The Hiroshima bomb myth is that by August of 1945, World War 2 was almost over, and Japan was ready to surrender, so the U.S. didn’t drop atomic bombs on Japan to force the Japanese to surrender, that we did it for some other reason. I heard this myth again on a PBS documentary last week, and it annoyed me. Some people believe that the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Japan to send a message to Joseph Stalin that we had this weapon and were willing to use it. Others claim the U.S. were using the Japanese people as guinea pigs to see what the effects of atomic bombs would have people and cities. Still others believe that the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Japan for revenge. Americans were angry about the treatment of American POWs by the Japanese.

However, there is an obvious flaw in all these theories, and it is simply this – If the Japanese were ready to surrender, then why didn’t they? In 1943, when Italy was ready to surrender, they surrendered. In May 1945; when Germany was ready to surrender, they surrendered. When Robert E. Lee was ready to surrender to Grant, he surrendered. That’s the way surrender works!

Because the U.S. had broken several Japanese codes, President Truman knew that some people in the Japanese cabinet were ready to surrender, but they were not willing to give up the emperor. So, before Truman authorized the bombing of Hiroshima, he sent a message to the Japanese saying that if they surrendered, they could keep the emperor. The Japanese government received Truman’s message, but they chose not to reply to it. After Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb, Truman again demanded that Japan surrender, and he said that more cities would be destroyed if they didn’t, but again the Japanese government did not reply. After Nagasaki was destroyed by the second atomic bomb, Truman again demanded they surrender, but again they replied with silence.

It was Emperor Hirohito who ended the war. After the bombing of Nagasaki, Hirohito split with the military. The generals wanted to continue with the war, but Hirohito had had enough. Hirohito made a radio broadcast to the nation saying that the government had agreed to Allied demands for Japan’s surrender. So, can you think of a good answer to my question: If the Japanese were ready to surrender, then why didn’t they?

 A lot of people also think that the war was nearly over by August of 1945, but that also is not true. Thousands of people, literally thousands of people, were still dying every day because of the war. The U.S. was bombing Japanese cities day and night. Japanese submarines and kamikaze planes were sinking American and British warships. Bloody fighting was still going on in China, Thailand, the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), and many other places. In addition, large numbers of people were being killed and dying of starvation in places still under Japanese control, including Korea, Manchuria, Taiwan, and Malaya. The war was far from over. Plus, millions would have been killed if the U.S. had invaded the Japanese home islands and had to fight their way across them. The U.S. did some bad things during World War 2, like locking up 100,000 Japanese Americans in squalid internment camps, but we didn’t drop atomic bombs on Japan when the war was almost over, and they were ready to surrender.

People are constantly getting themselves into trouble because they don’t put specific dates in emails. People have shown up on the wrong date for interviews and missed dinners and parties because they relied on words like ‘today’ or ‘tomorrow’ instead of specific dates. Not using a specific date can lead to a lot of problems. Think about this:

I. Emails are often delayed. ISPs (internet service providers) go down all the time. It is not unusual for an email to be received on the day after it was sent. In other words, if you send an email on May 3 that says: “The meeting will be tomorrow at 3PM”, what happens if your message isn’t received until the morning of May 4?
2. People don’t always read emails as soon as they arrive and don’t check the date when they were sent.
3. Using days of the week instead of specific dates can be confusing. Suppose you received an email on Tuesday, April 3 saying: “Our meeting is at 5PM next Thursday.” When is ‘next Thursday’? A lot of people would imagine that April 5 is ‘this Thursday’ and April 12 is ‘next Thursday’. However, that isn’t the way the dictionary defines ‘next’. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘next’ means ‘immediately after’, so the next Thursday after Tuesday, April 3 is Thursday, April 5, not April 12.

All these problems and many more can be avoided by including specific dates in your emails. Don’t leave people wondering as to what date you are talking about. In the business world, that makes you look unprofessional and careless.  People sometimes get mad at me because I ask for specific dates when I get emails in which the date is unclear. I am writing this article now because that happened to me twice this month. A repairman sent me an email yesterday asking if he could come over to my house ‘the day after tomorrow’. I wrote him back and asked for a specific date, and he got mad at me!
Remember this….There are 365 todays in a year. There are 365 tomorrows. There are 52 Wednesdays. But there is only one April 11. Dates prevent confusion.

