Partial Correction re Cold Steel Knife Post and an Apology

On a post dated February 21, we strongly recommended a particular cold steel knife. While we stick by that recommendation (it is the best kitchen utility knife ever), the website we referred to from which to buy it is a total scam. They don't answer emails or phone calls, and don't seem to stock the products they say they stock. There are many complaints about them on The Google. We apologize for any inconvenience. Yes, we realize we have had to do more corrections in the past couple of days than we have in years, and rest assured, our Quality Valuation Compliance (QVC) group is taking a serious and studied look at all of our procedures and processes to ensure that we meet the highest standards we always strive to meet.

Correction and Clarification re Two Recent Posts re Plug-In Hybrids and Yellow Tail

We do not hesitate to make a correction or modification when something we have written is brought to our attention as needing such. A loyal reader has brought two matters to our attention that do need correction or modification:

1.  Regarding our strong endorsement of Yellow Tail wines, we withdraw it. While what we said was correct as to taste and cost, one should never ignore the carbon footprint resulting from drinking a wine produced and bottled in Australia. Shame on anyone who does or who ignorantly forgets to take the environmental impact into account in every action or recommendation. Rest assured, we shall be doing an EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) for every future post.

2.  Regarding our comment on plug-in hybrids, we had it backwards.  You are better with a plug-in hybrid if you do most of your driving around town--as opposed to taking long driving trips--because you can then operate the car almost exclusively as an electric vehicle. Our loyal reader owns a Prius Prime, which is admittedly expensive for the use to which we put it (mostly short trips around town), but it almost never operates on the gas engine.  It has a range of about 30 miles on the electric motor.  He has owned it for 4 months, and he still has 3/4 of a tank of the original gas. [PS: We attribute our mistake to the author's having a senior moment. He is an old man who gets confused easily, and cannot afford a Prius Prime anyhow]

Rake (Netflix 4 Seasons): Update re Season 1 Through 5 Episodes

Rake gets better and better with each episode. The people are real--almost everyone is a good guy and a bad guy--a smarty and a dupe--a savior and a scoundrel--a humanitarian and a misanthrope. The acting is fantastic. The writing is superb. The twists and turns are mesmerizing. If you like law shows, you cannot but love this. If don't like law shows, you might even love this more. While Hugh Laurie would have been a fabulous choice for the lead, Richard Roxburgh is peerless, while the rest of the cast stands their own with him. The only regret you might have as you get half way through the first season, is that the series is only four seasons, and that it will end. This is a terrific series, and even though it's set in Australia, you'll have no problem with the language.

Proof That Jews Do Not Control the Media (Or At Least Not the AP)

[Courtesy of a Loyal (Episcopalian) Reader]

Correction: School Shooting-Florida story

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — In a story Feb. 22 about the Florida school shooting, The Associated Press misquoted Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel in some versions of the story when he spoke about the families of the victims. He said, "I've been to their homes where they're sitting shiva," not "where they sit and shiver."

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PS: "Shiva" (Hebrew: שבעה‎, literally "seven") is the mourning period in Judaism for first-degree relatives: father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, and spouse. The ritual is referred to as "sitting shiva."

PPS: "Shiver" means to shake or tremble with cold, fear, excitement, etc.

Tide PODS

Many people with HE washing machines avoid Tide PODS. But Tide PODS are HE compatible and, hence, you can get all the advantages of Tide PODS (including: avoiding the mess and measuring of liquids and powders; reduced storage space; easier inventory tracking; and enhance cleansing power in all water temperatures and load sizes) and continue to enjoy all the advantages of your HE washer. Note also that Tide PODS come in a plethora of varieties, designed to satisfy even the fussiest of washing pros or highly-skilled washing amateurs.



Link to Tide PODS Website and Description

Facebook: Sometimes a Better Way to Get a Reluctant Company's Attention

Say your Aeron chair, which you bought at Goodman's Furniture, needs a repair to one its armrests. You phone the service department three times over three days and consistently get voice mail and return call. Likewise, you send two emails to the service department and an email through the online form and still no response. You even send an email to Adam Goodman whose name and email appear on the website, and still no response, nor do you get any response to your email to Herman Miller. Then, on Sunday night, you post the history of your woes on their Facebook page. Schzam! It's like a Xmas miracle. You get a phone call early Monday morning from Goodman's. No apology, but a phone call, and your issue is resolved.

PS: If you don't have a Facebook account, you can have a Facebook member do the post for you. In that event, you should draft the post, be sure to make clear its you and not the Facebook member who had the problem, and, MOST IMPORTANT, do not place the post unless the Facebook member completely and freely gives his or her totally willing consent and, indeed, agreement for the Facebook post.

