LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 92

Bagpipes are a perfect illustration that humans can be a perverse and stubborn race of beings. Even the most accomplished bagpiper sounds horribly shrill and annoying half the time, yet the bagpipe has never gone away. Indeed, where there is one bagpipe, you are likely to find a dozen more shrieking away trying in vain to play a song together, and only when the thing is almost over does anyone realize what song it is they are butchering. And yet we invite these people to our parades and funerals all the time.

INDEPENDENCE DAY, 1863

This Friday marks America's 232nd birthday, a celebration of government of the people, by the people and for the people. Not only were our forefathers political geniuses and courageous champions of the rights of all mankind, but they had the wise foresight to declare independence in the summertime, July 4th to be exact, the perfect time to hold a fine celebration of our nation. Our biggest national holiday just wouldn't have the same appeal if it were held in say, November, or even worse, February. Fireworks displays, barbecues, visits to the beach and baseball games don't have the same attraction in those weather-challenged months, and parades are also problematic. So add Social Calendar Savants to their titles as Founding Fathers.

This year's celebration marks a turning point in American history if only for the fact that it is the final Independence Day of the Bush The Younger Administration, a government that tried mightily to make America less American. They didn't succeed in their goal of completely dismantling the Bill of Rights and installing a Roman-style permanent ruling elite, but they did take our nation a few giant steps backwards in our journey to becoming the America of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. So this week we can add a little gusto to our celebrations by saying good riddance to the worst administration we've ever had.

This year also marks a great opportunity to elect a president completely out of the mold of all former presidents, a black man in a nation that once enslaved blacks. Our choice this November will be that black man, Senator Barack Obama, or yet another in the parade of cynical old white pragmatists bent on world domination, in this case the 72-year old Senator John McCain. Not that the only reason to vote for Obama is his skin color, indeed that's the least of all considerations, he's just the better man for the job of restoring faith in America, both at home and abroad. Our Unity in these United States is being tested these days and our former image overseas as a champion of decency has taken a severe beating.

And the reason to worry about our image overseas is not to make people like us. Who really cares about that? If we like ourselves and do right that image will return, but the reason America used to enjoy a reputation as the champion of liberty, human rights and justice is because it was true, not just a mouthful of propaganda put out by a government looking for approval. Screw approval, just do what is right and good, and let people argue with that if they want to. Let this 4th of July be a rededication of America to American principles. There was once a 4th of July in 1863, when America was in mortal peril and torn by Civil War, when the Battle of Gettysburg ended in a Union victory. Four months later, recalling that 4th of July, Abraham Lincoln gave us the immortal Gettysburg Address, a speech that in its eloquent clarity and brevity identified forever our American ideals. Here it is:

FOUR SCORE AND SEVEN YEARS AGO OUR FATHERS BROUGHT FORTH ON THIS CONTINENT, A NEW NATION, CONCEIVED IN LIBERTY, AND DEDICATED TO THE PROPOSITION THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL.

NOW WE ARE ENGAGED IN A GREAT CIVIL WAR, TESTING WHETHER THAT NATION, OR ANY NATION SO CONCEIVED AND DEDICATED, CAN LONG ENDURE. WE ARE MET ON A GREAT BATTLEFIELD OF THAT WAR. WE HAVE COME TO DEDICATE A PORTION OF THAT FIELD, AS A FINAL RESTING PLACE FOR THOSE THAT GAVE THEIR LIVES THAT THAT NATION MIGHT LIVE. IT IS ALTOGETHER FITTING AND PROPER THAT WE DO THIS.

BUT, IN A LARGER SENSE, WE CANNOT DEDICATE--WE CANNOT CONSECRATE-- WE CANNOT HALLOW--THIS GROUND. THE BRAVE MEN, LIVING AND DEAD, WHO STRUGGLED HERE, HAVE CONSECRATED IT, FAR ABOVE OUR POOR POWER TO ADD OR DETRACT. THE WORLD WILL LITTLE NOTE, NOR LONG REMEMBER WHAT WE SAY HERE, BUT IT CAN NEVER FORGET WHAT THEY DID HERE. IT IS FOR US THE LIVING, RATHER, TO BE DEDICATED HERE TO THE UNFINISHED WORK FOR WHICH THEY HAVE THUS FAR SO NOBLY ADVANCED. IT IS RATHER FOR US TO BE HERE DEDICATED TO THE GREAT TASK REMAINING BEFORE US -- THAT FROM THESE HONORED DEAD WE TAKE INCREASED DEVOTION FOR THAT CAUSE FOR WHICH THEY GAVE THE LAST FULL MEASURE OF DEVOTION -- THAT WE HERE HIGHLY RESOLVE THAT THESE DEAD SHOULD NOT HAVE DIED IN VAIN -- THAT THIS NATION, UNDER GOD, SHALL HAVE A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM -- AND THAT GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE, SHALL NOT PERISH FROM THIS EARTH.

And that's the whole text of it, not a false note anywhere except when in his modesty Lincoln says the world will little note nor long remember what is said there. There were several other speakers that day, renowned orators who spoke at great length and whose words' were forgotten and little noted, but Abraham Lincoln left us with a beaut, a timeless 2 minute synopsis of what it means to be an American on that journey towards becoming the America of our ideals. Let's not let him down. Happy Independence Day, everybody.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 91

It is vitally important to use your imagination as often as possible.

OPTIMISTIC SCIENTISTS

It seems that at one time scientists were generally optimists, although it's pretty hard to recall those days when you consider our current crop of white lab coat-wearing doomsday predictors. In earlier times, scientists were people who studied the physical world and unraveled many of its secrets. Indeed they provided mankind with many wonders and generally improved our lot in life. We are flying around in airplanes, hooking up with the entire world via telephone and computers, living longer and enjoying better health due to the technological and scientific advances of these earnest people. Diseases that had plagued humanity for eons were cured, nutrition was improved and even M&M's made with dark chocolate were given to us for our enjoyment. Nothing not to like about all that.

And indeed scientists were always talking about how rosy the future looked with some of the breakthroughs they were working on. Anybody with a few miles on them recalls the last chapter of our grade school history books, excitedly titled "The Future!" or, more majestically: "Mankind's Forward March!" in which the world of the future contained all manner of life-improving gadgets and a small empire of space colonies. We'd all live to be 300, robots would clean up after us and if you felt like flying around you'd just strap on your personal jet pack and take off into the wild blue yonder.

No mention was made of nuclear meltdowns, giant oil spills, chemical poisoning of rivers and people, the continuation of mass starvation on much of the planet or the melting of the ice caps that would introduce Ohio and Nevada to the joys of ocean-front living. We had it all under control, you see, everything was going to turn out just swell. We trusted our scientists as they provided us with miracle product after miracle product, drained our pesky swamplands and lined our homes with asbestos to keep us toasty warn in the winter.

Well, we all know how a lot of that turned out, and the cancer plague from which we suffer is but one symptom. And it turns out those pesky swamplands came in pretty handy to Mother Nature as a tool for balancing our environment, just like the rain forests once thought to a great source of exotic wood. Live and learn, eh? So now the same breed of people who brought us all these life-enhancing miracles are predicting the end of life as we know it because of the wondrous things they have invented. Seems we had too much of a good thing and now it's time to pay the piper, Mother Nature. Kind of like the Roaring Twenties that led to the Whimpering Thirties of the Great Depression, but much worse.

At least that's one take on the whole doomsday thing. Maybe it's not science that's the problem, just maybe it's our new breed of scientists, as dour a bunch of nay-sayers as we've seen since the advent of the Inquisition, and we all know what a dour and humor-free bunch were the Inquisitors. Today's scientists can't seem to get enough publicity for predicting a dire cataclysm for mankind due to our many sins, mostly consisting of listening to these bozos in the first place. That's a pretty bizarre and creative approach to religion, one has to admit: You believed in the faith too deeply and followed our commandments too faithfully so now you must suffer grievously. Put that in your hash pipe and smoke it! Maybe then their incoherent blathering will make some sense.

Ah, sense, that's what's missing here, and I won't insult you by calling it common sense because it apparently isn't very common at all. Many people don't think it makes much sense to have the government regulating scientific endeavors, saying things like it breaches the rules of capitalism and stifles creativity. So the government loosens its regulatory powers. Then what you get is Love Canal and untested drugs poisoning people. The asbestos debacle comes to mind as well. As it turns out, as long ago as 1928 asbestos industry leadership knew very well that there "could be a problem" with people's lungs in regard to asbestos. As for myself, I need look no further than my own father, who died a long and tortuous death due to tiny fibers of asbestos lodged in his lungs. That certainly was "a problem" for him and our family.

