Some People Don't Like The President...

Some last minute thoughts before Big Tuesday:
In 2000, candidate Bush campaigned as "a uniter, not a divider." Since then, he has governed pretty much as a divider, not a uniter. Is this a flipflop? Or was candidate Bush lying? In either case, I think some of us kind of expected it to work out like this.
A lot of potential voters (as opposed to those who actually bother to vote) are distinctly anti-Bush. They're likely to vote more against the incumbent than for his opponent. Some hate the president for his policies. Some for his principles. Some for his disregard of their principles. For most though I think it's more that they're embarrassed that the president of their country is a putz, and they think it reflects badly on them personally. Kind of like being embarrassed to be seen in public with your wierd cousin (and, let's admit it, we all have one). You really should only be embarrassed if the wierd cousin is you.
In a try at lightening things up a little before D-Day, here's a copy of an online ad seeking a native English speaker for a school in north Thailand. Unfortunately, it ran sometime last year. Still, there may be an opening, so you might want to note the email address.
In case the wierd cousin gets re-elected...

Native English Speaker Needed
Info: Okay. Due to unreliable teachers leaving us in the lurch somewhat(they got better deals elsewhere) ,we desperately need two new teachers to fill positions for our outside primary school contracts.
Before I give you the all important details about the job, I need to get a few things straight. Firstly, the positions are at schools where the classes are large. One of the positions you will be dealing with around 25 semi-catholic rich fat kids, the other school has nearer 40 thin middle class Buddhist kids per class. Therefore, if you are not used to teaching this type of class then it might not be the job for you. For those who know what they are doing it's a breeze. Although we do have a short training program for people who are enthusiastic but dont have the experience. We have all the gear, flashcards and songs and activities and suchforth. For those used to teaching a hanful of kids in a small air con room these classes can be quite daunting. Right then, with that out of the way I will get down to some details. We need you to work from the 1st November until at least march. And if all is ship shape and Bristol fashion and you are happy then you will be offered a new contract for next year. Guaranteed. Our contracts include free medical insurance, work visa, end of year bonus, an extrememly friendly and informal atmosphere, a bloody nice boss by the name of khun lek, and a salary of 26,000 baht for 24 hours teaching a week. Since there is only around 4 months left until the end of the school year we cant offer you all these things. But we can offer you 28,000per month and a reduced bonus if you stay with us until march. It would be a good way to get your foot in the Chiang Mai door actually. It's allright up here. Pleeeeze, only people who are willing to stay and work until march apply. Officially you should have a degree and a Tefl, but to be honest we tend to overlook these requirements. If you have half a brain then that is enough. You can write to me and I will get back to you ASAP.
Date Added : 11th October
Job: full time - young learners
School: Nava Chiang Mai
Tel: N/A
CEmail: navachiangmai@yahoo.com

How not to handle a demonstration...

A long time ago, thirty-something years ago now, in the now fabled "Vietnam Era", There was a lot of unrest in America. People were demonstrating across the length and breadth of the oucntry. ALso from North to South and East to West. College campuses were esepcial hotbeds of this activity. In some places special police units were mobilized. In Berkeley we had the Alameda County swat teams, known as the "Blue Meanies". They were all really big and really intimidating. There was lots of tear gas in the air. There were also lots of bruises, and some broken bones. We were outraged at this. Of course, we were demonstrating because we were outraged in the first place.
In some places the National Guard was called out. One such place was Kent State University.
The result was a shocker. Also, in hindsight, fairly predictable. On May 4 1970, 4 students were shot to death, nine were wounded by concentrated fire from a squad of guardsmen. "A group of seventy National Guard troops advanced on the protesters with fixed bayonets in an attempt to disperse the crowd. The National Guardsmen were wearing gas masks in the hot sun (obscuring their vision and causing heat exhaustion) and had little training in riot control." This was caught live on television. The film is sometimes replayed today.
The newspapers next day all showed a picture of an anguished young woman kneeling over a very dead young man. With bloody hands. Won a Pulitzer, I think. Since then, Kent State has been the name of the event, not the school. If you want to talk about the school you have to say "Kent State; you know, where Kent State happened."
Last week there was a demonstration in the south of Thailand. In Thailand, as at Kent State, troops were called. Here, as there, people died. Predictably. Needlessly.

