Modern Dick Tracy Watch

New Modern 2018 Dick Tracy Watch

This incredible peace of artwork has been inspired by the old Dick Tracy watch, a remarkable example of  the futuristic technology with radio, popular since the first comic book appearance in 1937. Conceived by two brothers – Nick and Charlie Mathis, and designed by Nick, this modern piece of art is a fine blend of the original iconic Dick Tracy gadget with the comfort of a high quality modern watch for every occasion.

The detective Dick Tracy is one of the most famous heroes of comic strip Dick Tracy. After 8 decades, the detective is still in good health. He remains a regular feature in any popular comics list since its first appearance in the Dick Tracy Feature Book, published in May 1937 by David McKay Publications. Many more books starred Tracy in the following years.

Nick and Charlie Mathis recall that when they were kids, their mom bought each of them a toy Dick Tracy watch. Obviously, being a toy, the gadget was not well engineered, so they stopped working after a few weeks. The brothers shed a few tears, but since that they decided that a day would come when they would make a great gift to the mankind and make a real Dick Tracy watch features all the functions of the prototype;

Finally, Nick and Charlie offered the very first model of the official Dick Tracy watch in 2016, but that first model was made without a two-way radio. Two years later, in 2018 the company partnered with Elite Manufacturing to engineer a Bluetooth module which could receive and make calls by pairing the watch with your smartphone. Then the company launched a crowdfunding on Indiegogo to manufacture the first real working Dick Tracy. They promise that participants would get the Indiegogo discount.

Dick Tracy Watch rear view. Source of the image: dicktracy.watch.

Dick Tracy Watch Main Features and Functions

The watch features the following main functions:

• Watch Crown: Color matching 316L stainless steel.
• Watch Case: 316L stainless steel.
• Water resistance: Up to 3ATM.
• Dial: White dial with raised indice and dauphone style hands.
• Crystal: Beveled sapphire.
• Brass: Decorative brass radio mesh.
• Case back: Two-piece screw back.
• Strap: Custom black strap, oil tanned leather.
• Strap size: 18R.
• Buckle: Ardillon style, matching stainless steel.
• Buttons: Decorative button, matching the original Dick Tracy watch from the comics.

Note that each watch is uniquely numbered.

Dick Tracy Watch, front view. Source of the image: dicktracy.watch.

A Few More Words about Dick Tracy

In 1939, Dell company started its Black and White Feature Books. Six of the total of fifteen issues featured Dick Tracy. The same year Dick Tracy was the hero in the very first issue of Dell's Four-Color Comics, a publication with around 1,300 issues between 1939 and 1963, and every year the detective came back in a number of issues. In 1941, Dell launched the Large Feature Books series, where Tracy also appeared.

Through many years, Dick Tracy was one of the most popular characters in regular newspaper strips, appearing weekly or on a monthly basis. In 1949, Dick Tracy Monthly comic book series is launched, which were published until 1961 and ran for 145 issues.

He was revived in 1986, when Blackthorne Publishing started to run a new series and later, they produced a movie (in 1990) and the miniseries, True Hearts and Tommy Guns.Dick Tracy character was frequently used as promotional items by various companies.

And for the very long time, Dick Tracy featured his watch, which became one of the most iconic gadgets in American pop culture. Indeed, whenever there was trouble, the yellow jacket-clad detective could be summoned on his radio watch.

For dozens of years, this watch was just a pipe dream. Nowadays we have the likes of the Apple Watch, Pebble, Samsung and many other brands to satisfy our affinity for wrist gadgets, but for those who are dreaming of a real, original smartwatch, Dick Tracy watch is more than a dream.

Dick Tracy Watch Video.

When Second Language Training Should Begin?

From the Mouths of Babes

Language specialists believe second language training should begin early

The time when a little restaurant menu French was all the foreing language skill that most Americans assumed they needed has gone the way of the gold standard and a strong dollar. Today foreign language ability is increasingly important in the global economy, and in many American cities you can go for hours without hearing English spoken. But U.S. Scholars lag far behind international counterparts in requiring foreign language training. Starting when a child is young is critical, argue many experts.

At what age is a child best suited to learn a second language?

There is a cut-off age around puberty. After 12 or 13, it is very difficult to learn a language and to be able to speak it like a native speaker and develop a high level of fluency. Some studies comparting 2nd-grade learners with 8th-grade learners have found that eigths graders learn more quickly and can do more grammar than the 2nd graders can. The older students are more thorough learners.