So perhaps a bit more testing and stringent regulation of miracle products is in order as we march into Mankind's Brave New World. And let us not condemn science for the fix we're in, since science is the medium we used to identify our problems. The Neanderthals probably blamed the spirits for the end of the Ice Age during which they thrived, but at least we are aware of the forces of nature and our own impact upon them. And maybe we ought to start recruiting some new types of people to wear the white lab coats, people who are aware that science is a double edged sword. And people who do not feel it is their duty to consider those while lab coats to be religious vestments ordaining them with powers beyond their status as ordinary human beings who just happen to be scientists. There is no crystal ball in the laboratory, people, just work to be done. As my father used to say: "Hop to it."

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 90

There is no human endeavor so important that it cannot be put off because of a toothache. Everything stops until that throbbing pain is eliminated one way or another, either having a dentist fix it or yank the offending tooth out of your skull altogether. Nothing else gets done until that happens. Sort of shows us how insignificant are our priorities when something the size of a tooth can override any of them.

MASS STARVATION: MAYBE SOMEONE HAS A BETTER IDEA

You look around you in this world and can't help wondering. Why does this keep happening? How come nobody has done anything about that? What's the deal with this maniac? Who's idea was such-and such? You fill in the blanks, whatever it is that strikes you as odd, unacceptable or just plain nuts. Some things never seem to grow on us, no matter how long they've been going on. Mass starvation comes to mind as a good example of a time-honoroed practice that is impossible to accept as just the way things are.

As it stands now, 36,000 peple die every day of hunger, the vast majority of them children less than 5 years of age. Now, people being a prety resilient bunch, this starvation process takes a while, and the lead-up to one's death is agonizing. So, with 36,000 a day actually perishing, that means that many millions more of us are in the throes of starvation, fighting against it, even eating clay biscuits, wood pulp, insects, anything in order to survive one more day. It is a slow, excrutiatingly painful process, a torture far beyond that which men have devised to punish one another, what our own laws ban as cruel and unusual punishment.

Well, starvation is extremely cruel, but not at all unusual. 36,000 daily deaths are hardly unusual, even on a planet of 6 billion mouths to feed. And if you do the math, what's the big deal with feeding 6 billion and 36 thousand instead of just the 6 billion? A drop in the bucket, planet-wise. It's just a matter of getting the food to the hungry. Sounds pretty simple but that's not the case. Some places just can't produce enough food. Other countries, like our own United States, produce extraordinary amounts of food. Still others waste their own great potential for producing huge harvests by misusing their fertile land or by farming it as if we were still in the Bronze Age.

And being that our planet is full of sovereign nations with sacrosanct borders there's a lot of red tape involved in getting food to hungry people. And somebody has to pay the farmers for producing this food, the shippers for getting it to them and the workers on the receiving end to distribute it to those who need it most. Nothing is free and nobody's labor is anybody else's to take without proper compensation. And by definition hungry people have no money to pay for all this otherwise they'd buy some food for their families and wouldn't be starving in the first place. And feeding people must be followed up by education and retraining in agricultural methods otherwise the cycle will never end for some regions of the world. While it might be quaint to see pictures in National Geographic of backward people following an ox as they plow their ill-managed farmland, maybe we can all skip that notion like we have gotten past the practices of voodoo medicine and human sacrifice. Let it be the 21st century for everybody, not just the chosen few.

So now you've got to involve governments in the process of feeding people and that's probably the biggest barrier to solving mass starvation. You don't need a degree in political science to realize that many, many governments of many, many nations don't really give a rat's ass about their citizens, their only aim being the acquisition and retention of power and the wealth that power brings. Indeed, many of these governments find starvation a handy tool to eliminate the political opposition, saving a fortune on bullets. In such places food shipments are routinely kept away from the hungry, given as a reward to those loyal to the government or even traded to other nations in exchange for more weapons.

So what do we do about this slaughter? That's exactly what 36,000 daily deaths amount to, vicious slaughter, genocide. When the world possesses the means to end it and does not, what else can this be called? A plague? A disease? The starving person sure doesn't care what it's called, they only want something to eat so that they don't die that day. I don't know the answers to this problem but surely it must involve international cooperation on a scale not seen before. The United Nations does what it can, supposedly, but that's not enough to stave off even one of those 36,000 daily deaths.

If Europe can overcome their long history of slaughtering each other on battlefields by forming the European Union and using a common currency then perhaps the world at large can start cooperating on feeding all humans, no matter what their skin color, religion or political persuasion. Generally hungry people have no politics at all beyond eating, that most basic of human rights. So maybe the United Nations needs to be overhauled, kicking out the corrupt bureaucrats and the inept hand-wringers who's answer to every problem is to form a committee to study it while people are dying.

And just maybe sovereign governments can be persuaded to bow to the authority of a truly united world community to respond to disasters and emergencies within their borders. Starvation is both a disaster and an emergency. The United States could lead the way as the world's reigning superpower by ceding that authority to a revamped and reinvented United Nations, an organization stripped of political aims and in existence only to help human beings wherever and whenever they are in trouble. And it must be be made very clear that to defy the United Nations is to defy the entire world.

The U.N armies must be formidable in order to enforce the feeding of the starving masses, those millions and millions who strive every day not to be numbered among those 36,000 dead souls. That's over 13 million per year, the entire population of many a nation. One and a half Austrias, for example. So it's time to put some good minds to work on this emergency. The floods in America's Midwest are only the latest monkey wrench thrown into the works and there are a thousand other problems to be solved, and the starving will have no voice in the process, yet another problem. It is up to rest of us fortunate enough not to be hungry to help our brothers and sisters so that their voices can one day be heard instead of buried in anonymous graves. Anybody have any good ideas on how to do that?

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 89

A man once said that what you don't know can't hurt you. Now, that's a laugh. Of course the guy who coined that phrase isn't around anymore to explain his statement. It seems he died from some unknown disease after being bitten by an animal he didn't know was poisonous in an area he didn't know was dangerous. So much for that bit of folk wisdom.

ANOTHER SIGN THAT LIFE AS WE KNOW IT IS OVER: COSTCO IS SELLING CASKETS

The lovely wife asked me to look up the phone number for the wholesale grocery club Costco today. I'm sitting at the computer so I figure, sure, why not? It's 800- whatever, and she writes it down. I'm praying she doesn't want to join the place since I refuse to set foot in a joint that wants me to bring my own grocery bags and also charges a yearly fee for the privilege of shopping there, so she's on her own with this one. There's only two of us here, so I don't feel the need to buy a 55-gallon drum of cranberry juice or a bushel of raisin bran. I'm good with the regular supermarket.

But what do I see when I open their web site? Costco is now selling caskets! I knew they had branched out into all sorts of other things besides groceries for all their customers' household needs, but caskets? Do they run sales on these things? Are they a whole lot cheaper than regular casket sellers? And when a loved one dies, how many people will think of heading over to Costco for a bargain casket? Or will some people take advantage of the low price and buy their own casket years before they die? And if so, where would you keep it? Those things are pretty big.

One supposes it could serve as a guest bed in the old spare room, but definitely not for an elderly guest. No sense spooking the old folks, they've got enough reminders of their mortality already. Sticking it in the shed or the garage might be a good idea, but it's bound to become rusty and mildewed there. The attic is out of the question unless you've got six pallbearers handy when you need it since a casket is quite heavy. Unlike most products you buy from Costco, you only need this one just the one time. And if you're dead, odds are nobody will know you've got your own casket stashed away in the attic and they'll get you another, more costly one, thus defeating the purpose of buying it cheap in the first place.

And are Costco's caskets no-friills affairs? Not a bad idea since the comfy cushioning lining the interior of most caskets is wasted on the dead, as is the gleaming metal exterior. An altogether extravagant expense for someone who won't ever appreciate it. But just maybe, now that Costco's selling these things at a bargain, there's a chance to curry favor with that wealthy older relative who's preparing their will. You buy old Uncle Jack the fanciest, most comfortable coffin you can find, one with all the bells and whistles and you just might increase your piece of his estate pie.

Then again, that just might give the old boy the creeps and you'll find yourself disinherited. Or worse yet, Uncle Jack might keel over right then and there before he signs his new will and your Cousin Bill the drunken bum who hates everybody in the family inherits his dough and you're stuck with your Costco casket. Doesn't seem like an item for which they would have a liberal returns policy. Who would want to buy a used coffin? They can't be sure the thing was never used. So now you've got to figure out what the hell to do with it until you drop dead yourself, hopefully many years in the future.

You can always make a pretty cool looking go-cart for junior. Slap on some wheels, install some small seats and a steering wheel and he'll be the envy of all his friends, or at least the friends he has left when their parents get a load of his casket-mobile. A casket would also make a nice beer cooler. You could ice up a hell of a lot of beer in one of those things, although the ice might spoil the plush interior. Or your Costco coffin could be a nice planter, pushing up daises before you do. It doesn't seem all that useful as a piece of furniture, what with the curved top and all, but it would make a swell hope chest for Sissy, though. Lots of room for her trousseau in there.

