Not A Mystery

We left NYC just before our invitations to the Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic arrived. Drats.

Who would’ve guessed, polo in the midst of the city, with fancy attendees acting out a great scene from Pretty Woman, by stomping-on-the-divots during half time.

Plus a plethora of pretty faces, some of them Royal.

And perhaps here’s an example of sons improving on the fathers. We might call this the Tale of Two Princes.

HRH Prince Charles (on the right) has lately acquired the habit of saying silly things and promoting silly causes.

In a radio address … Prince Charles called for a return to spirituality as a guiding philosophy for human endeavors, with an associated downplaying of technology and science. He warned of the dangers of unrestrained scientific research and the perils of “tampering” with nature. He was inspired to pen these thoughts during a recent pilgrimage to a remote Greek monastery.

And the response: “You should tell Prince Charles who advocates organic farming. Let him travel by bullock cart or horse or small boat driven by wind when he comes to India. Why should he travel by Boeing aircraft?”  -  Chengal Reddy, president of the Andhra Pradesh Farmers’ Association

HRH's As Far As The Eye Can See

HRH Prince Harry (on the left) appears to be doing better, at least in his choice of causes.

On Sunday, June 27, 2010, the Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic will return to Governors Island for one of the most highly-anticipated events of the season, attracting a fashionable crowd from around the globe, and featuring the glamour and excitement of polo, “the sport of kings.”

The Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic will once again benefit the American Friends of Sentebale, a charitable organization founded by HRH Prince Henry of Wales and HRH Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, who are committed to transforming the lives of the orphans and at-risk children in Lesotho, Africa, many of whom are living with HIV/AIDS. Nearly one third of Lesotho’s population is infected with HIV/AIDS, and through Sentebale’s thoughtful and effective work, the organization is striving to affect positive change in the country.

Source

No matter how you cut it though, they both seem to be doing better than the rest of us.

Love those Royals.

No trip to NYC would be complete without a Bagel Schmear.

When I was a kid growing up in the Bronx, my Dad would take me to what he called “The Bagel Factory” early on Saturday mornings. I was too young to remember where exactly it was, but I do recall the noise of the ‘elevated’ train up above. And yeah, the taste of those bagels. Killer. Fresh, soft and hot. Mmmm.

So of course we had to find a bagel shop for Leslie.

Here is Murray’s on Sixth Avenue.

And it’s nice to report that there was one guy on Wall Street with some soul.

More than ten years ago, when he was putting in long hours as a Vice President at Merrill Lynch, Adam Pomerantz had a dream.  A dream of someday running his own business – not a business on Wall Street, but something much closer to his heart, and his stomach.

He followed his heart and his stomach, and when it was right he just knew it.  He found a small storefront in Greenwich Village, which he renovated on a shoestring budget, opening Murray’s Bagels in November 1996.  Adam named Murray’s Bagels for his father, from whom he learned his love of bagels and appetizing.

Murray's On Sixth

And here’s a Schmear you can believe in.

Screaming For Lipitor, Before It's Too Late

Just to prove that Murray’s retains some of it’s Wall Street Heritage, here’s the tab. Two bagels, with Lox, and Schmear. Total price, just shy of $20.00.

If The Cream Cheese Didn't Get You, This Will

It’s a good thing my Dad isn’t still alive, because this bill would put him in his grave.

“It’s good though.”  – Utah Philips

Technology can be used to solve some of mankind’s thorniest problems.

I read about the “mosquito” several years ago. It’s a gizmo that emits an irritating, high-pitched sound that can be heard only by children and people into their early 20s, and is used to prevent teenagers congregating outside shops, schools and railway stations. It was invented by a  British Aerospace engineer, Howard Stapleton, who came up with the device after his daughter was intimidated by a gang of boys hanging around outside shops.

Brilliant.

Eats Mosquitoes

But nothing good goes unpunished.

An investigation by the Council of Europe found that the controversial “mosquito” device should be banned from Britain immediately … It found that “inflicting acoustic pain on young people and treating them as if they were unwanted birds or pests, is harmful [and] highly offensive.” …  Calls for a ban by Europe’s oldest political body are likely to be approved by the council’s parliamentary assembly in Strasbourg this week.

