Trivia Tuesday August 29, 2017

And I think I'm crazy for adding more Christmas lights to outdo the neighbors!

Monday Morning Coffee August 28, 2017

Every six months, the head of the U.S. Fed testifies before Congress. 

In her testimony on Wednesday, nearly all of Fed Chair Janet Yellen's comments simply reiterated what had already been communicated by Fed officials. 

However, she did provide one new piece of information regarding future Fed policy which caused a significant reaction. Yellen said that the Fed would not have to raise the federal funds rate "all that much further" to reach a "neutral policy stance," which is the rate which neither helps nor hinders economic growth. 

The practical implication of a lower "neutral" rate is that the Fed would stop raising rates sooner than investors had previously expected. 

A potentially smaller number of future rate hikes is undoubtedly good news for mortgage rates.

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer. ~ Albert Einstein

Diabetes itself had been understood by its symptoms as far back as the 1600s - and the urination and thirst associated with it had been recognized thousands of years before.

A feared and usually deadly disease, doctors in the nineteenth century knew that sugar worsened diabetes and that limited help could be given by dietary restriction of sugar. But if that helped, it also caused death from starvation.

On the night of 31 October 1920, after reading a routine article in a medical journal while preparing a talk to medical students, FrederickBanting wrote down an idea for research aimed at isolating an internal secretion of the pancreas that might prove to be a cure for diabetes — a substance long sought by other researchers. 

The next morning, he discussed the idea with F.R. Miller, a professor of physiology at Western, who advised him to seek support for his proposed research at the University of Toronto. 

On 17 May 1921, Banting began work under the direction of Professor J.J.R. Macleod and assisted by C.H. Best.

Banting's and Best's experiments in the summer and autumn of 1921 were crudely conducted and did not substantiate Banting's idea, which was physiologically unsound. 

Banting had left London and risked all of his meager assets on the research in Toronto. However, he and Best did achieve favourable enough results treating some symptoms in diabetic dogs that Macleodapproved further experimentation and an expansion of the research team.

It was in 1921 that Canadian physician Frederick Banting and medical student Charles H. Best would be credited with discovering the hormone insulin in the pancreatic extracts of dogs.

Banting and Best injected the hormone into a dog and found that it lowered high blood glucose levels to normal. They then perfected their experiments to the point of grinding up and filtering a dog's surgically tied pancreas, isolating a substance called "isletin."

The pair then developed insulin for human treatment with the help of Canadian chemist James B. Collip and Scottish physiologist J.J.R.Macleod.

Macleod had been impressed with Banting and Best's work but wanted a retrial of the evidence. He provided pancreases from cows to make the extract which was named "insulin," and the procedures were repeated. 

Collip's role was to help with purifying the insulin to be used for testing on humans. 

Ultimately, the first medical success was with a boy with type 1 diabetes - 14-year-old Leonard Thompson - who was successfully treated in 1922. 

Close to death before treatment, Leonard bounced back to life with the insulin.

Insulin was immediately and spectacularly effective: not a cure, but a powerful lifesaving therapy for diabetes mellitus. 

Frederick Banting was hailed as the principal discoverer of insulin because his idea had launched the research and because of his prominence in the early use of insulin.

The Nobel Prize Committee in Sweden recognized the contributions of both Banting and Macleod in this important discovery. 

On learning that he was to share the 1923 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Macleod, Banting gave half his prize money to Best. 

Macleod gave half his prize money to Collip. 

Banting was awarded a lifetime annuity by the Government of Canada, was appointed Canada's first professor of medical research at the University of Toronto and was knighted in 1934. He was also made a Fellow of the Royal Society (London) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. ~ Michael Bliss

Trivia Tuesday August 22, 2017

If you were one of the wealthiest people in the world where would you live?

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Monday Morning Coffee August 21, 2017

One of the brightest spots in recent U.S. economic data came from the housing sector. 

Despite a lack of inventory in many markets, the national housing market continues to prosper.

Single-family housing starts were 10% higher than a year ago. Similar gains were seen for building permits for single-family homes in June. They were 9% higher than a year ago. 

Yes, inventory is still low in many real estate markets, but home builders are contributing by steadily increasing the number of new homes being built.

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"Give them quality. That's the best kind of advertising in the world."-Milton S. Hershey

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a time when ruthless businesspeople created empires of steel, oil and railroads on the backs of a hapless rural population forced into grim factory towns, Milton S. Hershey followed a different path to success.

