investing pet peeve

I've been reading offline about troubles at WeWork, a company that leases shared office space. They've been having a very bad year with their now stillborn attempt to take the company public so that shares of their stock could be sold on the open market.

Some of their difficulties resulted from their controversial chief operating office, who resigned from the company very recently. He will be paid $1.7 billion in the ultimate of platinum parachutes.

Although he did not own a controlling number of shares in WeWork, he owned enough special shares that gave him that power nonetheless. And therein lies my pet peeve.

For most investors, for every share of stock you own, you have one vote in officer elections and elections for other matters. So if you own a thousand shares, you have a thousand votes.

Some companies, however, allow for a special class of shares, which have a lot more voting power. For instance, the Ford family does not own a majority of outstanding shares in Ford Motor Company, yet they have enough special shares with more voting power so that they nonetheless control the company.

That, I think, is wrong. All shares should be equal. You should only be able to control a company if you own a majority of shares or can form a majority with other shareholders.

Happy Halloween!

an interesting mess

My Hollywood insider friend recently sent a first shipment of 2019 award screener DVDs. The big wave has not yet started on his end, when he receives dozens of screeners a week, but he was done with this batch, so he passed them along to me.

My husband and I had both read The Surgeon of Crowthorne by Simon Winchester (which was published in the United States as The Professor and the Madman so we selected that DVD first. The book and movie adaption were based on a true story about James Murray, who created the massive Oxford English Dictionary, and his friendship with his principal contributor, the American Civil War surgeon William Minor, who spent nearly forty years locked inside a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane.

I knew the movie had been a troubled production, so I went in with low expectations. Not surprisingly, the movie is a mess, albeit a very interesting one.

Even in the most gifted filmmakers' hands, a movie about two men sending letters back and forth regarding words to go into a dictionary is not inherently dramatic. The writers try, but they can't escape this trap.

The acting and direction are also quite inconsistent. Sean Penn plays the insane Minor and his performance is all over the place. Mel Gibson plays dictionary creator Murray and he's surprisingly restrained.

The movie's look is its greatest strength. It's often quite gorgeous. The set decorators and props crew must've worked around the clock because some of the sets are enormously complex, like the suite of rooms where the dictionary is created.

So I would not recommend the movie unless you have a particular interest in the material. I would, however, heartily recommend Winchester's book from which the movie was created.

silver senior sex maniacs

Suzanne Somers, who played Chrissy on the classic sitcom Three's Company and is now 73, said in a recent interview that she and her 83-year-old husband have sex twice a day.

Now she credits a dubious hormone treatment for the reason, but if they really are having sex that often at their ages, then good for them. Considering the hormone treatment is worthless, their natural sex drive is fantastic.

Somers is one of many former A-list TV stars who now peddle questionable health and medical treatments as a career. Why anyone pays any attention to them, when they have no health or medical training, is anyone's guess.

I will say that Somers has a dubious taste in clothes. I think she's a wee bit past her sell-by date to be wearing a strapless leather minidress. But, hey, if it turns on her husband and if he really does bang her twice a day, then it's all worth it.

a very early appearance

I was flipping through a recent issue of BBC History, a magazine I like very much, and stopped when I saw the picture below. The face was immediately familiar but I couldn't at first place who she was.

The answer is a very young Marilyn Monroe. This is a shot from what was probably her first modeling gig, way back in 1944 when she was just eighteen. It accompanies a sidebar about early target drones.

I've never really understood Marilyn mania. She was pretty but not extraordinarily so. I'm guessing the answer might be that she was more overtly sexual than other famous women at a time when sexual attitudes were beginning to change significantly. She was in the proverbial right place at the right time.

why no political posts?

A long-time reader emailed to ask why I no longer write about current presidential politics in the United States, specifically about you-know-who occupying the Oval Office.

That's because I decided a while back to forego writing about that topic entirely, otherwise this could morph into a political blog, which I did not want it to be.

