This is asinine.

I'm going to do something a bit unusual for me, and talk a bit about a stock I own. Normally, I figure that this sort of thing is A) sort of a private issue and B) kinda boring to other people, but in this case, I have a few points to make. First, let me post for you part of a short AP story from today about a company in which I own significant stock:

"NEW YORK (AP) -- Shares of Intuitive Surgical Inc., which makes the da Vinci robotic surgery system, tumbled Friday after the company forecast weaker sales growth in 2008 than Wall Street had expected.

After reporting strong first-quarter results, the Sunnyvale, Calif., company said it expects revenue to increase 42 percent for the year, which implies sales of $853.2 million. Earlier, the company projected 40 percent growth.

Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected $857.2 million in revenue, or growth of almost 46 percent. Intuitive Surgical Inc. shares skidded $57.50, or 16.5 percent, to $291.

ThinkEquity analyst Stephen Ogilvie downgraded the stock to "Accumulate" from "Buy" on the news. Ogilvie said Intuitive's first quarter was good and the company is in good shape, but he does not expect the stock to rise. He kept a price target of $360 per share."

Okay. First let me say that you can't get mad at the market: It is what it is and it does what it does. Fine. But analysts and media are another story. They're usually a beat slow and a step behind.

In this case, the writer points out that the company's forward earnings expectations fall $4 million short of analyst expectations, out of a total $850+ million. Fair enough, but for those keeping score at home, that's LESS THAN HALF OF ONE PERCENT!! And if you know the company's product -- surgical robots -- you understand that's a shortfall of two -- 2! -- systems. Over the next 12 months.

I would submit a better reading of events is that the stock had been speculatively bid up just prior to yesterday's earnings announcement and conference call. Maybe worth mentioning, if you're a decent reporter.

Secondly, ThinkEquity analyst Stephen Ogilvie is an ass. There, I said it. He's closing the door after the horse has left the barn. If he'd had something to say BEFORE the earnings announcement and 15% share price drop, that would have been worth something.

But if, on Wednesday, when the stock was at $350/share, he had a "buy" recommendation and a 12-month target price of $360, how is it a worse investment two days later at $295/share? I mean, as the AP article clearly states, he's not changing his expected target price. Most people think a thing is a better deal when it's on sale, not a worse deal.

Anyhow, not that I'm blaming Stephen Ogilvie or the AP for my little turn of fortune this week (and I'm not worried about this company in the long term AT ALL), but sometimes this kind of stupidity just needs to be called out.

He's ready

If you watched/read about/heard about the ABC "debate" that took place this week, you probably share my disdain for where we've come. America's political discourse has never been the angelic model of civic-mindedness many people seem to "remember" but I don't ever recall it getting quite this inane before at the presidential level. I do have to admit, the Goring of Gore came close, but the ABC charade was a new low, because it dwelled so happily and delightedly in the muck of this campaign, with a blissful ignorance of all the huge issues pressing in on our world.

And while Barack Obama came off as a bit beleagured during that debate, he did not crack, and did not sink to... oh, let's call it bitterness. He didn't dive in. And the next day, I think he adeptly turned that debate into an object lesson of why he's running. I think he's ready for this job.

A Malaria X-Prize?

In historical terms, almost wiping out a disease isn't much use. It may greatly help a few generations, of course. But almost certainly, absent a total victory over these pathogens, they will incubate, mutate and replicate again, more virulent or resistant than before. So, while we may all pat ourselves on the back for the brilliance of modern medicine, I've always felt we've been fooling ourselves.

Eradicating polio -- which the world almost, almost did -- would be an immense relief. We're not out of the woods yet.You may be surprised to learn that about 2,000 people are still diagnosed with the disease every year. Vaccinations have cut the incidence of polio by about 99 percent, but fewer and fewer of us have had the vaccine.

