"There's a sucker born every minute."
David Hannum, Banker & Horse trader

(Not P.T.Barnum!) 

The recent spectacle of genuflecting Steve Jobs worshippers lining up to be among the first to lay hands on the latest Cult-of-Apple icon - the 3G iPhone - reminded me that, for all its flaws (and they are numerous) this banana archipelago where I currently reside does, from time to time, in various areas, get it right.

I remember a few years back discussing the subject of cellular telephony with an old friend in Canada. He was bemoaning how, being the Luddite that he is, all he wanted was the most basic set available - something to send and receive calls and texts and in which to keep a modest phone book - but that the "system" was making it damned difficult.

His story is typical: He goes to a cellphone dealer. Tells the clerk what he wants. The clerk, a tad disappointed that he wasn't about to sell something that might surf the net while it does your laundry, showed him a modest array of modest devices. My friend inquired as to price…

"This one is only $129.00 when purchased with the Super-Wammy Gizmatorn package from Bell Canada, and this one only$180 with the Cosmotic Special Plan giving you 120 minutes of calls and 200 "free" text messages a month."

"But i Just want to buy a phone. I don't want to know about all that stuff."

"Oh. You can't do that."

Add to that almost universal scenario the outlandish prices charged for txt messages (One major US carrier just doubled their price from 10 cents to 20 cents per text - for no apparent reason other than that demand was skyrocketing and they could get away with it) and the fact that both the caller and the call receiver pay, and you have, in my view, a vision of cellular hell.

That oh-so-cool iPhone is going to end up likely costing you over $2000, my friend - even if you never make a single call on it. 

Now… how it works in this corner of the globe:

A couple of years ago I purchased a Sony Ericcson 810i (a lovely phone with no discernible objectionable characteristics that I've been able to find) at about $300.

Contract? No contract. Just: Here's your money. Here's your phone.

Of course I needed a SIM card. Got one…. about $1.00 including a "load" of about 30 txt messages.

Cell to cell calls cost about 20 cents a minute (only the caller pays). Not really cheap, but hardly outrageous. Text messages? 2 cents each, unless you avail of one of the zillion specials such as 50 cents for 24 hours of unlimited texting.

I also can use my phone as a modem for my laptop if need be on those days when I am being a bum on my friend's boat or laying about on the beach of one of the hundreds of tiny islands dotting the local Visayan seas (at a speed of about 128Kbps - adequate for checking email and surfing basic sites). The cost? 50 cents an hour.

Of course, I can also use my cellphone for all manner of finacial transaction such as bill paying and bank transfers etc. The costs vary, but never more than maybe a dollar.

And were my Canadian friend here? Well, he'd pick up a new Nokia or low-end Motorola for maybe $35.00 - or maybe $45 if he wanted an mp3 player, including a SIM card. If he was feeling particularly stingy, he could probably knock off about 50% for something refurbished.

I should point out too that, based on accounts I hear and read about widespread dropouts and unreliable signals throughout North America, that service here, though not perfect, is pretty damned good.

A word to all you western celphone users: You are idiots. Vote with your feet. Tell them to shove their phones and their unconscionable service contracts up their butts and pretty quickly you will discover what cellphones and service actually are worth.

"The data are neutral." - Peter Moens

(On being questioned about the morality of disclosing potentially dangerous scientific discovery.)

I recently lost a friend, albeit a friend I had not seen in some 15 years - one of those absent friends we all have about whom we think "One of these days before we die we'll get together and we'll have a grand chat." Sigh.

To anyone who has read any of my posts touching on matters of science I must appear quite the contrarian, harboring great distrust of it. That is an illusion. I love science passionately. After all, without science not only would even the most modestly middle class person not enjoy real wealth beyond the imagination of the Sun King rather than the Hobbesian "nasty, brutish and short" alternative, most of us would probably never have been born. Consider that pre-Industrial Revolution England could support no more than perhaps 6 million inhabitants. Who am I to think I might be descended from the lucky few who would have been born had engineering (applied science) not blossomed and permitted a population explosion? No, I certainly do not dislike science. Individual scientists, on the other hand, provide endless fodder for my misanthropic cannons.

Scientists are, of necessity, extremely intelligent human beings, but the key point often is not the intelligence but rather the humanity. While a high IQ should offer adequate defence against the worst of human shortcomings it usually does not in either personal life or vocation. The former interests me not at all; the latter is everything. Scientists are as emotional, irrational, stubborn, greedy, deceitful and so forth as accountants, lobster fishermen, store clerks and gardeners.