It is too bad that colleges in the United States don’t teach students how to write business letters. I majored in business administration in college, and this subject never came up.  Corporations generally don’t give any instructions to their employees about this either. I know business students at Cal who tell me that they still don’t teach this. In many foreign countries, all business students are required to learn how to write an email and a business letter.

OTHER COMMON EMAIL MISTAKES.
1. Forgetting to fill in the subject line. If you forget to include a subject line, your email may get ignored or get moved to your spam file and never be seen.2. A subject line that says nothing. If your subject line is vague or uninformative, how will you or the recipient find it later? Recently, a relative of mine sent me an email saying that he would be in San Francisco for a few days. The subject line in his email was ‘Travel’. How will I find that if I search my emails later?3. Not changing a bad subject line when replying or forwarding an email.
4. Forwarding an email to someone with an attachment when you don’t know the source of the attachment. This is how people get malware, spyware, and viruses in their computers.5. Sending an email to everyone on your mailing list. If you ever get an email that advises you to forward it ‘to everyone you know’, it is a scam. There is no message that you should forward to everyone you know.6. Replying to an email without checking to see who is on the carbon copy list. That can lead to some very embarrassing situations.
7. Not reporting spam. When you get a spam email, click the spam button. If you don’t report spam, you will get more spam.

By the 1970s, western Europe had fully recovered from World War 2, and their economies were growing rapidly. Before World War 2, people all over Europe were heating their homes and businesses with coal, but coal was being phased out in favor of natural gas. In 1980, Russia proposed building a 3,500 mile long pipeline to West Germany from Siberia, where Russia had vast reserves of natural gas. The Russians were offering to sell natural gas to western Europe at a bargain price. This project alarmed President Reagan. Reagan pointed out that Russia had always had authoritarian governments, and because of that, Reagan said, the Soviet Union would always regard countries like France and West Germany as enemies. Reagan said that over time, as industrialized democracies in western Europe became more and more dependent on Russian gas for their economic survival, someday the Russians would be in a position to use their natural gas as a weapon of blackmail or extortion. Of course, the Russians promised that they would never do that. Reagan imposed sanctions on the project to try to stop the pipeline’s construction, but greed carried the day. The Russians had powerful allies in this project. Europeans wanted the cheap natural gas the Russians were offering to sell them and big U.S. oil companies, which stood to make huge profits on the project, lobbied Congress to override Reagan’s sanctions, which Congress did, and the pipelines were built. Today, Vladimir Putin receives over $200 million a day from western Europe from natural gas sales alone. He gets much more from oil sales. If western Europe was not now dependent on Russian oil and natural gas, they would have cut off their imports of it as soon as Putin invaded Ukraine. The economy of Russia would have collapsed, and the war would have come to a quick end. Reagan got this one right.

Thomas Jefferson predicted that absolute monarchs and dictators would always regard a successful democracy anywhere in the world as a threat, no matter what the democracy did. That’s because people living under a dictator will always be thinking: “Why can’t we have the kind of government and the freedom that those people over there have?” Jefferson lived to see his prediction come true. The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were widely read in Europe and directly led to several revolutions, beginning with the French Revolution. Jefferson correctly explained why someone like Vladimir Putin will always view countries like Britain, France, Germany, or Sweden as threats. It isn’t because these countries are in NATO. Sweden isn’t in NATO. It isn’t because they are in the EU. Britain isn’t in the European Union. It is because these countries have democratic governments and despite Putin’s best efforts, there are people all over Russia who know that and who would like to have that kind of government themselves. Jefferson got this one right.

I often hear politicians (mostly liberals) promoting renewable energy: hydro, wind, and solar, and I hear politicians (mostly conservatives) promoting increased oil production. But – how often do politicians or news commentators talk about energy efficiency? If Americans bought more energy-efficient products, we could reduce energy consumption in this country a lot – and right now. We don’t have to wait the 5 or 10 years it takes to build a new pipeline or for new energy-efficient products to be invented and get to market. These products are available now.

