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I get your skepticism. The food was prepackaged meals. On most you just added water and microwave it. I was allowed a limited amount of ketchup on the faux burgers. I ate absolutely nothing else.

I only very rarely drink alcohol. I do not drink sodas. I drink a cup of coffee with a little low fat milk and Splenda. Once in a while I drink sugar free iced tea. I drink a lot of water.

My wife and I run our company together, so we are together 24/7. She is normal sized, 5' 2" and about 120 pounds, and eats more than I do, by far. She helped monitor what I ate and accompanied me to my doctors appointments.

Trust me, it is VERY frustrating when you hear "I gave up beer and lost 50 pounds!" or "I stopped drinking Cokes and lost 25 pounds!" There is nothing in my diet like that. Instead, I get to go "I went on a three day fast and lost a pound!" My cardiologist didn't believe me either. He put a monitor on me for two weeks. He apologized after getting the results. My heart rate often drops to 30 BPM while sleeping. It is usually in the low to mid 40's during the day. Freaked him out.

I’m trying to find the source, but I read this morning there was speculation that Hezbollah rigged their own pagers. The idea was if any pager fell into Israeli hands, THEY could remotely destroy it.

The speculation went further to suggest Israel hacked the pager network and made them all go boom.

Considering the logistics of knowing about the order of pagers, when they shipped, intercepting them, modifying them, getting them factory repacked, and having Hezbollah accept and distribute them without question, Hezbollah booby trapping their own pagers almost makes sense.

They think that I am just extremely low metabolism. It seems that the estimates of calories burned are just observational. They do not know, really, how many calories YOU burn. One doc said I should be proud my body is so efficient. Should the sh!t hit the fan, I’ll live longer. Yay.

Not for everyone...

I am 6’ tall and, right now, about 262. I work out three times a week. I have a physically active job.

I have been on special diets where they provide 100% of the food. I was given 1200 calories a day. I lost 3 pounds in 3 months. It wasn’t until it was cut to 900 calories a day that we cranked up my weight loss to about a pound a week.

My doctors have FINALLY agreed that I have a metabolic issue. Unfortunately the test to nail down the issue costs over $10K and my insurance will not pay for it.

In the meantime they have me on Wegovy. It kills your appetite, virtually erasing all interest in food.

I would rather have them treating the underlying issue...in addition to the weight I have a low heart rate, low-ish blood pressure, and a low body temperature (about 96).

I worked for a Demoncrat Congresscritter in the mid-1980’s.

There was a organized effort THEN to drive vans out to the nursing homes - they actually had MANY nursing homes designated as polling places for convenience - where they would pick up “the gomers”...voters that weren’t all there...and “help” them vote.

They still had a lot of the old style voting booths back then with the curtain you closed for privacy. It was pretty obvious that the voter didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on in most cases and that the helper got to cast their ballot over and over again.

They literally justified it as making voting accessible to senior citizens.

Waldheim may have been a Nazi at one time, but in the International Politics class he taught, he pushed Marxist ideology.

One of the main points in the class was the assertion that “North/South” tensions were the driving force in international politics. That view proposes that politics is a battle of resources…the haves verses the have nots. The opposite view is “East/West” which says ideology - capitalism vs communism - was the driving force. Waldheim rejected East/West. Marxists do that because their actual ideology doesn’t withstand scrutiny.

It wasn’t always. In the early 80’s I had a mix of view points from my professors. One insisted on calling the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression. Another taught me what the 2nd Amendment really says and why it was phrased the way it was.

…and then I had Kurt Valdheim as a professor for a class…Marxist eurotrash…

Most atheists I know are actually agnostic. They generally reject organized religion, but still on some level, believe in Someone.

I recently saw Ringo Starr and his All Star Band on tour. At one point in the show Ringo was doing jumping jacks on stage…at 83.

The All Starr Band was the lead guitarist from Average White Band, the lead from Toto, the lead from Men at Work, and Edgar Winter. They all got to play their hits. Ringo playing the drums to Toto’s Africa was memorable.

Best concert in my life.

Close.

It was cheap capital provided by Blackrock and Vanguard. Large corporations live on loans. These companies gave discounted rates, almost down to zero, if the company implemented certain practices. The board had to be diverse. Your employees had to be diverse. You could earn points by sponsoring certain groups or events. They were told this would help them succeed.

Well, after almost a decade of this nonsense the corporations began to see a negative effect on profits. Plus, with the rise of interest rates, knocking a point or two off a loan didn’t have quite the same impact.

These companies, for the most part, didn’t believe the crap they were endorsing. They were just greedy.

I remember a certain Presidential candidate promising to cure cancer.

I clicked on an invoice from my biggest vendor...it looked totally legitimate and even had my account number on it...and unintentionally installed a backdoor trojan virus on my computer, allowing a remote user to remote control my computer.

They logged on at 3:00am our time and used Zelle to transfer $4500 to Eastern Europe from my Bank of America account. They attempted to use Paypal to transfer $800, but Paypal stopped the transaction.

