How to pick a sweet honeydew melon

Brush your hand gently over a honeydew melon. Don't buy it unless it is covered with tiny hairs - the fuzzier, the sweeter.

To easily convert from kilos to pounds

To easily convert from kilos to pounds, double it and then add ten percent.

Example,

1) 73kg x 2 = 146

146 + 14.6 = 160.6 lbs


2) 45kg x 2 = 90
90 + 9 = 99 lbs

How to tell if you are about to buy a juicy orange or grapefruit, no matter what the skin looks like:

• Pick up the orange or grapefruit. If it feels light, it's not juicy and will taste rather woody.
• Go through the bin picking the ones that feel heaviest compared to oranges or grapefruits of a similar size. They'll be the tastiest ones.

How Porsche Hacked the Financial System & Made a Killing

In 1931, Austro-Hungarian engineer Ferdinand Porsche started a German  company in his own name. It offered car design consulting services, and  was not a car manufacturer itself until it produced the Type 64 in 1939. But things got interesting for Porsche long before then.

In 1933, he was approached by none other than Adolf Hitler, who  commissioned a car designed for the German masses. Porsche accepted, and  the result was the iconic Beetle, manufactured under the Volkswagen  (lit. “people’s car”) brand. Today, Porsche’s company is one of the  world’s premier luxury car brands, while Volkswagen (VW) is itself the  world’s third-largest auto maker after General Motors and Toyota.

Three years ago, Volkswagen found itself fearing a foreign takeover.  Porsche, the company, decided to step in and start buying VW stock  ostensibly to protect the landmark brand, widely fueling market  expectations that it would eventually buy Volkswagen outright. Of  course, this isn’t quite what came to pass.

For three years, Porsche kept accumulating VW stock without telling  anyone how much it owned. Every time it purchased more, the amount of  free-floating VW stock would decrease, driving the stock price up  slightly; your basic supply and demand at work. Eventually the share  price became high enough that, to outside observers, it wouldn’t have  made any sense for Porsche to buy Volkswagen. It would simply have cost  too much.

To explain what happened next, I’m going to first tell you about a financial maneuver called shorting.

Shorting

At any given point, only a certain amount of a publicly traded  company’s stock is floating freely in the market. The rest is held in  various portfolios, funds, and investment vehicles. Now, everyone’s  familiar with the basic idea behind the stock market: you buy stock when  it costs little, and you sell it when it costs a lot, profiting on the  difference.

But that assumes a company’s value is going to increase. What if,  instead of betting a company will go up, you want to make money betting  the company will go down? You can — by selling stock you don’t own.

Say you borrow a certain amount of stock from someone who already  owns it. You pay a fixed fee for borrowing the stock, and you sign a  contract saying you will return exactly the same amount of stock you  took after some amount of time. So, you might borrow a thousand shares  of Apple stock from me (I don’t actually own any, but play along), pay  me $100 for the privilege, and sign an obligation to return my stock in 3  months. At the time, Apple stock is worth $10 per share.

After you borrow the stock, you immediately sell it. At $10 a share,  you get $10,000. Two and a half months later, another rumor about Steve  Jobs’ health sends AAPL crashing to only $6 per share for a few hours,  so you buy a thousand shares, costing you $6,000. You give me back those  shares. Because you successfully bet the company would go down in  value, you earned $4,000 minus the borrowing fee. This is called  short-selling or shorting the stock, and the downside is obvious: if  your bet was wrong, you would have lost money buying back the shares  that you have to return to your lender.

Where Things Get Kinky

When Volkswagen’s share price exceeded the point where it made sense  for Porsche to buy the company, a number of hedge funds realized that  Volkswagen shares have nowhere to go but down. With Porsche out of the  picture, there was simply no reason for VW to keep going up, and the  funds were willing to bet on it. So they shorted huge amounts of VW  stock, borrowing it from existing owners and selling it into  circulation, waiting for the price drop they considered inevitable.

Porsche anticipated exactly this situation and promptly bought up  much of these borrowed VW shares that the funds were selling. Do you see  where this is going? Analysts did. According to The Economist,  Adam Jonas from Morgan Stanley warned clients not to play “billionaire’s  poker” against Porsche. Porsche denied any foul play, saying it wasn’t  doing anything unusual.

But then, last October 26th, they stepped forward and bared their  portfolio: through a combination of stock and options, they owned 75% of  Volkswagen, which is almost all the company’s circulating stock. (The  remainder is tied up in funds that cannot easily release it.)

To put it mildly, the numbers scared the living hell out of the hedge  funds: if they didn’t immediately buy back the Volkswagen stock they  were shorting, there might not be any left to buy later, and it isn’t their stock — they have to return it to someone. If their only option is thus to  buy the VW stock from Porsche, then the miracle of supply and demand  will hit again, and Porsche can ask for whatever price it wants per VW  share — twenty times their value, a hundred times their value — because  there’s no other place to buy. They’re the only game in town.

