Daily Links 6.30.2011

Craft beer is big business in JapanUnfortunately, I've only ever had Sapporo and Asahi

Mystery Shoppers in medicine?
I would welcome them. I tend to agree with this guy though it seems like there won't be mystery medical shoppers anytime soon.

CBO Warns of Debt Explosion
Why can't the people running the CBO run for office?

A pen that writes circuits.  And they work!

Where chain restaurants get their kitsch

Jolly Pumpkin La Roja

Today's review is Jolly Pumpkin's La Roja.

 

The bottle has a beautiful label, and I had high expectations, as I had heard that Jolly Pumpkin made some great beers.  Mine said it was bottled April 8, 2011, and came in a 750ml bottle.

The pour was a rich reddish-brown, amber color, and pours with almost no head.

The nose was very pleasant, with sweet cherry and spice coming off.  Very rich.  Nothing to prepare me for the taste, which was very sour.  Probably the best comparison would be sour cherries. Not quite sour enough to make my mouth pucker out, but very close.  To be honest, this beer was much too sour for me, and very different from my expectations (I expected this beer to be much sweeter).

For a beer north of $10/bottle, I was a bit disappointed.  I think there was some nice complexity in this beer, but ultimately it fell short, especially if you are looking for value from your beer spending dollar.

Overall grade:  C+ (B- except for the price)

Extreme Diet may cure Type 2 Diabetes

Eleven people with diabetes took part in the study, which was funded by Diabetes UK. They had to slash their food intake to just 600 calories a day for two months. But three months later seven of the 11 were free of diabetes.

"To have people free of diabetes after years with the condition is remarkable – and all because of an eight-week diet," said Roy Taylor, professor at Newcastle University, who led the study. "This is a radical change in understanding type 2 diabetes. It will change how we can explain it to people newly diagnosed with the condition. While it has long been believed that someone with type 2 diabetes will always have the disease, and that it will steadily get worse, we have shown that we can reverse the condition."

Link here. Full study here.

Here's hoping that further study reveals this as an effective and statistically significant source of treatment.  That said, I imagine this treatment will have to be monitored in a hospital setting, as I imagine many sufferers of type 2 diabetes lack the willpower to restrict their diets so drastically.

Recent Lunches

Recently I have been eating these for lunch:

StarKist Tuna Salad Lunch To Go

And I have to say, I'm quite impressed.  These babies are only 190 calories, but they are pretty filling, especially in combination with a separate snack.

Of course, I need to know if I'm getting the best deal.  At Ralph's, they cost $2.99/kit, which isn't all that cheap.  A quick search on Amazon revealed a 12 pack for an average of $1.90/kit, which seems much more reasonable.

That said, as Amazon has a tendency to do (for me anyways), it brought up the possibility of different brands.  While I haven't found a tuna salad kit that looks interesting, it seems I can get plain tuna pouches for less.

Or I could get salmon

Or I could pick up some Thai Chili Tuna Kits or hickory smoked tuna.

Though perhaps the most important item to order along with all of that tuna are some breath mints

Daily Links 6.29.2011

HP Notebook saves soldiers life

The Treasury has $1Billion in unwanted $1 coins
If they want Americans to use $1 coins instead of bills, then the need to stop printing bills.  People may not like it, but as long as they have the choice, they will use greenbacks.

Packaging Free Grocery Store to open in Texas
Buy 5 eggs, a cup of flour, 2 cups of rice--exactly how much you need!  I don't see how this will work unless prices have a sliding scale...

Europe's Asset Yard sale
Some nice things those Europeans are selling.  Too bad they took the Alps off the market

Further evidence of the IPCC's bias
The panel defends itself, but as the article states:  ""It is stretching credibility for the IPCC to suggest that a richer world with two billion more people will use less energy in 2050"

Steve Bezos wants to make a clock to last 10,000 years

Amazon founder Steve Bezos wants to build a clock to last as long as the pyramids.

Over the lifetime of this clock, the United States won’t exist,” Bezos tells me. “Whole civilizations will rise and fall. New systems of government will be invented. You can’t imagine the world — no one can — that we’re trying to get this clock to pass through.”