So let's support Costco in their new endeavor. Who knows, maybe they'll start selling other specialty items at bargain rates, things like barometers, shoe-repair kits, butter churns and DNA testing apparatus. But if you're stuck with your Costco casket, just stick it in the storage room with your bow flex exercise machine, your salad shooter and your mountain bike. Unlike those items, you will be using your Costco casket someday. And you'll be using it for a long time. A very long time indeed. Happy bargain hunting.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 88

Whoever said that love doesn't pay the rent has never visited a brothel or a house of worship, two places where love does indeed pay the rent. Different sorts of love, to be sure, but both kinds are quite powerful in people, and an indelible part of who we are. Profitable, too.

WHO'S GOING TO EXPLAIN STUFF NOW THAT GEORGE CARLIN'S GONE?

The other day we lost a master of not only comedy, but of the English language. George Carlin died of the heart disease that had plagued him for some time, at a far too young 71. At his age, a time when most comedians are rehashing the routines that made them famous, Mr. Carlin was always writing and performing new material, still thinking and expressing himself in a different way than anyone else. He was a chronicler of the absurd in human life, a puncturer of inflated egos and a master of social observation. With George Carlin around to explain stuff, we were all a little more down to earth.

He broke comedy ground again and again but still moved on to new material, fresh observations and was always current. He was as prolific a writer as Steven King and a hell of a lot more entertaining. There were no sacred cows in his world, including himself. And unlike a lot of thought-provoking comics, he was always very funny. Who else could make you think about the absurdity of the phrases "jumbo shrimp" and "colossal olives?" And his Hippy Dippy Weatherman review; "Tonight, dark. Tomorrow night, more of the same..."

Born to an Irish American family in New York City and educated in Catholic schools (Traditionally rich wiseguy training grounds), he made his mark in both conventional and counter-cultural comedy. His "Seven words you can't say on television" routine marked an end to his association with traditional comedy and sent him on the road to his greatest successes as an outsider who made everybody laugh, both traditionalists and avant garden types. That was because he spoke the unvarnished truth, that quality of his work that was probably greater than his innovation, his creativity, his superb comic timing and performance skills or the sheer volume of his work.

It was the raw honesty of his work that kept us all riveted. He pandered to no one and struck no false notes in his long career. For an artist to remain true to himself is one of the greatest achievements of any artistic discipline. And as topical and current as much of his work was, it was also timeless, much like Charles Dickens, who wrote about his own time and place but somehow managed to leave us timeless works. That's because, like Dickens, Carlin wrote about humanity, a commodity that never changes, and bloated egos, which seem to prosper in every age.

Artists like this are the people who see the forest through the trees and point out the obvious to the rest of us while entertaining us superbly. Talents like George Carlin are few and far between and we're going to miss him. There was nobody quite like him. And as he grew older and a little more grumpy, we liked him even better, like he was almost a family member or a favorite neighbor. Now that he's gone, who's going to explain stuff to us? Here's to you, George Carlin. Thank you and goodbye. Or rather, so long pal, since a little bit of George Carlin has rubbed off on all of us and in a sense he's not going anywhere in a hurry.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 87

Babies don't care whether or not you have any experience raising them and get born anyway. They figure you'll get the hang of it pretty quick and they're almost always right. Babies bring out the best in all of us. If we could trust ourselves to do the right thing like babies do, we could send Doctor Phil back to Texas.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 86

Murphy's Law states: "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong." Murphy was one of those guys with poor planning skills and no mojo at all. Some people just don't have much luck and assume that's the case for everybody. Sorry, Murphy, but you're on your own here. For the rest of us, Murphy's Law is more a guideline than a rule, a reminder to plan carefully so that when stuff does go wrong, we can always go to Plan B. Sometimes, we're all Murphy, there's no getting around each of us having some pretty lousy days here and there, but in general more goes right than wrong, otherwise we'd have gone the way of the dinosaurs long ago.

PEACE IN OUR TIME

"Peace in our time" was a slogan used by Woodrow Wilson to justify the United States' entry into World War 1, the war he called "the war to end all wars." Seems like the guy was 0 for 2 in the slogan department. Wilson was also the man responsible for the creation of the ill-fated League of Nations, the ill-fated part being the fact that the United States never joined the League and it presided over the buildup to World War 2, the most destructive and widespread war in humanity's history, claiming over seventy million victims. Not exactly a stellar record for an organization dedicated to world peace and understanding. Presumably Hitler, Hirohito and Mussolini never got the memo and all hell broke loose.

These days the League of Nations is replaced by The United Nations, a world body in which all nations of earth are members. The U.N. is not much more effective than its predecessor since no nation anywhere bows to its authority and wars great and small rage everywhere. The fact that there hasn't been a World War 3 yet is not due to anything the United Nations did or said, but instead the fact that a lot of nations own nuclear weapons and that sort of puts a damper on the large-scale wars, what with a nuclear holocaust threatening to kill everything on the planet except cockroaches and Andy Rooney.

And so the news comes to us that peace is breaking out between the Israelis and the Palestinians, two of the more bloodthirsty populations in that tinder-box of bloodthirsty populations called the Middle East. This cease-fire was brokered by Egypt, a nation that twice went to war on Israel with disappointing results, having been soundly defeated and falling quite short of their stated goal of wiping Israel off the face of the earth. One supposes that all those nations in the Middle East who share that goal want to go down in history with Babylon and Rome for having thoroughly trounced Israel, maybe even being responsible for a new Diaspora of the Jews.

So far, no good. Sixty years into its history, Israel's still standing, mostly due to their alliance with the United States. It seems America likes to have a henchman handy in the region to do our dirty work and Israel fits the bill, being nominally a democracy and being more than willing to shoot anybody who threatens them, in real or imagined terms. This way the U.S. military is freed up to invade hapless dictatorships at the whim of our own bloodthirsty presidents. You could look all this stuff up, it's happened, all rhetoric to the contrary. Americans and Israelis are natural allies, having a goodly portion of their citizenry believing that the Earth is only 5,768 years old. As dumb as that notion is, a great many people in both nations believe it. So, perception and not reality is the basis for this alliance, like so many alliances throughout history. Like the perception that Israel is an open, democratic society when in fact they pretty much disenfranchise that 20% of their citizens who are not Jews. And on these sand castles we try to build peace.

And why not? If peace can be attained anywhere for any reason, that's a good thing, and a basis upon which to build other peace agreements elsewhere in the world. If the warlike tribes of the Middle east can be brought to the bargaining table, then what greater example is there for the rest of humanity? If it takes pretending that they like one another, go for it. It's better than not making peace. We already know the result of generation after generation of hatred and warfare and it's not pretty, to say the least. So if we have to pretend to like one another or pretend we have a lot in common, then why not pretend to live in peace? Hard-headed pragmatism has us mired in an endless cycle of hatred and killing. Screw all that. Let's all join hands and sing while we lay down our swords and shields down by the riverside. Peace in our time. There is nothing else more important. These wars are killing us.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 85

If you hear voices in your head that's pretty normal since that is often how we communicate with ourselves, solving problems and resolving inner conflicts. It's only when they start speaking in a thick foreign accent and demanding that you do strange things should you start to worry. If you find them harmful to yourself and others, seek help. If, on the other hand, you find your voices charming and amusing, well, that would explain the secret smiles and all the muttering and giggling to yourself. Enjoy the show.

MODERN TIMES, FOR SOME

So here we are, so many of us in so many nations living a real high-tech existence, all i-pods, microwaves, high speed trains, computers and controlled indoor climates. We fly around in jets and communicate with the farthest corners of the world in the blink of an eye, shrinking our once vast planet. Our cities are gleaming citadels of progress, our farms high-tech wonders providing us with ever-increasing yields. Our medical scientists are constantly extending our average life spans and vast amounts of information are at our fingertips. The future is now and the living is good. A great time to be alive, no?

But you look a little deeper and you see that these conditions are far from universal. You notice entire communities in Kenya killing scores of people they figured were witches. You see images of lost tribes in the Amazon pointing their Stone Age weapons at passing aircraft. You wonder why in supposedly high-tech China people still seek mystical healing from dead tigers. And in India, a place that graduates more PhD's in computer sciences than any other nation, that some people sill cripple their children so they can be more effective beggars and more than half that nation lives, works and farms as if it was still the Middle Ages. A poverty-stricken Middle Ages.