It's easy to understand why this should be if you just ask yourself "What are these troops trained to do?" If they're being trained for their proper job, they're being trained to kill. To go into combat against an enemy force and to kill the enemy. There couldn't possibly be a worse force to send to police a group of demonstrating citizens. Using military troops for crowd control is a hopelessly bad idea. Bad, Bad, Bad! They have no skills for the job, no training. Kills the civilian protestors and destroys the troops as far as ever being an effective force is concerned. Ask yourself what life has been like for the guardsmen who were at Kent State that day, and what it's like when they see themselves again and again on that film clip.
Next time (and there will be a lot of next times), call in the specially trained crowd control police unit. If you don't have one, create one. Today wouldn't be too soon to make a start.

"It's Not At All Certain..."?????

Dick Cheney
seems to parse reality differently than most of us. When he hears what he wants to hear, like 'intelligence' from the well known fabulist Ahmad Chalabi, nothing in the world is more certain. When he is told something he doesn't want to hear, like news of another military bumble in Iraq, like the failure to sequester a large store of explosives (at the very location he claims Saddam Hussein was "reconstituting his nuclear program"), this information is "not at all certain". Thinking about it, I suppose most of us practice this sort of denial to some degree. When it reaches this level, and the practitioner is so happy to share his deeply felt skepticism (read:fantasies) with the world, well, any total sociopath would be proud. I guess the only certain knowledge he possesses is the data that fits his preconceptions. Sort of todays version of "All The News That Fits, We Print". Anything he doesn't want to believe, well, it's just "not at all certain".
And then the Vice president calls John Kerry an "Armchair General"? Come on! This is the man who had "other priorities" when it came his time to serve in the military. Some of us think his other priority was to nestle deep in his armchair, where he was much less likely to get his ass shot off. Or become a victim of the ever popular "friendly fire".


Besides, Mr. Vice-Commander-In-Chief, the phrase is Armchair Admiral! You're in Pensacola! Pensacola's been a Navy town for longer than you've been a crooked politician! And that's a long long time...

I Could Use a Little Help Here...

Right now, especially with all these elections under way (assuming that most of them, at least, will in fact happen), there are just too many things going on. I'm overcome with, as the late great


Steve Allen once put it:

Too many answers are going unquestioned.

Here are some of the things I am hearing said, with precious little evidence being put forth in support of the assertions:

We Need Tax Cuts To Increase Employment...

This is a subset of 'Trickle-Down Economics'. Bush-wa. If money trickled down, there'd be a cycle where the rich would become poor, and the poor become rich. In fact (observably so), money trickles up. Except where it rushes up. Give the poor some money and they'll waste it on things like food and shelter, giving the money to the rich in the process.

The Economy Is Strong And Getting Stronger...

The same source, with the same lack of supporting evidence. The President appears to be positively phobic about facts, since he certainly never employs any to back his assertions. It's really quite spooky. I've known lots of people who happily demonstrate their ignorance, but never seen a successful politician ('til now) who does so.

Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Would Hurt The Economy...

What do you suppose the increased energy in global weather is going to do to the economy? Four hurricanes in Florida. Ten (Ten!) typhoons in Japan. No harm to the economy there by God. Why would developing new technologies to change the way we interact with the environment be harmful to the economy? New technologies have always increased economic activity, though often at the cost of the environment, not to its benefit. New technolgies do, however, have a negative impact on obsolete businesses. The automobile was, as many have noted, a disaster to the buggywhip industry. Similarly, solar power might be bad for the oil industry. Bad for Saud. Dangerous stuff.

Foetal Stem Cells Have Never Cured Anybody...

Well, geez; before it was used, Jonas Salk's polio vaccine never worked, either. Why would anybody bother to do research on something that hasn't been proven to work?