Plugin Hybrids

Many people shun plugins because, given all their fuel and environmental advantages, driving to far away remote places can be a challenge. Enter the plugin hybrid. The ones from BMW are too ugly for words (which is surprising given how stylish BMWs tend to be). The Chevrolet Volt is, well, American, and in the main, American cars still have failed to match the Japanese for instrumentation and ease of feature control. That leaves the Prius Prime and Honda Clarity. The Prius leads in fuel economy but the Honda Clarity leads in style. The fuel economy of both is just astounding (100+ mpg on electricity and over 40 for the Honda and 50 for the Prius on gas), making them each worth your look in your next car buy: Link to Economy Comparisons of New Hybrid Plugins

PS: Regular hybrids are less expensive than hybrid plugins. So, if you never take road trips to exotic far-away places, you don't need to splurge on a hybrid plugin. And if you only take a rare road trip such places, remember, with the savings on going the regular hybrid route, you can always just rent a car for such trips. 

Costco (Kirkland) Olive Oil

There appears to be a pricing blip at Costco on its olive oil that you might consider taking advantage of. The price of its organic extra virgin olive oil is less than its inorganic extra virgin olive oil. And no, you don't have to rush out to get it. You can order it online at costco.com and it will be delivered in two days. Please store it in a cool place. 

Protesting the Affiliation of Apple, Amazon, and Google (YouTube) With NRATV

We don't do politics here, but we do believe in the inalienable right of all Americans to their freedom from the second amendment. In that spirit, you might consider sending emails to Apple, Amazon, and Google to tell them that, unless they cut their connection and support of NRATV, you will cut your connection to them and their products. If you haven't seen any NRATV shows, here is a one-minute sample that says everything: Link to the Evil Dana Loesch

Feel free to copy and paste the following:

I have been an Amazon Prime customer for years. Amazon has been my e-tailer of choice for years. But, if Amazon does not sever its affiliation with NRATV, I shall cancel my Amazon Prime membership and stop buying anything from Amazon. [Go to Contact Us on Amazon Website]*

I own an Apple phone and subscribe to Apple services. I love Apple products and services. But, if Apple does not sever its affiliation with NRATV, I shall trade-in my Apple phone for an Android and stop using any Apple services. [Link to Send Email]

I own a Google Pixel phone. If YouTube (Google) does not sever its affiliation with NRATV, I shall trade-in my Google phone and switch to AT&T or T-Mobile. [This is a bit indirect but Google seems impossible to actually contact]

________________________

     *  You just might get a response from Radhakrishnan, which will read: "Thank you for taking time and writing to us with you concern regarding NRA. I will definitely look into it. I'd like to inform you that, you did the right thing of sending us this email about the issue you experienced on our website. 

I'll make sure to forward your email as a feedback on to the appropriate people in our company and I can make you sure that we do take reports such as yours very seriously and we'll take immediate actions to rectify this. and be sure that Amazon for sure will cut NRA ties at the earliest."

Benefits of Counting Your Blessings and Teaching Your Children to as Well

[From the WSJ]

Some of her sons’ peers, she says, are lacking in the basics of gratitude, such as looking adults in the eye to thank them. The saddest part, she says, is that many parents don’t even expect their children to be grateful anymore. They are accustomed to getting no acknowledgment for, say, devoting their weekend to driving from activity to activity. There is “such a lack of respect,” she says.

Every generation seems to complain that children “these days” are so much more entitled and ungrateful than in years past. This time, they might be right. In today’s selfie culture, which often rewards bragging and arrogance over kindness and humility, many people are noticing a drop-off in everyday expressions of gratitude.

In a 2012 national online poll of 2,000 adults, commissioned by the John Templeton Foundation, 59% of those surveyed thought that most people today are “less likely to have an attitude of gratitude than 10 or 20 years ago.” The youngest group, 18- to 24-year-olds, were the least likely of any age group to report expressing gratitude regularly (only 35%) and the most likely to express gratitude for self-serving reasons (“it will encourage people to be kind or generous to me”).

“In some communities, specifically among the white middle and upper-middle class, there’s good reason to believe that kids are less grateful than in the past,” says psychologist Richard Weissbourd, faculty director of the Making Caring Common initiative at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. He places much of the blame on the self-esteem movement.

As Dr. Weissbourd sees it, parents were fed a myth that if children feel better about themselves—if parents praise them, cater to their every need and make them feel happy—it will help them to develop character. “But what we’re seeing in many cases is the opposite: When parents organize their lives around their kids, those kids expect everyone else to as well, and that leads to entitlement,” he says. And when children are raised to feel entitled to everything, they are left feeling grateful for nothing.

A growing body of research points to the many psychological and social benefits of regularly counting your blessings. The good news for parents: It also suggests that it’s never too late for their children to learn the subtle joys of appreciating the good in their lives. Gratitude can be cultivated at any age, whether it finds expression as a mood, a social emotion or a personality trait.

