In a wide-ranging profile due out in next month's issue of Details, Kentucky's Republican nominee for Senate, Rand Paul, stands up for all the good things the controversial practice of mountain top-removal mining can do for the environment. Despite warnings from conservationists that blowing the tops off of mountains to get the precious, precious coal underneath can have a seriously negative impact on the surrounding environment, Paul says that when you really stop to think about it, losing those mountain tops is actually a net positive.

Those of you with a taste for rum and 600 quid to spare might like to uncork a bottle of Black Tot "Last Consignment" British Royal Naval Rum, lovingly decanted from the official stocks held by the Senior Service since sailors' final rum ration in 1970

On July 31 of that year, at precisely six bells in the forenoon watch, Jack tars were issued their ultimate hit of rum on what became known as "Black Tot Day".

The remaining rum - likely imported from the West Indies in oak barrels by official supplier ED & F Man & Co - was poured into stone flagons and transferred to HM bonded warehouses, where it lay undisturbed, apart from tapping for the odd state occasion.

Six thousand bottles of Black Tot rum have now been released to landlubbers to mark the 40th anniversary of Black Tot Day.

I generally give books away to the charity shop when I've finished them, but if anyone going to Paris in a month wants it, let me know and I'll keep it by.

keep to the Fen Causeway

WASHINGTON--With unemployment at its highest level in decades, the U.S. Department of Labor issued a report Tuesday suggesting the crisis is primarily the result of millions of Americans just completely blowing their job interviews.

According to the findings, seven out of 10 Americans could have landed their dream job last month if they had known where they see themselves in five years, and the number of unemployed could be reduced from 14.6 million to 5 million if everyone simply greeted potential employers with firmer handshakes, maintained eye contact, and stopped fiddling with their hair and face so much.

The troubled economy and changing technology have already fueled a do-it-yourself education reform movement dubbed "edupunk," which envisions virtual campuses and lower-cost or even free instruction. The edupunks are picking up where traditional institutions left off. Since 2001, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has offered free online lecture notes, exams, and videos from classes. Today, its site gets 1.5 million visits a month, serving 900,000 unique users, and it's part of a worldwide Open CourseWare Consortium of universities offering free courses online. Other schools, such as Yale and the University of California at Berkeley, are posting video lectures. You can't get a degree from any of these efforts, but you can learn.

"Early on, there was a lot of concern," recalls Steve Carson of MIT OpenCourseWare. "What would the students think? What would the parents think? After all, they're paying lots and lots of money, and here we are giving away the same materials for free. "But when you talk to students, you find the value of being on campus is access to the equipment, access to the professors, and the opportunity to study with other bright and motivated students," Carson continues. "There's a certification and assessment for the learning that takes place--it's all presented on campus as a big package. MIT took one piece of that and put it up on the Internet, unbundled."

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