I predicted this would happen a few years ago, when the low-carb diets were still fringe theories, but I couldn’t figure out what exactly was the right play–short selling doesn’t make sense for an event that may take years. They’re really killing revenues for bread and pasta makers. It’s also, just as predictably, hitting doughnut and orange juice sales.

Well, here’s a side of sports I didn’t need to know about.

Well, here’s a side of sports I didn’t need to know about.

Well, here’s a side of sports I didn’t need to know about.

Here’s the latest spam I got in email:

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Allow us to evaluate the compatibility of your website with Google’s™ search engine.

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Yes, we all know about Google’s “rules and regulations.” I wonder if they’re trying to play off all the buzz about the IPO?

And they only want a hundred bucks.

Fox News is reporting that Alan King, the King of comedy, has died. The Borscht Belt just greatly expanded its borders.

[Update on Tuesday, May 11th]

Alan Henderson has some additional commentary.

Fox News is reporting that Alan King, the King of comedy, has died. The Borscht Belt just greatly expanded its borders.

[Update on Tuesday, May 11th]

Alan Henderson has some additional commentary.

Fox News is reporting that Alan King, the King of comedy, has died. The Borscht Belt just greatly expanded its borders.

[Update on Tuesday, May 11th]

Alan Henderson has some additional commentary.

Joanne Jacobs has a bunch of testimonials from her readers as to just how worthless high-school, and even college diplomas have become. Particularly dismaying was the inability of young people to do computation without a calculator, or to recognize that an answer was absurd.

Many college students hang on to their calculators much as a young child hangs on to a blanket for security. In my first calculus test, when the professor wouldn’t let calculators used, five of 25 students walked out and 10 other students never came back to class. We ended up with nine students at the end of the semester. I have seen the same problem in chemistry, physics and other courses. When courses get hard, most students just drop instead of studying harder.

I had a chance to talk to Rand at SA’04 and he said I should just post whatever was on my mind and not worry about consistency with the previous course of TTM, which had been a concern for me since I’m 99% aligned with Rand on space policy and much less so on terrestrial politics. Since my Dad’s death I’ve found myself less willing to keep my mouth shut about these things (for reasons which I’m not going to go into right now), so I wanted to check things out with Rand before diving back in. Now that I’ve cleared down some of my to do list I’ll resume posting, and we can see how things work out. I suspect that the upcoming election fight will have us all longing for the solemn dignity of monkeys throwing poo, but hopefully TTM will stay far enough above the fray to avoid the splatter.