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Also see today's Rich column.

A Lethal Combination

"Medical ventriliquism" indeed. The onset of a condition associated with loss of sexual interest, among other things; a new generation of people allergic to their own mortality; and a pharmaceutical industry that works nights and weekends devising new ways to separate you from your money.

Along the way, television commercials positioned hormone drugs as treatments for more than hot flashes and night sweats — just two of the better-known symptoms of menopause, which is technically defined as commencing one year after a woman’s last menstrual cycle.

One commercial about estrogen loss by the drug maker Wyeth featured a character named Dr. Heartman in a white coat discussing research into connections between menopause and heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease and blindness.

...

The suits also assert, based on recently unsealed court documents, that Wyeth oversold the benefits of menopausal hormones and failed to properly warn of the risks.

When I started this last month, I thought it might be somewhat difficult - meaning it would test my own ability to exploit the subject consistently and over time... exactly the very reasons to pursue it. But it's turning out that you don't even have to scroll down the page of the most-read news site - one that treats its readers in a generally childish fashion - to find glaring examples of gross obscenity. Which is itself...

damn.

Amounts of Stuff

Do we even realize this is happening? What does the level of abundance imply? is it mere and innocuous prosperity? Is there such a thing?

The self-storage industry has published its own almanac since 1992.

It's industry trade group proudly touts that "There is 7.4 sq.ft. of self storage space for every man, woman and child in the nation; thus, it is physically possible that every American could stand – all at the same time – under the total canopy of self storage roofing."

And of course, this is not counting our houses.

Daniel Pink, in an infomercial-type presentation that I uncomfortably recommend, broaches this little-talked about subject that is a creeping symptom of our nature. The way it encapsulates what we are doing to ourselves and the landscape is uncanny. It's the flag of slothful indulgence.

Not to mention, bigger than the film industry? What does it mean when the markets with real growth potential are prisons and self storage?

Masterpiece

Of finance, or art... or whatever it was.

In a gear-changing sign that the art market is shaking off the recession, Sotheby's auctioned off $134.4 million worth of post-war and contemporary art earlier tonight at its Manhattan salesroom, including a smoky sheet of dollar bills by Andy Warhol that sold for $43.7 million. The sale total surpassed the auction house's own goal of $67.9 million to $97.7 million - and outperformed its $125 million sale of contemporary art last November.

After a year of cautious bidding, the mood in the salesroom Wednesday night grew increasingly upbeat, with fashion designer Valentino Garavani and jeweler Laurence Graff among the winning bidders. The night unquestionably belonged to Warhol. The Pop artist is a household name, but his early 1960s silkscreens rarely surface at auction. That's why at least five bidders, including dealer Jose Mugrabi, chased after the artist's "200 One Dollar Bills," a seminal 1962 piece that Sotheby's last sold more than two decades ago for $300,000. A telephone bidder got it tonight for $43.7 million - over three times its $12 million high estimate - or $218,812.50 for each silkscreened dollar bill in the painting

.

Just stop and start anywhere.

Rigged, The Game Is

It means getting consulting advice on a war strategy from the people who are going to help you sell the war strategy.

When Gen. Stanley McChrystal decided to launch a sweeping review of Afghanistan strategy, he reached out to a small, but influential, group of national security wonks.

McChrystal’s “strategic assessment group” included Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute and his wife, Kimberly Kagan of the Institute for the Study of War; Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations; Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Andrew “Abu Muqawama” Exum of the Center for a New American Security; and Jeremy Shapiro of the Brookings Institution.

It wasn’t a particularly unusual move: The military — like corporate America — likes to bring in consultants for an outside view. Take the Joint Campaign Plan for Iraq, the document that lays out the U.S. military’s near-term and long-term goals. That document gets a fresh look every year, and the most recent review included input from think-tankers.

But as our friend Laura Rozen observed, it was also a way to win the hearts and minds of an important constituency: The foreign-policy pundits and op-ed writers who would help sell the new strategy to the public.

With apologies to The Clash, this indecision's killing them.