I thought that the most popular item on my Christmas gift list would be the electric scooter, but nobody took one. Over half my tenants picked Bose headphones, which surprised me, although perhaps it shouldn’t have. Headphone technology has changed a lot. The sound quality has improved greatly. Also, most older headphones connect to an iPhone with a wire, but new iPhones don’t have headphone jacks. It is possible to connect wired headphones to a new iPhone with an adaptor, but wired headphones are clearly heading for the electronic scrap heap along with floppy disks and VHS video tapes.
RING DOORBELL. I thought about putting Ring doorbells on my Christmas gift list, but I didn’t think that any of my tenants would want one. Let me know if I was wrong about that. Here is a great Ring doorbell story. A woman got a text message while she was at work saying that the motion detector in her doorbell indicated that someone was at her front door and moving back and forth between the door and the window next to it, but not ringing the bell or leaving the property. So naturally she called the police. The police came and looked around the house but found nothing wrong. Later, when the woman returned home, she reviewed the video the doorbell made and found the suspect. See the photo below.
Tycho Brahe. In the 16th Century, Tycho Brahe was the richest man in Denmark. He was a member of 2 royal Scandinavian families. Tycho Brahe was also Denmark’s most famous astronomer. Brahe built an observatory in his home, Knutstorp Castle, where he made several important astronomical discoveries. Perhaps his most important discovery was the supernova, a dying star. It is very rare that people get to observe the death of a star with the naked eye, but that happened in Brahe’s time. In 1572, Brahe observed a bright new star unexpectedly appearing in the night sky. It grew bright and gradually disappeared. Other scientists saw it as well but most of them thought that a comet in our solar system had exploded, but Brahe did some mathematical calculations and proved that it was a star located far beyond our solar system. Brahe correctly concluded that this was the explosion and death of a star. His discovery radically changed the way people thought about the universe. Since ancient times, people had accepted Aristotle’s theory that everything beyond the moon was fixed in its place, unchanging, and permanent. Brahe showed that stars are impermanent and that therefore, so are their planets. Aristotle was wrong and the Buddha was right about impermanence. There is nothing in the universe that is fixed, unchanging, and permanent.
Tycho Brahe’s Alcoholic Moose. While Tycho Brahe was a serious scientist, he lived a life of great luxury. One of Brahe’s luxuries was his pet, an 800-pound moose. The moose lived in Brahe’s castle. Brahe took the moose with him wherever he went. The moose trotted behind Brahe’s carriage like a faithful dog. The moose attended the elegant parties and banquets Tycho Brahe gave for his relatives and fellow scientists. The moose was also Brahe’s drinking buddy. Tycho Brahe and his moose were both heavy drinkers. The moose’s favorite beverage was Danish beer, which it consumed by the barrel. Brahe and his moose got drunk together along with Brahe’s friends, night after night. One night, at a banquet for Danish noblemen in Brahe’s castle, the moose climbed a flight of stairs while drunk, lost his balance, fell down the stairs and died as a result of the fall. I have heard that it is not unusual for people to die by falling down stairs while drunk, but how often do you suppose moose die that way? Probably not very often.
All my life, I have heard people say that poor people are happier than rich people, but I don’t believe it, and I never have. It seems like it is mostly rich people who say that. When Irving Berlin wrote the song ‘The Best Things in Life Are Free’, he was the richest and highest paid songwriter in the world. The same was true when the Beatles wrote ‘I don’t care too much for money. Money can’t buy me love.’ I’ve met poor people who believed that rich people are unhappy because “they have too much money to be happy”, but if having a lot of money really made people unhappy, then rich people would give away all their money, but they rarely do that. Poverty does not make people happy, and money does not make people unhappy. As my Uncle Irv Tarses (who was rich) used to say: “Whether you’re rich or poor, it’s nice to have money.”
DOESN’T GREAT WEALTH MAKE SOME PEOPLE UNHAPPY?
Yes. Sometimes. Rich people can afford to do things that would make anyone unhappy. Look at the photo below of 3 girls in China around 1900. The girl in the middle is rich. Her 2 companions are poor. The barefoot girl on the left is a slave. The girl on the right wearing shoes is a Christian servant. The rich girl in the middle has bound feet. She is crippled and can only walk slowly and for short distances. The 2 poor girls are her crutches. Foot binding was a common practice among rich people in China. Rich people can also afford to spend huge sums of money on quack doctors and quack medicine. A lot of famous rich people have died from that, like Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple. By the time Steve Jobs accepted the fact that you can’t cure cancer with exotic fruit juice and acupuncture treatments in Switzerland; his cancer had spread to the point that it was inoperable.
WHAT IS PRICE GOUGING?
The California state legislature passed a law in 2019 limiting most rent increases to 10% a year. Anything more than that is defined as ‘price gouging’. But what is ‘price gouging’? It currently costs between $3 and $4 to manufacture a vial of insulin, which according to Good Rx Health currently retails nationally for between $175 and $350. See: Insulin Prices. Now, it is possible to live without an apartment or paying rent. There are hundreds of people living in RVs in west Berkeley. However, diabetics die, and die quickly, without insulin. The patent on insulin expired generations ago so any pharmaceutical company can manufacture insulin without permission or paying a royalty. So this means that an 11% rent increase in California is ‘price gouging’ but charging $300 for a vial of insulin that cost $3 to make is ‘health care’.
The worldwide beaver population has exploded in the last 100 years. See the map below. The brown areas have beaver populations. Beavers were hunted to extinction in many places for their fur, but fashions changed. Men don’t wear beaver hats anymore. See the photo below of some well-dressed gentleman in Boise, Idaho in the 1890s, all wearing beaver top hats. Also, because of global warming, beavers are now thriving in places where it was too cold for them before, like Alaska and Siberia. Some respected scientific publications claim that beavers contribute to global warming because the water in their ponds trap solar heat, and that heat melts the permafrost beneath them. I refuse to believe that beavers are responsible for global warming, but I may be prejudiced about this. I like beavers.
“My Dog Has Anger Management Issues.” I once rented an apartment in Oakland, and I advertised that I would allow a dog or a cat. One applicant checked off on his application form that he had a dog but left the description line blank. I asked him what kind of dog he had. He said that he didn’t know. That set off an alarm bell for me. I know something is wrong when an applicant tells me that he has a dog but can’t describe it. That happens once in a while. I looked out the window and said to him: “I see that your dog is in your car. Why not bring him inside so I can meet him?” The guy went silent. After thinking about it for a minute, he said: “I don’t think that would be a good idea. My dog has anger management issues. That’s why I have to move.” I said: “Well in that case, leave your dog in the car.” I didn’t call the guy’s landlord to find out the gruesome details about what that dog did. I didn’t have to. I knew that I didn’t want that dog in my building. I rented the place to somebody else, a woman with a small turtle. I would much rather have a turtle in one of my apartments than a dog with anger management issues – or an alcoholic moose.
