Blessed by the Potato

Was just at Canadian Tire and saw all the back-to-school stuff out for sale, and realized that this is the first time I won’t be going back to school in September! :(

A member of the Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster — a competing “fake” religion to the true quasi-religion of Potatoism — has won the right to wear a holy collander in his ID photos.

Some Prius owners sell their used cars for a profit, hopefully putting to rest for good the belief that hybrids are somehow doomed to face higher depreciation.

Michael James comments on cap-weighting vs. fundamental weighting. I wonder not only if fundamental indexing can provide enough return to cover the costs, but also if they’re not trading one problem for another. One example of the problems with cap weighting is that when you get big bubbly stocks like Nortel back in the day, those stocks end up taking up huge proportions of a cap-weighted index, and the more over-valued those companies get, the bigger their share in the index! But that problem of lack of diversification doesn’t seem to be fixed by fundamental weighting from a 1-minute look at the two indexes: instead of having giant stocks, now we have giant sectors, with the fundamental index putting a 45% weight on financials, when the cap-weighted index was already a pretty hefty 30%.

Scott Adams puts out some quasi-serious ways for the US to get out of its budget crisis. For the carpool lane one, that’s actually a pretty good idea. Thanks to an experiment with hybrid cars, we know that being able to travel solo in carpool lanes is actually a valuable feature some people are willing to pay money for. You see, at one point LA (among other cities) gave a special sticker to hybrids to allow them to use the carpool lanes, as an incentive to get people to drive cleaner cars. Then, the quota for that program was hit and they stopped giving out the stickers. But the stickers were good for a few years and most importantly transferable, so what you saw happen is that cars with HOV stickers went for a premium over comparable cars — a few thousand dollars, perhaps as much as $4k. And that’s just for a few years of HOV access. So maybe there’s a group of people out there willing to pay on the neighbourhood of $1k/year to get solo HOV access, let’s ballpark it at 1% of a metro area’s population. Across a few major cities, that could hit a billion in tax revenue. Yes, a drop in the bucket for the problems facing the US budget, but a start. [And also, perhaps at the wrong level of government]

One of the Ford annoyances in Toronto commented on closing libraries, saying “And my constituents, it wouldn’t bother them because they have another library two miles one way and two miles the other way.” I’m all for eliminating waste in the city budget, but I’ve got a soft spot for libraries (and not only because Wayfare’s a librarian). Being no more than “two miles” (3.2 km) is about right — his ward is only about 6 km across, so assuming there are at least two libraries in it, that’s not far off. But 3 km is a long way to be from a library. Remember that the biggest users of libraries are not driving: the poor, the young, and I guess the cheap. Toronto has 99 libraries. Is that too many? It’s tough to say, but Toronto has 625 elementary schools (public, catholic, french catholic — not counting other private ones) and 135 high schools. Approximately one library branch per high school sounds about right to me. I’ll also just quickly say that the branches are more than just a place to check out books, so they are important to maintain, and maintain throughout the city.

I heard again recently the bit of reassuring spin from CMHC that they’re totally cool because the average equity of their mortgage portfolio is 45%. And note that that includes equity gained by price appreciation. To me, that average is nearly meaningless because it doesn’t break it down regionally, or bin it by equity. The defaults occur at the margin, and if the distribution of equity/LTV is large, then there will be plenty of people put underwater by even a modest correction that trouble will follow. Just for a point of comparison I tried to look up what a similar figure from the US would have been and found that in 2007, Fannie Mae’s average equity of the mortgage portfolio was 41%. That does not make me feel reassured that things are that much better here in the great white north, land of the conservative banks. I’d do a post on the “Canadian Moral Hazard Corporation” except it’s been done (with that exact title in several places). Maybe I’ll dig into Genworth later in the summer if I find some time (that one I can at least short if it comes up particularly spotty).

“Environment Canada now even has media officers in Ottawa tape-recording the interviews scientists are allowed to give.” Oh! I think I found where we can cut back on the budget!

Corning reported results and it was pretty much what I expected: display glass is facing troubles, but the company is expanding its other business lines to (partially) compensate. Given the price it looks like the display issues may be priced in, and allow for some upside if/when the other business lines grow enough to be meaningful. Still no position, but with it under $16 I’m becoming more interested, and have put in a bid at $15; let’s see what happens.

Cool random thing I learned: Saturn has two moons that share an orbit: Janus and Epimetheus.

I’ve seen OSG mentioned twice on BNN now as a value play and decided to have a look myself.