That would be the case with any subject area. But young kids like playing with language, they like making new sounds. They're not inhibited or embarrassed by making strange sounds, so it's ideal for them to learn a foreign language. If you wait until kids are in adolescence, they are very inhibited and very worried about how they appear to their parents.

What sort of second language programs are available for young children?

Ideally, if one of the parents is bilingual, or if you live in a neighborhood where more than one language is spoken or if you have a baby sitter that speaks another language, then the child can be exposed to another language in an early age. But for the majority of kids in the United States that's not the case.

Typically, schools don't start foreign language teaching until about middle school or high school, but about a fifth of the elementary schools teach some type of foreign language, either before or after school, or during the school day. It could be just an introduction or it could be an immersion experience. The successful programs are integrated into the school day so that everybody sees foreign language as part of the curriculum, not as some add-on that you only do if you have some extra time.

Does an immersion program require a special school?

No, but it requires a special program. Many public schools in the United States have implemented immersion programs: both partial immersion, where 50 percent of the day is in the foreign language, and total immersion, which starts out with 100 percent of the day in kindergarten and the first day.

Second Language Training Is Always Useful. Photo by Elena

Do kids lag behind in their English when they spend all their time learning another language?

That is the most commonly asked question by parents - “What happens to their English?” - and it is a very reasonable question. Children in immersion programs are taught the regular school curriculum and they have to take all the standardized that the other kids take in English. By the time they get to 5th or 6th grade, they score as well or better in English than their peers who have been studying only in English. Studying another language helps you learn more about your native language. All of the research results show that it actually enhances your native language abilities. Immersion students score especially high in English vocabulary and reading comprehension, even though they have gotten very little direct English instruction.

Are there any other approaches to teaching a child a second language?

Besides the immersion model, there is the traditional foreign language in elelementary schools approach (FLES). Those programs have different goal, but most often their aim is to enable the child to speak about specific things relating to their school, their family, their friends, the weather – really basic things.

More and more though, these types of programs are learning from the immersion methodology and are starting to teach content from the regular curriculum. A third model is called foreign language experience, or FLEX, and that is where the children receive a smattering of four or five different languages. They are just introduced to the language and may be a few basic phrases and some tidbits about the culture. It's supposed to expose the children to language in general and a few specific languages in particular so that when they go on to junior high or high school,, they will know what they want to study in depth.

What if the school has no program? Are language tapes  at all effective?

Listening to songs in different languages is fun for kids, but they are not going to learn to speak the language. What I would do myself if I had a child would be to find somebody in the neighborhood who spoke a different language, a child my child's age, and I would get them to play together. Kids learn so much from each other.

If a parent speaks the language that the child is learning, should the parent use it at home with the child?

There are some experts who say that when your child comes home from school, don't say « speak to me in Spanish ». Especially at the beginning stage of learning learning when the child is just going through a period where he's just supposed to be working on listening comprehension.

Are there any problems with language confusion?

Not at all? In general children can learn five or six different languages. In fact, children in many other countries do learn five or six languages at once.

The important thing is to separate the languages for the kids. If the mother speaks English, for example, and the father speaks Spanish, they should try as much as possible to keep those roles the same so that the child will see that there are two separate languages.

The top 10 tongues

The languages spoken most frequently at homes around the world :

Mandarin Chinese

English

Spanish

Arabic

Bengali

Hindi and Urdu (some language, different alphabet)

Portuguese

Russian

Japanese

German

How Good Is Fundamental Analysis?

How Good Is Fundamental Analysis?

The Views from Wall Street and Academia

How could I have been so mistaken as to have trusted the experts? (John F. Kennedy (after the Bay of Pigs fiasco).

In the beginning he was a statistician. He wore a white, starched shirt and threadbare blue suit. He put on his green eyeshade, sat down at his desk, and recorded meticulously the historical financial information about the companies he followed. The result : writer’s cramp. Automation meant using a slide rule.

But then a metamorphosis began to set in. He rose from his desk, bought blue button-down shirts and gray flannel suits, threw away his eyeshade, and began to make field trips to visit the companies that previously he had known only as a collection of financial statistics. His title now became security analyst.

As time went on, the security analyst’s stature continued to grow, and increasingly women joined the profession’s ranks as full participants. Portfolio managers began to rely on analyst’s reports and recommendations in deciding which stocks should be bought or sold. Eventually analysts reached the pinnacle of professionalism and came to be called bonafide chartered financial analysts.

