Short selling explained

My pal Paddy Hirsch, Marketplace's Senior Editor, has taken to his dry erase board again to explain the whys and wherefores of the much discussed but seldom understood practice of short selling.


Getting naked in short selling from Marketplace on Vimeo.

My childhood on Ebay

Good Lord. Is there anything that nostalgia buffs won't buy?

I mean, how did this stuff become collectible?

I am flying to Pennsylvania this morning to attend my 25-year High School reunion tomorrow night. So maybe I'm sensitive to this sort of thing right now. But there was a time when this Corelle in the avocado green Spring Flower pattern was all the rage. My mother and all of her friends had it. I ate many, many toasted cheese sandwiches off of these plates. Times changed eventually, and my mother pitched all of hers in a radical fit of updating at some point in the early '90s.

It's interesting to see it again, if only to get a shiver of recognition. But to spend money on it on eBay? I guess I'm not one for nostalgia. I had a good time when I was a kid --I had a genuinely happy childhood. But I think I'm missing the impulse to try to cling to it or recreate it in my adult life.

Armed with that little scrap of self-awareness, this ought to be an interesting weekend indeed. Look out class of '83, I'm coming back to the land of my birth. So let's keep things focused on the now and keep the sentimentality to a minimum.

On the horizon: The Water Mill

This is the Watermill by Element Four. Element Four is a British Columbia-based company that's determined to solve the world's potable water problems and their first product in that direction is their Water Mill.

The Water Mill mounts to the exterior of your home and distills pure water from the air. It's estimated to cost 35 cents a day to run and it cranks out 3.2 gallons of water a day. The Water Mill can be connected to a sink top dispenser, the ice and water dispensers on a fridge, its own wall-mounted dispenser or it can run into a separate, refrigerated appliance dispenser. The diagram below shows these four dispensing options pretty well.

While the Water Mill can't supply all of a household's water needs, it can provide ample drinking water for a family or individual and it will help you throw away the bottle for once and for all.

Happy Birthday

This was my Grandmother, Guellma Gevene Flowers-Smith-Stewart and she was born on October 22nd, 1905. We called her Gram sometimes and Gevene when there was a good story to tell that involved her. There were always good stories to tell that involved her. 

Gram died 11 years ago and a part of all of us went with her. But a bigger and better part stuck around. I cannot turn a mattress or iron a shirt without thinking of her, nor can I laugh or gossip with my sibs without her being in the middle of it. I report to my friends that my place is "Gevene clean" and they know that I've spent the previous day scrubbing my floors and vacuuming under the sofa. She's why I have a bar of Fels-Naptha soap under my sink and why I insist on doing everything myself. She taught be to be self-reliant, to draw strength from adversity and above all to laugh. Some people just loom large and Gevene certainly did that. I've heard it said that the dead live on when the living remember them. If that's true than this lady will be around forever. 

The baby in this photo was her first great-grandkid. Well, she's a grown woman now and in three weeks she's going to be married. My siblings, my parents and I will get together for my niece's wedding and celebrate. Wow. The first of my nieces and nephews, my parents' first grandkid, is getting married. We'll laugh and dance and knowing us, argue. But more than any of that, at least so far as I'm concerned, we'll do our best to make sure that the great lady who begot all of us lives for a little while longer.

More proof that bottled water is a pre-packaged LIE

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) commissioned a study of the quality of 10 domestic brands of bottled water. The ten brands were purchased from eight different states and the District of Columbia, then sent to the University of Iowa's Hygienic Laboratory for analysis. Samples were also sent to the University of Missouri for further analysis. You can read about the methodology of the tests here.

Municipalities are required to test for contaminants every year and then to make the results of those tests available to the public. Check the website of your municipality to find out what's in your tap water. The bottled water industry has no such requirement.

The EWP's study concluded:

Altogether, the analyses conducted by the University of Iowa Hygienic Laboratory of these 10 brands of bottled water revealed a wide range of pollutants, including not only disinfection byproducts, but also common urban wastewater pollutants like caffeine and pharmaceuticals (Tylenol); heavy metals and minerals including arsenic and radioactive isotopes; fertilizer residue (nitrate and ammonia); and a broad range of other, tentatively identified industrial chemicals used as solvents, plasticizers, viscosity decreasing agents, and propellants.

Read the study. Stop buying and using bottled water. Today.