Researchers find that people with a grateful disposition are more thankful for a wider variety of things in their lives, such as their friends, their health, nature, their jobs or a higher power—and that they experience feelings of gratitude more intensely. For them, gratitude isn’t a one-off “thank you.” It’s a mind-set, a way of seeing the world.

“Gratitude is also a spiritual emotion, whether it’s implicitly or explicitly expressed,” says David Rosmarin, director of the Spirituality and Mental Health Program at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. Almost every world religion includes gratitude as part of its value system, he says, citing familiar practices such as prayers of thanks or blessings over food.

In a study led by Dr. Rosmarin, published in 2011 in the Journal of Positive Psychology, researchers surveyed more than 400 adults online, assessing their religious and general gratitude, their religious commitment, and their mental and physical well-being. The researchers found, in keeping with past studies, that general gratitude was associated with less anxiety, less depression and greater well-being. They also found that religious gratitude—toward God—was associated with additional reductions in anxiety and depression and increases in well-being.

It can be difficult to remember to be grateful, for adults and children alike. Kristen Welch, a mother of three children between the ages of 11 and 18, lives outside of Houston and is the author of “Raising Grateful Kids in an Entitled World.” She admits that she was once “constantly comparing myself and my home to what others had.” If she visited a neighbor who was remodeling her kitchen, she would come back wanting to redo hers too, even though her kitchen didn’t need it. She noticed a similar attitude in her children. “Whenever I’d give them something, it was never enough. They always wanted more,” she says.

Most of the research on the benefits of gratitude has been focused on adults, but researchers are now turning their attention to how gratitude can better the lives of children, too. They’re finding that the experience of high levels of gratitude in the adolescent years can set a child up to thrive.

Gratitude initiates what researchers call an “upward spiral of positive emotions.” Adolescents who rate higher in gratitude tend to be happier and more engaged at school, as compared with their less grateful peers, and to give and receive more social support from family and friends. They also tend to experience fewer depressive symptoms and less anxiety, and they are less likely to exhibit antisocial behavior, such as aggression.

Counting your blessings may provide a built-in coping strategy, as research among adults suggests. Grateful people experience daily hassles and annoyances just like everyone else, but they tend to view setbacks through a different lens, reframing challenges in a positive light.

Dr. Weissbourd gives the example of one of his students, who comes from a low-income community in South America: “We were talking about gratitude, and he said that whenever he gets frustrated about waiting for the bus, he reminds himself that where he’s from, most people have to walk,” he says.

For a study published last year in the Journal of Positive Psychology, researchers tracked the role of gratitude in the lives of more than 500 adolescents from an affluent area of Long Island in New York over the course of four years, as they moved from middle school to high school. At four different points, students filled out questionnaires, rating on a scale of 1 to 7 how strongly they agreed with statements such as, “I have so much to be thankful for”; “If I had to list everything that I felt grateful for, it would be a very long list”; and “I am grateful to a wide variety of people.”

The researchers also measured antisocial and prosocial behaviors. They asked the students to rate how often (never, sometimes, often) they “stuck up for another kid who was in trouble,” for example, or made “a kid upset because you were mean to them.” The researchers looked as well at the students’ satisfaction with different aspects of their lives (school, self, family friends), how much support they received from family and friends, and their levels of empathy and self-regulation.

The study found that a growth in gratitude over the four years not only predicted a growth in prosocial behavior, it also predicted a decrease in negative social behavior compared with students whose gratitude levels stayed level or decreased. Being grateful might “undercut the motives for acting antisocially among adolescents,” the researchers suggest.

Students who were more grateful were also better at managing their lives and identifying important goals for the future, says lead researcher Giacomo Bono, assistant professor of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills. “When adolescents regularly express gratitude,” he adds, “it’s a good litmus test that they’re thriving.”

Grateful adolescents enjoy stronger relationships with their peers, in part perhaps because their positive disposition makes them more attractive and likable. In a 2015 study published in the journal Emotion, researchers conducted an experiment with 70 undergraduate students. They found that acquaintances were more likely to want to stay in touch with a student who expressed gratitude toward them (in writing) than students who didn’t show appreciation. Grateful students were perceived by peers as having a warmer personality and being more friendly and thoughtful.

As parents, we do our best to teach our children to be grateful, by doing things such as nagging them to writing thank you notes. Experts warn, however, that our best efforts can backfire and actually become a barrier to genuinely experiencing gratitude. Children need to learn how to “think” gratefully, they say, not just to mindlessly go through the motions of giving thanks.

Ms. Cormier says that she has worked hard to make gratitude a family habit since her children were little—and now it has become the norm. She encourages finding gratitude in the “everyday stuff,” she says, not just in response to birthday and Christmas presents. She also tries to teach gratitude by example. When her children help out around the house, like noticing when the trash is full and taking it out, or holding the door open, she thanks them. And now, she says, “my kids thank me every single time I put fresh sheets on their bed,” chaperone a field trip or make them dinner.

