I too wish to ask Salon's editors/authors of the piece why they use such an especially reverential form of address for the Dalai Lama where they would not do that for the religious leaders of other communities.

Would you refer to the Pope as "His Supreme Holiness"? How would you refer to the Archbishop of Canterbury? And what about the Patriarchs of the Marthoma or the Jacoba Churches (Syrian Christian sects of India)? How would you refer to the most revered of Muslim leaders?

What about the 'seers' of Hindu sects in India? -- there are, I understand, four or five of them, and they are revered by at least as many as revere the Dalai Lama.

What about the Reverend Wright, who recently caused a flurry in the political hen-coop by castigating US whites?

No "His Holiness" for the Reverend Wright? Well, Barack Obama has firmly disavowed the Reverend Wright's characterizations of US whites (accurate though some of those characterizations might be) - but there may be many who revere the Reverend Wright quite as much as some of you apparently revere the Dalai Lama.

And what about the leaders of Evangelical Christian sects of the US?

You have caught yourself on a horns of a TERRIBLE DILEMMA, I'm afraid!!

Here's my humble suggestion:

As 'secular editors', ALWAYS refer to the Dalai Lama as just the "Dalai Lama"; to all the other religious leaders likewise just by their common or Capital names (regardless of your own inclinations to especially revere the one or the other)...and let the readers supply the levels of holiness they wish to apply to the specific religious leader.

GSC

(P.S.: I'm a great admirer of the Dalai Lama, myself).

Suggestion to all humans everywhere:

EAT HUMAN BEINGS! (Not animals, whether those be cows or pigs or dogs or cats or chickens or geese or ducks)

Just a few years of this kind of diet, and we would most likely have solved the global warming and resource depletion problems.

As to which human beings would be 'best for table':

US citizens are unquestionably the best-fed of all human beings. There are 300-odd million of them.

There are 1000 million Indians - but more than 40% of these live below a disgraceful poverty line of just a couple of dollars a day and are severely malnourished - so Indians are way too bony, scrawny and tough to make eating any enjoyment at all.

The Chinese are far better nourished by Indians. There are about 1200 million Chinese in China, I understand.

The US and China should suffice to feed the whole world for quite a few days or even maybe years - and the best thing would be that we'd surely have solved the global energy and resource problems as well!

-- GSC

I think the 'parenting industry' has well learnt its lesson from the saying: "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time - but you can't fool all the people all the time".

The underlying message is that you don't really need to fool all the people all the time! Just those that you can fool whenever are quite enough to get you all the big bucks that you'll ever want. In the political arena, GW Bush has done it all too successfully for many, many, MANY years!

GSC

I guess one could think of crazier 'solutions to global warming' than blotting out the sun from the sky, but one is hard put to get hold of them.

Actually, once the link between global warming and human activities on earth is established and accepted, there is only one real resolution to the issue: DRASTICALLY reduce human population worldwide!

I understand it has been calculated that something like one 2004 tsunami, each day for 18 years or so (!!) would do the trick of bringing the human population down to a sustainable level of 1.5 billion humans. At what is considered a 'reasonable' level of consumption these days, that is said to be about the maximum that earth can support without serious damage to the global ecosystem.

It would be interesting to find out just where the thrust to reduce human numbers should be applied:

-- Should it be done in countries like China and India, which have each crossed over 1 billion population?

-- Or should it be done in 'developed' countries like the US, whose 300 billion population for instance consumes and pollutes the earth to something like the effect of 8 billion humans (or should that number be 80 billion?!!) in the 'developing' countries?

-- GSC