Yummy, Honey January 10, 2007March 5, 2017 COOKING LIKE A BEE A friend has become an amateur apiarist and sent 180 of his closest friends a jar of his first-ever harvest, along with a charming holiday letter. (“Raising bees, at least on the small scale we did this year, is easier than you might think. The bees do all the really hard work.”) With the jar came a little note advising that if the honey had begun to crystallize – it hadn’t – we need only remove the metal lid and microwave for 30 seconds. You’re kidding me! Does that really work? I’ll bet you have an old jar of honey in the back of your cupboard (do you have a cupboard? this whole thing is sounding less and less guy-like) and I’ll bet you’d be throwing it away once you found it, because it got all crystalline. And now we may just have rescued it for you. So there’s another $3 you picked up from this web site. I hope you’re keeping score. YUMMY Not only does Yummy deliver your choice of Chinese or Japanese; their fortune cookies are crisp and provocative. I’m still thinking about the “you will succeed someday” fortune I got last week (a reference to Borealis?). And last night, with my miso soup and mushrooms-three-ways, I got: “Happiness isn’t in having what you want but rather in wanting what you have.” Deep! (At least for a fortune cookie.) HOW CONSERVATIVE OR LIBERAL ARE YOU? I saw this test highlighted on Andrew Sullivan’s site and, surprise, surprise, I am more liberal than he is. (On a scale from 0 to 40, where 40 is Genghis Khan, Andrew says he’s 26 and this Andrew seems to be around 13.) But it’s really an annoying questionnaire, because of the “have you or have you not stopped beating your wife” nature of the questions. E.g.: 21. As a society, we should spend more money trying to find a cure for AIDS than for cancer and heart disease because AIDS threatens younger people. ☑ Agree ☐ Disagree Well, no, we should spend more on AIDS because it’s . . . contagious. (But, yes, maybe also because it kills younger people.) HOUSEKEEPING Roger: “If you are Andrew, why do you write the posts as if you were F.?” ☞ What you see as an F my browser displays as a pointing forefinger. I get an F in keeping my website techno-currant. (Speaking of which, the photo at upper left was taken in 1953.)
Chocolate Diet Coke (I Get No Kick from Champagne) December 29, 2006March 5, 2017 SELL LEA I just sold most of my LEA at a slight profit on the shares we bought at $28, and a nice profit on the shares later bought when it dipped to $18. I still have some LEA LEAPs, just in case Carl Icahn (who recently took a big position) pulls this off. My LEA guru is no longer as enthusiastic. HANG ON TO YOUR AXP First suggested here at $52.50 a year and a half ago, it is now $61 and change – but that’s after spinning off 1 share of AMP for each 5 of AXP, which adds nearly $11 more, for a gain, with dividends, approaching 40%. Oink, oink; I’m hanging on for more. A LA MEL TORMÉ Jim Busek: ‘Loved the Mel Torme item. I have had very few celebrity sightings myself (even counting Henny Youngman on a jetway as one of them), but I thought this had something in common with the fortunate Mr. Evanier: I was changing planes in Nashville and walked to the main lobby to get an ice cream cone. There were a couple of guys in that lobby sponsored by a group called ‘Arts In The Airport’ and playing country music They were pretty good so I watched them play for a while as I leaned against a pillar, eating my cone. They were about halfway through the Johnny Cash standard ‘Ring of Fire’ when it happened: Johnny Cash himself came walking into the airport, carrying a garment bag. As you might imagine, he recognized the song. And the guys singing it recognized him. Here’s the cool part: Johnny Cash walked over – maybe six feet away from me, mind you – stepped behind the microphone, and sang the last verse with the little two-man band. There were only about six of us watching, but we gave a rousing ovation when they finished. And then, with a smile and simple wave, Johnny Cash picked up his garment bag and went through security like everybody else. It was one of my all-time favorite travel moments.’ Joel Grow: ‘What an utterly charming story! When I was 19, I worked my way to Europe for the summer on an oil tanker. While in London with Susan, a young woman I met along the way on my travels, we splurged on a fancy restaurant. I was then a freshman in college and a Voice major. Somehow my being a singer was passed on to the waiter, who asked if I knew Richard Tucker, the great operatic tenor. Thinking he meant merely did I know who Tucker was, I said of course. A minute later, around the corner came the waiter with Richard Tucker in tow. I stood up fearfully, realizing the misunderstanding would make me seem a fool. Tucker walked up, embraced me and quietly whispered ‘What’s this all about?’ ‘Mr. Tucker,’ I said, ‘I meant I know who you are, not that I know you. I’m a singing student.’ ‘What’s your name?’ he asked, still embracing me. ‘Joel Grow,’ I said. He then held me out at arms length and asked loudly, ‘Joel, how are you? How’s the singing?’ and on and on like we were old pals, or mentor and student. I saved face, and even rose quite dramatically in the view of the waiter and my traveling companion. What a gracious, kind gesture from Mr. Tucker, who certainly didn’t have to go to that trouble.’ Larry Taylor: ‘Reminds me of a story that I heard Chet Atkins once tell. He had quietly slipped into a gathering of young pickers and just began jamming with them. After an hour or so that had little or no conversation, he thanked them for letting him barge in. As he walked away, one of the youngsters yelled out to him, ‘You ain’t no Chet Atkins, but you’re pretty damn good.’ Chet said that he just smiled and kept walking.’ HE SPEAKS FRENCH, BUT HE’S A MIME, SO YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND WHAT HE’S SAYING Several of you sent me this one. In case you haven’t seen it, an elegant bit of puppetry. CHOCOLATE DIET COKE Where but this web page would you get my Cooking Like a Guy™ recipe for Chocolate Diet Coke? (Squeeze some chocolate syrup I into the bottom of a glass, add ice, fill with Diet Coke, stir.) It’s kinda fun, gives your Diet Coke a little more body, and need not bring it up to more than maybe 50 calories, compared to the 145 in a real Coke. Hey, it’s the holidays – go nuts. Thanks for sticking with me again this year. Here’s wishing all of us a terrific 2007.
Kuo December 1, 2006March 5, 2017 TITLE SEARCH A New Orleans lawyer sought an FHA loan for a client who lost his house in Hurricane Katrina and wanted to rebuild… He was told the loan would be granted if he could prove satisfactory title to the parcel of property being offered as collateral. The title to the property dated back to 1803, which took the Lawyer three months to track down. After sending the information to the FHA, he received the following reply: (Actual letter): “Upon review of your letter adjoining your client’s loan application, we note that the request is supported by an Abstract of Title. While we compliment the able manner in which you have prepared and presented the application, we must point out that you have only cleared title to the proposed collateral property back to 1803. Before final approval can be accorded, it will be necessary to clear the title back to its origin.” Annoyed, the lawyer responded as follows: (Actual Letter): “Your letter regarding title in Case No. 189156 has been received. I note that you wish to have title extended further than the 194 years covered by the present application. I was unaware that any educated person in this country, particularly those working in the property area, would not know that Louisiana was purchased, by the U.S., from France in 1803, the year of origin identified in our application. For the edification of uninformed FHA bureaucrats, the title to the land prior to U.S. ownership was obtained from France, which had acquired it by Right of Conquest from Spain. The land came into the possession of Spain by Right of Discovery made in the year 1492 by a sea captain named Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the privilege of seeking a new route to India by the Spanish monarch, Isabella. The good queen, Isabella, being a pious woman and almost as careful about titles as the FHA, took the precaution of securing the blessing of the Pope before she sold her jewels to finance Columbus ‘ expedition. Now the Pope, as I sure you may know, is the emissary of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and God, it is commonly accepted, created this world. Therefore, I believe it is safe to presume that God also made that part of the world called Louisiana. God, therefore, would be the owner of origin and His origins date back to before the beginning of time, the world as we know it AND the FHA. I hope you find God’s original claim to be satisfactory. Now, may we have our damn loan?” He got the loan. ☞ This is bogus, but fun. TOEVS ON KUO From Jim Toevs, a friend in Montana: My next door neighbors here in Hot Springs, Montana, are wonderful folks. They are the quintessential good neighbors, in the best “Old West” sense of the word. We have never shared a meal together, but we have exchanged baked goodies on occasion, and we have an unspoken mutual understanding that we can always count on each other in any kind of