If polio were truly and finally eradicated, humans could all breathe a collective sigh of relief. No child would ever again be laid low by that disease. We're close, and continuing international programs have a good chance to finish off the poliovirus in our lifetime. It would be only the second disease ever declared eradicated, after smallpox (see Wikipedia for more.)

Similarly, malaria is a disease that we probably COULD eradicate if we had the money and political willpower. There are four strains of malarial parasites which can cause disease in humans. These protozoa still kill about 3 million people a year. And Wikipedia says that as many as 515 million people -- a good percentage of the world's population -- fall ill every year. It may be a chief cause of perpetual poverty in the world's tropical societies.

The big pharmaceutical companies of the world have no incentive to cure these diseases, of course. As Chris Rock astutely points out, the money ain't in the cure, it's in the treatment. Given the truth of that point, maybe the challenge is to put the money back in the cure.

So what if the great health charities, such as the Gates Foundation, were to sponsor a contest. The could raise great piles of money and offer it as a prize to the company which can succesfully eradicate these pathogens worldwide. There could be smaller prizes for partial success, but the big prize comes from permanent victory. We might attack other diseases in similar fashion. Put the profit back into the cure.

The idea of using a prize to spur innovation is nothing new. From the X-prize for a privately-financed spaceship, to the quest for a 100 mpg car, piles of money drive the world's visionaries to put their ideas into practice. The best ideas find risk-tolerant entrepreneurs to back them, and even when they fall short of the final goal, they move the ball forward.

I think that would work with disease. As we pick off diseases, we should be able to devote more and more of our resources on the ones that remain. Let's do it before natural selection produces generations of "superbugs" which overrun the progress we've made.

TOXIC: Garbage Island

A floating island of plastic garbage the size of Texas. A crusty old boat captain. A doctor. A Mexican scientist. And film crew of geeks. Makes for good TV, but this show is on the Web.

This will give you some serious thoughts about all the extraneous plastics in your life.

So far, 4 of 12 episodes of "Garbage Island" are online... I'm eager to see the rest soon. Go check it out.

Oh my Tigers!!!

It has been pointed out to me by helpful friends that the Detroit Tigers have failed to win a single real game since, in the heat of pre-season excitement, Tdec and I purchased a 27-game package of tickets. While I'm more likely to blame the Tigers' all-too-quiet bats, I have to admit that according to the laws of quantum physics, it IS possible that our decision to buy these tickets is the primary reason the Tigers are losing. But the odds are against it.

My preferred theory is that the Tigers are just enduring a perfect storm of slumping pros. And there's a common thread to them all: This team wasn't ready in time for the regular season. I understand the feeling of Leyland & Co. that the starting pitchers and everyday players are all established pros, and you don't need to harangue them to get ready. But these guys were not on their game coming out of Florida (by way of Houston), and they still are not. They're still a step behind the Royals and White Sox, obviously, and those 6 losses will hang around their necks like a weight the rest of the season.

I notice that the Tigers starting pitching has looked good for about four innings or so, and then fallen off considerably in quality. That's a TREND thus far: Good stuff, generally, but not enough stamina. Bonderman's speed tailed off in the 5th, and the other starters have marred their first four innings with substandard fifth and sixth innings. The Tigers' bullpen has been pretty good, actually, after clearing the basepaths of inherited runners. That caveat is a big deal though: If memory serves, I think almost 100% of runners inherited from starters have crossed the plate. The inability of Tigers pitchers to strand inherited runners has been a peeve of mine for a couple years now.

And of course the big bats have been silent. Some people think that maybe -- because Polanco, Guillen, Rodriguez, Cabrera, Renteria and Ordonez all just happen to be slumping players born, raised and trained to play baseball in much-warmer climates -- that maybe just maybe the weather has been a factor. It's not a crazy theory, but I have no idea how you prove it.

