Catching Up: Best of 2004: March

This, like others in the series, is a re-presentation of the best items that I passed to friends in my personal newsletter. There were lots of those items, and I am under some time limits right now, so I am trying to catch up just one month at a time. So here are the best from March 2004. Note: these, and other postings, do not consistently seek to be politically correct. That said, they also do not go out of their way to be offensive. They simply reflect a perspective on everyday life that appears to be commonly appreciated among ordinary people. But if anyone wants to question or comment upon any of the posts in my blog, they are definitely invited to post responses in the appropriate space, below. Note also that some of these come from webpages that now seem to be defunct. In the case of quotes, I've provided enough information for you to Google and/or WaybackMachine them and figure out the original sources, if you are so moved. * * * * * A study conducted by UCLA's Department of Psychiatry has revealed that the kind of male face a woman finds attractive can differ depending on where she is in her menstrual cycle. For instance, if she is ovulating, she is attracted to men with rugged and masculine features. However, if she is menstruating, or menopausal, she is more prone to be attracted to a man with scissors lodged in his temple and a bat jammed up his ass while he is on fire. Further studies are expected. * * * * * Question from a reader: So, Ray, if a Unitarian and a Methodist marry, are they Methotarians or Unitarodists? Reply from another reader: I'd guess that they'd be more ecumenical, and are either Metaridists or Metarodians or Unithorians. * * * * * [P]laywright August Wilson, who was on hand to receive the Freedom of Speech Award, began an autobiographical monologue with a tart, politically resonant wisecrack: "My ancestors have been in America since the early 17th century," said Mr. Wilson, who is of course black, "and for the first 244 years they didn't have any trouble finding a job." ... * * * * * "The 2000 election was a remarkably funny event," said Greg Proops, a comic best known for his appearances on "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" "I was surprised that after that election Haiti didn't invade us to install a democracy." * * * * * In 2000, poor diet including obesity and physical inactivity caused 400,000 U.S. deaths — more than 16 percent of all deaths and the No. 2 killer. That compares with 435,000 for tobacco, or 18 percent, as the top underlying killer. The gap between the two is substantially narrower than in 1990, when poor diet and inactivity caused 300,000 deaths, 14 percent, compared with 400,000 for tobacco, or 19 percent, says a report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. * * * * * The specialized definition of downtrodden here is: people with sense forced to observe a large portion of mankind continually trying to pinch its own head off. The goal of the rationally downtrodden is to somehow wrestle the insane bits to the ground before they kill us all. ... Remaining on Madman Watch for long stretches of time has a distinct tendency to result in attacks of profoundly logical depression. ... [F]ears about the unnatural sameness resulting from cloning are far too late in one way: the majority has already been there and had that done, long ago. In every way except the purely biological, too many humans have already been carefully raised as socially engineered monocrops. Original thought is now a severely endangered species. There has been a widespread sterilization project underway for a very long time, directed toward the human mind, and it has been much too successful. ... * * * * * Positive Development in Corporate Law Prison terms for white-collar crimes lengthening. Jeffrey K. Skilling, Enron's former chief executive, and L. Dennis Kozlowski and Mark H. Swartz, two senior executives at Tyco International, could all face more than 25 years in prison if they are convicted. Andrew S. Fastow, the former chief financial officer of Enron, faces at least 10 years in prison for his guilty plea even though he has agreed to cooperate with investigators. * * * * * If you want my title, it's professor of pickpocketry. My wife, Bambi Vincent, and I spend seven months each year traveling the world to film pickpockets and other street thieves who prey on unsuspecting tourists. As a security consultant to business travelers, law enforcement and corporations, I live to expose the latest tricks of scoundrels. After we observe a thief in action, we usually try to lure him into conversation and pick his brain the way he picks the pockets of his victims. Most thieves love to brag, though on other occasions we've had rocks thrown at us and knives pulled on us, and we've been hit and spat upon. I keep my money tucked inside my trousers, in a thin leather pouch that hangs from my belt. I also have a wallet stuffed only with newspaper, which I use as bait. It has been stolen from my hip pocket more than 100 times. Sometimes I confront the thieves and it magically appears on the ground. But other times I steal it back; that's the quickest way to establish rapport with pickpockets. When I invite them for coffee, I think they are in awe, and that is why they reveal their secrets and give me their cellphone numbers. Granted, the phones are usually stolen. Our cameras are no bigger than a dime, hidden inside items like buttons on shirt collars. In London, I