an emergency. They belong to an independent conservative Christian church here in town, but they have never tried to proselyte me, and I know from something the woman said, that they voted for Al Gore in 2000, and this year, they had a big sign for a Democrat State Legislative candidate on their property. They know that I am gay, but we have never talked politics. However, being a former Christian, myself, I was interested to consider how the Mark Foley and Ted Haggard scandals would affect the Evangelical turnout and their votes in the 2006 General Election. About a month before the election, I started seeing op-ed pieces by a man I had never heard of, named David Kuo, who had just written a book entitled, Tempting Faith. David Kuo was the number two person in the Faith-Based Initiative Office in the Bush White House, who resigned when he saw the way in which the Bush political apparatus was using Evangelicals for purely political purposes. After reading a couple of his articles in the press, I decided to buy the book to try to understand the impact it might have on the religious right. As I read the book, my neighbors kept coming to mind, and yesterday morning, I decided to take a risk, and took the book over to my neighbors. I said that I had found the book interesting, and that I thought they would as well. I only said something very general about it being about the seductive nature of power and politics. Unbeknownst to me, fifteen minutes after I left their home, their pastor showed up. He saw the book sitting on the kitchen table and exclaimed, “That is a VERY important book! I have a copy, and between the two of us, every member of our congregation is going to read it!” My neighbor could not wait to call me on the telephone and thank me for the book. I believe Tempting Faith will break the Conservative Republican hold on many Evangelical Christians. You may not choose to read the book, but at least Google David Kuo and read some of his recent op-ed pieces. If Progressives are going to claim the political center, which I believe we must do if we are to build a viable national political movement, it is important to understand that we can no longer assume that Conservative Christians are captives of the Right Wing Republicans. ☞ Kuo’s latest New York Times op-ed. INCONVENIENT DVD MM: ‘It’s at Netflix, here. And for what it’s worth, all 48 copies were rented all last weekend at the local Blockbuster near Hartford CT.’ FIGS Andy Maltz: ‘Cut the figs in half, grill them until almost black, top with a dab of marscarpone and square of proscuitto. I don’t like figs, but this is incredible!’ ☞ I tried this, but couldn’t find the ‘grill’ setting on my microwave and have no idea what marscarpone is, so I just popped the fig into my mouth. Not bad that way either. MOYERS Ralph: ‘You should really have given a warning about the Moyers speech at West Point. I frequently read your blog with my first cup of coffee at work and then settle down to my daily tasks. By the time I got to Emily Perez I was nearly weeping with anger and shame and profound sadness. I am now useless at work for at least the next hour.’ ☞ From now on: warnings.
Figs, Blimps, and Borealis November 21, 2006March 5, 2017 FIGS John Ebert: ‘You ask: ‘Who knew?’ I certainly didn’t. And I still don’t! Was that the whole story?’ ☞ Ah but there was an exclamation mark after the question mark. ‘Figs. Who knew?!’ By which I meant to convey a simple but exuberant truth: figs are actually worth trying. The longer version is that I was actually looking for dates. Dates are a sugary desert dessert the Canaanintes ate in place of Snickers – and I sometimes now do, too. But the biblical-fruit sector of my brain seems to have conflated the two, dates and figs, and I found myself asking the supermarket stock boy, ‘Do you have any figs?’ . . . meaning dates. And then, when he showed me, I figured, what the heck. Bought, ’em. Refrigerated ’em. Grabbed one by its little stub and ate the rest. Not half bad. The rest quickly followed. Who knew?! BLIMPS Dan Nachbar: ‘Your readers really need to stop picking on blimps. First of all, the generalization that blimps can’t fly in bad weather is wrong. It is true that several early rigid airships were lost in storms during the 1930’s. But airplanes of that era were also routinely lost to bad weather. The almost daily frequency of airplane accidents in that era is often forgotten today whereas crashing and burning a rigid airship is still a staple of Hollywood movies. It’s also true that our prototype blimp is very much a fair weather aircraft. But then, aircraft prototypes generally are. We don’t expect the same to be true of our next version. Remember, we’re