There's no doubt that players need to prepare for the cold, as it does change the game. I noticed that a lot of pitchers had control problems on the coldest days. The difference is that our opponents were pounding pitches into the dirt, while the Tigers arms were peppering the backstop. Which reminds me of Dontrelle Willis' pre-season comment that he had never SEEN snow. How much snow do you think Willis' perenniel teammate Miguel Cabrera has seen?

The fact remains, however, that their bats have been cold as ice the past week, and the weather can't be an excuse. Opponents are playing in the same conditions. So, even if cold wasn't the cause, my hope is that averages rise with the thermometer. But I know things will get better, as of course they can hardly get worse.

From his cold, dead fingers...

So Charlton Heston has passed away at the age of 84.

Can we have his gun now?

Odd fact...

According to a pair of stories in this week's TIME Magazine:

-- The Peace Symbol turns 50 on April 4, 2008. It was invented by an Englishman for an anti-nuke rally, and the symbol melds the semaphore signals for "N" and "D" as in "Nuclear Disarmament."

-- April 4, 2008 is also the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King.

I'm sure that the irony of this coincidence has been noted often before, but it was news to me.

Tigers Pitching woes

Seems like all the Detroit Tigers die-hards are worried sick about the state of the team's pitching staff. Everyone whose last name doesn't rhyme with "Jerlander" seems to be under suspicion. Francisco Cruceta can't get out of the Dominican Republic due to visa issues, lefty Tim Byrdak stunk so bad this spring he was given an outright release, Rodney seems to be perpetually troubled by tendonitis, and starter Dontrelle Willis has a combination of electric stuff and control problems that remind you of Charlie Sheen of "Wild Thing" vintage.

Yet, all the focus has been on the problems, and not the bright spots. Denny Bautista, picked up in a trade for prospect Jose Capellan, has looked fantastic, with three great pitches -- maybe Pudge and Chuck Hernandez can teach him how to mix them up correctly. Zach Miner is a legitimate major-league bullpen arm. Todd Jones has been there before and done it before. And Tata, Cruceta and Rodney could be back by May, for all we know. All is not lost. And fans are fooling themselves if they think other teams aren't facing the same sorts of questions.

And in the end, they simply need the bullpen to be average. Much has been said about the astonishing bats in this lineup -- all of it deserved. This team has starting pitching that, if all five guys get right, will shut down opponents' bats. Robertson and Bonderman were dogged by injury last year, but both have been sublime at times when healthy. Rogers is old as dirt, but he's also smarter than 95% of the guys he'll face. Verlander, well -- he's a great one. (Seeing his no-hitter in person was one of the greatest sports memories of my life. Who pitches a no-hitter in their second season? Who does that?).

So all the hand-wringing about the bullpen and the last two position players on the bench is a bit much. It's easy to imagine May 1 rolling around, with Rodney, Cruceta and Tata in the bullpen, Granderson in CF, Willis and his control problems sorted out after a slow start, and all of us asking ourselves, "What were we all so worried about?"

Me to Pennsylvania: "End it."

Hey, I believe in democracy. I'm a big believer. So I'm opposed to any and all shenanigans that Democratic bigwigs are talking about using as a way to end the Democratic Party's presidential race. Now, I'm backing Obama, so I wouldn't mind if Hillary had an epiphany and decided to drop out tomorrow. But if she decides to stay in it and try to win, well, OK.

A lot of people are nervous that a long primary will doom the Democrat in the general election. My feeling is that it would be hard for a Democrat to lose. People have talked about Clinton using the "Tonya Harding option," whereby, in losing, she essentially cuts Obama off at the knees for the general election. That's a possibility, of course, but that's just not cricket. If she pulls that shit and costs the Democrats the 2008 election out of spite, good freakin' luck finding support from your less-than-ecstatic Congressional colleagues over the next 4 years.

So, as a believer in democracy, here's what I'm asking of the voters in Pennsylvania: Just end this. Give Obama a 5-point win. That breaks the back of the Clinton campaign and drains the destructive energy out of her increasingly cynical campaign. To me, that's the best outcome: the voters decide.