Not the President this time, it's the First Lady who's parading her willful ignorance. Though, I'm ready to admit it's probably just to give cover to the First Husband. It's really hard for me to believe that someone who can walk and talk (albeit in Texas-speak) at the same time could be so obtuse.

Democracy Is On The Move...

It seems to me that the word Democracy has been employed to such an extent, and in so many inappropriate contexts, that it has now become little more than a shibboleth. It has come to mean nothing more than a government President Bush approves of. It is defined by an open public election, won by a candidate favored by the United States.

We're Winning The War In Iraq...

(alternate claim: We're Winning The War On Terror)...
Again, we certainly don't want to crowd out the message by including anything even resembling a fact here. Those dismal reports from the congressional investigating committee, the CIA, the FBI, an assortment of other three letter acronyms? Well, those reports were written by beaurocrats, you know, so you can pretty much disregard them.

The Largest Coalition In The History Of The World...

This one by Donald Rumsfeld. Noted historian. How far back does his memory go anyway? I guess not even as far back as 1991, and the first Gulf War. That was a century ago, after all. On the other hand, maybe he's talking about the coalition of Rumsfeld-Cheney-Rice-Ashcroft. Now that's an axis to be proud of. Or frightened of.

I forgot: I should probably include the enforcer; Tom DeLay here.



These, and many other subjects need questioners. Many many questioners. You can help! Send me your suggestions, comments, whatever. Just click on the email me... link. Hint, if you're using the Firefox browser, things like the pics in the posts and the sidebar links might or might not show up. If I knew anything about HTML, XML, Javascript, and the like, I'd try to do something about it. Or not. I do have another life, after all. Hope to hear from you at:

Email Franksmaunderings

Is this any way to treat your best friend?

What a thing to do to your best friend! Your ally. The ever maladroit George Bush

wants his best (perhaps only) friend Tony Blair,to send British troops into the war zone in Iraq.
Of course, Mr. Blair will acquiesce to President Bush's 'request'. He has no choice. He's finding out what it means to be an 'Ally of the United States'. The request may already have been 'approved' by the time I post this. To turn down the the request (to disobey the order, rather) will make it clear that when Mr. Blair says attacking Iraq was "Absolutely The Right Thing To Do", he was, to use a wonderful Briticism, being economical of the truth. Not being entirely candid, as some would say.

Karl Rove, the Presdent's evil genius, knows this very well. Knows that there is no real choice for the Prime Minister. He is required to demonstrate his fealty. But for President Bush to treat his staunchest ally in this manner is almost beyond belief. It's like making your girlfriend 'prove her love' for you. That's probably exactly the kind of act Mr. Blair feels he is being asked to submit to. Sending British troops into harms way, and putting them under U.S. command to top it all, will expose Mr. Blair to a full frontal attack in Parliament, and probably end his hopes for a third term. For all his political skills, and his likability, to be exposed openly as the sycophant of the highly unpopular president of the United States, will almost certainly cost him his majority.
Wonder what is going to happen to the rest of the 'coalition of the willing'? Will Poland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Thailand, et. al., be ready to recommit troops to a place where their good friend and ally, the United States, might at any time require them to prove their fealty in a similar way?
Wonder also what will happen if in spite of all, George Bush endures the same fate as his father? Mr. Blair, in addition to being exposed as nothing more than an avatar of America, will also be shown to be the backer of a loser.

GM Crops: To What Purpose?

GM: Genetically Modified. Applying genetic engineering techniques to add/modify the DNA of economically valuable plants or animals. Sometimes referred to as making Frankenfood.

