Opera For New Year’s Eve – 2 Minutes December 31, 2020December 30, 2020 But first . . . In case you haven’t seen it yet, this is me in 50 years, when all my parts have been replaced. And also . . . Do you own PRKR (last written about here)? Or are you for some reason fascinated by patent law? If so, check this out, written by a retired Federal appeals court judge who specialized in patent law. Everyone hates “patent trolls,” just as everyone mocked that woman who won $3 million from McDonald’s when she spilled hot coffee between her legs. But just as it turns out the public was misled into thinking the coffee case was ridiculous, so has our country’s Judiciary been misled by a sophisticated, decades-long campaign to delegitimize patent protection. Which matters, because a country like ours needs to reward inventors, not bankrupt them with legal fees as they attempt and fail to assert their patents. Retired Chief Judge Michel begins: An untold story of the patent “reform” era is how the High Court (as well as the Congress) blithely accepted an exaggerated narrative spun by the PR campaign of the Coalition for Patent Fairness (CPF). It might have been more accurately named the “Coalition for Patent Weakness.” That is what its massive PR/lobbying campaign relentlessly sought and the result CPF members ultimately got, including at the Supreme Court. But how did it happen? Read on to find out? Lately, there are signs the pendulum may have begun to swing back a bit — and that would be good for PRKR. As might be the “Markman ruling” a Texas judge is scheduled to render next month in PRKR’s suit against Intel. The last time a Markman ruling was issued — this one, April 29, in PRKR’s suit against Qualcomm scheduled for trial May 3, 2021 — the market found it encouraging and doubled the stock price. As always, full disclosure: I own a ton of PRKR — but only with money I can truly afford to lose. I should also say: lots of lawsuits are frivolous. I hate them. It’s just that, from what I can tell, and like the McDonald’s coffee suit, the ParkerVision suits are not. And now! Do you like opera? Here is a fitting two-minutes to end a rough year and start a terrific new one — which is what I dearly hope you have. Thanks for your readership!
Sleep Tight December 30, 2020December 29, 2020 Apparently, it not only feels great to get plenty of sleep, it’s good for your health. The coronavirus can cause insomnia and long-term changes in our nervous systems. But sleep could also be a key to ending the pandemic. . . . Zzzzzzzzz.
Two Dubious Ways To Make Money December 29, 2020December 29, 2020 But first . . . Even the Trump-supporting New York Post thinks this is insane. And now . . . One way to make money, maybe, is to take fliers on some of the stocks I mention here from time to time. (Part of my theory: it’s fun. And if you use the losers to lower your taxable income and your winners-held-more-than-a-year to fund charitable giving you would otherwise have done with cash — perhaps through a Gift Fund account at Fidelity or Schwab as described here — then, even if you only break even, you’ll still come out ahead after tax.) David M.: “Could you publish an end-of-the-year update on your various stock recommendations? I bought these in the last year or so: BOREF, for which I paid about $9; ANIX, $3; BKUTK, $400; CNF, $5; CNXM, $10; CTHR, 75 cents; PRKR, 12 cents; SPRT, $2 (which became $1 when they distributed $1/share at the end of last year).” → So long as this is all money you can truly afford to lose, I’d just hang on. They are all very different, of course, except in this respect: all will require lots of continued patience — if they work out at all. The only one for which something might happen fast is PRKR. Favorable rulings over the next several months could multiply last night’s 39-cent closing price nicely. Unfavorable rulings, on the other hand . . . well, you get the idea. Or you could start your own religion, as John Oliver once did (and Trump basically has), and make a ton of money that way.
Silent Monks Singing December 27, 2020 Turns out there definitely were dead people voting in Pennsylvania. Two. As reported here, one was for Trump. The other was in heavily-Trump Luzerne County, so may well have been cast for Trump also (the article doesn’t say). The third known instance of Pennsylvania voter fraud — out of 8 million votes cast — involved a registered Republican who voted once himself, then returned with sunglasses attempting to vote as his son. The truth, of course, is that voter fraud is rare — and more likely to be committed by Trump zealots than Biden zealots. Because (you’re way ahead of me) there are no Biden zealots. But isn’t that a good thing? Demagoguery enflames, divides, corrupts, and destroys. Decency, dignity, empathy, and competence offer promise of brighter days ahead. Speaking of which: THE DAYS ARE GETTING LONGER! Things are looking up! Trump supporters speak out. One minute. Giant Japanese xylophone. Two minutes. Wonderful. (Thanks, Steve.) I hope you had a great Christmas. Have you ever heard the silent monks sing Hallelujah? I’m 12 years late with this, so I figure what’s another couple of days? I especially love when they get to LORD OF LORDS. (Thanks, Ed!) Is it too early to wish a wonderfully Happy New Year?