Come on Pennsylvania!!

An old friend returns

I just knew he'd be back the day I heard the Wings were buying out his contract to fit under the salary cap... The Free Press reports:

(Darren) McCarty has been on a tumultuous path over the past few years, and his career looked over last summer. But last December he leaned on longtime friend and former Grind Line mate Kris Draper, and Draper came through with a gym membership and a contract for the IHL team he co-owns, the Flint Generals. From there McCarty played for the AHL's Grand Rapids Griffins, and Feb. 25 the Wings signed him to a one-year contract.

Darren McCarty's 36, so I wouldn't expect miracles. But he's a proud man, and I'm sure he'll get himself in game shape and do all he can to be ready during the playoffs. You'd expect McCarty to be a scratch most days if the rest of the team is healthy, but if the Wings make any sort of run, you can bet they'll call on McCarty at some point.

I know he's had his troubles, but man -- I like the guy. Welcome back, Darren.

I'm so bloody smart...

...sometimes I have to pinch myself to make sure I'm real.

I've been telling people for a long time that the day would come when we don't need solar panels -- we'll just be able to paint stuff, and it the paint will not only capture solar power, but be conductive enough that we just need to embed some wires in it to collect the power. Well, almost -- the idea is to put solar paint on steel siding. Close enough, folks. Keep thinking about it, and I'm sure the micro-wire idea will come to you, too.

No idea how far along the lads at Swansea University are to a finished product. But, how fantastically cool will this be?

We just need to put all efforts into getting this sort of stuff to market ASAP. It's got to be a strategic priority.

Tigers' Opening Day

Hard to believe, but real baseball is now less than 2 weeks away!

As a partial season-ticket holder, I got to jump the queue yesterday and buy Opening Day tickets. But I didn't see the e-mail alerting me of this until an hour and a half after the sale started, so I didn't end up with great ducats: All I could get was a pair of standing-room passes. Man, these things are going like hotcakes.

If you're a hardy soul, you might be interested in attending the Tigers' March 31 opener vs. the Royals. If so, let me know: I'm willing to sell the pair. Make an offer.

Too much junk mail

From the Stockton (CA) Record:

On average, every household in America receives 848 pieces of junk mail a year. That's more than 100 billion pieces of unsolicited paper using more than 100 million trees...

ForestEthics, an inter-national environmental nonprofit group based in San Francisco, launched its campaign Tuesday to stop junk mail and "take our mailboxes back," according to a statement...

Junk mail distributed by the U.S. Postal Service in the United States accounts for 30 percent of all the mail delivered worldwide, and ForestEthics says 44 percent of that goes to landfills unopened.

All that, and it pisses me off, too? What a deal!

Ferraro and the race card

I don't know that what Geraldine Ferraro said was racist; that is, I don't think it reveals a hatred of blacks on her part. But it does reveal a real cynicism about racial politics: She and other Clintonistas probably think it's good strategy to try to take a little of the shine off Barack. But Ferraro has proven to be ham-handed in the wrealm of bark-knuckle politics. If you're going to take the gloves off, be careful not to punch yourself.

Ferraro's clearly tried to insert race more overtly as a campaign issue, and that's absolutely unacceptable in a Democratic primary. But her boneheaded-comments also bothered me because they smack of the sort of entitlement mentality which has beseiged so many old-guard Democrats who support Hillary: The idea that she's earned her shot, while he's just "lucky," in Ferraro's words. Those are the sounds of a rat on a sinking ship.

Off all the chatter I've seen on this topic, maybe the best rebuttal to Ferraro came buried in the comments section beneath an item on the Huffington Post:

BrooklynLager: Imagine a goodlooking, charismatic graduate of Columbia, Harvard Law School who becomes the editor of the Harvard Law Review. He decides he wants to go into politics, so he moves back out to Chicago, but no one will back him for any office, despite his resume, obvious political skills, and talent. So he works for a while at a law firm to build up contacts and pay the bills.