In much of the world, people eke out a horrible living from the land they have never understood how to manage and it grows more barren every year as the result of ancient faming techniques, even though the information on how to correct this is readily available. You see military governments, dictators and kings living in decadent splendor while most of their citizens cannot read, have very little to eat and die in droves from easily treated diseases. You look around this shrinking planet and notice how so much hatred fills so many souls, with tribe-on-tribe genocide becoming commonplace to the point that nobody is shocked by a quarter of a million violent deaths anymore.

Even in the United States, the poster child for modern living, our nation spends more money per year on weapons and armies that the rest of the world combined even though we have less than 5% of the world's population. And for all that dough we can't even find our only proven enemy, Osama bin Laden, who lives in a part of he world a hundred years behind us in technology. So America contents itself with subjugating Iraq and Afghanistan and making an even bigger mess out of those two nations than they previously made of themselves, no easy thing to do. One would have said ten years ago that nothing could be worse in those two places, anybody could do better. Of course no one could have predicted America electing a semi-retarded president who likes to dress in costumes and start wars just for the hell of it. That sort of punched quite a few holes in our international standing.

So let's appreciate the modern amenities we have even more, knowing that we are privileged to be among that portion of humanity to enjoy these fruits of technological progress. Each of us is only an accident of birth away from scraping out a Medieval existence in some barren backwater, living in fear of the machete, drought and disease. And maybe we can take some of that huge military budget and help less fortunate nations to join us in the 21st century. It is said that no man is completely free when one man is a slave. And if that slavery takes the form of ignorance, hatred, kings, dictators, poverty, war and disease, there's quite a bit of work cut out for all of us before we can call ourselves a modern race. Let's help our brothers and sisters.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 85

If you hear voices in your head that's pretty normal since that is often how we communicate with ourselves, solving problems and resolving inner conflicts. It's only when they start speaking in a thick foreign accent and demanding that you do strange things should you start to worry. If you find them harmful to yourself and others, seek help. If, on the other hand, you find your voices charming and amusing, well, that would explain the secret smiles and all the muttering and giggling to yourself. Enjoy the show.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 84

Some see a sunset and mourn the day. Others rejoice at the sight and let the beauty fill their hearts.

NOBODY ASKED YOU TO UNDERSTAND ART. IT UNDERSTANDS YOU.

Great artists paint what they see. If you don't get it, they don't care. An artist doesn't paint for you or because they like to, but because they have no choice. Nobody decides they want to be an artist, they just are. Their art picks them, not the other way around. If a lot of them seem driven and tortured, well, that's the nature of great art. The privilege of being given the gift of creation comes at a very high price. It can be a tortuous existence but they do it anyway, with all their heart and soul and all the skills at their command, no matter what the personal cost. Each finished work of art is another nail in an artist's coffin. All the more reason to appreciate the joy and beauty they give us.

Which is not to say that every painter is a great artist, any more than every ham on a silly situation comedy is a great actor, or that Adam Sandler or Jim Carey are comic geniuses. They're not. Or at least not yet. Artists of any discipline may surprise themselves and the public by getting honest someday, one of the keys to greatness. A great artist panders to no one. It just doesn't occur to them. Which probably explains why there is so little greatness in popular and profit-driven mediums like television and movies. It's no wonder that great actors jump at the chance to film great scripts. They are rare. Very few movie projects are made just for the sake of the story and very few directors have the status to be left alone to tell that story in the way that they see fit. There are some, and their movies are generally superior.

But superior art doesn't always translate into profits. For every Pablo Picasso who made a fortune painting whatever he felt like painting, there are a hundred Vincent Van Goghs living tortured lives and dying in poverty. That's the deal with great artists, and they know it. Doesn't stop a single one of them from pouring their life's blood into their art and leaving the rest of us with an amazing body of work, and their great insight and understanding of humanity. And themselves being only human, of course they hope for money and recognition. That's only natural, but they never alter their work to suit popular tastes, hoping that the world will catch up to them before they die.

That never happens for most of them, but eventually the world does catch up and their genius is celebrated and collectors make millions off their work. But that's irrelevant. It is the world at large who benefits the most, learning some new insight an artist shows us and basking in the monumental beauty and talent given to us by these people. We get to walk away with a new way of looking at things, an incredible gift from the artist to the world. So let's not be stingy with our government endowments for the arts. They are well worth the investment. We need them more than they need us. Someday, somewhere, the results of an artist's efforts will stun you and make you a better and wiser person.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 83

No two people view the world in quite the same way. So right now, there's over six billion versions of reality. Nobody knows which one of us has it exactly right. A close approximation will usually suffice.

IN THE NEWS AGAIN: OH, CANADA! WHAT GIVES?

Canada makes headlines! That should be news in and of itself, but a closer examination of why they made the news bursts the bubble of anyone hoping for anything exciting to happen there. It seems that a magazine up there in the frozen north offended some people a couple of years ago and is being sued by those offended. The case has now worked it's way up the ladder to something called The British Colombia Human Rights Tribunal. Unlike Americans, Canadians don't have a First Amendment guaranteeing them freedom of speech. And unlike Canada, in America every courtroom is the guardian of human rights, no special tribunals needed.

McLean's magazine printed an article about Islam by Mark Steyn that dared to criticize that backward woman-imprisoning religion and actually make fun of it. And to make matters worse, Canada-wise, the article contained much tongue-in-cheek irony and was dripping with sarcasm. Canadian Government engineers are working feverishly to determine just how far over Canadian heads this article went. And apparently the Muslims who reside in Canada are sufficiently assimilated to western ways to bring a lawsuit on some very thin legal arguments, pulling out the old reliable race card, even though Islam is not an ethnic or racial identification, but a religion, where by definition people are a part it by choice. Still, Canada has chosen to take this frivolous law suit seriously, lest anybody think of them as less than fair.

Canadians are not what you might call a confrontational people. It would seem their main goal in life is not to offend anybody, whereas in America it often seems that our national pastime is to offend everybody, or at least reserve the right to do so. While many people think of Canada as America-Lite, they actually do have their own national identity, or rather, lack of identity. And they guard this national anonymity zealously. Controversy and contentiousness are frowned upon, and the current controversy before five Canadian judges is a test of how to maintain that lack of controversy, but don't tell a Canadian how ironic that is, they just won't get it.

This is a nation uncomfortable in the spotlight, embarrassed to express an opinion that goes against the status quo. And if that means abridging the right to free speech in order to avoid offending anyone, then so be it. Sad, but true. Islam, one of the largest religions on earth with well over a billion adherents, doesn't live or die on the opinion of a Canadian magazine. Unlike predominantly Muslim countries that outlaw and oppress other faiths, in western societies there is freedom of religion. Sometimes that means the freedom to get made fun of too. Ask the Catholic Church, fair game for just about everybody when it comes to poking fun at or angrily condemning religions. Muslims will just have to learn to get over it like everyone else.

There's nothing special about Islam that makes them immune to criticism or jokes. A whole lot of Muslims don't mind calling the rest of the world godless infidels worthy of only death and spewing endless mouthfuls of hate at the top of their lungs. A joke or two from them would be welcome, but Islam seems to be a faith woefully short on laughs. The Canadian magazine article didn't suggest anything even approaching physical harm or hatred for any Muslims. The writer may have been bitingly funny and sarcastic, but hey, he's Canadian, and Canadians would rather give up ice hockey than threaten anybody with bodily harm or preach hatred towards them. But threats, intimidation, terrorism, suicide attacks, war and brutal oppression are prominent features of today's Islam, perhaps explaining the singular lack of Muslim humor and all those grim facial expressions. Those are the irrefutable facts, and if pointing that out hurts some feelings, too bad.

If you don't like being associated with a religion that condones those things, either drop the religion or get to work to change it. How about some prominent Muslims condemning all the butchery done in the name of their precious faith? Don't shoot the damned messenger, fool, get the message! There's a reason many Muslims have settled in Canada. There they have the right to practice any form of Islam they please in that mellow nation and nobody's chopping their heads off, sending them to prison or bombing their mosques. That can't be said about a great many Muslim nations. So now what they are saying is that a Canadian writer can't point out the shortcomings of the homelands these people fled with their families, leaving home because of those intolerable shortcomings?

Canadian Muslims want it both ways. The magazine is being sued for promoting "hate speech," demanding a published apology by McLean's and monetary compensation for aggrieved Muslims. What, nobody can question religions? Religions have historically been the worst offenders when it comes to promoting hatred and warfare, all in the name of their cockamamie fairy tales that make no sense whatsoever. Any religion, not just Islam. We all have our faith and to many of us it's very important, but at some point you've go to be an adult about it and realize that if you can believe in one sort of fairy tale, let the other guy believe in his and we'll call it even.

