I’m still living with the glow of what we saw in Africa. A few more photos. We actually watched this from 15 feet.
The vultures awaited their turn at the carcass. First the lions, then the hyenas, then the wild dogs, then the vultures. A little like the Facebook IPO.
Cheetah on termite mound scouting prey — her lunch.
Zebras drinking. Water is plentiful in Botswana’s Okavango Delta, which is why there are so many large mammals.
Elephants are endlessly fascinating, especially their trunks, which they can manipulate in amazing ways. They destroy trees in their quest for food. The babies are cute. Botswana has the most elephants in Africa.
The few pictures of today and yesterday don’t do our Africa photo safari justice. Videos are more thrilling. I took a bunch with the still cameras — virtually every still camera these days can do 1080p HD (high definition) videos. But it’s hard to (a) keep the camera steady hand holding it and (b) worse, it’s hard to see the screen in the bright African sunlight. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll post a video of hyenas and vultures eating a dead giraffe. it’s gross.
I messed with these photos in Photoshop by applying “auto levels” and adding a little sharpening. I underexposed most photos by 2/3rd to one stop. That gave them more color saturation. That’s a good tip with all the photos you take today — no matter what camera.
I suspect Facebook will fall further. The company is trying with small announcements to arrest the decline. But there are too many long-term problems — the dearth of advertising, the rise of mobile, the overhang of shares still to sell, etc. — that will depress it long-term. I hope for a nice bounce today.
There are four problems with mutual funds.
1. Virtually all are long only. Which means they’ll do well only if the market goes up. They can’t short obvious overpriced ailing companies like RadioShack, BestBuy and Facebook.
2. They have to stay invested to reap their management fees. They don’t get fees on cash.
3. Fees hurt. For most mutual funds, they’re far too high.
4. Most mutual fund managers simply aren’t any good. The good ones are now running hedge funds.
Apple to bounce more.
Apple will probably announce the iPhone 5 next Wednesday. Many iPhone 4 owners (like me) skipped the iPhone 4S (Siri) phone to await the iPhone 5.
More travel tips:
+ This is a nice backpack. It’s called Surge. It’s by North Face.
It retails for $125. Click here. You can often get it cheaper in other, uglier colors.
+ Free WiFi services often insist you sign in. Before loading Outlook, open your browser and fill in their silly form.
+ You can’t charge your iPad from your laptop (at least mine). But you can charge an iPhone and a Kindle.
Recovering a damaged SD card.
+ You can recover your precious photos images. There are many sofwares out there (some free) including RescuePro from San Disk, Zero Assumption Recovery (click here.) and Kroll Ontrack data recovery (click here). They all require that your computer be able to recognize your SD card and its size. Mine couldn’t. That’s what I sent it to Kroll Ontrack for an expensive personal recovery — hopefully. they said their track record was 85% to 90%.
Good news: the Nikon D7000 has two SD card slots. Put two cards in. It will make one an instant backup.
Matt Taibbi on Romney. You may not like Rolling Stone’s Taibbi, but his latest piece called “Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital” does a good job on explaining how leveraged buyout companies work. Click here.
The U.S. Open Tennis continues today on ESPN2 and the Tennis Channel. The finals are this weekend.
Harry Newton who wonders if Hewlett Packard (HPQ) also isn’t overpriced?
By God, it’s hard to turn one’s head from Africa onto dealing with those wonderful people in our taxing agencies, who give exhorbitant interest and high penalties a whole new meaning.
This short YouTube video explains the mess our Federal Budget is in. Bottom line: you can close down the military and all the government agencies, we’ll still be in deficit. The entitlement programs — Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid — are what’s killing the budget. Worth watching. Click here.
I've found that I can charge my iPad from my laptop if I turn the iPad screen off. I just push the power button at the top to place it into “sleep” mode and it trickle charges. It isn't much of a trickle but it's enough to top off the batteries.
I'm trying it now.
You're 100% right. Turn off the iPad's power and it does charge. It's slow. But it does charge.
there's one more perhaps even bigger problem with mutual funds. except for index funds, virtually all funds' returns suffer from diseconomies of scale, yet they are created and managed by companies that benefit from the fees that derive from increasing scale. in essence, the management company and the shareholder have opposing interests. recipe for bad outcomes for the shareholders.
Most good mutual fund managers are now running hedge funds? Harry, you know nothing. Mutual funds are performing much much better than hedge funds this year. There are many very well paid, in the 7-figures, mutual fund managers. Regarding your comment about fees, Vanguard charges virtually nothing. I own a managed, active fund there with an annual fee of .004%.
Oh, and Harry, the market is up 14% YTD, yet you still have the gall to talk about shorting?
Finally, these safari photos are mediocre. You need a better camera.
Harry thanks for posting Matt Tiabbi's Rolling Stone article on Mitt Romney and Bain Capital. I would love to read the article Tiabbi penned on the Barack Obama and his lurid past. Obviously I'm kidding with you. We both know Tiabbi is a huge liberal. I was wondering if you have any plans to see the movie by Dinesh D'souza, “2016: Obama's America”?…….the movie opened while you were in Africa.
Harry
A couple of things about today's column. You lead with lion porn? Nice. And this year's U. S. Open has been the most unexciting tournament I have ever watched. I hope the quality picks up in the latter rounds. It looks like you had a great vacation.
Philip
Hard to photograph. Doesn't last long. But happens every 20 minutes, or so. The male lions have major stamina.