The Ultimate in Readability Also: The Message of a New Ambassador December 7, 2009March 16, 2017 SCARY This is what the mayor of Arlington is telling his 1,600 Facebook friends. Fortunately, it’s Arlington, Tennessee (pop. 4,000), not Arlington, Virginia (pop. 210,000). But still. (Thanks, Rex.) WORLD CLOCK Lots of buttons to click for different ways to see the rise in debt, population, bicycle production, poultry slaughter, diabetes, forest loss, desert gain, oil pumped – and on and on. (It’s also a way to see what time it is anywhere in the world – New Zealand, say.) (Thanks, Paul.) AMBASSADOR TO NEW ZEALAND AND SAMOA Watch this swearing in. It sends a warm message. TREES Rolfe W.: “You’ll probably get a bunch of emails on Friday’s column but the best time to plant a tree in the northern hemisphere is not spring, it is fall: Gives some time for new root growth to take advantage of rain in spring with better odds of surviving the drier and hotter summer.” BRCI I’m a little embarrassed that this stock – that I told you Thursday I was paying 2 cents for – traded as high as 8 cents Friday, before closing at a nickel. I was so focused on telling you not to pay crazy commissions if you decided to take a flyer on it (and even then, only with money you could truly afford to lose) that I forgot to say the most obvious thing: paying 2 or 3 cents for something is different from paying a nickel, let alone 8 cents. It may not seem that way, because anything less than a dime these days seems not even worth the trouble to stoop down and pick up. But paying 8 cents instead of 2 cents for a stock is exactly the same as paying $80 instead of $20. Right? With 150 million or so shares outstanding, the whole company was valued at $3 million if you paid 2 cents, but $12 million if you paid 8 cents. If things go well, it could be worth even more. That’s my hope. But this highly speculative gamble was clearly better at 2 or 3 cents than at 5 cents or 8. Always use “limit” orders when you go to buy a thinly traded stock. I haven’t sold any of mine, but I bought so many shares at 2 cents, I might sell a quarter of them at 8 cents (if it someday trades there again) to recoup most of my bet and thereafter play with “house money.” READABILITY Tom Anthony: “Did you try Readability on your own page? It eliminates most of your column!” ☞ Finally – an editor!