I've been reading the Motley Fool stuff on and off for more than ten years now, since they were just a forum on AOL. I like to think I learned a bit of useful information from them like how to evaluate a mutual fund based on its expense ratio rather than its historical performance, or the differences between a 401(k) a traditional IRA and a Roth IRA. Sometimes though, I just have to wonder where their heads are at. I was thoroughly dissatisfied with some of their picks in their Inside Value Investing newsletter a couple of years ago (I am no longer a subscriber), and I think they were just about as badly blind-sided by the events of 2008 as everyone else.

Several years ago, in Minneapolis, my wife and I saw theatrical monolog (alà Spaulding Gray, only not as good and without the suicide at the end) by a guy who talked about llamas. He claimed that up until a certain point in his life, he knew that llamas existed but never really made note of them. Then, one day, he met a llama up close. It was an epiphany. Suddenly, he noticed llamas everywhere, at the supermarket, at the zoo, on Monty Python's Flying Circus ...