Category Archives: General

General

Tesla now more valuable than Ford…

Interesting article by Fred Lambert and found on electrek…

Tesla (TSLA) is now more valuable than Ford and why it doesn’t matter

Without giving away too much of the article (or, conversely, simply offering a summary), the article notes that Tesla’s stock has for the first time risen above Ford’s: $45.47 billion versus $45.35 billion.

The article also notes that there remain sharp criticism and critics against Tesla who will no doubt wonder what in the world people see in the company.  It is operating at a loss and Ford sells far more vehicles than it does and operates at several billion dollars worth of profit.

However, the article examines what exactly Tesla is and comparing it one on one to another car making company doesn’t do Tesla justice.  It is, after all, a company that not only produces cars but it also working on solar power, batteries for the home, and software.

I was in a mall this past weekend and it happened to have a Tesla “store”.  Within were two Tesla vehicles, the S and X model (the upcoming “cheaper” model 3 completes the S 3 X –sex– label…if nothing else, Elon Musk has quite the sense of humor).

They were freaking gorgeous.

I’ve long noted that it is my belief with the coming automated driving we will soon not have personal vehicles, instead relying on a Uber/Lyft app that will call self-driving vehicles to us, will take us where we want, then be off to pick up the nearest passenger.

However, if I should ever get myself another car, I suspect it will be the model 3…at least once it is readily available.

If my predictions of what’s to come with self-driving cars prove right, that might well be the last actual vehicle I own!

 

General

Meanwhile, back in the 1980’s

Over the weekend I had an appointment at my bank regarding a long term CD that was maturing and what I wanted to do with it…

Image result for rich person images
This picture is obviously not of me.

Anyway, while going through the various -truth be told pathetic– interest rates available should I squirrel away what little money I have for up to five years, the person dealing with me noted how when they started working at the bank in the 1980’s, there were long term CDs available with interest rates over 10%.  Today you’re lucky to get anything between 1-3%.

Now, before your eyes glaze over and/or you run away screaming from this website thinking I’m about to get into investment and banking:  Relax, I’m not.

The banker’s story of what was going on in the 1980’s reminded me of something I experienced back then, in those heady days, the days when banking wasn’t quite as well regulated and Miami, let’s be honest here, was a place many used to launder their money.

Today, if you try to deposit more than $10,000 at a bank, you will be scrutinized.  Back in the 1980’s, this wasn’t the case.  Do some quick research and you discover that banks were -wittingly and unwittingly- laundering vast amounts of “dirty” money made through drug dealings.

But it wasn’t limited to banks.

Back in/around 1986-7 or so, I was in the market for a car.  I finished High School and was in the University and had a budget of about $16,000 for a car.  I looked around and this one caught my eye…

Image result for alfa romeo spider veloce 1986

That’s an Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce.  A fairly economic car to buy at that time yet one you could only purchase from dealerships that offered much higher priced exotic cars.

So my Dad and I headed to one of those dealerships (he’s an expert at haggling for the best price for a car), I looked around the lot and was wowed by many of the incredible, exotic vehicles available there.  While I was there for my more modest priced Alfa Romeo, my eyes lingered on two beautiful Lotus Turbo Esprits…

Related image

If the car looks familiar and you are a fan of films, you may recognize an earlier (circa 1977) model, one that is still very familiar, in the most famous scene of the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me…

Anyway, I was impressed by the two Lotus cars and curious what they cost and asked the guy we were dealing with what it would take to buy them.

“Sorry, you can’t have them,” the dealer said.  “They’ve already been sold.”

I stiffled a laugh.  There was no chance in hell I had the money to buy one, much less both, of these vehicles.  But back in those pre-internet days, the only way to find out about these things was to ask.

“I was just curious,” I said.  “What do each of them cost?”

“$50,000 each,” the dealer said, then continued: “Yesterday a guy comes in carrying a suitcase with $100,000 in it.  He bought them both on the spot.”

So I picked my jaw up from the floor and my father and I tried -but failed- to make a deal on the Alfa Romeo.

There is no way to know for sure if the cars’ buyer was anything but an honest man who made the $100,000 honestly.  Honest.

Yeah, there’s no way of knowing.

Nonetheless I suspect I came away with what may well have been the closest I ever got to the drug laundering going on in real time in Miami during that time.

General

Impossible foods…?