Article link here. Project website here.

 

 

Daily Links 6.23.2011

In-N-Out vs. Shake Shack vs. Five Guys  My vote is probably 5 Guys, thanks to the terrible quality of the non-Animal fries at In-N-Out

Bomb-jamming technology

More health reasons to floss though as Metch Hedberg said, "People who smoke cigarettes, they say 'Man, you don't know how hard it is to quit smoking.' Yes, I do -- it's as hard as it is to start flossing"

A camera you can focus after you take the picture.

Creative barcodes  Pretty cool.

Awesome Aquaria

Some of these look so much like land, it's incredible.

This is the general site, and some of my favorites are here, here, here, and here. Also here.

More town pirating...

Thames Town looks a lot like your average historic English village. There are lush green squares, classic brick homes, and even red telephone booths.

But Thames Town is not nestled in the British countryside; it's located in the northeast corner of China in Songjiang, near Shanghai.

 Photos by Triplefivechina via Flickr

More info and article here.

You wouldn't pirate a town...

Or would you? It seems China has plans to copy the entire Austrian town of Halstatt, and re-make it in Guangdong province.

Beautiful photo gallery here.

Golf has a very interesting business model

 With its only global superstar (Tiger) eclipsed and the lacklustre American economy hurting its sponsors, professional golf should be in deep financial trouble. Yet it is thriving. The average prize money for a PGA Tour event (the name derives from the Professional Golfers’ Association of America, from which the PGA Tour originally sprang) nearly doubled between 2000 and 2010, from $3.3m to $6m. The two highest-earning American athletes in 2010 (including endorsements and appearance fees) were both golfers. Mr Woods, despite his troubles, made more than $90m. Phil Mickelson, an amiable left-hander, made $61.7m. Even the 125th-ranked player on the PGA Tour made around $1m.

 More specifics about the business here.  A very interesting read throughout.  ...and even with Tiger seemingly on the way out, there is always hope in the future.

Perhaps a way to reduce health care costs?

ABOVE a valley in Pennsylvania sits an old hospital that gives an optimistic hint about the future of American health care. Geisinger Health Systems was founded in 1915 but is as adaptable and creative as a start-up. It has invented new ways to offer services: it provides heart surgery, for example, at a fixed price and with a warranty. (If there are complications within 90 days, you pay nothing to fix them.)

 It seems that the total program has some kinks to iron out, but anything to help bring down the costs of health care is okay in my book.  Full link here.

US Students failing history

Students in the US are(still) terrible at history.

Fewer than a quarter of American 12th-graders knew China was North Korea's ally during the Korean War, and only 35% of fourth-graders knew the purpose of the Declaration of Independence, according to national history-test scores released Tuesday.

In terms of education reform, I don't know who to blame.  My guess is both the schools and the parents, though I suspect it's more of the parents than I would like it to be (parents are harder to fix than schools).

Juggler giving up the dream...

...via Reddit

Facts that will blow you away

via Reddit. I can't vouch for accuracy.

The Vatican has 2.3 popes per square kilometre.

The biggest air force in the world is the US Air Force. The 2nd biggest air force in the world is the US Navy.

In Uganda, 50% of the population is under 15 years of age.

If there is a one in (x) chance of something happening, and you try it (x) times, the odds that it will happen are always around 63%, no matter what (x) is (over 10 or so). For example, if you have a 1 in a million chance of winning the lottery, and you buy a million lottery tickets, there's a 63% chance you'll win.

Despite its size, the state of Texas only has one natural lake; and it shares that one natural lake with the state of Louisiana.

The Pyramids at Giza were older to Cleopatra than Cleopatra was to the Moon Landing.

More people die of falling coconuts to the head than shark attacks.

Lake Tahoe is west of LA

Ethanol subsidy to end?

The Senate voted today to end $6billion in subsidies for ethanol producers.  As an economist, I would love to say "finally", but "the legislation isn't expected to be taken up by the House, possibly limiting the vote to symbolic significance".

The issue also confuses me, because I would guess that an effort to end the ethanol subsidy would come mostly from Republicans, but instead it came mostly from Democrats, furthering my belief that both parties do not understand how the economy works, and this is merely a politically based decision.