Briefly, it’s a tanker company transporting largely oil and LNG. There’s currently an over-supply of tankers in the world, with still more in the process of being built (due to orders placed years ago), so the rates tankers can charge are way down. OSG lost a lot of money last year as a result.

They continue to pay a high dividend (despite losing money) indicating either that management believes things will turn around, or that management is not being conservative. In reading commentary I have seen that this is supposed to be a cyclical industry, but looking back 10 years I only see one (small) negative year, so I don’t know what to expect in terms of the earnings improving. Assuming that it is cyclical and will return to something like their 10-year average EPS/CFPS then it’s pretty attractively priced.

The book value is quite high (I get $46, when its trading at $25). My big question there is how realistic is the balance sheet? If they could sell the ships for what they’re carried on the balance sheet then it looks like there’s a lot of margin-of-safety here. But if a glut of ships means that the ships should be marked down in valuing the company then that situation changes quickly. If they’re paying dividends while losing money then that means they’re having to borrow money from somewhere, and if the lenders turn pessimistic on the value of the assets, then that could be a negative catalyst.

I wasn’t sure how to go about looking up what the current value of the ships would be, so I turned to the security analysis group on reddit and was pointed to a helpful source on the prices of recent transactions for ships. I haven’t had the time yet to go through and try to value each ship, or if it’s even worth trying, but I can say that the ships are carried at about $3B, with an average tonnage of 100k, and an average age of 7 years. Looking up what that “average ship” would sell for it looks like the figure is $27M, which multiplied out by the number of ships does come below (but close to) well below the book value. However, that figure looks like it’s heading down even just over the last few months. So to be conservative I’d reduce that by some more, and once you put in another ~20% fudge factor it doesn’t look like the safety of that book value is there after all. Edit: I made a mistake and multiplied by the total number of ships in the fleet. But, if I understand correctly (and I may well not since I got this wrong once already) many of those ships are chartered from other owners. If I just multiply the average ship value by the number of owned ships, I get a figure that’s about half the current book value.

I am being terribly inexact with that single “average ship” value, since seven 40 kT ships aren’t the same value as one 280 kT ship. If it came out closer I’d probably take the time to go through the exercise of trying to value each of the ships (or at least binning them into 5 or so more representative bins). Since the earnings will be released in just a few days, I’ll wait to see what happens there. If the stock slips more, it may be worth looking at in more detail.

Oh, and since most of this post was about determining just what the reality is from the numbers on the balance sheet, check out this thread on CMF on that very topic!

Dear Jason, I saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall some time ago. I liked it, but the part that really made it for me was the vampire puppet musical at the end. So I was really surprised to see a clip explaining that it wasn’t just a scene for the movie, but a whole musical you were earnestly putting together on your own.

You said Judd Apatow told you to never show it to other people, and I am writing to say fuck that guy. There are numerous YouTube clips of you performing that musical number in various venues and people love it. We need to see the whole musical! There are far too few undead puppet musicals these days, it is definitely an under-served market.

So maybe not in Hollywood, but Toronto has played eager host to such off-the-wall musicals as Evil Dead the Musical (front four rows are in the “splatter zone”) and I think your Dracula puppet musical would fit right in in that city. Or go the Dr. Horrible route and just do it once and record it for the internet and DVD sale market. The few songs we’ve heard are actually catchy and fun and I’d love to see the rest.

Please do it!

On another note, I love the look of child-like joy and wonder on Jason Segel’s face when he’s performing with the puppets (and in the muppet movie trailer – “are there muppets in this movie?!”) In fact I even think there would be a market for a one-man show “Jason Segel sits on stage with a look of child-like joy and wonder on his face.” Maybe not a market for expensive tickets, but it wouldn’t be an expensive show, either.

I was just informed that Google intends to force G+ accounts to use “real” names, and in enforcing that policy has even gone so far as to delete other Google accounts with a pseudonym (even your Gmail!).

I’ve written before on anonymity and pseudoanonymity, saying:

That brings up a very good question of what it means to be anonymous these days. Is Lady Gaga anonymous? Madonna, Mark Twain, Prince, Robin Hobb? […] Is “Potato”? Sure, we don’t use our real names, but how much would our “real names” mean, anyway? There’s definitely a distinction between the fleeting anonymity of user213 leaving a comment on [a] blog with a dummy email address and then disappearing into the ether never to be seen again, and the pseudo-anonymity of CC or Potato, Gabe or Tycho, Yahtzee: established personas on the intertubes, with consistent messages, accountability (at least as much as if I was blogging with my real name), the ability to be contacted and engaged in dialog with. I publish under both my real name and Potato, and I daresay I’m better known and more widely read as Potato, with a longer track record (going on what, 13 years now of BbtP?). I would be more anonymous if I used my real name.