just getting started. ‘In general, blimps have proven themselves capable of handling the worst weather. By the time the Navy shut down its blimp program in 1957 (a sad story for another day) its blimps demonstrated that they could fly for 11 days straight through ice, snow, storms, and other severe weather that stopped all other transportation – both in the air and on the ground. (I suggest John McPhee’s book The Deltoid Pumpkinseed for a terrific rendering of this tale.) ‘As for your other reader comment that blimps are deafeningly loud, this is also no longer true. It is true that WWII-era blimps were a very noisy ride. (The Goodyear blimps are still essentially WWII technology.) However modern blimp designs, such as the Zeppelin-NT and our aircraft, no longer mount the engines on the side of the cabin as was done in old-fashioned blimps. Thus they no longer have the same noise problems. When flying my blimp, I can easily chat with folks on the ground below me using an ordinary speaking voice. If I’m up above tree-top level, we do need to raise our voices a bit. But engine noise in the cabin is certainly not a serious problem.’ BOREALIS Yesterday, I linked to a site that reminds us we are richer than we think. But you may not be feeling so rich if you bought Borealis at $16 and saw it close Friday at $4.80, down $2.20 (31%) in a day. There are these things to say about that: First, we bought this crazy speculation only with money we could truly afford to lose (and mostly at $3 and $4 a share), knowing that, like even the best of lottery tickets, it may not pay off. Second, the 31% plunge occurred on volume of 8,400 shares. Someone, nearing the end of the tax year, may have figured, ‘Oh, well, enough already. I’ll take my tax loss and move on.’ (Or maybe he plans to wait 30 days – to avoid the ‘wash sale rule’ under which the IRS disallows the loss if the position is reinstated – and then buy the shares back even cheaper, as others sell for their year-end tax loss.) My point: if GE drops 31% in a day, chances are investors are reacting to some very, very, very bad news. If Borealis drops 31% in a day, my friend Joey may have just decided, ‘the hell with it.’ (The way Pink Sheet transactions are reported, it may actually have been a sale of just 4,200 shares. I’ve never been completely clear on this, but sometimes both sides of the trade get included in the reported Pink Sheets volume: the sale of 4,200 shares plus the purchase of 4,200 shares.) Third, this stock really may gradually dribble down to zero over the months or years ahead. But so far as I know, nothing changed last week. There remains the prospect of potentially valuable technology and a giant iron ore deposit. I’ve never sold a share. If tax-selling drives it down further, I may even buy more. But only – truly, no joke – with money I can afford to lose. Because (as is perhaps becoming increasingly evident) I really may.
Say You Win the Lottery Or At Least Get Hit By a Bus November 17, 2006March 5, 2017 SAY YOU WIN THE LOTTERY Would you take your winnings over 20 years? Or the much smaller lump sum now? You would, of course, take the lump sum. And yet, as this site suggests, it might not end well. And won’t we be secretly pleased. Hit it, Klaus: Oh, schadenfreude, oh schadenfreude; a guilty pleasure I enjoy. Oh, schadenfreude, oh schadenfreude; I am an awful, awful boy. My spir-its soar, that I cannot deny; a deep down joy, it truly gets me by; Oh, schadenfreude, oh schadenfreude; a guilty pleasure I enjoy. But the point of this is not to get you in the holiday spirit, but rather to spread the wisdom of ‘structured settlements’ should you or someone you love, God forbid, ever get hit by a bus. JOHN BOGLE John Leonarz: ‘John Bogle is one of my favorite financial wizards. He has recently addressed the students of Immaculata College on the role of the mutual fund industry and its failings. His remarks were full of wisdom, humor and truth.’ ☞ Aren’t they always? PICKLES Pickles – click here. This is no way to save money, Lord knows, but the hot-sweets are really good, and I realized I could amortize the shipping charges and lower my average cost per pickle chunk by cutting up some fresh 89-cent cucumbers and dropping the unpickled chunks into the jar to replace the official ones as I speared and devoured them. Overnight, the fresh chunks get . . . pickled. I kept this up over several cucumbers, saving the pickle juice until almost all its heat and sweetness had been transferred to fresh cucumber chunks – and from there to the special pickle taste sensation area that resides under the bridge of one’s nose and extends up behind one’s eyes to the back of one’s eyebrows. Mmm, mmm, good.