If he makes fun of your fairy tale, so what? His religion is no better in the logic department than yours. That's why it's called faith and not fact. You can make fun of his if you like to waste your time with that sort of thing. But maybe not in Canada. Our dull but sane northern neighbor may be losing its "Beacon of Sanity" label soon if the British Colombia Human Rights Tribunal finds McLean's Magazine guilty. That will be the cue for even more talented Canadians to come to America to work. And just maybe that's the Canadian plan, to encourage all the creative and interesting people to leave. You just never know when one of them might attract undue attention by saying something controversial. Of course they'd never ask them to leave, that would be rude, very un-Canadian and a prime example of offensive speech.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 82

Things are different for children. For example, when your mother is chilly, it is you who winds up wearing a sweater, no matter how comfortable you might feel without one.

WHY ARE THESE ARAB GUYS SO AFRAID OF THEIR WOMEN?

Now, I'm no psychiatrist or psychologist and don't play one on TV. I also think most of them are fools trying to figure out what everyone pretty much knows already, that some people have serious mental problems. Oh, I suppose it's a good thing that somebody's on the ball trying to unravel the human psyche, it's just that I'd prefer it to be some more regular people than the current crop of maladjusted creeps that seem to dominate that industry. These clowns have few social skills and all seem to reek of mental instability themselves, but yet they set themselves up as experts on what is and is not acceptable human behavior. Here's a clue, clinicians: behavior that harms others and annoys the crap out of most people are indications of a troubled mind. Nobody really cares about the other stuff.

Besides, in some societies being crazy is normal. Take the Arab male's fear of women, for example. What's crazier than that? Nobody needs Sigmund Freud to tell us that these guys have their heads buried in their asses and have more Mommy issues than Oedipus and Woody Allen rolled into one. Many Arab nations keep their women under house arrest for life. They insist on dressing them in body blankets covering them from head to toe, refuse them an education, grant them no civil rights, physically and mentally abuse them and treat them like property. How inadequate do these men feel? Or is their inadequacy something very real and they take it out on their women? Hard to tell at this point. And how long can the rest of the world turn a blind eye towards this as "cultural differences?" If Western societies treated their women as slaves, the world would be up in arms, and rightfully so. It's wrong by even a minimum standard of human decency.

And a lot of their women buy into this too, even some Westernized and educated ones. Talk about your Stockholm Syndrome. Plastic surgeons are making a fortune offering a medical procedure to restore their hymens so that they will appear to be virgins again so that when they marry one of these guys he can feel like a man. Or at least pretend to feel like a man, since real men don't give a rat's ass about marrying a virgin if they love the woman. If she's marrying you, then her past lovers don't matter, it's you she's choosing for life, you sniveling wimp! Arab women don't get to demand the same of their husbands. They can screw all the goats and teenaged boys they want to, both before and during their marriage, but a wife has to be "pure." Pure what? Compliant ciphers? You've got to be extremely mentally lazy to want a life's companion who by definition has no opinion, no self-worth and no knowledge of the world except what you would have her believe. I think the sun has gotten to their brains or something.

So these societies surrender half their citizens to slavery and ignorance and then complain bitterly that Western society has eclipsed them in living standards, technology, life expectancy, education and any measure of human progress you'd care to mention. If it wasn't for the dual accidents of human dependence on petroleum and where the stuff happens to be located, none of these societies would be prosperous. And when the oil is finished, then what? They can go back to.... who knows what? Whatever it is they did before oil, pretty much wandering around the barren wastes on camels eking out a grim living and making war on other tribes doing the same thing. That's what went on for the past 1,000 years before the oil boom. These bozos have given no indication anything will be different when the oil dries up.

Even with all the petroleum billions they have earned over the past century, it's not like any of these nations have provided the world or even their own citizens with any great universities, scientific advances, enlightened philosophies, job-creating industries, agricultural self-suffiency or great architecture. Other than dates and woven rugs, their only notable export has been jihad, a commodity no one wants to import. Even many of the so-called wealthy nations are filled with poor people while their kings and princes enjoy an unbelievably luxurious and decadent existence. The education systems are a sad joke, preparing few students for the modern world.

Somewhere someone is in the process of inventing petroleum's replacement. Actually, a lot of somebodies in a lot of places are doing just that, none of them in the Arab world. I suppose the thinking there is that they can go on being fearful and inadequate slave masters forever. That's another hallmark of mental illness, a huge capacity for self delusion. Unfortunately for the deranged, nobody else is convinced that you are really Napolean, and when you're a poor crazy person, nobody will even humor you anymore. Odds are even your women will notice what a bunch of weak jackasses you are. Good luck in the next 100 years.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 81

Being alive means waking up every day. If you've accomplished that much today, then, so far-so good. Keep up the good work.

SOME QUESTIONS FOR THE NEW SUPERCOMPUTER

Its name is Roadrunner, and will be located at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and it can do 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second, a world's record. A quadrillion is a billion millions, and looks like this: 1,000,000,000,000,000. Way too big of a number for me to contemplate, as are petaflops, the term used to describe the ability to perform one thousand trillion calculations per second. Brain-busting numbers indeed. Anyway, Roadrunner is the world's fastest supercomputer and the United States military's newest toy and it will be used, among other uses, to keep track of our nuclear arsenal and make sure the things still work as they age. It cost only $133 million, relatively cheap for a Pentagon purchase that fills twenty-one tractor tailer trucks. What's surprising is that they didn't buy a dozen of them for that price.

The military will also allow scientists to use Roadrunner as well, to figure out things like climate change, the nature of the universe and a lot of other stuff they've been wrong about. This will only happen for a short while before the military places the machine in a secure and classified environment, so hopefully the folks in the white lab coats won't waste this short window of opportunity asking it dumb questions. Nobody really gives a rat's ass about the exact size of the galaxy or the atomic weight of bauxite.

My very rough understanding of computers is that you load them with a ton of information and then let them figure stuff out for you and they can only operate based upon the quality of the information they're given, hence the term GIGO: garbage in, garbage out. If you tell a computer that two plus two equals five, it will never figure out that's not true. So one would hope that the Pentagon is very careful about who they let near this thing. Some of our most prominent scientists have been crying the blues lately over their failure to explain various things about the nature of the universe and you don't want those people feeding Roadrunner their whacky theories as if they were facts. What good is a quadrillion calculations a second if the machine thinks 2+2=5? That would only be a quadrillion mistakes every second or, in layman's terms, roughly equivalent to the daily production of errors made by our current government. I've got some better questions for this computer to figure out.

Let's ask Roadrunner if there is finite number of uses for Miracle Whip and set those advertising claims to rest once and for all. Maybe ask it why the car you bought averages 10 miles per gallon less than what you were promised. Or better yet, ask Roadrunner to explain the infield fly rule clearly and concisely, or to find out all the tax deductions you can get away with before the IRS audits you. Let this machine count the votes this November so we don't wind up looking like the old Soviet Union again after a national election with all those "heads-we-win, tails-you-lose" voting machines installed in swing states.

Ask the computer to calculate how long it will take to rid the airwaves of reality TV shows and the exact number of "Law & Order" reruns we can watch before we start thinking that Jack McCoy is a real person. How about asking it how is it that a lot of giant corporations continue to lose billions of dollars but can still afford to pay their CEO's a hundred million a year. Maybe even figure out how many billions MacDonald's has served, and how much lard-per-ass that translates into. Or maybe find out exactly how big Barry Bonds' head would have grown if he wasn't forced to stop taking steroids. Could he have eventually doubled as the team mascot, thus saving a bundle on the costume?

These are the things people want to know. Or if you want to get picayune and demand useful information, you could feed Roadrunner all the pertinent information about the earth's tectonic plates and how fast they are moving and which one rubs the other one the wrong way and in this way map out all the potential earthquake sites and when they will occur and ask the people living there if they might want to move. While this will be a big disappointment to headline writers and on-site reporters who love this stuff, it might save a lot of lives. On second thought, Naaah, who cares? What we really want to know is how to win the lottery and with all those quadrillion calculations per second we figure we might just have an edge.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 80

Everybody everywhere hopes today will be their day. Usually it's not, but for somebody somewhere it is. And so we hope. That's what tomorrows are for.

CHEAP SELLOUTS

They say everybody has their price. The ones who say this this are the people looking to bribe someone. While that cynical statement may or may nor be true, nobody likes a guy who sells out cheap. Take a gander at Doctor Joseph Biederman and Doctor Timothy Wilens, a couple of influential psychiatrists from Harvard Medical School. The New York Times reported that in the last 5 years they received about a million and a half dollars apiece in "consulting fees," from pharmaceutical companies whose drugs these doctors have popularized. The drug corporation giants like nothing more than to have world-renowned experts plugging their products. And so they bribe them with consulting fees.

Dr. Biederman is the guy most responsible for the drugging of our nation's children, tranquilizing the soul and spirit right out of so-called difficult children. Then these helpless kids become miniature zombies prone to obesity and other metabolic problems. So now it comes to light that this jack ass Biederman sold his soul and our children's lives for chump change. While a million and half sounds like a lot of money to you and me, it doesn't amount to much to a man with the earning potential of a psychiatrist.