Source

After I got done chucking about “treating them [young people] as if they were unwanted birds or pests” I read the article a bit more carefully and got curious about what, exactly, is Europe’s oldest political body.

The Council of Europe, Europe’s oldest political body, aims to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law across the continent.

It emerged in 1949 from the ashes of World War II and now includes all European countries apart from Belarus … The council oversees the European Court of Human Rights … Lately, the council has become preoccupied with the problems of terrorism, organised crime, money laundering and human trafficking.

Source

Which should now be amended to, ” … the problems of terrorism, organised crime, money laundering, human trafficking and mosquitoes … “

Ribbit.

As a recovering procrastinator, I am big on last-minute gift ideas.

Here’s one for Father’s Day, and there is still plenty of time. Hours even.

So what’t the gift?

A Manly Rat. That’s also smart.

Specifically, an African giant pouched rat, about 30 inches long including tail. These are he-man rats, the kind that send cats fleeing. What’s more, we’re not talking about just any giant rat, but an educated one with the rodent equivalent of a Ph.D.

A Dutch company, Apopo, has trained these giant rats, which have poor sight but excellent noses, to detect landmines in Africa. The rats are too light to set off the mines, but they can explore a suspected minefield and point with their noses to buried mines. After many months of training, a rat can clear as much land in 20 minutes as a human can in two days.

In addition to earning their stripes as mine detectors, the giant rats are also trained in health work: detecting cases of tuberculosis. Possible TB sufferers provide samples of sputum, which are then handed over to the rats to sniff out. This detection process turns out to be much faster than your typical microscope examination. A technician with a microscope in Tanzania can screen about 40 samples a day, while one giant rat can screen the same amount in seven minutes.

Source

For a donation of $36 you buy a year’s worth of bananas for Ratso. And you can do it with the click of your mouse (sic), in plenty of time for Father’s Day.

Rat? That's Not A Rat, Now THIS Is A Rat

Speaking as a Dad I’d much rather get this than a tie, or even (gasp) a bottle of wine.

Here’s your link to donate.

Happy Father’s Day.

The US Congress is getting close to passing new financial regulation, attempting to rein in our friends on Wall Street. Pending legislation would limit Investment Banks’ ability to trade for their own accounts, and effectively bar them from trading derivatives.

The bankers are pushing back.

Surprised?

The big banks argue that the Volcker proposal is misguided, for several reasons … the banks assert that the financial crisis of 2008 was a lending-based crisis caused by reckless loans made to unqualified home buyers. It was not, they say, a trading crisis.

Source

Wall Street Bankers "Getting Wood" Over The Volcker Rule

This is not quite the truth, or even a close approximation to the truth. It’s an outright lie.

• Investment banks packaged, securitized and re-sold the fraudulent loans made by originators, ‘enabling’ them to keep the hustle going.
• Investment banks deliberately ‘gamed’ the rating agencies so that sub-prime loans were magically converted to investment grade bonds.
• Investment banks invented new vehicles to peddle (trade) their products called Special Purpose Vehicles.
• Investment banks obfuscated what they were doing by re-branding (renaming) the slime that was inside these investments; for example No-Doc (Liar) loans became known as Alt-A loans.

And to say that the crisis was lending based? Get this. When Investment banks ran out of loans to repackage and sell, because their suppliers couldn’t make them fast enough, they invented a totally new class bonds called Synthetic CDOs that didn’t even require real mortgages at all!

It was truly breathtaking.

If you read only one book exposing the underbelly of Wall Street, get a copy of The Big Short by Michael Lewis. If you have an audible.com account, I can highly recommend the audio version read by Jesse Boggs. Listen while you are in the gym, and the adrenalin rush when you hear about these Wall Street thieves will definitely improve your workout.

If you are not familiar with the term “wood”, then here is your link to the Urban Dictionary. Caution, this link is not rated GP.

You’d think a barrel would just be a barrel.