A name-brand source of information, opinion, ranting, and hilarity.

So I don’t think the “brave enough to be anonymous” ad hominen is warranted or fair. The internet seems to be growing up and moving away from pseudo-anonymity, but it’s still there (just as it is in “real” publishing) and I think it’s important to distinguish between actual anonymity and a nom de plume.

Anonymity contributes to the Greater Internet Fuckwad phenomenon, but I do see value in pseudonyms. It can give an asshole psychological permission to act like a giant asshole, but it also lets people make poignant comments or tell moving, important stories without fear of what impact those tales may have on their day-to-day life. For whatever reason they have: just shy, out of character with their other work, or because they live in a politically dangerous situation where their words could hurt people (including themselves). I liked the anonymity of the early internet: sure, there were ultra-jerks and flamebaiters and megatrolls, but there was also a culture of reasoned people who spent more time reading the message than the from field. It didn’t matter who your father was, what country you were from, how you earned your money, or if you were a 16-year-old high school kid: if you had something good to say, people listened.

Besides, I’m not sure that real names really solve the anonymity problem — I got through over 30 search results for my other name before I stopped counting, none of whom is me, and there are many more out there across the world who don’t rank highly in search engines. If I chose to be a troll, would my real name really remove that barrier to human interaction that leads people to say things they never would directly to a person’s face? I’d still be effectively anonymous.

They’re right in that it probably would help, at least a bit: prank calls went down after call display became popular, but they didn’t go away completely (just got one last week). Trolling would probably be reduced with some sort of real ID system, but I think that there’s value enough in some aspects of anonymity/pseudoanonymity that it should be kept. For example, should a LGBT teen in deepest darkest born-again country be forced to use their real name to join an online support/chat group? What about corporate whistleblowers? Or just people whose lives are interesting enough that they have secret obsessions they’d rather not have come up in an internet search (e.g.: LARPers)?

Moreover, G+/Facebook are the *last* places that need to enforce such a policy, since you have such tight control over your circles/lists. You should know who you’re adding: either the man behind the mask, or the nature of the invented persona (troll or not). Anonymous or not, if there are trolls bothering you on G+ or Facebook, odds are you approved them.

[Note that I’m being somewhat unkind here in not mentioning the good arguments for why a lack of anonymity may improve the internet experience for most]

Update: a nice op-ed about the issue, and how allowing (initially, anyway) pseudonyms was precisely what set G+ apart from Facebook, and may be a part of what’s made it so successful so quickly. [HT: LG]

It’s 4am right now and I’m awake. I don’t want to be awake, but I have a massive headache that’s just riding that edge where it’s threatening to spill over into a migraine… that or it’s just a really bad headache and the heat from the day (though now I’m safely ensconced in my air conditioned lair) is what’s making me nauseous.

I looked up the weather for tomorrow: 38°C, feels like 49°C. That is just stupid hot. 49 is painfully hot, like if you were to run your hand under hot water that was 49, you’d probably only be able to tolerate it for a few tens of seconds before having to pull it out from the pain. So if the humidex is right and it will feel like 49 all over my body tomorrow in the sun, then that is not good. That is going to be painful. Even without the humidex adjustment, it’s going to be above body temperature even in the shade. That is not healthy. I’ll probably be catching up on sleep all day once this headache lets me finally rest, but if I am awake I am going to be doing everything humanly possible to not go outside.

I had plans to go to a friends’ cottage this weekend. Like most cottages (but unlike my crazy family’s) it doesn’t have A/C. I kind of laughed at my dad when he put A/C in the cottage, since hey, it’s a cottage. It’s not as hot by the water as it is in the city, and even though most days can get pretty sticky in the summer, at night it cools off enough and there’s usually enough of a breeze that it’s ok for sleeping. There’s really just one or two weeks where the heatwave strikes and it’s just too hot to manage, and for those weeks I reasoned we could always just chill in the A/C in the city.

But this is that week.

It might be because at the moment I don’t want to move my head for fear of my brain exploding, but I’m seriously reconsidering this crazy plan to drive for four hours just to slow roast in my own juices. However, there is a fallback option: the Prius is a hatchback with folding seats, making a deck just large enough for a foam mattress. As a hybrid, it will run the air conditioner off the battery, then cycle the engine on as needed to keep the battery charged. Only a few L of gas should be burned overnight to keep the A/C running. Could be fun.