Spread those bribes over a number of years and it's really not much of a difference-maker in the life of a wealthy person. The pharmaceutical companies must be astounded at how cheap this man sold himself while they rake in huge fortunes from Americans for the privilege of drugging junior into submission. We like to think that our medical doctors didn't all sleep through Ethics 101 in medical school but we're mature enough to realize that they are human beings like the rest of us equally susceptible to corruption. Well, the truth is, most of us are not corrupt, or at least have had few opportunities to be tested.

But here's a guy who wielded enormous influence due to the status of his affiliations with Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital and his promises to improve the lives of our children. The net worth and life style of a man in his position would hardly be changed by a million and a half dollars over the course of several years. But still he lied about it to Harvard, violating all sorts of conflict-of-interest rules by which we trust our professionals to abide, whether they be lawyers, judges, surgeons or somebody messing with our children's minds and bodies. So maybe you have to figure that the 1.6 million was only the amount of bribes he could not hide from the tax man and his employers at Harvard.

Once you know a guy is corrupt, then, right or wrong, you figure he's totally corrupt and will seek every opportunity to cash in. This is not a safety inspector here making $65,000 a year and looking the other way when contractors hand him an envelope stuffed with cash. Not that corrupt safety inspectors are acceptable, but the theory here is that are easier and cheaper to buy than doctors. A bribe-taking doctor has a whole lot more to lose than 65 grand a year. Most doctors make that much in a few weeks and are held to a higher standard than the great majority of other professions, and rightfully so. These are the people we trust with the very immediate issues of life and death, the men and women whose judgement and honesty we all rely on.

While psychiatrists are for the most part lying blowhards who don't make a dime's worth of difference in most of their patients' lives, a lot of them, like this Biederman thug, wield enormous influence. And like any other low-rent thug, he sells himself cheap. Most of our doctors are hard-working and earnest professionals, plying their vital trade in an increasingly unfriendly industry environment, one corrupted by corporate interests in the health care providers, profit-driven hospitals and crippling malpractice insurance rates. Add to this the constant pressure by pharmaceutical giants to peddle their questionable drugs to trusting patients and you see where a good set of ethics is vital in a doctor.

So now you have to question Biederman's entire body of work. It's impossible not to, especially when you figure he sold himself so damned cheap. What other corners did he cut? How many children's imaginations did he stifle? How many of these children are now the steady patients of real doctors who have to treat their damaged bodies after having been prescribed metabolism-altering drugs by quick-fix psychiatrists with no talent at all for figuring out children's minds? How much of his research was funded and influenced by multi-billion dollar corporations with a specific agenda and with a desired result in mind? How long has he been on the take? A lot of parents would like to know. Their children would too if their curiosity had not been drugged right out of them. Make psychiatrists prove this is not a racket and Biederman isn't just another low-rent racketeer.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 79

For all intents and purposes, the center of the Universe is wherever you happen to be standing. Enjoy the view.

SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER MOVIES YOU WON'T SEE THIS YEAR

Well, it's almost summertime, that time of year when Hollywood trots out what they like to call their Blockbuster movies. They are usually loaded with big name stars and lots of action, completely implausible but entertaining roller coaster rides. First out of the box was "Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of Stunt Men" in which Harrison Ford reprises his role as a thrill-seeking archaeologist (See the implausible part?) seeking some mysterious artifact that holds mystical and mighty powers and fighting off evil villains left and right so that the artifact doesn't fall into the wrong hands. This is the fourth installment of the Indiana Jones chronicles and its great success pretty much insures we'll be seeing "Indian Jones #5, The Search For The Secret to Continence" a few summers from now.

Hollywood writers, producers and directors put a great deal of time and money into these projects so as to ensure optimal success. Like any other business venture, some of these movies fail spectacularly. Look at "Speed Racer," the movie made from a cartoon that everybody hated in the first place except the nerds involved in filming it. Let's just hope there are no "Prince Valiant" fans among the Hollywood movers and shakers or it promises to be a long summer. Here are a few more of the blockbusters that went bust for one reason or another.

STAR TREK: KLINGONS GONE WILD. This combination of the Star Trek franchise and Snoop Dogg's antics among drunken naked college girls on Spring Break is an attempt to cash in on two sure-fire box office winners. In this one, the Klingon Commander Woof has retired from Star Fleet and has found a new career filming naughty co-eds on the beaches of Rigel-7, a vacation planet favored by Federation officers on shore leave. The only problem here is that the young ladies in question are mostly Klingons, who don't look any better naked than they do wearing their battle armor. As Commander Woof says when he is distraught: "Ker-Plop!"

ROCKY MEETS RAMBO: Unhappy with how he tied up the stories of his two most enduring characters, Sylvester Stallone tries yet again to interest us in two very old warriors, this time pitting them together against two young Ultimate Fighting champions in a cage match in a warehouse in Philadelphia. When the two young fighters easily beat the crap out of Rambo and Rocky, Rambo pulls out a howitzer and shoots everybody. Then they both go to visit Adrian's grave and mumble to each other.

HARRY POTTER GROWS UP AND GETS A JOB LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE: The title pretty much explains why this one is still stalled in pre-producton.

THE MARCH OF THE BABY SEALS: Trying to cash in on the popular and successful animated and computer-generated images of penguins, the film makers tried for a reality take on these cute adventures, filming actual baby seals in the wild and dubbing in their dialogue using the recognizable voices of major film starts. One problem with that was that every time they assembled a few thousand baby seals together the locals in the area started clubbing them to death and skinning them on the spot. Another problem was that the main voice was provided by Jack Nicholson, and his maniacal laughter during the scenes of baby seal slaughter pretty much doomed the whole project and filming was halted. Not to worry, though, the film makers actually recouped their production costs plus a tidy profit through the sale of thousands of valuable baby seal pelts.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 78

When an old man asks you to pull his finger, you know what's coming next. But, what the heck, pull it anyway. There's some rituals in life impossible to avoid. Just get it over with, give the old fellow his little laugh and get on with your life. Who knows, one day that could be you offering a finger.

LET'S EXCUSE MY CULTURAL DIFFERENCES. IRRITABLE -AMERICANS, UNITE!

This world seems to bend over backwards to excuse heinous behavior when the words "Cultural Differences" are evoked. Saudi Arabia can enforce house arrest for half their population who committed only the crime of being born female. Doe this make them a MANarchy? They also get away with religious persecution, exporting jihad and making a spectator sport of decapitation. When you've got big money, the cultural differences card is easily played. Look at Japan, one of Asia's most racist societies. Having been forcibly dissuaded from practicing genocide (see World War 2), they are now content to prohibit foreigners from settling in their country and using unfair business practices to price foreign imports out of their domestic markets and to use their government as an extension of their corporations.

Japan's former government was an extension of their military, so one supposes that some day they might wake up and have a government that is just a government, but that seems doubtful. Domo Arigato, my ass. Their ancient enemy, China, has been mimicking the Japan, Incorporated mentality, although with the twist that the vast majority of Chinese citizens remain dirt-poor. They also get away with all sorts of political and religious persecution, once again on the grounds of cultural identity, which is just another way of saying; "Sure, we're a bunch of lowlife bastards, but Chinese governments have always been run by lowlife bastards! That's our culture, you see." Tell that to their child laborers, political prisoners, the Tibetan people and children all over the world poisoned by the lead in Chinese-manufactured toys.

Even poor nations get a pass for practicing genocide, citing cultural demands to avenge centuries-old grievances. Check out the never-ending ethnic cleansing campaigns and the elastic borders of the Balkan States and also the insane inter-tribal butchery in various parts of Africa. Countless nations practice religious persecution in the name of their so-called culture. Political persecution has long since become accepted in certain regions and countries around the globe as "the way things are done there." Oh yeah? Say's who? If nations can get a pass for behavior that in many countries would land them on Death Row, well, what about me?

As of now I am officially declaring myself a minority with a sacred and untouchable culture. Call me an Irritable-American. My culture includes advocating mass internment of "morning people," the traditional enemy of Irritable-Americans. I also insist on public floggings of those who would serve me weak coffee for four dollars a cup. And no punishment is too severe for people who don't read the newspapers and don't know what the hell you're talking about when you mention something that was a headline in every paper on the planet yesterday. I further insist on legislation being passed that recognizes Irritable-Americans as a legitimate sub-culture like Native Americans. We don't want casinos, we just want some understanding here.

