A guy I'd recommend for floor leveling

I've been having some work done on my house, and if you're in the Middle Tennessee area and have floor leveling needs - like fixing sags in your floor by putting in supplemental supports - I wanted to recommend Bruce Little.  He's done two jobs for me over the years, is a class act, and is somebody you can tell loves the process of leveling floors and cares about doing a top notch job.  He even makes some of his own heavy duty equipment.

Additionally, I wanted to add that he recently returned a call from me while he was on vacation.  Again, the last job he did for me was probably 8-9 months ago, and he returned a call from me while on his vacation.

Anyhow, it's often difficult to find referrals for people you can trust to do good work on your home, but I just wanted to recommend Bruce Little.  In his day job he works for Powerlift and you can find him by searching his name and powerlift (or just contact powerlift and they'll put you through to him), but he does small jobs on the side in his free time that are too small for powerlift to mess with.

search tags:  Bruce Little, floor leveling, BC Leveling, Tennessee, Middle Tennessee, Nashville

Bacteria that live off of electricity

I hadn't heard of this finding of microbes that link together in chains and live off of the electrical differential/potential as electrons flow across the circuit created.

Here's the article:  Have we found alien life?

quote: “It is kind of like science fiction,” he says. To a biologist, finding life that chugs along without a molecular energy source such as carbohydrates is about as unlikely as seeing passengers flying through the air without an airplane.

Here's a couple of related videos:

 
 

Bowhead whales live up to 200 years

Here's an interesting article on longevity research and a genetic study of bowhead whales.  The whales can live up to 2000 year.  

quote: The team found that the whales have genes related to DNA repair, as well as those regulating how cells proliferate, that differ from those found in humans.

Horizontal drilling

Ever wonder exactly how the horizontal drilling and fracking process works?  Here's a pretty cool video that shows what's going on.  It's amazing to me that this can technically be done.

http://www.oerb.com/?tabid=242

and a story from Foreign Affairs arguing that oil shale and natural gas boom that we've seen in the past decade or so could've only happened in the US due largely to individual land rights, legal system, and an economic structure that can support a large number of small independent operators.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141203/robert-a-hefner-iii/the-united-states-of-gas

The article concludes that despite large stores of natural gas in other parts of the world, it will likely be difficult to recreate the U.S. success globally.

Public ownership of sports franchises

I've wondered why cities are willing to spend huge sums of money on stadiums and arenas, but don't just go ahead and buy the sports franchise itself? 

Here's a Vice article discussing this
https://sports.vice.com/article/the-radical-case-for-cities-buying-sports-teams-not-sports-stadiums

"And then there were those who wondered: for $183 million, wouldn't it have been cheaper for D.C. to skip the stadium and just buy the team?"

S&P500 and international exposure

I was thinking about asset allocation today - specifically: "what is international exposure?"

In particular, how much international exposure is built into the S&P500, or should we have explicit international exposure?  

Well, with some quick googling it seems the S&P 500 companies have anywhere from 33% to 50% of revenues coming from outside the U.S.  On the low end , this article mentions research showing that 33% of the revenue from S&P500 companies is derived outside of the US.  Here's another article that says 50% of S&P500 revenue comes from foreign sources.    This story from 2011 puts the figure at 47%.  I'm not sure why the wide range, but we're probably safe saying many of the big American companies have significant international exposure - anywhere from 33% to 50% in aggregate. 

So do I need an explicit international index in my portfolio?  After seeing this I'm less concerned about needing that, especially if I have a large S&P500 exposure or invest in US large cap companies.  In particular, I would want to make sure I don't inadvertently over-weight international by calling the S&P500 "domestic" exposure when it's probably close to a 50/50 split of domestic/international exposure already.

Strandbeests - wind powered creatures

Creative Stuff:

http://www.strandbeest.com/

story: Alzheimers is type 3 diabetes

Interesting story - I hadn't heard this link before.   Evidence that Alzheimer's might be related to diabetes - at least as a correlated factor, and perhaps as contributing.  The connecting factor being that the brain has many insulin receptors governing brain glucose uptake.

http://bigthink.com/devil-in-the-data/alzheimers-is-type-3-diabetes

Interesting read in any event.

Human Powered Helicopter

I just happened across this video of human powered helicopter called Gamera II, from the University of Maryland.

Thirsty Tomatoes

Here's how the tomatoes looked after I got back over the weekend.  This was going on their second day without me watering them:

Tomatoes

Here's some of the first red tomatoes from this year.   They're looking to be pretty good.

The ones above are bigger than I grew last year.  Home Depot was out of the little ones that I like.  Below are some smaller greener Romas from extra plants that my uncle Danny brought to my Dad.  They should be coming in pretty soon.