Two on education

College students who take later classes tend to drink more and do worse in school. Link (Hint:  Correlation does not imply causation)

LA schools to remove chocolate milk from the menus, as well as corn dogs, chicken nuggets, and other "fast food" type meals.  To replace them are "Spinach tortellini in butternut squash sauce and California sushi rolls, along with many ethnic foods".  Sounds like a plan to me!

When I was in school, I always got chocolate milk if it was an option.  It seems like a simple solution to cut back on bad food choices to take away chocolate milk, and it seems to me that the replacement meals look better than the original greasy spoon ones!

Daily Links

Black men are safer in prison than outside?

Meredith Whitney on the coming collapse in state finances

Ten Places with Strange Names (and how they got them)
I like Idiotville

How to Screw with Car Salesman (and get a better deal)
My strategy would be email all your local dealers once you've picked out the specific model that you want, and let them compete against each other until you settle on a price (of course, looking up the dealer invoice price on Consumer Reports first to use as a departure point).

The amazing condiment vacuum!

The Cost of Cigarettes by state
West Virginia is the cheapest and New York the most expensive, but most surprising to me was how cheap cigs are in California (#46 on the list, even after 9.75% sales tax)

Triple Chocolate Oreo Chunk Cookies

Watermelon, the perfect summer treat...only $4000?

A small, black watermelon from Japan recently sold for 300,000 yen, or about $4000. Apparently, " the fruit is lauded for its crispy texture and extra sweet juice".  Link is here.  The price is an absolute bargain compared to a 2007 watermelon which sold for 650,000 yen ($8100).

 

For my money, I'd prefer a Japanese square watermelon.

Best pizza around in Arlington, TX?

The best pizza seems to be a transplant from Connecticut, which makes it okay even if it is in Texas now.

I'd eat at Corky's. My favorite was the pizza with the spinach topping, a perfect creation of thin, slightly charred crust, made-from-scratch sauce, whole-milk cheese, and fresh, oven-roasted spinach. From time to time I would ask the owner, Dominick (Nick) DiBattista, what his secret was. Something about the spices he used in his sauce. I didn't care really. I was young, hungry, and had a sewer commission to write about. Life was good.

Then it was over. One day in 1995, I made a pit stop on the way back home to New York from Boston. Corky's, named after Nick's father, was closed. There was a sign with a farewell message from Nick. He was off to Florida. Damn, I recall saying to myself on the drive home, I wish I'd gotten the recipe for that spinach pizza.

Over the past 15 years I'd think of Corky's from time to time, especially after eating another ordinary pizza. I was at Sally's in New Haven last fall, and it was still among the best I'd ever had. But I was still thinking about that spinach pizza and the little shop in East Hartford and wondering whatever became of that guy. Then, a few months back, for some reason after all these years I turned to my Mac and typed in the name "Corky's." As easy as that, I found a restaurant with that name in Arlington, Texas.

I, for one, welcome our new cyborg overlords

New technology allows for a beatless heart.  Doctors at the Texas Heart Institute have created a heart implant with "a moderate amount of homemade stuff" that operates without a pulse.

Cohn sees this heart as the future. He likens artificial pulsing hearts to flying machines with flapping wings — mimicking nature is not always the best solution for a machine.

The article is here. More here.

Man pees in reservoir, Portland Water Bureau throws out 7.8million gallons of water!

While the icon looks like the Onion, this seems to be a real article.  Unfortunately, it is just about the most idiotic, wasteful story I've ever heard:

Portland officials say a 21-year-old man admitted urinating in a Mt. Tabor reservoir early Wednesday, forcing the city to take a key water supply off line.

David Shaff, administrator for the Water Bureau, said about 7.8 million gallons of drinking water will be discarded because of the incident. He originally said that will cost the bureau about $600,000 in lost revenue but later clarified that his math was very wrong, and that the water would have sold for a retail price of almost $28,500, and disposal fees are expected at about $7,600.

Still, Portland threw away $35,000 worth of water for a couple pints of urine?  What would they do if an animal were to pee in the reservoir, or even what if the animal died?