If you’ve followed my posts here, by now you know I’ve got a pretty liberal mindset.

I feel climate change is a very real danger and we not only should, but need to invest in alternate sources of energy that are more environmentally friendly.  I’m also optimistic and very open to new technologies and hope they offer us a better way of living.

I’m also, it must be noted, a meat eater.

I love meat.

I love steaks.  I love hamburgers.  I love sausage and pork and bacon.

For that matter, I love eating chicken, turkey, and shrimp.

The liberal inside me is, yes, bothered by this.  I don’t want to think about what went into me getting my latest meal, as much as I may enjoy it.

I’ve tried alternate tofu patties, vegan burgers, etc., and found them…lacking.  However, I’m optimistic the industry will, over time, twerk the formula and soon enough we’ll have artificial meats that taste as good as and are healthier than real meats.

Impossible Foods is but one company involved in creating artificial meats and, in this article by Dara Kerr for C/Net, they’re about to expand…

Impossible Foods to supersize production of lab-grown burger

The article is fascinating and this passage from it, in particular, I found very encouraging:

The idea is that not only can these faux meat products be healthier, with less antibiotics and hormones, but that they’re also less resource intensive and more environmentally friendly. For example, Impossible Foods says producing one of its burgers requires only a quarter of the water and 5 percent of the land that making a conventional burger calls for, and that the process emits only 13 percent of the greenhouse gases.

Very encouraging stuff…if Impossible Burgers finally does arrive to my local grocery store, I’ll most certainly give it a try.

Hope it tastes good!

General

Little Egypt…

Once in a while I stumble upon articles that fascinate me.  Here is one such article, written by Kat Vecchio and found on Salon.com concerning a notorious late 19th Century, early 20th Century dancer Katherine Devine, better known as “Little Egypt”:

Katherine Devine, the Kim Kardashian of the 1890’s

It is truly fascinating to see how our culture has both changed and remained fixed in time over the years, especially when seen through the story of Ms. Devine.

I don’t want to give too much away from the article, but Ms. Devine achieved a level of notoriety at the turn of the Century 1800’s into the 1900’s because of her “risque” dancing, specifically a party she was hired to dance for involving some wealthy patrons.

The story of how Ms. Devine took what was a scandal and made it an opportunity is classic Americana.  Not the Americana people like to pretty up, but the real life flesh and blood that made much of this country…despite attempts by many to hide the “darker” aspects of our lust.

Based on the article, Ms. Devine was hardly a stunning woman, and I actually laughed out loud at this description, offered by The New York Daily Tribune, of her appearance in court following the “scandalous” dance she gave the millionaires:

The New York Daily Tribune reported, “The woman spoke with a French accent that didn’t work much more than half of the time.”

If you truly dig below the surface of the American dream, you’ll find so many people like Ms. Devine…people who used whatever “talents” they had and pushed them to their limits to make a nice life for themselves.  Considering the status of women in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s and presented in snippets through the article, one had to take whatever advantages one could to make a living.

While Ms. Devine, at least according to the article, was not a prostitute but rather a bawdy vaudeville dancer, the role of sex in the rise of the American West is fascinating because of the things we don’t talk about.

When I visited Seattle, one of the startling things I discovered was, among others, the role madam Lou Graham had on the rise of that city.  She was a successful madam and loaned money to various businesses as well as helped the women (and men!) under her wing get an education so that once their “scandalous” days are done they will have the potential to continue their lives productively.

The saddest part of the article on Ms. Devine was the nature of her passing, an apparent gas leak in the building she resided in.

Here’s to Ms. Devine and others like her, who managed to take on the hypocrisy of society -on the one hand many of them so high and mighty fighting “smut” while on the other hand incredibly quick to devour any little piece of information on it- and make a life for herself.

General

Fascinating find…

Found this article by Kate Springer on CNN.com:

Secret treasure: Historic banknote found inside ancient Chinese sculpture

At the risk of giving away too much from the article (you should read it!), this is a photograph presented in the above link showing both the sculpture and the banknote found inside it:

Specialists at Mossgreen auctions in Australia discovered this Ming dynasty banknote hidden inside the head of this 14th century Buddhist carving. The wooden sculpture represents the head of a Luohan -- an enlightened person who has reached Nirvana in Buddhist culture.