In a paper published in 2014 in the journal School Psychology Review, researchers describe an educational program that they developed to train elementary-school students, ages 8 to 11, in gratitude. More than 200 students participated. Half were assigned to a control condition, while the other half were assigned to the gratitude intervention, which some received for one week and others for more than five. The program’s lessons included, for example, reading “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein and asking students to write down one thing they would do to show the generous tree in the story that they were grateful for what she had done.

Researchers found that students who received the training, even for just one week, were not only better at “thinking” gratefully, they also reported experiencing more grateful emotions and greater increases in positive social behavior (such as writing thank-you notes) and emotional well-being than students in the control group. When researchers followed up five months later with students who had stayed in the program longer, these positive effects had continued to grow. With intentional practice, experts say that gratitude can move from a fleeting state to a habit and can eventually become a personality trait.

Casey Rummel, an 11th-grade English teacher at Leadership Public Schools in Richmond, Calif., used the gratitude curriculum in his class as part of an upcoming study. It made such an impact that he’s continuing to use it even though the study ended.

Using a computer program developed by their school, students spend the first four minutes of each class expressing gratitude to their classmates in writing. These notes have included such simple messages as: “thanks for always being there bro appreciate it much love” or, “Thanks for being a welcoming person....” Some of the notes Mr. Rummel has read, particularly between the boys, are things “they likely wouldn’t feel comfortable saying out loud,” he says.

The research points to several ways that parents can help children to think gratefully. Parents can spur their children to appreciate and reflect on the time and thought behind the gifts and kindness they receive, as in: “Jack really knows how much you love football. How thoughtful that he gave you a jersey of your favorite team” or “Wow, Grandma just took a five-hour train ride to come and see you perform in that play.”

A turning point for the Welch family came when they started volunteering as a family to assist poverty-stricken communities, at home and overseas. Two years ago, her daughter went on a volunteer trip to help rebuild homes in rural Texas. One house had floors so rotted that you could see the ground. When her daughter came home, Ms. Welch says, she got down and hugged the floor and said, ‘I’ve never been grateful for a floor, but now I am.’”

Last year, Kathryn Virmani, mother of two from Westfield, N.J., helped to organize a fundraiser with an educational component at her children’s school to teach responsible citizenship and encourage gratitude. “A bad day for kids in our town is a parent not letting them use their Xbox,” she says. The students raised money for Heifer International, a nonprofit that aids struggling communities world-wide. When the kids heard some of the villages had no access to water or electricity, they asked “ ‘why don’t the people just go to the supermarket?’ The very thought that supermarkets don’t exist in some places was an eye-opener,” says Ms. Virmani.

For some parents, a good starting point is simply to set a better example themselves. In the Templeton poll, less than half of respondents said that they express thanks or gratitude daily to their spouse or partner.

It’s also important for children—and adults—to notice and acknowledge the larger circle of people who benefit their lives, like the school secretary or janitor, says Dr. Weissbourd. “In a society that has become so splintered and self-focused,” he says, “gratitude is a common bond and offers one of the best ways for us to connect with one another.”

Ms. Wallace is a freelance writer in New York City.

Bargain Hunting for Hotel Snobs

[From the WSJ]

HIGHFLIERS

Luxury Bared

Launched in 2015 in the U.K., Luxury Bared concentrates on the top end of the luxury market (posh resorts such as Sandy Lane in Barbados and Amanjena in Morocco), publishes highly detailed reviews produced by its own team of inspectors and books directly with hotels, resorts and cruise lines.

Cost Access to directory and reviews is free; $35 a month buys you platinum membership with full access to all content and a number of other bells and whistles (see Perks, below).

Perks Platinum members get the best available room rate, concierge service and access to 247 airport lounges. Other typical perks include full breakfast for two, spa credits, early check-in and late checkout, plus extras specific to certain hotels. For example, at the Mandarin Oriental in Shanghai, you might get a private artist-led tour of a prominent art gallery.

Sample Properties Park Hyatt Abu Dhabi, Cheval Blanc Randheli in the Maldives (pictured at top), Brown’s London. luxurybared.com

BEAT THE ODDS

DreamCheaper

For the obsessive price-comparer, this no-frills Berlin-based company does the compulsive checking for you. Once you’ve got a hotel reservation that you can cancel without penalty, you send it via email to DreamCheaper. The site scans 100 other booking sites and hotel companies to find you a lower price and when it does, it’ll rebook your room.

Cost Registration is free but the cost varies by booking (see below)

Perks Savings—an average of 15% (and up to 60%). The company keeps 20% of the savings. dreamcheaper.com

FAMILY SIZE

Suiteness

Founded in 2014 and specializing in hotel and resort suites that accommodate four or more people, Suiteness currently contracts with properties in 20 U.S. cities—Seattle to Washington, D. C.—plus London. The company aims to take the hassle out of finding suites that are not widely listed and adjoining rooms that appeal to young families or groups traveling together.