Scientific fraud, deception and incompetence are nothing new. What is new however is the economic/social environment in which science is conducted. Pure research for the sake of pure knowledge continues of course, and the body of scientific knowledge grows exponentially, doubling in a matter of months, not centuries. But the game has changed dramatically in the past several decades. The intimate financial relationships between universities and corporations, patent sharing, the setting up of companies by ambitious, taxpayer-funded professors and so forth are productive but, to say the least, uncomfortable. The combination of this new profit motive with the surprisingly still prevalent need to conform in the scientific community and you have a recipe for bad science.

If you think I overstate my case consider just three areas:

Evolution by natural selection.
No scientist who hopes to keep food on his table and clothes on his children's backs would dare express anything short of evangelical support about this foundation of modern biology. To do so not only risks funding but subjects one to ridicule. If you doubt that, just ask a transformed cladist.

Astronomy.
We all know that the universe started with the Big Bang, don't we? Well apparently we don't. Hundreds of (non-creationist) astronomers, astrophysicists and other equally brainy folk of a Steady State bent find the theory at best flawed and at worst very bad science. But can you name three? Of course you can't. They are relegated to the outback and never seen on television or magazine covers and rarely published in the major journals because they cannot get funding for their work.

Medical science.
This is my favorite. While Robert Gallo earns millions of dollars from his patents on AIDS tests based on his own unpublished, un-peer-reviewed, HIV theory, which tests, even if they worked (and they do not) would be useless, hundreds of dissident scientific voices of brilliant. proven minds are silenced or, when heard, dismissed out of hand as cranks.

My point here is simple: The minute a scientist begins to allow the direction of their work to be governed by financial profit or attention on funding or peer acceptance rather than by a desire to simply get at the truth, no matter how distasteful that truth might prove to be, he or she ceases to be a scientist and becomes a businessman/woman.

So, why the long preamble to my few words about my departed friend? Because it illustrates what he was not. Whatever human foibles may have manifested in his personal life, he embodied the essence of the 'real" scientist. He was for me a living example of why, over time, science "works".

Peter was the father of an intimate friend. On first meeting him I found him to be a bit confounding, somewhat lacking in conventional social graces and a tad frightening. In truth, over the decade in which we spent time together this did not change one whit, but, I came to like, admire and respect him enormously. Oddly, we could not be two more different people; me, the shameless perpetual unproductive dilettante and him the fiercely dedicated over-achiever excelling in whatever he set his formidable mind to. Stubborness about what we each believed was perhaps the only shared trait. I liked that he was always - as in always - willing to play tennis with me despite the disparity in our experience and skill. I liked that he was always willing to have a good verbal punch-up with me on a wide range of subjects but most frequently things related to science. Frankly, on this latter point, I always felt honored and more than a little surprised that he would bother to go beyond the dictates of requisite civility toward a quasi-family-member and actually argue in scientific terms and in a manner devoid of any hint of condescension or contempt with an unlettered laymen such as me. At the foundation of my affinity though was his simple, unshakeable integrity as a scientist.

I am unqualified to judge the quality of his work as a scientist, though his credentials and accomplishments would suggest it was first rate (see Obituary here), but I feel entirely at ease, even enthusiastic, commenting on his mind qua scientist.

Three things were instrumental in forming my opinions of Peter as a scientist. Two were specific events; the third a repetitive pattern.

1. Peter's daughter was an undergraduate majoring in Biology. She worked in his lab one year and wrote her first published paper under his aegis. After completing it, one night she telephoned me. She was in an unusual emotional state - somewhere between tears and rage. It seems her father was proofreading her work and was being mercilessly hyper-critical to the point of questioning the placement of commas and choice of conjunctions. It seemed petty and cruel. I was naturally sympathetic and supportive as I was well aware of just how maddening the man could be. Later though, upon reflection, I thought "Wow. That is so cool. He will not allow an article to go out under his name (or his daughter's) until it is absolutely perfect in every excruciating detail!" I want scientists to be maddeningly unreasonable nitpicking perfectionists! My life depends on it.

2. A year or two later, Peter's daughter worked in another lab and conducted a lengthy experiment. The results were unexpected and very disappointing. Crestfallen she told him of her failure. His reaction? "You got a result. Your experiment was a success." Again, with no need for reflection this time, my reaction was "Wow! What a fantastic guy!" She got a result! Budgets, grants, pride, expectations be damned, she got a result! I believe that is called "science".