When I discovered the theft in morning, I immediately contacted B of A. I explained to them what had happened. They said that since it came from my IP address, my computer, there was nothing they could do. I escalated the issue to a supervisor. They reluctantly told me I could appeal. I had to provide proof of the fraud...the fake email, a statement from my vendor that they discovered someone was sending out fake invoices, proof from my alarm company that no one was on the premises at 3:00am, etc. It took 3 months, but they eventually returned my funds.

Funny how Paypal could tell that the transaction was fraud while it was happening and Bank of America could not.

Exactly.

I am not so infused with hubris to say “this cannot be so.”

At one point it was impossible for man to fly.

We could not travel faster than sound, the human body couldn’t stand the stress.

Just the thought that you could pick up a device you carry in your pocket and call someone on the other side of the planet would have been science fiction 75 years ago.

When quantum physics tells us two entangled particles separated by hundreds of light years somehow interact instantly, why is interstellar travel so impossible?

I was about 12 when my Dad and I heard a local radio personality talking to their remote crew about seeing and following a UFO. They claimed to be in the vicinity of the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport. Dad, totally out of character, wanted to drive over and see for himself what was going on.

As we approached Lockhart Stadium, on the south side of the airport, we saw a bright, bluish-white, oval shaped thing flying about 50 feet above the ground, heading south. Sure enough a WFTL van was following it. We could hear them on the radio describing it as we watched them.

The craft...or whatever...crossed perpendicularly in front of us, maybe 200 yards away or less, and as it approached Commercial Blvd. it accelerated and arced up into sky, disappearing to the south.

The problem with EV’s has been three-fold:

1. Range
2. Charging time
3. Infrastructure

At 600 miles, this solves problem 1.

At 9 minutes recharging time this solves problem 2.

Number 3 is the elephant in the room and the thorniest of problems.

Generating the power currently involves primarily coal and natural gas plants. Because physics is physics, you are shifting the burning of fuel from the car, where emissions is controlled, to the power plant, where it is less so. Because of inefficiencies in transmitting the power and converting it into motion, it takes more fuel to power an EV than it does an ICE. We do have about 20% of our power coming from renewable sources, but that doesn’t quite overcome the inefficiencies.

Distributing the power will require an upgrade to our grid with estimates of $2 to $5 trillion dollars required to enable 80% of our vehicles to be electric.

Converting gas stations to charging stations will be very costly. Unattended charging station has been prone to vandalism and are inherently unreliable. The solution is, of course, to have charging stations monitored, much like gas stations.

Until we get the infrastructure addressed widespread adoption of EVs is going to be hamstrung.

I am not saying I am sold on this, but...

IF there is a Deep State, an international cartel that is obsessed with controlling humanity and...

IF there are extraterrestrials/interdimensionals that are observing us for their own reasons and...

IF these two groups know about each other, then...

It is highly likely they would cooperated and one of the items on the top of their to do list would be convincing the world that they don’t exist...that people who do think they exist are nutz, rubes, idiots, insane...

It is also likely that things would slip. There would be people aware of the situation who feel compelled to let the public see behind the curtain now and then.

A bunch of Republican stars…

The list of signatories to the letter, besides Luttig, includes (in alphabetical order) John B. Bellinger III, Senior Associate Counsel to the President and Legal Adviser to the NSC under George W. Bush, Phillip D. Brady, Deputy Counsel to the President under Reagan, Benedict S. Cohen, Associate Counsel to the President under Reagan, Peter D. Keisler, Associate Counsel to the President under Reagan, and Robert M. Kruger, Associate Counsel to the President under Reagan.

Also included are John M. Mitnick, Associate Counsel to the President and Deputy Counsel, White House Homeland Security Council under George W. Bush, Alan Charles Raul, Associate Counsel to the President under Reagan and General Counsel, OMB under Reagan and George H.W. Bush, Nicholas Rostow, Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Legal Adviser to the NSC under Reagan and George H.W. Bush, Peter J. Rusthoven, Associate Counsel to the President under Reagan, David B. Waller, Senior Associate Counsel to the President under Reagan, and Wendell L. Willkie II, Associate Counsel to the President under Reagan.

I am dealing with probate which will leave me with about that amount.

We are putting it towards our debt. I had a stroke back in November and existing until I could work again ran up our credit cards. We had some business related vendors act as asshats and cut off our terms. We now have to pay them back AND pay for inventory in full. It will make me smile when I pay them off and then change to a different vendor.

Whatever is left will be invested. I am planning on 50% in something safe and 50% invested by me. My stock and fund picks have outperformed the market for the past 20 years, but crap can happen, so 50% boring.

We are coming up on our 40th anniversary and we have talked for years about taking our two boys and their families on a cruise. We will pay for the actual booking, the rest is up to them. They are good with it. That is the extent of our discretionary spending.

I read the entire article and couldn’t find anything about the graduation rate of underserved minorities at MIT.

Funny that.