Cost Free

Perks Best possible rate for suites with the guarantee that if you find a better price through another source, Suiteness will refund the difference; also concierge service and donations made to local charities with each booking.

Sample Properties Nobu Hotel at Caesars Palace Las Vegas, The Carlyle New York City, Kimpton Aertson in Nashville. suiteness.com

QUIRKY CLUB

Tablet Hotels

When it launched in 2000, Tablet Hotels was like an online guide to the coolest hotels of the world. According to co-founder Laurent Vernhes, the site has a quirky bent. “We are biased toward independent hotels and the best hotels within the chains, like Ritz Carlton and Park Hyatt,” he said. By now it’s grown to include 1,400 anonymously reviewed properties in 88 countries and offers rooms at the lowest available rate, which can be booked with or without membership to the Tablet Plus Travel Club.

Cost Tablet Plus is $99 a year, and, if you’re feeling generous, you can book properties for friends as well.

Perks Upgrades, Wi-Fi, spa discounts, plus location-specific benefits like parking in Los Angeles (true value!) and an app that lets you create “staylists,” like playlists, of your favorite hotels and share your lists with other Tablet users.

Sample Properties El Palauet Living Barcelona; Shangri-La Sydney; the Heywood Hotel in Austin, Texas, tablethotels.com

KEEPING UP WITH THE 1%

Velocity Black

Membership at Velocity Black, an exclusive mobile app-based venture started in 2016 by former Goldman Sachs banker Zia Yusuf, doubled each quarter last year. Applicants are vetted and interviewed before acceptance because, as Mr. Yusuf explained, the goal is to build a community of like-minded frequent travelers—across industries from tech to entertainment—who are looking for “that next great Instagram” (and have an average of 1,800 Instagram followers). Members get access to what is effectively a turbocharged concierge service that responds via app, within 60 seconds. According to Mr. Yusuf, the concierge can secure everything from tickets to a sold-out John Mayer concert to a private visit to the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles for a marriage proposal.

Cost $2,400 a year, plus a $900 initiation fee.

Perks Access to private events around the globe, on-the-fly restaurant reservations, “local intel” in 100 cities, free upgrades at hotels and on airplanes and bragging rights: The model Gigi Hadid is a founding member.

Sample Properties Mandarin Oriental Tokyo, Hotel du Cap Eden Roc on the French Riviera, Baccarat Hotel New York City. velocity.black

Trump: The New Yogi Berra

Trump at CPAC Speech: "I actually have kept more campaign promises than I made." Priceless.

Bond Strategy

[Prefatory Note: We don't do politics or financial advice here. Do not take this thought as financial advice. Just take it as a random thought you might talk about with your financial advisor. If you don't have a financial advisor, i.e., if you don't have someone who knows more about financial stuff than you do, consider getting one]

We have talked before about the serious disadvantage of getting bond exposure through mutual funds or ETFs because the bonds held by them never expire, and so in effect, you are making an interest rate play. At the same time, while individual bonds do have a set expiration date, buying them has default risk and, other than bond experts, are beyond most people's expertise. One alternative is to buy bonds through a bond management company like Cincinnati Asset Management (CAM), where for a small fee, they do the bond buying (in investment grade corporate bonds) and monitor for default risk (they've never had a defaulting bond), but you actually hold the bonds so that they will have fixed maturity dates. Two issues with CAM are that: (i) there is a minimum amount to open and maintain an account; and (ii) the fee is a percent of the value the account, i.e., the higher the value of the account, the greater the fee. Here is a possible work-around: Put the minimum in CAM to qualify, and then for any further bond purchases, pick bonds that are held in the CAM account, so that, if CAM sells one because of a looming credit quality issue, you can sell it in your other account. This strategy might be additional attractive in a Roth IRA where the interest/dividends are tax-free.  

Link to CAM Website

Mining Bitcoins Explained

[From the WSJ]

Many people seem to be confused by bitcoins in general (which have been described as virtual tulips) and by bitcoin mining in particular. This article will answer all your questions about bitcoin mining. For those with a limited attention span, it can be summarized as follows: Where do bitcoins come from? With paper money, a government decides when to print and distribute money. Bitcoin doesn't have a central government. With Bitcoin, miners use special software to solve math problems and are issued a certain number of bitcoins in exchange. This provides a smart way to issue the currency and also creates an incentive for more people to mine. Here then is a fuller explanation, and if anyone understands this, they are either a genius or a blathering idiot.

But while running one rig, he kept tripping the circuit breaker in his home. So the 20-year-old looked into leasing commercial space but struggled to find a large-enough place without neighbors who would mind the noise.