3. Frequently in our many talks I would attempt to draw Peter into discussion of things metaphysical or even religious (in the Buddhist/Taoist, not the Christian, sense). How would he react? Did he say Buddhist monks are deluded nuts? No. Did he condemn them in any way? No. Though I knew his personal feelings to be entirely negative, his reaction as a scientist was to not react. He simply refused to go there. He would always bring me back to, in effect, "Let me deal with what I do know and can speak intelligently about. I cannot comment on those matters." To be sure, he would readily ridicule the likes of TM practitioners "flying" by bouncing cross-legged on mattresses and faith healers et al whose quakery might be objectively proven, but when pressed on matters related to higher levels of consciousness or mystical experience and so forth he had no comment. In other words, he did precisely what a "scientist" should and must do if he or she is to wear that noble badge untarnished and with integrity.

I cannot say anything as trite (and untruthful) as "I am a better man for having known Peter Moens", but I can without hesitation say "I am a smarter man for having known Peter Moens." And I can think of no greater compliment to my absent friend than to call him "scientist".

I do and will continue to miss you, Peter.

Hello.

Miss me?

I am back.

Where have I been? Not saying.

Why have I been gone? Not saying?

Am I likely to disappear again any time soon? Not saying.

"We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves." - John Locke

Perhaps because of living in Asia rather than Canada, in recent years I have been lulled into thinking that Political Correctness had faded to near invisibility and the dark days of endangering life and limb by calling any female a "girl" or, even worse, a "lady", were behind us. Silly me. I am so naive sometimes.

A couple of news items this week grabbed my attention for their PC content. The first, very overt and unavoidable; the second, considerably less noticeable but actually far more significant and I'll talk about it in a later post.

Former Governor of New Jersey and Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, who once said that she would never have risen to the level of VP candidate were she not a woman, had the audacity to say "If Obama was a white man he would not be in this position… He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

So, what do I think can be reasonably said about her statement? Easy: It was a stupid thing to say. Not evil. Not a capital crime. Not racist. Just stupid. Surely Ms Ferraro could not have thought she could say that without causing a furor. And furor is what she got.  Her remark has been described by pundits and arbiters of acceptable speech as everything from "offensive" to "divisive". The commentary, recrimination, quasi-defence and apology is as ridiculous as it is knee-jerk and predictable.The one thing common to all commentary though is this: It is all about her making the statement, not about the merit or its lack in the actual content or meaning of the statement. And that is what makes it just another example of mindless political correctness. It matters not if the statement is entirely accurate, partially accurate or totally inaccurate. What matters is that she (or anyone) is simply not allowed to express such a thought.

Apparently we are to believe Obama's race is an irrelevancy. We are not supposed to notice that he is black and if we inadvertently do, certainly not allowed to suggest that this fact might in any way (positively) impinge on his presidential aspirations. No matter that it is impossible to watch any lengthy coverage of primaries or speeches or debates without hearing mention of his race. No matter the endless references to the possibility of Americans electing their first black President. No matter that analysis of primary returns always goes into excruciating detail about voting patterns of various demographic groups with particular focus on women, Hispanics, and blacks. (Sorry, Neanderthal that I am, I refuse to use the ridiculous "African American".) No, Obamarama's success to date must be attributable only to his combination of skillful oratory, wisdom and blah blah blah.

Ferraro said he has benefited from being black. That may or may not be true. Personally I think to dismiss the idea out of hand would be absurd and that it matters not a damn if it is true, but debatable it may well be. However, I did not see anyone actually debating it. Not one person I saw on the tube offered up any argument that the statement was not true. Not a single one said flat out "Obama has not been helped by his being black.", only that it was shameful for her to say it. It was stated by some that nobody would dare to suggest that Hillary is in the position she is because she is a woman. Perhaps that's true, but why? And how about "Hillary has achieved the level of success she now enjoys in part because she is lucky enough to be the wife of a former president."?

These people make we want to throw up. If I didn't know better I'd swear they are all Canadians.

"I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance." -  Christopher Marlowe

Without a doubt, for me, the most important news of the day, slipped in amongst whoring politicians, middle east bombings and $109 a barrel oil, was word that the Vatican is updating the Seven Deadly Sins. I am not sure if that means my chronic sloth, greed, and lusting no longer make eternal damnation inevitable for me or that I have an extra baker's half dozen to worry about.

