2015 As long-time readers know, I suffer from enthusiasm. It’s the happy gene, I think. (Apparently, you may be able to buy it over the counter — 5-HTP — but do your own research.) All the happier when the enthusiasm proves justified: Remember Honest Tea? Its co-founder took a prototype bottle out of his briefcase and asked me to try it. It was awful (who drinks room-temperature “iced” tea out of a briefcase?) but I invested anyway. It’s now everywhere! Coke bought it! Moroccan Mint, in their glass bottle, served really, really cold, is the best. Remember Google? I’ve been super-enthusiastic about Google. Although in that case, far from investing, I led a bunch of us off a cliff buying puts. “Google is just the most wonderful company that ever was,” I wrote a decade ago, arguing that its stock was, nonetheless, potentially ripe for a fall. Wrong about the stock, right about the company. Remember silt? I’ve been enthusiastic about Great Lakes Dredge & Dock because it — silt — just continues to accumulate and GLDD seems to be in a good position to proifit form that. So far, it’s been neither a big winner or a loser, but this Seeking Alpha analysis yesterday helps to keep me hopeful. I’ve been enthusiastic about beets. Yesterday I was enthusiastic about the best jukebox EVER. (And free!) SETH SINGS! And for months now, I’ve been enthusiastic about my pal Seth, who was more than a little nervous when he debuted at 54 Below last year — which showed — but boy has he ever found his stride. Among the many reviews of his most recent encore was this one from the New York Arts Review. (“Sikes may well be one of the saviors of the Great American Songbook as we continue into the 21st century. … I can’t wait to see what [he] does next. I’ll certainly be there and so should you!”) Is he the next Frank Sinatra? No. Am I having fun reading his reviews? Yes. 2016 Of rather more consequence is my enthusiasm for Democrats. And this reason to be optimistic, from the National Journal: . . . But what has to be deeply unsettling to Republicans is what has happened with party affiliation over the past seven years. . . . From 1990, when Pew began aggregating its monthly surveys each year, through 2006, an average of 29 percent of adults identified themselves as Republicans, 4 percentage points below the Democrats’ 33 percent. From 2007 through the end of last year, the average for Republican identification was 5 points lower at 24 percent. Democrats, by contrast, held steady at 33 percent. That means Republicans have gone from 4 points behind during that 1990–2006 period to 9 points behind in the years since. Reason to be cautiously optimistic. I will never get over the lost opportunity I think we had in 2014 to up-end the truism that “turn-out is always terrible in a mid-term.” But 2016 is no mid-term: 2016 is going to be the mother (or possibly the grandmother) of all presidential elections, where turnout works in our favor. DR. SEUSS And speaking of optimism, I love this upbeat excerpt from Brian Grazer’s A Curious Mind: Being determined in the face of obstacles is vital. Theodor Geisel, Dr. Seuss, is a great example of that himself. Many of his forty-four books remain wild bestsellers. . . . selling 11,000 Dr. Seuss books every day of the year, in the United States alone, twenty-four years after he died. He has sold 600 million books worldwide since his first book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was . . . rejected by twenty-seven publishers before being accepted by Vanguard Press. . . . Geisel says he was walking home, stinging from [that] twenty-seventh rejection, with the manuscript and drawings for Mulberry Street under his arm, when an acquaintance from his student days at Dartmouth College bumped into him on the sidewalk on Madison Avenue in New York City. Mike McClintock asked what Geisel was carrying. “That’s a book no one will publish,” said Geisel. “I’m lugging it home to burn.” McClintock had just that morning been made editor of children’s books at Vanguard; he invited Geisel up to his office, and McClintock and his publisher bought Mulberry Street that day. When the book came out, the legendary book reviewer for the New Yorker, Clifton Fadiman, captured it in a single sentence: “They say it’s for children, but better get a copy for yourself and marvel at the good Dr. Seuss’s impossible pictures and the moral tale of the little boy who exaggerated not wisely but too well.” Geisel would later say of meeting McClintock on the street, “[I]f I’d been going down the other side of Madison Avenue, I’d be in the dry-cleaning business today. …” Hurray for beets, Democrats, socially responsible iced tea, optimism, enthusiasm, nosewheel motors, rectal applicators, brain training — and summer!
Best Jukebox EVER June 23, 2015June 22, 2015 I actually have one in my living room that I bought 35 years ago when they used real records. A Rock-ola. (Hey: no plane, no boat, no car — I bought a juke box. Sue me.) This one, with music from the 40’s and 50’s and 60’s and 70’s, is now in your living room (or wherever) — free. Enjoy. Thanks, Mel!
Paul — Pandas! — And The Pope June 22, 2015June 22, 2015 First you may want to spend 87 seconds with these baby pandas. How can you not? (Thanks, Mel!) And now, here’s Paul Krugman on Jeb’s voodoo economics. (His Florida economic miracle was built on the housing bubble — which burst just after he left office.) And Pope Francis on climate change. (“The vision Francis outlined in a 184-page papal encyclical is sweeping in ambition and scope: He describes relentless exploitation and destruction of the environment and says apathy, the reckless pursuit of profits, excessive faith in technology and political shortsightedness are to blame. The most vulnerable victims, he declares, are the world’s poorest people . . .“) Does it strike you as ironic that the chairs of the relevant House and Senate committees believe climate change is a hoax, while virtually the entire scientific community — and the Pope! — recognize it as an urgent, epic problem? (Jeb, a Catholic, seems conflicted on this score. “Speaking at a town hall campaign event in New Hampshire on Tuesday, Bush, who converted to Catholicism 20 years ago, all but dismissed the pope’s new encyclical on the environment . . .”)
Your Chin and Your Brain June 19, 2015June 19, 2015 YOUR CHIN Suggested two years ago at $22.70 because of its promising therapy for double chins, Kythera is being bought out at $75 a share. It’s so nice when one of these works. Thanks, Guru! YOUR BRAIN A privately-held company I have an interest in has peer-reviewed studies showing that its exercises sharpen acuity, where crossword puzzles and such do not. (“Researchers found participants who did just 10 hours of the exercise, with no further training, had gains of 1.5 to 6.6 years across several standard measures of cognition that persisted even a year later. No gains were seen from doing crosswords. . . .“) Here’s their latest offer: Thousands of BrainHQ users are powering up their brains with the Daily Spark. Join them this week and invite your friends to join, too! It’s free for everyone—and a great way to sample BrainHQ’s clinically proven brain training. What is the Daily Spark? Every weekday, the Daily Spark opens one level of a BrainHQ exercise to all visitors. Play it once to get the feel of it – then again to do your best. Come back the next day for a new level in a different exercise! Something to pass on to your parents? Your grandparents? (A) They will appreciate your thinking of them. (B) They may be less likely to lose their keys or crash their cars. Even you might benefit, though I’ve never noticed you to be anything but razor sharp. (“The study also showed that participants aged 50-64 had gains just as large as those 65 and older. “This suggests that as with physical exercise, anyone can improve at any age,” said Dr. Wolinsky. “And, as with physical exercise, why would you wait until you are old to get into better shape? . . .“) Have a great weekend!
Would The GOP Support Him For President? June 18, 2015June 18, 2015 And by “him” I mean Him. This son of a nun thinks not. Two minutes. (Thanks, Mel!)