Author: A.T.

Someone named Thor sent me this. The only other Thor I know was Thor the Nordoom, who used to stand his 7-foot frame out by the Donnell Library around 53rd Street, and such other urban haunts, wearing a Viking costume and handing out some kind of literature that proclaimed him to be, in fact, Thor the Nordoom. (Well, he didn’t exactly hand it out; he had it in a sort of wooden pouch on his belt, as I recall, by his hoof.) Beware.

“This virus works on the honor system,” Thor writes:

Please delete all the files on your hard disk,
then forward this message to everyone you know.
Thank you for your cooperation.

On a separate topic, 2 million people are supposedly shopping on a thing called Spree.com. Supposedly, when you click there and sign up and start buying stuff, you will get refund checks within a week or two — and I will get a piece too (because I have secretly embedded my ID in that hyperlink). Supposedly, when you refer friends of your own to this, you, too will start getting checks for their purchases.

This will make us all rich beyond imagining.

Of course, if each of their 2 million shoppers gets them five more who get them five more who get them five more, that’s 250 million shoppers right there . . . and two more levels takes it to every human on the planet.

But I don’t care. Sign up. Let’s all get rich together.

I used to think of Nader as a hero. I marveled at his courage in taking on the auto industry on safety issues. I was thrilled to see my dad, who ran an ad agency, do the first full-page ads, pro-bono, to launch Nader’s Public Citizen and his Congress Project. I have those ads framed in my office. I was over the moon when Nader gave a blurb for my 1982 expose of the insurance industry. As Rachel Carson’s A Silent Spring launched the environmental movement, so Unsafe at Any Speed launched consumerism. We consumers have a lot to thank Ralph Nader for.

And yet it turns out to my great dismay, there is another side to Ralph Nader. I could write 10,000 words about this — and did, not so long ago, under the headline “Ralph Nader Is a Big Fat Idiot.” In the one area I have come to know in painstaking detail — your overpriced, rotten automobile insurance — Nader has been anything but the consumer’s friend. For more than three decades, Consumers Union has been crying out for meaningful reform. Nader has been without question the lynchpin in preventing it.

We all want heroes. It was very discouraging for me to see how much harm Nader had — inadvertently, I’m sure — caused drivers and accident victims. And how stubbornly he refused even to discuss it, even to answer mail about it.

But that was nothing compared with what he is doing now. He’s running for President, and his candidacy could actually siphon off enough votes to throw the White House to the Republicans. Which means a conservative Supreme Court for the next 25 years. (On “Meet the Press,” George W. singled out Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia as the two Justices he most admired. If elected, he would likely get three or very possibly four appointments to the Court in his first term.)

Few things could be worse for the little guy Nader claims to represent. And yet I am assured by a mutual friend that he’s in the race to stay, consequences be damned. “The Democrats could use a four-year cold shower,” he told Tim Russert during his own “Meet the Press” interview. And if it’s a 25-year cold shower because of the Court, and young women go back to having coat-hanger abortions, well, Russert didn’t ask, but that doesn’t seem to deter Nader either.

The NRA rejoices! The gun-show loophole will stay open after all! The tobacco industry exhales a sigh of relief. Finally, a president who can work with Jesse Helms. McDonald’s is thrilled. No more minimum wage hikes (never shoulda been raised from $4.25 to $5.15 in the first place)! Steve Forbes beams. A well-deserved multi-million dollar cut in his annual tax bill. The Big Three cheer. That silliness about cleaner air and global warming can be put behind us. Banks and insurance companies relax. Scrutiny of abusive credit card practices and redlining gets put on the back burner. Big campaign contributors exult. Campaign finance reform is dead.

Ralph Nader has ridden to their rescue.

What must he — and his supporters — be thinking?!

Willis: “The point of a dishwasher is to wash the dishes at a temperature that kills the bacteria and removes the oil/grease/wax stains the bacteria hide in.”

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, I paid good money to subscribe to this web site. How come all the stuff here isn’t ABOUT money?

OK, then, buddy, how about The Wall Street Journal? Which charges an even higher subscription price and recently ran a feature article on dishwasher-loading.

You will recall, we have been talking in recent days about dishwashers that double as cabinets, and tables with flaps that fold up so the dishes can be washed in place without having to clear, or then set, the table. (Sound impractical? What if the dishes were glued to the table, so they didn’t move as the soapy jet stream hit them, nor be re-centered or re-set? This gets better all the time.)