Automobiles. The average automobile sold in the U.S. last year got 25 miles per gallon and sold for $47,000. However, there are lots of cars on the market that get 40 to 50 miles per gallon and that cost much less than $47,000. A Toyota Prius hybrid gets 52 miles per gallon and sells for $35,000. This car has been on the market for many years and consistently gets very high marks for reliability. A Honda Accord hybrid gets 47 miles per gallon and also sells for around $35,000. The Prius is made in Japan. The Accord is made in Ohio. And lots of companies make electric vehicles.

Companies that buy huge numbers of cars and trucks are ordering electric vehicles. They aren’t doing this to please environmentalists. They are doing it to save money. Amazon has ordered 100,000 electric delivery vans. They did this because they did the math and concluded that they would save money by buying electric vans over gasoline powered vans.

I don’t understand why the government doesn’t do more to encourage Americans to buy more energy-efficient cars. I would like to see President Biden go on TV and stand next to 2 new cars that look about the same. I would like him to say: “If you are in the market for a new car, why buy this car that gets 25 miles a gallon and complain about how much you are spending every month on gasoline when you can buy this car over here that gets 45 miles a gallon and costs the same?” Unfortunately, I don’t expect that to happen.

However, even without encouragement from the federal government to buy more electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrids, it is probably going to happen anyway. In 2021, 5% of new car sales in the U.S. were hybrids and 3% were electric vehicles. However, a recent study by J.P. Morgan predicts that 38% of all new car sales in the U.S. will be EVs or hybrids by 2025. Why the big change? It’s the price of gasoline. In 2016, the average retail price of gasoline in the U.S. was a little over $2.00 a gallon. Few people expect to see that price again.

Refrigerators. There are many other energy-efficient products that the government should be promoting and that are available now. I see that in my business. Sometimes a landlord will ask me when it is better to replace an old refrigerator or pay a repairman to fix it. I tell landlords that this decision shouldn’t be made principally on the cost of the repair but the age of the refrigerator. Refrigerators have become vastly more energy-efficient over the past few decades. A refrigerator made today will use 50% to 70% less electricity than a refrigerator of the same size made 20 years ago, and new refrigerators last longer than they used to.

Pilot Lights. I don’t understand why gas water heaters still have pilot lights. I had to replace 2 gas water heaters last year. I tried to buy new ones without pilot lights but couldn’t find them. I don’t know why gas water heaters still have pilot lights. The gas used by pilot lights is just wasted energy – completely wasted energy – and a gas water heater can use 25% of its gas just keeping the pilot light lit. There is no need for this waste. The technology to light gas appliances without pilot lights has been around for a long time. Gas clothes dryers don’t have pilot lights. They stopped making gas clothes dryers with pilot lights 50 years ago. Yet, lots of new water heaters, kitchen stoves, and wall furnaces still have pilot lights.

The White Roof Project. In places where it gets hot in summer, just painting a dark colored roof white can reduce that home’s air conditioning bill by as much as 40%. It is really astonishing at how much something as simple as this can reduce a home’s air conditioning bill. When I was a child, my bedroom was under the roof. It was a black tar roof. In summer, the temperature in my room was much hotter than the temperature outside, and we did not have air conditioning. White roofs also last much longer than black roofs because they don’t get as hot. Again, why isn’t the government promoting things like this?

Years before Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, rumors circulated all over Europe that Hitler was secretly Jewish, but could that be true? In order to answer this question, you need to understand how the Nazis defined their terms. The Nazis believed that there are 2 pure races in the world, Aryans and Jews, and that everyone else in the world is of mixed race. The Nazis were never able to identify Jews or Aryans by physical characteristics so the only way you could prove that you were an Aryan in Nazi Germany was by obtaining an Aryan Certificate. In order to get an Aryan Certificate, a person had to fill out a form stating the names of his parents and grandparents and certify that none of them were Jewish. However, Adolf Hitler couldn’t do that. He didn’t know the name of one of his grandparents. Adolf Hitler’s father, Alois, was born out of wedlock, and his mother, Maria Schiklgruber, refused to name the father. At the time Maria Schiklgruber became pregnant, she was working as a housemaid in the home of a wealthy Jewish merchant named Frankenberger. He had 2 sons living in the house with him and with her. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what the rumors were around town. Adolf Hitler was very aware of the fact that a lot of people suspected he was Jewish, and when he came to power, he took actions designed to squash the rumors. Hitler had family records destroyed. He had people who knew his father murdered, and he had a provision put in the Aryan Race Law stating that there were 2 people, and only 2 people, who were ‘indisputably Aryan’ and were therefore exempt from the requirements of the Aryan Race Law – himself and Jesus Christ. (How could Hitler prove that Jesus didn’t have any Jewish ancestors?) In 2010, 2 Belgian journalists collected saliva samples from 39 of Adolf Hitler’s known living relatives and had their DNA tested. It showed that the Hitler family haplogroup is rare in Western Europe but common among Sephardic Jews in North Africa. That didn’t prove that Adolf Hitler was Jewish, but it did add to people’s suspicions.

