Paraphernalia

Written on 4/7/11 but only now being posted.  The original title was misspelled "Paraphenalia".

On the way to my car this evening I spotted a discarded Sprite bottle on the grass. Ever the conscientious recycler, I picked up the bottle and noticed two holes burned into the side and aluminum foil under the cap.

That's odd I thought. And then - oh rats! - drug paraphernalia. How depressing. Maybe it had been tossed over the fence by some kids from town. I hate to think our students have enough free time away from their studies that they can afford (in multiple senses of the word) to get stoned.

A quick search on the web for bongs found directions and pictures - all so much neater and professional looking than the one I picked up.

I envy people who have the time to get stoned. I'd use the time to make a start on all the books I want to read.


Oh, and yes, the bottle and aluminum foil have been recycled.  It was only afterwards that I realized how my civic deed could be misinterpreted as destroying evidence.

Oscar Levant and His Quotes

Bill Scheft's June 5th review of a new Joe DiMaggio biography, “Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil”, in the NY Times Bbook Review quoted Oscar Levant as saying that the slugger's failed marriage to Marilyn Monroe "proved that no man could be a success in two national pastimes."

The quote was new to me.  I thought Levant's most famous quote was either “I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin” or, my father's favorite, a quote about Heddy Lamarr, “Everyone knew that under her clothes she was naked.”  (Heddy Lamar, a stunning beautiful actress was infamous for running around au naturel in the 1933 film, Ecstasy.)

I took to the web to see if the quote was listed under Levant's name.   It wasn't.  What I did see once again that sites poach from each other and proofreading, if it exists is poor.  Both ThinkExist.com and BrainyQuote.com were missing the “m” from “my” in the quote, “I have no trouble with y[sic] enemies. But my god damn friends... they are the ones that keep me walking the floors at night.” 


I'm glad I took the time to search, though.  I found a quote which becomes more true as you grow older: “It’s not what your are, it’s what you don’t become that hurts.” 

I think my father's fondness for Oscar Levant stemmed from hearing Levant generate his quotes on the fly and the tragedy of his later life.  Depending on the source Levant's stays in mental institutions were the results of dependence on prescription drugs, manic depression as bipolar disorder was known at the time, or a combination of the two.

Antinomian

One of the curses of having an academic bent is the need to know.  It doesn't rise to the level of obsession, but it is pervasive.  If I see a word I don't know, or worse, a word that I looked up previously and whose definition I am now unable to remember, I have to look it up.  

It's clear that I got sidetracked on my way to being an etymologist.  I try to note down where I saw the word and use the word if appropriate.  In this case, however,  I wrote "antinomian" on an envelope and only just got around to looking it up online:

antinomian   [ˌæntɪˈnəʊmɪən]

adj

(Christian Religious Writings / Theology) relating to the doctrine that by faith and the dispensation of grace a Christian is released from the obligation of adhering to any moral law.

I suspect that this applies to those who, secure in their faith, do ill to others with a clear conscience.  Suicide bombers would be the most obvious target, although it might have referred to extremists in the anti-abortion camp.

Dead Grandmothers and Deadlines

In a May 8, 2011 article, "Of Deadlines and Dead Grandmothers", behind the paywall of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Thomas H. Benton the nom de plume of William Pannapacker, an associate professor of English at Hope College, described his experiences with relatives dying before critical academic work was to be done.

When his own grandmother died just before a paper was to be turned in, he spent the night writing the paper and missed the funeral.  At that time it never occurred to him that there was any other choice.  The article was a thoughtful one, with the comments typically informed, containing useful tradecraft, e.g., sending a condolence note or requesting memory cards from the funeral home.

On the more humorous side, there is a classic 1990 essay, "The Dead Grandmother/Exam Syndrome and the Potential Downfall Of American Society", by Mike Adams in The Connecticut Review correlating mortality statistics and exams.  (The link is to a PDF file.)  With appropriate graphs documenting the health hazards to grandmothers of students he reached several difficult to implement suggestions:

• Eliminate exams
• Allow only orphans to enroll at universities.  This of course would lead to a supply and financial problem for younger students,.  For those who delay college attendance out of concern for their grandparents, family responsibilities would be a complicating factor.  (Increasing the number of orphans has certain moral problems.) 
• Have students lie about their enrollment.  Again, another moral problem.