Joel Williams: “The washable house has been thought of before — by Popular Mechanics, back in 1950. For a picture, see my site — January page.”

This is great. The 1950 caption, as you’ll see when you visit Joel’s page, was: “Because everything in her home is waterproof, the housewife of 2000 can do all her cleaning with a hose.” And here we are in 2000 and what progress have we made really? Sure we’ve put a man on the moon — but have you been there? Worse, Scotch Guard, the one truly great invention of the last century when it comes to hosing down the furniture, has recently been taken off the market. We’re sliding backwards!

As for the table with flaps that fold up, washing all the dishes in place, Mark McMillion writes: “I was reading in the latest issue of Forbes about raising kids to be unspoiled by riches. The article mentioned that in billionaire Les Wexner’s house here near Columbus, Ohio, the dining room table lowers to the floor below where the servants can clean and clear it. How about that?”

An outstanding idea, although in Charles’ and my case, the folks on the floor below us are not our servants, they are retailing executives, and might be more than a little surprised to see our dining room table — which Charles designed, by the way — come rumbling down at them through their ceiling.

Meanwhile, that little portfolio of five stocks I mentioned March 14 is still up 35%, which has nothing to do with washing dishes but does suggest you can clean up even if you don’t think about money every day. You know: a watched pot, and all that. I plan to continue to hold most or all of my own position in these stocks. So does the smart person who recommended them to me. But after such a large and rapid run-up, I hereby absolve myself of any responsibility for your continuing to hold them (not that I accepted any responsibility in the first place).

As for Calton (CN), with which we did even significantly better, it seems to have fallen back to what may again be an interesting price. I know nothing, but if you still own some, I wouldn’t rush to sell at these prices. (Note that “these prices” may be deceptive — there has been a 1-for-5 reverse split. The $6 shares today are actually about $1.25 in terms of the pre-split stock. We started buying at 60 cents or so, started selling around $2.50, and declared lunacy at $6 ($30 after adjusting for the reverse split). Now, as I say, it’s back down to the equivalent of $1.25 or so ($6 on the new stock). It’s riskier than it was, because some of the company’s cash has been invested in Internet ventures. But the boss still has millions of reasons — namely, his own shares — not to screw it up.

There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who will have seen what follows at least a dozen times since Monday (they are called “gay people with e-mail”) and those who have not seen it even once (you?).

To the first group, my apologies. To the second, a brief explanation. Dr. Laura is a talk show host. She knows a great deal about God’s will, so one listener wrote in for some advice:

Dear Dr. Laura,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s law. I have learned a great deal from you, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to best follow them.

When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. How should I deal with this?

I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as it suggests in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

Lev. 25:44 states that I may buy slaves from the nations that are around us. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans but not Canadians. Can you clarify?

I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 10:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?

Lev. 20:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging.

The identity of the writer is not known to me, nor Dr. Laura’s response.

Tomorrow: How the Housewife of 2000 Will Clean Up

Yesterday (once I finally got it posted — sorry), we talked about a rotten life insurance policy that one reader’s parents had been talked into.

Today, let’s look at a different insurance deal, this one from Warren Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway.

The folks at Berkshire Hathaway are smart and honest and they’re not giving anything away.

(BRK is the company that Warren Buffett has built from a threadbare New England clothing manufacturer with a $19 a share book value in 1965 to a global insurance and reinsurance giant, with major stakes in Coca Cola, American Express, Gillette, among others. Current book value: about $38,000 a share.)

Until recently, you could buy auto insurance through GEICO, a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, and you could buy butter crunch from its Sees Candy or furniture from its Nebraska Furniture Mart — but you could not deal with BRK directly.

Now, via the Internet, for two insurance products, you can.

One is “excess umbrella liability insurance” — in case the guests who slip on your icy front porch suffer particularly horrendous injuries and meet up with a particularly sympathetic jury — and the other is “annuities.”

You can get an instant quote on either by clicking here.

I am going to leave annuities for another time. Today let me just tell you how simple and smart (at least from Warren’s point of view) the Excess Umbrella product is.

An umbrella policy, as you know from last month, picks up where your underlying policy’s liability coverage leaves off. Ordinarily, you would get an umbrella policy from the same carrier that writes your homeowner’s and/or auto policy. But you can certainly call an independent agent and but coverage from a different carrier — assuming you can find one willing to take your business. Carriers will want to verify, first, that you do have ample “underlying” liability coverage via your primary policies. Typically, you would need to have $1 million in liability coverage on your homeowner’s policy and a $300,000 or $500,000 limit on auto. The umbrella — typically an additional $1 million of coverage — would only kick in once these underlying limits were exhausted.