Years go by, and FINALLY he's able to get financial backing to run for state senate in a heavily black district, because that's all that's available to him. He works there for years, forming alliances, meeting with people whose support he's going to need (some of which will come back to haunt him later, but he has no other options), and finally almost 20 years later, he wins in a tightly contested primary for Senate and explodes on the national scene. As we've all seen what Obama is capable of in strict terms of electability - the guy is a phenomenon - his lack of experience in Washington should be striking. The man is 46 years old, not 36.

Now consider Bill Clinton, someone with comparable charisma and a similar educational background. Three years out of Law School, he's the Attorney General of Arkansas. Two years later he's Governor. It's as easy as that.

Agreed: Ferraro is just wrong. There's no excuse for a Clinton to so bungle race issues that she loses 90% of the African-American vote in Mississippi. Hillary is half of a political partnership which has made huge commitments to improving the economic opportunities of black America, to appointing blacks to positions of power and influence, to healing racial divisions. It is so sad to see them walk away from that here, in this chapter of their lives. It's deeply short-sighted, and reinforces my conviction that for the Clintons, all is calculation, and nothing is principle.

Black candidates have to deal with the reality that a real chunk of the electorate is just never going to vote for them. And while it may be true that some voters are excited about Obama because he's black, history clearly shows (Jesse Jackson, for instance) that you can't win just by being an exciting, eloquent black leader. There's so much more than that to Barack. He's sharp, graceful, shrewd, hard-working, and pretty clearly running a campaign which taps into all of the pent-up RAGE at what's been going on in Washington. He doesn't have to run against Bush -- it's so fucking obvious that Barack Obama is Bush's antithesis.

Now, Hillary Clinton is an intelligent and talented politician, who excites a lot of people (not me, incidentally, but no matter). And she was at her best when she was showing positivity, humanity, humility, energy and even a little spontanaiety. To me, she's always been a bit like meatloaf (the food): You know, it's fine, it fills you up, not really objectionable. I'd choose meatloaf over plenty of other options, but it doesn't get me really excited. If she were the nominee, I'd vote for her in November knowing that, you know, at least she'd run an Administration where people had some respect for the Constitution and the law, and that counts for a whole lot.

But while Hillary Clinton is an adept politician and a really good senator, Obama shows the promise of greatness. He offers America a chance to really break with he political tropes of the past few decades, to heal some of its wounds, to mend its fences with neighbors, and to really build a vision for America into the 21st Century. Hillary, like George H.W. Bush, has trouble with "the whole vision thing."

This is it in a nutshell: Ferraro needs to stop fighting the political battles of 1984.

I got stripes...

Maybe it was rash, maybe it was a foolish way to tie up several "Benjamins", especially in these days of $3+ gasoline. But baseball fever has gripped the Woods household this year in a big way. And on the last day of our trip to Australia, Trase and I went online and plopped down the money for a pair of 27-game Tigers ticket packages.

Yesterday, the FedEx guy delivered a little bundle of joy. They're beautiful.

So on April 2, and 1:05 p.m., you shall find me in Section 321 of New Tiger Stadium -- (I'm not going to advertise for that carpetbagging bank anymore; they didn't pay me a naming-rights fee) -- cheering my lungs out as Jeremy Bonderman takes the mound.

Maybe I'll get ambitious and post my breakdown of the Tigers '08 lineup. But I might have to charge for that content through my ArbINSIDER subscription program.

This is not a tax bill

Got the letter from the township tax assessor's office today. It says "THIS IS NOT A TAX BILL" in big letters, so I guess it's just a friendly update from the friendly people down at the friendly twp. hall. They say the assessed value (which isn't REALLY the assessed value -- there's some formula based on the real assessment) for my property went down 8% this year. Yikes.