Save a Fortune on Drugs November 16, 2006March 5, 2017 FIGS! Who knew?! BLIMPS! Jonathan Young: ‘I work with hearing-impaired and deaf students at Harvard. According to The New Yorker‘s story about blimps a few years ago, most blimp pilots suffer marked hearing loss because of engine noise. So: Vote Republican if you must, go to rock concerts without earplugs if you’re nuts, but don’t become a blimp pilot.’ ☞ You caught me just in time. DRUGS! I could take 10 minutes to put this in my own words, or you could take 2 seconds to click here and read it yourself. No wonder Wal-Mart is going to be able to sell generic drugs at $4 per prescription. They have begun rolling that out across the country. (Click here to see Costco’s prices – you don’t have to be a member to use its pharmacy.) WATCH THIS! Kathryn Lance: ‘This non-political video is about the perception of beauty and shows how a rather ordinary-looking girl is transformed into a super-model. I found it amazing. And come to think of it, maybe it isn’t non-political after all.’ World famous advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather shows you why nobody is more beautiful than you because the models they use on billboards are nobody. They don’t exist. Our perception of beauty is based on people who do not exist. Watch this 1 minute 10 second video and see how the agency turns an ordinary everyday looking woman into a super model. The real surprise is toward the end. Please show this to your daughters. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to make this a show and tell at school or girl scout meetings either. ☞ And you could bring in a few containers of figs to let the kids try them and see how good they are. (In a modest sort of way.) Tomorrow: Say You Win the Lottery
Lou Gehrig Eating Pumpkin Spice Muffins in a Blimp (And Making Elections Verifiable) November 9, 2006March 5, 2017 Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus – and he gave us Virginia. (In case George Allen has not yet conceded as you read this, pending the ‘recount,’ note that there’s almost nothing to recount. If I got this right, 93% of the votes were cast with paperless ballots. Have I mentioned HR 550 and the importance to democracy of having verifiable elections?) BALLOTS Juan Jover: ‘You write, ‘You’d vote on the touch screen . . . then check the paper ‘receipt’ to be sure it reflected the candidates you chose . . . then drop it in the ballot box on your way out.’ In reality, in a good system, the voter never touches the paper ballot. It is printed at the voter can see it through a window, so there is no chance that the voter would walk out with the ballot (which would create two problems: (1) the voter could sell the vote, and (2) the count in the machine would not match the ballots in the box). Another way of obtaining the same result of auditability (and this is a preferred method) is that the voter marks a paper ballot (like in a standardized test), then the voter puts the ballot in an optical scanner attached to the ballot box. You put the ballot through the opening in the scanner, which then reads the ballot and deposits the ballot inside the ballot box. So there is no chance for the voter to walk out with a ballot. In addition, to voter verifiable paper ballots you need to mandate by law a certain percentage of precincts, selected at random, to be recounted manually. As you know, in many states there is a recount mandated by law if the results are very close. If there are no mandatory random audit somebody could cheat by a larger percentage and would never be caught since there would be to recounts to compare the results from the machine vs. the results from the paper ballots. The bill you’ve been advocating, HR 550, mandates both things (among others).’ BLIMPS Joel Grow: ‘As romantic and whimsical as they are, I’d say don’t make a big investment in blimps. My dad flew them for many years for Goodyear, and loved doing so, from flying over the ’39 world’s fair (when the ailing Lou Gehrig was a frequent passenger who became a pal of dad’s) to scouting for German u-boats in WWII, to promotional flights before and after these events. But he said himself, and the writer implies as well, that their inability to fly in almost any kind of bad weather makes them unreliable. Many much larger rigid airships, like the Hindenburg, Akron, Macon, and Shenandoah, all crashed in bad weather with considerable loss of life.’ ☞ I love writing this column, because inevitably one of you will turn out to have had a father who drove Lou Gehrig around in a blimp. YOU CAN’T SAY WE DON’T KNOW HOW TO BAKE Ralph Sanders: ‘The wages of sin is pumpkin spice muffins. Last Sunday, it occurred to me that not only are churches that exclude gays being hypocritical and un-Christian, they’re paying for their prejudice in ways they don’t comprehend. At our church, the Center for Spiritual Living in Seattle, all are welcome equally. Sexual orientation simply is not as issue, and we are infinitely the better for it. We have affinity groups: singles, couples, elders, and lesbians and gay men. One of the ways the affinity groups contribute is by taking care of the coffee and snack table in Fellowship Hall between services. The gay men are, not surprisingly, very good at this. This past Sunday, not only was their center piece beautifully designed and seasonally appropriate, but the goodies were freshly made right there in our kitchen. The highlight was just-out-of-the-oven pumpkin spice muffins! If this is sin, brother, bring it on!’
