​A lighthearted look at news of the day:
 
SeaWorld in San Diego decided to let Shamu go last week. Times are tough, especially for large mammals looking for work. Have you ever tried to buy a month’s worth of plankton on unemployment?
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At about the same time Shamu was let go, a professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia published a study that shows fish are sentient beings that can feel pain. Apparently, eating healthy requires you to have no conscience.
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Fish have feelings, cows can’t spell very well but they don’t want you to eat beef … if some scientist tells me artichokes really have hearts and bananas don’t like it when they find themselves appealing, I’ll have to survive on a diet of milkshakes and candy bars. Come to think of it, most Americans would go for that.
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Harvard archivists are making several old documents available online. One of them is a letter from a student, written in 1743, asking his father for more money. He says he needs to buy belt buckles for 15 shillings, needs another 15 to print his “theses,” and could use a little extra for “any manner of entertainment.” As a side note, he also said he was highly insulted by his roommate’s decision to dress as pirate for Halloween.
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A Yale student went viral recently for her tirade against a faculty member who suggested students be tolerant of, or simply ignore, Halloween costumes they might find offensive. Honestly, if kids are that easily offended, how are we ever going to introduce them to the crop of 2016 presidential hopefuls?
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Getting back to that 1743 Harvard student, if college kids today would ask their parents for money in letters (or emails) that begin, “Pray Sir, send me money …” and end, “Your obedient son,” they might actually get somewhere. Either that or Dad would drive to Cambridge with the family psychiatrist.
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There are still so many Republican presidential candidates in the field that the debates would go much smoother if they divided into two teams and competed to see which side could best answer the questions.
 

​A lighthearted look at news of the day:
 
Last week, Ohio voters rejected a ballot measure that would have made recreational marijuana use legal. There is a built-in problem with trying to get out the vote among marijuana users. Most of them are still at home going, “So, when was that vote thingy again?”
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After this, the Buckeye State should be known as Not So-High-O.
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Ohio’s measure was backed by a small group of investors who would have become the state’s sole suppliers of legal marijuana. So the proposal combined the power of big business, which liberals dislike, with the legalization of a drug conservatives dislike. Whoever thought this was a winning strategy must have been high.
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Ben Carson surged ahead of Donald Trump in polls last week. This shouldn’t come as surprise, given that we haven’t seen such a riveting public speaker since Chester A. Arthur.
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It must be difficult for Ben Carson to run in a race where he clearly is so much more learned than everybody else. What sort of attack ad could you hit him with? “Ben Carson may be a brain surgeon, but he’s no rocket scientist!”
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Ben Carson always can assure people that if he doesn’t know the answers, he knows how to put his fingers on the best minds in America.
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Carson has admitted to falling asleep behind the wheel of his car more than once. Doctors reportedly urged him to stop listening to his own campaign speeches while driving.
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Jeb Bush, meanwhile, has launched a new “Jeb can fix it” tour. That may not be the best slogan when your campaign is beginning to break apart.
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At the last Democratic debate, Bernie Sanders said everyone was tired of hearing about Hillary Clinton’s emails. But last week he told the Wall Street Journal the federal investigation into those emails was appropriate. It’s amazing how shifting poll numbers can cure fatigue.
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Utahns learned last week that the future of vote counting looks a lot like the past, as in the 18th century.
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State law keeps election clerks from issuing public updates on vote totals after Election Day, which is a problem when most of the votes are sent in by mail. Final results in Utah won’t be posted until Nov. 17. The biggest problem with this is that the candidates have to keep fresh hors d’oeuvres coming for all those hopeful folks still hanging around their victory parties.

​A lighthearted look at news of the day:
 
The World Health Organization now says bacon is the new cancer stick. It might as well have said watching football makes you go blind.
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Millions of Americans find themselves negotiating, wondering how many more years they might get if they just cut back on the bacon in their maple donut bars.
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In Rochester, N.Y., a deer that had been struck by a car hobbled through the automatic sliding doors of a hospital emergency room. The Associated Press said doctors and staff strapped it to a gurney, and then it was “put down.” Reportedly, the deer’s final words were, “That’s Obamacare for you.”
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An auction house last week sold a simple little cracker that had been aboard the Titanic for $23,000. It had been taken from a lifeboat by a passenger aboard the RMS Carpathia, which rescued Titanic survivors. The enterprising passenger reportedly had said, “Some day, this cracker will help my great-great grandchildren buy a certified used car.”
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The cracker was made more valuable because it had a sell-by date of September 2017.
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Walmart announced it is launching a drone delivery program. That should be fun. Just go online and order a shotgun, then watch as the fun plays out in the skies.
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Ben Carson said he once tried to stab a friend with a knife. Now he’s surging in the polls. Maybe this was a great campaign move. Word is his handlers are advising him to say, “On second thought, I remember I used a bazooka.”
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Somewhere, former vice president Dick Chaney is remembering the time he shot his hunting companion and thinking, “Maybe I should get in this race.”
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Researchers at Clear Labs studied the composition of hot dogs and found human DNA in 2 percent of the samples. Coincidentally, they also studied presidential candidates and found little beef and a lot of filler.
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A word of caution to hot dog industry PR professionals: Avoid reacting to this by saying, “Hey, we’re only human.”
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So, bacon causes cancer and hot dogs contain human DNA. Talk about hitting America where it hurts. Somehow, I think al Qaida and ISIS are behind this.