Say NO. Take a rest from the bombardment of investment ideas. (They’re speeding up.)
When God closes a door. He opens a window.
In short, another will come along. And it will be better.
I see no rate increase. Fine for bonds, for the time being.
But the market didn’t respond positively. Maybe it really believes the economy is slowing down?
I don’t believe in vitamin supplements. I have two reasons:
+ They don’t do anything. I smell gigantic marketing scam.
+ No one checks the quality of manufacture. This stuff is specifically exempt from FDA oversight. I’ve read horrendous stories on what researchers have found in pills. Mice droppings, you name it.
The (failing?) New York Times did a piece on “Why Are So Many People Popping Vitamin D?” The Times wrote:
Millions of people are popping supplements in the belief that vitamin D can help turn back depression, fatigue, muscle weakness, even heart disease or cancer. In fact, there has never been widely accepted evidence that vitamin D is helpful in preventing or treating any of those conditions.
But so firm is this belief that vitamin D has become popular even among people with no particular medical complaints or disease risks. And they are being tested for vitamin D “deficiency” in ever greater numbers.
The number of blood tests for vitamin D levels among Medicare beneficiaries, mostly people 65 and older, increased 83-fold from 2000 to 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among patients with commercial insurance, testing rates rose 2.5-fold from 2009 to 2014.
Labs performing these tests are reporting perfectly normal levels of vitamin D — 20 to 30 nanograms per milliliter of blood — as “insufficient.” As a consequence, millions of healthy people think they have a deficiency, and some are taking supplemental doses so high they can be dangerous, causing poor appetite, nausea and vomiting.
Vitamin D overdoses also can lead to weakness, frequent urination and kidney problems.
“A lot of clinicians are acting like there is a pandemic” of vitamin D deficiency, said Dr. JoAnn E. Manson, a preventive medicine researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who helped write an Institute of Medicine report on vitamin D.
Read the article here.
Ultra-Fascinating reading:
Trump and the Pathology of Narcissism
Diagnosing the president was off-limits to experts – until a textbook case entered the White House
Click here.
Hearing aids are driving me nuts.
The Wall Street Journal just did a piece on:
Should Hearing Aids Be Sold Over-the-Counter?
Lawmakers consider legislation to allow less expensive hearing aids to be sold over-the-counter
The idea is to make hearing aids affordable. But, to me, the real outcome would be to remove the high-pressure salesmanship which makes buying them such a totally unpleasant experience, and removes the customer’s ability to figure the technical characteristics of each hearing aid.
I’ve been testdriving technology for over 40 years. I’ve never come across a collection of technology products — hearing aids — for which so little technical information is available.
I’ve got emails out to Bose, and the presidents of Audicus and Starkey. Bose says its new Earphones are not freely available and they can’t sell me one to testdrive. Audicus and Starkey are not responding. (Did I expect otherwise?) Nobody seems to like the idea of an outside editor testdriving their products by comparing them technically. This is disheartening.
You can read the Wall Street Journal’s piece here.
Favorite stupids. This works:
To the optimist, the glass is half-full. To the pessimist, the glass is half-empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. But there’s another conclusion:
My son thinks his kids (ages 3 and 1) will never learn to drive:
This is my favorite:
Understanding Engineers
Normal people believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet.
Harry Newton, whose children and their spouses visited last night for the Planned Parenthood 100-year Gala. I couldn’t discern much of the speeches — which has made my quest for a decent hearing aid even more urgent. The Gala had a photo booth. You stood in front of a black curtain and hit the shutter button on the floor. Then you checked the photos you made on an iPad and emailed them to yourself. Best party favor ever. Here are the kids and their friends clowning around in the photo booth last night. Neat.
