I can remember like it was yesterday, pawing through the pile of science-fiction books my scientist father brought home from the library that day and finding "Childhood's End" at age 10. I had to read it five times afterwards over the years to finally "get" it. I've read everything else he ever wrote since.

I'll never forget in 1964, dad writing to me while I was on Yankee Station in the Navy, that he had gotten a personal letter from Arthur C. Clarke, addressed to him as a "leading scientist" (among the 200 patents my father received, the one that interested Clarke was his patent for determining that pre-cast, pre-stressed concrete was solid, without breaking it open - every time you ride on a freeway and never think of it falling apart beneath your wheels - absent an earthquake - you can thank him). Clarke asked him to predict, with his knowledge of technological development, what would 2001 look like? Dad's answer was that the military would have finally let go of solid-state electronics and allowed them into the civilian market by then. Of course, he bought his first solid-state consumer electronics six months after replying, a story he always used to love to tell as a way of pointing out where "futurism" usually ends up.

I'll also never forget dad reading "The Star" to us on Christmas Eve every year as an antidote to formalized religion.

Finally, 20 years ago, the last year Clarke was fully ambulatory, I managed to make it into the Magician's Guild, aka the Science Fiction (and now Fantasy) Writers of America, where I had the privilege of meeting both Clarke and Isaac Asimov at that year's dinner, and being treated as an equal by the two men most responsible for my being there (outside of my dad for bringing their books home to begin with).

In today's LA Times obituary, he was quoted as saying he had been known as a writer, as a salesman for space exploration, and an underwater explorer, "but what I should most like to be remembered for is being a writer."

The world is indeed a darker place that he is no longer in it. But I am sure the Star Child is watching us from "The Clarke Orbit."

Whatever their obeisance to capitalism, China is still run by those who grew up in the psychopathic criminal conspiracy masquerading as a political party, known as Maoism. This is a government of international outlaws who have no understanding of laws, of decency, of anything other than the wielding of power.

Anything done to embarass or overthrow them is a good thing. If there was a bunch of thieves and back-alley assassins more in need of being put in the dock of crimninal law - other than our own Republican Party, another criminal conspiracy masquerading as a political party - I can't think of who they'd be.

Poor widdle Sean and all the other Hillarybots, trying to find some way to explain why the LOSER they decided to back should be the winner.

Do you actually think that any state Hillary won in the primaries is going to go Republican in November? Democrats are Democrats and in fact polls here in California show Hillary wouldn't win the state now if she was in a primary contest with Obama this month. Unlike Hillary, there is a good chance Obama may turn some "magenta" states purple enough to break out of the 17-state "DLC zone" that over-educated, under-intelligent morons like you, Mr. Wilenz, have consigned us to for the past 20 years.

Thank God for the system we have, which has revealed The Empress for being as naked as she is when it comes to good sense, judgement, managerial ability in leading her campaign and choosing her staff, and the flat out ability to just not lie. David Geffen was right when he said that the Clintons have lied to so many people about so many things for so long that they now wouldn't know the truth if it kicked them. Sinpers in Bosnia? Chelsea in danger on 9/11? She had any influence on any legislation ever (other than screwing the pooch when she tried to be "co-President" and work her magic on health care)?

The truth is, the incompetence of your candidate means she has now set back the cause of feminism for the next 20 years as thoroughly as her incompetence set back the cause of universal health insurance for the past 15 years.

Actually, since failed academics like Wilenz never use one word when 50 will do, you could have boiled his argument down to this:

"If wishes were horses, we'd all be riding."

I read his piece and wondered (once again) why it is that all the diehard Clintonistas are so goddamned stupid.

Good job kicking him into the gutter, Mr. DeLong.