The banknote is 700 years old and, naturally, a rarity.  Makes one wonder how it got there (did the owner of the sculpture hide it there with the intention of using it later?  What happened then?  Did he/she simply forget it was there?  Did they pass away before telling anyone it was there?  Did they sell/give away the sculpture and forgot they had cash stored within?  The possibilities are, I suppose, endless)

Fascinating, fascinating stuff.

This was also in the article and provides yet another fascinating look at how things rolled back then:

The (discovered) bill is endorsed by the emperor himself, with three official red seals and a line that reads: “Authorized by the Department of Finance, this bank note has the same function of coins. Those who use counterfeit banknotes will be beheaded, the whistle-blower will be rewarded 250 Liang silvers plus all the properties of the criminal. The third year of Hong Wu period.”

Yikes!

They took counterfeiting very seriously back then!

General

Fax machines and… electric cars?

Over on Salon.com Jonathan Coopersmith offers a fascinating -and dead on, IMHO- article regarding one of the bigger issues which may be holding back the success of electric cars: the variety of different charging stations.  He notes this issue is not unlike the slow/stagnant growth of fax machines in the 1960’s and 70’s and how, after a single fax “standard” for operation was adopted the fax machine became huge.

Read the article for yourself:

What fax machines can teach us about electric cars

Without stepping too much on the article, Mr. Coopersmith notes that in the early days of the fax machine each machine had its own sending/receiving “language” and therefore you could only send a fax to a person who had the same type of machine as you did.  If you worked for Industry “A” and needed to send a form to Industry “B” but your fax machine was created by the XYZ company and the people you were trying to send your form to had a fax machine created by MNO, chances are you were out of luck.

That changed when the Japanese adopted a single fax “standard” operating system and, suddenly, that fax created by the XYZ company could send faxes to a MNO fax machine and vice versa.  Soon, all fax machines worked together and, as obvious as this may seem in retrospect, it really pays to be able to send a fax to any machine, regardless of who made it.

The problem Mr. Coopersmith points out with electric cars is similar.  When driving your gas powered car, you can drive up to any gas station and fill ‘er up.

That’s not yet the case with electric cars and their charging stations.

Granted there are other issues with electric cars (such as the distance they can travel on a charge, how long a charge takes, etc), but I believe Mr. Coopersmith is right in saying the charging stations/charging of electric cars should be standardized.

If you have a Tesla car (I envy you), you shouldn’t have to be on the lookout for only Tesla charging stations.  Similarly, if you have a Chevrolet Volt or Bolt, you shouldn’t be looking for only Chevrolet charging stations.

Like gas stations, there should be universal charging stations, places where you can take your electric vehicle and charge it up regardless of what brand it is and, as Mr. Coopersmith notes toward the end of his article, Tesla appears to be moving toward this goal:

In the last few years, Tesla has veered from its initial exclusivity to cooperation. In 2014, Tesla announced it would share its patents royalty-free – including its charger and plug designs – to encourage the spread of electric vehicle technology. In 2015, the company agreed to make its cars and charging stations compatible with China’s new standard, possibly by using adapters at charging stations.

I long for the day we finally rid ourselves of the outdated, noisy, and polluting gas engines.  They’re a technology that is over a hundred years old now and, given all the advances in battery technology, should be on its way out.

Perhaps with the standardization of electric charging stations, the end of the gas powered vehicle might be closer to reality.

Though one wonders how long before the self-driving vehicles gobble up the driving market anyway!

General

Uber’s self-driving cars…

I’ve noted many times before my fascination with what I feel is the inevitable future of transportation: Self-driving cars.

When this happens (and it will), there’s going to be a domino effect that will cause considerable benefits for many and economic hardship for others.  To begin, when self-driving vehicles become a reality, why would anyone own a car?  If a fleet of self-driving vehicles becomes a reality and its as easy as summoning one to pick you up with an app and pay a minimal amount to take you where you need to go, then pick you up afterwards to take you back, then why have your own car?  Why spend money on fuel, insurance, and service?

And if that becomes the case, think about how many businesses will be impacted.  If people don’t have their own cars, there will be less and less need for gas stations (that’s already happening to some degree with electric powered vehicles), car insurance (the companies and all they employ), and car dealerships (ditto).

Anyway, Uber’s thinking is clearly along my own, as the following article by Andrew J. Hawkins for theverge.com, demonstrates:

Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Are Now Picking Up Passengers in Arizona

If this experiment proves successful, it is but another step on the way toward having a fully autonomous vehicle industry.