Umbrella coverage is usually very cheap — as little as $100 a year for $1 million, rarely more than $350 — because few people are sued, and of those, most have no need of coverage beyond their underlying coverage.

Still, you never know, which is why an umbrella helps people with assets to protect sleep better.

Now comes BRK to offer even more peaceful sleep. And to answer frequently asked questions about umbrella policies here.

The deal is very simple. Whatever umbrella coverage you have now — $1 million, say — BRK will match, and for just 90% of the premium you are now paying.

So if today you pay $250 a year for $1 million umbrella, BRK will sell you a second $1 million for $225.

Virtues? Well, it’s easy to understand. That’s a plus. And it seems relatively cheap — 10% off what you’re paying now. And you can apply right on-line. Send in your application, a copy of your umbrella policy, and a check for $225, and the chances are good you’ll be all set and sleeping like a baby.

And I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it! (I would certainly check with my primary umbrella carrier first to see what it would charge to double your limit.)

But look at how smart this is from BRK’s point of view, especially in the Internet age.

BRK presumes that the underlying carrier is not an idiot, and is attempting to profit by writing your policy and tens of thousands like it. In this example, $250 is a premium that the underlying company believes sufficient to generate a profit.

So BRK has let the underlying carrier do all the research on your insurability, pay all the agent commissions . . . BRK just piggybacks on top.

Even if it were taking equal risk for a premium 90% as great as the other carrier’s premium, BRK would probably doing better. It’s getting 90% as much money, but with a much lower cost of acquiring the business.

But BRK is not taking as much risk. The only way BRK could suffer a complete $1 million loss is if both the underlying carriers did, first. The basic auto or homeowner’s policy would pay, and then, if that weren’t sufficient, the $1 million umbrella coverage would pay. Only if that were not sufficient does the BRK coverage kick in . . . and then possibly not even in the full amount.

Granted, if you lose a $15 million lawsuit, all the coverage will be quickly exhausted and BRK will be out its full $1 million right along with everybody else. So I don’t mean to say this extra coverage is worthless — it’s not. Or that BRK bears no risk — it does.

Still, you can see what a smart deal this is for BRK. It’s a simple, no-nonsense, customer-friendly product, very light on overhead and expenses. The underlying carriers are the ones that need the marketing staffs and underwriters to sell the policies and evaluate the risks, and the claims departments to spring into action once there’s a claim.

Berkshire just sits back and makes money.

Richard Z: “Years ago my parents were tricked into buying life insurance policies from Prudential for (i.e. “on”) all their children and (gasp!) their 3 year old grandchild. I forget what it was called then but now it is known as Variable Appreciable Life. The snake oil salesman promised my parents that if they put in $94 a quarter in my case (I was a 22 year old single male nonsmoker at the time), at the end of 10 years my $50,000 policy would be paid up. (FWIW I am still single with no dependents.) When I turned 32 my parents handed the responsibility for the policy over to me. I noticed then that I was still being billed quarterly but could refuse payment. Prudential simply took it out of the investment portion of the policy.

“My last statement showed a net loss of over 3% for last year. This is partly due, as the statement clearly pointed out, to the subtraction of various management fees. What I would like to do immediately is turn it in for its cash value (a little over $4K) and put that money in this year’s and next year’s IRA.

“Question 1): Am I doing a smart thing? And Question 2) If the answer to Q1 is “yes,” how do I convince my parents of that? I know this seedy little salesman will tell them I’m doing it. And they will think I’m throwing all their money away. They have no concept of how meaningless a sunk cost is in making a decision like this.”

Well, first let’s take a look at what your parents were sold. You’re right in thinking it wasn’t a wise buy. Unless their goal was the peace of mind of knowing that if one of you died young, they’d at least get a little money out of it — unlikely — what was the point?

That you might become uninsurable by the time you had dependents? And that you would then die, and that this $50,000 — oh, happy day — would provide a nice life for those dependents for a year or two until they went on some game show and won the money they really needed to have a nice life?

Otherwise, what the heck good was this insurance policy? What were they thinking?!

Thank heavens they had a financial professional guiding them to this prudential decision.