Three Last-Minute Gifts With Free Shipping December 24, 2020December 24, 2020 #1 Peace of mind: Put a bow around this and send to any friends or relatives bedeviled by lingering doubts. The election was not rigged. Life is stressful enough these days without that nagging concern. Five minutes with the lifelong Republican Trump recruited from Microsoft. Free. #2 A sharper mind: I plug BrainHQ all the time — you know I own a little sliver of it — but quarterback Tom Brady swears it makes him sharper, and peer-reviewed studies show dramatic results in reducing the onset of dementia, and auto insurers have found its users have fewer, less serious accidents because their reflexes are sharper — and other benefits have been documented as well (tinnitus, PTSD) — so, instead of socks or a scarf, why not put a bow around this and send it to everyone you love? Spend $9 to buy them a 3-month subscription (discounted by $30 if you click here). “Send through email at the time or your choosing. Gift term begins when activated by recipient and does NOT automatically renew.” Can you imagine how much better your life will be if, by their spending a few minutes a week doing computer exercises, a loved one you would otherwise have had to care for avoided dementia? You have $9 — I know you do! Take a few minutes to explore the science. #3 A wandering mind: Drive around Amsterdam or Seattle, Beijing or Rome, Yekaterinaberg or Buenos Aires, Dublin or Delhi — and more than a dozen others — setting the speed of your car, hearing the street noise, even changing the radio station. OK, it has its limitations. It’s not one-millionth as good a gift as #2 above. But it’s free and safe, with a zero carbon footprint. Accompany it with the promise of 35,000 frequent flier miles at such time as actual travel becomes possible again? Merry Christmas, dear reader! Don’t you tell me Santa isn’t real.
Dead Pennsylvanians Voting December 23, 2020 No one seems much troubled by Trump’s coup attempt, on the I-hope-valid assumption it will fail. But before we get to that . . . and the specifics of dead Pennsylvanians voting (if you make it all the way to the end) . . . The Nostalgia Machine — pick any year from 1951 on. Eternal youth — a progress report. (Just in case you’re interested.) Okay, now . . . Trump will leave office having allowed North Korea to gain the ability to nuke our cities and Russia the ability to wreak havoc with our national defense, economy, financial system, and infrastructure. With unemployment far above the rate he inherited. With the nation many trillions deeper in debt. With our infrastructure four years deeper in decline. With world confidence in us severely shaken. He came into office with a full CDC pandemic team forward-deployed in China (which he pulled back) . . . and a “pandemic playbook” and tabletop exercise orchestrated as part of the elaborate effort the Obama team made to give the Trump team all the help it could — which help (see Michael Lewis’s The Fifth Risk) was all but entirely ignored. Yet with that horrible record, with his horrible personal failings . . . . . . and with more dying of Covid each day than died at Pearl Harbor or on 9/11 . . . . . . and with life terribly difficult for so many . . . . . . Trump and his followers can’t believe he wasn’t re-elected in a landslide. Like the landslide he won in 2016 (when he came within 3 million votes of Hillary) that was celebrated on the Mall by the largest Inaugural crowd in history. Some of this is how The Big Lie works. How strongmen work. How fascism works. How Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News has worked. How Bill Barr has worked. (Fox and Barr only now, WAY too late, having backed off a bit.) And it’s how Vladimir Putin works. As previously noted: Q-Anon was nurtured by Russia. Well, Q-Anon is now in Congress and, the past few days, in the Oval Office. The Russians have hacked our computer systems — and millions of our minds. It is ongoing. Trump’s followers have been conned into believing Putin over our intelligence agencies. The Second Cold War has pitted a judo black belt against a fake-wrestling fan; a KGB-military veteran over a bone-spur lothario. Guess whose country is on the mat? Before I leave this, I want to take the example of just one mind that’s been hacked. A highly educated mind. He writes: I can live with Biden (not Harris). But I cannot abide the belief that we no longer live in a country where voters get to choose the government. This is a foundational risk to the country. Whatever the result of this election, the opaque and fraudulent voting system must be reformed. I attach a screen shot I took from Pennsylvania — all fraudulent votes of dead or nonexistent people, all duly logged. In addition to the screen shot of dead voters, he included a 4-point Trump retweet. I replied: Yes! Faith in fair and honest elections is key. To me, no one has done more to shake that faith than Trump — except possibly Putin. His screen