Rest assured, however, that I still pay a great deal of attention to what's going on back in Washington, and if I feel a need to comment about it, there's always Twitter or political forums on Reddit. There I know no restraint.

the blind assassin

Given I had a recent negative impression of the 2018 Booker Prize-winning novel, I decided to read some more books from other years that had won the award to see what they were like. I settled on Margaret Atwood's 2000 winner The Blind Assassin.

I'd only ever read two of Atwood's novels in the past, both of which I liked, and now having read Assassin, which I really liked, I've decided to read the rest of her fiction over the course of the next year or so. How as a reader could I have largely overlooked such a brilliant and skilled writer?

Assassin is told out of sequence and is really a story within a story within a story. That may sound complicated but it's not. The book just works magnificently with complex characters and sparkling prose. If you've never read it before, I highly recommend.

Looking back over the list of Booker winners from the last several decades, I see quite a few that I've read and really liked. And I see a few that I intensely disliked. I'm guessing this is because the prize has a different panel of judges every year.

royal groveling

The British media has been giving extensive coverage to a hug-gone-wrong involving a charity organizer and Meghan Markle, the American actress who married a royal. Markle tried to hug the woman at the same time the latter tried to curtsy.

Although not a royal by birth or even British, tradition holds that all members of the royal family must be shown deference, either by a bow from a man or a curtsy from a woman. While that's no longer enforced, it was in past centuries and transgressors could be seriously punished.

Now I could see how one might argue that the monarch him or herself is entitled to this business. But a spouse who didn't start out as a royal and is married to someone way down the line of succession? That's just absurd.

Americans by tradition never bow to monarchs because our country disavows the whole idea of monarchy. But citizens of commonwealth countries are expected to do so. One of those is my husband.

I asked him if he would bow to a monarch or member of the royal family if he ever were to meet one. He said he would if he was in uniform in a receiving line but not if he was in civies.

I wonder where that leaves me? If we were at a snooty function and he was in uniform and we met a royal, how should I react, given I'm married to a commonwealth citizen?

I think I would solve the problem by speaking loudly in my American accent "how ya doin'" and pretending I didn't even know about that whole curtsying tradition.

driving on the wrong side

I know a woman here who, like me, is an American expat married to an Aussie. She's not been hitched as long as me and has been here Down Under some five or six years.

She was involved in a minor car crash a few days ago. Pulling out of a parking lot, she ended up on the right side of the street and momentarily forget that was the wrong side here in Australia, where everyone drives on the left like in the UK.

A man turning out of an alley did not think to look in her direction, given she was on the wrong side of the street, and he broadsided her while going a few miles an hour. She immediately admitted she was at fault because she failed to drive on the correct side.

I've been living here in Australia for nearly eleven years now and have been driving the entire time. Never in that time did I forget to drive on the correct side.

I think driving on the left when you were trained to drive on the right makes me a more careful driver. I'm always checking myself to make sure I'm where I'm supposed to be.

In actuality, I've spent more years of my life driving on the left side — eleven — than I did on the right side — seven. Yet I'm still right-side oriented. I guess once you've learned that imprints on you permanently, like a native language you'll never truly forget.

More than once, however, when I'm riding in the passenger seat on the left while my husband is driving and riding in the right-hand seat, I'll react to something in the road and suddenly turn an imaginary steering wheel to the left or right while stamping on an invisible brake. My husband finds that highly amusing.

It seems like a natural reaction because I'm sitting in what, in America and much of the world, would be the driver's seat. That part of my brain has never been fully conditioned to left-side versus right-side driving.

molten lava crotch

As you can see from the picture below (enlargement), these leggings were (are?) actually up for sale on Amazon. I can't imagine many sold.

How could the seller not see — even if it was a man — that no woman in her right mind would want to wear something that looked like she was having the period from hell and wearing no sanitary protection?