Unlike Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt who offered their workers callous treatment and back-breaking labor for menial wages, Hershey offered his employees dignity and prosperity, inspiring bounteous love and loyalty in his workers and making himself wildly rich in the process.Hershey began his candy-making career at age 15 when he was apprenticed to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, confectioner Joseph H. Royer. Hershey blossomed under Royer's tutelage, acquiring many of the skills and tools he would later use to build his own empire.In 1876, with $100 he'd borrowed from his aunt, Hershey opened his first candy shop in Philadelphia.For six years he worked day and night to keep the business alive. Working 15 to 16 hours a day, Hershey would make caramels and taffies at night, then sell them from a pushcart to crowds at the Great Centennial Exposition, which was being held to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.But in February 1882, after a winter dogged by illness and mounting debt, Hershey sold the business and headed to Denver to join his father in the great Colorado silver rush.Surprisingly, the riches Hershey found in Colorado came not from the ground, but from a cow. While working for a confectioner in Denver, Hershey learned that adding fresh milk to caramel greatly improved its quality and extended the candy's shelf life - a discovery that would be crucial in later years.Hershey left Denver for Chicago, where he started another candy shop. But failure continued to haunt him, and the venture quickly fell through.

After a similar experience in New Orleans, Hershey headed to New York City and opened yet another store. Despite his best efforts, the company continually lost money. When a group of kids stampeded his delivery wagon and made off with his entire stock, Hershey was bankrupt.Hershey returned to Lancaster to find that his relatives had given up on him, refusing even to take him in, let alone lend him money to start another business. But Hershey would soon find salvation in the form of an old friend and employee.Henry Lebkicher, who had briefly worked for Hershey in his Philadelphia store, not only offered Hershey a place to live, but also lent him the money he needed to bring his candy-making equipment from New York.

The pair then scraped together enough capital to start the business that would firmly establish Milton Hershey as a candy-maker, the Lancaster Caramel Co.By 1893, in addition to the original Lancaster factory, the now incorporated Lancaster Caramel Co. had plants in Mountjoy, Pennsylvania; Chicago; and Geneva, Illinois, which together employed more than 1,300 workers. Hershey's persistence had finally paid off. And this would prove to be just the beginning.During a visit to the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Hershey witnessed a demonstration of chocolate-rolling machinery from Germany that sparked a new determination in him. Hershey turned to a friend and said, "Caramels are a fad, but chocolate is permanent. I'm going to make chocolate."The next year, using the very same machinery he'd seen at the exposition, Milton started the Hershey Chocolate Co. and began producing more than 114 different types of chocolate candies, including the product that would make his name famous the world over - the milk chocolate Hershey Bar.

Previously manufactured only in Switzerland and Germany, milk chocolate was new to the United States, and the Hershey Bar became an instant phenomenon.

It was so successful that Hershey sold Lancaster Caramel Co. for $1 million and turned his attention solely to chocolate.For several years, Hershey had been perfecting a plan for mass-producing milk chocolate. Now with the wealth generated from the sale of the caramel company, he could put that plan into action.

Inspired by the utopian "city of the future" created for the Columbian Exposition, Hershey set out to build not just a chocolate factory, but the ideal town where the work force could live, play, work and prosper.

Because of its rich supply of clean water, proximity to some of the finest dairy farms in the country, and plenty of land for expansion, Hershey chose his birthplace, Dairy Church, Pennsylvania, as the site for his dream city.

In 1903, Hershey broke ground for his new factory and set into motion the events that would turn his dream into a reality. The factory was modern in every way, with high-tech machinery that eliminated the cost and tedium of making and wrapping chocolate by hand, and made possible the mass production of high-quality milk chocolate at affordable prices.The community Hershey built for his employees (officially renamed Hershey, Pennsylvania, in 1905) was just as impressive and modern. It featured affordable housing with sewage and electricity, paved streets (with names like Chocolate Avenue and Cocoa Avenue), schools, department stores, a trolley system, churches, a library, a hospital, a zoo, an open-air theater and even an amusement park.

Both the community and the company prospered, and by 1915, the chocolate plant alone covered 35 acres; company sales rocketed from $600,000 in 1901 to $20 million by 1921.When the stock market crashed in 1929, Hershey refused to let the dark shadow of the Depression fall over his idyllic community. While other companies fired employees and cut back their operations, Hershey embarked on an ambitious building plan devised solely to keep his workers employed.

They constructed a new high school, a sports arena, a community building and a lavish 170-room hotel.

Legend has it that during construction of the hotel, Hershey was watching a steam shovel in operation when a foreman proudly commented that it could do the job of 40 workers. Hershey told the foreman to get rid of the shovel and hire 40 workers.Both the company and the town survived the Depression and continued to flourish, thanks to Hershey's singular vision and amazing inventiveness.