As the dramatic surge in bitcoin’s price lures both individuals and corporations to try their hand at mining cryptocurrencies, many people are facing similar problems to Mr. Poteat. That’s giving rise to “hosting” or “colocation” services that make mining easier for the masses by providing ready infrastructure, security and electricity.

In February, Mr. Poteat moved his equipment into a data center run by Bcause , a five-year-old company that is laying out plans to build the largest bitcoin mining operation in North America.

“It’s just difficult as an individual to handle all the logistics,” Mr. Poteat said.

Bitcoin mining can be expensive and cumbersome, requiring specialized hardware and massive amounts of power. Such challenges have long prompted miners to share space and resources. Now, companies that harbor mining equipment are fielding more requests than ever.

Even as bitcoin prices have tumbled about 40% from a December peak, the amount of computing effort expended by miners, also known as the hash rate, has continued climbing. That likely indicates more miners are jumping into the network, according to market observers.

Miners are rewarded with new coins and transaction fees for performing the calculations that make the bitcoin network tick. The more valuable a bitcoin is, the greater the incentive to start mining. But the more miners who participate, the more computations are needed to earn rewards.

Bcause is one of the firms that have sprung up to cater to aspiring bitcoin miners. In an old beverage warehouse in Virginia, the startup is running thousands of rigs for clients from the U.S. to Asia. It has received $5 million in Series A funding, led by Japanese financial services firm SBI Holdings Inc., and plans to raise more.

Bcause has contracts with wholesale clients to house about 60,000 mining rigs, and will serve retail clients by renting out spare machines, a process known as “cloud mining.” It has about 5,000 machines up and running and plans to outfit another site in eastern Pennsylvania.

The company was initially founded to provide bitcoin options contracts for investors trying to hedge their cryptocurrency investments. But the team decided to incorporate hosting services last year as bitcoin surged and mining became profitable again.

“The demand is overwhelming,” said Fred Grede, chief executive officer of Bcause and a former executive at the Hong Kong Exchange and Chicago Board of Trade. “That’s where the revenue is.”

One of the most popular mining machines, known as the Antminer S9 and manufactured by Chinese firm Bitmain, is frequently sold out, forcing customers to wait months for delivery. Each rig costs about $2,300 but can go for as much as $5,000 on the secondary market.

Bcause’s retail clients can rent a Antminer S9 for about $4,800 for one year. The company declined to provide prices for institutional clients, who purchase their own machines.

Traditionally, the world’s biggest bitcoin miners have set up shop in places with low-cost electricity and cool climates to accommodate the heat given off by the mining rigs. However, the spectacular rise in bitcoin has afforded more location flexibility, miners say.

China’s crackdown on domestic mining could also lead many in the country to consider alternative areas to run their operations.

“A lot of people don’t trust going to China and putting all that investment into China,“ said Michael Adolphi, chief operating officer at Bcause. “We’ve made it economically feasible for them to bring it here.”

Still, the extreme volatility of bitcoin has some questioning how long the mining boom will last.

In mid-2014, when bitcoin fell more than 50% from the end of 2013 to about $500, mining operations were forced to consolidate, said Garrick Hileman, chief executive of research firm Mosaic.io.

“A combination of inefficient hardware and declining bitcoin price led a lot of them to close up shop,” Mr. Hileman said. The industry could experience a similar shakeout if prices start to drop again, he said.

The bitcoin price at which miners can still profitably run rigs varies depending on electricity costs, scale and the difficulty of mining. Some miners estimated the cutoff to be around $1,000 per bitcoin, though one small-scale miner pinned his exit level around $4,000.

At about $11,700 late Tuesday, miners point out bitcoin prices are still 10 times their value versus a year earlier.

“Mining is still insanely profitable at the moment,“ said a spokesman for Genesis Mining, a cloud mining company that rents computing power to customers. ”One of the biggest challenges in the space is just building out the mining capacity to meet the demand.”

As a hosting service, Bcause says it is insulated from major price shocks, since it doesn’t invest in the mining equipment or the cryptocurrency itself.

It plans to build out a one-stop shop for trading bitcoin, with spot and derivatives exchanges, as well as a clearing house, pending regulatory approval.

David Bowman, who operates a small mining facility in Plattsburgh, N.Y., said he started selling contracts for cloud mining for the steadier revenue. However, he acknowledged the risks.

“The difficult part is the price,” said Mr. Bowman, who has 30 machines running in an office space. “The price is anyone’s guess. It’s kind of a shot in the dark sometimes.”

