So what? For another $50 less you can get a Toshiba Gigabeat 40 megabyte player that is pretty much the same thing as the Zune, and then if you add the free Rockbox operating system, you have a pretty good music player that is, in my book, better than the iPod. (Have used both.)

Microsoft is probably telling the truth. New products tend to come down in price after a while. There are several brands of mp3 music players on the market and obviously there is some competition out there and some kind of pricing structure based on size of memory and cachet of manufacturer. Apple seems to be good at asking a premium price for its new products, getting Apple a larger slice of the mp3 player pie, and squeezing consumers until the pips squeak. Their products are good, but their business practices are rotten to the core. Eventually Apple turn into cider.

... try befriending the overseas students, of whom you will meet many. Many of them will be arriving in a strange land knowing no one and for that reason may tend to flock together with other strange birds of a similar feather.

For them you as (presumably) a born American will have premium scarcity value as a friend and with a bit of luck will be invited to spend your vacations overseas, marry their pretty sisters, etc.

Harriet Miers, herself a candidate for the Supreme Court, though maybe not a very distinguished one, said that Bush was the smartest man she had ever met. Maybe a bit of hyperbole, but she must have had a lot to do with him over the years and he must have impressed her.

Interesting that Draper does not comment on the fact that Bush is supposedly a deeply religious man.

I think the explanation for the mysterious failure of the Democrat leadership to oppose the Iraq war is probably the correct one.

I am absolutely no one of any political importance, and I had no special intelligence about Iraq, yet in the run up to the Iraq war I did not believe that Iraq had chemical weapons that represented a real threat to the West, nor was I in the least bit convinced by Colin Powell's UN presentation that was so woefully short on details. Clearly his sermon was aimed only at the choir.

I was shocked when around 9/14 Bush stated that the rest of his presidency would be dedicated to a War on Terror. Actually I thought that he had lost his mind.

Now that we know that Bush is a great intellect, it occurs to me that he must have been reading George Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty Four and concluded that perpetual warfare against an ill-defined all-purpose enemy was the way to go for any self-respecting totalitarian state.

Come on folks. Britney is a fine musician. Do you think Ella Fitzgerald or Dame Kiri Te Kanawa could lip sync and dance any better in a bikini. I don't think so.

Making pop records is a producer's medium and this one is no worse than many.

The Britney Spears audience is mostly young women who are in the market for trendy clothes and makeup, so she is promoted for that audience (market). You may remember that it was only a short while ago that she was being marketed as America's Oldest Living Virgin until her maidenhood was stolen when she was impaled by the dastardly lothario Justin Trousersnake, or whatever his name is. From that point onward her descent into degradation and baseness has been precipitous, climaxing in the publication of a photograph in which it appeared that she had not wiped her bottom properly.

However, we dirty old men know that beneath the sleazy exterior, there beats the heart of an innocent young girl who had been badly wronged.

You go, girl!

Don't you still have to sign up for an AT&T contract when you buy the thing? If you have a contract you don't have to use the service, but you still have to pay for it. At least that is my impression.

Come on folks. Britney is a fine musician. Do you think Ella Fitzgerald or Dame Kiri Te Kanawa could lip sync and dance any better in a bikini. I don't think so.

Making pop records is a producer's medium and Britney's latest oeuvre is no worse than many. It has a beat, it has lyrics. What do you want? An instant standard? Cole Porter or Irving Berlin?

The Britney Spears audience is mostly working-class young and not so young women who are in the market for trendy clothes and makeup, so she is promoted for that audience (ahem, market). You may remember that it was only a short while ago that she was being marketed as America's Oldest Living Virgin until her maidenhood was stolen when she was impaled by the dastardly lothario Justin Trousersnake, or whatever his name is. From that point onward her descent into degradation and baseness has been precipitous, climaxing in the publication on the Internet of a photograph in which it appeared that she had not wiped her bottom properly.

However, we dirty old men know that beneath the sleazy exterior, there beats the heart of an innocent young girl who had been badly wronged.

You go, girl. Here are some of the lyrics from your next hit album, Britney Lip-Syncs Standards Doggie Style.

They all laughed at Rockefeller Center,

now they're fighting to get in

They all laughed at Whitney and her cocaine binge

They all laughed Fulton and his steamboat,

Hershey and his chocolate bar

Ford and his Lizzie, kept the laughers busy,

that's how people are

They laughed at me wanting you,

said it would be, "Hello, Goodbye."

But oh, you came through, now they're eating humble pie

They all said we'd never get together, darling,

Let's take a bow, for ho, ho, ho!

Who's got the last laugh now?