But no, it turns out that a barrel of oil is 30% smaller than a barrel of wine. F2U Rio Linda a barrel of oil holds 42 gallons, while a barrel of wine holds 60 gallons.

I discovered this the other day while standing in front of a restaurant’s urinal in Healdsburg, California which is in the midst of Wine Country. If you are a guy you know that restaurants typically post ‘theme’ documents at strategic spots in their restrooms so that you can educate yourself while relieving yourself.

This was perhaps the very first form of multi-tasking.

Yes, I Stopped What I Was Doing To Snap This Pic With My iPhone

But I digress.

If you do the math, a ‘leak’ of 40,000 barrels of oil a day, is equivalent to a ‘leak’ of only 28,000 barrels of wine.

That sounds a lot better for several, mostly obvious, reasons.

Some might call this obfuscation, but I call it creative.

I’m surprised BP isn’t quoting the size of their spill using a wine barrel standard with a footnote to that effect on the second page of their press releases.

I always do what I’m told, as long as I can understand what’s expected. Which, during our week in NYC, was easier said than done.

For example suppose you are on a NYC subway and have an emergency. What you are expected to do depends on what kind of emergency is in progress.

If you stop and read the instructions, they actually say not to pull this emergency cord in case of fire, medical or security emergency. Hmmm.

Think Long And Hard Before You Pull That Cord

Then we came across this signage near a fire house.

Not What We Thought

As we were standing there, a huge ‘Hook and Ladder’ truck pulled up to back into the firehouse. When I stopped to take a picture Leslie pointed to the sign that was directly over my head and asked me what it meant.

Since I grew up in NYC I pretty much ignore signs altogether, but explained that it meant you couldn’t Sit in a car while it was parked in a  No Standing zone. Which is actually pretty funny when you think about it.

But when I did the Google thing, here’s what I found:

PARKING REGULATIONS

What people generally understand as “parking” is legally divided into three categories: parking, standing and stopping.

• A NO PARKING sign means you may stop only temporarily to load or unload merchandise or passengers.
• A NO STANDING sign means you may stop only temporarily to load or unload passengers.
• A NO STOPPING sign means you may stop only in order to obey a traffic sign, signal or officer, or to avoid conflicts with other vehicles.

So No Standing really refers to a ban on unloading merchandise. You know, all those delivery trucks that park (Stand) in the street while they unload packages.

And if you want to put a number on that, a ticket is worth $115 for the City of New York.

Who would have guessed?

All of which says to me that it really is getting harder and harder to do what you’re told.

Back to our NYC Notes with a few more travel tools, for you traveling tools.

Today we will talk restaurants.

While I’ve used Zagat, Yelp and Open Table before we got to NYC, I must say that they really shine in a big city with a high density of good restaurants. And when you couple them with Google’s direction capabilities the results are simply amazing.

Here is a display of nearby restaurants (based on my GPS iPhone’s location), in both Zagat and Yelp, two popular apps. I’ve clicked on Balthazar, which was on Leslie’s Bucket List, a great place for lunch. Also dinner, but for more $$$.

After you click on one of the restaurants in the map display you can read reviews in both apps. Yelp has many more entries than Zagat, but the latter has more structured reviews for easier comparison.

Nearby Restaurants Displayed In Zagat (Left) And Yelp (Right)

Once you’ve identified a few candidates, and read all the reviews, you can go to Open Table and make the reservation. And finally of course Google will direct you to the entrée.

Below you can see some available times on Open Table at 10 Downing, another target from Leslie’s Bucket List. They also display a list of other nearby restaurants and their openings. You just click to reserve. There has been some discussion of whether you get the same priority for seating when you use Open Table compared to calling the restaurant directly.

Reservations At All Nearby Restaurants

I felt like we get better service coming in from Open Table, but that could just be because we were traveling in a better circle of restaurants than we normally do. On the other hand, the restaurant knows you will be solicited by Open Table to review the restaurant after your visit, so that can have some effect.

Note that you can make a reservation via Open Table directly from within either Zagat or Yelp, but if you go to the Open Table app itself you will get times for not only your target restaurant but other restaurants in the same area.