More Must See TV October 10, 2006March 5, 2017 ANTIQUE APPLES Jeff Bauer: ‘You write: ‘You’re wondering just how long apples in a refrigerator can last?’ Would you believe six months? My father used to run an apple orchard – about 12,000 trees – and built a cold storage building. Why? Because apples fetch higher prices in January. Not much different than what you’re doing with your fridge, but on a larger scale. Purchase your favorite varieties in October and enjoy eating them through the winter when the prices go up. For maximum freshness, place them in the crisper drawer, in a perforated plastic bag. ‘If there’s no column tomorrow, you’ll know why. But so far, I feel fine.’ You’ll be better than fine. Keep eating those apples. (Fujis rock.)’ ☞ And carrots can last up to 9 months. Click here for ideal storage temperatures and hints on which fruits don’t huddle well with others in the dark. THAT AMAZING VIDEO As of two nights ago, only 7,889 YouTubers had seen it since March 2. Now, 24 hours later, thanks to you, twice as many have. But what about the other 200 million eligible US voters? If the number keeps doubling every day, as friends tell friends to watch, we’ll get to them all in two weeks. (Not that this will happen; but 15,000 doubling each day does get you to 200 million in under 14 days.) HOTEL MINI-BAR KEYS OPEN DIEBOLD VOTING MACHINES Click here (but that’s the story in a nutshell: hotel mini-bar keys open Diebold voting machines). STEAL AN ELECTION IN UNDER A MINUTE Click here to watch a demo from Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy on how to steal an election on Diebold machines undetectably – in under a minute. The demo simulates an election between George Washington and Benedict Arnold. Guess who wins. Note, near the end of the demo, how a single machine can be rigged to infect many more. Tell me again why so few Republicans co-sponsor HR 550? Next to motherhood and apple pie, shouldn’t verifiable elections – which underpin democracy – be the easiest bipartisan issue in the world? If you are represented in Congress by a Republican, please consider bringing this to his or her attention right now. Just call the Congressional switchboard – 202-224-3121. No need to talk with your Representative directly; see if you can get his or her legislative aide on the phone, or just leave a message asking for support of HR 550. Tomorrow: Buffett and Borealis (from the sublime to the ridiculous)
Chilled Fruit October 9, 2006March 5, 2017 You’re wondering just how long apples in a refrigerator can last? You may not have been wondering that before, but now you are. A week? Two weeks? Three? How about four and a half months, baby!* In Columbus’s day, they had no refrigerators, only maggots, rickets, and terns. It’s a miracle he ever found this place. But he did, and the bond market and banks are closed today in commemoration thereof. The stock market, by contrast, is open – if only to vault the Dow tenfold, from 1175, where I carelessly placed it Friday (throwing off the rest of my calculations by a zero as well), back to where the rest of the world thought it was. ☞ But sure enough, on the Sunday shows yesterday, the Republicans on to talk about Mark Foley found ways to talk about the record-high stock market. Except that, as noted Friday, the S&P 500 is down 11% after six years, the NASDAQ is down 54%, and both are down way more than that against the Euro or the Canadian dollar – let alone gold. (They also emphasized the wonderfully low gasoline prices, about which you already know my suspicions.) MUST SEE TV Only 7,889 people have viewed this video on YouTube since it was added March 2. I’m almost sure you’ll be glad you were the 7,890th – and that you’ll want to share it widely. Meanwhile, HR 550 – a bill that has the support of virtually every Democrat in the House – would restore the integrity of our elections, and thus our democracy. Whether you’re sleeping in today or racing to work, this video is worth your time. *If there’s no column tomorrow, you’ll know why. But so far, I feel fine.
