Not A Mystery

We went to Smalls Jazz Club.

It was on Leslie’s Bucket List for our week in NYC.

If you are in NYC, don’t miss Smalls.

On our first visit we saw Ehud Asherie Solo Piano with Harry Allen on Tenor Sax. And then The Joris Teepe Group featuring David Kikoski on piano, Alex Sipiagin on Trumpet and Willard Dyson on Drums.

Alex Sipiagin was great on the trumpet and reminded me of Manny on Black Books, but Leslie told me I’m nuts. About Manny, not his trumpet playing. Kikoski was incredible on piano and reminds me of nobody else on this earth.

We liked those groups so much we went back a second night to see the Neal Smith Quartet.

I even took this picture with my iPhone. As you can see, Smalls lives up to its name.

Abraham Burton on Tenor Sax, Mulgrew Miller on Piano

Smalls has a website that not only lists their schedule, but has links to all the artists.

They also have a live webcam so you can watch the performances even if you aren’t in NYC. Although the video is pretty poor (what do you expect), the sound is actually quite good!

Loud applause now.

I’ve never been a big fan of Martha Stewart.

But today Martha surprised me, so I may have to revise my position. More details to follow.

In the meantime, back to our week in NYC.

The good news is that we landed at JFK after a cross-country flight and my back felt fine. The bad news is that the flight was a red-eye, so we arrived at 6:30am.

On the other hand there was no traffic once we got into Manhattan.

We had a great breakfast at The Clinton Street Baking Co., which was on Leslie’s Bucket List.

After breakfast, we started walking back towards SoHo.

Usually our default is to walk from Fabric Store to Fabric Store, so when Leslie suddenly stopped and said, “Matzo” I was understandably confused. Had she spotted Isaac Mizrahi?

But I remained calm, and slowly looked around.

Nothing.

“In the little window behind you, look.” Leslie suggested.

And amazingly here is what I saw, as I peered into that window on Rivington Street. Matzo coming off a production line, in an unending stream. Amazing.

Supposedly the Israelites couldn’t wait for their bread to rise when they fled Egypt, so they invented Matzo, which is just four and water.

It seems obvious (to me) in watching this unending stream of production, that a more likely explanation would involve a Jewish entrepreneur who figured out how to mass produce a ‘healthy’ bread substitute, and Matzo was born.

I hope he made a fortune before being run out of Egypt.

Now back to Martha Stewart.

The Matzo-Line Leslie found belongs to Streit’s Matzo, whose storefront was at the end of the block. When I did a search to find other information about the company I discovered this outstanding documentary done by … wait for it … Martha Stewart.

One final note. If you listen carefully to the talk on the Streit’s production line, it does not sound like either Hebrew or Yiddish. At least we don’t have to worry that they will relocate this line to Arizona.

My father nurtured one, and passed it on to me.

And then in turn, I passed it down to my sons.

It must be a Patek Philippe watch, right?

You never actually own a Patek Philippe.

You merely look after it for the next generation.

Nope. In actual fact it’s a bad back.

Which brings me to my first travel tip, in our NYC Travel Note Series.

When you sit in an airplane seat you need a lumbar support, especially if you have a bad back. And since something like 70% of the population has one or will have one, this tip goes to the heart of any travel plan.

For years I would stuff a pillow or blanket behind my back. I stopped doing this, not because the airlines started charging for pillows and blankets, but because they don’t work.

Years ago I discovered the Eagle Creek Lumbar Support. This thing is brilliant. It inflates with a puff of air to give outstanding lumbar support. The killer feature is that it conforms perfectly to your back and the seat. Plus it has a bit of give during the bounces.

The Patek Is For Sure Pretty, But The "Cush" Doesn't Need Winding

You can forget the traveler’s checks, but don’t forget your lumbar support.

Trust me.

Leslie and I just returned from a week in New York City.

In the coming days I’ll be posting some NYC impressions and travel related items.

Now THIS Is A 'Schmear' - Quick, Pass Me The Lipitor

We had a great time.

Hard as it is (for me) to believe, we began our blog one year ago today.

And this is our 178th. post. But who’s counting.

In honor of that Anniversary, I’d like to suggest that you check out some of our FAV posts.

F2U Rio Linda, FAVS are items that I had the most fun composing, or that I thought actually had some redeeming social value.

You can either click the FAV link in the right-hand column, or just click here.

In the meantime, what with the oil spill, let’s all think Big Green this week.

This Is As Green As It Gets

The good news is that if a catastrophic event destroys mankind our investments will be extremely well managed after we are gone. The bad news is that the computers doing it may be trading for their own accounts instead of ours.

This theater of the absurd scenario might be more plausible than you think, and occurred to me last week when our stock exchanges mysteriously melted down in the space of a few minutes.

I’m currently reading David Hoffman’s Pulitzer prize-winning book “The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race“. Its cheerful title is taken from a Soviet weapon system designed to have computers automatically fire a massive retaliatory nuclear strike at the US if Soviet leaders were ‘decapitated’ by an assumed US first strike.

The Soviets referred to a semi-automatic defense plan as the “Dead Hand.” The Dead Hand was a system that would fire a portfolio of SS-18′s on to the United States and Western Europe if its sensors made the conclusion that the Kremlin had been destroyed by a nuclear blast. The system was in place as early as the mid-80s. It is a bit of a miracle, given the demonstrated shortcomings of Soviet engineering, that it never made a mistake.

The Soviets claimed that they never actually set up a completely automated system, but instead would have had (surviving) lower level officials make the final decision on whether a strike was to be launched.

