1. With all due respect to Lizardbreath, she’s going about her business plan completely the wrong way.  I’m sure there are merits to the Paleo diet, yuppies thinking that raw grass-fed ground beef approximates paleolithic mastodon meat aside, but if you think about it, designing a diet for an organism that can thrive just as well on whale blubber and the occasional plant as it can on soybeans and rice really shouldn’t be all that challenging.   Omnivores are adaptable!  You might not lose weight, but it’s probably not going to kill you.  If we analyze it conceptually, we can see a fad diet consists of the following elements:  a) a ban or near ban on pre-packaged foods b) a ban or near ban on one kind of macronutrient c) some form of calorie restriction d) an exhortation to exercise and e) a story about why this is so, the more romantic the better.

For example, in the caveman diet, we take “follow our conception of the caveman” as a maxim, thus, we do not eat packaged foods, cereal grains (Grok don’t farm), we eat lots of meat (Grok hunt) and berries and nuts (Grok forage), we fast now and then (Grok no have refrigerator), and we sprint and jump (Grok surprise mastodon.)

Thus, the growth industry here is in telling a good story.  I therefore present the Path of Hypatia, designed especially for women, drawn from the wisdom of the ancients who said let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine thy food.  The program recommends that you eat primarily olives, cheese, bread, lemons, fish, and wine, and recommends both quiet time for contemplation (stress makes you retain belly fat, so do your metaphysics!) and vigorous Spartan exercise every day, for is it not said, “wealth, flutes, and instruments generally?”  I’m sure LB can come up with a good lawyer saga.

2. Someone give me an argument why this isn’t simply common-sense. Here are the terms of the mortgage: pay it back or the bank can take back the house and your credit rating will take a hit.  Everyone agreed to this mortgage.  There is no clause that says “you can let the bank take the house back only if you’ve bankrupted yourself in other ways first” or (in many states) “if the house isn’t worth what the loan is, the bank can come after you for the balance.”  So by “walking away” we mean “fulfilling the terms of the contract.”

Now, sure, I think there’s generally a moral obligation not to be dork, and there would be repercussions for the lending market generally if lots of people defaulted strategically.  But.. look, there’s lots of repercussions when the housing market collapses, and I haven’t seen a call for the banks independently to do the moral thing and let people pay 33% of their income on their mortgate in order to stabilize prices.   Why is it that the homeowner is held to a higher standard?

3.  I just have to note this because the second item is cracking me up.