Willie Hitler. This guy has always fascinated me. William Patrick Hitler was Adolf Hitler’s nephew. Most people were so afraid of Adolf Hitler that they didn’t dare say anything that might offend him, but Willie told everybody that he thought Naziism was evil, including ‘Uncle Adolf.’ Willie was born in England and had a British passport. He was, therefore, under the protection of the British government. After having dinner with Willie, Adolf Hitler told Herman Goering that he would rather have several teeth pulled without anesthesia rather than have dinner with Willie again. Willie Hitler sent several blackmail letters addressed to ‘Dear Uncle Adolf.’ Willie repeatedly asked ‘Uncle Adolf’ to help him get a good-paying job in Germany. That would have been very easy for Adolf Hitler to do. Willie stated in his letters that if ‘Uncle Adolf’ didn’t help him, Willie would be forced to sell a story to a London tabloid revealing some family secret. We don’t know what that secret was, but Willie knew all about the Frankenbergers. Willie moved to the United States just before the start of World War 2. Upon arriving in the U.S., Willie traveled around the country giving anti-Nazi lectures. After Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States, Willie tried to join the U.S. Navy. A suspicious recruiting officer asked Willie: “Isn’t your uncle Adolf Hitler?” When Willie said: “Yes, he is”, his application was immediately stamped ‘Rejected.’ After making a personal appeal to President Franklin Roosevelt, Willie was allowed to join the navy. He won a purple heart. After the war, Willie had 3 children. They live on Long Island under assumed names. Understandably, none of them want their neighbors to know that their real name is ‘Hitler.’

The word ‘spoof’ usually refers to a kind of joke or harmless prank, but caller I.D. spoofing is neither funny nor harmless. It is a form of fraud used by identity thieves. Imagine this situation. Your phone rings. Your caller I.D. says the call is from Bank of America. The caller says: “Hi. My name is Matilda Yakabovski. I’m calling from Bank of America’s security department. There has been some suspicious activity in your account. We would like to make sure that these transactions are legitimate. Would you please confirm your account number and password?” This phone call is a caller I.D. spoof from someone trying to steal your password.

Caller I.D. spoofing is a technological trick that allows callers to change the name and phone number that appears on your caller I.D. screen to whatever the spoofer wants. Every year, millions of Americans fall victim to caller I.D. and email spoofing scams (also known as ‘phishing’). Here is how to protect yourself from caller I.D. spoofing.

1. Never give personal information over the phone unless you initiated the call yourself and you know for certain who you are talking to.

2. Your bank or credit card company will never call you and ask you what your account number is. Obviously, they already know that. If the caller can’t tell you what your account number is, then you are speaking to a crook.

3. Banks, credit card companies, and government agencies do not call people on the phone to ‘confirm’ or ‘update’ your personal information, such as your social security or driver’s license number, PIN number, security code, password, mother’s maiden name, etc.

4. Do not call the phone number in an email message or click the hyperlink to contact a company where you have an account. Call the phone number on the last statement you received from them.

5. If you think you have been scammed by a caller I.D. spoof, contact the company right away and tell them what happened.

6. Never follow the instructions from a caller I.D. or robocall, such as: “If you do not wish to receive any more phone calls from us, press 7′. Just hang up the phone.

7. Don’t be bullied. Be very suspicious if the caller is pushy, demanding, or threatening. Scammers often claim to be government agents and threaten people unless you send them money immediately. A favorite is: “You failed to appear for jury duty. Unless you pay a fine of $500 immediately, a bench warrant will be issued for your arrest.” These people usually want you to pay these so-called fines with gift cards or cryptocurrency.