Best Kitchen Knives: Taiwan Cold Steel 400 Series Kitchen Classic Sub Zero Quench

If you favor expensive watches or designer brands of other products that actually are not superior function-wise, stop reading now. But if you are looking for the absolute best kitchen knives at any price, and these are exceedingly inexpensive, then you cannot do better than the Taiwan Cold Steel 400 Series Kitchen Classic Sub Zero Quench. In particular, the steak knives make the best utility knives ever--their cutting ability is unsurpassed, they last forever, and they are extremely comfortable to use. Our Kitchen Utility Panel (KUP) has been testing them for 25 years as general purpose knives, and they do as good a job today as they did 25 years ago, and a better job than any other knife ever has done. 

Link to Knife Website

Signing for FedEx Deliveries Online

Some FedEx shippers require a signature before leaving a delivery. All international shipments, whether the shipper requires it or not, require such a signature. This can be an inconvenience if you are not home. However, if you sign up with the FedEx Delivery Manager (which is free), you can customize your general delivery preferences (e.g., where packages should be left) as well as options for specific deliveries (e.g., you can "sign" for the delivery so it will be left even if no one is home to sign upon its actual arrival) and to set vacation holds.

Link to FedEx Delivery Management Enrollment Website

Correction re Using a Bose Mini Soundlink With Your Television

In a post dated February 17, we suggested using a Bose Mini Soundlink (or other such mini speaker) as a speaker for your television, which can be connected by bluetooth or cable. As for a cable connection, the post referenced a 3.5mm RCA Y cable, but should have noted more specifically to be sure it is a mini 3.5mm cable, with a 3.5mm connection on both ends (unless your television's audio output ports are some other size). If you ordered the wrong cable from Amazon for $8, it would cost you $6 to return them so you'd get only a $2 refund, hence you will have paid $12 if you return them and only $8 if you don't, and you can give them to charity. We apologize for the incomplete information in that earlier post. 

Print Friendly: Decluttering a Website

Most webpages, including newspaper and magazine articles, are filled with ads and such. Mercury Reader has been my browser extension choice to remove the clutter and produce a clean page. But Print Friendly looks to be better in several ways, e.g., having its own link to share it with others and including the URL.

Link to Print Friendly Website for Browser Extension Download

Check Your Router for Malware

One component of your computer system might not be as secure as the others, namely, your router. In a nanosecond, with no cost, by clicking on the blue "Check your router" button at this site, you will know if you have malware in your router: Link to Check Your Router Website 

Browser That Does Not Track You: DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is the most stupidly named search engine around, but it's actually pretty good to use. It works just as you would expect - type something into the box and the results appear in a familiar format. But the most compelling reason to use it is that, unlike most other search systems, it doesn't track you, doesn't show you ads, and doesn't sell your data to other companies who might want to show you ads in the future for things you've been searching for.

Download Link to DuckDuckGo

Toto Neorest vs. Kohler Veil: Battle of the Smart Toilets (and a Note on Dissonance Theory)

Dissonance Theory (which says that, post-purchase or post-decision, one will accentuate the positive and depress the negatives associated with the decision) teaches us that buyers of the Toto Neorest will believe their smart toilet is the better while buyers of the Kohler Veil will think theirs is. The lesson: Do not trust customer comparisons when it comes to smart toilets. Here, then, is an excellent piece analyzing the pros and cons of the two commodes, which is well to consult before plunging in on your smart toilet purchase: Link to Smart Toilet Comparison Analysis

Post-Script: Here is an real-life example of Dissonance Theory: The summer between junior and senior years in college, my roommate, a math major, worked at a chemical company and cleared $3,000. He bought a car that was a hideous purple color, but as he explained, the car was discounted so much because of the unsightly color he was willing to abide the color to get a car he otherwise could not have afforded. Six months after the purchase, the paint start to peel, but being under warranty, the dealer agreed to re-paint the car--any color my roommate wanted. Guess what color he chose: Yup, the same hideous purple. Some people are more highly dissonant than others. My roommate was off the charts, but a wonderful person nonetheless. 

Seeing Allred (Netflix, 2018)

[Prefatory Note: Sometimes, the posts in this blog might be seen to stretch or alter the truth a bit or attempt humor that does not conform to reality.  In this instance, the post is completely accurate. No jokes]

Seeing Allred is a documentary about the life and career of Gloria Allred, and to a much lesser extent her daughter, Lisa Bloom. Perhaps all families are weird, but many will say that the family I came from might be a little weirder than most, one example of which is that it is a family that does have the kind of large family functions others do, with the result that many family members have never met each other and cannot figure out how they are related to each other. My mother (who looked strikingly like Gloria Allred) and her father (who did not look like Gloria Allred except they were about the same height) were related to and very close to Gloria Allred (e.g., my mother attended Lisa Bloom's marriage), but no one else in the family ever met her or talked to her or has any clue how any of us are related to her. Given that disclaimer, I will say this: Whatever preconception you might have about Gloria Allred, Seeing Allred is worth watching.  