was tracking some pickpockets for a news program and had to go to the men's room. The camera was in my eyeglasses, and when I stood at the urinal, I forgot to turn my head. The editors had to do some cutting. I probably have more insight into the subculture of global pickpocketing than any other person in the world, on either side of the law. But that doesn't mean that pickpockets can't outsmart me. Last summer in Rome, my wife and I were packed like sardines in a metro at rush hour near the crowded Spanish Steps. There were 20 people near the door, and 14 were probably pickpockets. A woman was working my hip pocket, gently moving out my wallet. I had a small wireless video camera hidden in a cellphone in my right hand, high up filming the action. Bambi was to my left, with two guys trying for her handbag, which she was keeping an eye on. Another team of three guys was trying to go for a tall American man standing close beside me. I pretended not to notice anything. Unbeknownst to me, they succeeded in removing a small video recorder from a bag I was holding at knee level while I was watching everyone's faces. Embarrassing, yes, but I have to acknowledge the finesse of high-end pickpockets because of the perfection in their combination of stealth and precise choreography. ... * * * * * The Community Service Society studied employment conditions among black men in New York City. Using the employment- population ratio, which is the proportion of the working-age population with a job, it found — incredibly — that nearly one of every two black men between the ages of 16 and 64 was not working last year. ... * * * * * From a Republican: Pythagorean Theorem: 24 words. Lord's Prayer: 66 words. Archimedes' Principle: 67 words. Ten Commandments: 179 words. Gettysburg Address: 286 words. Declaration of Independence: 1,300 words. US Gov't regulations on the sale of cabbage: 26,911 words. (Ah, but we forget:) The sometimes erotic, largely ignored Song of Solomon: 2,658 words. The arbitrarily disregarded Jewish laws, repeatedly interminably in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy: over 50,000 words (depending on which ones you disregard!). * * * * * Late-Night Political News (This was when I started a series that continues on my newsgroup to this very day. Here are some of continuing interest -- to me, anyway.) "A California state senator has proposed an amendment to the California state constitution that would lower the voting age to 14. This is ridiculous, do you know what would happen if we allowed 14 year olds to vote? We'd end up with someone like an action hero as governor." —Jay Leno "Here in California gas prices have gone up to more than $2 a gallon. So not only didn't we find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq… apparently we didn't find any oil there either. Didn't we win the war? I thought that gas would be free now." —Jay Leno "President Bush has unveiled his first campaign commercial, highlighting all of his accomplishments in office. That's why it's a 60-second spot." —Jay Leno "The election is in full-swing. Republicans have taken out round-the- clock ads promoting George Bush. Don't we already have that? It's called Fox News." —Craig Kilborn "I heard this today and I thought this was fascinating and interesting. President Bush has two daughters, two beautiful daughters, and they may work on their father's presidential campaign after they get out of college and I thought, well, that's a pretty good move because in this economy, they won't be able to find real jobs." —David Letterman "Martha Stewart was convicted of four counts of lying and obstruction of justice and could serve up to 20 years in Congress." —Craig Kilborn "John Kerry will be the Democratic nominee for president. Democrats finally found someone who is Al Gore without the flash and the sizzle." —Craig Kilborn "Earlier today, President Bush said Kerry will be a tough and hard- charging opponent. That explains why Bush's nickname for Kerry is math." —Conan O'Brien "Kerry has already begun his search for a running mate. They say that because John Edwards still has $50 million in campaign money, Kerry might pick him. Pick him? Hey, for $50 million, Kerry will marry him." —Jay Leno "In a recent interview, Kerry said Clinton was known as the first black president and he'd like to earn the right to be second. Is John Kerry the closest we can get to a black president? How does it make Al Sharpton feel? He's going, hey guys, hello, I'm an actual black person." —Jay Leno "John Kerry has promised to take this country back from the wealthy. Who better than the guy worth $700 million to take the country back? See, he knows how the wealthy think. He can spy on them at his country club, at his place in Palm Beach, at his house in the Hamptons. He's like a mole for the working man." —Jay Leno * * * * * My husband is a liar and a cheat. He has cheated on me from the beginning, and when I confront him, he denies everything. What's worse, everyone knows he cheats on me. It is so humiliating. Also, since he lost his job three years ago he hasn't even looked for a new one. All he does is buy cigars and cruise around and shoot the bull with his pals, while I have to work to pay the bills. Since our daughter went away to college he doesn't even pretend to like me and hints that I am a lesbian. What should I do? Signed, Clueless Dear Clueless: Grow up and dump him. For Pete's sake, you don't need him anymore -- you're a United States Senator from New York now.