8. Get a free credit report on yourself and look for suspicious activity. Go to: https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action This website is operated jointly by the 3 big credit reporting agencies, Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. They are required to provide free credit reports on this site under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Do not go to other websites with similar names or that have ‘free’ in their names. They aren’t free. Never give a credit card number to get your credit report.

DOES LIGHTNING EVER STRIKE THE SAME PLACE TWICE?

There is an old saying that goes: ‘Lightning never strikes the same place twice’, but lightning often strikes the same place twice. The Empire State Building is struck by lightning about 25 times a year. Lots of people are struck by lightning more than once. Walter Summerford was a British officer from an upper-class family. During World War 1, he was struck by lightning while on the Western Front. The lightning strike left him paralyzed in both legs. In 1924, Summerford was struck again by lightning. Strangely, this time the lightning cured his paralysis. 2 days later, he was able to walk again. In 1930, Summerford was struck by lightning for a third time, leaving him paralyzed once again. He died in 1932. In 1936, his grave was struck by lightning, destroying the gravestone. See photo below.

HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF JAMES OTIS?

James Otis was one of the leaders of the American Revolution. He is best remembered for his sayings, which include: “Taxation without representation is tyranny” and “A man’s home is his castle.” Otis is the reason we have the 4th Amendment in the Constitution banning warrantless searches. In 1783, while James Otis was standing on the porch of a friend’s house, he was struck by a bolt of lightning and killed instantly. Strangely, there were no marks on his body or his clothes and no one else on the small porch was affected by the lightning strike.

WHAT IS THE WORST LOCATED BASEBALL STADIUM IN THE U.S.?

There are a lot to choose from, but I pick Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Their stadium is located on a low-lying island in the Susquehanna River that floods frequently. The original stadium at this location was washed away by a flood in 1935. Then, a second stadium was built at the same location. It also flooded frequently and rotted away. In 1987, the mayor of Harrisburg ordered the construction of a third stadium at the same location. It also floods frequently. Harrisburg had a mayor at that time who made a lot of very bad decisions. So – what should Harrisburg do with their oft-flooded stadium? I think they should use the stadium to hold Naumaquias. What’s that? The ancient Romans periodically filled the Coliseum with water and recreated famous naval battles there (only naval battles that the Romans won, of course.) The Romans built full-size warships inside the Coliseum for this. Huge numbers of combatants and rowers participated in these battles. Thousands of them were killed. The Romans liked battle recreations to be as realistic as possible. Naumaquias were very popular with audiences. But – where would Harrisburg get volunteers to participate in deadly sea battles? From the same place the Romans got them – prisons. The Romans gave freedoms to condemned prisoners who participated in Naumaqias, provided they survived and fought fiercely. This is the solution to Harrisburg’s stadium problem. People would come from all over the U.S. to see a real Roman Naumaquia!

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO BERKELEY’S 99¢ ONLY STORE?

A visit to this store is worthwhile just to look at the ceiling. The ceiling seems extremely lavish for a 99-cent store. It is located at 1941 San Pablo Avenue. See photo below. The building was originally the Rivoli Theater. It was built in 1924 and seated 1,400 people. The theater closed in the 1950s and has been used as a store ever since. The original ceiling is still intact, but few people who shop at the store look up and notice it. Contrary to the store’s name, the merchandise has never been 99 cents only.

IDEALIZING LIFE IN THE OLD COUNTRY.

My grandparents, Bores Tarses and Pauline Tarses came to America from Ukraine. Ukraine is in the news every day now, but few Americans realize what a horrible place this has been to live in over the past 120 years. First came the Russo-Japanese War, then World War 1, and then the Russian Revolution. Countless millions of Ukrainians were killed. Then came a typhus epidemic that killed 2 million. Then came Stalin’s Terror Famine of the 1930s. Between 3 and 4 million Ukrainians died of starvation. Millions more were sent to the Gulag, Stalin’s slave labor camps. Few of those people returned home. Then came World War 2. Between 5 and 7 million Ukrainians were killed, including all of my grandparent’s sisters and brothers who had not come to America. Today, Ukraine is among the poorest countries in Europe. Per capita income is $13,000 a year (or it was before the current war began). By comparison, per capita income in neighboring Poland is $33,000 a year, and Poland is a relatively poor European country. Nevertheless, my grandmother talked about Ukraine as though it was a wonderful place, even though terrible things were going on there at the time she left. Old people who moved to America when they were young all seem to do what my grandmother did – idealizing the place where they came from. Maybe your grandparents talk the same way about the places they came from. But – if life was really as wonderful in the Old Country as they remembered it, then why did they move to the United States?