Shaff said the Water Bureau regularly finds dead animals in the same drinking supply but doesn't dump the water. "This is different," he said.

Well, at least the Portland Water Bureau has perspective...

Count Portland city Commissioner Randy Leonard, who oversees the Water Bureau, among those. After hearing about the incident, he quipped, "I think I'm going to have a Coke with my lunch today." 

When writing this headline, they must have considered and rejected all of these first:

Obama Blasts Weiner

Obama Puts Pressure on Weiner

Pressure on Weiner From White House

Obama: Squeezing Weiner Out of Congress?

Obama: Caught Squeezing Weiner Out of Congress?

Obama Puts Weiner in Public Eye

Obama Blasts Weiner in Public Eye

Obama Raises Weiner's Profile

Obama Casts Shadow Over Weiner

Obama Rubs Weiner Wrong Way

Obama Gives Weiner the Rub

Obama Bleeds Weiner Dry

Weiner Chafed by Obama

Obama Puts Down Weiner

Obama Catches Weiner Red Handed

Obama Cleans Up Mess Made by Weiner

Obama Rides on Weiner

Obama Tears Weiner a New One

Obama, Weiner Fail to See Eye-To-Eye

Obama Clamps Down on Weiner

Obama Chastises Weiner

Obama Hits Weiner Where It Hurts

Obama Takes High Ground and Refuses to Get Involved in Weiner Controversy

 Via the inimitable Robby

Free soloing

Free soloing is rock climbing for people who think regular rock climbing is for wimps.

I wouldn't want to do this.

US Banks collude on IPOs

Three Oxford researchers show quite convincingly that US Banks collude to overcharge IPO clients in the US. (Article in Reuters; Full Citation).  Another embarrassment for US banks, and another reason for people to think of investment banks as vampire squids, sucking the blood out of the "real" economy.

Between 1998 and 2007, 95.4% of U.S. IPOs between $25m and $100m had gross spreads of exactly 7%. The comparable figure between 1989 and 199… While Chen and Ritter showed virtually no IPOs over $150m with a 7% gross spread, we find that 77% of all offerings between $100 and $250m charge exactly 7%.

European IPO fees do not cluster, and only 1% of offerings raising $25m or more experience gross spreads as high as 7%. Within the $25m-$100m range, fees for European IPOs average just over 4%. Indeed, European IPOs are always cheaper: we find that there is a “3% wedge” between European and U.S. IPOs after controlling for size, issue characteristics, syndicate structure and time or country effects.

Billionaire Larry Ellison to resolve tree-dispute with neighbors...

...by buying the house next door with unobstructed views.


A bit of background:  Ellison bought a house with a nice view of the San Francisco Bay in the late 1980s, and then his neighbor's redwood trees grew enough to obstruct the view.  After failing to reach an agreement about trimming the trees, Ellison (as billionaires are often want to do), just offered to buy the offending house, which another wealthy family--the Von Bothmers--refused.

Now the issue seems to be resolving itself, as Ellison will buy the house next door.  (Link with pictures)

"Community activists" demand Wal Mart concessions...

...when real community members think differently.

The Living Wages, Healthy Communities Coalition released a list of demands to Wal-Mart, including:

• Walmart will provide free shuttle transportation to and from the nearest metro station to each DC store every 10 minutes.
• Walmart will provide $50/month in public transportation subsidies to each employee of its DC stores.
• Walmart will commit to responsible traffic alleviation studies and measures that promote walkability and increase the quality of life for residents.
• Walmart will work to provide secure car sharing and bike sharing at each of its stores.
• Walmart shall employ no less than two off-duty DC police officers on its premises at all times, stationed in locations determined by input from a community advisory board in the ward where the store is located.
• Walmart shall not sell firearms or ammunition at its DC stores.
• Walmart will pay every employee in its DC stores the DC Living Wage rate ($12.50/hour) or higher
• Walmart will employ at least 65 percent of the employees at each of its DC stores on a full-time, 40 hour per week basis.
• Walmart will not inquire about previous criminal convictions in its job application forms
• Walmart will fund workforce training programs for DC residents to be determined in consultation with a community stakeholder advisory council.
• Walmart will use first source hiring: at least 40% percent of its employees at each store will be residents of the ward where that store is located and at least 75% percent will be DC residents.
• Walmart will provide, on a per-store basis, ongoing funding for community funds controlled by community advisory councils

Luckily, Walmart will (of course) not sign such an absurd agreement, and there's nothing that the Living Wages Coalition can do about it.