Catching Up: Best of 2004: February

This, like others in the series, is a re-presentation of the best items that I passed to friends in my personal newsletter. There were lots of those items, and I am under some time limits right now, so I am trying to catch up just one month at a time. So here are the best from February 2004. Note: these, and other postings, do not consistently seek to be politically correct. That said, they also do not go out of their way to be offensive. They simply reflect a perspective on everyday life that appears to be commonly appreciated among ordinary people. But if anyone wants to question or comment upon any of the posts in my blog, they are definitely invited to post responses in the appropriate space, below. * * * * * A man walks into a bar. He sees a good looking, smartly dressed woman perched on a barstool. He walks up behind her and says, "Hi there, good looking, how's it going?" She turns around, faces him, looks him straight in the eye and says, "Listen, I'll screw anybody, anytime, anywhere, your place, my place, it doesn't matter. I've been doing it ever since I got out of college. I just flat out love it." He says, "No kidding? I'm a lawyer too! What firm are you with?" * * * * * Dear Dr. Laura: Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the other specific laws and how to follow them. 1. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing smell for the Lord - Leviticus 1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them? 2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her? 3. I know that I am not allowed to have contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness - Leviticus 15:19-24. The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense. 4. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians? [It goes on from there. But you get the idea.] * * * * * A magician worked on a cruise ship. The audience was different each week so the magician did the same tricks over and over again. There was only one problem: the captain's parrot saw the shows each week and began to understand how the magician did every trick. Once he understood, he started shouting in the middle of the show. "Look, it's not the same hat!" or "Look, he's hiding the flowers under the table!" or "Hey, why are all the cards the ace of spades?" The magician was furious but couldn't do anything. It was, after all, the captain's parrot. Then one stormy night on the Pacific, the ship unfortunately sank, drowning almost all who were onboard. The magician luckily found himself on a piece of wood floating in the middle of the sea with, as fate would have it, the parrot. They stared at each other with hatred but did not utter a word. This went on for a day... and then 2 days...and then 3 days. Finally on the 4th day, the parrot could not hold back any longer and said......"OK, I give up. Where's the fucking ship?" * * * * * If President Bush were a woman http://www.funsnap.com/1/bushgirl.swf * * * * * Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has been called many things, a savvy politician, a devoted wife. But Men's Journal magazine is adding one more description to that list: Tough Guy. In its March issue, already on newsstands, the magazine publishes its annual list of "The 25 Toughest Guys in America" -- and Clinton weighs in at No. 25, just behind human crash test dummy Rusty Haight, who has been in 740 car wrecks. It's the first time Men's Journal has put a woman on the list, senior editor Tom Foster said. "I think just looking at what she's been through and what she represents, that sort of stood for itself," Foster said. "Would you mess with her?" [It's true. Here's the link:] http://www.mensjournal.com/feature/0403/toughguys.html * * * * * Lifetime estimates in women range from 7% to 17% for sexual assault, 3%-15% for rape, and as high as 30%-50% for sexual harassment. A history of sexual trauma (including sexual molestation, sexual assault or rape in either childhood or adulthood, and sexual harassment) is associated with (1) increased rates of psychopathology, (2) more frequent health problems, and (3) negative health behavior (i.e., behavior with a known negative impact on health outcomes). See http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/466545?mpid=24800 * * * * * In his new book, "The Pecking Order: Which Siblings Succeed and Why," to be published next month by Pantheon, [Dalton Conley, a sociologist and director of the Center for Advanced Social Science Research at New York University] turns conventional wisdom on its head, arguing that pronounced economic disparities lie not just between families but within them. His astonishing assertion: differences between families explain only 25 percent of the nation's income inequality; the remaining 75 percent is explained by differences between siblings. More typical of the United States than President Bush and his brother Jeb, the governor of Florida, he suggests, are the White House's previous tenant, Bill Clinton, and his half-brother, Roger, a college dropout, onetime cocaine dealer and failed musician. Or, for that matter, Jimmy Carter and his ne'er-do-well brother, Billy. * * * * * Whatever arguments there may be about the verisimilitude of Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ," one thing is certain: this Jesus is a Hollywood hunk who probably bears little resemblance to what the Jesus of history looked like. The title role is played by Jim Caviezel, a dark-haired, blue-eyed star whose brooding good looks have been compared to those of Montgomery Clift. He doesn't exactly fit the archaeological evidence that the average man of Jesus' day was about 5 feet 3 inches tall and a bantamlike 110 pounds. Given the harsh conditions, especially for working stiffs like the members of Jesus' family, combined with Jesus' ascetic lifestyle, which included walking everywhere, scholars agree that he was most likely a rather sinewy peasant, as tough as a root and about as appealing. * * * * * Apparent Republican contradictions to ponder: The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq. Government should relax regulation of Big Business and Big Money but crack down on individuals who use marijuana to relieve the pain of illness. A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multi-national corporations should be trusted to make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation. Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton. The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay. Group sex and drug use are degenerate sins unless you someday run for Governor of California as a Republican. If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex. A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our long-time allies, then demand their cooperation and money. HMOs and insurance companies have the interest of the public at heart. Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism. Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools. A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense. A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy. The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's driving record is none of our business. What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the '80s is irrelevant. Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony. * * * * * Next: (you guessed it) March 2004 ...

