Well, I'm back from a few days vacation with the kids. If there was any major science story breaking in the news, I sure didn't hear about it. Not that I could hear very much over the background level of my 2- and (almost) 4-year-olds, mind you.

Tomorrow, I can already tell, will be one of those "where-am-I" days at work, since it seems like I've been gone a lot longer than I really have. I'm sure there will be no shortage of folks helping to orient me, unfortunately.

I'm assuming that my company wasn't bought/sold/broken up for scrap while I was away. August isn't much of a Wall St. deal-making season (since so many grand pooh-bahs are off vacationing, of course,) but things will probably start percolating around as we head into fall. When I count up all the rumors I've heard about various companies, it's almost equivalent to just picking from the whole combinatorial set. I'm trying to think of a match that I haven't heard speculation about. . .Glaxo SmithKline and Denny's? Lilly and Carnival Cruise Lines? It's been that jumpy.

Needless to say, most of the rumors haven't made much sense to me - no, not those two, the real, well, more real rumors. That doesn't mean that some of them won't come true, unfortunately for those involved. I'm deeply sceptical of most mergers, even ones that bring in a big seller (like Pfizer's acquisitions of Warner-Lambert and Pharmacia.) Those should have been called Pfizer's acquisitions of Lipitor and Celebrex, frankly. As far as I can see, Pfizer's headed for the Red Queen's Race (from Alice in Wonderland) - having to run as fast as you can just to stay in one place. And that's a goodmerger. The bad ones have amazing potential for harm.