General

Yet more politics…

It’s been, astonishingly, 27 days -not yet a month- since Donald Trump became president of the United States of America (Curious how long he’s been President?  Click here).

Feels like a lifetime since then and certainly much longer than 27 days!

The news outlets like to show how the job of President “ages” the people on the job.  Someone far wiser (and clever…wish I knew who!) than me noted that this time around, the country is going to age during his term.

Giving Mr. Trump some props, he decided yesterday to have a long (77 minutes, in the end) press conference and answer many, many questions from reporters.

Again, I have to give Mr. Trump some props for doing this.  The administration has been in turmoil of late and for him to go out there and answer questions from reporters was, if nothing else, a brave thing to do.

However…

If the press conference was intended to show Mr. Trump in charge and ease any fears people have that his government is stable…he pretty much blew it.

One of the reactions, from Stephen Collinson from Mr. Trump’s hated CNN, offers this:

Donald Trump -under fire- returns to the campaign

Others laid into his performance, like S.V. Date for Huffington Post…

Trump blames media, judges, Democrats in Chaos Theory Tour-De-Force

Also from the Huffington Post, twitter reactions…

Scarier than Psycho: Twitter erupts over Trump’s “Bat#$@” press conference

My favorite reaction, from Gary Cooper, offers the following gif and these words:

SNL writers at the moment…

Yup.

Though if you think about it, the writers at SNL still have today and tomorrow to see what further madness might occur which they can find humor with.

Speaking of which, thank the Gods its Friday.  To everyone out there, have yourselves a nice, relaxing break.

 

General

Oh my…

Its getting really hard not to get political around these parts, as much as I am loathe to do so.

Politics, especially nowadays, are incredibly polarizing and if you’ve followed my writings for any length of time you know where I stand.

Having said that, to those who are on the right, politically, I can’t help but wonder when you look at all the news floating out there about President Trump and, especially of late the resignation/firing of General Flynn and the hints at collusion between Russia and Mr. Trump’s people, does it not at least make you a little queasy?

Just a little bit?

I mean, its been roughly three weeks since Donald Trump has become President and the news cycles have been filled with mostly bad, worse, and terrible news regarding his Presidency.

Going back to General Flynn, this is the sort of thing he did back on the campaign trail…

I especially love the very first words he utters in the clip above:

We do not need a reckless President who believes she is above the law.

Wow.

Projection much?

I may have noted this before, but in my other life, I studied Psychology and one of the most interesting “defense” mechanism I encountered was that of Projection.

In a nutshell, Projection is used by people to defend themselves “against their own unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others.”

So therefore when General Flynn talks about a “reckless” President who believes herself “above the law” and then looks at what Mr. Trump has done in the past three weeks, can we not agree at the very least it has been reckless and there has been a disregard for the law (“So-called judges”)?

This isn’t unique in General Flynn.

Donald Trump often used this, insulting others with phrases that seemed more apropo to himself.

We’re only three weeks in, folks, and with General Flynn’s resignation/firing for having talked to the Russians before the actual election and then lying about having done so the media and members in Congress are beginning to wonder the exact extent of Mr. Trump’s relationship with Putin and the Russian power base.

Perhaps the biggest unanswered question, and a frightening one it is, is this: Did Donald Trump and his staff know that Russia was trying to sabotage Mrs. Clinton’s campaign by hacking her people’s computers and then releasing the information to the media?  Did he not only agree to this but encourage it?

And if that’s the case, what does it say about our media when there were hints about this already there, during the election, and no one seems to have taken them seriously until now?

Frightening, frightening stuff.

General

Well that’s interesting…

If you spend any amount of time on Reddit, you may find interesting stories like this one:

Man escapes African desert doom by turning wrecked car into DIY motorcycle

The above article, written by Meghan Neal and found on nydailynews.com, concerns Emile Leray, a Frenchman who found himself driving in a restricted area of Africa and twenty miles from the nearest village when he wrecked his car.

As the title of the article states, he then turned the wrecked car, a Citroen, into a motorcycle and used that to get himself to safety.

Granted I’ve spoiled most of the above article but you should give it a look-see for the various details.  I’ll spoil the article a little bit more and offer the following photograph, which shows the DIY motorcycle Mr. Leray made from his wrecked car:

MOTORBIKE4N_2_WEB