All posts by Rand Simberg

Jasper

The day that the Lileks family has feared for so long has finally come.

We had to do the same thing with Jessica the cat a year and a half ago. She was eighteen, and hadn’t lost bladder control so much as become senile, and willfully doing it in inappropriate places. We probably waited too long for her, but saying a final goodbye to an old friend is never an easy thing to do. She’s in the back yard now, where she used to play.

Crowdfunding

Where does it go from here?

Traditional capital flows from nonprofits to investment banking are being disintermediated. People, causes and businesses that need capital have access through the internet, social media and crowdfunding platforms to capital that they simply could not access before. As this trend grows, crowds will demonstrate a different sort of wisdom, sometimes funding causes that foundations wouldn’t or entrepreneurs that VCs wouldn’t.

The JOBS bill was one of the few bi-partisan things that Congress had done recently that will actually help the economy and provide more opportunities for true wealth and job creation.

Low-Carb Diets

…give better cardiovascular outcomes:

Recent randomized controlled trials document that low-carbohydrate diets not only decrease body weight but also improve cardiovascular risk factors. In light of this evidence from randomized controlled trials, dietary guidelines should be re-visited advocating a healthy low carbohydrate dietary pattern as an alternative dietary strategy for the prevention of obesity and cardiovascular disease risk factors.

I’m convinced that the medieval unscientific low-fat nutrition advice killed my father in the seventies.