Meanwhile, real community members, can't wait for the change:

Yvonne Williams, chair of the Board of Trustees for Bible Way Church—which has built hundreds of low-income apartments right across the street from the proposed Walmart, and is at work on 60 more—brought 50 signatures in favor of the project from local residents, and says they desperately need more affordable groceries than what they can get in CityVista Safeway and NoMa Harris Teeter.

“We’ve been praying for food in our neighborhood for 40 years,” Williams said. “We need Walmart here to meet the needs of our residents.”

More of that here.

Police, like everyone else, respond to incentives

In the astonishing clip above, a local television station in Tennessee monitors police agencies that patrol an interstate highway. In eastbound lanes, the traffic flow includes vehicles importing illegal drugs from Mexico. Ninety percent of the time, police ignore that side of the highway, because the cars traveling westbound are carrying cash back toward Mexico. And that's the bigger priority.

More here.

As always, people respond to incentives.

Track Hollywood Stars' Career Trajectory

A neat article in Slate which uses Rotten Tomatoes data to chart the career trajectory of Hollywood actors and directors.  It's interesting that actors on average have the same average Tomato-rating throughout their careers, and I would've expected the survivorship bias of directors to also show up among actors.

Another interesting things about the article was it named some high scoring movies on the Tomato meter.  Maybe I'll have to check some of them out...

Jean De Florette / Manon of the Spring

The Sweet Hereafter

Secrets and Lies

Another Year

Some beers I'd like to try in Philly

Simcoe dIPA
Perhaps a rival for Pliny?

Also, Stoudt's seems like a fun Philadelphia brewery:
Old Abominable
Smooth Hoperator
Fat Dog
Karnival Kolsch

As GM goes, so goes the country?

A Penn law prof is scathing in its review of the government bailout for GM in today's WSJ

President Obama's visit to a Chrysler plant in Toledo, Ohio, on Friday was the culmination of a campaign to portray the auto bailouts as a brilliant success with no unpleasant side effects. "The industry is back on its feet," the president said, "repaying its debt, gaining ground."

If the government hadn't stepped in and dictated the terms of the restructuring, the story goes, General Motors and Chrysler would have collapsed, and at least a million jobs would have been lost. The bailouts averted disaster, and they did so at remarkably little cost.

The problem with this happy story is that neither of its parts is accurate. Commandeering the bankruptcy process was not, as apologists for the bailouts claim, the only hope for GM and Chrysler. And the long-term costs of the bailouts will be enormous.

Block out those annoying LEDs

If one wanted to blot out today's ubiquitous LEDs he could always use electrical tape, but now there is a more elegant solution:  LED Sunglasses.  They block out 80% of the light form LEDs, and only cost $6.

Now if only I could buy actual sunglasses for that price...

Pliny the Elder!

This afternoon's beer was my favorite--Pliny the Elder!

I had a bottle dated 5.4.2011, and shared it with Julie before we go to a fancy dinner tonight (at Providence, review forthcoming).

As usual, Pliny was outstanding.  The head was light (since I poured it into two glasses) and the beer was a nice golden color.  The first taste was excellent-- (Julie:  "This is what beer should taste like!"), with a good deal of citrus, especially grapefruit.  The magic of PtE is it's ability to be 8% ABV and you would never know.

Anyway, I still have a bottle left in the fridge, and it's taking everything I have not to open it right now.  Truly this is an outstanding dIPA.

Grade:  A++

Summer Afternoon Pina Colada

This afternoon I decided to make myself a nice Pina Colada.  I am usually not a fan of sweet cocktails, but I make an exception for Island drinks.

This is the recipe I used, which I found online a few weeks ago:

Pina Colada:
1.5 oz Cream of Coconut/Coco Lopez
1 oz Heavy Cream
6oz Pineapple Juice
2oz white rum
approx 8oz ice
blend until creamy (no ice chunks)

Delicious! 

