You assume that the elements of the various desert religion creeds were delivered by God instead of devised by humans in imitation of what they thought God was like.

Or do you merely assume that about your own creed?

Of course it will seem blasphemy to a true believer to say that humans have actually devised the principles of their religions (or at least of yours). Nevertheless, an honest look at some of the fakakta crud that passes for religious doctrine makes it pretty obvious that these stupid ideas are the ideas of people, not God. I say this as a highly religious man.

Charity, forgiveness, mercy, justice, peace, honesty, a veneration of true understanding, help for those less fortunate, peace--these are the sorts of things that any religion should sponsor and be proud to sponsor. The rest is bull.

Dear Harry: You are exactly right. Independence Day is one seriously cheesy movie. I've watched it twice, I admit, because I am a sucker for science fiction, but good god, what a blatant and clumsy bundling of sentimental bull.

Just like the Bush administration. Both administrations think they can beat anybody, even aliens in flying saucers. In movies, it is easier to make thinks come out the way you want.

How is it you know about Southern Baptist re-dedication? Were you, too, raised in the creed?

You propose a WPA-style solution to our economic problems. I concur. Infrastructure is seriously messed up, and it only makes sense to do something which at once employs people and adds value to the common enterprise.

The one additional suggestion I will make is that the new WPA equivalent include a massive program on the space effort. Sure, many of the jobs demand high technical expertise. But for every engineer, there must be ten jobs that need doing that an engineer is too highly trained to do. I say space because that is the one area no one is concentrating on and in which we can again become a leader. We could achieve a regular space-faring ability within ten years, and become a leader among nations again.

In my opinion, it is a bad sign when a troubled government retreats from its initiatives of exploration and discovery, as the U. S. has done ever since the Apollo program. In my opinion, the argument that it costs too much to go to space when we have so many problems here is fallacious. (The whole point of a WPA approach would be to lessen the cost, incidentally.) The point is fresh thought, fresh discovery, not grudging contraction while we waste more and more money on intractable situations.

Plan to recommend this approach on Obama's website.

Glad to see someone observing the estrangement caused by the acquisition of language. Like Pullman's "other grace," there are compensations--without language, how would we write books that matter to children, for example?

This just to say that I suspect memory does not begin with language. Have meditated on this (being a literary person) for nearly fifty years. What I suspect is that upon the acquisition of language, the nature of memory changes. We organize it differently, according to the concepts we are learning. Nothing that we remember from before can fit into that organization, so we do not "remember" it. I suspect the memories survive, as emotional impressions, inexplicable waves of affect, those strange images that sometimes spring into our heads when we are doing something without thinking or reading.

The early memories become, I would suggest, the context, the aura for linguistically-based memories.

Didn't take the article as anything but fun, so no snooty comments here. Hope it's right. Got bored a long time ago with the Brazilians and the landing strips. The whole fad was just another silliness. What's wrong with natural?

They call it a remake, but is that an accurate word if the entire thesis of the movie has been changed, and only the names have been kept? In the original, Klaatu came to warn the Earth that unless humans behaved and quit making war, the superpeacekeepers that his race have created, like Gort, will destroy it. In this, according to your review, Klaatu has become the superbeing, and does all the threatening himself. It was important, in that movie, which is over fifty years old now, that Klaatu was caught in the same trap as humans.

It had its lame moments, yes--Klaatu explaining that he comes from a planet several millions of miles away, maybe Saturn, which is a physical impossibility, and so on.

But I do remember that movie. Will probably not see this one, not because of your review, but because I have learned to avoid movies with Keanu Reeves.