Investment Thoughts: Timing the Housing Purchase

The current situation appears to be that prices in about half of the residential housing markets in the U.S. are still rising or flat, and that prices are falling in the other half. It is not presently clear to me which will become the dominant motif in coming months. I suspect the numbers will be negative rather than positive -- that the many homeowners who must roll over adjustable-rate mortgages in coming months will find it more difficult to do so, now that credit conditions have tightened in the wake of the collapse of the subprime mortgage market. Projections I am reading today are telling me that housing is generally expected to continue into negative territory into 2008, or possibly 2009. I would expect the latter, given that there is (if I recall correctly) a nine-month overhang of unsold houses on a national basis, as distinct from the more customary five or six. Absent a roaring bull market, which nobody is forecasting right now, it will take a while to work off that excess inventory. If you are looking to buy in a housing market that has experienced a downturn, I imagine a good time to buy will be when sellers are in a panicked state -- that is, slightly before the market reaches a solid, flat bottom. By the time things level out, the most desperate sellers may be gone, and you may be dealing with people who are not as desperate to sell. But since it is hard to see too far into the future, it may seem too risky to buy at that point, given the possibility that housing will stay down for a long time.

No Drives Are Attached, or Drives Are Powered Down

I was starting to build a second computer. I installed a Philips SPD2513BD DVD burner. I didn't notice that it was a SATA drive, and I was a little bummed about using up one of my two SATA connections, in this new computer, when I could have used one of the IDE/ATA connectors instead. But in the worst case I could swap it with the IDE burner in the other computer. I liked the specifications and the looks of this drive, and I had already paid shipping, so I decided to make a go of it. My plan for a quick and easy Windows XP Professional installation, on this new computer, was to use DriveImage 2002 to install a drive image PQI file containing a complete snapshot of an earlier WinXP installation. That way, I would not have to go through the whole rigmarole of installing Windows, sitting there hitting keys to get it to download updates, etc. I would just re-install this already complete previous installation, change a few hardware items, and be done with much of the installation chore. Unfortunately, it didn't work quite that way. When I tried to boot from the Drive Image CD, I got this error message:

No Drives Are Attached, or Drives Are Powered Down The Device Driver Is Not Installed

The message was obviously incorrect, insofar as it was coming from a CD that was loaded in the DVD drive. I had previously booted Bart PE and had seen, there, and also in an Ubuntu bootup, that the system was indeed recognizing both the DVD drive and the hard drive. I did a Google search for the error message, but came up with no answers. I was stumped. I searched for the error message in Google Groups as well. There, I got the idea to check the BIOS. No clues in the BIOS, but I then thought of trying to boot Drive Image from the floppy disk. (I had recently recopied Drive Image to fresh floppies.) But that gave me a Grub Error 22. Evidently this system was not willing to boot from the floppy, even though I did have it third in the BIOS bootup sequence. I tried moving it to first. That worked. The floppy booted. Apparently Grub had come preloaded ... or, as I thought about it, perhaps I had not completely reformatted the hard drive after installing Ubuntu on it. I postponed the Drive Image process to verify that, rebooting with PartitionMagic 8.0. Of course, it wasn't prepared to load that, either, not from the CD anyway, so I reverted to the original plan and proceeded to load Drive Image from the floppy, figuring I would fool with the partition issues later. But then -- I had forgotten -- Drive Image was able to identify and delete the partition, so PM wasn't needed. I was surprised and pleased that DI was able to read the PQI, given that it was saved on a DVD rather than a CD. I hadn't been sure that DVD technology was in the mainstream back in 2002. I still got Grub Error 22, so I researched it and got the advice to boot from the WinXP program CD, go into Recovery Console, and use FIXMBR and FIXBOOT. That solved the problem.

