WARREN BUFFETT’S VIEW ON MONEY
In case you missed it in yesterday’s New York Times . . . we’re doing what we need to do, Warren Buffett says, referring to all this gargantuan deficit-spending and money-printing. But we’d better get ready to do something different as soon as we are able.
TED OLSON’S VIEW ON MARRIAGE
And also in yesterday’s Times . . . famed conservative Ted Olson, who persuaded the Supreme Court to install George W. Bush as President, now hopes to persuade the Court to allow marriage equality.
A NEW KIND OF INSURANCE
You sit for three or four hours having your own stem cells painlessly extracted . . . then watch as they’re freeze-dried, like coffee, and stored, like furs for the summer . . . and then, years later, in case you should need to grow a new limb or something, voilá!
Watch the video here. It’s “bio-insurance.”
Thoughts?
(Full disclosure: a friend who’s advising the company sent me the link; being boyish if not rakish in my unstudied enthusiasm for such things, I bought a few shares just for the thrill.)
(Further disclosure: apparently it’s less about growing new limbs than repairing bum knees – at least for now.)
(Final disclosure: the procedure is priced at $7,500 up front plus $750 a year to stay frozen.)
One big question I had after watching the video – what advantage is there to going through this procedure before you NEED to do? How would that 52-year-old in the video have been helped if he had done this at age 30 and paid for 22 years of storage – versus just harvesting his stem cells this year, once he knew he needed them, waiting a few weeks for them to replicate?
But assuming it does make sense to bank them early, as argued in the video . . .
How about a steep family discount? Four for the price of two?
And how about an “endowment” option – say, a one-time $5,000 add-on for lifetime storage?
Which might be accompanied by some kind of insurance policy from Berkshire Hathaway guaranteeing a $50,000 pay-out if your deposit should ever be lost by virtue of a meltdown.
And of course the most obvious suggestion of all (drum roll please): while we’re freezing things and providing genetic insurance – shouldn’t we toss in free spermcryogenics? Give our customers something fun to do during those 3-4 hours?
Which reminds me:
WORKING YOUR WAY THROUGH COLLEGE