Stocks Fall After Japan Lifts Nuclear Crisis Levels

(This was originally written on April 12, 2011.0

Why would stocks fall?  The ever mysterious stock market reacting negatively on good news.  Oh wait! "Lifts" means "raise" not lift as in "removes a restriction.  Things are getting worse.  So bad times ahead for Japan means bad times ahead for all.  Combine this with the entrail reading discussions of P/E (or PE10 for the cognoscenti) and it looks like we're in for a dive. 

Quick!  Stock up on canned goods, bottled water, gun, ammo, and triple tax exempt bonds.

(I wanted to include the line "Dark at the end of the road for Bonnie and Clyde", but then I found that it might be one of those things we all know, but what we remember doesn't match with the facts.  The sentence doesn't exist in "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde".)

BRK-A

(This post was hanging around in drafts for about two months.  In the last trading week the stock has dropped to about $113,000.  See the post script.)

It's not everyday your stock can drop over 900 points before noon. I imagine some deep pockets repeating their mantra: "Warren isn't often wrong", but the recent business of what appears to be David Sokol's insider trading moves on Lubrizol should make the Capitalist's Woodstock, the annual Berkshire Hathaway stock holder's meeting interesting. 
Andrew Sorkin's article in today's NY Times has some questions he's ready to ask when the Oracle from Omaha opens the meeting to shareholder questions.  As an owner of BRK-B I should have a dog in this fight, but I'm content to watch the big boys duke it out.

I feel compelled to say that I got BRK-B before it split 50:1.  Watching the share price bounce around 100 points a day gave me the delusion that I was playing the capitalist game, although it was more likely that the capitalist game was playing me.  BRK-B was well down from it's $4+K price when I snapped it up. And how many shares did I get?  Well not very many, but having shares just to get the shareholder report and badge every year commands a modicum of respect when the topic of finance or investing comes up.  (Of course that modicum quickly disappears when I open my mouth and my ignorance is revealed.)

Years before, when what is now known as BRK-A was selling for ~$10K I considered buying a share with almost all my discretionary funds.  It would have been worth it, but then again, there are so many things I should have done.  (And so many I am grateful that I didn't.  Don't knock inertia.)

PS:  Warren Buffett's public inaction and statements masked the fact that he had turned over relevant information about insider trading to the SEC.  See for example corporate Compliance Insights'Was Warren Buffett’s Public Support of Sokol Appropriate?

Wave of the Future

I was rummaging through some old stuff and came across a post card for "The Wave of the Future" (WoF) poster from High Tech Times.  I got the poster years ago.  It's around somewhere, probably still in the mailing tube. 

The cost then was $25 + $4.50 for shipping and handling.  I was surprised that I was flush enough to put up that much money.  How much more could it cost now?  I figured, what with the web being the web I'd search for High Tech Times or the WoF and pick up another one. 

The first thing I stumbled upon was the Grafikdotcom_blog post "Wave of the Future" by the person who created the graphic.  The post contained the excruciating behind the scenes details of creating the pixelation effect by hand and the never before revealed information that the the Japanese calligraphy in the top left hand corner is the name of the design company: “Grafik”.

Never content to leave well enough alone, I found a post from 2007 "Wave of the Future is now the Past" which discussed Hokusai‘s original, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, as well as the WoF. At that time it seems that the WoF poser was no longer in print.

There was a link to an online poster gallery which advertised it for $99, but they were out of stock. A business opportunity or just tough luck?

I'm going to root around to see if I can find my copy.

How Badly Do You Want An iPad?

The headline says it all: "Boy regrets selling his kidney to buy iPad". To quote ShanghaiDaily.com:

A 17-year-old student in Anhui Province sold one of his kidneys for 20,000 yuan only to buy an iPad 2. Now, with his health getting worse, the boy is feeling regret but it is too late, the Global Times reported today.

If not a hoax, it is more supporting evidence that teenage brains are not fully developed.

The story is much juicier because the hospital where the kidney was removed was not licensed for organ transplants, there was a broker who cannot be found, and "the department that did the surgery had been contracted to a Fujian businessman."  I smell a TV special investigative report and a related CSI story on TV.  Expect this story to also surface with a vengeance when supporters of market forces in medicine point out how much more efficiently business deals with illness.

Some 45 years ago there would be reports of young men killing themselves after being forced to cut their hair. (It was the season of shaggy mops. Short hair in America meant the military or support for the war in Vietnam.)  So don't file this story under "Those Wacky Chinese Teenagers."