Now let’s also look at the numbers. For $94-a-quarter — $376 a year — to have grown to a cash value of $4,000 after 10 years is for it to have compounded at something less than 1%. (Gee! We invested just $3,760 over 10 years, Madge, and it grew to $4,000! Where can I get some more of that?!)

Then again, you had this (unneeded) $50,000 of life insurance protection along the way, which Prudential would have had to shell out if your bungee cord had popped, so from an actuarial point of view, it was not as if they were taking you to the cleaners. For a 22-year-old who actually needed insurance, because he had, say, a young child or dependent parent, it could have been worse. (But a $500,000 term life insurance policy, in this circumstance, would have been about 10 times better — and about the same price.)

Say you had skipped the life insurance policy and invested the money at 7% after tax instead. It still would have worked out to only $5,500. Not a fortune.

And at that point — now, aged 32 — say you did need life insurance. If you were sure you wouldn’t die young, you could just keep that $5,500 growing, and — if you earned 6% a year after tax — it would be $50,000 by the time you were 70, when your arteries might actually have begun to clog, and $161,000 by the time you were 90 and the heart by-pass had turned into an underpass. (I’m not sure what that means, exactly, but in the life insurance game, one always reaches for a euphemism, and all the obvious ones have already been taken. OK: dead. You were 90 and dead.) Make that $278,000 if it could have compounded at 7% after tax or $477,000 if you want to be really unrealistic and assume 8%.

But who can be sure to live to 70 or 90? The whole point of life insurance is that you might not.

So if and when you do have dependents, you might well want to buy life insurance. Inexpensive term life insurance.

In the meantime, your IRA plan makes sense. It might well grow to over $100,000 by retirement, and you won’t have to have an underpass to collect it. This is all thanks to the generosity of your parents. So the proper strategy with them is to say, “Thank you: because of your foresight in saving for me, I’m going to have a six-figure increase in my retirement assets.” Granted, they didn’t choose a great investment vehicle (okay, they chose a LOUSY investment vehicle), but they did do something which could be a meaningful contribution to your future security. Plus, as the estimable Less Antman notes, it was a lousy investment primarily because you didn’t die — so essentially this whole mess is your fault.

Retired molecular biologist Dickson Pratt: “On the subject of ‘stupidity,’ you might want to check out the Darwin Awards. For example, take a look at the 1999 winners.”

Mark Centuori: “Readers enamored with stupid product sites may also derive thrills from Seattle’s treasure, Archie McPhee. No, I haven’t ordered from the catalog, the site, or even visited the store (am I distancing myself?).”

Me, neither. From a quick perusal, this stuff seems a lot stupider than the talking spatula I ordered from stupid.com.

And then there’s this, inspired by our recent discussion of the dining room table with flaps that fold up, allowing the dishes to be washed in place, without ever having to clear or set the table:

Anna Marasco: “In my dream house, all the floors in all the rooms have ceramic tiles. And the walls are wainscoted to four feet with tile. In a discreet location on the floor, one tile is ungrouted. Pry it up and there is a drain. Near the drain, in a hinged ungrouted tile on the wall, is a retractable hose like those at coin operated car washes, that shoots hot sudsy water and hot clean water. The whole room can be hosed down and then squeegeed to a cleanliness that is really next to Godliness. Is that too much to ask?”

Certainly not. Shoulder-height electrical outlets to avoid short circuits, yes? And the furniture and bedding? I assume it is all made of metal, rubber, and upholstered for quick-dry by Speed-O.

Tomorrow: Stupid Life Insurance

Where would I be without Alan Rogowsky sending me URL’s like www.STUPID.com. Sure seemed stupid to me. I bought a tingler, a talking barbecue spatula and a programmable electronic frisbee. Not sure whether any of this stupid stuff will actually come, or what I’ll think of it, but I will be running to the mailbox every day.

One item no one would call stupid is the dishwasher cabinet we imagined Tuesday. David Maymudes was one of several, including a New Zealander, who advised me that something very similar is already for sale! (Click here.) Great minds, and all that. The brochure even says “you can use clean dishes directly from one drawer while loading dirty dishes in the other.”

Look at the way the first letters of these paragraphs cry WOLF. If I got them to spell COKE or NIKE or DELL, could I charge them for it?

Finally, I hope I haven’t totally lost you to the talking barbecue spatula, because — thanks to David Blumgart for this one — if you’re interested in the economy, you should really click . . . here.