Toronto recreation parks. St.Clair Reservoir at Sir Winston Churchill Park.St. Clair and Spadina Reservoir. Address: 301 St. Clair Ave W. & Spadina Road. Photo by Elena

Some of Wall Street’s portfolio managers actually invest on the basis of the charts and various well-known technical schemes. But even on Wall Street, technicians are considered a rather strange cult, and little faith is put inn their recommendations. Thus the studies casting doubt on the efficacy of technical analysis would not be considered surprising by most professionals. At heart, the Wall Street pros are fundamentalists. The really important question is whether fundamental analysis is any good.

Two extreme views have taken about the efficacy of fundamental analysis. The view of many on Wall Street is that fundamental analysis is becoming more powerful and skillful all the time. The individual investor has scarcely a chance against the professional portfolio manager and a team of fundamental analysts.

An opposite-extreme view is taken by much of the academic community. Some academicians have gone so far as to suggest that a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at the Wall Street Journal can select stocks with as much success as professional portfolio managers. They have argued that fund managers and their fundamental analysts can do no better at picking stocks than a rank amateur. Many have concluded that the value of professional investment advice is nul.

My own view of the matter is somewhat less extreme than that taken by many of my academic colleagues. Nevertheless, an understanding of the large body of research on these questions is essential for any intelligent investor who observes the major battle in an ongoing war between academics and market professionals that has shaken Wall Street to its bedrock. Current field reports have the academics claiming victory and the professionals screaming “Foul”.

Burton G. Malkiel. A Random Walk Down Wall Street, including a life-cycle guide to personal investing. First edition, 1973, by W.W. Norton and company, Inc.

The Influence of Random Events

The Influence of Random Events

A company is not an entity unto itself. Many of the most important changes that affect the basic prospects for corporate earnings are essentially random, that’s, unpredictable.

Take the utility industry. Presumably it is one of the most stable and dependable groups of companies. During the early 1960s almost every utility analyst expected Florida Power and Light to be the fastest-growing utility. The analysts saw a continued high population growth, increased demands for electric power among existing customers, and a favorable regulatory climate.

Everything turned out exactly as forecast except for one small detail. The favorable Florida regulatory climate turned distinctly unfavorable as the sixties progressed. The Florida Public Utilities Commission ordered Florida Power and Light to make several substantial rate cuts and the utility was not able to translate the rapid growth in demand for electric power into higher profits. As a result, the company closed the decade with a mediocre growth record, far below the ebullient forecasts. In the 1970s, similar kinds of mistakes were made as analysts failed to predict the increased fuel costs resulting from the tenfold increase in the international price of oil. In the early 1980s, analysts failed to appreciate the effect of the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island on the later performance of utilities with uncompleted nuclear power plants. Thus, even the “stable” electric utility industry has proved extraordinary difficult to predict.

U.S. Government budgetary, contract, and regulatory decisions can have enormous implications for the fortunes of individual companies. So can the incapacitation of key members of management, the discovery of a major new product, the finding of defects in a current product, a major oil spill, industrial accidents, natural disasters such as floods and hurricanes, etc. The stories of unpredictable events affecting earnings are endless.

Burton G. Malkiel. A Random Walk Down Wall Street, including a life-cycle guide to personal investing. First edition, 1973, by W.W. Norton and company, Inc.

Waterproofing and Building Structure Rehabilitation of St. Clair Reservoir. Photo by Elena

Basic Incompetence of the Analysts

The Basic Incompetence of Many of the Analysts Themselves

The overall performance of analysts in many respects reflects the limit of their abilities. Their record with regard to STP Corporation is certainly a good example.

In the early 1970s, racing car driver Andy Granatelli’s STP was the darling of the Wall Street fraternity. Report after report indicated why it was likely to enjoy a large, long-term growth rate. Analysts pointed to its consistent pattern of growth over ten years. On the argument that the future would be more of the same, and that STP could continue to create its destiny through its marvelously successful advertising campaign, the Wall Street fraternity gave STP an estimated 20 percent growth rate for earnings in future years. As STP”s stock price rose, analysts recommended the shares with greater and greater enthusiasm. Needless to say, but said nevertheless, STP management actively encouraged this enthusiasm.

Few analysts bothered to ask about the company’s major product. STP oil treatment, which apparently accounted for three-quarters of the firm’s revenues and earnings. What did the product really do? Could one really believe that STP helped cars start faster in winter and made engines run longer, quieter, and cooler in summer?

