It looks like we're starting to wake up to the insane thinking that somehow corn is the answer to our energy problems. According to an article in today's WSJ profits on ethanol are down, as are stocks in companies that rushed in to try to make a buck on the idea.

See, the problem with ethanol is the cost to grow and convert the corn needed to produce it is too high. Politicians out to get the vote didn't exactly lie to us when they said ethanol would reduce our reliance on foreign oil - it did. They just didn't bother to tell us, or they didn't realize, it would drive up the cost of everything else that depends on that corn we're diverting to fuel.

It's not that I think reducing our dependence on foreign oil is a bad thing. I'd just rather do something about it on a full stomach.

It's truly terrific news that the recent fires in California are mostly behind us. I worry for all the people who have lost their homes in those fires. This isn't at all unlike a hurricane hitting Florida or the Gulf Coast. Disasters like these uproot entire neighborhoods. Some will rebuild. Some will leave and never return. None will ever be the same.

I can't help but wonder how many people's lives will be made even more complicated than they already are because they've lost all contact with their records. Think about it for a minute. How many accounts do you have? You have financial accounts, probably checking, maybe savings, a brokerage account. There's your 401(k), your IRA (maybe a couple of them). You probably have one or more nsurance policies, and a mortgage. Don't forget credit cards.

The list goes on and on. My personal stress level goes through the roof thinking how awful it would be to try to reconstruct all that information literally from ashes. I have three recommended ways to safeguard your personal information in the event of disaster

Last month I wrote about a buddy of mine who had invested in Microsoft stock many years ago. He'd seen the stock rise nicely and had several times his original investment locked up in his holdings. His problem, if you can find a way to sympathize with him, has been that Microsoft stock has basically done nothing for quite a long time.

I didn't give him any advice on his problem, other than to talk about opportunity cost. That is to say, your money that's sitting idle in Microsoft today earning little or nothing could be invested in some other stock with more upward momentum. The difference between the value of his Microsoft holdings some arbitrary time from now and some other investment at that time is the opportunity cost of not making the more attractive investment.

I'm always preaching investment advice to people I know. Invariably I'll be having lunch with someone and even before the food shows up I'm going on about how to avoid making one or more investment mistakes.

One of my biggest pet peeves is holding on to a loser investment too long. Time and again I hear the sob stories about the stock that went up briefly and then tanked. The so-called investor, a.k.a. deer in the headlights, then freezes, hoping the stock will rebound. Too often it continues to fall, or does nothing at all, and our investor friend continues to lose money. These are the kinds of things that cause us to under perform the market.

But today my story is about another kind of under performance.

I haven't written much lately at all about my weight loss progress, so I thought today would be a good day to catch you up on it. The reason I haven't written much about my weight loss lately is because I have not lost any weight lately.

Why haven't I lost any weight lately? Did my pound a week plan fizzle out? Did I give up? Is my weight once again climbing?

The American dream: Owning your own home. Ah, but if only our dreams were free.

Jack Hough at SmartMoney.com kicked off a lively debate about the relative costs of owing the place you call home versus renting it. It's hard to argue with his conclusion that renting is cheaper than owning. He begins with the end, stating:

Businesses are great investments while houses are poor ones, so I'd rather rent the latter and own the former.

Then he works through a fairly exhaustive arguement for why money invested in owing your own home returns less than money invested in stocks. He sums it all up with these words:

Shares right now cost 16 times earnings and over long periods return 7% a year after inflation. Houses right now cost 19 times their "earnings" and over long periods return zero after inflation. And they look likely to return less than that for a while.

We're having a Christmas sort of day here in our household. We're finally replacing our old refrigerator, the one we purchased more years ago than I care to think about, with a new model.

Our reasons for replacing the old appliance with the new have almost nothing to do with the cost savings we will realize by upgrading to a more efficient appliance. But I happened to be reading an article recently about the true cost of an appliance and in the interest of all things money I thought I would have a look at the real dollar savings we'll be seeing.

It's July 4th here in the US. This day the US gets a day off to do whatever we feel like doing. Most of us are free to use our time however we like. We're celebrating Independence Day, the birth of my home country.

For me today is all about a very few simple things. Flying the flag, a little yard work, the back yard barbecue, and maybe a beer or two. Domestic, of course, and very likely from a small independent brewery. I'll be making some good investments today. I'll be investing in time. Time spent with family and friends, celebrating freedom and the good things it has brought us.

Have a happy and safe Independence Day.

You'd almost have to be living under a rock not to have heard about what's going on in housing and real estate these days. If by some highly unlikely series of coincidences the news about the subprime mortgage meltdown has somehow escaped your radar, you've no-doubt noticed all the "For Sale" signs in your neighbors' yards. Have you noticed those signs have been up for a while?

In some cases realtors' signs have stood in yards for months on end. Houses aren't selling as fast as they used to, and not for nearly as much as they used to.

It's been a while since I updated you on my quest to lose weight, to become the lean mean investing machine I once was. OK, back then, when I once was I was hardly a mean investing machine. I was fairly lean though.

In both January and February I posted a message here updating you on my progress toward my goal of losing a pound a week. I nearly let March get away without weight loss update.

The news is good. We're 12 weeks into the new year, 2007, and as of this morning I'm slightly ahead of my weight loss goal. As of this morning I'm officially down 14 pounds from the beginning of the year.

In case you can't tell, I'm practically bursting with pride at my accomplishment so far. I'm particularly proud of my newfound ability to pass up dessert. I've always been a sweets hound. I realized, however, that if I were serious about reaching my weight loss goal I would need to have the ability to pass up some (many) of those post-meal gratuitous calories.