And Irritable Americans need to be left alone. Don't call my house to take some stupid poll or try to sell me time shares in a Florida swamp. Don't tell me I have to understand why my taxes have to build cheese museums and pay cash to people to not grow alfalfa on their tennis courts or intercept the e-mails of chat-room nerds. Don't even think about asking me to watch a minute of reality television or another dopey sit-com written by morons for the entertainment of other morons. Don't ask me to listen to a grinning TV talking head after the president makes a speech explaining to me what he really said. I just heard for myself what he said, you boob! Let Moron-Americans form their own separate culture. Oops, sorry, they already have, and they are well on their way to dominating this society.

Which brings me to another cultural imperative of Irritable-Americans: People who cannot refrain from smiling as they speak will not be considered for employment as television news readers. That's an irritating enough habit in salesmen. There's no reason to watch people grinning their way through reports of earthquakes and starvation. Are these people smoking pot all the time? Must be. Perhaps re-education camps will be required for such people. And there's no maybes on mandatory re-education for those who think that Bill O'Reilly is anything but an entertainer and a mean drunk. Irritable-Amrericans have nothing against drunks, only mean people. So from now on, be careful about what you say about or to Irritable-Americns. The American Civil Liberties Association will be all over you like a priest on an altar boy.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 77

It is said that the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Often ignored in this equation is the fact that in general, the bigger they are, the harder they hit. And also there's this often-ignored maxim: The smaller they are, the quicker they fall. So it's best to have a solid plan when confronting a big person or a big problem, one that employs a lot of lucid thought and careful preparation and does not involve relying on simplistic slogans having little to do with reality. Otherwise you'll be knocked on your adage in no time, wondering why your empty words failed you. Ignore the obvious at your peril.

DOPOTO REPORTS: NEVER ASSUME ANYTHING

The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO) has been busier than a Republican apologist lately. Numerous reports of human miscalculations have been flooding our Inbox, many of these errors the result of relying on false assumptions. Take the presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton, for example. So confident were her handlers and herself that she was the heir-apparent to the Democratic nomination that they failed to budget past the Super Tuesday primaries in February. The result? Thirty million dollars in debt and Senator Barack Obama wearing "her crown."

So much for assumptions. Ask our modern day physicists, once so confident in their assumptions on how the physical universe ought to behave because they formulated a bunch of "laws" governing all matter and energy great and small. Turns out that the Universe is breaking these laws left and right, leaving the good professors scratching their egg heads and moaning that the Universe just doesn't make sense. Nonsense. The Universe makes perfect sense and does follow immutable laws, just not the laws that these theorists have dreamed up. Just as the Earth upon whose back we ride insisted upon being a globe instead of a flat plain, the Universe is going on its merry way being exactly what it is, not what we wish it to be.

It's up to a new generation of scientists to figure that out, losing a lot of the erroneous assumptions that have led their brethren into so much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and the angst-ridden rending of their white lab coats. But not to worry, medical doctors have learned by trial and error (on us) that bleeding a patient to cure "ill humours" is not the way to go and amputating limbs with a dirty hacksaw using your equally dirty hands might not be such an efficient form of surgery. No doubt future physicians will look back in equal horror at radiation and chemo-therapy to cure cancer by burning and poisoning the patient. And today's physicists with their "immutable laws" will be remembered quaintly as earnest but unenlightened boobs engaged in fanciful guessing games.

To be sure, there are many things we can rely on; the tides, the rising and setting of the sun, death, taxes and human arrogance. Outside of that, however, life is a crap shoot. Consider George Foreman, picked by almost everybody thirty years ago to retain his Heavyweight Boxing Championship against Muhammad Ali. The only man to have ever beaten Ali in the ring, Joe Frazier, had been knocked out easily by Foreman. Twice. Ali was considered over the hill, while Foreman was in his prime, a muscular beast of young man with a devastating punch and a relentless attack. The only one not to assume Foreman would win handily was Ali, who outfoxed him, out-boxed him and knocked out Foreman in the 8th round to regain the Heavyweight Championship. DOPOTO concludes: So much for assumptions. Don't believe our own hype.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 76

If you eat only healthy foods, exercise regularly, get plenty of rest, maintain an even temperament and do all things in moderation, you're still going to die. Some reward for living such a bland existence! Might as well live it up. Besides, can anyone recall any careful and moderate people who had a big impact on history? No, it's the loud, the bold, the intemperate risk takers, the driven who leave their mark, usually in CAPITAL letters.

OBAMA WINS NOMINATION. CONGRATULATIONS, AMERICA!

Barack Obama won the Democratic Party's nomination to be their candidate for the presidency of the United States. History was made today and America grew up a little bit. While Hillary Clinton has not yet conceded and the designation isn't completely official, it's basically a done deal. A black man is the nominee of one of the major parties for President of the United States of America! He was judged by the content of his character and the voters decided he has the goods to be our president.

So maybe America does have a shot to really get back on track to becoming the America we can be, the America of our Declaration of Independence, the America of our our Constitution and our Bill of Rights, the America we believe we've got it in us to become. After 8 years of Bush the Younger and his co-conspirators doing their damnedest to turn America into a playground for the haves at the expense of the have-nots, a nation bent on aggressive intimidation of the world and its own citizens, Americans have said enough of this bullshit. We're putting a man up for president who is everything they are not, a man who by his very presence in the race changes things around here in a very big way.

Barack Obama has not won the presidency, of course. There's still the matter of campaigning against a formidable Republican nominee, Senator John McCain. There are those who feel McCain is the better man for the job, and there are those who don't believe that for a second but will vote for him anyway because he is white. No sense denying that fact or pretending to ignore it. But there are those as well who will vote against the Republican Party because of its 8 years of criminal misrule that has made a lot of people who love America very angry.

That's a lot of people not voting the issues, but the issues should be what wins this election. McCain is more of a status-quo guy, so far vowing to keep most of Bush The Younger's policies in place. He might want to re-think that position during the general election campaign. How many people outside of the super-wealthy are better off now than 8 years ago? How many Americans think it's okay to have the government that represents them spy on its own citizens, torture prisoners, start unprovoked wars, try to dismantle our beloved Bill of Rights and let New Orleans drown? Not too many.

Senator Obama is a good campaigner, having narrowly beat a very able campaigner in Senator Hillary Clinton for the nomination. His task now is to convince the entire nation, not just the Democrats, to grow up on several levels, not just in voting for a black man. He is asking Americans to work together once again towards our common good. He is challenging us all to see beyond our differences and to recognize what we have in common. The vicious partisan politics we have fallen into must end, and reasonable ideas introduced by anybody in either political party must get serious consideration. So the radical change he seems to be asking for is merely a return to sanity in Washington.

So history was made today by a black man running as just a man, his race being as little an issue as is imaginable in a nation with our troubled racial history. If and when he becomes president, he will have his work cut out for him to restore American policy to American ideals and to undo the horrendous damage done to our nation's reputation by Bush The Younger. He will be left with an immoral war in which America was the instigator and the villain and will have to figure a way out of that mess. The economy is in a shambles and Americans are restless for change. Well, if we show we have truly grown up as a nation and make Obama our president, change is what we'll get the moment he takes the oath of office. If we elect McCain, just one more mediocrity in a long line of grey men in grey suits reeking of ulterior motives, we will get more of the same downward spiral started by Bush The Younger. Obama in '08!

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 76

Never trust anybody who doesn't like ice cream.

THIS JUST IN: THE UNIVERSE IS HARD TO UNDERSTAND, BUT THE WORLD IS RETURNING TO NORMAL

Our intrepid physicists are just about to give up trying to figure out the universe. It seems that the universe behaves in ways contradictory to accepted science, defying gravity and having mysterious invisible energy driving it to expand like crazy. For lack of a better term they call this force "Dark Energy," like it was some kind of new Star Wars villain. These poor guys are practically in tears that their dream of coming up with a unified theory to explain the whole of creation in one neat little paragraph seems to be getting more and more elusive as their knowledge of the universe increases. They can hardly believe their own eyes.

But seeing's believing, and they're seeing a lot of things go on in outer space that don't jibe with the laws of physics as we know them. Could it be that they were wrong about a whole lot of things? Maybe made way too many assumptions? Wouldn't be unprecedented in any form of human endeavor. When it comes to physics we've always known that there's more than meets the eye going on with the various forces of nature and indeed we've discovered molecules, atoms, neutrons electrons, quarks and antimatter, all sorts of invisible and very active things the rest of us just have to take their word for it that they exist.

They've also figured out by experimentation and observation that there's more elements and energies at work than they are currently aware of and that pisses them off no end. Like the aliens in too many bad science fiction movies say; "Puny humans, you cannot not conquer me!" At least not just yet. Let these people go back to the drawing board and scribble some new equations and come up with some better theories. Like that early physicist William Shakespeare remarked, "The fault lies not with the stars but with men." What is, is, and all the wishing in the world doesn't change that. Throwing tantrums when the universe doesn't go along with your pet theories doesn't get you any closer to the truth.