Hershey would put that inventiveness to use for his country during Word War II, when he oversaw the development of the high-energy Field Ration D bars carried by GIs serving in the war zones.

The 4-ounce non-melting chocolate bars packed 600 calories and could support soldiers if no other food was available.

Hershey would later say that the four Army/Navy "E for Excellence" awards bestowed on the Field Ration D bars were among the proudest achievements of his life. ~ Entrepreneur Magazine

Trivia Tuesday August 15, 2017

Check out this article on Wikipedia for a fun list of spite houses.

Here's one right here in Alameda, CA that is still standing and occupied.

Monday Morning Coffee August 14, 2017

As mentioned previously, the Fed's target level for inflation is an annual rate of 2.0%. Tuesday's release of the core PCEprice index, the inflation indicator favored by the Fed, revealed that inflation remains well below this level. 

In June, core PCE was just 1.5% higher than a year ago, which was the same annual rate as in May. 

Low inflation is good for mortgage rates, and rates improved as a result.

 “You have to set goals that are almost out of reach. If you set a goal that is attainable without much work or thought, you are stuck with something below your true talent and potential.” —Steve Garvey

Jim had a rough start in life.  In his early years at school he describes himself as quiet and having no friends. Yet, he discovered that he could make friends by making people laugh. 

That was his turning point. But the results weren’t all positive. One teacher wrote on his report card: “Jim finishes his work first and then disrupts the class.” 

At home, he thoroughly enjoyed making faces and mimicking in his mirror. His ambition showed when he began to think beyond entertaining his fellow students. 

At age ten he sent his resume’ to actress/comedienne Carol Burnette, hoping to be discovered.

It wasn’t all up hill for Jim though. First, he had to work around his learning disability, dyslexia, in order to succeed in school. He did this by developing a phenomenal memory.

Although his dad tended to encourage his craziness, his mom was alarmed and often sent him to his room. No problem – just more time to practice in front of the mirror.

Money was another hurdle. His family lived in a rough district with lots of low-rent townhouses. By the tenth grade he was trying to juggle eight-hour night shifts at the factory with school during the day. He was so exhausted that he couldn’t understand what his teachers were talking about. 

He didn’t have any friends at school and feared that anyone getting close might discover his embarrassing poverty. 

With little learning and no relationships, he felt that school was getting him nowhere. He called it quits at 16.

His family decided that their surroundings were taking them the wrong direction, so they packed up and moved to Canada with no job in sight. His parents and two siblings lived in a beat-up yellow Volkswagen camper van for a full eight months, parking in campgrounds.

You can imagine his emotional baggage – the loss of his teen years, feeling intellectually backward, the embarrassment and hardship of poverty. Yet, perhaps that feeling of inferiority paved the way to his success by making him feel that he had to try harder than others.

As one biographer wrote: “His greatest bursts of creativity were born out of desperation; so was his remarkable willingness to take risks.”

His first public performance was in Toronto’s Yuk-Yuk Comedy Club. Eleanor Goldhar, publicist for the club, noticed Jim’s intensity. 

When he wasn’t performing, he was quiet compared to the other comedians. In her own words, “You could see him watching and listening – observing closely, paying attention to everything that was going on.”

Jim says that he’s always believed in magic. When he wasn’t doing anything in Hollywood, he would drive up and sit in his car on Mulholland Drive, look out at the city, stretch out his arms, and say, “Everyone wants to work with me. I’m a really good actor. I have all kinds of great movie offers.” 

He would just repeat these things over and over, literally convincing himself that he had a couple of movies lined up. He’d drive down that hill, ready to take the world on, saying, “Movie offers are out there for me, I just don’t hear them yet.” 

He now reflects that it was like total affirmations, antidotes to the stuff that stems from his family background. 

Around 1990, when Jim Carrey was a struggling young Canadian comic trying to make his way in Los Angeles, he drove his old Toyota up to Mulholland Drive. While sitting there looking at the city below and dreaming of his future, he wrote himself a check for $10 million, dated it Thanksgiving 1995, added the notation “for acting services rendered,” and carried it in his wallet from that day forth. 

The rest, as they say, is history. Carrey’s optimism and tenacity eventually paid off, and by 1995, after the huge box office success of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, and Dumb & Dumber, his asking price had risen to $20 million per picture. 

When Carrey’s father died in 1994, he placed the $10 million check into his father’s coffin as a tribute to the man who had both started and nurtured his dreams of being a star. ~ Matthew Bass

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