Mind you, when I look at the list, I feel reasonably safe. The digital age 7 biggies are:

1. Polluting ( I consume so little I think I'd be considered a minor transgressor by any heavenly tribunal.)
2. Genetic engineering (Okay, I'll stop my basement hobby cloning.)
3. Being obscenely rich (Hmmm. Unless 'obscenely rich' is defined as having maybe $20 or $30 in your pocket, I'm safe.)
4. Drug dealing (Okay here too. I wonder if wishing I had the nerve to be a drug dealer counts.)
5. Abortion (I won't sweat this one until I grow a uterus.)
6. Pedophilia (Okay here too. I like 'em young but definitely post-pubescent.)
7. Causing social injustice (I'll have to wait until the Pope explains to me exactly what this means.)

One highly amusing thing I saw was a church official explaining that there was a need to update because confessionals are too often sadly empty these days.

These information age river-of-fire-and-feces attractors are all worthy of volumes of comment of course, but I'll leave that to those who care enough. I will mention only one because of the sublime irony in it: Being obscenely rich.

Hilarious. This from the man who oversees an estimated 10-15 billion dollars in assets in banking, insurance, chemicals, steel, construction, and real estate and pays no taxes. This from the guy who, along with his cardinal and archbishop cronies on any given day wears ceremonial clothes and adornments costing more than the annual income of millions of Filipino farmers and fishermen.

I suppose though, being the Pope and all, he shouldn't have too much trouble wrangling some sort of Papal Dispensation.

Obscene?
 

"The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity" - Andre Gide 

In an earlier post about evolution and scientists I said: "Scientists, being human, are not above a bit of verbal slight of hand from time to time to make their point to us, the great unwashed."

I just came across a perfect example of the above - from my favorite Darwin dogmatist, Richard Dawkins, of course. In his essay "The Improbability of God" he tackles the question of evolution of complex systems - in this case the scientists' favorite straw man, the eye. (Scientists love this one because creationists are so often stupid enough to raise the development of the eye as an objection to evolution when it is an easily handled challenge.)

In explaining how minuscule changes can accumulate such that we can go from non-existent or rudimentary to fully developed and complex, given enough time, Dawkins writes:

"All the domestic breeds of dogs — Pekingeses, poodles, spaniels, Saint Bernards, and Chihuahuas — have come from wolves in a time span measured in hundreds or at the most thousands of years… Think of the quantity of change involved in going from a wolf to a Pekingese; now multiply that quantity of change by a million. When you look at it like that, it becomes easy to believe that an eye could have evolved from no eye by small degrees."

At first blush this might seem like a reasonable and persuasive statement. It is not. His analogy is misleading to the point of being underhanded. The obvious reaction Dawkins is aiming for here is something like "Oh, if such huge changes can occur in canines in such a relatively short period (a few thousand years), then of course things like going from a single light sensitive cell to intricate eyes must be possible given tens or hundreds of millions of years." No doubt he is very successful in eliciting that response.

So why is it underhanded? He is equating apples and oranges. The development of the eye is alleged to be a product of evolution by natural selection. Survival enhancing mutations persist and are added to with further survival enhancing mutations over millions of generations. Change is multiplied or limited according to a combination of chance and viability. However, that is decidedly not how wolves became Chihuahuas. The Chihuahua's ancestral wolves may well have been a product of evolution by natural selection; the Chihuahua is not. Evolution by natural selection plays no role in the development of canine breeds. Every breed of dog on earth (save mongrels - the non-breeds) is a result of evolution by human selection - the opposite of natural selection. The essence of natural selection is non-design, non-direction. Every breed of dog (horse, cow, pig and other domesticated animal) was selectively bred for its particular attributes. Mutants that would quickly be eliminated in the natural world survive and are fed, cared for and intentionally bred under the direction of humans. Every breed of dog is a designer dog.

It is pathetic. I cannot stress enough what I have said before: Scientists like Dawkins are among the most intelligent people on the planet. I find it hard to believe they make mistakes like this unintentionally. Prenez garde.

"Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete." - Jean-Paul Sartre

The other night I finally got around to watching "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford". I had it available for a while but put off watching it for two reasons. Firstly, just the title and the graphics told me this was going to be a slow, ponderous and self conscious, self indulgent affair. This proved to be true enough. With two hours and forty minutes of lingering shots of wheat fields beneath zen-master-wannabe voice-overs, slow and ponderous it was indeed. It was also brilliant in some respects. Little cinematographic and art direction elements actually thrilled me now and then and the attention to historical detail was refreshing.