Honest Tea-V June 15, 2006March 4, 2017 2ND QUARTER ESTIMATED TAX DUE Helloooooo, procrastinators! Second quarter estimated tax payments are due today. Click here for the instructions and form. HONEST TEA-V I enjoy plugging Honest Tea, in no small part because I own a tea spoon full of its (still private) stock. Well, here‘s its story on TV. (You can read the transcript, but if you have broadband, click to watch.) It’s one of those nice win-wins: tastes good, good for your health, good for the Third World communities that grow the tea, nice kid in his garage goes from an idea and a kettle to a thriving little enterprise. My current favorites: Mint White (all the anti-oxidants of green tea, 70 calories per bottle, one-eighth the caffeine of coffee), Tangerine Green Tea (10 calories, one-fourth the caffeine of coffee), Peach Ooh-La-Long (a little more caffeine), and my caffeine-free favorite, Gold Rush Cinnamon (just 18 calories per bottle). A FURTHER THOUGHT ON MARRIAGE From entrepreneur Bill Stosine, pseudonymous gay Iowan in a 20-year relationship with a surgeon: It ought to make the “family values” crowd happy that gays want to get married and settle down into committed, monogamous, loving relationships. If gay people were allowed to marry each other, one of the benefits would be that they would not be so pressured into marrying a person of the opposite sex merely to try to conform to what society expects. Do you want a gay person to marry YOUR child or grandchild? Wouldn’t it be better to encourage gay people marry each other instead? Is it fair that 30-year gay and lesbian relationships receive less protection than those of heterosexuals who meet in the morning and marry by sundown? A gay couple may have lived in the same home for 30 years, cared for each other through illnesses, comforted each other after the loss of loved ones and shared their entire lives together are denied the rights and protections that strangers who decide to marry on a whim in Las Vegas receive. Britney Spears was married and divorced within 72 hours. On the TV show “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?” a man chose his bride from 50 women who paraded onstage in bathing suits and wedding gowns. She wanted his money; he wanted a trophy; neither of them had ever met each other before. The judge who officiated proclaimed the union was based on the love and trust they developed (I guess in the 90 seconds in between their meeting and the wedding). Yet gay and lesbian people who are in committed, long-term relationships are denied the opportunity to marry because their relationships supposedly make a “mockery” out of marriage. Which relationship is the true joke? A faithful gay partner of 30 years has no legal right to make important medical decisions for his incapacitated partner. He gets no help from federal legislation that would protect his job in the event he must care for his sick partner. Insurance companies deny them the opportunity to obtain joint policies for automobile, health and home insurance. When one of them dies, the other may have no legal right to continue living in their home. The deceased’s unaccepting family member can contest a will and leave the long-term dedicated partner bankrupt and without a home. Such insensitive maneuvers aren’t uncommon to gay men and lesbians grieving the loss of a longtime partner. Without marriage, gay couples have tried to establish their rights privately, through contracts. For about $1,000 lawyers provide couples with a will, health care proxy, statement granting each partner durable power of attorney if the other is disabled, and a contract to govern disposition of commonly held property. But such agreements aren’t always upheld in courts, and they are like a fig leaf compared to the broad legal cloak of marriage. I don’t describe a “special right.” The right to marry is so basic to happiness that polls have shown that Americans value a happy marriage, even above money, as most important to their sense of personal worth and fulfillment. I think as anyone matures he or she wants to connect with something bigger than self. To love someone, follow all the threads of each other’s lives, and be legally recognized as family. Society has a compelling interest in encouraging stable, monogamous relationships between adults – straight and gay. People who are married buy houses and save money. They are good neighbors, they tend to be more helpful and quieter than singles. They have a reason to work and stay out of trouble: responsibility to their spouses. There are health benefits to monogamy, especially important in this age of AIDS. Finally, the sheer joy and comfort of having that publicly acknowledged close relationship makes one a happier person, and happy people cause less grief to others. NTMD I covered the remainder of my position yesterday on news that BiDil has received ‘Tier 2’ reimbursement status in about 25% of its market . . . which means that insurers will pick up a lot more of the cost of the drug. I question whether this is good for the financially strapped American health care system (why should it cover an expensive drug when a generic equivalent is available, albeit requiring nine pills a day instead of six?), but it could stem some of the company’s losses and cause a bounce in the stock. Or not. Still hard to see what makes this company worth more than $200 million – it has just one product that may never break even. But now you know what I know.