You Could Buy One Share or Two Light Bulbs

BOREALIS

So Borealis is hanging in there around $8 a share, meaning that the entire company, divided, as it is, into 5 million shares, is now valued at $40 million.

One of the things it owns is 5.2 million shares of its Cool Chips subsidiary, currently trading around $14 – or roughly $72 million worth. To me that means either that BOREF is worth at least $72 million (how can a wallet with $72 in it be worth less than $72?), or else – more likely – that COLCF is worth less than $72 million.

BOREF also owns most of Chorus Motors, which has begun trading (all of these wildly speculative stocks are listed on the ‘Pink Sheets‘), with a current bid and ask of $9 bid, $23 offered, a wide spread to be sure. With 6.2 million shares outstanding, sellers are valuing CHOMF at $56 million, buyers at $142 million.

Are we having fun, or what?

THE HEADWATERS OF AN URBAN LEGEND

A smart hedge fund manager forwarded this seemingly compelling alert to me and the rest of his list:

The below info was forwarded by the Dallas U.S. Secret Service Field Office

*********************************************
Subject: Identity Theft Warning

Southern California law enforcement professionals assigned to detect new
threats to personal security issues, recently discovered what type of
information is embedded in the credit card type hotel room keys used
throughout the industry.

Although room keys differ from hotel to hotel, a key obtained from the
“DoubleTree” chain that was being used for a regional Identity Theft
Presentation was found to contain the following the information:

* Customer’s (your) name

* Customer’s partial home address

* Hotel room number

* Check in date and check out date

* Customer’s (your) credit card number and expiration date!

When you turn a key in to the front desk your personal information is there for any employee to access by simply scanning the card in the hotel scanner. An employee can take a hand full of cards home and using a scanning device, access the information onto a laptop computer and go shopping at your expense.

Simply put, hotels do not erase these cards until an employee issues the card to the next hotel guest. It is usually kept in a drawer at the front desk with YOUR INFORMATION ON IT!!!!

The bottom line is, keep the cards or destroy them! NEVER leave them behind and NEVER turn them in to the front desk when you check out of a room. They will not charge you for the card.

Information courtesy of: Pasadena Police Department

I checked with a friend who works at a hotel, who checked with colleagues throughout the industry, and none of them, so far, knows of any hotel that copies your name or credit card or address to the key. This inadvertent hoax is just an urban legend in the making – like witnessing the birth of a star. Then again, in the course of looking into this, I did learn that the plastic key cards cost hotels only 20 cents each; so now at least I know not to feel guilty when I forget to return them.

CHEAP BULBS

Jonathan Hochman: ‘Home Depot now sells nice Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs (CFL’s) for as little as 2 for $8.00. CFL’s can replace ordinary lightbulbs. They use 75% less energy and last much longer. Early generations of CFL’s were dim and expensive. However, the new fourth generation bulbs work even better than incandescent bulbs. At these prices the bulbs pay for themselves in a matter of months.’