HFT hearings

I'm watching the high frequency trading hearings on C-Span that likely arose from information published in Michael Lewis's "Flashboys" book that should arouse serious concerns from anyone who reads it.  I'm a fan of Brad Katsuyama who's talked about in the book who built a new exchange IEX to try to create more fair markets.

During the hearings, it is amazing to me how Sen Ron Johnson is willfully unconcerned during these hearings, and it's so frustrating to watch him try to get the panelists to say something other than what they're saying, and he seems to suggest that to even bring attention to these issues hurts investor confidence in the markets.  The panelists give an answer in conflict with his preferred answer, and he repeatedly tries to ask it a different way to get a different answer.  Much effort to create a case of: "there's nothing to see here, lets move along."

This is very much a case of diffuse harms (investors) vs. concentrated interests (hft firms, exchanges, brokers).

EDIT:  Thomas Farley, president of NYSE Group, actually just testified that part of the existing market structure (maker-taker pricing where brokers get paid for their orderflow) creates conflicts of interest in the market and he would be in favor of reducing/removing them.

Throwing out the old boom box

I'm going to have to throw out the old GE boom box.   My brother got this back when Michael Jackson was coming out with the Thriller album, around December 1983.   I ended up taking it from him when I went to college.

The radio still works on it, but the tape deck started dragging pretty badly a few years back, and today I checked and it doesn't work at all.   Model was GE cassette recorder 3-5257A.  I'm going to sound old, but they really don't make them like this anymore.  In my opinion, people would buy more boom boxes again if they were built solidly like this one.  I never got another because the one's in the stores seemed so cheap in comparison.  In particular, this one made excellent recordings - I'd use it to record song ideas mostly and that's something the newer consumer decks got progressively worse at over time.

On BLTs

I've spent a considerable amount of time researching this, and I've concluded there is an optimal way to make a BLT sandwich.  Specifically - it'll taste quite a bit better based on how you assemble the ingredients.

Now, first off, my BLT includes bacon, lettuce, tomatoes, mayo, American cheese, a fried egg w/ some onions blended into it, and toast.  Here's one assembled:

But here's the key point:  It matters how you order the components on the sandwich  Simply putting the ingredients together randomly will make your sandwich less than what it could be.  It just won't taste as good.

So when you arrange a BLT sandwich, I suggest this ordering - from bottom to top between the two pieces of toast.   The bottom being the bottom of the sandwich as you are eating it - so that it's closer to your tongue.
1.  MAYO:  putting the mayo here is much better than putting mayo on the top of the sandwich.  I sometimes would mistakenly put mayo on the top piece of toast and wonder why my sandwich was no good.  Put the mayo on the bottom.
2.  TOMATOES:  put the tomatoes on the mayo near the bottom of the sandwich.  I like slicing little Roma or cherry tomatoes best because they keep longer and might have more flavor, but any tomato will do.  Keep it at the bottom.  The sandwich will taste drier if you don't put the tomato at the bottom.
3.  BACON:  Yes.  Put the bacon on top of the mayo and tomato.  As you eat the mayo, tomato, and bacon will all merge together and taste best in this order.  You can try it, but I think if you put the lettuce or other ingredients "between" any of these 3 ingredients, it won't taste as good.  Usually the bacon is coming out of the skillet at this point in time during sandwich assembly, so it's straight from the frying pan onto the sandwich.
4. CHEESE:  I put a half slice of American cheese on top of the bacon, broken in two pieces.  I think it helps hold the sandwich together as the cheese melts, and it just tastes good there.
5.  FRIED EGG w/ ONIONS.  I used to not put an egg on the sandwich, but found out I like it this way.  As I pull the bacon out of the skillet I put an egg in, and toss in some chopped onions with it while it is cooking.  I crack the yolk and mix the onion pieces with the egg and it all cooks into a single fried egg "patty".  The onions make a difference.  When the egg is done I put it on top of the cheese, which I think it melts to to help hold everything together.
6.  LETTUCE: The lettuce is best put on the top of the sandwich.  I think partially - I like the texture of the lettuce, and it'll still give a good crunch on the top of the sandwich without interfering with all the good stuff at the bottom.  Also - if you put the lettuce in the middle of the sandwich things will slide around like crazy.  Lettuce has a high viscosity I guess.  Don't believe me?  Try putting the lettuce in the middle of the sandwich - you'll have a wreck on your hands, and the lettuce anywhere but at the top will make your sandwich taste less good.

And the final point to reiterate.  Make sure you eat with layer 1 on the bottom closest to your tongue when eating, and layer 6 toward the roof of your mouth.  

That's pretty much it.