This latter point is perhaps unduly important to me. The film makers' primary job is to entertain, I suppose, but ever since Lawrence of Arabia in the 60's, in which the second most important character, Sherif Ali, was a complete fabrication, I have resented putatively historical dramas fudging the truth. So, it was interesting to learn the reality behind the legend and the folk song I remember from my teen years in a coffeehouse hangout, but not interesting enough to overcome the wish that they'd just get on with it and shoot the bastard.

The second reason I put off watching this film is that I am sick of films glorifying bad people. Don't get me wrong; I am certainly not immune to the fascination everyone seems to have for sociopaths. I watch reruns of the Sopranos with relish, and though I tell myself it is because I regard it as the best show ever produced for television in every respect, I cannot deny the fascination with the outlaw life portrayed, nor that I, like everyone, "root" for Tony, his nephew and the other lovable scum whose real life counterparts are horrific, terrifying and utterly devoid of charm or worth.

I must digress for a moment. The Pentagon maintains a Film Liason Office in Hollywood. Through that office, producers and directors solicit technical advice and assistance and free or low-cost use of military materiel and personnel in the making of their films. This aid and approval is not always forthcoming; it will be withheld when the military finds the script too disparaging. For example, I believe the Dustin Hoffman flic "Outbreak" was denied because of its suggestion that the Army would even consider bombing an American city. Similarly, Oliver Stone's "Platoon", seen as too critical of the Vietnam war, was denied assistance. However, most films are approved and helped, and many, like "Courage Under Fire", enthusiastically so. Why? Because every such film, regardless of the levels of violence, regardless of how horrible, bloody and stomach-turning combat is portrayed as being, is a recruitment poster. The Pentagon apparently fully understands something that escapes the rest of us by and large: What we show on-screen we more than portray; we exalt.

So, back to Jesse James. The man was a murderer. Period. His motivations, his situation, his psychology, simply do not matter to his dead or injured victims, nor should they to us. Like all the other desperado folk heroes - the Ned Kellys, Bonnie and Clydes, Ronald Biggs et al, - James was a man who chose to steal from others and murder them, if necessary, rather than wait on tables, add columns of numbers, or repair plumbing fixtures.

Are such parasites really worthy of interest or attention? Not unless we enjoy abandoning reason and choose to succumb to our atavistic feral instincts. They are losers and only as interesting as we make them. Punish them and forget them. Calling a shit an "anti-hero" and examining the real or conjured minutiae of their mental and physical lives does not remove the flies or the fetor. Flush them down the toilet. It's where they belong.

"Violence isn't always evil. What's evil is the infatuation with violence." - Jim Morrison

 (A two-quote post because both are so appropriate I could not choose one over the other.)
 

"Words … are innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, defining that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos… They deserve respect." - Tom Stoppard

I watched Barak O'Bamarama the other night, and I frankly can't remember if it was his post-Wisconsin speech or part of his Texas "debate" with Hillary. These babble fests do tend to just run on from one to the next. No matter. What matters is what has stuck in my mind since. He used the old standby sentence "We are a nation of immigrants." That one always makes my skin crawl. And it always reminds me of once, years ago, watching an erudite and literate Canadian political reporter for whom I had some good measure of respect as a straight shooter (Patrick Duffy) make a similar statement: "After all, we are all immigrants in this country." What a pity. I lost all respect for him in that instant and could never again bring myself to take him seriously about anything, or even watch him.

These statements and similar ones, which have become mantra-like over the years, offend on so many levels it would be too time consuming to cover them all, so I'll address only a couple.

Firstly, I always take umbrage when a speaker opts for a clever turn of words rather than say precisely what he or she means. They toss out something handy that they know will not be challenged, when, were they to be precise, their statements might draw unwanted scrutiny and objection, forcing them to defend a position they might be incapable of defending. It is cheap and unprofessional.

Secondly, as I have stated earlier, I am something of a fanatic in demanding accuracy in use of language by public speakers. Barak and Patrick, to put it inelegantly, you are full of crap and what's worse is you are both bright enough to know it. An "immigrant" is a person who resides in one country but was born in another. This is not complex. This is not subtle. This is not open to misinterpretation. This is not open to expansion to include other meanings. I was born in the center of Toronto, period. That one set of grandparents emigrated to Canada from England is irrelevant. That another set of great-great-great-great grandparents emigrated from Ireland does not make me an immigrant.