One of the pluses we got from staying in Soho, was that we could walk to scores of restaurants in just a few minutes. You can see that from Four Points Sheraton Soho where we stayed, that it was only 6 minutes and one turn to 10 Downing via Google.

Great time-saving tools, and convenient.

Some of my favorite words, speaking as A Tool.

Today a quick intermission from our NYC Notes.

Deborah Solomon interviewing Christopher Hitchens about his just-published memoir.

Did you write the book for money?

Of course, I do everything for money. Dr. Johnson is correct when he says that only a fool writes for anything but money. It would be useful to keep a diary, but I don’t like writing unpaid. I don’t like writing checks without getting paid.

Source

On the other hand, being retired, I don’t do anything for money.

As, for example, this blog.

It Could Be Worse

In the end, I think my way is less stressful.

We were in NYC for a week, and regrettably I never got any face-time with my Peeps at Goldman Sachs. But while Leslie and I were having a beer and burger at The Spotted Pig one afternoon I was reminded that NYC is a hotbed of financial innovation.

As I looked out the window, with beer in hand, I noticed an entrepreneur with a small re-cycling business.

A few weeks ago I described my own financial returns in the area of recycling. So I was interested to compare a professional’s return with my, admittedly amateurish, effort.

Recycling By A Professional, Don't Try This At Home

Here’s what I calculate:

• I’m estimating 250 recycle units in the bag(s).
• Containing all aluminum cans, at 32 cans/pound we are looking at 7.81 pounds.
• At a recycle value of $1.57/pound this bag would fetch our small businessman $12.26.

On the other hand, if he switched from recycling aluminum cans to plastic bottles the return would be better:

• If the 250 units were plastic, at 14 bottles/pound we are looking at 17.85 pounds.
• At a recycle value of $0.93/pound that same bag would fetch our businessman $16.61.

Which would be a 35% increase in cash flow for the same amount of effort.

I was briefly tempted to consult with our entrepreneur, but then Leslie reminded me that he probably knew more about his business than I could hope to learn. And, she insisted rather strongly, that he didn’t need any help from me.

So I stayed right where I was, and quietly sucked down my beer.

Note: If you are interested in the detailed financials of residential recycling, and who wouldn’t be, see our previous post.

In preparation for our week in NYC I installed a number of travel apps on my iPhone.

Even though I grew up in the Bronx, I haven’t really spent much time in NYC since I moved to California after college. And I didn’t want to act like I was from Rio Linda when we hit the Big Apple. After all Leslie is from Rio Linda, and one in the family is enough.

F2U, Rio Linda the “Big Apple” is what non-natives call NYC.

But of all the apps I loaded, the best by far, was the one I didn’t load.

Google Maps.

If you have a smartphone with GPS and a broadband connection (like an ordinary iPhone), this will get you anywhere. No matter whether you are driving (insane in Manhattan); taking a cab (almost insane if it’s during the day and you want to go cross-town); taking a bus (sane but slow); taking the subway (sane and quick); or even walking (probably the best).

When you get a route from Google you can specify your mode of transportation.

Of course if you are taking a subway there’s no connectivity underground, so remember any directions before you submerge.

Here’s an example. Leslie took me to the Brooklyn Flea on Saturday. Great market by the way. When we were done we wanted to get over towards DUMBO which is a longer walk than we wanted, but how to get there on the bus? I had no clue.

Here’s how I figured it out in less than 30 seconds.

Google found my location from the GPS. Then it told me to walk a block to DeKalb Ave. and take the B38 bus towards downtown. Oh, and by the way, the next bus will come in 8 minutes.  Click to enlarge the image.

From Brooklyn Flea to DUMBO On The Bus

This Google service saved us hours of time and let us feel like native New Yorkers no matter where we were. If you travel, this is the only way to get around as long as you have a net connection.

I’ll discuss other apps over the next few days, that were equally useful for different tasks.

Traveling these days reminds me that I’m really not in Kansas anymore.

Or should I say, Rio Linda.