Great Divide Chocolate Oak Aged Yeti

After another successful trip to the liquor store last night, I tackled another beer on my list:  Great Divide's Chocolate Yeti.

I had it in a 22oz bomber bottle (bottled April 7, 2011), poured into a footed pilsner glass, both straight up and over vanilla bean ice cream.

The Yeti is a viscous very dark brown with a dark brown head.  Nose is a strong pleasant oak, with an undertone of bittersweet chocolate.  The first taste gives a feel of the high octane of the brew (9.5% ABV), but also a nice maltiness, oak, and chocolate.  Finish includes the bitterness of the hops, and definitely some spice from the cayenne pepper (!).  Overall, this beer is very bold, and honestly, probably would be better to mellow out for a little while (my bottle was only 2 months old).

Over ice cream was outstanding.  The float was made with a double pour over 3 scoops of ice cream in the same type of pilsner glass.  The richness and sweetness of the ice cream helped mellow out the strong ABV, and while I ate some ice cream with a spoon at the beginning, the end of the glass with the ice cream melted into the Yeti was fantastic.  Although this chocolate stout hardly needed more to seem like a dessert, the vanilla bean ice cream was incredible with some Yeti on top and made for a delicious way to wrap up my day.

Overall grade:  B+

Other Beers I'd like to try

Great Divide's Chocolate Yeti 
Maybe I could have a beer float with this?

Russian River's Supplication
Another A+ offering from RR

Ommegang's Gnomegang
A New York pale ale with a gnome on the front.  How can you go wrong?

Dubuissan's Scaldis
Per Robby's recommendation

House Votes to cut TSA Funding

House Votes to cut TSA funding by $270 million

It's a good first step to eliminating the TSA completely.  Also, I like how this agency spokeswoman speaks about the threat of terrorism, without discussing whether the TSA actually has prevented any terrorist action. 

“At a time when intelligence tells us that terrorists remain interested in attacking transportation, this amendment would cut TSA’s screening workforce by more than 10 percent,” about 5,000 people, said Kristin Lee, an agency spokeswoman.

The TSA is a big waste of time for everyone involved, and besides making millions of passengers remove their shoes, and forcing intense patdowns on people, they also steals your stuff. 

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"--Benjamin Franklin

Lagunitas Wilco Tango Foxtrot

Tonight's beer was Lagunitas's WTF! ale. The bottle I had was a 22oz bomber poured into chilled mug.Very little head, and what was there was light with splotchy lacing.  Beer was a nice brown hue, and the bouquet had some nice malts and more hops than I expected.  First taste was very hoppy, and had a dry finish.  Aftertaste a little malty, but more residual hops than I would expect from such a dark ale.  No strong alcohol taste, despite being 7.8% ABV.  Overall a nice bottle and at $4.29/bottle at my local shop it's an interesting ale worth a spin.

Grade: B

The only question that remains for Ohio State...

...is how big the penalty will be when it comes down.  

James said [Terrelle] Pryor's mother then purchased her own vehicle from a Columbus car dealership on "word of mouth."

Said James: "It was basically a deal where friends who had gone to the dealer say, 'This guy can be helpful to you.' It wasn't about a special deal. It was just that everyone knew to go there. If I'm a businessman and I can create a feeder system for athletes and parents to where people know to go there, what's wrong with that?"

What's wrong with that is that it's easy to violate NCAA rules for giving special deals to athletes.

James said that within the past 10 days, Pryor's mother purchased a 2007 Nissan 350Z sports car with about 80,000 miles on it for her son, from Auto Direct Columbus, Inc.
James said the vehicle was financed for "about $11,000" and that the payments are about the same as those she had been making on the Charger. [Emphasis mine]

The value of that car according to Kelley Blue Book is over $17,000.  I wonder why this dealer is giving 35% discounts to star athletes?

Full Story

$300million painting found behind sofa

Apparently some Air Force Lieutenant Colonel found an original Michelangelo behind the couch.

I've never found anything so nice behind my couch, though I doubt it would fetch more than $100million (pssh, tosh) due to the uncertainty surrounding it.