Gains

Porsche’s ownership disclosure sent the hedge funds on such a flurry  of purchases for any Volkswagen stock still in circulation that the VW  share price jumped from below €200 to over €1000 at one point on October  28th, making Volkswagen for a brief time the world’s most valuable  company by market cap.

On paper, Porsche made between €30-40 billion in the affair.  Once all is said and done, the actual profit is closer to some €6-12  billion. To put those numbers in perspective, Porsche’s revenue for the  whole year of 2006 was a bit over €7 billion.

Porsche’s move took three years of careful maneuvering. It was darkly  brilliant, a wealth transfer ingeniously conceived like few we’ve ever  seen. Betting the right way, Porsche roiled the financial markets and  took the hedge funds for a fortune.

What's a Bitcoin and why would you want one?

By Woody Leonhard

You might have heard in recent weeks about Bitcoin millionaires — people who raked in vast sums of real money riding this relatively new form of currency.

Bitcoins offer both a fascinating, new approach to money and many potential pitfalls. Here's what you should know about this online phenomenon.

The history of money is fascinating. Ancient humans traded salt for fish, wheat for beer, and camels for wives. Around 9,000 BC, give or take a millennium or three, people started using an intermediary object — something they might not need but could exchange. For example, I'll take one bag of rice for my duck; I'll give you a half-bag of rice for that small clay pot or a whole bag for that big pot.

In Asia, cowry shells (considerably easier to carry than bags of rice, no doubt) were used long ago for bartering. But as trade expanded around the world, more sophisticated forms of "currency" were needed: bronze-cast knives in China, silver bars of set weights in Mesopotamia, gold bars in Egypt.

Around 700 to 500 BC, the first coins appeared — typically, stamped bits of naturally occurring silver/gold metal called electrum. Minted coins followed, their value dictated by the weight and fineness of gold or silver used. Coins from Athens, Persia, and China circulated all over the world.

Around the 11th century, paper money appeared alongside coins in China. In Europe, the first paper money was a sort of IOU used to document loans in gold. The IOUs gradually formalized into official banknotes.

In the 17th century, European governments (and much of the world soon after) moved into the business of issuing paper money, backed by deposits of gold and silver.

Skipping over centuries of hyperinflation, bank runs, and the end of the gold standard, we arrive at the monetary system in use today.

With the exception of cash and trade, every monetary transaction we make today goes through the same basic cycle: you offer to buy something with a credit card or check, a central record-keeping organization verifies whether you have sufficient funds or credit, the purchase is approved, and the transaction is posted to your account.

All forms of electronic money work the same way. You put through a charge using a credit card online, or you receive or send money via PayPal, or you tap your stored-value card or phone to make a payment. As long as you have enough money or credit, you're good. The system works because the currency used remains relatively stable.

Establishing an entirely different kind of money

Bitcoins are currency, but they're unlike anything most of us use today. They're a blend of new technology, old-style bartering, and free-market thinking. Although completely electronic, a Bitcoin's value is set by the open market — not by any government entity.

Like cash, Bitcoin transactions are untraceable. If you want to transfer significant amounts of money through traditional channels, it takes either suitcases of cash or at least one intermediary bank — along with all the required paper trails and fees. Not so with Bitcoins. Using some cryptographic magic and extreme redundancy, the Bitcoin network requires no central bank, no list of Bitcoin holders, nothing that can trace a person to a specific transaction. If that sounds like an ideal setup for money launderers, drug dealers, and/or fugitive prime ministers, you're on the way to understanding the early attraction of Bitcoins.

About four years ago, Bitcoins came to prominence as the preferred currency on the Silk Road website. As reported by the Guardian and other sources, the majority of sales on Silk Road involved drugs. Bitcoins made those transactions untraceable.

Today, Bitcoins are undoubtedly used for less sordid transactions. But their fluctuating value also gives them a commodity- or stock-like aspect. Through 2012, a single Bitcoin's value grew from U.S. $5 to about $13. This year, a Bitcoin cost $266 on April 10 and then fell to $125 the next day, prompting the crash of the largest online Bitcoin exchange, the Japan-based Mt. Gox (site). When the exchange came back online a day later, Bitcoins hit a low of $65. As I write this, a couple of weeks later, the value's almost doubled to $120.

Now that's what I call volatility!

Nobody knows for sure why the Bitcoin market soared, then crashed. One theory places the blame on Cyprus's banking crisis, where thousands of bank accounts received involuntary "haircuts" by a Cypriot government flailing for cash. Panicked depositors ran for alternatives — among them, Bitcoins. Others speculate that organized crime manipulated the market to buy low and sell high. (On April 24, Mt. Gox was also hit by a massive distributed-denial-of-service attack.)

Steve Forbes, no stranger to the subject of money and finance, put it succinctly in his op-ed article, "Bitcoin: Whatever it is, it's not money!" He states that the Bitcoin is too volatile to be "money" in any traditional sense of the term. "It has no fixed value. It trades like a stock or commodity."

To Bitcoin proponents, that's precisely the point. Bitcoins are kind of an anarchist's version of cowry shells — not beholden to any government, bank, political group, or individual trying to corner the market in a specific commodity.