shot showed the first page of a statewide registry of Pennsylvania voters who had requested to vote by mail, ordered by birthdate, starting with one from Chester County born September 6, 1903. We can’t know for sure that he or she is dead, but at 117, it’s a reasonable assumption. Each successive line on the screenshot grew a little younger, with the youngest of the 17, from Northumberland County, having been born February 27, 1912. Probably dead, too. Not good, right? And just the sort of thing that would reinforce my friend’s feeling — bred of so many repetitions and tweets and posts from so many directions — that there was massive fraud. And yet on closer inspection, it turns out that of the 17 screenshotted ballot requesters, 4 were registered Republicans and 3 had no party affiliation. Six of the 17 never returned the ballot they were sent. The 11 who did should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law! Except . . . wait. Is it possible that, in inputting millions of data entries, someone slipped and hit a ZERO instead of a NINE — a quarter-inch to the left — making the birth year 1903 instead of 1993? I truly don’t know. Yet even assuming all 11 were fraud – 2 fraudulent Republicans, 2 fraudulent no-party-affiliation, 7 Democrats – is this in any way meaningful? This is just one page taking us only from 1903 to early 1912 . . . there would presumably have been several more pages before you got to more plausible ages (there ARE centenarians in Pennsylvania, and they do have the right to vote) . . . so maybe instead of 11 there are 100 or even 200 such questionable ballots, and maybe the ratio skewed Democratic, netting Biden an extra few dozen votes — but Trump lost Pennsylvania by 82,000! And if this was systemic Democratic fraud, why include Republicans? And why not return all 17 ballots? Why waste any precious votes if you’re going to all this trouble and risking prison? I mean — it’s just crazy. No? What makes it significant is that it doesn’t come from a crazy person. It comes from a a really smart, opinionated person. People listen to him. The Trump retweet my friend included had Trump saying: If you think this is all a coincidence you’re an idiot. These are statistical impossibilities.” This is the line of argument every court has rejected — including all three of Trump’s personally-appointed Supreme Justices — but let’s take a fresh look at the four items that supposedly make the case for Trump. “Biden outperforms Senators in swing states, underperforms in VA, NH, RI.” One explanation is some systemic fraud no one has been able to unearth. A far better one, it seems to me, is that in the swing states, voters KNEW they were in swing states — and so tried extra-hard to get rid of Trump, even though some were lifelong Republicans (like all those “Lincoln Project” Republicans) who gritted their teeth and voted for Biden (wishing they could have voted for Romney or McCain) but not for other Democrats. “Biden underperforms Hillary/Obama in cities, except in MI, PA, GA, WI.” Assuming this is accurate, so what? Virtually no resources were expended to turn out Biden voters in solid blue states. Tremendous efforts were made in swing states. Why is it odd – let alone impossible – that voters in Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Milwaukee who had stayed home in 2016 (because everyone knew Hillary would win and their votes weren’t needed) would this time show up? Why would Georgia’s Republican Governor and Secretary of State be so adamant in saying the election, thrice counted and backed up with paper ballots, was fair and secure? “Biden mail-in dumps with 100% margins.” I’m not sure what this refers to. Clearly, anything ABOVE 100% is either fraud or an error, and even 100% in a large sample size seems impossible. But Trump was telling his people not to use mail-in ballots and we were begging our people to use them . . . so why is it remarkable that – especially in heavily Democratic areas like Philadelphia, which would skew 90%+ our way, anyway – the mail-in skewed close to 100%? In the states where ballot counting was delayed, it was because Republican legislatures would not allow the processing/counting of mail-in ballots to begin until Election Day. The purpose of that was to allow Trump to show a big margin on Election night, so he could claim theft and rigging as the counting wore on. And maybe stage a coup. “GOP lose zero House races. ” See #1 above. And also: if we had the ability to rig results for Biden, wouldn’t we also have rigged to win the Senate? And House and state legislative chambers? Tribal Trumpers are so deeply dug in that, as he told us at the outset, he could walk down Fifth Avenue shooting people and they would still support him. Not because they are stupid (or murderous), but because Trump (in this way, at least) and Putin (who is murderous) and the folks heading Fox (looking to make money) are very, very smart. UnAmerican and untruthful, but very very smart.