There used to be a "rule" that no garment should be made out of a fabric where at least one full repeat of the pattern was not visible. Had such a standard been considered when making these leggings, the maker would have been spared a lot of problems.

fake meat

I read an article offline about meat substitutes which pretty much convinced me I don't ever want to eat meat substitutes.

This is the sentence that did it for me: "Startups such as Prime Roots, Emergy Foods and Ecovative Design LLC are developing meat substitutes from fungi, a group of organisms that includes mushrooms, mold and yeast."

Mushrooms, okay. Mold, no thanks.

Humans are carnivores. We're designed to eat meat. I get that fake meat is humane whereas real meat may not be, but that's a compromise I'm willing to make.

I will admit that I'm tempted to taste one mouthful of fake meat, even if it's made with mold, just to see what it tastes like. I suspect it's as revolting as fake milk — aka soy milk — is revolting. IMHO, soy milk smells like vinyl and tastes like what I imagine liquid vinyl would be.

I will also admit that the pictures of fake meat look tasty. But we all know looks can be deceiving. For many years, photographers made food look more delicious and also to hold up under hot lights by adding products from the hardware store. A varnished brownie might look good but it would taste horrible, if not downright toxic.

children in hot cars

The November issue of Harper's magazine mentions the following statistic in their monthly statistical index: "Percentage of cases in which parents or caregivers of children who die from being left in hot cars are charged with a crime: 55."

Part of me feels sorry for the parents in such a situation. They are facing the greatest possible punishment of all, the death of a child and the guilt at knowing they're 100 percent responsible.

But then the other part of me objects strongly and says "what about the child? Aren't you feeling sorry for him or her"

Of course. That child's suffering completely eclipses that of the peabrained parent or guardian.

I'm not a big fan of incarceration for non-violent crimes, but I think there are exceptions. This is one of them. I think the penalty for leaving your child to die in a hot vehicle has to be serious enough that it serves as an actual incentive for every parent or caregiver to be much more mindful.

With all this said, what kind of incompetent does an adult have to be to forget you have a child in your parked car? Are people like this zonked on drugs or booze? Are they distracted by their mobile phones?

Wake the fuck up, people. Your children are the most important element in your life. Act accordingly.

the $2.18 lawsuit

A New Jersey couple is suing Taco Bell for false advertising after they had to pay $12.18 for two burrito, taco, and chalupa dinners that were advertised for $5 each.

While I think it's safe to say that most Americans have neither been sued nor sued anyone else, this Taco Bell lawsuit is what gives the country a reputation for being litigious.

I think both parties here handled this stupidly. The couple could've given Taco Bell an ultimatum when they went to pay for the food — honor your advertising or we'll never spend money in your establishment again. And we'll also post details about this bad experience on Yelp and other online sites.

For its part, Taco Bell should've just honored the advertised deal, charged the couple ten bucks, and ignored the trivial price difference.

Of course, this isn't just about the $2.18 dispute. The couple are seeking punitive damages. Even though the case has been transferred to federal court, where the punitive limitation is $75,000, they could still make out like bandits.

I imagine Taco Bell will throw a few lowball settlement offers their way and the pair will end up with a few thousand dollars. Which effectively will be paid by other customers who patronize Taco Bell.

The picture below (enlargement) is from an actual American trial underway in the late nineteenth century.

not too brite

Police in Illinois this week arrested a man for giving a fake name. Plot twist: his real name is tattooed on his neck.

The man was being questioned for forgery and gave the officers a fake name in an attempt to hide the fact that he had an existing warrant for his arrest.

If only he had worn a turtleneck sweater.

The above aside, what kind of idiot has his own name tattooed on his neck? What's the point of that? A handy icebreaker? But as Mr. Illinois proved, it could be a real liability if you plan on a life of crime.

The mental giant is pictured below in his mugshot.

scanning scammer

I happened to read an article offline about Evelyn Wood, who in the mid-twentieth century made a very big name for herself — and a lot of money — by selling speed-reading books and courses.