How a distributed-currency system works

As mentioned above, Bitcoins are entirely electronic. At its heart, a Bitcoin is simply a number — like the serial number on a banknote. To use a Bitcoin, you sign in to your Bitcoin wallet, stored either at an online service or in an application on your personal computer or mobile device. The wallet shows your Bitcoin balances; it's also where you get Bitcoin addresses (essentially separate accounts), which you give to other Bitcoin users when transferring the currency. According to the "How does Bitcoin work?" page, the system is somewhat like a distributed email network.

Bitcoins also work somewhat like a typical online bank transfer but with important differences. For instance, there's no bank-like clearinghouse for Bitcoin transactions. Nobody has a list of all account numbers and owners. There is, however, an ongoing list of transfers: which accounts transferred how much to which other accounts. The list is public — it's stored in hundreds of different locations, on hundreds of different computers. (You can see every transaction going by in real time on Clark Moody's site.) Who owns the accounts is, on the other hand, private.

The technical details of Bitcoin transfers — how Bitcoins change ownership and how the system prevents transferring the same Bitcoin twice — involve public-key cryptography and some fancy computing techniques. Unlike a bank, the Bitcoin network doesn't keep track of your Bitcoins — only Bitcoin transactions. Which means you're responsible for protecting your Bitcoin wallet.

When you ask somebody to send money, you have to give them a Bitcoin address — essentially an encrypted public key. The Bitcoin software actually encourages you to generate a new address number for each transaction. If you get money from one person and then send that money to someone else using a different address, it's basically impossible for anyone other than you to know where the money came from or where it went.

There's some time delay on the transactions. Typically, it takes 10 minutes for Bitcoin transfers to take effect. The reasons are complex, but they're associated with preventing double spends — trying to spend the same Bitcoin twice, either intentionally or inadvertently. Since there's no central repository of accounts and balances, the delay is basically the price you pay for having a whole bunch of computers simultaneously verify the transactions.

If you're accustomed to bank wire transfers taking an hour, a day, or even a week to complete, 10 minutes doesn't seem like much of a hardship. And the Bitcoin verification runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week on hundreds of computers, making the system fairly reliable.

Incidentally, the first widely recognized Bitcoin transaction was the purchase of two pizzas. The buyer reportedly paid 10,000 Bitcoins — pricey even at early Bitcoin rates.

Where Bitcoins came from; where they're going

Bitcoins have a fascinating history. The originator of the concept, who went by the handle "Satoshi Nakamoto," has never been identified. I say "went" because Satoshi appeared out of the blue in 2008, published a few papers, never made a public appearance, and stopped answering emails in December 2010. However, the importance of Bitcoins doesn't rest in the person or persons who created it. The creation itself holds the answers to pressing money problems such as making private transactions without resorting to piles of cash.

If you want to keep your Bitcoin transactions private, there are two points of vulnerability to online snoops: when you buy Bitcoins using some other currency, and when you sell your Bitcoins. Once inside the system, you're anonymous. In other words, when you use Bitcoins only to pay for purchases, there's no traceable record. (One person recently sold his house with Bitcoins, another sold a Porsche.)

That obviously presents a problem for law enforcement. Because Bitcoins make investigations more difficult, law-enforcement agencies are leaning hard — sometimes with sanctions, sometimes with legislation — on the Bitcoin clearinghouses to provide information about transactions. Mt. Gox's sign-up page warns that if you try to access your account using the Tor network or public proxy servers (two common means of disguising your location), they might suspend your account and force you to submit anti-money-laundering documents. (A bitcoin.org page, on the other hand, recommends using Tor to hide your PC's IP address.)

Today there are approximately 11 million Bitcoins in circulation. The system is designed to let the number of Bitcoins increase at a very slow rate — by 2140, there should be about 21 million Bitcoins in circulation. If you want to learn more about Bitcoins, take a look at the official Bitcoin FAQ.

Bottom line: If you do become a Bitcoins user, keep in mind that the value of your Bitcoins can change rapidly and unpredictably. Whenever someone asks me whether I'd buy Bitcoins right now, my answer is a resounding "Hell no!" It's an interesting concept — a currency not tied to any country or financial institution — but the recent run-up and decline of Bitcoin pricing give me nosebleeds. Put your savings in Bitcoins, and you might make enough money to retire in the next year. Or you could lose 90 percent of your gamble — er, investment.

What are the best examples of people "cheating the system"?"

I learned this one from a friend's mom: How to get cheap long term parking at an airport by parking in an airport hotel garage... make sure the garage has a maximum fee for lost parking ticket, park your car and take the airport shuttle to and from the airport. Upon returning from your trip pick up your car and pay the lost ticket fee (usually like $20-30 total vs $15 - 20 / day)

Stretching postage dollars

A friend of mine used to have many Pen Pals when we were younger. At some point he started to send letters without a stamp, by writing the intended recipient's address as the sender's address, and his own as the intended recipient. The letters would then be delivered to the real intended recipient because the post office thought the recipient was the sender who forgot to put a stamp.