No doubt many who use this little shibboleth would argue that only 'first nations' people can be considered "native" or non-immigrant. Even if one accepted the perverted meaning of immigrant that is based on heritage rather than place of birth, the people making such an argument would be, well, full of crap. It has pretty much been established beyond doubt by genetic testing that North and South American aborigines are descended from inhabitants of Asia.

I suppose it might be argued then that the original statement is correct: if even natives are immigrants, we are ALL immigrants. This means, of course, that the word might just as well be expunged from the language as useless because of its universal applicability. And then we are left without a word to distinguish between a person who was born in a given country and one who moved to that country from elsewhere, should we have need. But that's precisely the point, isn't it - to eliminate, for purposes of political correctness or some more specific need, that distinction through bastardization of the language?

Most of the time I find the subject rather meaningless. What matters to me is a person's character, not the particular piece of geography on which they happened to have been born.

I recall once, when in a pub in Dublin with my significant other, one of the locals with whom we were enjoying a pint of Guinness made some comment about "you Yanks". I quickly corrected him. He then asked why we Canadians always seem so quick to correct that innocent and understandable error. I started into a long explanation of the relationship between Americans and Canadians and national identity and so forth. My girlfriend quickly (and wisely) cut me off and said: "Because we are Canadians, not Americans."

Patrick, Barak, please read carefully: I am not an immigrant. Please stop calling me one.

“When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.” - Oscar Wilde

Well, it seems the world is to be blessed with yet another Balkan state.

After illegally bombing Yugoslavia, getting involved in a civil war on the pretense of stopping a dreamt-up Serb on "Kosovar" genocide in which 100,000 reported deaths proved to be fewer than 3,000 and Slobodan's mass graves have proven as elusive as Saddam's WMD, lending aid to a gang of murderers and criminals calling themselves a liberation army, dictating one-sided "peace" terms, severing about 15% of Serbia's sovereign land from it, and possibly murdering Slobodan Milosovic, NATO, the better part of the EU and America are getting what they wanted all along: an independent Kosovo. And this new state will of course be immediately recognized by the U.S because that, according to King George, will "lead to peace".

One has to wonder…Should all the legal Hispanics in America get together with all the illegal alien Hispanics who flood into America and they settled in, say, Arizona or another state where their numbers would comprise a majority, started shooting everyone in sight and declared their independance, would Georgie be so quick to recognize the new sovereign country? Hmmm… maybe. I mean after all, that's how America came to acquire Texas and Hawaii, is it not? That's how Israel, paragon of peace, with the blessing of America and the other enlightened western democracies (each of whom turned refugee Jews away by the tens of thousands), came into existence, is it not?

One imagines that all those native born Floridians must shudder a bit when they see yet another new wave of aging ex-pat Canadians getting off a plane, retirement checks in hand.

"Either war is obsolete or men are." - Buckminster Fuller

About a year ago I wrote email to a few friends in which I said laughingly that regardless of skin color, ethnicity, political philosophy or religion, nobody with a name like "Barak Obama" would ever be elected President of the U.S. Well, it is beginning to look like maybe the laugh is on me. Obama's recent successes are impressive and his public speaking makes Hillary look shopworn and effete. Another couple of wins and he will almost certainly be unstoppable.

Around the same time I sent another mail in which I said that my nightmare election scenario would be Clinton vs McCain. Choose your Patriot Act embracing war monger!

As I watched the post Potomac Primary pundits ramble on with their explanations for today's results and predictions for the future a horrifying thought struck me. Though I don't have the time of day for "Let's invade Pakistan" Obama and his patronizing banalities ("One nation! One People. And the time for change is now!), were he the Dem's candidate in November I'd feel compelled to vote for him simply to stop that madman McCain.  The thought that made me shudder: In a McCain vs Obama election I think we can count on an international crisis erupting sometime in October. Mad Iranians will flood across the border into Iraq. Suicidal mujahadeen will blow up people in northern Pakistan. "Proof" will be discovered that Osama is buying nuclear technology from Kim Jung Il. Whatever. There will be something that will make the ungrateful electorate come to its senses and realize that security is dependent on a strong President and the job is too much for an unproven wimp like Obama. Thank god we have McCain!

Coming to a television screen near you. Autumn chaos! Count on it folks. You don't really think the neocons and the billionaires are about to give up after 8 years of having their way, do you?