More recently, however, she has been exposed as a scam artist who knew her methods didn't work for most people yet she continued to peddle her wares

My grandfather had a very large and eclectic library that filled floor-to-ceiling shelves in several rooms of his house. Many of the books he had bought as box lots from yard sales and country auctions.

I remember looking through his shelves when I was a kid and at some point coming upon an Evelyn Wood instructional book. I read it, or at least part of it, and found it didn't work for me.

As an adult, I imagine I have a fairly average reading speed. I've seen people in public read much faster than me and also much slower.

Quite honestly, I don't care to read any faster than I already do now. I enjoy reading and savoring what I read. Rushing through it does not appeal to me.

It would be like rushing through a visit with a friend or rushing through a meal — or rushing through sex. Just because it can be done faster doesn't mean it should be done.

nosy parker mysteries

I happened to be thinking yesterday about what are sometimes called "nosy Parker mysteries" where a overly curious central character decides on his or her own to investigate a crime to which he or she is only tangentially connected by the slimmest of threads.

A good example of this would be Miss Marple, created by Agatha Christie, and Jessica Fletcher in the Murder, She Wrote television series and later novel series.

Frequently, Miss Nosypants shows up in some location away from her home for some reason. When a murder happens shortly after she's arrived, she takes it upon herself to investigate.

Which means if Miss Marple shows up at your wedding or birthday party or community event, there's a good chance someone will be dead within hours.

Why do people never catch on to this danger the instant she crosses the threshold? Your chances of dying increase exponentially the moment her shadow darkens the door. Yet no one so much as flinches.

I'm reminded of the Anna Pigeon character in Nevada Barr's great series about the park ranger who somehow always stumbles onto a body whenever she travels to a national park. The worse thing a park might ever experience is an angry bear rummaging through garbage cans, but within hours of Anna arriving on the scene for some training or temporary work, someone is dead and often more than one someone.

Why don't people go running and screaming in the other direction as soon as she walks through the door? She's visited more than a dozen national parks, and every single time she hits a new one, several people end up dead. Yet no one ever reacts when she turns up in their park.

They're often downright glad to see her. Silly fools.

youtube superstar

A six-year-old YouTube superstar with 30 million subscribers has bought a $8 million piece of real estate in her hometown of Seoul. I can't tell from the linked story if this is a commercial or residential property.

In all candor, it sounds to me like the kid's parents wanted the property and used her to get it. As the mother of a six-year-old, the idea a child that age could shop for a piece of real estate is more than a little ludicrous.

IMHO the parents would have been better off banking the kid's earnings in safe, solid investments and continued to live their life as before. Milking your kid to live in luxury strikes me as more than a little disgusting.

I have a fairly low opinion of parents who push their kids toward stardom, as I wrote in an entry on this blog back in May. I would not be surprised if things don't end particularly harmoniously for the six-year-old real estate tycoon and her parents when she becomes an adult.

joker lust

People have gotten so hot and bothered by the new movie Joker that they're posting their sexual fantasies online about the antihero.

Now I will agree that Joaquin Phoenix can be a sexy man, but from what I've seen of this movie's stills and online trailers, the Joker does not appear at all sexy. Maybe you need a kink for skinny clowns to make this click (Phoenix lost more than fifty pounds for the role).

I've always found clowns to be yucky. I don't have coulrophobia — a fear if clowns — but I don't like them, either. This may stem from a childhood experience when I was someplace where a clown was handing balloons to children. I remember when he gave me one, he had the absolutely worst case of bad breath I think I've ever encountered.

Nevertheless, when Joker is available on DVD, my husband and I will probably give it a watch but I don't expect to be turned on. I know my own loins and I can't see Joaquin as an underfed clown would ever do it for me.

what is a holocaust survivor?

I was listening to a podcast over the weekend where Erich Fromm was briefly mentioned and described as a Holocaust survivor. That struck me as incorrect.