Admittedly, some analysts had a queasy feeling, but this was carefully reasoned away. For example, in the May 17, 1971, issue of the Wall Street Transcript, one analyst was quoted as saying: “The risk is that it is difficult to prove what exactly the product accomplished, and people fear that the FTC might attack the company on an efficacy basis. We feel there is a very low probability of that happening and in the meantime consumers think the product works and that’s the important thing. It is sort of a “cosmetic company” for the car. If ever there was a castle in the air, STP certainly qualified.

David A. Balfour Park in Rosedale. Photo by Elena

While the above analyst was being quoted, Consumer Reports was completing its report on STP. This was published in July 1971 and stated that STP was a worthless oil thickener, not a panacea that would make ailing engines healthy again. Indeed, the consumer magazine reported that “STP can change the viscosity of a new car’s oil to a considerably thicker grade that certain auto manufacturers recommend.” The magazine went on to say that the major auto manufacturers positively discouraged the practice of using such additives, and suggested that STP might modify the properties of a car’s engine oil so much that the new-car warranty terms might be affected.

To be perfectly blunt, many security analysts are not particularly perceptive, critical or competent. I learned this early in the game as a young Wall Street trainee.

The stock fell abruptly and the company’s consistent record of past earnings growth came to an untimely end. As one analyst confided after the debacle, “I guess we just didn’t ask the right questions.”

In attempting to learn the techniques of the pros, I tried to duplicate some analytic work done by a metal specialist named Louie. Louis had figured that for each 1 cent increase in the price of copper, the earnings for a particular copper producer would increase by $1 per share. Since he expected a 5 cents increase in the price of copper, he reasoned that this particular stock was “an unusually attractive purchase candidate.”

In redoing the calculation, I found that Louis had misplaced a decimal point. A penny increase in the price of copper would increase earnings by 10 cents, not by $1. When I pointed this out to Louie (feeling sure he would want to put out a correction immediately) he simply shrugged his shoulders and declared, “Well, the recommendation sounds more convincing if we leave the report as is.” Attention to detail was clearly not the forte of this particular analyst. From then on I referred to him as Sloppy Louie (not to denigrate the excellent fish restaurant of the same name near the New York financial district).

To balance this inattention to detail and careful work, we have those who glory in it. Take Railroad Roger, for example. Roger will accurately recount every conceivable statistic on track miles and freight carloadings for hours on end. But Roger does not have the faintest clue what the rails will earn next year, or which should be favored for purchase. Oil analyst Doyle performs in a similar manner. His knowledge concerning refinery capacity is encyclopedic, but he lacks the critical acumen to translate this into judgments useful for investment decision-making.

Many analysts, however, emulate Louie. Generally too lazy to make their own earnings projections, they prefer to copy the forecasts of other analysts or to swallow the ones released by corporate managements without even chewing. They it’s very easy to know whom to blame if something goes wrong. “That treasurer gave me the wrong dope.” And it’s much easier to be wrong when your professional colleagues all agreed with you. As Keynes put it, “Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.”

Corporate management goes ot of its way to easy the forecasting task of the analyst. Let me give you a personal example: A two-day field trip was arranged by a major corporation to brief a whole set of Wall Street security analysts on its operations and future programs.

We were picked up in the morning by the company’s private plane for visits and briefings at three of the company’s plants. In the evening we were given first-class accommodations and royally wined and dined. After two more plant visits the next day, we had a briefing, replete with slide show, indicating a “most conservative five-year forecast” of robustly growing earnings.

At each stop we were showered with gifts – and not only the usual souvenir mock-ups of the company’s major products. We also received a variety of desk accessories for the office, a pen and pencil set, cigarette lighter, tie bar, cuff links, and a tasteful piece of jewelry to “take home to the wife or mistress, as the case may be.” Throughout each day liquor and wine flowed in abundance. As one bleary-eyed analyst confided at the end of the trip, “It’s very hard not to have a warm feeling for this company.”

I do not mean to imply that most Wall Street analysts typically receive payola for touting particular stocks. Indeed, from my own experience, I would judge that the standards of ethics in Wall Street are very high. Sure, there are crooks, but I would guess far fewer than in other professions, despite the celebrated insider trading cases of the late 1980s.

I do imply that the average analyst is just that – a well-paid and usually highly intelligent person who has an extraordinary difficult job and does it in a rather mediocre fashion. Analysts are often misguided, sometimes sloppy, perhaps self-important, and at times susceptible to the same pressures as other people. In short, they are really very human beings.

Burton G. Malkiel. A Random Walk Down Wall Street, including a life-cycle guide to personal investing. First edition, 1973, by W.W. Norton and company, Inc