In any case I was struck by a parallel in last week’s breakdown of the US stock market. As I write this the SEC has still not tracked  down the specific cause of a 1000 point drop in the Dow that reduced a number of Dow Component stocks to pennies a share in the space of a few minutes. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when, a few moments later, the market recovered as mysteriously as it had plummeted.

F2U Rio Linda, normally a quick recovery after a market drop is called Dead Cat Bounce by investors. So let’s refer to this event as a Dead Hand Bounce in homage to the anonymous computers that caused, and then corrected, the disruption.

Last One Out, Shut Off The Lights

Although the real cause of the market dislocation is still unknown, what is clear is that a number of computers were at the scene of the crime. And those computers place their trades so fast there is no way humans can be involved in real time to supervise.

By late Sunday, a cause of the slide hadn’t been determined … Still, some new details about what happened during the brief span Thursday afternoon that sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average into a nearly 1,000-point tailspin continued to emerge over the weekend …

But it is becoming clear that much of the decline was because of glitches in how the market functions. High-speed electronic trading, long held as a boon that has made the market more efficient, can also trigger sharp selloffs that overwhelm the market.

Source

Although everyone is relieved that this storm has passed, it reminds me of a that old saying, “Problems that go away on their own, come back on their own.“

And now that hackers know what’s possible, they will have begun working on their own version of the Dead Hand.

I wonder what they’ll call it.

Get a grip, because I’m about to tell you how to double your money with no risk.

While simultaneously bringing new meaning to the phrase, “go green”.

Let’s talk recycling.

Like me, I’m sure that many of your beer-drinking friends go on about the  hundreds of dollars they ‘make’ by taking their crushed aluminum cans to be recycled.

In these days of miserable interest rates on my savings account I figured it was time for me to see if this new income stream could improve my standard of living.

Unfortunately I don’t drink beer in cans, since I’m mostly a wine and craft-brew guy. But we do consume some Seltzer and Gatorade, both of which come in recyclable containers. Bravo.

Wait Until Goldman Sachs Finds Out

After investing in, and religiously employing, a can-crusher for several weeks, I accumulated what seemed to be a ton of aluminum. Well, not a ton, but at least a few pounds.

But when I delivered my load to be bought by the recycle guy I was crushed, crushed I say, by the meager payback. We are talking a couple of bucks for all that work and time. It seemed like I was paying a lot more for the aluminum when I purchased the cans in the grocery store than I was getting back in all my newly found green-ness.

Convinced I was getting shafted by the authorities I almost called my local Tea Party, but instead of going for comic relief, decided to do some calculations. Keep in mind that in the grocery store we pay the CRV (California Refund Value) deposit per container, but get paid back by the pound of material we present for re-cycling.

Here are our input figures after I did some careful weigh-ins:

• The CRV for all three containers is the same: 5 cents per container.
• The weight of 1 aluminum can is 1/2 ounce.
• The weight of 1 Gatorade 12 Fluid Ounce bottle is 1 ounce.
• The weight of 1 Gatorade 20 Fluid Ounce bottle is 1 1/4 ounces.
• The weight of 1 Gatorade 32 Fluid Ounce bottle is 1 3/4 ounces.

Our Menu, So To Speak

• The recycle value of 1 pound of aluminum is $1.57 per pound.
• The recycle value of 1 pound of plastic is 93 cents per pound.

Now we can calculate that it takes:

• 32 aluminum cans to make a pound.
• 16 small Gatorade bottles to make a pound.
• 12.8 large Gatorade bottles to make a pound.
• 9.14 extra large Gatorade bottles to make a pound.

So where do we find our best Return On Investment?

The envelopes please…drum-roll…for a 5 cent investment in each container our payback is:

• For each aluminum can, 4.9 cents returned, for a loss of 2%.
• For each small Gatorade bottle with cap, 5.8 cents returned, a gain of 16%.
• For each large Gatorade bottle with cap, 7.3 cents returned, a gain of 46%.
• For each extra large Gatorade bottle with cap, 10.2 cents returned, a gain of 104%.

Hmm pretty interesting.

Our beer-drinking friends are actually losing money even after collecting their re-cycle fees. They are generously donating 2% of their CRV to the State of California, and not even breaking even. Thanks guys.

On the other hand, those of us who work out every day, and drink Gatorade to replenish our electrolytes are not only happy and healthy, but if we supersize our investment to the Big Gatorade bottles, we will be making 104% on our money.

F2U Rio Linda, that’s otherwise known as doubling your money.

Oh, I discovered one more interesting fact. The State of California levies Sales Tax on the CRV, so when they increase the CRV evey so often it serves to increase their tax revenues.

Maybe it really is time to call in the Tea Party-errs.

Ah, the immigration debate ramps up again.

It shouldn’t take a Rocket Scientist to figure out, that by definition, enforcement requires a way to distinguish between the legals and illegals.

Common sense should tell you that the only way to do that on a day-to-day basis is with a National Identity Card authenticated by some form of biometric technology.

Unfortunately we have politicians who don’t agree.

The [reform] blueprint, written primarily by Mr. Schumer, includes a proposal for a Social Security card containing a biometric chip that all workers, including American citizens, would have to present to an employer when being hired.

Conservatives, while supporting stronger enforcement, have long opposed national identity cards, or making the Social Security card a de facto one.

Source

When they are not blocking legislation, they can listen to Fairy Tales to pass the time. It’s a nice world they live in,  where anyone can just look around and pick out the illegal immigrants.

We Don't Need Secure ID's In Our Fantasy World

And go to Arizona when it’s time for their R & R.