There is a pretty vociferous debate going on these days about the pros and cons of GM foods. There are the proponents, who claim a moral imperative to feed the starving masses, and the antis, who claim that these hi-tech foods, or Frankenfoods, can be dangerous to your health. I disagree with both of these claims. Perhaps this is not the best stand to take, but please bear with me.
To begin, the likelihood that GM foods will prove dangerous to the consumer is, let's face it, fairly remote. The creators of these altered plants are pretty knowledgeable people, and their purpose is not to poison their customers, but to make money from them. It's hard to sell food to dead people. And the testing needed to show dietary safety of food that is really not so different from stuff that's been around for a long time isn't terribly difficult.
However, the promoters of such stuff are being disingenuous. They're trying hard to distract your attention from the man behind the curtain. There are other issues besides food safety. Issues that go far beyond food safety. Especially given that there is no shortage of food in the world today. There is, as always, an economic problem: poor people can't afford to buy food. When people of means take note, they send food off to the poor starving . When their attention wavers, the poor return to being poor, and continue to starve. Sorry - different subject.
About frankenfood; there are definitely other concerns than just safe nutrition.
How about the environmental problems? For the most part, GM plants are being designed with three goals in mind. Disease resistance, pest resistance, and herbicide resistance. Crops with such characteristics can be grown more successfully, where success is defined as the greatest yield of a single crop measured in Tonnes/Hectare. A field where nothing except the desired plants can survive, the ultimate in monoculture, is the most 'efficient' of farms. The result of this kind of farming is, however, not unlike the current situation where increased use of chemical fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, have caused a tremendous increase in the level of contaminants in food, as well as degradation of watersheds and the environment that is dependent on uncontaminated water. Pursuers of this kind of efficiency are not unlike the landowner who dams the river flowing through his property, unconcerned with the damage to his downstream neighbors.
In the ultimate farm envisioned by these pioneers of GM cropping, the plants will unaided create a circle of death around themselves, destroying all other plants, destroying insects harmful, benign, and beneficial as well. Result: the farmland so used becomes infertile to any other crop except for this or another similarly engineered plant.
What does this mean in terms of economics? The farmer who has planted such a crop is now a client of the patentholder of the crop. The corporation now dictates the means and method of growing - and the price - of the seed, the fertilizer, the chemicals to be applied; the entire system from planting to harvesting. The farmer has just become a tenant, or sharecropper, on his own land! Of course, his crop yield will increase (probably). Ask any farmer or fisherman, or anyone at the bottom of the commodity production process. An increase in output goes hand in hand with a decrease in price. Grow more; sell for less. The profits are made by the people higher up the food chain. Of course, this is a description of the small family farm. Something that hardly exsists in North America. Agribusiness is the rule rather than the exception. Fields with but a single crop, as far as the eye can see. These businesses can deal quite well with GM crops. They grow them, take their price support money from the government, and invest it in the company that sells them the GM seed! Not a bad way to do business.
Not exactly related to the vision of Feeding The Starving Masses though, is it?
All the above is not at all an indictment of GM technology, nor of all applications of that technology. There is a lot of promise in genetic modification for creation of wonderful compounds for medical purposes. It seems to me that there's a very real possibility that genetic engineering can be used to help in environmental restoration as well. Perhaps to help corals and planktonic life adapt to the increased temperature of the oceans (yes, there is global warming, and no, I'm not blaming you in particular for it).
Using genetic engineering to search for new compounds, new biological entities, and new knowledge is a great idea. Even if it weren't, it's pointless to try to tell people to not know something they know. Sort of like telling them to forget how to make nuclear bombs, please!
Personally, I'd really rather not see plants, or animals, with odd assortments of genes from odd assortments of other life forms, set loose on a large-scale basis, with the near certainty of negative unforseen consequences. Those unforseen consequences that always seem to go along with any human endeavor.

Thinking about that conventional wisdom...