Some Stages in Today's Bear Market (Thinking Especially of Homes)

You have your euporia, when everyone is making money. Then the plateau, when it still looks like everyone is making money, or should be. Then a few shudders. Then a sharp, unsettling drop. Then you spend some time regearing and reconsidering and reviewing. You conclude that the sharp drop was a correction, a short-term adjustment before a return to the upward path, although admittedly now you're starting back upwards from a slightly lower point. Then there is more bad news, and things go slightly down instead of slightly up. There are adjustments and amendments to the bad news, but you're willing to admit that it was bad news, nonetheless. You realize that the start back towards growth is going to be slower than you had thought. There is some wavering. There are one or two more sharp drops, although maybe not as sharp as the first one, and usually followed by a partial recovery. At some point, you start to doubt the pundits and financial sages who say that, once this latest glitch is past, things should be on a smoother road to improvement, sometime later this year or early next year. You fear it might actually take somewhat longer than they're saying. You, and a million others who are reading and thinking more or less the same things as you. You see that it's not entirely clear how far things will continue to decline, or when this will be over. It occurs to you that there is a mortgage or a margin call or some other bill that you might not be able to pay, that you were assuming you would be able to pay, because now the values of your assets at risk are somewhat lower than you had thought they would be. You observe that, whereas it used to be that every piece of bad news actually had a silver lining, now every piece of good news is just a finger in the dike. It's good news, sure, but it's arriving in an increasingly dark time. By itself, it won't change much. So maybe you cash out at a loss; or maybe you remain hopeful about the past and worried about the future, all the way to the bottom. You, and a million others. Of course, if you can't afford to keep the asset in question -- if you can't meet the margin call or pay the mortgage or continue to put food on the table -- then your sellout still doesn't necessarily give you much cash in the hand. You may find, to everyone's surprise, that you're not actually walking away with much. Which is a shame, because in a recession, cash is king. If you had cashed out earlier instead of riding the surfboard all the way up to the sand, you would now begin to notice that impressively valuable assets are becoming available for a song. Fortunately, others do have cash. They will buy those assets, and eventually they will put you to work on those assets, so that you may help to build their fortune. You may be working only occasionally, or at a paltry wage, but you'll be grateful. It's not until you'll have the courage of being able to survive that you'll insist on better wages and conditions. And in today's global economy, that could be a decade away.

Working with Files and Folders

You can replace the old MultiRen utility, provided by PC Magazine in 1998 (when they were giving readers good freeware utilities) with a feature in the freeware program ExplorerXP. In ExplorerXP, you highlight multiple files and choose Commands > Rename (or just F2). You then choose a mass renaming function (e.g., Trim) and play with it. It doesn't make the changes right away -- it just shows you what it is going to do. It is a significant improvement over MultiRen, never mind the mass-renaming feature provided in Windows XP.

2xExplorer provides a dual-pane interface that appears similar to the dual-pane interface in the old PowerDesk 98 Utilities. The program's filtering tool, icons, and other features also appear to provide a welcome resurrection of some PowerDesk capabilities, in a form that works in WinXP.

Crystal Ball Gazing: Finances

It appears the financial system will be experiencing significant changes. One is that we have been enjoying easy credit, and it looks like that party is over. There is no longer as much money available as there was before. Indeed, the current is running in the other direction: Americans are needing to come up with cash to pay mortgages and to buy things that they previously were able to cover by borrowing in one way or another.

People will raise cash by selling things. The classic adage is, "In a recession, cash is king." If you have cash (from e.g., selling your house a year or two ago), you may soon find that you can buy things, very cheaply, from others who are unloading them to raise money.

This applies, in part, to consumer goods. They have been cheap enough, thanks to China, but soon people may be resorting to yard sales and eBay to get whatever they can get from some items. It also applies to cars. Demand for cars will drop when people can't afford them. Automakers have to do their best. Six months to a year from now, you may be able to get quite a deal on a new or used car.

Of course, it also applies to real estate, though that is a somewhat different matter. You may really need a new cell phone or a new car to keep on making a living, but you can most likely survive and keep your job if you are renting rather than buying. So you could afford to wait a while for real estate prices to hit bottom, and waiting is what I would recommend.