Of course, my "taxable value" went up, thus my taxes will, as well. Guess we should be thankful that tax hikes are capped in Michigan, but it does mean that after 5 years, the taxman is still playing catch-up, even in a down market.

A low blow?

I just saw a picture of John and Cindy McCain at his press conference where he denied having "sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." Or maybe it was some other hanger-on. I know this isn't exactly profound political commentary, but Cindy looks like a pretty tightly wrapped package, doesn't she?



I had a chuckle thinking that she looked a lot like Cruella De Vil. Taking an inspriation from Nancy Nall, I decided to Google "Cindy McCain cruella". Astonishingly, it turned up 830 results, so I decided that maybe I didn't have such an original insight after all. But isn't shared experience at the heart of humor? You know it's kinda funny.

Comments on the Presidential Race

Hillary Clinton keeps saying the Barack Obama hasn't passed the "Commander in Chief" test. I hope I'm not letting a national security secret out of the bag here, but neither has she -- she's been in the senate 7 years, which is about 13 years less than the Republican nominee has been in the same august body. So I think she's playing with fire here. But when you're 100 delegates behind, maybe that's a game worth playing.

Who did pass the "C in C" test? I think Al Gore did, but I didn't get a chance to vote for him this time around. George Bush the lesser definitely didn't -- he just sat in the big chair in Texas for a few years, oblivious that there were continents across the sea (he was vaguely aware of Mexico).

Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy, Nixon -- none of them really passed the "C in C" test prior to becoming leader of the free world. I think of all of the recent "deciders", George Bush the "greater" had the best preparation, and he ended up using all his moxie for the largely successful Gulf War Vol. I to some effect. But Truman did all right in the Commander in Chief department, I'd say, and he didn't have a whole lot more prep than either of this year's Democrats.

In the end, we relied on the judgment of these men.

Clinton's done

So, rumor has it that Hillary Clinton had a big week last week, winning Ohio and "winning" Texas. But according to Kos, Obama had such a "bad" week that he ended up gaining 8 delegates on Hillary. Here's the math. A few more weeks like that, and she'll have to drop out sooner rather than later, methinks.

So, I'm already 0-1 on predictions (I said it would be Huckabee for the GOP), and I'm now predicting that I'll be 0-2 on my predictions, as I think it's clear that Obama will win. If I'm right about that, I guess that will actually be 1 right, 2 wrong. (Am I hedging my bets here?)

Incidentally, I endorse Obama, for all that it's worth.

Scientists: We must slash our carbon outputs

The scientists tell us that to avert more warming, we're going to have to cut carbon emissions faster and more dramatically than Kyoto or any other plans have been calling for. It's serious folks. And as quaint as the warming-deniers are, the weight of the evidence and the seriousness of the problems warming will cause justify serious national action.

As I watch coverage of the Presidential primaries unfold, I continue to be amazed by the ability of candidates, commentators and news professionals alike to ignore virtually all serious discussion of the life-or-death issues in front of us. Instead, they focus in with laser-like intensity on the most sophomoric, personality-driven aspects of the election. To my knowledge, nobody has asked either candidate, "What do you plan to do when oil reaches $150 a barrel?" or, "What if Greenland melts?"

Lately, I've gotten a little worried that maybe this isn't just a recession or a cyclical downturn in the American economy. When you look at what's happening to the U.S. dollar, and what's happening to our manufacturing base, and you add to it the aging of our population, and the huge demands that Medicare and Soc. Security are going to put on all of us... well, I start to get a bit gloomy. When you add in the prospect that fuel could get three times as expensive as it is now, that we will see huge resource wars and the displacement of hundreds of millions of people due to warming, the loss of huge amounts of natural habitat for the same reason, and potential shocks to the planet's ability to produce food... well, I get downright worried.

So, whatever else happens, it's pretty clear to me we have to cut carbon outputs now.