CHOCOLATE DESSERTS.

A gimmick that many restaurants use to get absurdly high prices is serving food in a way that is designed to surprise or shock people. Below are pictures of chocolate desserts from some expensive restaurants. One restaurant serves 2 truffles on a flip-flop for $30. You get to keep the flip-flop (just one flip flop). Another serves truffles on a horse manure fork for $85. For $60, you can get ground chocolate wafers and mascarpone in an overturned flower pot. The chocolate dessert ball is $100. I have no idea what the wrench is for. If you know what the wrench is for, let me know. I’m curious about that.

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A pound of chocolate weighs considerably more than a pound of gold. That is because the U.S. uses English weights and measures, which are often irrational and confusing. In the U.S., chocolate and most other things are weighed in a system called avoirdupois, in which there are 16 ounces in a pound. Gold and other precious metals are measured in the troy system, in which there are 12 ounces in a pound. It is more obvious in the metric system which pound is heavier. A pound of gold weighs 373 grams, but a pound of chocolate weighs 454 grams. 

WHAT WEIGHS MORE, A TON OF CHOCOLATE OR A TON OF COAL? The coal weighs more. In the U.S., chocolate is weighed in regular tons. There are 2,000 pounds in a regular ton. Coal and many other commodities are weighed in long tons. There are 2,240 pounds in a long ton, so a ton of coal weighs 240 pounds more than a ton of chocolate. The rest of the world uses the metric ton, which weighs 1,000 kilograms. So, in Germany, for example, a ton of chocolate weighs exactly the same as a ton of coal.

HOW MANY OUNCES ARE IN A GALLON? That depends on whether it is an American gallon or an Imperial gallon. An American gallon contains 128 ounces. An Imperial gallon, which is used in Canada and many other British Commonwealth countries, contains 160 ounces. To make matters more confusing, there are 2 ways to measure ounces. There are dry ounces and fluid ounces. Gallons are measured in fluid ounces.

HOW MANY ZEROS ARE IN A BILLION?

In the United States, one billion = 1,000,000,000 (a 1 with 9 zeros). In Britain, one billion = 1,000,000,000,000 (a 1 with 12 zeros).

In the United States one trillion = 1,000,000,000,000 (a 1 with 12 zeros). In Britain, one trillion = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 (a 1 with 18 zeros).

Try asking the questions above to people who should know the answers: math and science majors. Very few of them will get them right. I sometimes wonder if the foreign students at U.C. Berkeley learned anything about the U.S. system of weights and measures before coming here. I also wonder if math and science students who come here from countries where people speak British English get confused about how many zeros there are in large numbers like a billion.

HAVE YOU BEEN EATING MY COASTERS?

I used to keep beverage coasters in my guest cottage, the Tool Shed; however, I just removed them because they kept getting eaten by either my guests or my tenant’s guests. See photo below. Nobody ate a whole coaster. After taking one bite, these people must have realized that these coasters are made out of cork and are inedible. This has happened 3 times. I removed the coasters because I became concerned that someday, somebody was going to eat a whole coaster, get sick, go to the hospital, and then sue me for not having a warning label on the coaster saying: ‘Do not eat this coaster!’ I don’t know who has been eating my coasters or why. Nobody has come forward and confessed. Is it you? My stepsister eats a lot of rice cakes, and her rice cakes look a lot like my coasters; however, I haven’t had the guts to ask her – or anybody else: “Have you been eating my coasters?” If I buy new coasters, I am going to have to get coasters that are more obviously inedible.

WHO HAS BEEN EATING THE FAKE APPLES AT IKEA?