More Efficient Use of Global Financial Resources

There has been enormous liquidity in the global financial system. There has actually been more money to invest than places to invest it. Thus, in the U.S. within the past decade, we have seen a dot-com bubble and a real estate bubble, and there have been other bubbles abroad. Those with funds to invest are less worried about the security of their investments. They are more willing to risk a loss of principal in exchange for a chance at making large additional amounts. That is, they do not desperately need to preserve their capital.

This state of affairs suggests that too much profit has been extracted from lower-income people. The money has been concentrated in the hands of investors; but now what? Now we invest it in projects that do not always make long-term sense. To some extent, it becomes unneeded office buildings or inflated salaries, or in other ways more of it is spent than would actually need to be spent to achieve the socially desired goal (e.g., to recruit qualified leaders; to insure an adequate supply of office space).

Meanwhile, some of that money could be performing more effectively elsewhere. There are people who will die for want of a sheet of plastic; there are bridges that will rust for want of a coat of paint. A billion dollars becomes a mere cipher on the macro level; but on the mezzo level, it would have meant four thousand projects, each costing a quarter of a million dollars.

Privacy

It seems privacy will go -- is going -- in two directions. On one hand, we are developing greater capacity to peer into people's bodies and minds, to speculate about their childhoods based upon adult behavior patterns, to see through their clothes with X-ray machines when they enter airports, and so forth. It is probably only a matter of time until many of our hopes, lies, fears, and beliefs are electronically readable. This is the direction of greater openness, as demonstrated in the frank confessions of people on websites like MySpace and Facebook. People seem to be embracing this openness, or at least taking it head-on and making the best of it. Thus they set themselves up for great interactions with other likeminded individuals, and also for great abuse by people who do not share their orientation and/or will use it against them.

The other direction is the opposite. This is the direction of closedness. As data become more openly available, people are more concerned about those who would abuse it. Thus we have medical privacy laws that did not seem necessary for previous generations; these are part of an age when, say, a would-be employer could abuse access to that information by using it as a basis for denying employment. Most people now seem to have concerns about revealing their Social Security numbers, whereas it had previously seemed that only the paranoid were concerned about letting anyone else get those numbers. Of course, people have always told tales or used the available information against one another.

If trends like those of the medical records and Social Security numbers are any guide, it seems that it becomes increasingly painful to be open with one's private information -- and yet, at the same time, that the amount of potentially available information about oneself increases. I expect that we are moving into a time when extremely sensitive personal information becomes available, but is no longer made readily known to potential friends -- that, instead, it is available only to authorities and criminals, who will ignore it at best and use it against you at worst.

Chinese Expansionism

China's leaders do not fully control their country. There are thousands of protests every week, in different places around China, and the pollution controls that the country needs are enforced (or, frequently, not enforced) by corrupt local officials. China is on a march to at least a minor meltdown, not too many years from now. One possible response will be to find more places for Chinese people to live abroad. China invests its money in beneficial projects throughout the developing world, and especially in Africa and Latin America. It presently does so to obtain even more beneficial arrangements. But it may also find, incidentally, that such projects provide a convenient opportunity for the relocation of large numbers of Chinese citizens who can find a way to get out of the country to live somewhere else. A hundred years from now, the Chinese may have become the world's first truly international race. A particularly attractive piece of real estate lies just to the north. There is a lot of empty Siberia up there. Of course, Russia is a major nuclear power. It would be extremely risky for China's army to march north, seeking to seize pieces of that empty land. But there are other ways. At present, Russia enjoys financial strength, due especially to its oil and gas. That revenue source will not last forever. Twin forces of conservation and consumption will have eaten into that funding stream within the next ten to twenty years. Russia has never managed to become economically or culturally competitive. This does not appear likely to change. That is, manufacturing or other sources of significant revenues do not seem likely to provide the sort of funding that Russia would need to excel economically. Thus, within a generation, a combination of factors may enable the Chinese to offer Russia a deal that Russia cannot refuse -- if not for the actual transfer of land, then perhaps at least for the resettlement of Chinese people. Russia's Putin has recently behaved arrogantly in the Arctic. He may have done so, not merely to grab its resources, but also to send a message that Russia is an aggressive place. He may have become anxious that China is aggressively expanding its military, not only to protect its interests in international waters, but also in case there does seem to be some need for a move north. Things are not presently at that situation. But there are desperate times to come; and desperate times calls for desperate measures.