I just finished with my (almost) annual physical. Results: excellent. As the Dr. said, "You should thank god for your health. Worth more than money." A good thing too, because I have lots of good health (thank god), but not lots of money. Along with what they call a check-up here, I got a free breakfast. Free in the sense that it was included in the price of the examination. About two kilocalories of good old American style breakfast, only without the potatoes. Within minutes, I was hungry for more. It's probably going to take all day to walk that free breakfast off.
Got me to thinking about that old, conventional wisdom. "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day." "It gives you energy so you can do a good day's work." In keeping with this recieved wisdom, millions of Americans, and people worldwide, eat good hearty breakfasts, then get into their cars, drive to work, and sit at a desk for the rest of the day. Except for the lunchbreak, when they eat another good hearty meal. Go back to the desk and sit some more. What happens to all that energy you consumed to allow you to do a good day's work? Gets turned into fat, is what. So it will be available if you ever decide to do a good days work. Work in the sense of the world of physics. Work = Force X Distance; something like that. Exertion. Exercise. Etc. The kind of work most of us do not do in this post-industrial society except as a hobby.
I used to be a member of the Seattle downtown Y. A wonderful old 1914 vintage building, with classic but worn tile floors, a great basement natatorium, great gym facilities. Even had convertible squash/handball courts, you could reconfigure with a hand crank on the back wall. In the mens locker room there was a classic old balance type scale; also vintage 1914 I'm guessing. On the pedestal of the scale was an old ideal height/weight table. For me, the correct weight (it said) was around 215 lbs. I recall also that the table showed that a woman 5'6" should weigh around 145-150. Doctors today say those weights are too high, by about seventeen per cent. How come our ideal body sizes have changed? I don't think it's so much in response to the supermodel women in the fashion magazines. You know, the ones who look like one woman famines? I think it has more to do with weight trend than with actual weight. Today, the problem is to avoid gaining weight. Ninety years ago, the problem was more likely to avoid losing weight. That healthy five foot six woman who weighed one-forty-five was well nourished, and had the strength and stamina do do a day's (1914 day's) work. Before the advent of all the labor-saving devices, which aren't labor saving at all - they just shift the labor from actual labor to working longer hours at a desk to make the money to buy the devices - a work day involved physical activity. Laundry meant washing the clothes, not dropping them into a machine. If you wanted to eat some ice cream, you'd better figure on some serious cranking on the ice cream machine. Probably, you'd have to expend more calories making the desert than you'd get from eating it. So, the problem, if problem it was, was eating enough food to keep your weight up, rather than eating little enough food to keep your weight down. Calories were in short supply rather than too easily got.
Conclusion: If you're going out into the fields to pick, dig, hoe, plow, lift, carry, sweat and strain, eat a big ol' two thousand five hundred calorie stick-to-your-ribs breakfast; if you're going to sit at a computer (as I am doing at this very moment), eat a two hundred calorie breakfast. That's enough energy for sitting down. Or, if you're worrying about your weight compared to your height, find a scale with a hundred year old weight table...

Campaigning --- in Florida?

I see that Sen. Kerry has been campaigning in Florida.

That's really a shame. A waste of time and resources that could be put to better use elsewhere. As it stands, he has as much chance of getting an honest count in the State of Bush as Richard Nixon had of getting an honest count from Mayor Daly in Cook County in 1960. The fix is in. The Florida deck is so frozen the oranges are trying to flee north.
If the Senator wants to capture Florida's electors, he'd better be prepared to hire a ton of lawyers to file suit in every precinct in the state, asking to have the ballots sequestered for a total hand-and-eyeball recount.
Oops. Sorry. forgot, there are no ballots! If you really want, Senator, you can look at the computers we used for the count. Best we can do. At least, you know, we don't have any of those pesky chads this time!

Superman is dead...

Christopher Reeve died on Sunday. Too soon.
I admired Mr. Reeve. As I admire anyone willing to invest himself (or herself) so completely in carrying a message to those in need of hearing it. Whether they want to her it or not.
You were very eloquent. I'm sorry you didn't get to walk again. We will all miss you.

Waxing Poetic

As some of you know, I am currently teaching at a small university in Bangkok. English, yes. I'm trying to invent myself as a teacher at the moment. I hope I'm not sailing under false colors to too great a degree. Sometimes I like to show my students a picture, and ask them to write something about it. They're not very English-proficient, but they can be very poetic. Here are some recent examples:

"When I look at this picture. I feeling to the natural. It's beautiful so much. It's amazing in Thailand because the other nationalitys are rarely gives feel to green. It's for me when I don't happy time. It looking for my friend when I'm alone. I feeling want to live near river. I want to look out from confuse of the city. I want to live with my family, father, mother, sister and brother, It feels hapy for me. I hope it gives me to happy everytime."
Or this one:

The Chinese Old man likes fishing along the river. He loves to do it everyday because fishing is his hobby. He feels happy when he's waiting for the fish. Sometimes if he can get the big one, he will cook and eat it.
Sometimes he can't get anyone but he still sits and relaxs with the nature. The happiness in life is not the money, The true happiness in life is to do the thing that you like.

