Village Hummus, San Mateo

Hummus & pita (Yelp photo)

We have become regular patrons of Village Hummus in San Mateo, across the street from Whole Foods Market.

Sure, one can buy hummus and falafel at every grocery store, including the aforementioned Whole Foods, but the Village Hummus offerings are superior: complex, flavorful, and fresh. And don't forget the pita, which is as far removed from the store-bought version as a fresh-baked loaf of bread.

Its chicken and beef dishes are quite tasty, but if I ever decided to go vegetarian Village Hummus would make the transition quite easy.

The Journey Home

Leading theories about how pets find their way home: magnetic fields (cats), scent (dogs), and the stars (birds) .

Dogs extend their scent range by moving among overlapping circles of familiar scents—much the way cell phone coverage relies on interconnected footprints from different cell towers. A dog that wanders out of its own immediate range might pick up the scent of, say, a familiar dog in the next circle. That might point it to a circle that contains a familiar person or tree or restaurant trash can, and so on.

Cats, like other animals, might rely more on magnetic fields—a faculty that could turn out to be quite common in mammals. “There are some studies that show that the ears of most mammals contain iron.”

One of my favorite childhood books was The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford. Three household pets, a Labrador, a bull terrier, and a Siamese cat (!), traverse 300 miles across the Canadian wilderness to make their way home.

Having lived my entire young life on a 44-mile-long island, I had to use almost as much imagination for Journey as I did for Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, but the effort was worth it.

Such is the power of a good Odyssey story, a story, it turns out, that had a factual basis.

The Best Number

Six writers of varied backgrounds opine on "What’s the best number?"

Their answers--13, 17, 42, 747, 200 billion, and infinity (∞)--are by turns whimsical and thoughtful.

On Sunday, the first day of the week, it may seem fitting to celebrate ONE, the beginning of the natural numbers, and the rank that everyone is striving to be in the good old U.S. of A.

I'm partial to THREE, however. It's the day of the month when I was born and connotes stability (a three-legged stool, a tricycle versus a bicycle). Besides, three is the limit of the number of things I can retain in memory.

As we visit our place of worship today, three is also a reminder that the world and beyond are more complicated than the monotheistic one.

O blessed glorious Trinity,
Bones to philosophy, but milk to faith,
Which, as wise serpents, diversely
Most slipperiness, yet most entanglings hath,
As you distinguish'd, undistinct,
By power, love, knowledge be,
Give me a such self different instinct,
Of these let all me elemented be,
Of power, to love, to know you unnumbered three.
                    ---John Donne

It Almost Makes Me Want to Vote for Him

Barron's runs a second splenetic cover story about Donald Trump.

The first was about a 25-year-old securities-analysis dispute in which Mr. Trump comes off like a blustering bully, and this week's is about how he's going to start a trade war with China that could start another Great Depression. (Just in case the reader needs to be bludgeoned into understanding, Barron's invokes Herbert Hoover and Smoot-Hawley in the second paragraph.)

From the cover [bold added]:

Trump's proposed tariffs could lead to a trade war with China--and possibly a real war. This guy is either ignorant about global economics or he wants to replay the Great Depression. When will Republicans tire of amateur hour?

Barron's risks losing its hard-won reputation for reporting and analysis by going after Donald Trump in such a vituperative fashion.

Barron's pet issues are not important to most voters. On top of everyone's minds are illegal immigration, national security, and terrorism, and to a lesser degree jobs, taxes, spending, and medical care, so his views on those topics are fair game. But a "real war" with China? Barron's should be printed on yellow paper.

Maybe We Won't Always Have Paris

Like millions of others, we've visited the Great Cities of Europe---London, Madrid, Venice, Florence, Rome, Amsterdam---and also, like millions of others, Paris is #1 or #2 on the list.

It's difficult for our minds to grasp the evil of what happened tonight.

It wasn't a natural disaster like an earthquake or a man-made disaster like a pipeline explosion or a hybrid disaster like a heat wave.

It wasn't a vengeful person fueled by hate, rage and alcohol or an unnoticed individual seeking to become famous through a horrific act.

It was a coordinated attack by dozens of heavily armed men who killed as many people as possible. The killers are not appeased by sweet words or money. Widespread death was the goal.

After 9/11 we said that the world was changed forever. After years of unresolved conflict, wishful thinking, and willful blindness we thought terrorism "contained" and resumed our normal lives.

The problems were growing beneath the surface and now threaten to overwhelm Western Europe. Hundreds of thousands of unassimilated Muslims live in the outskirts of Paris.  Rick said, "We'll always have Paris," but maybe we won't.

Listening and Talking Over a Meal

Executive Director Meg and new staffer Abby.