I knew some about Fromm because of my shrink parents and brother. Fromm, of course, was a famous psychoanalyst. But I had never heard anything about him having been in a concentration camp.

Which led me to wonder if my definition of Holocaust survivor was more limited than that of others. A reading of Wikipedia's entry suggests that is the case, although that site is not the final arbiter of such issues.

A phrase like Holocaust survivor is inherently imprecise. But I'm wondering if you should consider someone like Fromm, who left Nazi Germany in 1934 a year after Hitler came to power, to be in the same group as someone like Elie Wiesel or Primo Levi, both of whom were sent to Auschwitz.

Yes, people who left Germany in the earlier 1930s often faced extreme discrimination and harassment and asset seizure before they left, so life wasn't a cakewalk for them. At the same time, their experiences were nowhere near as severe or harsh or horrible as those sent to death camps.

At the end of the day, why does this matter? The reason why I think there should be a distinction is because identifying Holocaust survivors as only those who endured extreme and extraordinary hardship in concentration camps underscores their profound bravery and boundless endurance. The Holocaust was an attempt to wipe certain ethnic groups from the face of the earth, and those who survived the death camps defeated that attempt in a way no one else could.

a confession

I finished doing my American income taxes about six weeks ago but did not submit them until this week. The reason for the delay in sending was that I recalculated everything numerous times to make sure I hadn't made a mistake.

My anxiety had good reason: I owed utterly nothing for the year. My total tax liability for tax year 2018 was exactly $0.

I had done quarterly estimated payments through the year, paying the same amount each quarter that I had done the last several years. But it was totally unnecessary.

When I looked under the hood, so to speak, the reason I owed nothing for the year became obvious.
More than 75 percent of my income came from so-called qualified dividends, which are ordinary dividends earned for holding stock in American companies. These are subject to a special, preferential lower tax rate, regardless of how much you earn in dividends.

If your other income for the year is fairly low — that which doesn't come from qualified dividends — the first $38,600 you earn in dividends is utterly tax free. The tax rate is zero on that income.

By sheer accident, I happened to end up with this windfall. My total income not from qualified dividends fell just under the $12,000 personal exemption. And my total income from qualified dividends fell just under the tax-free limit of $38,600.

So I owe nothing for the year. I also did some quick calculations, and the same thing could happen for tax year 2019. I will probably owe nothing again.

I have paid a very low tax rate ever since I converted my CDs into stocks. But at least I paid something. Except not this year.

This does not seem fair — to other taxpayers. I should pay the same income tax rate as someone who earns the same amount of money from a salary or interest or rents or whatever. Why should someone who owns stock get special treatment?

Then again, I'm not fool enough not to take advantage of this special tax treatment. Nonetheless, I have decided this year, in recognition of this good fortune, I will make a larger charitable donation than usual to a few worthy charities.

milkman

Last night I finished reading Milkman by Anna Burns, the most recent winner of the prestigious Man Booker Prize, Orwell Prize, and National Book Critic Circle Award.

And I absolutely hated it.

Fortunately, I was not alone. Based on reader reviews, reactions to this book roughly seem to fall into two camps — people who rave about it and people who loathe it.

The book is massively overwritten IMHO. What most writers would take ten or fifteen words to say, Burns takes pages. She deliberately repeats herself over and over again to the point of monotony. A single paragraph runs for page after page. Even a single sentence can run longer than a page.

In short, the book was torture to read. Why did I finish? I always finish whatever I start, without exception.

I did enjoy the New York Times review where it was absolutely panned. "A willfully demanding and opaque stream-of-consciousness novel, one that circles and circles its subject matter, like a dog about to sit, while rarely seizing upon any sort of clarity or emotional resonance. I found Milkman to be interminable, and would not recommend it to anyone I liked."