Couldn't have said it better myself - Miss Rossukol appears to be a sort of modern-day Thai Isaac Walton.

Irony Unleashed

I can only imagine that Charlie Rangel (Congressman from NYC) must be chuckling to himself. Last year he decided it would be educational for the nation to have a dialog about racial/social/economic equality. Or lack of same.

He chose aseemingly appropriate means to initiate the chat, by introducing a bill to reinstate the miltary draft in the congress. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Things have changed in this world of high technolgy. Warmaking is no longer for the cannon-fodder conscript. Warfighting requires highly trained, highly skilled, highly engaged professionals. Or highly angry, highly motivated, willing-to-die amateurs (guerillas, insurgents, whatever you care to call 'em).

Donald Rumsfeld
said as much in response to the draft proposal. I guess you could actually call it a draft draft proposal. Mr. Secretary Rumsfeld is right.
However; while warfighting is now the province of highly trained, etc.; if the United States is to pursue its present course, it will need a large army of occupying troops. As has been historically the case, these occupying forces have been the poorest and least effective troops the occupier has. The weakest of the conscript forces will suffice to patrol the streets of subject countries and shoot insurgents or others who anger them. So, irony of ironies, Rep. Rangel set out to raise a ruckus over the exemption of the privileged from doing the dirty work of war, and is now the author of a bill which will begin to enable the country to occupy any country that makes the mistake of offending our (easily offended) President.

On becoming reradicalized

I hate it, but it appears that I am being rapidly re-radicalized. Returned to the emotional state of my adolescenthood. It probably started when I joined an anti-war march in January of last year. Marching along Market (I think) in San Francisco, I found myself marching under a banner that said Berkeley Students Against the War. Remarkable! I mentioned to one of the banner-bearers that I'd marched under that same banner back in 1970, and that the only difference seemed to be that this time there wasn't (yet) any tear gas in the air.
I'd like to insert parenthetically here that among letters to the San Francisco Chronicle and other papers in the following days, there appeared to be a number of writers who accused the marchers around the country of being 'naive' for thinking they could stop the war. I responded by pointing out that for me, at least, I was simply establishing my right to say I told you so later, when the venture degenerated into the fiasco it has now become. I wish I'd said then that the naive ones, in my opinion, were those who thought there could be a successful conclusion to this cynical, hegemonic war. I always think of the good retorts too late to use them.
Now about that phrase so much in the news today:

Precision Bombing.
Precision bombing, along with Body Counts, Captured Enemy Documents and Hearts and Minds was a phrase coined back during the Vietnam war by DOD publicists to describe how we were winning that war. It belongs in the lexicon of war right up there with Collateral Damage as a misleading and obfuscatory way of sanitizing the death of unknown numbers of people.
Let's look at the precision we have achieved. In March 2003, the grand enterprise began with huge numbers of cruise missiles being fired at Iraq. Most of the missiles did, in fact hit their target (Iraq), but numbers of them also hit: Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia! Hundreds of the missiles completely missed a country the size of (we are often reminded) California! The DOD estimate finally was that approximately 80% of the cruise missiles hit their targets. This news tidbit was not greatly noticed, as at the time we were "winning" the war. Eighty per. cent. is actually not too bad for an obsolete system that we had to use up anyway, as the missiles were approaching their bar-coded "best used before" date. Honestly, our military "consumables" as they are euphemistically called, have expiration dates.
Of course,now that we control the skies of Iraq, we can target our, mmm, targets much more reliably. Especially if we venture close enough to use laser targeting. We can achieve absolute to-within-a-third-of-a-meter accuracy in hitting the XY coordinates of our goal. That's how we came to pinpoint the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade so exactly. Oops. Some of our targets seem to be cases mistaken identity. Must have something to do with military intelligence.
It's remarkable to me that there are so many people who believe that the government is completely inept when it comes to domestic issues, like making them pay taxes, while that same government is infallible in its judgements about killing people (other than themselves). Then there is the problem that, while one can strike at the predetermined X and Y exactly, it's not possible to know who will be at that location when the bomb goes off.