There’s POT In The Latkes December 21, 2020December 21, 2020 Oy! Enough a’ready! But I say: No! If you missed Hamilton Hanukkah Friday, treat yourself! (And — while I’m not myself a fan of edibles —who can resist these?) Surprise: Q-Anon was nurtured by Russia. Putin hit us with a surprise attack in 2016 more lethal to our long-term strength and national unity than Pearl Harbor. It is ongoing. The commander-in-chief doesn’t care. His followers have been conned into believing him and Putin over our intelligence agencies. The Second Cold War has pitted a judo black belt against a fake-wrestling fan; a KGB-military veteran over a bone-spur lothario. Guess whose country has been winning? I know this is impulsive and unexpected. But . . . marry me?
My $30 Hamilton Hanukkah Gift To You December 18, 2020 The oil has finally run out but this song can’t wait another year to be shared. Have you ever seen a drop test? BOREF shareholders may enjoy this one. It’s in German, and Greek to me. But all part of the FAA certification process. Inch by inch. Georgia — we totally have a shot! For money: American Bridge. For time: HelpWinGeorgia.com. For fun: Rock the Runoff, streamed last week. The French Royal buzz keeps building. You may be late for Christmas, but February 14th is just around the corner. And there’s a one in twelve chance any given woman in your life celebrates her birthday in January. Use this link to get $30 off a gift of BrainHQ — shown greatly to reduce the odds of developing dementia, the severity of auto accidents, and a whole lot more. Or for the same money you could get them a scarf. Tim C.: “As regards last week’s living-forever . . . you might want to find out whether the telomere-lengthening endures once you exit that hyperbaric chamber. In space they lengthen but then deteriorate back on earth.” → Oh, okay. I’ll await further study. But I have a good feeling about this! Have a great weekend.
God Bless Us, Everyone December 17, 2020 “I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then I want to move in with them.” — Phyllis Diller That’s the epigram on the first page of Dan Mathews’ new, Like Crazy: Life with My Mother and Her Invisible Friends. On page 4, he makes reference to one of his favorite Christmas songs, “Daddy’s Drinkin’ Up Our Christmas.” I am lying down as I read (grabbing a little late afternoon sun, if you must know), my phone a few feet away but Airpod Pros still planted from a leftover Zoom, and so — highly doubtful of success — I say into the air, “Hey, Siri, play ‘daddy’s drinkin’ up our Christmas.'” No way, right? You can ask her to play Jingle Bells and she’ll read you a Wikipedia entry on “jungle balls.” There’s no way she’ll figure out what I said, let alone know this song. If it’s even real. “I’m on it!“ she replies. “Yeah, right,” I mutter. And two seconds later, there it was: Daddy’s Drinkin’ Up Our Christmas. I was so blown away by this, I called a friend from Paris, Texas (I’ve been to Paris, Maine, but never Paris, Texas) who laughed and told me the title reminded him of a another Christmas classic. But before I share that one with you, I’d like to note that it’s Hanukkah. Or I should say: still Hanukkah. How can it last so long? It’s a miracle! You’ve presumably seen the Smokey Robinson Hanukkah tweet (45 seconds). But have you seen this Hanukkah missive (two minutes)? And now, for the big finish, I give you — straight from my friend from Paris, Texas — Uncle Carl Came Out On Christmas. Maybe it was too much sun, or just an overwhelming feeling of gratitude for how far the world has come (look who’s gonna be the next Secretary of Transportation, for Pete’s sake!) — or maybe it’s just that time of year — but I actually got a little misty at the end. The way I do each year as “A Christmas Carol” ends. Happy Hanukkah, dear reader. Merry almost Christmas. Thank you for your readership.
Put ME In This Hyperbarium! December 15, 2020December 15, 2020 But before we get to that . . . This lecturer in psychiatry at Yale thinks he knows why Trump can’t concede. Grievance addiction. Literally. And now . . . Technically, I guess it’s a hyperbaric chamber. But if fish live in an aquarium and Greeks lived in Byzantium . . . Israeli scientists put 35 old-ish folks into them 90 minutes a day, five days a week, for three months. At the end of which, their telomeres had lengthened by 20%. They were 25 years younger. Or at least their telomeres were. I may be glossing over a few things (one of you likens me to Kramer in my enthusiasms), but I’ve already found a manufacturer. I’m trying to find out whether I can invest; and whether they have one I can sit in watching movies while I de-age. I have a friend who’s paid a fortune to freeze himself when the day comes. But forget cryogenics. My way, if it works, could keep the day from coming in the first place; and is so much warmer. Oh — and look who got 306 Electoral College votes. Thanks to all of you who helped.