On the plus side, the book has a pretty cover.

the holy water shoe

So-called "Jesus shoes" that have soles with holy water reservoirs, a Bible verse on the side, frankincense-scented insoles, a crucifix in the laces, and more religious accessories sold out within minutes when they went on the market recently.

The price per pair was $3,000 American.

If you think you're so religious that you covet these shoes and willingly cough up three grand, wouldn't you be a much better Christian if you instead donated that money to the needy and just wore some cheap generic shoes from Target?

Maybe the sellers should have called them "hypocrisy shoes."

caught passing notes

Supreme Court justices are supposed to be the model of seriousness, probity, and wisdom. So who knew they passed notes — a lot of them — among each other while hearing oral arguments in America's highest court?

Sometimes they were about baseball. Or each other or the lawyers arguing before them. Or about attractive women in the courtroom.

"Note blond in second row, center," one wrote to another. "She is here almost daily—at least since you came!"

One might be tempted to criticize the justices for such levity while weighing the nation's most important legal matters. But as legal scholar Jeffrey Toobin has written, the justice's opinions are rarely changed because of what lawyers say during oral arguments.

An oral argument is a necessary part of the process, but it's not a trial, either, so some judicial distraction would be harmless, all things considered.

And hopefully the mystery blond may now learn she set judicial hearts racing.

why poop stinks

Tombo was "helping" me change baby Danny's diaper yesterday after the latter had a particularly odoriferous dump.

"Mummy, why does poop stink?" Tombo asked.

I honestly didn't know. So I looked it up. The bottom line is that the main culprit is healthy but necessary bacteria. (If you're interested, Googling will turn up some good sources at the top of the queue.)

So I explained as best I could to a three-and-a-half-year-old about bacteria, good and bad. He liked the idea that things were so tiny that he couldn't see them.

This has, however, has caused him now to ask multiple times about random things "is there good bacteria here?" or "is there bad bacteria there?"

If my son ends up becoming a bacteriologist as a professional in his adult years, I'm guessing this will have been the genesis. I'm glad I looked up the answer because I incorrectly thought the reason was methane. This is why you always tell your kid the truth.

one atop the other

Some enterprising individual has created a gallery of maps showing other countries superimposed over the United States in their exact sizes. You can see an example below.

Some of these surprised me. I thought China was bigger. I thought Germany was a lot bigger than France, when it turns out the latter is nearly double the size of its easterly neighbor.

The only one that didn't surprise me was Australia because I'd seen the visual comparisons before. Still, I imagine it takes a good bit longer to drive across country here down under than it does in the United States.

married priests

Pope Francis has convened a three-week special session at the Vatican to determine if the Catholic Church should allow married priests in the Amazon region.

The church is considering this because of the extreme shortage of priests in Central and South America.

IMHO married priests are a great idea but then I'm not Catholic so I have no skin in the game.

But I do think this is a mistake for the church to do this only in one remote area. What, they'll still continue to insist married priests everywhere but the Amazon are somehow sinful?

At least Pope Francis is trying to develop a solution. He's meeting considerable resistance from within the Vatican from traditionalist who don't want change but offer no hint of a solution to the problems he's trying to address.

Of course, this could be just the first step toward what might be his eventual goal: married priests worldwide. Such a change would be transformative and the effect would be fascinating to observe.

the nickel boys

Last night I finished reading The Nickel Boys, the short, powerful new novel from American writer Colson Whitehead. You may recognize his name for having won both the Pulitzer Prize and the the National Book Award for his 2016 novel The Underground Railroad.

I liked Railroad but would have liked it a lot more if it was grounded in reality. I'm not wild about books that veer into the fanciful and defy both logic and history.

Nickel is entirely grounded in reality and is, in fact, loosely based on a true place and series of events. The book tells the story of two African-American teenagers who are sent to a brutal reform school sometime during the explosive civil rights battles of the 1950s and 1960s (the exact date is never clear).