One of you asked about buying single shares of stock for kids, et al, as gifts. I said I thought it was ridiculous (and wasteful in requiring the company to start sending quarterly and annual reports which your recipient may not even want) and suggested sending a framed canceled certificate for 1000 shares, and pointed you to Scripophily.com for this.

Tom Bolger: “I disagree. When you purchase scripophily, while it looks nice, it’s of no value. It’s just an expensive piece of paper. Depending on its collectible value, almost the cost of a real share. Not all of us are wealthy enough to purchase a ‘significant’ quantity of stock for a gift. But for the cost of a single share, yes, at a premium for the service, you not only get a nice piece of paper to hang on the wall but as a shareholder, you also receive an annual report and any giveaways (AT&T gives calling cards, Wrigley gives chewing gum). The real value is starting a child interested in stocks and hopefully a lifetime of successful investing. And after several years, who knows, maybe your $100 investment in a Dell may split several times and be worth $1,000. Now that’s a gift.”

OK, on a less grumpy day, I suppose I can see this is no worse than getting the kid a Star Wars Imperial Cruiser or something. Maybe even a little better. Fine. First a share of Nike; soon an application to Wharton. Fair enough.

Tom found two sites devoted to this cause: Oneshare.com charges $35 (including shipping) plus the cost of the share itself. Add another $34 if you want it to arrive framed. A competitor: Framestock.com.

A current favorite on both sites: a $17 share of World Wrestling Federation stock. Yours, framed, for under a hundred bucks.

erika: “i just finished reading one of your intresting books and i would like to know if you can explain it to me with a little more details. please the book i read was the only investment guide you will ever need. can you please e mail me with a respond thankyou so much erika” — Apparently not the only investment guide she will ever need.

Now THIS is pretty cool. Don’t be mad at me if they’re swamped and it takes you a while to get your “go ahead” — I just got mine after a couple of weeks. But I tried it, and, well, it’s pretty cool: Tellme.com.

Basically, once you’re signed up, you just call 800-555-TELL and say, in words, what you want — stock quotes, the weather, local movie listings, a traffic report. You can even make free long distance phone calls.

It’s all free. At least so far.

If you’re calling from your home base, Tellme seems to know that and doesn’t ask you to punch in your ID number. You just say “movies” or “traffic” and off you go.

If you’re calling from a different phone, you do have to enter your ID number, but just the first time — and it’s easy to remember. At least for now, your ID is just your 7-digit local phone number.

If you’re calling in from a land line, you won’t have to tell it where you are. It knows. (If you want to know the weather back home, you can get that, too.) And if you’re calling from your cell phone, well, then you may have to tell it where you are. But how hard is to say “Los Angeles?”

There is one big caveat in all this (apart from the potentially long wait to get signed up with an account). This is one site where I think you should actually read the User Agreement and the Privacy Policy.

The way it currently reads, at the end of this test period Tellme can modify its User Agreement and Privacy Policy any way it wants without notifying us, and we are deemed to have agreed to the changes (even though we may not know they have changed) the first time we next use the service. It is our responsibility, the User Agreement explains, to check the web site and keep abreast of any changes.

So, theoretically, at least, if the new policy is that “we will give or sell your information to anyone we want any time we want” . . . and if the new user agreement is that “we will bill you $5 per call” . . . that’s it — we’ve agreed to it unless we’ve checked Tellme’s web site and reread the Agreement and Policy before each call.

Obviously, this is ridiculous, and I assume nothing nearly so nefarious is intended. Still, Tellme should add something like this to its current User Agreement:

Notwithstanding the likelihood that we will alter the terms of this agreement at the conclusion of our test period, we will absolutely will not, under any circumstances, begin charging you for our service without having first notified you of the proposed fee schedule and gotten your explicit, active approval. Likewise, we will not share any of your personal information without having first obtained your explicit, active approval of such a change in our privacy policy.

I’ve suggested this, and been thanked for the suggestion, but so far, no change. Anyway, it can’t hurt to check out the demo. Voice recognition is really almost ready for prime time.

Speaking of talking computers . . . would you like someone to read my column to you every morning while you’re getting dressed? I haven’t tried this, but it’s free: ReadPlease. Apparently, after downloading the software, you can then cut and paste anything you want into the Windows clipboard and have ReadPlease read it out loud. You even get to choose the reader’s voice and speed. (I got this tip from TheFreeSite newsletter, which is also free and alerts you to lots of other free stuff. I tell you: this dot-com economy is a gold mine! I can’t believe all those stocks tanked.