Despite scheduling conflicts our four cooks came through with a tasty and balanced meal for the overnight guests of Home and Hope.

I was the sole volunteer present, but setting up the tables and laying out the food took only a few minutes, as was clean-up, which is easy now that someone donated a dishwasher.

One of the teenagers left quickly after dinner. After her mother departed, she returned to the kitchen as I was wiping the counters. Would you like something more to eat? "I can't stand her." Oh, she just wanted to be in a different room from her mother. I can't help you with that, but a lot of teenagers feel that way. She gave a wan smile and helped herself to some ice cream. Home and Hope is more than about dropping off food; it's also about listening and talking.

Our next date at the Lutheran church is in January, which will come all too quickly.

Controlling One of the Deadly Sins

(Image from Medical Daily)

One basic marker of growing up is learning how to control one's anger at other people. However, suppression isn't the answer.

What happens in the brain when you try to clamp down on that rage? A whole mess of bad stuff.

Your ability to experience positive feelings goes down — but not negative feelings. Stress soars. And your amygdala (a part of the brain closely associated with emotions) starts working overtime.

The opposite of suppression, venting, isn't the solution either.

Venting intensifies emotion....“getting it out” tends to snowball your anger.

Psychologists and neuroscientists recommend reappraisal, that is, telling yourself another story about the person who triggered your anger.

You want to scream back. Or even hit them.

But what if I told you their mother passed away yesterday? Or that they were going through a tough divorce and just lost custody of their kids?

You’d let it go. You’d probably even respond to their anger with compassion.

A reappraisal story is likely fictional--your conscious mind even knows this--but it's enough to get past your initial flash of anger and prevent your own angry response.

I now realize that I have long used a (more immature) form of reappraisal to get through the day. Whenever an aggressive driver pushes into my lane then slams on his brakes, I think about all the accidents he must have and how high his insurance rates must be. I've had my share of bad bosses who scream at their staff, and I imagine how that Type A behavior will land them in an early grave.

It's hard to be angry against someone whom you're pitying (of course, don't tell them that because that could make them angrier).

Recipe for Hope

The temperature dipped into the 30's and 40's. At the Home and Hope shelter we closed the dining room door quickly to keep out the cold.

Volunteers range in age from
one to sixty-ish.

I said a silent prayer of thanks for the fossil-fuel companies that provide the natural gas, nighttime electricity, and complex distribution systems that keep the furnaces going. My church favors alternative energy produced by solar panels and windmills; unfortunately, these energy sources are currently too expensive and too underpowered when it's freezing outside.

Tonight was perfect for comfort food. We brought spaghetti and meatballs, a creamy kale and spinach casserole, and broiled potatoes. Bread, salad, and pumpkin pie comprised the rest of the dinner. We packed the leftovers for Wednesday's lunches and said goodnight at 8:30. We'll be back with more on Thursday.

Efficient Markets in Transportation

The efficient market hypothesis (EMH) has been around for about half a century. Its tenets are still in dispute, but there's no question that the EMH has had a profound influence on the behavior of capital markets, if for no other reason that powerful participants believe it to be true in at least the weak and semi-strong forms [bold added]:

The weak form of EMH assumes that current stock prices fully reflect all currently available security market information....

The semi-strong form of EMH assumes that current stock prices adjust rapidly to the release of all new public information....

The strong form of EMH assumes that current stock prices fully reflect all public and private information.

Your humble observer and stock punter has found the semi-strong form to be operative; whenever a particular stock is touted in a business publication, the price rises before I could buy it at a price that would produce an extra-normal return. By the time he reads the article it's too late for the average investor to join the party.

Not all drivers are personable young ladies. (Atlantic image)

Now that the Internet and mobile communications have spawned businesses that were unimaginable a few years ago, these pricing principles have also been found to apply in other marketplaces. Take the case of Uber, which matches riders to drivers as demand and traffic conditions change. One of Uber's innovations is surge pricing:

which refers to the practice of charging customers higher prices at peak times. It got a lot of attention during a snowstorm in New York in December of 2013, when rates were massively increased, up to eight times, attracting a flood of negative press and customer feedback.

In Uber supply responds to higher prices quickly, so many experienced drivers don't waste their time chasing them.

"The seasoned drivers don’t pay any attention to surge,” [driver John Sollars] said. “By the time you get to that part of the city, the surge is over. Often, even when I’m sitting dead center in the middle of a surge area, I don’t get a ride request. Then, as soon as the surge is off — bam! — here comes a ride.”

newer and part-time drivers — who account for the vast majority of Uber vehicles — do chase surges. “The online message boards are full of questions about how to get surge pricing,” he said. But Ryder Pearce, co-founder of SherpaShare, which helps drivers analyze earnings, said that many new drivers become disillusioned after chasing surges that end or getting stuck in traffic jams en route.