This isn't a novel. There are real people, children, noncombatants, people who just want to be left alone, who stubbornly insist on wandering into the bomb zone. When the DOD figures this one out, I want to know about it. I can't even imagine the feelings of people who hear the planes, see the planes, feel the explosions, and are completely powerless to prevent the death and destruction from occurring. My imagination says anger, rage, vengefulness. But that may be too mild a description of the way the people we are bringing freedom-and-democracy feel about us.

I wouldn't count on any future government of Iraq being friendly to the United States. Not unless we own it. How the perpetrators of this disaster ever thought they could re-create Iraq, and the middle east, is beyond me. Hey! It was a play you idiots! George Bernard Shaw wrote it as a comedy!

A Tip of the hat (or whatever)

A tip of the hat to the young lady in Strasbourg France who shaved her head!
Caught between the Scylla of her religious obligations and the Charybidis of the French law, she chose a third way. Rather than comply with one, but not both, of the competing forces, the young Muslim girl has found a way to be in compliance with both religious and secular rules. As a shave-pate, she displays no hair (very important, somehow, for observant Muslims), while not wearing a headscarf (very important, somehow, for the French gov't). With perhaps a touch of sarcasm, she has stepped outside the conflict. The message I get, and which I hope others get as well, is that both sides in this dispute have opted for form over substance, while ignoring the needs of the individuals involved. Rather than think of the needs of the collectivist institutions, religious and secular, perhaps it is time to turn our attention to the needs of the people, spiritual and educational.
Her solution is vastly superior to a suggestion I made to the French government a few months ago. Seeing that the law called for a ban on 'large crucifixes, skullcaps (yarmulke) and headscarfs', I proposed that the law should go on to define just what dimensions of the specified items ought to be. My opening suggestion was: crucifixes, no more than five cm in the long axis; yarmulke, no more than 5 cm in diameter; headscarves, no more than 10 cm square. Properly displayed, I believe these could all become popular fashion articles. In fact, if one were so disposed, one could wear all three simultaneously!
However, my suggestion went unheeded. Instead, we can hope to see large numbers of shaven heads in the schools of France in the near future. I hope the young ladies do not forget to apply sunblock to their scalps.
I wonder what the observant Jewish young men can come up with as clever as this?

And the winner is...

I managed to watch the Great Debate this morning (my time). The candidates belied the title (candidate). Candid they were not. They both remained on message, stubbornly so it seemed to me. Lots of lost opportunities to actually say something. That might well have caused coronary problems with the staff though, so it's probably best they just read from the prepared statements.

However, I was pleased at the performance of one person. I was cringing at the thought that I was going to have to witness Jim Lehrer struggling to be right-down-the-middle-to -the-second fair to both uncandidates. He far exceeded my expectations. He has grown so much since his previous outing in 2000 that I am tempted to either nominate him for an Emmy, or vote for him!
For the rest, it seems that there is much confusion between a 'war on terrorism' and a 'war on Iraq'. How the two have become confused is puzzling to me. Aside from the fact that the occupation of Iraq is creating large numbers of rank and file terrorist soldiers, that operation has as much to do with overcoming terrorism as Vietnam (sorry to bring it up) had to do with halting the spread of Communism. That is, it has nothing to do with it at all. However, I do believe I was wrong in January of 2003 in my belief that the President wouldn't be able to keep the electorate believing that things were going okay in Iraq. If he'd waited 'til 2004, maybe, but over 18 months, I thought the results would be pretty easy to see.
I guess I was wrong about that, too.