One young man, Elwood, is an honor student raised by a loving grandmother. He hitchhikes to a nearby college so he can enroll in classes while still a high school student, but unbeknownst to him, is picked up by a man driving a stolen car. That leads to the sentence that lands Elwood in the reform school.

The other young man, Turner, is from a troubled background and has been sentenced several times to the brutal reform school where he knows all the secrets. Turner and Elwood become close friends, their different backgrounds notwithstanding.

What really makes the book sing is the ending. It's so utterly unexpected and shocking and heartbreaking. It really made the book for me, and I know others feel the same way, having read various reader reviews.

So I strongly recommend The Nickel Boys. It's both disquieting and utterly memorable. Don't miss it.

crashing chanel

At the Chanel Spring 2020 show in Paris this week, a professional comic dressed in an actual vintage Chanel suit and crashed the catwalk, parading around onstage before being abruptly escorted off by model Gigi Hadid. The crasher can be seen in the right foreground in the photo below (enlargement).

This was only the latest in the increasingly common practice of ordinary people crashing shows simple for the hell of it.

While fashion shows are the height of pretension and the outfits themselves are increasingly absurd, I think the crashers' behavior is tiresome and narcissistic. It's time to grow up. Fashion is a serious business for some people and they have the right to engage in it without being harassed, so satisfy your cravings for attention somewhere else.

If designers and models want to make themselves look like fools, they should have the right to do so without an actual fool getting in their way.

a good windows feature (and a bad one)

I've never been timid about expressing my annoyance with Windows "improvements." But the latest update for Windows 10 actually has a good feature.

When you have a Microsoft app like Notepad or Word open, the icon in the tab bar will include an asterisk if the file has not been updated since changes made. I wrote this blog in Notepad, for instance, and then just cut and paste it here.

That little asterisk reminds me that I need to save. On more than a few occasions in the past, I've written or revised entries for this blog and then accidentally shitcanned them because I hadn't saved the file.

With that said, the most recent update eliminated a great feature Windows used to have. You could simply right-click on an app icon in the taskbar and it would show a menu. Now it still does a menu but it's severely limited with far fewer options to the point of being worthless.

how old is too old?

It is almost a certainty that whoever is elected President in November 2020 will be in his or her seventies. The incumbent is 73 and the three most likely candidates to face off against him are 70 or older.

Yesterday, one of those candidates had unexpected heart surgery and suspended his campaign for the time being as a result. He is nonetheless expected to make a full recovery.

This has led people on various online forums and elsewhere to call for a maximum presidential age limit.

However well intentioned, I don't think this is a good idea. Yes, older people are more prone to health issues than most younger people.

But age is not an easy barometer of fitness. Some people at eighty are sharper than other people at sixty. Older does not mean infirm automatically.

So while I think it's perfectly acceptable for voters to consider an individual candidate's age, equally voters can look at at that candidate to determine whether he or she seems fit for office, based on age, temperament, and more.

the quote investigator

I recently discovered The Quote Investigator, a thoroughly researched webpage that does exactly what the title promises: investigates whether or not popular quotes are erroneously attributed to famous people.

The site is run by the author of a book titled Hemingway Didn’t Say That about popularly misquoted statements.

If you're a fan of witty quotes like I am, you should definitely check out the site.

free interestate porn

Late night drivers on Interstate 75 in Auburn Hills outside Detroit were startled to see hardcore porn playing recently on an electronic billboard beside the highway. The smut played for about twenty minutes before police shut it down.

This is one of those funny/not funny situations. It is rather amusing to imagine what some of the drivers' reactions were when they realized what was playing on the screen.

But such a distraction could have caused a deadly accident or several when drivers overreacted to what they saw. Fortunately, no such incidents were reported.

Security footage showed two young males breaking into a shed under the billboard where the computer is held that controls the billboard. The porn began playing within a few minutes thereafter.

I would not be surprised if this prank was the result of a youthful dare. Like many dares, it could have had deadly consequences. Thankfully this one didn't.