Ikea has plastic apples in their kitchenware displays. Whenever I go to Ikea in Emeryville, I look at the fake apples. All of them have teeth marks in them. See my photo below. An employee at Ikea told me that they replace the plastic apples with teeth marks in them, but then they have to replace them again when the new fake apples also have teeth marks in them. I have a cousin here in Berkeley who teaches art at a public school in Oakland. She told me that she has seen teeth marks in the fake apples in her classroom as well. There is something about this that I don’t understand. The plastic apples at Ikea are hollow. They weigh less than an ounce, so it must be obvious to anyone picking up one of these fake apples that it is a fake apple. So – why do people keep trying to eat them? Could they be the same people who are eating my coasters?

IS PLANT-BASED MEAT HEALTHIER THAN THE REAL THING?

Most people believe that plant-based meat is healthier than the real thing, but is that true? In order to make a vegan hamburger look and smell like the real thing, the ingredients are ultra-processed. An Impossible Burger contains about the same number of calories and the same amount of saturated fat as a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder, but the Impossible Burger contains much less protein and 6 times more salt. Just because a product is plant-based doesn’t mean that it’s good for you. Coca Cola and cigarettes are also plant-based.

FREEZING FOOD.

Most people freeze the wrong foods. Some foods that are commonly frozen taste awful after they have been frozen. I have never understood why people buy frozen peas and carrots. Peas freeze well, but carrots do not. My high school cafeteria used to serve peas and carrots quite often. I ate the peas but pushed the carrot cubes to the side of my plate and then dumped them. Here are some foods that most people don’t freeze but that freeze very well in freezer zip-lok bags.

1. Brown Sugar. Brown sugar will turn hard as rock with time if you store it in a kitchen cabinet, but it will stay soft almost indefinitely in your freezer.

2. Chocolate. Your freezer is the best place to store chocolate that you use infrequently, like unsweetened baking chocolate. Fully defrost chocolate in a zip-lok bag before opening the bag ro avoid condensation on the chocolate’s surface. That can cause chocolate to bloom.

3. Muffins.  I store muffins in my freezer, and they always taste fine after I defrost them.

4. Butter. Butter at Safeway is $4.99 a pound right now. It is $2.50 a pound at Costco, but you have to buy 4 pounds at a time. It can take a long time for most people to go through 4 pounds of butter. Most dairy products do not freeze well, but butter freezes very well.

5. Bacon. Bacon is another product that costs twice as much at Safeway as it does at Costco, but you have to buy 4 – 1 pound packages at a time. Bacon is the easiest thing in the world to freeze because it is already vacuum sealed. Just toss it in the freezer. Most people don’t realize it, but a lot of the bacon sold in supermarkets arrives at the store frozen.

IT’S ENGLAND VS. IRELAND IN MY CHOCOLATE ROOM!My English toffee proved to be very popular, so now I am also making Irish toffee. The crunchy center of both is the same. Both are 30% butter. However, English toffee is dipped in milk chocolate and then covered in chopped almonds. Irish toffee is covered in dark chocolate and then dusted with a little sea salt. The English and the Irish have always disagreed as to what type of chocolate goes best with toffee. Both ways are very good.
P.S. – I am told that this is not the only issue that the English and the Irish are not in complete agreement about.

CONSTRUCTION TIPS FOR CALIFORNIA LANDLORDS.
If you are thinking about buying a rental property in California someday, these tips may be helpful to you: Construction Tips For California Landlords.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS?
Look at the metal object in my hand in photos below. Do you know what it is? Your parents and grandparents know what it is. It is an ashtray from a Boeing 737 from the 1980s. Every seat had an ashtray in the armrest. The smoke on airplanes was sometimes so thick that you couldn’t see the faces of people more than 3 rows behind you. Everything beyond that was just a white cloud. On some flights, flight attendants walked down the aisles handing passengers little packs of free cigarettes. I had a hard time breathing on airplanes, and the longer the flight lasted, the harder it became to breathe. I used to ask for a window seat because the air was a little better over the air vents under the window, but there was no place to escape from the smoke. Smoking on flights in the U.S. was banned in 2000.

COMMENTS? If you want to comment on any article in this newsletter, you can do so at: Mark Tarses Blog

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’.