IMDb Link to Seeing Allred

Quick and Unobstrusive TV Audio Fix

If you have a relatively new television, you're likely dazzled by the picture (especially if you have a 75" or larger screen) but underwhelmed by the sound. Soundbars, wireless headphones, and surround systems can solve the problem, and there are countless alternatives at all price levels. One additional alternative is to use your little portable sound box, like the Bose Mini Link, which has fantastic sound and will connect to your TV by bluetooth or with a 3.5mm RCA-Y audio cable available for under $10. And you can still move it to another room to listen to music or take it with you on trips, which other audio alternatives are not very good at.

Saying Enough Is Not Enough

Fewer than 3,500 Americans have died as a result of international terrorist actions (which includes 9/11), and a few hundred more from domestic terrorist actions. About 4,000 Americans have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and add 58,000 in Vietnam. In the last two years, more Americans died from gun shots than in all those attacks and wars, and 33,000 will die this year and every year hence from gun shots. Add to the gun deaths the deaths from cancer and heart disease, and yet we are turning over this country politicians intent on spending billions to keep and throw out immigrants, who have a lower criminal rate than any group, and cutting back spending on anything that actually might make a difference. When Republican senators collect $3M each from the NRA (John McCain gets over $7M), and the president gets $21M, lets hope the citizens of Broward County use the opportunity they have to tell the Republicans that enough is enough. In that vein, here is a letter to the NYT we applaud:

"If the leaders in Broward County (the sheriff, the school superintendent, the mayor), and the affected parents and students and faculty, want to do something immediately, beyond words, beyond saying “enough is enough,” to stand up for gun safety laws and a national policy to stem gun violence, then they need stand up now to those who are beholden to the NRA. Specifically, they need to tell Governor Scott and President Trump that they are not welcome in Broward County, they are not welcome to come and speak, until and unless they are willing to say: “Enough is enough. I no longer will accept the financial support of the NRA so that I can honestly engage in a meaningful way to find ways for this country to adopt gun safety laws and take such other steps that are needed to stop this kind of mass killing.”

Apps to Help Picking a Wine

[This post is courtesy of cnet. If you instead would like the recommendation of our Group for Rating Alcohol Products Enthusiastically (GRAPE), just go with Yellow Tail. You can't beat the price or the taste. Indeed, we have found it to be a naive imported little wine with no breeding but you surely will be amazed by it's presumption. And it comes with screw tops, which we strongly recommend, and if you're an aficionado, you can get a Yellow Tail t-shirt to proudly display your discerning palette]

Vivino Wine Scanner:  It provides tons of information in a neatly organized app and lets you order wine for delivery. There are a number of apps that let you scan a wine label to get information about the wine, but Vivino Wine Scanner app provides the most useful information.

Wine-Searcher: No account sign-up necessary and skilled at scanning beer and spirits in addition to wine.

Wine Spectator WineRatings+: Wine Spectator is the Bible of wine ratings.

SlimJet: Portable Browser With Ad-Blocker

Slimjet is a free portable browser. Like many others in the market, it's based on the Chromium engine. It's in good company, because Google's Chrome is too. And Slimjet has a number of handy features. It has a built-in ad blocker, to help preserve your bandwidth and avoid distractions. It integrates neatly with Facebook, providing some extra features. And, purely aesthetic but interesting nonetheless, its tabs are a little less rounded than the default Chromium ones. Not as square as Internet Explorer or Firefox, but not as rounded as Chrome. Which I think happens to look rather nice. As a portable option if you want it, just download the file, run it to decompress it, then double-click the application icon to try the browser. Nothing gets added to your PC's registry, so you can simply delete the downloaded folder if you don't like it, and every trace of the application will be gone. This also means that you can keep it on a USB stick and run it on multiple machines if you want, or keep it in Dropbox or OneDrive in order to do the same.

Like all browsers, Slimjet works happily alongside any other, so it's perfectly safe to try Slimjet even if you currently use Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Edge, or anything else. You don't need to limit yourself to just having one browser on your computer, despite what Microsoft likes to imply.

Link to SlimJet Download

Summary of the New Tax Law

In its February 14 edition, the WSJ has a third section that provides an excellent overview of the new tax law, with suggestions as to what to do about it. For example:

Charitable Deductions: With the doubling of the standard deduction, and caps on deductions for mortgage interest and state and local taxes, if you do not reach the limit to enable you to itemize charitable deductions, consider: (i) "bunching" donations every few years to your favorite charities; (ii) "bunch" donations every few years to your own donor-advised funds; and (iii) make your donations out of your IRA.

Estate and Gift Tax: See the WSJ.

Education (529 Plans): These plans have gotten a lot more flexible (e.g., allowing them to be used for K-12 tuition; enabling transfers to 529 ABLE accounts), but some states (e.g., New York) have warned that such withdrawals could have state-tax consequences.

Alimony: No longer will alimony payments be deductible to the spouse paying them or reportable as income for the spouse receiving them.