In the brave new mobile Internet world prices change quickly in response to new information, and achieving above-average returns is difficult. Eugene Fama is smiling.

Remembering Sarah

Prayer chapel: St. Ambrose, prie dieu, votive candles.

I lit a candle this morning for my grandmother, who was born 111 years ago.

When she was 16, kidney disease made her severely ill. She was miserable during her two months in the hospital and wrote that she "wanted to die." Her kindly doctor, one Grover Batten, continually encouraged her, saying that she had much to live for.

After she recovered, Sarah lived the rest of her life with serenity and gratitude, the outlook of many who have been given a second chance. That is how I remember her, and I still miss her.

We'll Probably Put it Off Until It's Too Late

Barron's graphic.

During the golden years you need a lot of gold [bold added]:

the reality is that about 70% of people over the age of 65 will need some sort of long-term care, ranging from assistance with dressing and bathing to medication management and skilled medical help....the median annual cost of a private room in a nursing home is $91,250. The median cost of a one-bedroom in an assisted-living facility is $43,200 for a year.

Every senior I know wants to stay in his or her house, with home-health care, as long as possible ("aging in place").

The rule of thumb for moving: “Once you go beyond needing six hours of care, you are getting to the point that assisted living may be less expensive."

There's much more information in Barron's about the costs and benefits of various long-term care alternatives. The important take-away is this: seniors and their families should have the conversation now rather than make hasty decisions in the midst of a crisis.

Good Market for Shacks

Last week we commented on the "dilapidated" San Francisco 765-sq-ft shack that sold for $408,000.

There's now a 180-sq-ft shack in Palo Alto that's listed for $1,998,000. Without a sewer hookup the structure was probably a toolshed on an estate that has since been subdivided. The property is 1½ miles from Gunn High School, frequently rated as one of the top 100 high schools in the nation.

The 6,886-sq-ft property can accommodate a two-story home of at least 2,500 square feet, so the value lies obviously in the land. A buyer's total cost would be at least $3 million, $2 million for the land plus $1 million ($400 x 2,500) for reconstruction. It's actually a better value than the San Francisco shack, which is an "historical property" that can't be torn down. Crazy times.

The Best Medicine

Having celebrated another birthday this week, I've been told that I should embark on a completely different second career that's both fulfilling and enjoyable (naturally, it doesn't pay much).

I've also been told that I can be hilarious. 89-year-old Chuck Esterly shows that it's never too late to start a standup career.

(What's that? They're laughing at me, not with me? Oh.)

I Wish I Were Older Just This Once

Optimizing Social Security benefits for a married couple can be a complex analysis. Factors to be considered are the couple's ages, historical earnings, future earnings (if applicable), and life expectancies. A bit of research and number-crunching revealed that our own best strategy would be to file-and-suspend. The Chronicle explains [bold added]:

It lets a spouse, say a husband, who reaches full retirement age (around 66) file for his own retirement benefit and immediately suspend it so that it can continue to grow [blogger's note: about 8% per year] until he reaches age 70. His filing lets his wife immediately begin collecting a spousal benefit, as long as she is at least 62. Then, at age 70, he begins collecting his own, higher benefit.

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 eliminated this strategy for everyone who is not yet 66 years or older as of May 1, 2016. Neither of us will turn 66 by then.

Comments:

1) File-and-suspend is a strategy generally employed by seniors with above-average incomes.

2) The Republican Congress passed a bill that "hurt" one of their constituencies.

3) The media didn't publicize how the Republicans compromised. Puzzling, isn't it?

4) While some planning is essential, this is an example of why it doesn't pay to invest too much time or money (unless one's net worth or income puts one in the top 1%) into building a complex financial model based on rules that can be changed with a stroke of the pen.

5) I wish I were older just this once.

I Didn't Just Mail It In

For once I did a little prep work for the off-year election and selected my candidates for the school board and city council. However, I didn't look at the materials until yesterday, too late to mail in the ballot for San Mateo County's first "all-mail" election.

No problem--on Election Day I headed over to the Recreation Center, where one could still vote via old-fashioned voting machine or old-old-fashioned paper ballot. I didn't have to show an ID, but one doesn't need to do so for mailing in a ballot either.

The kid at the computer verified my precinct in order to give me a four-digit passcode to operate the voting machine.

This was the only live polling place in the entire City. I asked him what would happen if his computer malfunctioned. No problem, he had a backup machine in the case. Very good, someone had thought this through.

2,133 of the 71,131 votes in the County were cast at the polling places. Perhaps some who voted in person were late like me, but I'd like to think that there were some in the three percent (3%) who enjoy the physical act of voting.

One doesn't fully appreciate the sacrifices made for democracy by just mailing it in.