Meanwhile, back on earth, the Brave New World in which we find ourselves is starting to look familiar again, largely thanks to Vladimir Putin, who singlehandedly is turning Russia back into the old Soviet Union, grabbing power through subterfuge, banning critics of his policies from the media, rattling his nuclear saber and interfering with other nations left and right. What a relief. Our Bogeyman is coming back with a vengeance. In a world where the United States was the only viable superpower we've had the red bullseye on our shirts for a generation now and we've behaved pretty badly, trying to be both the United States and the Soviet Union rolled into one, confusing the hell out of the rest of the world and ourselves too.

Now hopefully we can let the Russians resume their role as the bully on the block while we try to revert to our more familiar role as the champion of freedom and openness. Who knew we'd miss our bogeyman so much and how its presence reinforced our better instincts? And as an added bonus we've got a new South American Mini-Me of the Russians to replace the faded Fidel Castro. His name is Hugo Chavez and he runs Venezuela with the iron fist of a true dictator, this week laying the groundwork for an Iron Curtain-style police state in Venezuela. Hallelujah!

Washington can only rejoice at these developments, a return to the Spy-vs.-Spy Mad Magazine brand of international politics. Say what you will about the Cold War and its creeping dread of nuclear holocaust, but America flourished and thrived under these conditions. Having a diametrically opposite opponent in the global contest for hearts and minds forced us to define what it meant to be America and more often than not we came out on the side of the angels. Being the only superpower on the block brought out the worst in us, and a lot of the things we've done would have brought howls of protest from ourselves in previous decades.

Like the physicists who thought they were on the verge of figuring things out, the reality of life has shown us that we are no more advanced as a people than anybody else on this planet. The only thing America had going for it was our dedication to a set of principles laid down long ago by men who understood human nature quite well, that system of government with its checks and balances on absolute power and a dedication to an open and free society. Without our great bogeyman to show us the difference between our two approaches to statesmanship America foolishly attempted to fill the void by becoming what we once condemned.

Unprovoked wars of aggression, torturing of prisoners, criminally corrupt leadership, the politicalization of science and general news, the demonization of opposing political views, the looting of the national treasury to benefit a wealthy elite, spying on one's own citizens; all these things are the opposite of what America is supposed to stand for. All one can say is; Welcome back Bogeyman, and ditto to the Mini-Me Bogeyman Lite in Venezuela. Now we'll know once again what we stand for and what we stand against. About time.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 75

There is no such thing as a king or a queen or a prince or royalty of any sort if nobody pays attention to their silly claims. Without the willing consent of their subjects, a king is basically that ranting and raving guy with the funny clothes you hope doesn't sit next to you on the subway. Apparently no one has told this to the people in this world still living in monarchies, perhaps finding it way too entertaining to send them the memo just yet. Boy, are they going to be pissed off at the rest of us when they find out.

STONEHENGE WAS BUILT BY IDIOTS

After centuries of everyone wondering what the heck it was for, from the Romans assuming it was a temple to one of their own goddesses, modern Englishmen figuring it was built as an altar by the Druids, and Star Trek nerds figuring it to be everything from a giant calendar predicting the movements of the stars to a UFO landing site, some guy has now figured out what Stonehenge really was, that mysterious circle of giant stone slabs in the middle of a field in the England's Salisbury Plain. An archaeologist with the very British name of Doctor Michael Parker-Pearson has dug up the surrounding area and found out the place was just one part of a huge complex serving as a cemetery for the royalty of the day, sort of like the Egyptian pyramids minus the beauty, the intricate engineering and the staying power.

Stonehenge predates the pyramids, being around 4,500 years old, even before the wheel was invented. There was no written language back then so there's no record of these people other than what Professor Parker-Pearson and his people dig out of the ground. So far they think Stonehenge was a burial place for royalty built by the back-breaking labor of many thousands of people over a period of several generations. They had to drag forty-ton stone slabs thirty miles with ropes and logs, set them upright in the ground and then hoist some more slabs to lay on top of them without the benefit of any sophisticated building tools. Archaeological evidence also suggests that in order to get people to do these things, just like the Egyptians, a religious reason was given, the site doubling as a temple of sorts.

So maybe the conversation with the laborers went something like this:

"You will erect a great and majestic tomb in which to bury your king with a lot of gold and valuables and a bunch of slaves who will be slain to serve me in the afterlife. God wants this."

"So, let me get this straight, Rex; you want me and thousands of others to spend our life's labor and that of our children and grandchildren building a giant building that will not be public or of any use whatsoever to anybody else but you and your immediate family and then only when you're dead?"

"Precisely! I command you to do so."

"Okay, sure, why not? We were all getting a little tired of living in this lightly populated paradise with plenty of game to eat and lots of fertile farmland. We were actually hoping for some sort of prolonged agony with no reward for our efforts."

And so these people, both in Egypt and in England, set forth to build the biggest mausoleums ever. It took humanity the better part of 4,000 years to figure out that kings and pharaohs don't really have their best interests at heart. Heck, England still keeps a royal family around as a sort of reminder of how stupid we all used to be. Following kings and queens and elevating them to the status of gods has to have been one of humanity's more idiotic ideas. When the biggest and fanciest buildings around are the homes and tombs of one person while everyone else lives in crowded mud huts you'd think the people would rise as one and beat the royal family with blunt objects.

But, no, that's not how the story unfolded. It would be centuries before any large buildings were erected that were open to the public, and then most of them were temples and churches of some kind, the public only welcomed in during services or to sweep the place up, those magnificent premises being erected for the benefit of another set of quasi-royalty, the priests and shamans and various muckety-mucks of our many religions, that breed of human whose job it is is to carefully regulate and supervise the daily lives of the many people who live in the kingdom since the king was far too busy enjoying a life of decadent leisure to do it himself.

So it seems our distant ancestors, even with their great engineering prowess and artistic skills, were pretty much idiots for spending their entire careers in the service of somebody called "Your Majesty." Not that we're exactly geniuses the way we still follow some leader or another into ruinous wars that benefit exactly none of us common people, and then thanking our intrepid leaders for "protecting" us with their large armies, never stopping to think that such protection would be unnecessary without their territorial aggression, but at least we're starting to open our eyes. A little bit, anyway.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 74

Because most people believe something is true doesn't mean much. At one time most people thought the world was flat. So the fact that soccer is the most popular spectator sport in the world doesn't make it any less boring. Presumably it's a lot more fun to play than to watch and not much skill is required either, pretty much 22 people just running back and forth willy-nilly and kicking a large ball until by the law of averages it winds up in the gigantic goal area once or twice a game, prompting the announcer to shriek Gooaaall! like a banshee with his hand stuck in a car door for about 20 minutes or so until paramedics come and sedate him. Outside of that amusing spectacle, watching a soccer game is a real snooze.

WHO KNEW TIGER WOODS WAS AN ATHLETE?

In today's New York Times there is a debate over whether or not Tiger Woods is the greatest athlete ever. It seems we'll never know since he insists on wasting his prime athletic years playing golf, a game that in the past has been dominated by fat guys. So it stands to reason that if an actual athlete ever took up golf that he would of course be better at it than the fat guys. Doesn't seem fair, really. No wonder the golfing associations keep changing their golf courses to prevent Tiger Woods from winning every single tournament instead of most of them.

But one wonders what sport the New York Times is talking about when they say Woods is a great athlete. Was he a track star in college or something? A wrestler, maybe? They don't say. Golf isn't really a sport, it's a game. In golf there is no running or heavy exertion of any kind. The players never directly compete, so there is no defense, no strategy and no head to head competition. Indeed, the competitors never directly interact at all, they just sort of watch each other and hope they can sink the ball in one less shot than the other guy. Pretty much an adrenaline-free activity, the antithesis of what we think of as sport.

And it's not like it's a grueling endurance test either. It's usually a pleasant walk on a beautiful day in beautiful surroundings interrupted only by whacking the ball with a very expensive club 70 or 80 times. They don't have to haul their own golf bags, they've got a caddy to do that. Hell, they don't even pull the clubs out of the bag when they need one, the caddy hands it to them like a butler. Then they walk leisurely to wherever the ball landed and do it again.

So if Tiger Woods is a great athlete, what about Minnesota Fats? He excelled in another leisurely game, the game of pocket billiards, more commonly known as pool. And he was a whiskey drinking, chain smoking guy with the nickname "Fats." Or how about great bowlers? They also play a game with no defense, no running and no direct interaction between the players. Okay, golf, pool and bowling require a great deal of skill to master, but then again, so does cabinetmaking and brain surgery but nobody's writing about carpenters or doctors as great athletes. So if Tiger Woods wants to be thought of as great athlete, maybe it's time he took up an actual sport and proved it.