Elderly Japanese Volunteer for Risky jobs at Nuclear Reactor

Elderly Japanese people volunteer to do risky work at the nuclear reactor that's melting down.

These people are true heroes, and are the people who should be doing this work.

How to book a cheaper flight (to a hub city)

Arbitrage at work?  This seems to only work with one way flights to hub cities (Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, O'Hare, Salt Lake City, Charlotte), but I've always thought it would be a neat idea to book a connecting flight and hop off at the connection:  How to Beat High Airfares

A nonstop one-way ticket from Des Moines to Dallas/Fort Worth is $375 on American Airlines, for example — more than the $335 Delta will charge you to fly from Miami to Anchorage.

But what happens when you’re interested in flying American from Des Moines to Los Angeles, which hosts a more competitive airport? That flight is only about half the price ($186), despite its being more than double the distance. Now, here’s the trick: American flights from Des Moines to L.A. have a layover in Dallas. If you want to travel to Dallas, the best way to get a reasonable fare is to book the flight to Los Angeles instead, and simply get off the plane at Dallas.

Steve Cohen is a luckbox

Steve Cohen is a tape reader? I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Benjamin Graham disciple, and it's very hard for me to believe that people have made billions of dollars by gauging the "feel" of the market.

Cohen would become what Wall Streeters call a “tape reader,” perhaps the greatest of his generation, a trader who bets on stocks based on his intuitive reading of the movements of numbers. It’s a trading style known to some older Wall Streeters, but one that has fallen out of favor in recent decades in the face of computer-driven trading and analysis. From the beginning, Cohen never used mathematics or complicated algorithms, or, at least in his early years, any serious study of a company’s business fundamentals.

“There’s kind of an art to reading the tape,” he says. “I can’t really explain it; it’s about pattern recognition.” When he began trading, “I’m not looking at anything. Just the numbers on the screen. I couldn’t even tell you what the company did, and I don’t care. I’ve always been intuitive like that. It was always seat-of-the-pants.” He shrugs. “I mean, I’m not exactly classically trained.”

In 1978, Cohen graduated from college six months early to take a job offered by a friend of a friend at Gruntal & Co., a sleepy century-old brokerage whose trading floor occupied the 14th floor at 14 Wall Street. Cohen’s first job was in option arbitrage, which involved wrapping a single trade in so many hedges it was practically risk-free. It was boring. Studying tape all day, then going over it again every evening when the other brokers went home, Cohen played stocks on the side, and after a year or so realized he was getting good at it. “It occurred to me that I was more right than wrong on the direction of stocks,” he says. “So I thought, Why hedge them? Why not just buy stocks?” His bosses, looking at his returns, agreed to let him try.

“During college he would call me during class breaks, at lunch, and do a trade or two,” remembers Ron Aizer, Cohen’s broker, who hired and then supervised him at Gruntal. “He wasn’t a Goldman Sachs type. He wasn’t enamored of that prestige. I remember his very first day he made $10,000. He was far more advanced than other people his age. He started playing bigger and bigger as he evolved. I was the one who used to allocate the securities each guy could trade, and I’ll give you the classic line Steve gave me when, you know, I wouldn’t let him trade IBM or some other stock. He said to me, ‘Would you bat Mickey Mantle seventh?’ So I said, ‘I guess not,’ and changed the rules.”

Daily Links - June 1, 2011

The "luckiest" Blackjack player ever?

Don't buy a used Volt! (The law of unintended consequences)

(Related giving money away to big Auto:  US Loses $16 Billion on Auto Bailout )

The NAACP is an embarassment in NYC Charter Schools

Beers I would like to try before I leave California

Russian River's Pliny the Younger
Only available on tap, and where can I find it?!  I would love to get a chance to try it somewhere in SoCal.

Lagunitas's WTF! Ale
If someone was able to a beer with a name like WTF into production, it has to be pretty good.

Russian River's Blind Pig IPA
Pliny the Elder is probably my favorite beer of all time, so I would definitely like to try some other offerings from Russian River.

Stone's Double Bastard
I think Arrogant Bastard is good but not outstanding, though I haven't yet had a Stone brew I didn't enjoy.