SWCAMBORNE

“Flattery and insults raise the same question: What do you want?”

Mason Cooley

American Aphorist

Aphorist: One who write aphorisms.

People in my neighborhood have rain guages and they chat on line about them.  I think that you could sell millions of them for $199 each.  The question is could you make them cheap enough?

Amazon is selling the Kindle Edition of Scott Turow’s new book for $14.99.  Substantially the same price as the print edition.  Scott Turow is the extremely successful writer of legal suspense novels.  Since they first created the Kindle Amazon has sold most e-books for $9.99.

Amazon was forced to make this price increase by the publisher.  They want to maximize the sell price and sell printed books.  They have a huge sunk cost in the value of their printing plants and distribution systems and they want to preserve it.  The publishers will lose of course because the cost of e-books is so much lower.  The only question is: How long can the publishers hang on to the old model?  They forced Amazon to capitulate to price increases but now they are running into consumer resistance on the customer review pages of their web site.  Take a look:  Innocent by Scott Turow Reviews

It is virtual civil disobedience.  And of course I’m participating.  We (the price protesters) have taken over the customer reviews and are rating the book one star.  Hopefully the result will be a rapid change in the pricing by the publisher.  I’m sorry for Scott Turow since he will lose some royalty money but in the words of Lenin: “If you want to make an omelet you have to break some eggs.”

I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.

David Mamet

Playwright

Halcyon Bush is the very good Post Mistress on Utila in Honduras.

She has a great name, a wonderfully happy demeanor and is an excellent representative of the endangered Post Office.

In March I and a few of the codger divers bought all of her postcard stamps and enjoyed getting to know her and her friend the judge.

You can see the group photo here

A new organization in the UK has put together an excellent fact sheet about immigration.  You can go directly to the I Love Migrants site . Or cut and paste this link: http://ilovemigrants.wordpress.com/i%E2%99%A5home/

An exerpt:   “Migrants will look after the old: Only through migration will there be enough young people to look after the elderly.” read more

In reality the presentation of facts will only work to convince those with open minds.  Most minds are made up already and dismiss facts that don’t confirm their beliefs.  But this is the beauty of I Love Migrants.  Their main appeal is to the emotions.  And they claim the emotional high ground.  Love is better than hate.

Recently I found myself wanting a card that said something along the lines of “whoops I screwed up”.  Of course I could not find any.  I think that someone should make them and sell them in a 6 pack, with things like “I am a moron” and “sorry for being an a$$”. Just think of all the relationships that the cards could help heal.

A few years ago my friend from a long time ago Tina T. moved with her husband Alan G. to Spain.  They bought a house near Granada and are now renting rooms and a small apartment to travelers.  You can rent a piece of their beautiful house for not a lot of money.

This idea of retiring and then renting part of a beautiful house as a supplementary source of income is an excellent one.  It keeps your hand in without a rigorous schedule and keeps some more options open.  The ability to find rentals on the internet has leveled the playing field for individuals.  It used to be that it required several levels of distribution to find renters now organizations like VRBO and Owners Direct give an individual vacation home owner broad visibility at low cost.  Change is…

In exactly 800 days I will be eligible for the medicare buffet.  I and about 3 million others will become eligible in 2012.   My hip is starting to hurt but I can wait and so can the rest of my cohort.  But rest assured that we will all be lining up for new knees and hips. Read more or click on my official countdown counter to the right of the swcamborne.com home page.

So lets do the math.  Knee replacement surgery costs about $30,000 and about a million of us will need at least one hip or knee in the next few years.  That comes to Thirty Billion Dollars just for the orthopedic needs of people born in 1947.

What can you do about it?  If you are looking for a career go into the orthopedic supply business.  If you are an investor buy stock in the companies that supply this industry.  If you are a taxpayer hang on it is going to be a rough ride.

BTW It might be a good idea to let in a lot more immigrants to help pay for all of the above.

Nick A. is a friend of Gene and Carole in Richmond Hill.  He has a very creative blog site. It includes insights one can only get from someone who is both creative and a quadriplegic.   If you want to learn to see things differently read Nick.  Warning this blog is not for those who want to keep wearing rose colored glasses.

Nick’s friend Gene